Tragic Overture (Brahms)

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The Tragic Overture in D minor, Op. 81 is an overture by Johannes Brahms . It was written in Bad Ischl in the summer of 1880 , at the same time as the Academic Festival Overture in C minor, Op. 80 . The premiere under Hans Richter , which took place on December 26, 1880 in Vienna , was unsuccessful; since then, too, the tragic overture has been reluctant to assert itself in concerts. Temporally it stands between the creation of his second and third symphonies . Their playing time is about 14 minutes.

To the music

occupation

The line-up consists of a piccolo , two flutes , two oboes , two clarinets , two bassoons , four horns , two trumpets , three trombones , a tuba , timpani and strings .

Content and form

The tragic overture , which arose from a sketch for a symphony movement , portrays the tragic as such; When composing, Brahms said he had “no specific tragedy as a subject in mind”. In any case, there is no evidence to support the assumption that the tragic overture was created on the basis of the Viennese theater director Franz von Dingelstedt's idea of a musical score for Faust by Johannes Brahms. Brahms himself compared the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture when he once said, "one laughs, the other cries". Originally the tragic overture was not even called "tragic", but was planned by Brahms as a dramatic overture. However, he realized that he hadn't gotten to the heart of the piece. Due to the (not always usual) instrumentation with trombones and tuba, it has a festive, dark sound character.

The structure of the tragic overture follows the form of the sonata main movement ; for this reason and with regard to its length (duration) it can be regarded as an independent symphonic movement. Between the usual forms of the symphonic movement (first and second theme ) Brahms inserts developing passages that are typical of his symphonic work. The implementation will be at a reduced tempo played and also receives the subject processing joint . The recapitulation (similar to the first movements of his first and fourth symphonies) is veiled, i.e. That is, it is not clearly introduced with the recognizable first topic, but only with its thematic components and then with the second topic.

The fact that, on the one hand, the development is played at half, twice as slow a tempo with a rhythmic figure that appears march-like, and on the other hand, a little later in the same section, another rhythmic figure appears that appears scherzo-like , one can speak of a musical form which tries to unite all the elements of the symphony that are typical of the movement in one movement: the momentum of a first movement, the seriousness of a funeral march as the second movement, the lightness of a scherzo as the third movement and the renewed momentum of a finale.

The formal freedoms, the developing passages with additional, colorful themes and the use of different tempos offered Brahms an opportunity to experiment creatively outside the laws of the symphony. However, the claim of the form remains guaranteed; In addition, the term “overture” clearly delimits the work from the symphonic poem , which was popular with his contemporaries and allowed greater formal freedom. In this respect, the Tragic Overture, despite its compositional peculiarities, is entirely in keeping with the tradition that was valid up to that point.

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