breathethedownbow:

fyeahclassicalcomposers:

I dunno if you guys could tell, but I’m very into the lives of the Schumanns, and as an extension, Brahms, and I did a lot of research over a year about their stories and works and everything, and even incorporated a lot of those elements into my writing (including the names of people I mention henceforth)

So the other day we were assigned this academic reading in theory and I just completely lost my, excuse me, shit, because this guy decided that theory papers, especially those on metrical theory, were too boring so he wrote it as Eusebius, Raro, and Florestan, AKA Robert Schumann’s alternate personalities with which he wrote music reviews (most likely before his mental health began to take a turn) and potentially even pieces (afterwards)

The premise is that the theorist’s piece on metrical dissonance in Schumann’s works has been sent back through time and Eusebius and Florestan are reading it and commenting on it and if you think musicians or theorists are boring you better open your eyes for Johannes Brahms’ sake

and now you know I am not joking

but as you can see

there’s a reason I’m losing my shit

holy mother of Franz Liszt

coffee freaking models of dissonance

you thought you nightblogged huh

we are Chiarina

music theory fanfiction

complete with ship

(source)

(background: in my NaNo 2011 novel, three of the characters were Raro, Eusebius, and Florestan and I just I cannot handle this)

theculturetrip:

Ten Reasons to Love German Culture: German Giants of Classical Music

From the three B’s of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, to the epic operas of Wagner, Germany has provided a wealth of composers who have defined the course of western music. These German masters still occupy an exalted place in the canon of classical music, and remain widely celebrated throughout the world. »

composersillustrated:

Johannes Brahms by Richard C. Thompson

That Johannes Brahms’s beard was a psychological disguise has always been admitted, masking Johannes’s inveterate shyness, self-pitying morbidity, and perennial sexual frustrations. But it’s not until now, and findings released in a new collection of essays (The Beard in Crisis: Masculinity, Subjectivity, and the Hirsute Performativity of Gender in 19th Century Central Europe – A Critical Reader (University of Bart College, Indiana), that the astonishing truth has come to light. Under one of the floorboards in Brahms’s bachelor pad in Vienna, a stash of fake beards in various stages of greyness has been discovered. This - at last! - explains why there are no photos or images of Brahms in between clean-shaven late-pubescence and full-on beardy-weirdy fulsomeness. What was he hiding? Something even more remarkable: a collection of hosiery, corsetry, and undergarmentry that correspond roughly to Brahms’s rotundity suggest that his performance of gender went beyond merely hiding behind a beard. Those otherwise inexplicable comments from Brahms’s favourite courtesans in Vienna’s cafés - “Johannes was one of us!”, Elisabeth Schwanenberg said after his death - now begin to make sense… [x]

OH MY GOD

madopiano:

it seems like brahms just went from 

to

OVERNIGHT

Like there are no mid-beard Brahms portraits. I don’t get it. 

Either it just materialized overnight, like the beard fairy visited him and whispered “congratulations u are badass enough for this beard” and kissed him on the cheek and BAM: BEARD

or he was as much of a perfectionist with his facial hair as he was with his music and he just shut himself in a room for 10 years working on his beard. 

Bittersweet Symphonies:
Johannes Brahms & Clara Wieck Schumann

In 1855 Johannes Brahms wrote the pianist Clara Schumann a naked cry of frustration: “I can do nothing but think of you… What have you done to me? Can’t you remove the spell you have cast over me?” The situation between them at the time was messy - very messy. Clara was 35, Brahms 21, she famous, he rather more infamous. She was married to the composer Robert Schumann, and the pair had seven young children. On the other hand, for more than a year, Clara’s husband had been in an asylum and Clara had not been allowed to see him. When Robert fell off the edge, Brahms had hastened to her side.

Now Brahms, Robert’s protege and discovery, was helplessly in love with Robert’s wife. They had not expected it, didn’t want it, and so on. Brahms loved and admired Robert. Shortly before jumping in the Rhine to escape the demonic oratorios in his head, Robert had made the name Brahms known across Europe, declaring this student from Hamburg the coming saviour of German music.

Brahms, meanwhile, was living with Clara and the children - his bedroom on a separate floor, to be sure, but spending most of his time consoling her, helping with the children, and going nearly out of his mind with yearning.

In those years Brahms was slim, beardless and drop-dead handsome. Gossip was sizzling in musical circles. Clara was yearning mightily, too, but as with Brahms her feelings were tangled up with anxiety and guilt. Robert and Clara had been, after all, the supreme musical romance of the Romantic period. Clara was the love of Robert’s life, his prime musical champion, the heroic force that had held together his splintering mind longer than anyone could have imagined. Continue Reading >>

mahleriana:

The alphorn melody from Brahms 1, in a birthday message to Clara Schumann, 1868