Inwardness and Inner Melodies in Brahms’s Piano Works

Abstract

This article argues that the concealment of the structural melody in an inner voice imbues Brahms’s piano pieces with that inward quality long associated with the composer’s pianism. It examines three different types of structural inner melodies, proceeding from that in which the sense of interiority is most concrete to that in which it is most abstract, and culminating with an extensive analysis of Brahms’s Intermezzo in A minor, op. 76, no. 7. The article concludes that when the melody fades within, we are ultimately the ones who turn inward and lose ourselves to the music in a moment of quiet transcendence.