Brahms's Elegies

A unique insight into the relationship between Brahms's music and his philosophical and literary context from a modernist perspective.

Introduction; 1. Brahms's ascending circle: Hölderlin and Schicksalslied; 2. The ennoblement of mourning: Nänie and the death of beauty; 3. A disembodied head for mythic justice: Gesang der Parzen; 4. The last great cultural harvest: Nietzsche and the Vier ernste Gesänge; 5. The sense of an ending: music's return to the land of childhood; Epilogue.