Johannes Brahms is often regarded as the greatest composer of the second half of the nineteenth century. He first studied music with his father, a double-bass player for the Hamburg opera. He later studied composition with Eduard Marxsen. Brahms was a talented pianist, giving his first public recital at the age of 14, and making a living by playing in taverns and dance halls. There are a few interesting paradoxes in this assessment that are worth mentioning.
Today, we think of Brahms as the epitome of a Romantic composer, his music filled with yearning, nostalgia, and profound sentiment. Brahms viewed "Romanticism" (to him, this meant the music of Liszt, Wagner and Bruckner) with contempt; instead of following their course, Brahms espoused a more abstract, 'classical' approach to music -- more closely allied with the late works of Beethoven. Later-nineteenth-century music was a golden age for musical drama (particularly opera), yet Brahms wrote no theatrical music at all. The late nineteenth century was a time of musical innovation and upheaval, yet its 'greatest' composer was an iconoclast only in the sense that he was self-consciously a musical conservative.
Raised in the slums of Hamburg, Brahms was initially self-taught as a musician. A precocious learner, he developed his piano skills so quickly that by the age of ten he was able to earn a living playing in dance halls, beer gardens and brothels. Ultimately, music and the piano provided Brahms a way out of poverty as he grew in demand as a recitalist, accompanist and concerto soloist. For a time when he was in his twenties, Brahms held a part-time post at the court of the minor principality of Detmold, serving as an accompanist, and also directing the choir, but the composer spent a large part of his youth wandering from one city to another, meeting the important participants in Germany's decentralised musical life and broadening his artistic horizons.
He began touring regularly with Joseph Joachim, the most important violinist of his time. Joachim was also a fine composer, and helped Brahms refine his own compositional craft, particularly in the areas of counterpoint and form. In September of 1853, in Dusseldorf, young Brahms presented himself at the door of composer Robert Schumann and his wife, Clara, who was one of the greatest living pianists and a composer and critic as well. They took the slender blond boy into their home for more than a month, in the course of which Schumann published an influential magazine article announcing Brahms to the musical world as its next hero. Later in life, Brahms would likewise serve as the champion of young composers, most notably, Antonin Dvorak.
In February, 1854, Schumann suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. Brahms hurried back to Dusseldorf to help Clara. After Robert's death (July 29, 1856), Brahms and Clara Schumann briefly considered marriage, but ultimately decided against it. Although they put aside the possibility of romantic involvement, they maintained a close Platonic friendship for the rest of their lives. Brahms settled in Vienna when he was in his thirties, and like Beethoven before him and Mahler after, he soon began to spend his summers in the country. In the winter, Brahms polished his recent compositions and planned his next ones, but the serious business of invention and creation was reserved for summer.
He became concerned prematurely about the fading of his creative force and wondered how he would spend his last years. Even in middle age, the composer assumed a harsh and severe attitude toward much of the world outside his work, a protective stance made necessary by his wish to preserve time and strength for composition. He even quarrelled with some of his oldest and most faithful friends. In his later years Brahms was feted as an esteemed artist and intellectual by Viennese society, a fine close to a life which had begun in squalor. Johannes Brahms was a prolific composer in all forms of music except opera.
His chamber pieces, and in particular his Piano Trios (1854, 1882,1886), Piano Quintet (1864), Horn Trio (1865), and his sonatas for violin (1879, 1886, 1888), v'cello (1865, 1886), and clarinet (both 1894) are a constant in our musical life. His four symphonies (1876, 1877, 1883, 1885), his piano concertos (1854, 1881), and his violin concerto (1878) are universally admired cornerstones of the orchestra repertory. His numerous songs -- especially those of Opus 121 (1896) are rapturously beautiful and profound. One could also rhapsodise over the beauty and strength of his choral music and the many works for solo piano. Johannes Brahms truly earned his place as a Grand Master of music.
On a concert tour in 1853 as accompanist for the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi, Brahms met Franz Liszt, who praised the 20-year-old's Scherzo in E Flat Minor and his piano sonatas. Brahms, however, never became personally friendly with Liszt, and in 1860 he signed a manifesto attacking the so-called Music of the Future, which Liszt championed. More fruitful for Brahms was his meeting with Robert Schumann, who hailed the young composer as the coming genius of German music and arranged for the publication of his first songs and piano sonatas. Schumann died in 1856, and Brahms remained a devoted friend of his widow, Clara Wieck Schumann, until her death in 1896. Brahms never married, although he had a large circle of friends and patrons.
After Brahms was rejected for a post as conductor in Hamburg in 1862, he visited Vienna and later (1868) made his home there. The compositions written before his first visit to Vienna include several piano works--of which the "Edward" ballade is the most famous--the two serenades for orchestra, his first piano concerto, and the Piano Trio in B Major. Brahms's work as a choral conductor in Vienna prepared him for the composition of A German Requiem, based on biblical texts rather than on the Roman Catholic requiem mass; it was first performed on Good Friday (April 10), 1868, in the cathedral of Bremen. Brahms's other major works from this period include the Piano Quintet in F Minor; the Magelone Romances based on poems by Ludwig Tieck; two piano quartets; and the trio for piano, violin, and French horn.
Brahms conducted the orchestra of the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna from 1872 to 1875, after which he devoted himself entirely to composition. His conducting experience undoubtedly influenced his return to orchestral composition, marked by his first two symphonies (C minor and D major), his monumental violin concerto and second piano concerto, and two concert overtures--the Tragic and the jovial Academic Festival, based on student songs and written to celebrate an honorary doctorate awarded him by the University of Breslau in 1879. During this period Brahms did not neglect song or chamber music, although the number of his piano compositions diminished after he wrote Variations on a Theme by Handel (1862).
During the 1880s, Brahms wrote his third (F major) and fourth (E minor) symphonies; the double concerto (A minor) for violin, cello, and orchestra; and choral works, chamber music, and songs. Brahms made his will in 1891 and then embarked with renewed vigour on the composition of many of his best works. He returned to writing for the piano, creating in his short capriccios, ballades, and intermezzos a musical testament that sums up the musical achievements of German romanticism. During these years Brahms became friends with the clarinettist Richard Muhlfeld and wrote the some of the finest works ever composed for the clarinet: two sonatas, the quintet for clarinet and string quartet, and the trio for clarinet, cello, and piano.
Brahms's last two compositions were religious in nature: the Four Serious Songs on biblical texts, and the set of chorale preludes for organ. These works were published after Brahms died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. Brahms, more than any other composer of the second half of the 19th century, was responsible for reviving what is termed "absolute" music--compositions to be accepted on their own terms as interplays of sound rather than as works that depict a scene or tell a story (program music). Brahms was a master of the compositional craft. He often used established techniques, such as counterpoint, especially in his sets of variations, but in such novel and refreshing ways that the listener first perceives the beauty and strength of the music and only later becomes aware of the composer's technical mastery.
Brahms's love of German folk song gave his music a sturdy Teutonic character. Although most of his music is serious, his intimate folk-song settings and his dazzling Hungarian-style finales, such as in the G Minor Piano Quartet or in the double concerto, reveal lighter sides of his musical personality. His choral music includes the finest Protestant church music since that of Bach, and in his Lieder he created the perfect partnership for voice and piano. His piano writing is more difficult than it sounds, and therefore has an appeal to pianists who are more concerned with musicality than with virtuosity. Brahms wrote masterpieces in many different genres including: symphony, concertos for varied instruments, chamber works, lieder, and a sacred mass.
Opera was the only major musical medium in which he did not write, but his legacy of musical craftsmanship is evident in the works of many late "romantic" and "20th-century" composers including Max Reger and Paul Hindemith. Compositions
In the following pages we will examine some of Brahms works in more detail.
Brahms -- Symphony #1
Many composers contemporary with Brahms regarded the traditional symphony as an outdated genre. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) had revolutionised opera, establishing a musical and philosophical approach he referred to as "Music of the Future" (Zukunftsmusik). Even when writing music for instruments alone, Wagner and his disciples believed that Classical or early Romantic formal principles were academic, sterile, and a hindrance to full emotional expression. The great symphonist in these circles was Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), whose music, especially in its dramatic pacing, was decidedly unlike that of previous composers.
It was not, however, that Wagner's group had lost respect for composers of the past: Beethoven continued to be venerated as the consummate master of the symphony. Brahms knew all of the modernist propaganda, and he, too, was mindful of Beethoven's legacy. His response, however, was to honour Beethoven and other past masters by following in their footsteps, rather than declare the old forms perfected and without need of further contributions. In the process of creating his own first symphony, however, Brahms found himself plagued by self-doubt. Early in his career, in 1855, he attempted to transform a piece that he had written as a sonata for two pianos into a symphony.
He was dissatisfied with the orchestral result, but not, apparently, with the essence of the music: the work survives as the impassioned Piano Concerto #1. Brahms completed a multi-movement, large-scale work for orchestra alone in 1858. Rather than identify the work as a "Symphony," however, Brahms opted for the title "Serenade." A serenade was somehow more modest, or at least less conspicuous, than a symphony; it seems likely that Brahms was dissatisfied with the emotional impact of the work or with the sophistication of his writing for such a large combination of instruments. As further warm-ups, Brahms composed a second serenade (scored without violins) in 1859 and the masterful Variations on a Theme of Haydn in 1873.
The work that ultimately became the Symphony #1 was begun in 1855 and completed in 1876, an astonishing gestation period of 21 years. The psychological strain of the compositional process seems to have been captured in the symphony's tragic introduction. (The Symphony #1 is the only Brahms orchestral work that begins with a separate introduction, whereas Beethoven used one in four of his nine symphonies and several overtures; evidently Brahms found the older device worth a try, but ultimately not to his liking.) Over relentless hammer-blows in the timpani, the strings inch menacingly upwards while the winds move in the opposite direction, immediately establishing a sense of conflict.
The main body of the first movement draws heavily upon this idea as well as others from the introduction, achieving a level of thematic and motivic integration that would surely have impressed Beethoven himself. In the middle of the movement, a rhythmic cell, short - short - short - long, starts intruding into the texture, an unmistakable reference to the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony #5. Indeed, gestures of homage to Beethoven, particularly the Fifth Symphony, are present throughout the work. The key is C minor, giving way to C major in the final movement, following the same tonal plan as Beethoven used in the Fifth. The Brahms work also contains references to Beethoven's Sixth and Ninth Symphonies, the Sixth receiving a few brief quotations in the middle of the first movement.
The echo of the Ninth Symphony's "Ode to Joy" in the grand melody of this symphony's finale is particularly obvious: when a critic called the similarity to Brahms's attention, his testy reply was, "Any ass can see that!" A further reference to the Fifth Symphony comes toward the end of the work, when the final coda is arrived at by means of an accelerando. Finally, one wonders whether Brahms's decision to identify the symphony as his opus 68 is merely a coincidence: Beethoven's opus 68 is his Symphony #6, and the Symphony #5 is right next door, at opus 67. In spite of the clear influence of Beethoven, however, Brahms's personality emerges clearly: the violent first movement ends quietly, with echoes of the introduction -- a distinctly Brahmsian understatement.
The second movement features rich string writing at the opening and a beautiful melody, introduced by the solo oboe, as a second theme. The middle section begins with wandering solos in the oboe and clarinet before becoming more agitated. After a tragic climax, the texture begins to disintegrate, and just when the movement has been reduced to the barest wisps of sound, the timpani enters for the first time. Music from the beginning of the movement returns, but it is entirely transformed: the melody which had been in the strings has been moved to the delicate high woodwinds, the lower strings offer a gentle pizzicato (plucked) accompaniment while the upper strings provide a new counter-melody, and the trumpets unify the sound with a pure, modest beam of light.
The melody from the solo oboe returns, but this time the oboe is joined by the horn and a solo violin -- the only concertmaster solo in all of Brahms's orchestral music. The third movement is the least like Beethoven. Beethoven, for the third movement of a symphony, usually wrote a scherzo: a fast, typically heavy, often rhythmically unpredictable dance in a quick triple meter (three beats per measure). This movement is moderate in nearly all respects: a moderate tempo, a moderate dynamic range, even a moderate register for the solo clarinet as it introduces the first theme. An agitated passage, with a rhythmically unstable accompaniment in the strings underpinning chromatically inflected melodic lines in the woodwinds, disturbs the tranquillity -- but the clarinet solo returns, unaffected by what has happened.
Subtly, the movement relaxes into the middle section, with a different metric organisation (6/8 instead of 2/4). This section builds up considerable energy, but the excitement is ultimately contained. Just when the music is at its most defiant, the tension fades away. The clarinet solo returns once more, surrounded by echoes of the previous section. These echoes persist, but the conflict has been forgotten, and the movement ends peacefully. The finale begins mysteriously. As soon as the first phrase is finished, the orchestral sound disintegrates, leaving only static pizzicato. The footsteps accelerate, then stop in their tracks, only to have the woodwinds bring back the rest of the orchestra. The cycle repeats, and after the next pizzicato episode, a new challenge rises from the bottom of the orchestra.
A series of outbursts are cut short by an interruption from the timpani, and as the smoke clears, the introduction has come to end. Or has it? A solo horn calls from the back of the stage, offering new hope -- but the music is still imbedded in the introduction. This movement really has two introductions, one following the other: the first tragic, the second optimistic. For the traditionally minded Brahms, a compound introduction is quite out of character, and it is likely that he had in mind the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony #9, with its famous several-part introduction. The horn solo is repeated by the flute, which then gives way to a beautiful chorale in the trombones.
The trombones do not play in the first three movements, but their use here is telling: Brahms wants to make sure that the listener remembers this chorale, as he has later plans for it. After the optimistic segment of the introduction, the stage has been set, and Brahms finally gets around to unveiling the eloquent melody which is the heart of this movement -- the one with the superficial similarity to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Gradually, the majestic music shows signs of being challenged, and the movement comes to a temporary halt with a succession of coarse, angry chords. Casually disregarding the implied conflict, the grand tune returns, making its way into a remote key and paying a brief visit to the mysterious pizzicato of the introduction.
After another attempt at full celebration, the music wanders into a dream world, with melodic fragments in the woodwinds searching for a sense of direction. The character changes suddenly with a violent outburst from the strings, and the entire orchestra builds up to a terrifying passage where the strong metrical beats are silent, but the weak beats are mercilessly attacked, one after another. After the music reaches the moment of greatest despair, the horn once again sounds its call of hope. Over grim pounding in the timpani, the orchestra tries to assert its glory, but the momentum subsides again, and the music returns to familiar material from earlier in the movement. As the familiar music comes to a close, an ominous mood settles over the orchestra, just as it did before.
The movement has already been very long, and yet the glorious conclusion which the horn call and the "Ode to Joy" cousin seemed to foretell is nowhere in evidence. A stormy transition leads to a disorienting accelerando, where the various sections of the orchestra are not quite in synchrony with one another. Finally overcoming the previous tension, the music fights its way to an energetic coda, during which the trombone chorale from the beginning of the movement returns in triumph. Brahms and Wagner spent their careers in disagreement about the expressive power of older symphonic forms. The enduring popularity of Brahms's symphonies over the last 120 years suggests that the younger man was correct.
Piano Concerto No. 2, in B-Flat, Op. 83
Brahms, in the years of his maturity, was essentially a "summer composer." Unlike Mahler, who was burdened with opera and orchestra directorships in winter, he held no official posts then. Brahms was active during the winter months, playing the piano and conducting, while sketching the musical ideas and procedures that he would assemble into his greatest works at the Alpine resorts where he spent the warm months. In the spring of 1878, as a between-seasons diversion, he made his first trip to Italy, where he was entranced by the climate, the architecture and the art -- but not by the music. Ideas for a new piano concerto, his first in twenty years, began to take form there and he started to work on the concerto that summer.
Brahms soon put it aside in favour of the Violin Concerto and some other works, and he did not return to it until he came back from a second Italian tour in 1881. In July, when the Concerto was complete, he let his friends know, in his usual shyly ironic way, writing to one that the composition consisted of "some little piano pieces," and to another that he had composed a "tiny, tiny concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo." The presence of the scherzo was important news, for this symphonic feature ordinarily had no place in the concertos of the time, although there was a popular one in the fourth of Henry Litolff's unusual "concertos symphoniques," written in the early 1850's.
In fact, the music of Brahms's First Piano Concerto had originally been sketched as a symphony and only later converted into the form in which we now know it. With the Second Concerto, he was surely and consciously expanding the form. His friend, the critic Eduard Hanslick, called it a "symphony with piano obbligato," and there are times when the piano accompanies the orchestra rather than vice versa, but this Concerto might truly have been better described as a symphony for piano and orchestra. Brahms apparently wrote the new Concerto as a vehicle for himself, and by this time he was no longer what was conventionally understood as a keyboard virtuoso.
He played, it was said, like a composer, meaning that he was more concerned about communicating his musical thought than about getting in all the notes. Nevertheless, the great length, massive sonorities and rhythmic complexities of this piece were such that just getting through the Concerto at all was more than many other pianists of the time could aspire to. Around the time of the new Concerto, a new friendship grew up between Brahms and the conductor-pianist Hans von Bülow, who had merely dubbed Brahms's First Symphony "Beethoven's Tenth." Bülow had formerly belonged to a rival faction that gathered around Liszt (his teacher and ex-father-in-law) and Wagner (husband of his ex-wife).
In October, 1881, Brahms tried out the Concerto with Bülow and his orchestra at Meiningen, and on November 9, 1881, in Budapest, Brahms played in public for the first time, with Alexander Erkel conducting. Brahms himself conducted the rest of the program. Later that season Brahms played the Concerto about a dozen times on tour with Bülow and his orchestra. Some of the tour programs included both of his Concertos, with Bülow and Brahms alternating in the roles of soloist and conductor. In the 1890's, Eugen d'Albert used to play both of Brahms's Concertos on one program, which must have made the concerts endurance contests for both soloist and orchestra.
The majestic gravity of the First Concerto sometimes feels like the work of a young man who is taking himself much too seriously, but the Second is lightened considerably by the bright sun of Italy, if not by its songs. As we follow the path of the quiet opening horn call and the other principal themes through the great length of the first movement, Allegro non troppo, we hear Brahms move masterfully back and forth between the lyric and heroic treatment of ideas. The second movement, Allegro appassionato, sounds neither "tiny" nor "wispy" but, rather demonic. In the third movement, a serene Andante, Brahms makes time for song, at last. The opening melody, played by the orchestra's principal cellist, was to reappear many years later in a song, Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer:
"Ever lighter grows my slumber, and my sorrows hover over me like a trembling haze. In dreams, I often hear you calling outside my door. No one is there to open it for you. I wake and weep bitterly." When the music slows, the clarinets play a melody from a song he had been working on just before, Todessehnen, "Longing for Death," an abandoned lover's lament. The last movement is a sprightly rondo, Allegretto, whose main theme seems to be a lovely version of this sad song's opening measures. The contrasting episodes are distantly derived from the Hungarian Gypsy style that Brahms always found so amusing and that he so often used in his finales. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift
(A German Requiem, with Words from Holy Scripture)
Op. 45, for Soprano, Baritone, Chorus and Orchestra
This great choral work occupied Brahms's attention on and off for well over ten years, from the mid-1850's to l868. It is an extraordinary composition that grew slowly into its final form, enriched by associations and events of weighty significance to the composer and by his secret investment in it of a great wealth of personal concern and emotion. When it was completed, it turned out to be one of the towering masterpieces of a great musical century, a glorious work that is elevating and ennobling.
Young Brahms was trained as a pianist, but for years he was employed as a choral conductor in Detmold, Hamburg and Vienna, and he quickly learned how to write smoothly and effectively for chorus. The lively choral tradition of the city of Hamburg where Brahms grew up had begun to fade before he was born, but during his childhood the members of the principal church and sacred choral organisations there united in a single, strong choral concert society that acquired an important place in local musical life. Nevertheless it is difficult for us to realise now, when so much music is so easily available on CD's, tapes, radio and television, what choral music Brahms could not hear there.
The Hamburg Singakademie -- as the city-wide choral organisation was called -- and the Philharmonic Society seem never to have performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony during Brahms's youth, and when he travelled to Cologne to hear it for the first time in his life, it was just a few weeks before his twenty-first birthday. That was in the spring of l854. In September of l853, in Dusseldorf, young Brahms had presented himself at the door of the composer Robert Schumann and his wife, Clara, who was one of the greatest living pianists and a composer, too. They took the slender, blond boy into their home for more than a month, in the course of which Schumann published an influential magazine article announcing Brahms to the musical world as its next hero.
In February, l9854, Schumann suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide in the Rhine, and Brahms hurried back to Dusseldorf to help Clara. Among the compositions he was working on then was a big piece that he and she used to play as a two-piano sonata. He thought it had the makings of a symphony, but later, during a four-month engagement at the little princely court in Detmold, he decided to convert most of it into his D-Minor Piano Concerto. One sonata movement was held out, however, and it became the second movement of the Requiem. The idea of opening the Requiem with a deep and dark toned orchestra whose violins are silent may also have originated in Detmold where, in l859, Brahms studied a Requiem by Luigi Cherubini (l760-l842) that begins in just that way.
By l86l, on the fifth anniversary of Robert Schumann's death in a mental hospital, Brahms was deeply involved in work on the Requiem, which he had perhaps first imagined as a memorial to Schumann. He had already written some of the music, setting texts that he had selected from the Bible, which he seems to have read more as a work of literature, of poetry and history, than as a testament to religious belief. Other aspects of the composition may have been modelled after such works as the Deutsches Requiem of Franz Schubert (then thought to be by his brother, Ferdinand Schubert), or Schumann's own Requiem für Mignon , with its text from Goethe's Romantic novel, Wilhelm Meister -- the same Mignon who is now best known as the lead personage of the opéra-comique by Ambroise Thomas that bears her name.
On January 3l, l865, Brahms's mother died, and his work on the Requiem entered a second phase. He was seeking comfort and consolation in his work, he said, after what he called the unspeakably bitter blow of his loss. By August, l866, the music was complete, but at its first hearing, on December l, l867, in Vienna, only three movements were performed, and badly, making the work's future seem uncertain. However, on April l0, l868, Good Friday, the composer conducted the six completed movements in the Cathedral at Bremen, with great success. Shortly afterward, he inserted what is now the fifth movement of the Requiem, the soprano solo, and at the same time thoroughly edited the score in preparation for its publication later that year.
The first complete public performance of the final version was given on February l8, l869, in Leipzig, where Brahms had his usual trouble with the public there, but the Bremen success was quickly repeated elsewhere, and within a year the work had been heard in twenty German cities. When he finished the music of the Requiem, Brahms told his friends, "Now I am consoled. I have surmounted obstacles that I thought I could never overcome, and I feel like an eagle, soaring ever higher and higher." It is just this idea of consolation that distinguishes Brahms's Biblical Requiem text from that of the Latin Mass for the Dead. His subject is the comfort of the living through resignation to God's will, not prayer for the peace and rest of the soul of the dead.
From the form in which he put the title, "A German Requiem with Words from Holy Scripture," and from his remarks to friends, it is clear that he meant to indicate something like "A work in the manner of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, or the Mass for the Dead, but in the German language and with a text from the Bible." This has been variously interpreted at various times but it was probably his intent to draw attention to the fact that the text of this Requiem was in his listeners' vernacular. Brahms once told a prominent choral conductor in Berlin that a well-known hymn tune underlay the Requiem, but he added, "If you do not hear it, it doesn't matter much."In fact the presence of a little three-note motive that is heard hundreds of times in the course of the work is very clear.
The notes are those first sung by the leading voices of the chorus, the sopranos, F-A-B flat (basically do-mi-fa), which are also heard in various permutations -- inverted and reversed. Brahms found them, along with the idea that underlies the entire composition, in Bach's half dozen or more uses of a hymn with words and music by Georg Neumark (l62l-l68l), Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten: "Whoever just lets dear God prevail and always places all his hope in Him, God, His wonder, will support him during pain and affliction. Whoever has placed his trust in almighty God has not built on sand." For Brahms, every one of the hundreds of references in his Requiem to that tiny three-note fragment of the hymn's melody reaffirmed this sentiment.
Overall, Brahms's Requiem is a Biblical song, or a series of them stretched to more than symphonic length. The first movement is headed by the composer, Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck, "Fairly slow and with expression." The deliberate pace of its motion, the deep, dark sonorities of the orchestra (without violins), the highly inflected dynamics of the chorus and the solemnity of the text prepare both the performer and the listener for the serious matters that are under consideration here. The second movement, Langsam, marschmässig, "Slow, march-like," was originally conceived as a "slow scherzo" in the early sonata-symphony. The music rises majestically and sadly falls back over the great time-spaces covered by this mystic processional.
In the third movement, the tempo is Andante moderato, and the solo baritone voice prays to the Lord for knowledge of man's ultimate fate. The answer is given in a few simple words: "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God," sung in a long and complex fugue. Next is the work's central movement, a serene psalm-setting as a choral song, Mässig bewegt, "In moderate motion." The fifth movement is the late insertion, an aria for soprano. The pace is Langsam, "Slow"; the dynamic level is indicated as "soft" or "very soft" throughout, but the melodic line presents such technical difficulties for the singer, and at the same time is so charged with emotion, as to make one wonder what an opera by Brahms would have been like, if he had ever written one.
In the sixth movement, Andante, the baritone returns to sing with the chorus of the resurrection of the dead, and then, in a great fugue, of the power of God. The last movement, Feierlich, "Ceremonially," echoes the first and brings the work to its close with a call, at last, for a blessing of the dead. The instruments of the orchestra are two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harps (at least two), and strings. Contrabassoon and organ are optional. The harps play a single part in unison.
Symphony No. 1, in C Minor, Op. 68
In 1862 Brahms began to work on the music that was to become his First Symphony. Yet, the piece would not be completed for fourteen years. As the time passed, the composer's other work gained him an important place in the world of music. A symphony by Schumann's heir was eagerly awaited, but Brahms would not be rushed. "Composing a symphony is no laughing matter," he once said, and at another time, "I shall never finish a symphony. You have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven." In 1876, when Brahms was forty-three years old, he finally got up courage enough to release the Symphony for performance and the première took place on November 4 at the Grand Ducal Theatre in Karlsruhe.
Because he trusted the conductor and admired the orchestra of this small city, Brahms had refused offers to perform the Symphony elsewhere, but soon he conducted it himself in Mannheim, Munich and Vienna. At early performances, the reception was quite cold. Listeners were at first puzzled by the work's combination of restrictive formality and expansive expression, but of course it eventually became one of the most popular symphonies in the repertory. The Symphony opens with a broad introduction, Un poco sostenuto, that leads to the vigorous main section of the first movement, Allegro. The second movement, Andante sostenuto, is lyrical but restrained. In place of a scherzo, there is a brief, light-hearted third movement, Un poco allegretto e grazioso, with a contrasting trio, or middle section.
Brahms planned the movement as a foil for the matchless grandeur of the Finale, which begins with a tensely dramatic Adagio. Toward the end of the section the tempo changes and a horn calls for attention to the movement's principal section, Allegro non troppo, ma con brio, with its broad main theme. At early performances, the thematic melody was often likened to the theme from the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which gave Brahms's partisans the idea of calling it "Beethoven's Tenth Symphony." However, the resemblance is slight, and neither the last symphony of Beethoven nor the first of Brahms, both of which are counted among the supreme masterpieces of the art of music, needs or benefits from the comparison.
The score of the First Symphony calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.
Symphony No. 2, in D Major, Op. 73
Brahms laboured fourteen years before presenting his First Symphony to the world, and though the piece was not a great success at first, the performance gave him courage to start a second work immediately. During the summer of 1877, Brahms retired to a small town in the southern province of Carinthia, where he could compose in quiet surroundings, far from the busy life of Vienna.
While there, the composer wrote to the critic Eduard Hanslick, "So many melodies are flitting about, one must be careful not to tread on them." By treading carefully, Brahms was able to find enough musical inspiration that summer to provide him with material for his Second Symphony, his Violin Concerto, his First Violin Sonata, his two Rhapsodies for piano, Op. 79, and his Second Piano Concerto. In a few summer months Brahms put together most of the Symphony, and he completed it in autumn in Vienna. In September, he wrote to his friend Dr. Theodor Billroth, "I don't know if I have a pretty symphony. I must inquire of skilled persons." And to one of his greatest admirers, Elisabet von Herzogenberg, a fine amateur musician with a good sense of humour, Brahms sent this misinformation about the Symphony:
"You just sit down at the piano, put your little feet on the two pedals in turn, and strike the chord of F minor [which he thought very gloomy] several times in succession, first in the treble, then in the bass, fortissimo and pianissimo, and you will gradually gain a vivid impression of my 'latest!'" In October Brahms played the first movement and part of the finale for Clara Schumann. Early in December, Brahms and Ignaz Brüll played a piano-duet arrangement of the entire symphony for a few friends in a piano showroom, a custom which had started with the First Symphony and was to be continued with the Third and Fourth. Brahms joked about his new symphony right up to the eve of the first performance, when he wrote, in another letter to Elisabet von Herzogenberg,...
"The orchestra here plays my Symphony with mourning bands on their sleeves because of its dirge-like effect. It is to be printed with a black border, too." In fact, the piece is one of the composer's most cheerful works. The first performance took place at a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Hans Richter, on December 30, 1877. The pening of the Symphony did not captivate the audience, but as the music progressed, enthusiasm mounted, and Richter was obliged to repeat the third movement. The Second Symphony has moments that are serious but few that are sombre. The principal theme of the opening Allegro non troppo, and the three bass notes that introduce it, seem to set the tone for the whole work.
The gravest of the four movements is the elegiac second, Adagio non troppo. Brahms never wrote a true scherzo for any of his symphonies, and here the third movement is a stately Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino). The movement resembles a minuet with two faster trios -- or contrasting middle sections -- Presto, ma non assai, each a variation on the principal theme. The finale, Allegro con spirito, overflows with thematic ideas, some derived directly from the first movement. The finale is probably the most joyful, exuberant movement to be found in all four Brahms symphonies. The Second Symphony is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.
Symphony No. 4, in E Minor, Op. 98
When he was in his twenties, Brahms held a part-time post at the court of a minor principality for a while, but the composer spent a large part of his youth wandering from one city to another, meeting many of the important participants in Germany's decentralised musical life and broadening his artistic horizons. Brahms settled in Vienna when he was in his thirties, and like Beethoven before him and Mahler after, he soon began to spend his summers in the country. In winter, Brahms polished his recent compositions and planned his next ones, but the serious business of invention and creation was the summer's.
In 1884 and 1885, in the Styrian Alps of Austria, Brahms wrote his Fourth Symphony -- two movements in each summer. Returning from a mountain walk one day, Brahms found his lodgings in flames. Fortunately his friends were able to carry most of his books and music out of the burning house, and happily, the manuscript of the Symphony was saved. Brahms entrusted the first performance of his Fourth Symphony to Hans von Bülow's orchestra at the court of the Duke of Meiningen. Bülow prepared the piece in rehearsal, and Brahms conducted the première on October 25, 1885. A week later Bülow conducted it, and in November Brahms and he set off on a concert tour of Germany and the Netherlands with the new Symphony in their repertoire, but the work was slow to win public favor.
Even in Brahms's own Vienna, the Symphony disappointed his friends and delighted his enemies. Twelve years later there was an extraordinary performance of the Symphony again in Vienna. Fatally ill with a disease of the liver, Brahms made his last public appearance at a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on March 7, 1897, at which the Fourth Symphony was played. The composer's English pupil, Florence May, described the touching scene: "The Fourth Symphony had never become a favourite work in Vienna, had not gained much more from the general public than the respect accorded there to any important work by Brahms.
Today, however, a storm of applause broke out at the end of the first movement, not to be quieted until the composer, coming to the front of the box in which he was seated, showed himself to the audience. The demonstration was renewed after the second and third movements, and an extraordinary scene followed the conclusion of the work. The applauding, shouting house, its gaze riveted on the figure standing in the balcony, seemed unable to let him go. Tears ran down his cheeks as he stood there, shrunken in form, with lined countenance, strained expression, white hair hanging lank, and through the audience there was a feeling as of a stifled sob, for each knew that they were saying farewell.
Another outburst of applause, and yet another; one more acknowledgment from the master, and Brahms and his Vienna had parted forever. "The Fourth Symphony reflects the earnestness and introspection of Brahms's late years. The first movement, Allegro non troppo, is alternately contemplative and dramatic, and the second, Andante moderato, is based principally on an austere theme in the old, ecclesiastical Phrygian mode. The contrastingly robust third movement is the Symphony's scherzo, Allegro giocoso, although it is only distantly related in form to the classical scherzo of Beethoven. The finale, Allegro energico e passionato, is a chaconne, a set of continuous variations on an eight-measure theme in triple meter.
After presenting the theme in the wind instruments, Brahms constructs a monumentally powerful series of thirty variations, carefully controlling the ebb and flow of the music, the continuity and the contrasts in the eight-measure phrases, until a brilliant coda brings the Symphony to a close. The score calls for piccolo and two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle and strings.
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56
In 1870, a music historian showed Brahms an unpublished set of six little suites, or divertimento's, for wind instruments that were thought to have been written in the 1780's or 1790's by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809).
The second movements of three of the suites had titles, and the tune of one of them, Saint Anthony's Chorale, so pleased Brahms that he jotted it down in his notebook. Three years later he used it as the basis of this set of variations. There is no proof that Haydn wrote the suites. In fact, twentieth-century musicological research suggests that they were perhaps by one of his students, possibly Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831). The titles given to the three movements are probably the names of popular tunes on which they are based, and Saint Anthony's Chorale is thought to have been a pilgrims' hymn. This is one of Brahms's few major works for which Preliminary sketches exist, and they show that he had been working over the musical possibilities of the chorale in his mind long before he wrote them down.
He spent the summer of 1873 writing the Variations, and when he was done he had two versions. The one published as Op. 56a was his first purely orchestral composition in fourteen years. The other, 56b, for two pianos, was his last big keyboard work. Those who have long known the more popular orchestral version find no surprises on first hearing the music played by two pianos - except perhaps the surprise of discovering how similar they are. The rich texture of the inner voices, for example, which is a hallmark of Brahms's style of orchestral writing, turns out to sound like perfectly idiomatic piano writing. There are differences, but they are few and relatively unimportant. The version that sounds "right" to the listener is the one that is more familiar - or the one that he has heard more recently.
Although the content of the work is sophisticated and subtle, the structure is simple and direct. To begin, there is a statement of the theme, which in the orchestral setting is very close to the original in sound. Then, in eight inventive variations, Brahms develops a great series of rich, new melodies, all based on the harmonic and rhythmic structure of the theme. For a finale, there is a new set of sixteen short, continuous variations on a five-measure motive derived from Variation IV, and then Brahms briefly brings back a bit of the original theme for the grand closing section. The orchestral version calls for piccolo and two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, triangle and strings.
Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, in A Minor, Op. 102
Brahms prematurely became concerned about the fading of his creative force and wondered how he would spend his last years. In middle age, the composer assumed a harsh and severe attitude toward much of the world outside his work, a protective stance made necessary by his wish to preserve time and strength for composition. Brahms even quarrelled with some of his oldest and most faithful friends. The composer's disagreements with Clara Schumann were relatively easily smoothed over but a problem with the violinist, Joachim, was somewhat more difficult to mend.
The two men, friends since 1853, had kept in touch through the passing years even though their busy careers prevented them from meeting often, but after a letter from Brahms to Mrs. Joachim was instrumental in defeating the violinist's divorce suit, they did not speak for several years. It was Brahms, surprisingly, who took the first steps toward re-establishing their friendship, and his peace offering was this Double Concerto. It did succeed in patching up their friendship, but the old intimacy was never regained. Why the "work of reconciliation," as Clara Schumann called the Concerto in her diary, is for the unusual combination of violin and cello rather than for violin alone, is not clear.
Perhaps Robert Hausmann, the cellist in Joachim's quartet, had asked Brahms for a solo piece, and the composer was to use him as intermediary in reopening contact with the violinist. Perhaps the cello part was to be a cushion in case Joachim rejected Brahms's proposal to renew their friendship. The Concerto was completed during the summer of 1887, in Switzerland, at Thun. Brahms told a friend to whom he habitually described his works-in-progress in deprecatory terms that his "latest folly" was a "form of idiocy." To Clara Schumann he admitted that he was having problems in writing for the soloists, but she replied encouragingly that as the composer of such fine sonatas for violin and for cello he certainly knew how to deal with the instruments.
In the end, Brahms and Joachim together worked over the solo parts, making them more effective -- and more difficult to play -- than they first were. The two soloists are given all the time they need to display themselves individually, and when they play together, their music is often so richly textured that the listener could imagine them to be an entire string quartet. The Concerto is Brahms's last orchestral work, and the writing is as full as it is in any of his symphonies, which led to complaints, after early performances, that the orchestra covered the soloists. Since then, musicians have learned how to balance these apparently unequal sonorous forces. Joachim was joined by Hausmann in the first performances of the Concerto. In September, 1887, the musicians tried it out in a private reading with the Baden-Baden Orchestra.
Brahms conducted, and Clara Schumann was there as well. On October 18, in Cologne, they gave the first public performance. Six years had passed since Brahms had written a concerto, when he had given the world his huge Second Piano Concerto, whose four movements had led many musicians to think of it as a symphony for piano and orchestra. The Double Concerto is more conventional, in three compact movements, classical in construction. The first, Allegro, is a powerful, dramatic movement, with great rhythmic force; the second, Andante, is based on two expansive, fresh and lyrical melodies; the third, Vivace non troppo, is a cheerful and witty rondo that recalls Joachim's Hungarian origins. The scoring calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
Brahms spent three consecutive summers, 1877, 1878 and 1879, in the picturesque village of Pörtschach on Lake Wörth in Lower Austria, where, he said, the surroundings were so rich in melodies that he had "to be careful not to step on them." There he composed such great works as his Violin Concerto, his Second Symphony, and his Second Piano Concerto. The Violin Concerto was written during the summer of 1878. In August, Brahms sent a copy of the music to his close friend, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who found problems in it. Consultations followed and revisions were made even after the first performance, which was given by Joachim and Brahms at a concert of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on January 1, 1879.
When finally published that October, Brahms had revised the concerto further and incorporated fingerings, bowings and a cadenza by Joachim. A music critic of the time, reminiscing later about the first performance, remembered that the first movement was too "modern" for the audience, but that the public had enjoyed the second movement and had been enthusiastic about the third. Another critic thought that Joachim was either badly prepared for the first performance or indisposed that day, and that Brahms seemed somewhat agitated or disturbed. A few months later, Brahms noted that Joachim's performances of the Concerto were improving, and before the year was out the violinist wrote to the composer that he could even play it by heart.
We now count the Concerto among the four greatest violin concertos of the nineteenth century, along with those of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. Yet, when the concerto was new, violinists resisted it, and many preferred Max Bruch's more lightweight concertos. The great conductor Hans von Bülow declared the piece was not a concerto for violin but a concerto against the violin. The Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, whose opinion Brahms solicited, refused to play this work because its only good tune, he said, was not even given to the violin but was the oboe solo at the beginning of the slow movement. Tchaikovsky, whose Violin Concerto also had great difficulty in making its way into the standard repertoire, liked Brahms personally but did not care much for his music.
He wrote in a letter to a friend that the Concerto "lacks poetry. Brahms's mastery overwhelms his inspiration." Despite all this early opposition, Brahms's Concerto was taken up by all the great violinists of the generation after Joachim, artists whose playing is still remembered: Ysaÿe, Enesco, Busch, Thibaud and Kreisler (who wrote his own cadenzas). Over time, the concerto gained its present honoured place in the standard repertoire. The first movement, Allegro non troppo, is idyllic; the second, Adagio, is lyric; and the third, Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace, is a brilliant Hungarian dance. Brahms is known to have sketched and then discarded a scherzo movement that was to come between the slow movement and the finale.
He may have used it in his Second Piano Concerto, which he was working on at the same time as the Violin Concerto. Brahms orchestrated the Violin Concerto for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
| Title | Arranger/Composer |
| Academic Festival Overture | Johannes Brahms |
| Hungarian Dance #7 | Johannes Brahms |
| Symphony No. 4 In E Minor Op. 98 (Academic Festival) | Johannes Brahms |
| Symphony No. 4 In E Minor Op. 98 (Allegro Energico) | Johannes Brahms |
| Symphony No. 4 In E Minor Op. 98 (Allegro Giocosa) | Johannes Brahms |
| Symphony No. 4 In E Minor Op. 98 (Allegro Non Troppo) | Johannes Brahms |
| Symphony No. 4 In E Minor Op. 98 (Andante Moderato) | Johannes Brahms |
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