Brahms had a reputation as a misanthrope, and his music was often heavy and too academic. Brahms, a North German, had little love for France, and French composers never ceased to denigrate him. It was said that, thanks to his many trips to Italy, his sauerkraut was often sprinkled with ambrosia, the drink of the gods. It's true... Behind a certain heaviness, there are «divine» passages of intense beauty. That's why, if I had to take just one minute of music to a desert island, I'd take it from Brahms. Brahms is, in fact, a man deeply wounded by an unhappy childhood as a musician in a Hamburg harbor cabaret; but it is from this wound that the sublime music I would choose to keep arises. Perhaps this wound will also help us to understand him better, and to forgive him for his gaucheness.

The Christmas season has been over for a while now. But there's hardly a Christmas song that isn't still playing in our heads. The ones we hate in the stores or the ones we cherish under the tree. So why is our relationship with them so contradictory? And why does the music market continue to ride the «Christmas» wave? Perhaps and simply because, like every musical style, there are sub-categories. And in this case, there are two main ones: «melancholy» and «entertaining».

Le dépassement des normes