The Musical Rhetoric of the Baroque on the Example of Johannes Brahms’ Psalm XIII Op. 27

Abstract

The musical style of Johannes Brahms has long been known as influenced by music of the earlier epochs. His references to techniques, forms and genres of the Renaissance and Baroque music and the elaborate use of the counterpoint were frequently analysed by musicologists. Less often, however, the potential relationship between word and music shaped by the Baroque music rhetoric was studied, something which was somewhat forgotten in the Romanticism. Brahms' fascination with the past, which led the composer to study the 18th-century musical literature and treatises, enabled him to recognise many interesting aspects of the Baroque music. Like Bach and his contemporaries, Brahms used rhetorical figures in his early sacred works, e.g. Psalm XIII Op. 27.