Conference Theme 1: Literature and Poetry
The music of Brahms is intricately linked to the German intellectual tradition. Within his song output alone, Brahms set 46 poets, including respected names such as Goethe, Eichendorff, and Heine, and many lesser known poets. Brahms also set many literary and philosophically-based texts by writers such as Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin in his choral works. His treatment of the Luther Bible as a piece of German literature is found in some of his most renowned works such as Ein deutsches Requiem and the Vier ernste Gesänge. Whereas the majority of the poets Brahms set were German, the imaginative realm of that poetry reaches far beyond German borders, extending, for example, to China in his setting of Goethe’s Chinesisch-deutsche Jahres- und Tageszeiten, to Persia in his settings of Daumer’s Hafis poetry, and it conjures up ancient Greece in his Sapphische Ode and other works. Equally broad is the chronological reach of his literary interests, extending from classical antiquity through Medieval Europe, and on to the nineteenth century. This conference will explore the poetic and literary aspects of Brahms’s compositional output drawing on evidence from the composer’s library, sketches and manuscripts, and correspondence. In relation to theme 3 below, it will also consider the work of recent composers, for example Wolfgang Rihm, who have returned to the literature Brahms set, by way of paying homage to or even “recomposing” Brahms in works such as Symphonie “Nähe Fern” (2012). The focus on Brahms and literature will also prompt discussion of the presence of Brahms in literary fiction by authors such as Thomas Mann, E. M. Forster, and Milan Kundera.
