A Historiography of Musical Historicism: The Case of Johannes Brahms
type: CreativeWork
description: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) lived in an epoch marked by the 1848 revolution that precipitated social, cultural, and economical changes. In the realm of music, the extension of concert repertory to music of the past, and the emergence of historical writings reflected a greater awareness of music history. While composers of that era, including Brahms, arguably worked under the growing weight of history, Brahms was able to place himself within the ranks of classical masters by his historicist aesthetics and compositional methodology that synthesized the past, the present, and his individual creativity. Combined with his connection to musicology, a blooming discipline and child of the historicism movement, his historicist practice and thinking continuously receive scholarly attention, especially in the twentieth century up until today. Musical historicism, however, remains a problematic and paradoxical concept, notwithstanding the fact that it gradually gains importance in both Germanic and Anglo-American Brahms scholarship and historiography, hence, increasing the need for historiographical studies on musical historicism in Brahms. This thesis is a study of the interpretations and writings on Brahms and musical historicism from selected Anglo-American and German Brahms scholars, starting from the late 1960s, when scholars began to use “musical historicism” prominently as a term, up to the 2010s, in order to provide an overview of the usage and development of this term in Brahms scholarship and also to determine the extent to which there is a consensus on how Brahms scholars have employed this concept. With this study, I hope to highlight the importance of continuous reassessment and reinterpretation of writings on Brahms’s musical historicism, and, more specifically, speak to issues related to the reception history of Brahms’s music as well as informing our understanding of Brahms’s place in musical historicism. The first chapter surveys relevant secondary literature, …
abstract: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) lived in an epoch marked by the 1848 revolution that precipitated social, cultural, and economical changes. In the realm of music, the extension of concert repertory to music of the past, and the emergence of historical writings reflected a greater awareness of music history. While composers of that era, including Brahms, arguably worked under the growing weight of history, Brahms was able to place himself within the ranks of classical masters by his historicist aesthetics and compositional methodology that synthesized the past, the present, and his individual creativity. Combined with his connection to musicology, a blooming discipline and child of the historicism movement, his historicist practice and thinking continuously receive scholarly attention, especially in the twentieth century up until today. Musical historicism, however, remains a problematic and paradoxical concept, notwithstanding the fact that it gradually gains importance in both Germanic and Anglo-American Brahms scholarship and historiography, hence, increasing the need for historiographical studies on musical historicism in Brahms. This thesis is a study of the interpretations and writings on Brahms and musical historicism from selected Anglo-American and German Brahms scholars, starting from the late 1960s, when scholars began to use “musical historicism” prominently as a term, up to the 2010s, in order to provide an overview of the usage and development of this term in Brahms scholarship and also to determine the extent to which there is a consensus on how Brahms scholars have employed this concept. With this study, I hope to highlight the importance of continuous reassessment and reinterpretation of writings on Brahms’s musical historicism, and, more specifically, speak to issues related to the reception history of Brahms’s music as well as informing our understanding of Brahms’s place in musical historicism. The first chapter surveys relevant secondary literature, …
author: Ho, Shao Ying
language: en
keywords: Brahms, Johannes, Brahms, historicism, musical historicism, historicism in music, historiography
identifier: Ho, S. Y. (2013). A historiography of musical mistoricism: The case of Johannes Brahms [Master's thesis, Texas State University-San Marcos].
date published: 2013-04
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:19:37Z
provider: Texas Digital Library
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Texas Digital Library

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10877/4991