Rubbra, Brahms, Handel: How Retro Can It Get?

David Francis Urrows

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Chapter 3 Rubbra, Brahms, Handel: How Retro Can It Get?

于'Make It Old': Retro Forms and Styles in Literature and Music

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David Francis Urrows

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类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 44–59

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004516472_004

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Abstract

In 1938 British composer Edmund Rubbra (1901–1986) made an orchestral version of the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24 by Johannes Brahms (published 1862). Rubbra’s choice was not popular among critics, in the United Kingdom at any rate, and his orchestration was even condemned as a ‘false move’ on his part. The work proved to be more popular in North America, particularly after performances by Arturo Toscanini, and later by Eugene Ormandy. In 1984 Rubbra’s score became the accompaniment for the Jerome Robbins/Twyla Tharp ballet, and thus reached a much wider audience (although their title suppressed Rubbra’s role).

We may observe (and hear) in the two later works the ‘backward glance’ of both Brahms and Rubbra. Brahms, in this major contribution to serious variation sets of the Romantic period, explicitly ‘made it old’ by selecting a ‘trumpet tune’ from an obscure keyboard suite of ca. 1717. After the Theme, Brahms briefly abandons Handel, for with Variation 1 we enter the Klangwelt of Brahms. Nonetheless, references to old forms, patterns, and genres appear subsequently in the work, leading to the idea of the ‘exotic’ and the ‘antiquarian’ as possible (newly-identified) musical ‘topics’.

I trace Rubbra’s backward glance not so much towards Brahms, as back to Handel through and in some respects circumventing Brahms. Rubbra’s genius was not only to look forward – to give the work to a twentieth-century orchestra and to orchestrate out implicit instrumental sonorities in the variations, a few of which actually postdate Brahms – but also to ‘make it old’ by realizing the Baroque grandeur of the Theme, as well as the genre references (the ‘topics’) among the variations. In sum, the retro elements in Brahms are ‘re-retrofied’ by Rubbra in this remarkable and enjoyable adaptation of an important work.

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'Make It Old': Retro Forms and Styles in Literature and Music

丛编： Word and Music Studies, 卷： 19and Word and Music Studies Online, 卷： 19

ISBN:: 9789004516472

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 15 Jun 2022

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Literary Relations

Front Matter

Part 1 ‘Make It Old’

Section 1 Historical Retro Forms and Styles

Section 2 Retro in Contemporary Opera

Section 3 Retro in Contemporary Popular Music

Part 2 Word and Music Studies: Surveying the Field

Back Matter

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Chapter 3 Rubbra, Brahms, Handel: How Retro Can It Get?

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'Make It Old': Retro Forms and Styles in Literature and Music

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