Composer of the Month
Hailed as the heir to Beethoven, Brahms grew into one of the 19th century’s truly great symphonists, explains
Natasha Loges on Brahms, Germany’s great Romantic
Has anyone ever been so utterly defined by their facial hair? There is no doubt that Brahms’s image was transformed by the bushy beard that sprouted in his mid-forties. Thereafter, he was regarded as serious and, by association, misanthropic and lonely – in short, a second Beethoven. Certainly, he could be brusque and occasionally unkind, but he was never unsociable. He gathered friends and admirers across Europe, with whom he enjoyed convivial evenings of eating, drinking and informal music-making, a counterpoint to his substantial public life.
Unlike Beethoven, Brahms was not born into a family of court musicians; nor was he the child of a schoolteacher with access to an outstanding general and musical education, like Schubert; nor the slightly spoiled son of a financially comfortable bookseller, like Schumann. Brahms’s parents were lower middle-class, his father a double bassist and horn player, his mother a seamstress. For years, his childhood was dogged by the myth that his parents exploited him financially by making him play the piano in the brothels of Hamburg, thereby scarring him for life. But this is not borne out by the evidence of his father’s growing income and his mother’s devoutness.
Brahms’s life was transformed when he met Robert and Clara Schumann in October 1853. Schumann wrote an article, New Paths, that declared the 20 year-old a genius. Access to prestigious publishers followed, which also meant that each new work was tested by the music establishment against Schumann’s hyperbolic prophecy.
Around Brahms, German music was splitting into two camps: one around Liszt and Wagner, the other associated with the Classical values of Mendelssohn and Schumann. Vitriolic battles were fought in the press, and no composer could remain on the sidelines. In those years he published many songs, as well as three symphony-sized piano sonatas. The Piano Sonata No. 1 Op. 1 deliberately recalls Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata Op. 106, making Brahms’s musical allegiances explicit.
Schumann wrote an article, New Paths, that declared the 20-year-old Brahms a genius
It was also a time of unimaginable personal turmoil. Schumann first attempted suicide in 1854 and died in an asylum two years later, leaving his 36-yearold wife and seven surviving children. Brahms stepped into the breach, falling deeply in love with Clara Schumann. This settled into a lifelong friendship, despite occasional bitter arguments. The earliest sketches of Brahms’s First Symphony also date from the mid-1850s, although the work would not emerge for 20 years.
Recognising his inexperience, Brahms withdrew and voraciously studied still largely unknown repertoires of early music, choral music, folk music, the Viennese classics, contemporary and classical literature, philosophy and more. He amassed invaluable practical experience, conducting the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir, navigating the emerging
German rail network, arranging concerts and fixing publication fees, and – importantly – establishing the independent working routine which shaped his days.
The 1860s remained turbulent and unsettled, with an eventually permanent move to Vienna (he never lost his affection for the North German landscape). He earned his keep by composing and performing. Initially a formidable pianist, he later neglected his practice, but his playing always retained a profoundly moving expressivity. Given the tremendous difficulties of his piano concertos, solo and chamber works, his skill can easily be imagined. One recording survives which is thought to be his but, sadly, tells us little. Memoirs suggest that his playing was like Bernstein’s or Britten’s – architectural and orchestrally conceived.
The music of the 1860s includes some of his most ambitious chamber music, including the Piano Quintet Op. 34 and the Horn Trio Op. 40. But it was the landmark German Requiem Op. 45 which finally fulfilled Schumann’s promise. Brahms also cannily published several works which became enormously popular: his Hungarian Dances WOO1, which were rapidly arranged for every conceivable ensemble; his Waltzes Op. 39, inspired by his adored Schubert; and his Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52. These brought his music into every middle-class household.
Perhaps most significant, however, was the completion of the First Symphony
Op. 68 in 1876. In the decades after Beethoven’s death in 1827, the symphony had become the ultimate test of a composer’s ability to handle large-scale form, generate rich thematic material, and handle orchestral texture. Beethoven’s symphonies had steadily grown in popularity and were increasingly regarded as models – firstly to be understood and, then, surpassed. As the discipline of musicology emerged, in tandem with a new sense of national consciousness expressed in language and culture, and the construction of new concert halls and orchestras suitable for large-scale works, Beethoven was increasingly regarded as the supreme figure in instrumental music. This intensely masculine world denied performance opportunities to female composers, such as the gifted symphonist Emilie Mayer.
The success of Brahms’s symphony unleashed a new confidence, leading to the completion of three more over the next 11 years. Comparison with Beethoven was inevitable, as revealed by the conductor Hans von Bülow’s famous dubbing of Brahms First as Beethoven’s ‘Tenth’ – an observation that was, in Brahms’s view, painfully obvious. The symphony presented a Beethovenian tragic-heroic musical narrative, resolved gloriously in the folk melody of the final movement – a powerful symbol of shared humanity.
By the time of the First Symphony, Brahms was financially independent, not least thanks to good advice from friends like Clara Schumann and the excellent management of his patient publisher Fritz Simrock. (Brahms’s demands of Simrock ranged from financial management to the posting of tinned fish, all of which were uncomplainingly discharged.) Brahms therefore remained free of institutional commitments, unlike most of his peers.
Alongside his busy working schedule, Brahms was also an enthusiastic and knowledgeable editor of other composers’ music. Although we might criticise the philological methods used as haphazard, this was undeniably the golden age of collected editions. He contributed to the complete editions of the music of Mozart, Chopin and Schubert, and also edited works by Couperin, CPE Bach and of course his great mentor Robert Schumann.
As Brahms’s friends recalled, the composer eventually declared that he would have ‘no opera and no wife’.
The search for a suitable libretto had preoccupied him for decades. He considered numerous plots, hoping for one set in Italy by his friend the writer and translator Paul Heyse. More unexpectedly, letters also reveal that he considered one about the medieval pirate Klaus Störtebeker. The decision to remain unmarried ref lected his long-held desire to stay unencumbered. Earlier, he had worried about the financial responsibility; now, in the 1870s and ’80s, he could no longer sacrifice his independence. He was comfortably settled in a spartan but spacious apartment in Vienna near the Musikverein, with his faithful housekeeper Celestina Truxa to look after him.
The city had been transformed by the creation of the Ringstrasse, the imposing boulevard circling the historic centre. It cemented Vienna as a place of unsurpassable beauty and
civilisation (Brahms never visited Paris), a fitting home for all he loved. And while winter concert seasons were packed, Brahms could reserve long summers for composition. Those precious ‘working holidays’ took place in gorgeous resorts in south Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He rose early, brewed strong coffee, worked all morning, walked all afternoon and socialised all evening. He also eventually visited his beloved Italy eight times.
And he was not lonely; numerous unpublished postcards in Viennese libraries testify to a music-filled social life centred around the cultivated uppermiddle-class families of Vienna. His friend Maria Fellinger created many affectionate photographic portraits of him.
In 1890, the playing of clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld caused Brahms to reverse a decision to retire from composition. Mühlfeld’s sweet, singing tone inspired some of Brahms’s most glorious chamber music. This was followed by the piano miniatures Opp. 116119, his tenderest, most personal works.
By the time of his death from cancer at 64, Brahms had attained legendary status. His rigorous approach to form inspired generations of composers, led by Schoenberg. Meanwhile the burgeoning record industry established a powerful performance tradition around his music. Generally speaking, performances (especially of the instrumental music) became increasingly ponderous and heavy, bringing gravitas and profundity but sacrificing clarity and momentum. Newer recordings with a more energetic, lighter approach recall Brahms’s stylistic debt to earlier composers, especially Beethoven. With their transparency of sound, they help us rediscover the singing, inner lines interwoven through his music. Over a century after his death, this sense of rediscovery remains as fresh as ever.
Brahms’s rigorous approach to form inspired generations of composers