Brahms's "Rinaldo" Op. 50: A structural and contextual study

Brahms's cantata Rinaldo, Op. 50 is the most significant example of his dramatic music. Yet Rinaldo historically has been viewed only in the shadow of Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45, published a few months earlier; often it is completely disregarded in favour of more "popular" vocal compositions. Rinaldo is a secular cantata. Its dramatic and personal style results in part from Goethe's text, a terse Romantic expression of one event in Tasso's epic tale of the First Crusades, Gerusaleme Liberata. The absence of detail in Goethe's text is a key feature in its effectiveness as a psychological drama. Brahms exploited this in his setting, creating a significant drama with an economy of musical means. This dissertation presents a contextual study and structural analysis of Rinaldo to illustrate Brahms's musical approach to drama. It focuses on three areas: historical context and musical models, narrative and character development in the text, and music as narrative. Part I isolates Brahms's musico-dramatic ideals and identifies possible sources of influence from operatic and concerted vocal works. A compositional history (including a study of manuscript sources) and history of critical scholarship on Rinaldo serve to highlight reasons for its neglect in the last century. Part II addresses the textual side of Rinaldo through a discussion of Goethe's characterisation and structure, and illuminates dramatic features of the text and implications for a musical setting. In Part III extended musical analyses of structure, tonality, thematic/motific progression and word-setting are undertaken to highlight Brahms's musical expression of the psychological plot development. Finally, Brahms's operatic ambitions and the texts he considered as potential opera libretti are discussed in two extended Appendices. They provide pertinent information on the composer's music drama aesthetic. While the primary aim of this dissertation is to provide a detailed study of Rinaldo, the findings are applicable to Brahms's compositions as a whole. The examination nonetheless reveals Rinaldo as the pinnacle of Brahms's achievements in the composition of music drama.