Brahms's Elegies

Exploring the philosophical dimensions of Brahms's music, this book analyzes his elegiac works and their relationship to German literature. Of interest to musicology, German studies and cultural history scholars, it illuminates how Brahms's music relates to aesthetics and modernity from Hoelderlin, Schiller, and Goethe to the Frankfurt School.

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.