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Article: Brahms and the German Spirit.(Book Review)
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- Article date:
- September 1, 2005
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Music Library Association, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Brahms and the German Spirit. By Daniel Beller-McKenna. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. [xi, 243 p. ISBN 0-674-01318-2. $49.95.] Illustrations, music examples, index, notes.
Daniel Beller-McKenna has set out to correct what he sees as a deficiency in Brahms scholarship of the post-World War II period, namely the failure to acknowledge the composer's patriotism--his Germanness--because of a fear that his reputation and the reception of his music might be tainted with Nazi-style nationalism; thus the "universalistic assessments" of his compositions are a "strategy" (p. 4) to separate him from German culture. Beller-McKenna's approach is to situate ...