[AZamericonnie]

Lyle Lovett is such an interesting individual to me Drumbo. Love his music since the very beginning of his stuff.

[Publius]

In early 1865, Mama Brahms died. She had come to sense that the purpose of her life and marriage to a beer fiddler seventeen years her junior was to give Johannes Brahms to the world. Almost immediately, Jo began sketches for the “German Requiem”. This was not to be a Catholic requiem mass, but a Protestant conception consisting of biblical verses set to music, a concept pioneered by Bach.

But first Brahms got down to work, finishing his cello sonata. The first two movements had been written down a few years earlier, but the finale presented a problem. Brahms chose a rather thorny, academic solution. He turns back to Bach and writes a fugue, which is multiple counterpoint. This is tough on the performers, and sometimes it is even difficult for audiences. Mathematicians love it, however, because counterpoint is all about numbers. Just listen to that fugal subject played forwards, backwards, upside down, in different keys and different speeds. This recording was made in the Thirties and features two monumental giants of their respective instruments.

Brahms: Cello Sonata in E minor, Op. 38, third movement