Chapter 38 - Inspiration

Summary

Brahms as a point of reference for contemporary music is somewhat overshadowed by other composers. While, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music is a constant subject of adaptation as well as an inspiration on different compositional levels, contemporary composers seem to be less inclined to approach Brahms’s music in this way. Whereas a composer like Helmut Lachenmann published a third voice to one of Bach’s two-part inventions and grappled with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto K622 in his own Accanto (1975–6), he left Brahms’s music almost untouched. Even where the instrumentation suggests Brahmsian models, as in his Allegro sostenuto for clarinet, cello and piano (1986–8), a specific relationship cannot be identified. And while Brian Ferneyhough refers to Elizabethan consort music in some of his string quartets, he apparently does not consider Brahms’s contributions to this genre, such as his String Quartets Op. 51 and Op. 67.