Schoenberg's quartets and trio, composed over a nearly forty-year period, occupy a central position among twentieth-century chamber music. This volume, based on papers presented at a conference in honor of David Lewin, collects a wide range of approaches to Schoenberg's pieces.

The first part of the book provides a historical context to these works, examining Viennese quartet culture and traditions, Webern's reception of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Schoenberg's view of the Beethoven quartets, and the early reception of Schoenberg's First Quartet. The second part examines musical issues of motive, text setting, meter, imitative counterpoint, and closure within Schoenberg's quartets and trio.

The forced migration of artists and scholars from Nazi Germany is a compelling and often wrenching story. The story is twofold, of impoverishment for the countries the musicians left behind and enrichment for the United States. The latter is the focus of this eminent collection, which approaches the subject from diverse perspectives, including documentary-style newspaper accounts and an exploration of Walt Whitman's poetry in the work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.
The flood of musical migration from Germany and Austria from 1933 to 1944 had a lasting impact. Hundreds of musicians and musicologists came to the United States and remained here, and the shaping power of their talents is incalculable. Several essays provide firsthand insights into aspects of American cultural history to which these emigres made essential contributions as conductors, professors, and composers; other essays tell of the traumatic experience of being exiled and the difficulties of finding one's way in a foreign country. While the migration infused the U.S. with a distinctly European musical awareness, at the same time the status and authority of its participants tended to intervene in the development of a genuinely American cultural voice. The story of the unprecedented migration that resulted from Nazism has many dimensions, and "Driven Into Paradise" illuminates them in deeply human terms.

Though central to our concert and recording repertory, and crucial to the history of the symphony, the four symphonies of Johannes Brahms have proved surprisingly resistant to critical analysis. In this brief, elegant book, a premier musicologist conducts us through the Second Symphony to show us what is unique and remarkable about this particular work and what it reveals about the composer and his time.

Reinhold Brinkmann guides us through the symphony movement by movement, examining musical ideas in all their compositional facets and placing them in the context of major trends in the intellectual history of late nineteenth-century Europe. He delineates connections between this symphony and the composer's other works and traces its relation to the music of Brahms's predecessors, particularly Beethoven. The product of a long and deep engagement with the music of Brahms, "Late Idyll" captures the spirit of the composer, probes the impulses behind his revisions of the original manuscript, and explores the meaning of the disparity between the first two movements of the symphony and the last. The result is a penetrating reading of a perplexing and important composition, clearly placed within its biographical, historical, and artistic context. It will engage and enlighten students and concertgoers alike.

Schonbergs Klavierstuecke op. 11 (1909) markieren einen musikgeschichtlich hochst bedeutsamen Moment. Die Interpretationen dieses ersten gueltigen Werkes der (Schonbergschen) Atonalitat verstehen sich als paradigmatisch, sie handeln von der Entstehung dessen, was heute 'Neue Musik' genannt wird. Die Arbeit setzt ein mit einer ausfuehrlichen Erorterung der kompositorischen Situation Schonbergs zwischen 1906 und 1909; zentrale kompositorische Probleme der Opera 9, 10, 12, 14 und 15 werden untersucht, Grundideen Schonbergschen Komponierens dargestellt. Der analytische Hauptteil enthalt nach Bemerkungen zur Quellenlage und einem Literaturbericht drei umfangreiche Interpretationskapitel. "The documentary aspect of the dissertation has stood, and will continue to stand, the test of timeo Music and Letters "Brinkmann's mittlerweile 'klassisch' zu nennende Studie - in Darstellung, Gedankenscharfe wie analytischem Zugriff ungeschlagen." Buchhandler heute "aein Klassiker der analytischen Auseinandersetzung mit dem iuvre Schonbergsa ein zeitlos aktuelles Buch" Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift.