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JOHANNES BRAHMS
(1833 ­ 1897)
The music of Johannes Brahms (May 7, 1833 ­ April 3, 1897)
represents the furthest development of one strain of Nineteenth­
Century Romanticism. Broadly speaking, one can distinguish five
lines of development: the Beethoven­Mendelssohn­Schumann­
Brahms; Liszt­Wagner­Bruckner­Strauss; folk­lore nationalism;
Italian opera; and French, both operatic and symphonic. Some of
this overlaps, of course. One can view Brahms, for example, with his
deep artistic attachment to German folklore and older music, as a
German nationalist.
The son of a musician, Brahms received piano, cello, horn, harmony,
and composition lessons from an early age. He made his first public
appearance as a ten­year­old pianist, playing an etude by Herz and
participating in chamber works by Mozart and Beethoven. As far as
his composing went, the more fantastic Romantics like E.T.A.
Hoffmann and Callot, as well as the poetry of Eichendorff and Heine
and folk and medieval sources, influenced him most. One finds in
early Brahms a cultivation of the bizarre, a strain which he ruthlessly
excised from his decades­later revisions of early work. Most of his
early music concentrates on the piano and on chamber music featuring the piano – no surprise there.
In 1853, Brahms met Schumann, whose music he had at first dismissed during a short­lived infatuation with
the school of Liszt, and then enthusiastically studied. Schumann, for his part, raved over the compositions
Brahms had shown him and published an influential article ("Neue Bahnen," "New Paths") which praised the
young man as having "sprung, like Minerva, fully­armed from the head of the son of Cronus." Schumann had
put his finger on a major quality of Brahms' music: its ability to convince you of its artistic completeness and
abundance and its apparently easy seamlessness and inexorable flow. Brahms became attached to the
Schumann family, especially, after Schumann's insanity and death, to Schumann's wife Clara and daughter
Julie. Brahms took care of the household so Clara could earn money as a touring pianist. For many years,
romantic rumors circulated about Brahms and Clara, but Clara seems never to have regarded Brahms as
anything more than a devoted son. For his part, Brahms, although capable of temporary infatuations,
deliberately kept himself away from marriage, for he believed in the incompatibility between an artistic career
and a family. Nevertheless, Clara remained, notwithstanding occasional tiffs, perhaps Brahms' closest musical
advisor and confidante, up to her death in 1896.
In the 1850s, Brahms turned from chamber music to orchestral music for the first time and produced, the
first Serenade, the Piano Concerto #1, and the second Serenade. The Piano Concerto, one of his most
turbulent, Sturm und Drang works, was actually booed and hissed at its premiere, which wounded the
composer but also stirred him to revise. In the aftermath of the concerto fiasco, he temporarily lost his
publisher (Breitkopf & Härtel), but eventually hooked up with Simrock, who remained his major publisher.
A creative block afflicted Brahms during the mid­1850s. He felt at a loss, written­out. He turned to a study of
strict counterpoint – canon, fugue, invertible counterpoint – writing a series of exercises and polyphonic
works. Some of these found their way into later pieces. However, it also turned Brahms into a contrapuntal
master, perhaps the best since Bach. It comes out most in his choral music, but it runs through his
instrumental music as well (the finale to the Haydn Variations and the Fourth Symphony, for example), often
when you least expect it.
In 1860, infuriated by an editorial in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Brahms and the composer­violinist
Joachim published a reply. The editorial contended that the marriage of literature and music was the only
true path for the "music of the future." Brahms, who saw himself as a musician of the future, contended that
music should proceed on its own logic, rather than essentially Mickey­Mouse a literary plot. He objected
mainly to the tone poems of Liszt, but the quarrel got away from him. He was seen in opposition to Berlioz
and Wagner as well (both of whom he admired), and this precipitated the so­called Brahms­Wagner split of
the latter Nineteenth Century – the fight between the Wagnerites and the "Brahmins." It says much for
Brahms' stature, and he's not yet thirty, that he becomes a (very unwilling) pole in this argument.
Around this time, Brahms began to seek conducting positions. He was turned down by his native town,
Hamburg, to direct the city orchestra but was accepted by the Vienna Singakademie. Brahms had previously
led a women's chorus in Hamburg and an amateur choir at the Detmold court. All this experience led to the
composition of a number of choral works, among the finest of their time. Brahms' choral music falls into three
broad categories: "antiquarian," where the influence of J.S. Bach and Heinrich Schütz is particularly felt;
"folk," arrangements of folk­songs and folk­like original tunes; and extensions of the Romantic choral works
of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. In 1865, Brahms' mother died. He responded creatively with Ein
deutsches Requiem (1866­67, premiered in its entirety in 1869). Brahms had been a well­respected young
composer before. This work swept through Europe, from Britain to Russia, and vaulted Brahms to the front
rank of Nineteenth­Century composers. He was seriously regarded – and just as bitterly mocked – as
Beethoven's successor, which, in my opinion, gave him the willies. Beethoven had been a presence in his
creative life for a long time. Now the presence had become so strong, it threatened to cut off his creative
work. It says much for Brahms' will and fortitude that he kept on.
During the 1870s, he struggled to master both the string quartet and especially the symphony. People
expected a symphony from Beethoven's supposed successor. Nevertheless, when he turned to orchestral
music again, he did so with the marvelous Variations on a Theme by Haydn (1873). His first symphony
(begun, by the way, in 1862) appeared in 1876. Even after a successful premiere, he felt compelled to revise
the slow movement before publication. Brahms became a ruthless revisor of his own music. We know he
submitted many of his major works to this process, but often we haven't the earlier versions, since he
destroyed most of his earlier drafts. The chips from his workshop are few and far between. In the cases
where earlier versions have survived (usually because they were published), one does notice a pattern of
cutting out more fantastical, even bizarre, passages in favor of classical proportion and restraint. As a result,
we have a kind of Official Portrait of Brahms' music. We get only glimpses of the fan of Callot.
Brahms' catalogue grew to include four symphonies, a second piano concerto, a violin concerto, a double
concerto for violin and cello, and a mountain of chamber music and songs. The songs are perhaps the most
neglected part of his output, with the exception of certain "hits" and the magnificent, late Four Serious Songs,
written in response to the death of Clara Schumann. It turns out he was a canny businessman as well, aiming
many works for the middle­class domestic market. For example, he made four­hand piano arrangements of
each of his symphonies, a smart move in the era before recorded sound. He also arranged Ein deutsches
Requiem, his most popular work, for piano and choir, thus ensuring more performances among amateur
societies. He amassed enough money to even play the stock market, which he did successfully. He lived well
within his means and used most of his money to support family, friends, young musicians, and scholars in
whose projects he took an interest. He managed to give up public performance as early as the 1870s to
devote himself to composition. He died, long resident in Vienna, of liver cancer in 1897.
His lasting influence has been as a symphonist and chamber­music master. He remained controversial for a
time even after his death, especially the works from the 1870s on. George Bernard Shaw, one of the greatest
musical critics of all, came around to Brahms ("my only mistake," he claimed) as late as the Twenties.
Schoenberg considered himself a descendant of Brahms and his twelve­tone method of composition a simple
extension of Brahmsian procedures. He even wrote an influential essay, "Brahms the Progressive," in the
1940s. Since Brahms himself anticipated them, it's surprising that many neo­classical composers seemed
"allergic" to his music. However, Brahms now sits safely ensconced in the pantheon of western music, beyond
the cavil of turf wars. It's still possible to dislike his music but not to discount its importance. ~ Steve
Schwartz