Brahms as a Vanishing Point in the Music of Wolfgang Rihm:

For many years, the composer Wolfgang Rihm has engaged in writing new works in response to the music of Johannes Brahms. There are very good reasons why he might do so. These two German composers, living and writing more than a century apart from one another, share a strong historicist approach to music. Whereas the sphere of Rihm’s allusions stretches from Bach to Varèse, and from Gesualdo to Stockhausen, a significant part of his œuvre responds to a number of prominent German composers from the long-nineteenth century. Amongst them are Schubert, Schumann, and Mahler. Rihm’s Erscheinung: Skizze über Schubert (1978) for nine string players, Ländler (1979) arranged for 13 string players, and his many Goethe-Lieder are strongly evocative of Schubert. “Eine Art Traumbild” from the seventh scene of the chamber opera Jakob Lenz (1977/78) responds to Schumann’s Kinderszenen,1 whilst the third movement of his Piano Trio Fremde-Szenen I–III (1982–84) called “Charakterstück” also conjures up thoughts of Schumann. Rihm’s Abgesang of Morphonie, Sektor IV for string quartet and orchestra (1972/73), the large orchestral adagios Dis-Kontur (1974) and Sub-Kontur (1974/75), and Symphony No. 2 (1975) and No. 3 (1976/77) are strongly suggestive of Mahler.2 Rihm’s compositions that respond directly to the music of Brahms do so in manifold ways (see Table 1). The title of the 1985 composition Brahmsliebewalzer conjures up Brahms’s Liebesliederwalzer. Written for solo piano, however, Rihm’s