Brahms's Violin Sonatas

Notation in Johannes Brahms's sonata scores tells violinists and pianists far more than merely what pitches to play and how long to play them--if read carefully, these scores reveal an immense amount of expression, both of musical and human essences. Joel Lester's Brahms's Violin Sonatas
magnifies key passages from these scores, revealing in clear and accessible language how the composer built his themes and musical narratives and how, ultimately, Brahms's music came to sound Brahmsian. Through close readings and annotated musical examples, Brahms's Violin Sonatas guides
practitioners to read scores with care and to develop their own informed interpretation of the pieces, eschewing the notion of a single "correct" interpretation of the historical score. By exploring not only the sonatas' musical elements, but also their relationship to important events in the
composer's life, Lester shows how subtle components can communicate the gestures, moods, personalities, and emotions that make Brahms's music so compelling. A companion volume to the author's award-winning 1999 study Bach's Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, and Performance (OUP), Brahms's
Violin Sonatas is a clear and practical guide to understanding and performing Brahms's music in the present.

"Brahms's Violin Sonatas: Style, Structure, and Performance is a companion volume to Joel Lester's award-winning 1999 study Bach's Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, and Performance. Using a minimum of technical language and with annotated musical examples illustrating almost every point, Brahms's Violin Sonatas explores three masterpieces of the concert repertoire in a book designed for performers and music scholars alike. A major focus is how much can be learned by carefully reading Brahms's artistically nuanced musical notation, and by understanding Brahms's style-especially his music's deep connections to Classical-Era harmony, phrasing, and form while at the same time using late-19th-century harmonies, dissonances, and thematic evolutions, along with the contrapuntal textures that imbues all his works with a uniquely "Brahmsian" sound. Lester also explores how these works relate to important events in Brahms's life. Practical and concrete suggestions on performance arise from many of these discussions, calling performers' and analysts' attention to both technical and interpretive matters. Lester's aim is to inspire readers to explore their own individual approaches to Brahms's music, balancing what they find in the music to how they balance today's performance and interpretive styles with the ways that Brahms himself and his contemporaries might have played and experienced his creations"--

"This book is...excellent. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." -- W. E. Grim, CHOICE

"This book demonstrates Joel Lester's predilection for detailed motivic, harmonic, rhythmic, textural and registral analyses. It shows beautifully how the patterns revealed by analysis contribute to larger narratives and enable Brahms to re-imagine classical formal structures. And, his frequent
asides to the performer and listener reflect his many years of experience as a violinist and performance coach." -- Jack Boss, University of Oregon

"This volume is about the sheer sound of Brahms's music. It's written by a consummate musician reveling in the beauty of every detail and marveling at how each gesture influences performance and analytical decisions." -- Heather Platt, Professor of Music History, Ball State University