This volume investigates different aspects of the creative process in Johannes Brahms. Its findings are impressively underscored by numerous high-quality illustrations; the volume is printed in four colours throughout. In the course of 15 chapters, renowned researchers present Brahms not just as a composer but also as an arranger of his own works and of those of others, and also as the dedicatee of other composers’ works. Along with the sources for the musical texts, title pages and diary entries also offer a starting point for fascinating investigations into the genesis of Brahms’s works. With this critique génétique, current trends in literary studies and musicology are here introduced into the world of Brahms research. An extensive index of people and topics completes this authoritative overview of Brahms studies, which has been edited by scholars from the Johannes Brahms Complete Edition in Kiel.
About the authors
Michael Struck (Editor)
Dr. Michael Struck, born in 1952 in Hannover, studied school music, private music teaching, piano (diploma, class of Werner Schröter), musicology (Constantin Floros) and pedagogy at the music conservatory in Hamburg and at Hamburg University. In 1984 he completed his doctorate with a thesis on Schumann’s controversial late instrumental works.
He is a research associate at the research centre the new “Johannes Brahms Complete Edition” at Kiel University (member of the editorial board), as well as editor and supervisor of numerous volumes. He is the author of many musicological publications on music of the 18th to 20th centuries and other work editions. Struck is also a music critic. As a pianist he has given concerts with the vocal ensemble of Kiel University as well as with the Wiesbaden Chamber Choir and has given concert lectures (in 1989, 1997, 2001, 2005 as part of the matinees on “Raritäten der Klaviermusik” in Husum). In 2009 he was awarded the Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau, in 2010 as a scholar at the Brahms Research Centre at the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut of Kiel University he was a co-prizewinner of the Brahms Prize 2010, conferred by the Brahms-Gesellschaft Schleswig-Holstein.
Die ausgesprochen lange Publikationszeit von fünf Jahren (zwischen der Kieler Tagung 2011 und dem Erscheinen dieses Bandes 2016) verschmerzt man gern, wenn man die durchgehend hervorragende Qualität der Beiträge und durchdachte Anlage des Bandes betrachtet. Doch fernab von dieser Entscheidung bietet dieser vorbildliche und hochwertige Band eine hervorragende Grundlage für die Beschäftigung in gleich zwei Feldern: dem Kompositionsprozess von Johannes Brahms und den Herausforderungen moderner Editionsphilologie, wie sie sich vor allem nach der Fruchtbarmachung der französischen »critique génetique« auch für die musikologische Skizzenforschung entwickelt hat.