Why is it that so many classical music listeners today often find the music of Johannes Brahms heavy and cumbersome? Is it possible that today’s instruments and the way we play them affect our judgement of his music? The answers to both these questions are intertwined and probably intimately related to the differences between Brahms’ century and our own as regards the aesthetics of composers and the instruments used in the realization of their musical works. This is also complicated by the fact that during this time music developed in what I would call a disjunctly progressive fashion in which various aspects of musical aesthetics developed at different rates, due to artistic, social, financial and even political reasons….
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