The Intellectual Worlds of Johannes Brahms

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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

1–3 February 2019, University of California, Irvine

Welcome to the website for the international, scholarly conference, “The Intellectual Worlds of Johannes Brahms” that will take place from 1–3 February 2019.

The music of Johannes Brahms holds a prized place in the Western classical canon. Treated as the culmination of a compositional tradition that extends from Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert through the end of the nineteenth century, Brahms’s music has been portrayed as timeless, universal, and “absolute.” As a representative of the concert hall establishment, Brahms also provides a solid foundation upon which composers, theorists, historians, philosophers, and poets have built new edifices in the twentieth century. Using the date 1897 as a pivot point, “The Intellectual Worlds of Johannes Brahms” considers Brahms and his music from both of these perspectives—contextualizing it in the literary, political, and philosophical worlds in which Brahms lived as well as considering the new intellectual worlds that have grown up around Brahms and his music since his death.

Although the perception of Brahms as a composer of “absolute” music has been revised and rebutted over the past thirty years, much work remains to be done to situate him in the intellectual contexts of his own time. Brahms’s broad intellectual curiosity informed his compositional practice through the relationship between his compositions and literature and poetry; his keen interest in German political history; his contemplation of music in relation to philosophy, humanism, and matters of faith; and his expression of different ideas about race, ethnicity, and national identity. Located at the intersection between the humanities disciplines of music, German studies, history, philosophy, and critical theory, this research is crucial in understanding the continued relevance of Brahms’s music in our current time. Our theoretical conception of the composer continues to evolve as Brahms’s music takes on renewed significance.

The international conference “The Intellectual Worlds of Johannes Brahms” will take place at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts of the University of California, Irvine, from 1–3 February 2019. It will have two keynote lectures, it will include a Brahms concert, and a series of workshops on professional development for graduate students and early-career scholars.

This conference is part-funded by the following bodies, to whom we express our thanks: