The works of Johannes Brahms are among the
most consistent of any composer. His style matured early and
then changed little, and his meticulous, self-critical
approach never allowed publication of any work less than
excellent.
Born in Hamburg, he learned the piano from
the age of six, first with his father (a double-bass player),
then with Otto Cossel and Eduard Marxsen, who also taught him
composition and gave an all-round musical training. In his
teens Brahms began to compose and performed regularly, earning
money (at the cost of his innocence) in a sailors' bar.
In 1853 he was invited to tour with the
violinist Eduard Remenyi. In Hanover he was introduced to the
violin virtuoso Joseph loachmi. who was to become a
significant figure in Brahms's life. Joachim arranged for him
to meet Liszt in Weimar, where Brahms embarrassed himself by
falling asleep during the great pianist's performance of his
Piano sonata in В minor. Brahms quickly won a deserved
reputation for the frank, even rude manner in which he
expressed his opinions. He was never very taken with the "New
German School ' and later supported the critic Eduard Hanslick
in his campaign against Liszt, Wagner, and Bruckner.
On a visit to Robert and Clara Schumann in
Dusseldort, he met with great enthusiasm for his piano music.
Shortly afterwards, Schumann broke a ten-year critical silence
to announce in the New Musical
Journal in 1853 that Germany's
musical '"Messiah" had arrived: at the age of 20, Brahms
became instantly famous. After Schumann's suicide attempt in
1854 and committal to an asylum, Brahms stayed with Clara
Schumann. Although he was in love with her, they did not marry
after Schumann's death two years later, but became lifelong
friends.
During the next few years Brahms often
stayed with Joachim, who encouraged his composing; he also
travelled frequently
with Clara. He had a number of
love affairs, but never married.
He was employed as a choral conductor in
Hamburg and Vienna, and settled in the Austrian capital m
1869. the year after the triumphant premiere at Bremen of his
famous choral work Hill Deutsches Requiem. Vienna
remained his home for the rest of his life. Early tame had
meant early publication; the proceeds spared him from taking
court appointments or undertaking too many hectic concert
tours.
The great things that had been forecast for
him by Schumann were turning into something of a burden,
however, and Brahms deliberated for many years over his first
orchestral works. He began work on a symphony as early as
1854. Like many other composers, Brahms was awed by the
symphonic masterpieces of Beethoven and uncertain about
producing examples of his own. After five years it emerged in
a revised form as the First piano concerto. Eventually
he completed his First symphony in 1876, 14 years after
it was begun. With its broad, abstract Classical form, its
emotional progression from tragedy to triumph, and the
nobility of its hymn-like finale theme, it was quickly dubbed
"Beethoven's Tenth.''
Brahms had by now mastered orchestral
writing: the Violin concerto and Second piano
concerto in addition to three more outstanding symphonies
followed within nine years. Brahms's last orchestral work, the
Double concerto of 1887 for violin and cello,
was written for Joseph
Joachim and marked a reconciliation with him following a
seven-year rift, after Brahms had taken the side of Joachim's
wife Amalie in their divorce proceedings.
From 1880 Brahms often visited the resort of
Bad Ischl, accompanied on two ocassions by Johann Strauss II,
whose Blue Danube waltz he declared he wished he had
composed. He also had a long association with the Meiningen
Court Orchestra, who toured with many of his works. In 1891
their clarinettist Richard Muhlfeld so impressed Brahms that
he wrote four works for the instrument. One of these was the
Clarinet quintet (for clarinet and string quartet),
which ranks among his finest works.
Brahms created Classical musical structures
in a Romantic age. His writing is notable for its rich
textures resulting from a dense fabric of interwoven melodies.
It gives his music an emotional depth quite different from the
passionate intensity of Tchaikovsky, for example; in the
Clarinet quintet he beautifully conveys a sense of
autumnal melancholy.
Clara Schumann died in 1896 and Brahms
undertook a 40-hour journey to attend her funeral, which
caused his own health, by now precarious, to worsen
dramatically. After a short stay at the spa at Karlsbad he
struggled back to Vienna to attend Bruckner's funeral, and the
following year Brahms himself died, succumbing to cancer of
the liver.
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