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Johannes Brahms: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was born on the 7th of May 1833 in Hamburg, Germany, into a family that struggled to make ends meet despite his father's musical talents. His father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was a double bass player who had moved to Hamburg from Heide in Holstein, and his mother, Johanna Nissen, was a seamstress seventeen years his senior. The family lived in poor apartments in the Hafenstadt quarter, and at one point, Johann Jakob even considered emigrating to the United States after an impresario promised them fortune for their son's talent. Brahms received his first musical training from his father, learning violin and cello basics, but it was his piano studies with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel that truly ignited his career. By the age of ten, he was performing in private concerts, playing works by Beethoven and Mozart, and by 1845, he had already composed a piano sonata in G minor, though his parents disapproved of his composing ambitions, preferring he focus on performance. Brahms's early years were marked by a relentless pursuit of musical excellence, and by 1848, he was giving his first full piano recitals, which included a fugue by Bach and works by contemporary virtuosi. Despite persistent stories of him playing in bars and brothels, modern scholars dismiss these as anecdotal, noting that Hamburg legislation strictly forbade such activities and that the Brahms family was relatively prosperous. Brahms's early compositions, known as his juvenilia, were largely destroyed by him later in life, with the earliest acknowledged works dating from 1851, including his Scherzo Op. 4 and the song Heimkehr Op. 7 no. 6.
The Schumann Connection
In 1853, Brahms's life changed dramatically when he met the violinist Joseph Joachim, who was so impressed by Brahms's playing that he remembered it fifty years later as the most overwhelming experience of his artist's life. This meeting led to a lifelong friendship and a mutual training exercise in counterpoint and fugue. Brahms then visited Weimar, where he met Franz Liszt, and later, with a letter of introduction from Joachim, he visited Düsseldorf to meet Robert and Clara Schumann. Robert Schumann, greatly impressed by the 20-year-old's talent, published an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik nominating Brahms as one who was fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner. This praise, however, aggravated Brahms's self-critical standards, and he wrote to Schumann expressing his fear of fulfilling such extraordinary expectations. After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement in a mental sanatorium in February 1854, Brahms based himself in Düsseldorf, where he supported the household and dealt with business matters on Clara's behalf. Brahms began to feel deeply for Clara, who to him represented an ideal of womanhood, but he was conflicted about their romantic association and chose the life of a bachelor to focus on his craft. Their intensely emotional relationship lasted until Clara's death, and Brahms dedicated his Op. 9, the Variations on a Theme of Schumann, to her in June 1854. Clara continued to support Brahms's career by programming his music in her recitals, and Brahms's early compositions, including the Piano Concerto in D minor, were shaped by this period of intense emotional and professional support.
Johannes Brahms was born on the 7th of May 1833 in Hamburg, Germany. He was born into a family that struggled to make ends meet despite his father's musical talents.
Who were the key figures in Johannes Brahms's early career and how did they influence him?
Johannes Brahms met violinist Joseph Joachim in 1853 and later visited Robert and Clara Schumann in Düsseldorf. Robert Schumann published an article nominating Brahms as a future great, while Clara Schumann supported his career by programming his music in her recitals.
What is the significance of Johannes Brahms's A German Requiem?
Johannes Brahms composed A German Requiem Op. 45 after his mother died in February 1865. The work uses texts from the Luther Bible rather than the traditional liturgical Missa pro defunctis and marked his arrival on the world stage.
When did Johannes Brahms move to Vienna and what was his role there?
Johannes Brahms made his first visit to Vienna in autumn 1862 and soon made it his home. He was appointed conductor of the Wiener Singakademie in 1863 but left the post in June 1864 to focus on composing.
What were the dates of Johannes Brahms's symphonies and how were they received?
Johannes Brahms's First Symphony appeared in 1876 and was hailed as Beethoven's Tenth. His Second Symphony followed in 1877, the Third in 1883, and the Fourth in 1885, with all receiving warm reception and becoming prominent in the standard repertoire.
When and how did Johannes Brahms die?
Johannes Brahms died on the 3rd of April 1897 in Vienna at the age of 63. He was diagnosed with liver cancer and his last public appearance was on the 7th of March 1897 when he saw Hans Richter conduct his Symphony No. 4.
Brahms's entry into the public eye was marked by the polarized context of the War of the Romantics, an affair in which he regretted his public involvement. In 1860, he and others prepared an attack on Liszt's followers, the so-called New German School, objecting to the rejection of traditional musical forms and to the rank, miserable weeds growing from Liszt-like fantasias. A draft was leaked to the press, and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik published a parody which ridiculed Brahms and his associates as backward-looking, and Brahms never again ventured into public musical polemics. Despite this, his music was considered relatively conservative within the context of the war, and Eduard Hanslick celebrated them polemically as absolute music. Hans von Bülow even cast Brahms as the successor of Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, an idea Richard Wagner mocked. Brahms's First Symphony, which appeared in 1876, was hailed as Beethoven's Tenth, and the similarity of his music to that of late Beethoven had first been noted as early as November 1853 in a letter from Albert Dietrich to Ernst Naumann. Brahms's music, with its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied yet expressive contrapuntal textures, adapted the traditional structures and techniques of a wide historical range of earlier composers, making him a figure of both admiration and controversy.
The German Requiem
In February 1865, Brahms's mother died, and he began to compose his large choral work A German Requiem, Op. 45, of which six movements were completed by 1866. The work was not a setting of the liturgical Missa pro defunctis, but a setting of texts which Brahms selected from the Luther Bible, and it was composed in three major periods of his life. An early version of the second movement was first composed in 1854 after Robert Schumann's attempted suicide, and most of the Requiem was composed after Brahms's mother's death in 1865. He added the fifth movement after the 1868 premiere, and in 1869 the final work was published. The complete work was first given in Bremen in 1868 to great acclaim, and a seventh movement, the soprano solo Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, was added for the equally successful Leipzig premiere in February 1869. The work went on to receive concert and critical acclaim throughout Germany and also in England, Switzerland and Russia, marking effectively Brahms's arrival on the world stage. Brahms has been described as an agnostic and a humanist, and when asked by conductor Karl Reinthaler to add additional explicitly religious text to his German Requiem, he responded that he would gladly omit even the word German and instead use Human. The work, which was partially inspired by his mother's death, also incorporates material from a symphony which he started in 1854 but abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt, and Brahms once wrote that the Requiem belonged to Schumann.
The Vienna Years
In autumn 1862, Brahms made his first visit to Vienna, staying there over the winter, and he soon made it his home. In 1863, he was appointed conductor of the Wiener Singakademie, and he surprised his audiences by programming many works by the early German masters such as Heinrich Schütz and J. S. Bach, and other early composers such as Giovanni Gabrieli. Brahms also wrote works for the choir, including his Motet, Op. 29, but finding that the post encroached too much of the time he needed for composing, he left the choir in June 1864. From 1864 to 1876, he spent many of his summers in Lichtental on the north side of Vienna, where Clara Schumann and her family also spent some time, and his house in Lichtental, where he worked on many of his major compositions including A German Requiem and his middle-period chamber works, is preserved as a museum. In Vienna, Brahms became an associate of two close members of Wagner's circle, his earlier friend Peter Cornelius and Karl Tausig, and of Joseph Hellmesberger Sr. and Julius Epstein, respectively the Director and head of violin studies, and the head of piano studies, at the Vienna Conservatoire. Brahms's circle grew to include the notable critic Eduard Hanslick, the conductor Hermann Levi and the surgeon Theodor Billroth, who were to become among his greatest advocates. In January 1863, Brahms met Richard Wagner for the first time, for whom he played his Handel Variations Op. 24, which he had completed the previous year, and the meeting was cordial, although Wagner was in later years to make critical, and even insulting, comments on Brahms's music.
The Symphonic Legacy
Brahms's First Symphony, Op. 68, appeared in 1876, though it had been begun and a version of the first movement had been announced by Brahms to Clara and to Albert Dietrich in the early 1860s. During the decade it evolved very gradually, the finale may not have begun its conception until 1868, and Brahms was cautious and typically self-deprecating about the symphony during its creation, writing to his friends that it was long and difficult, not exactly charming and, significantly, long and in C Minor, which made it clear that Brahms was taking on the model of models for a symphony: Beethoven's Fifth. Despite the warm reception the First Symphony received, Brahms remained dissatisfied and extensively revised the second movement before the work was published. There followed a succession of well-received orchestral works: the Second Symphony Op. 73 in 1877, the Violin Concerto Op. 77 in 1878, dedicated to Joachim, who was consulted closely during its composition, and the Academic Festival Overture and Tragic Overture of 1880. The following years saw the premieres of his Third Symphony, Op. 90 in 1883, and his Fourth Symphony, Op. 98 in 1885, and Richard Strauss, who had been appointed assistant to von Bülow at Meiningen, found himself converted by the Third Symphony and was enthusiastic about the Fourth, calling it a giant work, great in concept and invention. Brahms's symphonies are prominent in the standard repertoire of symphony orchestras, only Beethoven's are more frequently performed, and Brahms's symphonies have often been measured against Beethoven's.
The Late Masterpieces
After the successful Vienna premiere of his Second String Quintet, Op. 111 in 1890, the 57-year-old Brahms came to think that he might retire from composition, telling a friend that he had achieved enough and could enjoy a carefree old age in peace. He also began to find solace in escorting the mezzo-soprano Alice Barbi and may have proposed to her, but his admiration for Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist with the Meiningen orchestra, revived his interest in composing and led him to write the Clarinet Trio, Op. 114 in 1891, Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115 in 1891, and the two Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120 in 1894. Brahms also wrote at this time his final cycles of piano pieces, Opp. 116, 119 and the Vier ernste Gesänge Four Serious Songs, Op. 121 in 1896, which were prompted by the death of Clara Schumann and dedicated to the artist Max Klinger, who was his great admirer. The last of the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122 in 1896, is a setting of O Welt ich muss dich lassen O world I must leave thee and the last notes that Brahms wrote. Many of these works were written in his house in Bad Ischl, where Brahms had first visited in 1882 and where he spent every summer from 1889 onwards. In the summer of 1896, Brahms was diagnosed with jaundice and pancreatic cancer, and later in the year his Viennese doctor diagnosed him with liver cancer, from which his father Jakob had died, and his last public appearance was on the 7th of March 1897, when he saw Hans Richter conduct his Symphony No. 4, with an ovation after each of the four movements. His condition gradually worsened and he died on the 3rd of April 1897, in Vienna at the age of 63, and he is buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery in Vienna, under a monument designed by Victor Horta with sculpture by Ilse von Twardowski.
The Progressive Brahms
Brahms's music is known for its debts to the Viennese Classical and earlier traditions, including its use of traditional genres and forms, but his use of developing variation, as argued by Carl Dahlhaus, was an expository procedure analogous to that of Liszt's and Wagner's modulating sequences. Although Brahms often wrote music without an explicit or public program, in his Symphony No. 4 alone he musically alluded to the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, the texted chaconne of Bach's Cantata No. 150, and to Schumann's music, from musical cryptograms of Clara to the Fantasie in C with its use of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, perhaps intending these as ironic, autobiographical reflections on the work's tragic character. Arnold Schoenberg would later defend Brahms, stating that it is not the heart alone which creates all that is beautiful or emotional, and he highlighted Brahms's fondness for motivic saturation and irregularities of rhythm and phrase, terming Brahms's compositional principles developing variation. In Structural Functions of Harmony in 1948, Schoenberg analyzed Brahms's enriched harmony and exploration of remote tonal regions, and Tommasini writes that at his best, the symphonies, the piano concertos, the violin concerto, the chamber works with piano, the solo piano pieces, especially the late intermezzos and capriccios that point the way to Schoenberg, Brahms has the thrilling grandeur and strangeness of Beethoven. Brahms's influence extended to composers of both conservative and modernist tendencies, and his music remains a staple of the concert repertoire, continuing to influence composers into the 21st century.