Download Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68
JOHANNES BRAHMS was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3,
1897. He completed his First Symphony in 1876, though some of the sketches date back to the 1860s. Otto
Dessoff conducted the first performance on November 4, 1876, at Karlsruhe. Additional performances that
season prompted further revisions, particularly in the second and third movements, before the score was
published in 1877.
THE SCORE OF THE SYMPHONY calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and
contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.
Given that the First Symphony of Johannes Brahms is one of the most familiar in the repertoire, one of those
iconic works that seems to define what a symphony essentially is, it is good to remember that it was written by
a man terrified of writing symphonies, perennially uncertain in dealing with the orchestra, and unsure of the
path he wanted to take. All these elements define Brahms as a man and as a composer. So does the splendid
result, a testament not only to his genius but to his courage and his tireless patience. This work of remarkable
power, passion, and unity was forged in anxiety and sometimes despair through a period of over fifteen years.
Its real history goes back further than that, to the heady months when Brahms was discovered by Robert
Schumann, who in an instantly notorious article proclaimed that this student twenty years old was the coming
savior of German music. This new genius, Schumann declared, was a real Beethovener, keeping faith with the
old forms and genres like symphony and string quartet. That article brought Brahms fame and a host of
enemies before he had done much to earn either. There began a lifetime of trial in the spotlight.
In his article Robert had urged Brahms to produce big pieces—symphonies and concertos. Reeling from the
implications of the article (and from what happened soon after, Robert being committed to an asylum) Brahms
attempted to obey: after several false starts he embarked on a gigantic piano concerto. In fact he had not yet
mastered large forms, and he was not comfortable with the orchestra either. His friend and adviser, the
violinist and composer Joseph Joachim, burst into laughter when he saw the first orchestral draft of the piece.
It took Brahms five years of struggle to complete the First Piano Concerto. Yet in the end, for all its
uncertainties and its manifest flaws, the First is one of the great concertos—and the first monumental
testament to Brahms's courage and patience. But at the time of its completion in 1859, clearly he decided that
never again was he going to mount an ambitious orchestral work until he knew what he was doing.
The first thing history knows of the First Symphony was contained in a package Brahms's one-time love Clara
Schumann received in 1862. It was a draft of the Allegro of the eventual First, without the introduction. The
music “is rather tough,” Clara wrote a friend, “but I soon got used to it.” By this point the musical world,
having absorbed his early works, was waiting for a symphony. And Brahms well knew that his enemies were
waiting for it to fail.
Then the symphony dropped out of sight for the next fourteen years. In the early 1870s Brahms groaned to a
friend, “I’ll never write a symphony! You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we’re always hearing a
giant like that behind us!” By “like that” he meant, of course, Beethoven. Yet at that point he was still working
doggedly toward the symphony. Besides his fear of the competition, what held Brahms up for so long?
Probably it had something to do with uncertainty about what he wanted for the later movements. The eventual
slow movement would be traditional enough in conception. But for whatever reason, Brahms, who wrote fine
and fresh scherzos, in this case did not want a standard symphonic one. What, then? In the end he created
something new, the Brahmsian intermezzo, a medium-tempo movement that can range in tone from lyrical to
passionate.
Secondly, at some point he decided he wanted an end-weighted symphony, meaning one whose finale is the
most expansive and intense of the movements. Having already drafted a powerful and intense first movement,
he now faced the daunting prospect of creating a finale to top it. (This is the dilemma of all composers who
want to write a finale-directed work.)
There was one more issue: his lingering uncertainty with the orchestra. Brahms was one of the most eclectic of
artists, drawing ideas from the past going back to the Renaissance, yet at the same time he had one of the most
distinctive stylistic signatures of any composer. The exception was when it came to an individual orchestral
sound, which the early orchestral works lack. He refused, in short, to write a symphony until his handling of
the orchestra was as distinctive as everything else about his music. He achieved that, at last, in the Variations
on a Theme by Haydn, from 1874. There the world first heard the Brahms orchestra, massive and rich in color
and texture, though also capable of great delicacy.
In summer 1876 it was time. Brahms headed for the Isle of Rügen to finish the symphony. As a creator always
inspired by the landscape around him, he probably hoped its rugged cliffs would get into the piece. Surely they
did.
The piece begins on a note of searing drama: keening, searching melodies spreading outward, and the
pounding timpani Brahms always associated with fate. (See the “All flesh is as grass” movement of his
German Requiem, and his Song of the Fates.) The introduction lays out two essential ideas that will mark the
symphony, a three-note chromatic motif and a soaring line spanning an octave. Meanwhile the first movement
will turn out to be opening act of an implied four-movement narrative: from darkness in the first movement to
light in the finale—that being the same narrative as Beethoven's Fifth.
The introduction gives way to a 6/8 Allegro that never flags in its driving, churning energy. It features the kind
of innovation common in Brahms, for all his devotion to tradition: the two principal motifs, the three-note
chromatic bit and the soaring bit, are presented together in counterpoint, rather than successively. Meanwhile
the dominant rhythmic motif, three pounding notes, recalls in a different context the famous motif from
Beethoven's Fifth. At the end of the movement a pensive coda is troubled by the fateful timpani of the
opening.
Second comes a slow movement in ABA form, marked by Brahms's singular, melting, heart-tugging lyricism.
There is meanwhile a sense of intimacy in this movement that approaches the effect of chamber music. That
will become a familiar territory in Brahms's orchestral works. The middle section offers more lyricism in its
flowing themes that gather to something of a recall of the first movement’s intensity.
Then comes the intermezzo. It begins with a blithe clarinet theme that is developed at length. The middle
section’s pulsing theme recalls the second movement in gathering toward another recall of the opening
movement. The fateful quality of the symphony’s first pages still lingers in the background.
All along, the finale has been the goal, when the tensions of the first movement and the fraught lyricism of the
middle ones find their apotheosis. The finale’s opening pages recall the shadows and searching of the first
movement, and the fateful question it left unanswered. The music reaches a breathless climax, then as if with a
burst of sunlight through clouds, by way of a French horn we hear the call of an alphorn. Here in a moment of
uncanny C major beauty the First Symphony turns toward solace, fulfillment, and finally triumph.
As in Beethoven's Ninth, what follows is the certification of that fulfillment in the form of a chorale theme that
the whole symphony has been striving toward. That theme, unforgettable from the first time you hear it, is the
soul of the finale, which still has tumultuous stretches to work through. The coda is unbounded exaltation.
Surely part of that exaltation is Brahms's own, after so many years and so much anguish having accomplished
something worthy to place at the feet of the giants of the past, whose tramp he would never stop hearing.
Inevitably came the moment when some unwise person noted to the composer that his big theme in the finale
recalled Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Brahms's response was characteristic: “Any jackass can see that!” As usual,
Brahms left his real point hanging: he meant that while his work had Beethoven all over it, he had still brought
to the symphony something deeply personal and original. When the First premiered in 1876 the response was
cautious, but in fact the genre had been languishing for decades and in the end, with one stroke, Brahms had
revitalized it. The symphonies of Mahler, Dvoˇrák, Sibelius, and many others rode that revival. If Brahms was
something of a musical loner, as much Classic as Romantic, as much conservative as progressive, his impact
on the future of music from conservative to progressive has been profound and lasting.
Jan Swafford
JAN SWAFFORD is a prizewinning composer and writer whose books include biographies of Johannes Brahms
and Charles Ives, “The Vintage Guide to Classical Music,” and, published last summer, “Beethoven: Anguish
and Triumph.” He is currently working on a biography of Mozart.
THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 was given by Leopold Damrosch
and his orchestra on December 15, 1877, in New York’s Steinway Hall. The first Boston performance was
given by Carl Zerrahn on January 3, 1878, in a Harvard Musical Association concert at the Music Hall.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCE of the Brahms First was during the
orchestra’s first season, on December 10, 1881, under Georg Henschel, who programmed it again in
December 1882 and December 1883. It has also been played in BSO concerts under the direction of Wilhelm
Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Karl Muck, Max Fiedler, Ernst Schmidt, Pierre Monteux, Serge
Koussevitzky, Richard Burgin, Sir Adrian Boult, Charles Munch, Guido Cantelli, Carl Schuricht, Eugene
Ormandy, Erich Leinsdorf, William Steinberg, Rafael Kubelik, Bruno Maderna, Joseph Silverstein, Seiji
Ozawa, Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, Pascal Verrot, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, James
Levine, Bernard Haitink (including the most recent subscription performances in November 2009), Christoph
von Dohnányi, and Vladimir Jurowski (the most recent Tanglewood performance, on July 19, 2013).
To Read and Hear More...
John Daverio’s Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age” provides thoroughly informed consideration
of the composer’s life and music (Oxford paperback). Eric Frederick Jensen’s Schumann is a good biography
in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford). Schumann: A Chorus of Voices, by John C. Tibbetts, offers varied
perspectives on the composer and his work from a wide assortment of performers, scholars, biographers,
critics, and commentators (Amadeus Press). John Worthen’s Robert Schumann: The Life and Death of a
Musician is a detailed treatment of the composer’s life based on a wealth of contemporary documentation
(Yale University Press). Peter Ostwald’s Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius is a study of the
composer’s medical and psychological history, likewise based on surviving documentation (Northeastern
University Press). Robert Schumann: The Man and his Music, an anthology edited by Alan Walker, includes
discussion of Schumann’s Manfred in Frank Cooper’s chapter on the composer’s“Operatic and Dramatic
Music” (Barrie and Jenkins).
Bernard Haitink recorded the Manfred Overture with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (Philips).
The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded it with Charles Munch conducting in 1959 (RCA). Other
recordings of varying vintage include James Levine’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon),
George Szell’s with the Cleveland Orchestra (Sony), Claudio Abbado’s with Orchestra Mozart (Deutsche
Grammophon), Rafael Kubelik’s with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Sony), Christian
Thielemann’s with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), Wilhelm Furtwängler’s with the
Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), and Arturo Toscanini’s with the NBC Symphony Orchestra
(RCA).
The important modern biography of Mozart is Maynard Solomon’s Mozart: A Life (HarperPerennial
paperback). Peter Gay’s wonderfully readable Mozart is a concise, straightforward introduction to the
composer’s life, reputation, and artistry (Penguin paperback). John Rosselli’s The life of Mozart is one of the
compact composer biographies in the series “Musical Lives” (Cambridge paperback). Christoph Wolff’s
Mozart at the Gateway to his Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791 takes a close look at the realities,
prospects, and interrupted promise of the composer’s final years (Norton). For further delving, there are
Stanley Sadie’s Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 (Oxford); Volkmar Braunbehrens’s Mozart in Vienna,
1781-1791, which focuses on the composer’s final decade (HarperPerennial paperback); Julian Rushton’s
Mozart: His Life and Work, in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford), and Robert Gutman’s Mozart: A
Cultural Biography (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Harvest paperback). Peter Clive’s Mozart and his Circle: A
Biographical Dictionary is a handy reference work with entries on virtually anyone you can think of who
figured in Mozart’s life (Yale University Press). The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart’s Life and
Music, edited by H.C. Robbins Landon, includes an entry by Robert Levin on the concertos (Schirmer). A
Guide to the Concerto, edited by Robert Layton, includes a chapter by Denis Matthews on “Mozart and the
Concerto” (Oxford paperback). Alfred Einstein’s Mozart: The Man, the Music is a classic older study (Oxford
paperback). Other older books still worth knowing are Cuthbert Girdlestone’s Mozart and his Piano
Concertos (Dover paperback) and Arthur Hutchings’s A Companion to Mozart’s Piano Concertos (Oxford
paperback). Michael Steinberg’s program note on Mozart’s A major piano concerto, K.488, is in his
compilation volume The Concerto–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford paperback). Donald Francis Tovey’s note on
K.488 is among his Essays in Musical Analysis (also Oxford).
Maria João Pires has made two recordings of Mozart’s A major concerto, K.488: with Frans Brüggen and the
Orchestra of the Salzburg Mozarteum (Deutsche Grammophon), and with Theodor Guschlbauer and the
Gulbenkian Foundation Chamber Orchestra Lisbon (Erato and Apex). Other recordings include—listed
alphabetically by soloist, all of whom double as conductor unless otherwise noted—Géza Anda’s with the
Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum (Deutsche Grammophon), Daniel Barenboim’s with the
Berlin Philharmonic (Warner Classics), Alfred Brendel’s with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St.
Martin in the Fields (Philips), Imogen Cooper’s with the Northern Sinfonia (Avie), Leon Fleisher’s with the
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (Sony), Jeno Jandó’s with András Ligeti and the Concentus Hungaricus (Naxos),
Murray Perahia’s with the English Chamber Orchestra (Sony), Maurizio Pollini’s with Karl Böhm and the
Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), and Mitsuko Uchida’s with Jeffrey Tate and the English
Chamber Orchestra (Philips).
Important books about Brahms include Jan Swafford’s Johannes Brahms: A Biography (Vintage paperback);
Malcolm MacDonald’s Brahms in the “Master Musicians” series (Schirmer); Johannes Brahms: Life and
Letters as selected and annotated by Styra Avins (Oxford); The Compleat Brahms, edited by conductor/scholar
Leon Botstein, a compendium of essays on Brahms’s music by a wide variety of scholars, composers, and
performers, including Botstein himself (Norton); Walter Frisch’s Brahms: The Four Symphonies (Yale
paperback), and Peter Clive’s Brahms and his World: A Biographical Dictionary (Scarecrow Press). Important
older biographies include Karl Geiringer’s Brahms (Oxford paperback) and The Life of Johannes Brahms by
Florence May, who knew Brahms personally (published originally in 1905 but periodically available in reprint
editions). John Horton’s Brahms Orchestral Music in the series of BBC Music Guides includes discussion of
his symphonies, concertos, serenades, Haydn Variations, and overtures (University of Washington paperback);
for more detailed analysis, go to Michael Musgrave’s The Music of Brahms (Oxford paperback) or Bernard
Jacobson’s The Music of Johannes Brahms (originally Fairleigh Dickinson). Michael Steinberg’s notes on the
four Brahms symphonies are in his compilation volume The Symphony–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford
paperback). Donald Francis Tovey’s notes on the Brahms symphonies are among his Essays in Musical
Analysis (also Oxford).
Bernard Haitink recorded the four Brahms symphonies with the Boston Symphony Orchestra between 1990
and 1994 (Philips); a more recent release has him conducting all four symphonies live with the London
Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live). Earlier BSO accounts of the Brahms First were made in 1956 by Charles
Munch (RCA), in 1963 by Erich Leinsdorf (also RCA, as part of his complete Brahms symphony cycle with
the orchestra), and in 1977 by Seiji Ozawa (Deutsche Grammophon). Other noteworthy cycles of the four
symphonies include Daniel Barenboim’s with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Erato); Nikolaus
Harnoncourt’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (Teldec); Marek Janowski’s with the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra (PentaTone); Herbert von Karajan’s early-1960s cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche
Grammophon); James Levine’s with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA) and live with the Vienna
Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon); Charles Mackerras’s with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, in “period
style” with interpretive choices suggested by documentation from Meiningen, Germany, where Brahms
himself frequently conducted the orchestra (Telarc); and Simon Rattle’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (EMI).
For those interested enough in historic recordings to listen through dated sound, both Arturo Toscanini and
Wilhelm Furtwängler left multiple accounts of the Brahms First Symphony (various labels). Toscanini’s live
performances with the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 (on Christmas Eve, from his very first concert
with that ensemble) and May 1940 (from Carnegie Hall) are outstanding, as is Furtwängler’s 1951 broadcast
with the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg. There is also a very beautiful 1953 recording
by Toscanini protégé Guido Cantelli with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Testament). The Brahms recordings of
Willem Mengelberg with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (previously available on Naxos and Tahra) and of
Felix Weingartner with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra (previously available on
Living Era, Naxos, and EMI) will be important to anyone interested in the recorded history and performance
practice of these works.
Marc Mandel