Musical Appreciation
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford recalls the very different receptions given by British and German audiences to a little bit of Brahms.
1875
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford recalls the very different receptions given by British and German audiences to a little bit of Brahms.
1875
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Britain’s position outside the European Continent, politically and physically, has in no way lessened her appetite for European culture. Indeed at the very height of Empire, so Sir Charles Stanford tells us, a little critical distance gave the British an appreciation (and a common courtesy, one might add) that the Continentals lacked.
BRAHMS’ music had long been more deeply appreciated and universally accepted in England than in Germany, owing probably in a measure to the fact that we had no serious battle-ground of Wagnerian and anti-Wagnerian parties; the performance of this symphony [the C Minor] set an imperishable keystone on his fame among Britons.*
I had myself the curious good fortune to compare the attitude of an English and German audience towards one of his orchestral works. In 1875 I heard within a few weeks two performances of his Serenade in A (without violins), first at the Philharmonic Society of London, and afterwards at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. In London the enthusiasm was so great that two movements (the scherzo and the minuet) had to be repeated. In Leipzig the entire work went literally without one hand being raised to applaud.
That is, Symphony No. 1 in C minor (YouTube). Stanford was desperate to get Brahms over to Cambridge to receive an honorary doctorate in music, but press excitement put Brahms off. He did however allow the Cambridge Musical Society to perform his C Minor Symphony, the first time it had been performed since its premiere in Karlsruhe on November 4th, 1876.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why in Stanford’s opinion was Brahms’s music less universally liked in Germany than in Engand?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
People in England liked Brahms’s music. Not as many people in Germany did.