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Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

There are so many names in the golden book of musicians – Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Bizet, and Goetz, to mention no others – that inspire unquenchable regret, as one speculates on what they might have done, that we ought to be doubly thankful for the gift of those who have been spared to deliver their message; whose genius has reached its full maturity, and who have passed away before any sign of weakness or senility was apparent in their work. Such reflections may perhaps help to mitigate that natural grief aroused by the death of Johannes Brahms. For in truth it would be hard to find another composer of whom it could be more justly said that he was felix opportunitate mortis. He had reached the confines of old age, and although the quality of his recent work showed no falling off in nobility of sentiment or mastery of technical resource, the dimunition in quantity seemed to indicate that the fount of inspiration was running dry. For a man who devoted himself with such single–hearted absorption to the labours and delights of composition, the loss of the creative instinct would have been a sore trial. This, however, is a matter of mere speculation, for we have seen in Verdi the astounding spectacle of a genius flowering afresh in an octogenarian. All that can be said is that Brahms could not very well have enhanced the splendour of the glorious heritage which he has bequeathed to posterity, and that at no point of his career was his greatness more widely or deeply recognised than at its close.

Though Brahms’s life was singularly devoid of exciting or sensational incidents – a quality which may be attributed to a great extent to his early abandonment of any ambition that he may ever have felt to shine as a virtuoso, still more to his resolute refusal to enter on the perturbing domain of operatic composition – it would be a great mistake to suppose that his career partook of the nature of a ‘walk over.’ He was never a popular composer in the sense that Mascagni, Sullivan, or Verdi are popular composers, and although hailed as a classic in his lifetime, it was only by slow degrees that he scaled the citadel of Fame. The historic greeting extended to him by Schumann in his famous ‘Neue Bahnen’ article was really almost a bit of clairvoyance on the part of the elder man, when one considers how uncompromising and angular many of the works are on which Schumann’s prophecy was based. Roughly speaking, it took Brahms fully fifteen years before he was able to vindicate the accuracy of Schumann’s estimate so far as any public recognition of his genius was concerned, and though the salutation must have sustained and invigorated him throughout all these years of waiting, there can be little doubt that it hampered him a good deal by provoking the antagonism of those critics who were incapable of detecting the stamp of genius in his early compositions. As it has truly been said, Schumann’s praise provoked quite as much scepticism as sympathy. It excited people’s curiosity without carrying conviction. Average people are always suspicious of the announcement that a new genius has emerged above the horizon, even though another genius makes the announcement.

The simple story of Brahms’s life, apart from his compositions, could easily be condensed into a paragraph. He was born on May 7, 1833, at Hamburg, and, unlike perhaps the majority of great musicians, inherited his musical talent from his father, a double bass player in the opera band. His chief teacher was Eduard Marxsen, of Altona, his deep obligations to whom, especially in regard to the theoretical side of the art, he never sought to disguise. At fourteen he appeared in public as a pianist. When he was twenty he went on a tour as accompanist with Remenyi, and so impressed Joachim, who happened to attend one of their concerts, by his masterly transposition at sight of the accompaniment to the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, that the great violinist gave him an introduction to Schumann, then (in the autumn of 1853) living at Düsseldorf. This led to the ‘Neue Bahnen’ article, and to other generous exertions on Schumann’s part, including his successful negotiations with Breitkopf and Härtel for the publication of Brahms’s early works. Indeed, Schumann’s letters at the time abound with charming and characteristic references to his ‘young eagle.’ As, for example: ‘I think Johannes is the true apostle who will write revelations which many Pharisees [Schumann might have added ‘scribes’ as well] will be unable to explain, even after centuries.’ Or, again in a letter to Joachim only three weeks before the tragedy of February 6, 1854: ‘I like the cigars very much; there seems to be a Brahmsian flavour about them, which is, as usual, rather strong but of fine flavour.’ So much for Schumann. As for Brahms, the gratitude he felt to his patron was expressed in his unalterable devotion to his widow, in attending whose funeral he caught a chill which is believed to have precipitated his own end. But to return to the fifties: In 1854 Brahms visited Liszt at Weimar – the latter, by a strange error in judgment which he speedily recognised, having been disposed to hail in him a champion of the extreme romantic movement – but these friendly relations never led to any permanent association, Liszt’s opinion of Brahms’s music in later years never rising above the level of respect. For a while Brahms filled the post of musical director to the Prince of Lippe-Detmold, and then, after returning to Hamburg and spending some time in Switzerland, and appearing at Leipzig in a Gewandhaus Concert in 1859, he gradually gravitated to the Austrian capital, which with occasional intervals was his headquarters for the last thirty-five years of his life. For a short time (cric. ann. 1863) he was director of the Singakademie, and ten years later directed the concerts of the Gesellshaft der Musikfreunde – to which he bequeathed a large portion of his fortune – for three or four seasons. He was in the habit of spending his holidays in the mountains – in the Tyrol or in Switzerland – and paid an occasional visit to Italy. But in spite of repeated invitations he never visited England, and declined the honour of a degree at Cambridge. A similar offer from Breslau found him more amenable, and he signalised the occasion by which his genial ‘Academic’ Overture, in which several well-known students’ songs are used as themes with such brilliant effect.

With the solitary exception of opera, there is no branch of composition in which Brahms’s genius failed to find vent. To say in which he excelled most is no easy task, but perhaps there is a wider consensus of opinion as to the supreme merit of his concerted chamber music than as to anything else he wrote. Here even the most unsympathetic and antagonistic critics have been constrained to express their reluctant appreciation of such pieces as the sextets and the great Clarinet Quintet. For ourselves we are inclined to agree with Dr. Parry in holding that the freshness and poetry of his genius is most strikingly illustrated in his songs. ‘Brahms’s songs,’ he says, ‘represent the most advanced development in respect to the perfect balance of the elements of art; and they present also endless phases of feeling and emotion, from light-hearted merriment and childlike innocent gaiety to a high pitch of passion. They are quite often dramatic in the same sense that Beethoven is dramatic, and portray the characters of various kinds of human beings with an amazing subtlety and power. Finally it is in his songs that Brahms shows the most easily recognisable examples of what people call beauty, and it often is genial beauty of the highest order.’ The foregoing remarks may be illustrated by reference to such splendid and divergent examples of his art as ‘Liebestreu’ and ‘Verrath’ for dramatic intensity, ‘Feldeinsamkeit’ for idyllic charm, ‘Vergebliches Ständchen’ for coquettish merriment, and ‘O wüsst’ ich doch den Weg zurück’ for the tender passion of regret for ‘the days that are no more.’ His unaccompanied choral music, again, which is far less known than it deserves to be, is of extraordinary beauty, and for those who are in sympathy with Brahms’s music we know of no more exquisite pleasure than that to be derived from singing in such pieces as ‘Vineta’ or ‘Stand das Mädchen,’ or the splendid group of five-part songs (Op. 104). Of the fascination of the ‘Liebeslieder’ and ‘Zigeunerlieder’ it is not necessary to speak, but the noble motets entitled ‘Fest und Gedenksprüche’ deserve to be more often heard. From these the transition is easy to his works for chorus and orchestra, of which it must suffice to mention the ‘Schicksalslied’ and the immortal Requiem, as the most conspicuous examples. These noble works exhibit in a most remarkable way that asceticism mingled with poetic mysticism which is so characteristic of Brahms’s genius, and have, as a natural consequence, extorted their due meed of obloquy from critics whose praise is an insult. Turning to the domain of orchestral music, it is significant that Brahms’s first symphony was not produced till November, 1876, or more than twenty years after Schumann had urged him to attack this branch of composition, a notable proof of Brahms’s slow and gradual progress. In Schumann’s letter to Joachim he says: ‘He (Brahms) ought always to remember the beginning of Beethoven’s symphonies and try to do something similar.’ The hint was surely not thrown away; nothing more truly Beethovenish has been written in the last seventy years than Brahms’s four symphonies. The Fourth still remains a hard nut to crack, not for the ‘Pharisees’ alone, but the others have all passed into the classical repertory of the concert-room. There remain his important compositions in which a solo instrument is combined with orchestra – the two remarkable Pianoforte Concertos, the Concerto for violin and violoncello, and the splendid Violin Concerto, all of them works in which Brahms’s native virility of imagination is combined with astonishing mastery of technical resource and complexity of detail. Nor must we forget to mention the conspicuous triumphs he has achieved in the field of variation writing – whether for pianoforte or orchestra – a field in which only the greatest composers have succeeded. His extensive contributions to the literature of the pianoforte illustrate the uncompromising aspect of his genius perhaps more markedly than any of his compositions, and on this account have never attained any great popularity amongst virtuosi, unless we except the groups of short pieces recently published, in which the genial and poetic vein of his muse emerges with delightful effect.

The austere character of a good deal of Brahms’s music, coupled with his strong objection to being lionized and interviewed, has given rise to a good deal of misconception as to his personality. Brahms never married, but he was neither a misogynist nor an anchorite. He disliked publicity, hated writing letters, and avoided functions. But though, like Schumann, he was not a society man, he was by no means unsociable. In the circle of his intimates, or, better still, in a tête-à-tête, he could be and often was genial and entertaining. His gift for repartee was remarkable, and in the war of wits he was a ready and formidable antagonist. It has been incorrectly stated that he was a man of little culture outside his art. As a matter of fact, we have the best authority for saying that he had not only a choice library, but was well acquainted with the masterpieces of European literature. Apart from this, the care he exercised in the choice of words for his songs is enough to disprove such an assertion. He certainly showed a lack of discrimination in his selection of an English translator to his songs, but it is satisfactory to learn that this error is now being made good by the commission entrusted by Messrs. Simrock to Mr. Paul England. His attitude to England and the English, again, gave rise to a good deal of misinterpretation. But his refusal to accept commissions to compose for festivals and societies was with him a matter of principle, and whatever may be thought of the tone of his historic letter to the Leeds Committee, the position of the writer is unassailable. Brahms had nothing of the courtier or the diplomatist about him. He abhorred publicity and dreaded a sea passage. But his brusquely non possumus attitude in regard to an English visit did not prevent him from maintaining cordial personal relations with many of his English admirers, and several young musicians from these shores met with marked kindness from him in Vienna. As regards the insinuation that he had secretly inspired attacks on Wagner, we are glad to see him absolutely acquitted of such conduct by that enthusiastic Wagnerolater, Mr. H. T. Finck. The insinuation arose from his personal friendship with Dr. Hanslick and Dr. Billroth, both uncompromising anti-Wagnerians. Brahms was incapable of any mean or underhanded action. He never indulged in newspaper controversy, but kept his views to himself. There is a story of a friend who met him after a performance of ‘Die Walküre’ and asked him what he thought of it. Brahms replied: ‘We must all of us listen to Wagner with our own ears.’ If he did not sympathise with Wagner’s methods, it is known that he recognised his genius, and testified his respect by sending a wreath to Venice on Wagner’s death in 1883. The catholicity of his taste is sufficiently shown by his immense admiration for the genius of Strauss – in which he shared the views of Wagner and Von Bülow – on whose wife’s fan he inscribed a few bars of the ‘Blue Danube’ with the charming compliment ‘unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms.’ We have left ourselves no space to touch upon his life-long friendship with Dr. Joachim, or on Hans von Bülow’s devoted championship of his genius. Whatever may be the verdict of posterity as to the vitality of his compositions, the lesson of Brahms’s life – in which consistent and unfaltering devotion to the highest aims was the dominant principle – can never fail to exert a stimulating influence on his successors. ‘The example of a noble man,’ so wrote Dr. Parry more than then years ago of Brahms, and the witness remained true to the close of his life, ‘tends to make others noble, and the picture of a noble mind, such as is presented in his work, helps to raise others towards his level.’

Musical Times, May 1897