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Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) Background Johannes Brahms was born on 7th May 1833 in Hamburg. His father played the horn and double-bass, while his mother was a seamstress 17 years his father's senior. His father played in the militia band and court orchestra, earning barely enough to support his family. Johannes was intended to learn his father's trade, and was taught violin, cello, and piano. The young Brahms's pianistic abilities shone through, and from the age of 13, he earned money for his family by playing the piano in restaurants, taverns, and brothels. It is speculated that Brahms's early experiences in Hamburg's houses of ill repute were responsible for his disastrous love life. Brahms originally learned piano with F.W. Cossel, later transferring to Eduard Marxen, who gave him crucial early lessons in music theory. Despite his considerable virtuosity as a pianist, Brahms decided early on to concentrate on composition. |
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Friendship with Joachim In 1853, the 20-year-old Brahms embarked on a concert tour with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi. He visited Liszt in Weimar, where both parties were mutually unimpressed, and became friends with the great violinist Joseph Joachim. Joachim introduced Brahms to the Robert and Clara Schumann in Dusseldorf. This meeting was a crucial turning point in Brahms's career. He performed several of his piano works for Schumann, including the early piano sonatas, which Schumann described as 'veiled symphonies', and the E flat minor Scherzo. He described Brahms as the long-awaited successor to Beethoven, and in his influential music journal Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik hailed him as a genius 'called forth to give us the highest expression of ideals in our time'. Schumann urged Brahms to write a symphony, and to take up the challenge presented to German composers by Beethoven's Ninth. Brahms experimented with symphonic ideas in a two-piano sonata, but felt that the task of a complete symphony was beyond him for the time being, and eventually these early sketches resulted in the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, op 15. Brahms and Clara When Schumann had a nervous breakdown in 1853, Brahms returned to Dusseldorf to assist Clara Schumann and her family. Brahms developed a friendship with Clara that lasted until her death in 1896. Brahms described it as 'the most beautiful experience of my life, its greatest wealth, its noblest content'. Brahms held deep romantic affections for Clara, which were probably never consummated. In 1857, he became conductor of a choral society in Detmold, a post he held for three years. He was also pianist-in-residence to a local prince, giving piano lessons to Princess Friedericke. During his appointment, he completed two serenades, a string sextet, and the D minor Piano Concerto, amongst other works. Success in Vienna In 1862 he visited Vienna, giving concerts and meeting the important music critic Eduard Hanslick, who pitted Brahms's conservatism against the radical Wagner-Liszt-Bruckner school. In 1863 Brahms became director of the Vienna Singakademie for one year, and in 1872-75 directed the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. From then on his life was fairly uneventful, except for the composition of major works, and concert tours as a pianist. Brahms did not write a symphony until he felt himself fully prepared for the task. The Symphony No 1 in C minor, which he had been sketching for 15 years, was completed in 1876, No 2 in D major in 1877, No 3 in F major in 1883, and No 4 in E minor in 1885. Conservative or radical? Brahms occupies a peculiar position in the history of German romantic music. He was one of the first early music scholars, not only studying the masterpieces of Bach and Handel, but resurrecting the works of Rennaissance and early Baroque composers such as Gabrieli, Palestrina, and Schutz. He is regarded as the arch-conservative, the polar opposite of Wagner and Liszt's new ideals of music-drama and symphonic poems. He inherited the great Austro-Germanic symphonic tradition established by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, while extending it with the language of Romanticism. However, recent reappraisals of his work by composers such as Schoenberg and Webern have recognized him as a progressive, pioneering the new contrapuntal style that was to find its peak in the 12-tone works of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. But it is the essential accessibility of Brahms's music that has firmly placed him in the canon of great composers. He was a true man of the people, utilising popular folk melodies and gypsy tunes. His music is about love, suffused with a melancholy romanticism that is totally unique. Back to top of page |
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