best melody ever

This is possibly the best melody ever in the history of music, though I'm sure at least 1/2 of the casual readers of this blog would like to challenge me on that:

For the clueless: Brahms - Double Concerto, III. Vivace non troppo (the second theme). ask me if you want a recording; it's sheer, utter and total bliss.

Maybe I should make the case for Brahms and for the concerto first, before I start enthusing about the melody itself. I didn't really like Brahms for quite a long time, kind of abstract, difficult to get a grip on, and (especially for the piano pieces) technical stuff that sounds deceptively simple but is pretty tough. But ever since we played the Brahms 2 (shorthand for Brahms' second symph) at YO I've changed my view. He has the most effective melodies: take the C major theme from brahms 1 4th mvmt for instance (the second-best melody ever?), which is really not very fancy or anything - and yet comes imbued with such deeply felt emotional content.

On a list of my favourite composers Brahms would be on the top, followed by Beethoven and Sibelius I think. Brahms' music expresses controlled, restrained but deep and highly-charged emotion. It's full of hidden meaning; why, for instance, does the last piece he ever wrote for the piano (the rhapsody op. 119 no. 4) start in E-flat major and maintain that key-centre until right at the end when it turns into E-flat minor for a particularly defiant ending? Considering that it's the last piece he intended to write (he wanted to stop after that), I think it's pretty significant. I think it's an old man, recording his thoughts on life for posterity. Brahms for me represents fundamental angst - not the kind of angst that you get on this and other worthless blogs but an intensely meaningful emotional strife.

As for the concerto... I think most romantic-era concertos have a personal message (not just capering about in the abstract). Fundamentally, you can see the concerto as soloist(s) against orchestra, man alone against society / world / universe / powers-that-be. Concertos have particular meaning, in a way that symphonies cannot convey quite as effectively. Sibelius said a symphony "must be the supreme expression of logic"; Mahler disagreed: "a symphony must embrace the world". Whichever way you look at it, a symphony isn't quite as personal; it's more calculated, structured, formal, has a large-scale or general message, as opposed to the personal and particular message of a concerto.

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Now for the Brahms double. It's very late Brahms, his last orchestral work. It's pretty idiosyncratic; the other notable pre-Brahms multiple-soloist concertos are... some baroque concertos grosso (what the hell is the plural, concerti grossi?) and some mozart (flute & harp, violin & viola) and beethoven (triple concerto, another of my favourites). It's pretty abstract compared to other romantic-era stuff, lots of arpeggios and scales weaving around melodies that are pretty no-frills for that period.

Going into the music, the first movement is at first glance pretty standard angry romantic-era stuff... a few defiant chords from the orch, a rhapsodic cello solo segueing into a more concillatory orchestral interlude, then another rhapsodic vln and cello bit... whirling synchopated chords (a Brahms trademark i think) that give the impression of pulsating rhythm and so on, good stuff but i guess probably not transcendentally good.

The second movement is something else altogether. It's based on this simple idea:

And yet it's unusual; the melodic contour is a rising 4th (A-D), a tone (D-E), and another rising 4th (E-A), then the D major chord down (A-F#-D) which is curious inflection. Then we get a plagal cadence in the second bar, very strange. Rhythmically, the second bar has an obvious 3/4 feel, but the first bar doesn’t have any obvious landmarks; it’s rather uncentred. The accompaniment in the first bar is in unison (i.e. everyone in the orchestra who’s playing is playing that same melody). Then we start like the first bar, but the chord down isn’t D major any more, it’s a B minor chord (F#-D-B), so it’s a sequence roughly a third down. And this time the cadence is II-V, an imperfect cadence. Significantly, the last time we approached the dominant note (A) from above (B-A); this time it’s from underneath (G#-A). The effect is electrifying, hypnotic, it’s slightly like a mystical experience; it’s hardly conventional at all.

The third movement of course starts with the famous melody... cool, suave, sneaky:

The cello has it, then the violin, over some light accompaniment; like friends bantering in the canteen over coffee and a doughnut, then the orchestra takes over with the same thing but ×10 more bombastic (the recording I have rather inexplicably but effectively ups the tempo here). The soloists come in with some huge chords (the effect of a bow heaving across 4 cello strings is incredible), and then we get a few bars of the V7 chord of C, in preparation for the Big Tune which pops in over a bass C pedal:

What can I say? The effect is magical; for a start focus on the top notes: G-E-G-C. Why not C-E-G-C a normal C major arpeggio? It’s a favourite technique of Brahms, skipping over one note in an arpeggio to make an impact, and here it’s particularly effective. Using the double stop you get from G to C&E at the same time; the aural effect is surprising because you’re expecting G to C, which you do get but you get the E note too, quite unexpectedly. The first 4 notes set the mood - broad and expansive. Then you might expect another E after that but Brahms pushes the envelope, takes it to F, and uses the long-short-short rhythmic idea from the opening. Other notable parts are I guess the tie from bar 4-5, and the sequence in bar 5-7 (F-E-D-A then A-G-F etc., particularly effective because the cellist just slides up *whoosh* to the A harmonic). THEN the violin comes in, over the cello and a triplet pizz accompaniment. The effect is lovely, brilliant; after the violent syncopated chords it feels like a struggle won (and all the symbolism of man vs. society, particular over general and so on). There’s another great melody after that but I think this one’s clearly the best.

I love the brahms double concerto; to me, it’s about dialogue - deep meaningful proper conversation with someone else you can relate to. It’s about friendship, not in the philo-sophie sense (heh) but just being with the people whose company you enjoy. You could read a romantic interpretation into the piece (cello: guy, vln: girl; 2nd movement: tender caressing in the soundscape etc. that sort of stuff) but I don’t think so; it’s not overtly romantic like tchaik or some of bruch (scottish fantasy?) or others I can't think of at the moment - at least I don’t think so.

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Reading meaning into music can look like quite a futile exercise, especially music as abstract as Brahms. But then, why read meaning into anything at all? It seems particularly absurd that I see an animate collection of atoms called Adam, or Eli, or Shaggy, or Remus, or Wen-yi, or Zhaohan, and I read the meaning “friend”. (Or that I see another collection of atoms called xy, and I think “ponce”.) Yet I persist in that.

People persist in seeing meaning in things that are fundamentally meaningless when you think about it... a collection of atoms strung together as a person, for instance. In that sense I guess my search for meaning in a collection of pitches strung together as a melody is no less valid and no more absurd than that.

Am I making sense? Guess not. I'm sounding like Kundera with his philosophical eternal recurrence crap at the start of the unbearable lightness of being.