Brahms's critics : continuity and discontinuity in the critical reception of Johannes Brahms

Abstract

This thesis draws on the writings of a number of nineteenth-century musical commentators, including Richard Pohl, Hermann Deiters, Selmar Bagge, Adolf Schubring, Franz Brendel, and Eduard Hanslick. These critics were writing for the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik in the 1860s, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in the 1860s and 1870s, and the Neue Freie Press from the 1860s to the turn of the century. The major findings are that there are traces of the ‘revisionist’ views of recent commentators on Brahms in these nineteenth-century writings. Thus these writings can be understood as a significant part of Brahms Rezeptionsgeschichte.