The long and productive middle phase of Brahm's career is represented by two studies of the chamber music. John Daverio finds relevant precedents for one of Brahms’s most characteristic Mischformen in Mozart, who provided the models that Brahms could appropriate in a "romanticizing" gesture aimed at giving new life to the sonata form. In a wide-ranging critical study of the F-Major Cello Sonata, Margaret Notley ties certain peculiarities of style and structure to the unusual genesis of the work.
The volume concludes with two case studies concerning works from Brahms's last period. Ira Braus’s analysis of the Intermezzo in E Minor, op. 119, no. 2, has important implications for performance practice. Finally, Daniel Beller-McKenna reads the Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121, against a larger cultural background shaped by the aging composer's continuing allegiance to Romantic idealism.
