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Brahms alluded obviously to the literary figure of E. T. A. Hoffmann when he signed several of his works as Johannes Kreisler in the early 1850s. His correspondence with friends, including Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim and Julius Otto Grimm, also demonstrates his strong identification with Kreisler and, through him, with certain aesthetic principles of German Romanticism. Imagination, artistic self-discovery, creativity, playing with the limits of expression, improvisation, sketchiness, fragmentation and even contrapuntal experiments are all recurrent elements in Hoffmann's writings, and many of them play an important role in Brahms's early works. In my study, I focus on possible reasons for Brahms's identification with Kreisler and seek to identify musical features that can be associated with Kreisler's characters in the composer's early pieces. After specifying the works that Brahms signed as Kreisler, I present some excerpts from his correspondence that contribute to our understanding of Brahms-Kreisler, giving an insight into their biographical context as well. I examine Kreislerian features in Brahms's early works by analysing 1) the Andante of the Piano Sonata in C major, op. 1; 2) Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 9, and 3) the Adagio of the Piano Trio in B major, op. 8. I will also interpret Kreisler's characters in the original version of the B major Trio (1854) by comparing it to the recomposed piece (1889). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The B major piano trio has a special place in Brahms' oeuvre: under the number op. 8 we find simultaneously an early and a late piece. When Fritz Simrock obtained the publication rights of several early Brahms works in the 1880s, and gave the composer the opportunity of revising his pieces before their new edition, Brahms virtually rewrote his piece. To understand the context of rewriting, it is essential to consider the historical, political, cultural and musical contexts that defined the milieu of the late 19th century Vienna where Brahms lived and worked. As a representative of the liberal elite of this era, the composer had to face the emergence of various populist political and social movements which questioned the fundamental principles and values of liberalism, and these processes also influenced the musical scene and the general discourse on music. The musical principles and values that Brahms had embraced were shaken and began to lose their dominance: respect for the musical past and its traditions was challenged similarly to notions of musical intellect or musical logic. The motifs of logic, reason and scientific thinking appear remarkably in the rewritten - or in other words 'castrated' - B major Trio. I borrow the word 'castration' from Brahms, who, in a letter to Simrock, used this phrase to describe the editing process, during which all the movements of the piece, with the exception of the Scherzo, were significantly revised. Brahms preserved the original identity of the movements by retaining their first themes. However, he made striking and decisive changes in them by composing new second themes, and deleting or revising long passages or even whole sections. In my paper, I focus on the first movement, and seek to answer how Brahms's rewriting process and compositional decisions can be interpreted in the context of the musical-political ideologies of the 1880s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]