Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833.

Life

His father was a musician and double-bass player. His son Johannes had an older sister, Elise, and a younger brother, Friedrich. He had a gift for music and taught himself violin, cello and french horn. His piano tutor from age seven was Otto Cossel and he studied composition and piano under Eduard Marxsen from age 13, dedicating his second piano concerto to Marxsen, his "dear friend and teacher" in 1882.

He settled in Vienna.

Symphonies

His symphonies were, in a way, 'summer symphonies' since he wrote most or parts of them during his summer trips on Rügen 1876 (1st symphony), 1877 at the Wörthersee (2nd symphony), in Wiesbaden in 1883 (3rd symphony), and 1884 and 1885 in Mürzzuschlag (4th symphony).

Brahms was the architect among symphony composers. He strictly adhered to some formal conventions while modifying some others, so that, properly understood, the constructive element is more typical of his symphonies than the melodious element. This is perhaps the main reason why his symphonies seem to be very 'German' works: quite the reverse of being easily accessible, they are very serious, grave, mostly gloomy, and metaphysically weighty.

It is sometimes said that the middle movements of all of his symphonies are somewhat not equal to the first and last movements: this is true as far as the chamber music-like character and the lessened dynamics is concerned. Brahms obviously liked to give such a stark contrast between the movements by which the expression of each of them could be very much intensified. Though the Brahms specialist Siegfried Kross called him the "unromantic romantic" it seems more appropriate to call him 'the classical romantic.'

Third Symphony

Brahms admitted that he was "shy" about his works. This is especially true of his third symphony of which we know almost nothing of its origins. The only extant information concerns the completion of the work in 1883 during a summer trip to the spa town of Wiesbaden.

The third symphony is in some ways very unique in the symphony literature, at least compared to those written before. Especially remarkable are the third movement, usually a scherzo, with its beautiful, but very sad melody and, even more so, the quiet, un-triumphal endings of all four movements. The main theme of the third movement resembles "a slow melancholic waltz, a valse triste, whose grievous tone in some passages reminds the listener of Tchaikovsky." It is also the third movement which exemplifies the Brahmsian changing of instrumentation, the seizing of the main theme by different groups of instruments. Though the first and fourth movements are the conflict-ridden ones, all of the movements end in a dreamy, resignative tone.

The symphony seems to suggest that life cannot resolve the conflicts, or only by the passing of time. The work as a whole strongly bears the mark of 'being finished', it is a Abschiedssymphonie, a 'farewell-symphony': probably Brahms did not know himself that he would write another - and final - symphony. What Brahms once humorously said about his second symphony is absolutely true of his third: that it could be published with a mourning border.

Fourth Symphony

To his old friend, Clara Schumannn, Brahms wrote that he had "labored long and hard" at the fourth symphony.<Brahms to C. Schumann, Meiningen, at the end of October 1885.>

Bibliography

Since Brahms was a German composer it seems appropriate to give also a short selection of some of the more important books about him in German.

• Literature in English
  • Frisch, Walter. Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
  • Frisch, Walter, ed. Brahms and His World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.
  • Frisch, Walter. Brahms: The Four Symphonies. New York, N.Y.: Schirmer Books, 1996.
  • Musgrave, Michael. The Music of Brahms. London: Routledge, 1985.
  • Musgrave, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Brahms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  • Musgrave, Michael, ed. A Brahms Reader. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.
  • Musgrave, Michael, and Bernard D. Sherman, eds. Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  • Swafford, Jan. Johannes Brahms: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

• Literature in German

Floros, Constantin. Schmidt, Gärtner, Heinz. Johannes Brahms: „Trüge ich nicht den Namen Kreisler“; Biografie eines Doppellebens. München: Langen Müller, 2003.

• Online links
  • List of all his compositions according to opus numbers [1].
  • American Brahms Society [2]
  • Johannes Brahms Gesellschaft und Museum Hamburg [3]
  • Brahms Museum Mürzzuschlag / Östterreichische Brahmsgesellschaft [4]
  • Brahms Gesellschaft Wiesbaden [5]