Margaret Notley aims to situate Johannes Brahms in the historical-cultural context of “late” Habsburg Vienna. Historians, doubting their musical competence, tend to shy away from such treatment; many musicologists have become more adventurous, but their historical command is sometimes lacking. Max Kalbeck's biography (Berlin, 1908–1913) is often cited, but many readers will not have read the still-untranslated Kalbeck. It is interesting thus to be reminded (43) of him styling Brahms's Third Symphony the Germaniasymphonie, though what this might imply, beyond Brahms having attended, along with Emperor William I, the dedication of a monument near Wiesbaden to “Germania,” is not discussed. “History” tends to be added on; the book is not as truly interdisciplinary as the material demands.

For instance, admiration for Bismarck into the 1890s is certainly worthy of comment, but there might be more to it than mere “chauvinism” (215), a description begging a number of questions, not least for a “liberal” in Vienna. Moreover, to express surprise that “German pride and careless anti-Semitism were intertwined … even for the Liberal Brahms” (21) belies the essences both of actually existing liberalism and anti-Semitism. Nineteenth-century continental liberalism(s) stood distinct from contemporary American usage. An interesting claim, derived from Theodor Adorno, is that of musical individualism: “Whereas Brahms as a private person may not have questioned Liberal emphasis on the individual, he did recognize the musical problem” (106). Brahms, an artist rather than a political philosopher, would be more likely to problematize through composition rather than pamphleteering; historians' horizons will remain restricted, indeed distorted, should they fail to engage with artworks. Unfortunately, little more is said on this inviting problem of subjectivity. It would likewise have been revealing to pursue the concluding claim of common ground between tonal music and liberal economics, both believed to operate according to natural logic (209). Notley leaves the suggestion hanging.

Possibilities for the intellectual historian, then, are rarely followed through. The following promises a great deal: “In some later works … [Brahms] concentrates expressive complexity in brief passages. These moments make it clear that Brahms was the contemporary of Adolph Menzel and Theodor Fontane in Germany and Robert Browning and Henry James in England, and they remind us that in the 1880s and 1890s he was living in the Vienna of Freud and [Josef] Breuer” (51). Notley proceeds to analytical discussion of these “moments,” but proposed connections receive no further comment; neither James nor Browning reappears. Whether contemporaneity might be rendered “clear” or even relevant is debatable; such is not attempted here. Freud is little more than name-checked on reappearance. On contemporaneity, might we not have heard from Friedrich Nietzsche, author of Untimely Meditations?

There is for the general historian, however, one especially interesting chapter, “Volksconcerte and Concepts of Genre in Brahms's Vienna,” contrasting the democratic aspirations of symphonic theorists—oratory to humankind and so forth—with high ticket prices and the paltry number of symphonic concerts on offer, far fewer than in Berlin. This works well as an independent essay, yet we must await its conclusion for any connection to be made with the theme of “lateness.” For, in general, much sits awkwardly between a collection of not-quite-independent essays and the integrated demands of a book.

Musicological material tends to be more revealing, for instance, that on Brahms's attitude toward consecutive fifths and octaves and on the distinction between an Adagio movement and an Andante, post-Beethoven and vis-à-vis Anton Bruckner. There is, however, a recurrent, thinly veiled hostility to Richard Wagner and his supporters, described as “apologists” or “acolytes,” whereas Brahms's merit neutral designation. One might have hoped that such partisanship had long since died—apparently not. More seriously, Notley fails to appreciate (178) the irony in Wagner's usage of the term Zukunftsmusik (“music of the future”).

A surprising omission relates to Brahms's “Hungarian” music, for instance the celebrated Hungarian Dances and the finale of the G minor Piano Quartet. Such music is suggestive concerning an adoptive Viennese's attitudes toward Hungary and the extent to which, prior to Béla Bartók's ethnomusicological and compositional work, “Hungarian” and “gypsy” music were equated by the “educated” (liberal?) public. Notley discusses gypsy style in the slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet. Following Bálint Sárosi's Gypsy Music (Budapest, 1978), she makes a revealing point concerning appropriation: Gypsy “performance” was designed to suit audiences' tastes, quite different from what gypsies played for themselves. This issue might be fruitfully pursued in the context of the post-Ausgleich nationalities question and, indeed, the “lateness” of the Dual Monarchy.