The Cambridge Companion To Brahms

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The Cambridge Companion to Brahms

This companion gives a comprehensive view of the German


composer Johannes Brahms (1833–97). Twelve chapters by leading
scholars and musicians provide systematic coverage of the
composer’s life and works. Their essays represent the latest research
and reflect changing attitudes towards a composer whose public
image has long been out of date.
The first part of the book contains three chapters on Brahms’s
early life in Hamburg and on the middle and later years in Vienna.
The central section considers the musical works in all genres, while
the last part of the book offers personal accounts and responses from
a conductor (Roger Norrington), a composer (Hugh Wood) and an
editor of Brahms’s original manuscripts (Robert Pascall).
The volume as a whole is an important addition to Brahms
scholarship and provides indispensable information for all
enthusiasts and students of Brahms’s music.

Michael Musgrave is Emeritus Professor of Music at Goldsmiths


College, University of London. He is author of The Musical Life of
the Crystal Palace, The Music of Brahms, and Brahms: A German
Requiem in the series Cambridge Music Handbooks.

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The Cambridge Companion to

BRAHMS
edited by
Michael Musgrave

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press


The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521481298

© Cambridge University Press 1999

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception


and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1999

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data


The Cambridge Companion to Brahms / edited by Michael Musgrave.
p. cm. –
Includes work list, bibliographical references, and index.
ISBN 0 521 48129 5 (hardback) – ISBN 0 521 48581 9 (paperback)
1. Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897 – Criticism and interpretation.
I. Musgrave, Michael, 1942– .
ML410.B8C36 1998
780´.92–dc21 98–3057 CIP
[B]

ISBN-13 978-0-521-48129-8 hardback


ISBN-10 0-521-48129-5 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-48581-4 paperback


ISBN-10 0-521-48581-9 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2006

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Contents

List of illustrations [page viii]


Acknowledgements [viii]
Notes on contributors [ix]
Chronology [xii]
Preface [xix]

Part I · Stages of creative development and reception


1 Brahms the Hamburg musician 1833–1862 Kurt Hofmann [3]
2 Years of transition: Brahms and Vienna 1862–1875 Michael Musgrave [31]
3 Brahms and his audience: the later Viennese years 1875–1897
Leon Botstein [51]

Part II · The music: genre, structure and reference


4 Opposition and integration in the piano music John Rink [79]
5 Medium and meaning: new aspects of the chamber music David Brodbeck [98]
6 Formal perspectives on the symphonies Kofi Agawu [133]
7 ‘Veiled symphonies’? The concertos Malcolm MacDonald [156]
8 The scope and significance of the choral music Daniel Beller-McKenna [171]
9 Words for music: the songs for solo voice and piano Michael Musgrave [195]

Part III · Brahms today: some personal responses


10 Conducting Brahms Roger Norrington with Michael Musgrave [231]
11 The editor’s Brahms Robert Pascall [250]
12 A photograph of Brahms Hugh Wood [268]

Notes [288]
List of works [307]
Bibliography [312]
Index [318]

[vii]

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Illustrations

11.1 Concert programme for the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of Herr and
Frau Schröder, 5 July 1851, showing the names of Brahms and Karl Würth
(Brahms-Institut, Lübeck) [19]
11.2 The programme at the Thalia-Theater, 9 September 1851, in which Brahms
participated as accompanist (Brahms-Institut, Lübeck) [20]
11.1 Autograph: from the finale of the First Symphony, bars 27–31 (Pierpont Morgan
Library, New York, Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection) [260]
11.2 a and b Copyist’s manuscript: from the finale of the First Symphony, bars 26–37
(Brahms-Institut Lübeck) [261]
11.3 First edition (Handexemplar): from the finale of the First Symphony, bars 28–34
(Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna) [262]
12.1 Brahms and Alice Barbi on the Ringstrasse (Negative from the Bildarchiv,
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna) [269]
12.2 Brahms reading in the library of Viktor Miller zu Aichholz (Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde, Vienna) [279]

Acknowledgements

Music examples are reproduced by kind permission of the copyright owners. Ex.
8.1: Ludwig Doblinger (B. Herzmansky) KG, Vienna (c. 1984); Ex. 9.10b, G.
Schirmer Inc., New York; Exx. 8.4b, 8.6a, 8.7a, 8.7b, Peters Edition Limited, London
(Peters Editions Nos. 3672, 2082). All other examples in score are taken from the
Johannes Brahms Sämtliche Werke, 1926–8, published by Breitkopf & Härtel,
Wiesbaden. All newly engraved examples are by Brian Fairtile, New York City.
Illustrations and plates are by courtesy of and with thanks to the following
institutions: Plate 1.1 and 1.2, Brahms Institut, Lübeck; Plate 11.1, Pierpont
Morgan Library, New York; Plate 11.2, Brahms Institut, Lübeck; Plate 11.3,
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna; Plate 12.1, Bildarchiv, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; Plate 12.2, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. The
jacket image is by courtesy of the Portrait Gallery of the Royal College of Music,
London, with thanks.

Particular thanks are expressed to Morna Flaum for assistance with typing and to
Daniel Grieco for assistance with translations; to Edward Roesner and Virginia
Hancock; and to Lucy Carolan for her most painstaking and helpful editing of the
text. Finally, I am indebted to my contributors for their patience during the
preparation of this book, and I thank Roger Norrington especially for his kind
hospitality during the preparation of his chapter.
Michael Musgrave
[viii]

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Contributors

Kurt Hofmann has assembled since the 1950s the largest private collection of
Brahms material, which has formed the main part of the Brahms-Institut at
Lübeck, of which he is Director with Renate Hofmann. His research has
resulted in publications, many of them standard works of reference, including
the editing of the reminiscences of Richard Heuberger and Richard Barth, a
study of the first editions (Die Erstdrucke der Werke von Johannes Brahms,
Tutzing, 1975), a detailed calendar of Brahms’s life (Johannes Brahms: Zeittafel
zu Leben und Werk, with Renate Hofmann, Tutzing, 1983), a revised listing of
Brahms’s library (Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms, Hamburg, 1974), and
studies of Brahms’s connections with Hamburg and Baden Baden. Professor
Hofmann is an editor of the Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel: Neue Folge, which
has continued the original, sixteen-volume, series of Briefwechsel.
Leon Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly, conductor of the American
Symphony Orchestra and President of Bard College, New York, where he has
pioneered annual festivals devoted to individual composers, including, in 1990,
Brahms. His Brahms writings include articles on concert life, science and
music in Brahms’s Vienna, and on Brahms and nineteenth-century painting.
He is editor of and contributor to The Compleat Brahms, forthcoming from
Schirmer in 1999. As a conductor he has performed little-known nineteenth-
and twentieth-century orchestral and choral works. His recordings include
performances of works by Joachim and Schubert, in orchestrations by
Joachim, Mottl and Webern, and Brahms’s Serenade in D, in both its published
version and a reconstructed version as a nonet.
John Rink is Reader in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. His fields
of specialism are performance studies, theory and analysis, and nineteenth-
century studies. He is the author of Chopin: The Piano Concertos (1997), joint
editor, with Jim Samson, of Chopin Studies 2 (1994) and editor of The Practice
of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation (1995), all published by
Cambridge University Press. Dr Rink is Project Director and one of three series
editors of The Complete Chopin – A New Critical Edition (Peters Edition).
David Brodbeck is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at
the University of Pittsburgh. He is former President of the American Brahms
Society and edits the series of Brahms Studies published by the University of
Nebraska Press. He has contributed essays to Brahms Studies: Analytical and
Historical Studies (Oxford University Press, 1990), Mendelssohn Studies
(Cambridge University Press, 1992), Brahms and His World and Mendelssohn
and His World (both Princeton University Press) and Schubert: Critical and
Analytical Studies (University of Nebraska Press), as well as to the periodicals
19th-Century Music and Journal of Musicology. He is author of Brahms:
Symphony No. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
[ix]

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x Notes on contributors

Kofi Agawu is Professor of Music at Princeton University, having previously taught


at King’s College London, Cornell University and Yale University. He is the
author of Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classical Music
(Princeton University Press, 1991) and of many analytical articles, including
‘Theory and Practice in the Analysis of the Nineteenth-Century German Lied’
in the journal Music Analysis, 1992. His study African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe
Perspective was published by Cambridge University Press in 1995.
Malcolm MacDonald is the editor of Tempo, the quarterly magazine of modern
music. He lives in Gloucestershire as a freelance writer on music. As ‘Calum
MacDonald’ he has broadcast and contributed to many periodicals on a wide
range of subjects, especially twentieth-century music. His books include the
volume Schoenberg in the Master Musicians series, a three-volume study of the
music of the English composer Havergal Brian and a major study of the life
and works of Brahms in the expanded Master Musicians format in 1990. He is
currently completing a book on the music of Varèse.
Daniel Beller-McKenna earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1994 and has
taught at the University of South Carolina and the University of New
Hampshire, where he is Assistant Professor of Music History. His essays on
Brahms’s vocal and orchestral music have appeared in the Journal of
Musicology, 19th Century Music, The New York Times, and various anthologies
of Brahms studies. He is currently writing a book on the intersection of
religious music and nationalism in Brahms’s music. He is also preparing a
series of essays on John Lennon and the Beatles, the first of which will appear
in Music & Letters (1999). Beller-McKenna is Vice President of the American
Brahms Society and a member of the American Musicological Society Council.
Roger Norrington founded and conducted The Schütz Choir of London in 1962
and The London Classical Players in 1980. A leading pioneer in the
performance of music using original instruments and playing styles, he has
presented a number of extended weekend ‘Experiences’ on London’s South
Bank and abroad devoted to major composers; these have included, in 1992,
‘The Brahms Experience’, centring on a performance of A German Requiem.
His wide catalogue of recordings includes – in addition to the symphonies of
Brahms, the German Requiem and other choral and orchestral works – the
complete symphonies of Beethoven, symphonies by Schubert, Schumann and
Bruckner, overtures of the early romantic period, and operas of Mozart (The
Magic Flute and Don Giovanni). Sir Roger received his knighthood in 1997.
Robert Pascall is Professor of Music and Head of the Music Department at the
University of Wales, Bangor, and Professor Emeritus of the University of
Nottingham. He is president of the Society for Music Analysis, Chair of the
Editorial Board of the journal Music Analysis, Vice Chair of the new Johannes
Brahms Gesamtausgabe, and Corresponding Director of the American Brahms
Society. He has published on Brahms and his contemporaries, on nineteenth-
century music history and on Franz Schmidt; his edition of Brahms’s First
Symphony for the Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe inaugurated the edition in
1996, and he will edit all four symphonies.
Hugh Wood is a composer who has worked at Cambridge for twenty years as

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xi Notes on contributors

University Lecturer in Music and as Director of Studies in Music at Churchill


College, of which he is a Fellow. He studied composition with Iain Hamilton
and then with Mátyás Seiber. He has written much chamber music, including
four string quartets; a vocal-orchestral piece Scenes from Comus (with which he
made his Prom debut in 1965); concertos for cello, for violin and for piano, and
a chamber concerto; a chamber-orchestral song cycle to poems of Pablo
Neruda; a cantata; and a symphony. He has also written about fifty songs,
including four sets to poems by Robert Graves.
Michael Musgrave is Emeritus Professor of Music at Goldsmiths College,
University of London and lives and works in New York City. The focus of his
research is German and English music of the nineteenth century, on which he
has written and broadcast widely. His books include The Music of Brahms
(1985, rev. edn Oxford University Press, 1994), The Musical Life of the Crystal
Palace (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Brahms: A German Requiem
(Cambridge University Press, 1996). He is editor of the Brahms Serenades
Opp. 11 and 16 for the new Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe and a contributor
to the forthcoming edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians and the New Dictionary of National Biography. He is a member of
the Advisory Board of Music Analysis.

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Chronology

1833 Brahms born 7 May, in Hamburg, son of Mendelssohn: Italian Symphony;


Johann Jacob Brahms and Christiane Marschner: Hans Heiling. Borodin
Nissen. born.
1834 Liszt: Harmonies poétiques et religieuses;
Berlioz: Harold in Italy. First issue of
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik published in
Leipzig.
1835 Birth of younger brother Fritz, 26 March. Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor,
Naples; Schumann: Carnaval.
Mendelssohn appointed conductor of
the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Bellini dies, Saint-Saëns born.
1836 Glinka: A Life for the Tsar, St
Petersburg; Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots,
Paris.
1837 Berlioz: Grande messe des morts; Liszt:
24 grandes Etudes. Field and Hummel
die. Balakirev born.
1838 Family moves to 38 Ulricusstrasse. Schumann: Kinderszenen and
Kreisleriana. Bizet and Bruch born.
1839 Begins lessons with his father. Attends Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette Symphony.
the Privatschule of Heinrich Voss, Musorgsky born.
Dammthorwall.
1840 Begins piano lessons with Otto Cossel. Schumann marries Clara Wieck and
composes over a hundred songs.
Paganini dies.
1841 The family moves to Dammthorwall 29. Schumann’s symphonic year. Chabrier
and Dvořák born.
1842 A great fire destroys much of Hamburg Wagner: Rienzi, Dresden; Verdi:
(8 May) Attends Bürgerschule. Nabucco, Milan; Glinka: Ruslan and
Ludmilla, St Petersburg. Schumann:
Piano Quintet and other chamber
works. Mendelssohn: Scottish
Symphony. Boito, Massenet, Sullivan
born; Cherubini dies.
1843 First appearance as pianist. Offer of an Wagner: Flying Dutchman, Dresden;
American tour. Berlioz: Treatise on Orchestration.
Opening of the Leipzig Conservatoire.
Grieg, Heinrich von Herzogenberg
born.
1844 Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto;
Nietzsche, Rimsky-Korsakov born.
[xii] Liszt at Weimar.

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xiii Chronology

1845 Now entirely Marxsen’s pupil. Wagner: Tannhäuser; Schumann: Piano


Concerto. Fauré born.
1846 Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust, Paris;
Schumann: Second Symphony in C.
Mendelssohn: Elijah, Birmingham.
Ignaz Brüll born.
1847 Summer at Winsen, near Hamburg. Mendelssohn dies.
1848 Hears Joachim play the Beethoven Violin Donizetti dies. Duparc, Parry born.
Concerto in Hamburg.
1849 Second solo concert. Berlioz: Te Deum; Meyerbeer: Le
Prophète. Chopin, Kalkbrenner, Nicolai,
Johann Strauss I die.
1850 Fails to meet the Schumanns when Schumann: Rhenish Symphony; Liszt’s
they visit Hamburg. Composes songs first symphonic poem.
and first chamber music. Fibich, Henschel born.
1851 Scherzo in E  minor, which he plays to Verdi: Rigoletto; Liszt begins issuing
Henry Litolff. Hungarian Rhapsodies. Lortzing,
Spontini die. D’Indy born.
First volume of the Leipzig Bach
Gesellschaft Edition published.
1852 Sonata in F  minor [later Op. 2] and
more songs.
1853 Sonata in C major [later op 1]. Concert Liszt: Piano Sonata, Festklänge;
tour with Reményi: meets Joachim in Schumann: Violin Concerto.
Hannover, Liszt and his circle at Weimar;
Rhineland walking tour; meets Hiller
and Reinecke at Cologne and the
Schumanns at Düsseldorf. Schumann
hails Brahms in the Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik. Meets Berlioz, David, Moscheles
in Leipzig. Opp. 1, 2, 6 published. First
public performance in Leipzig (Op. 1,
Op. 4).
1854 Meets Bülow in Leipzig. Opp. 2, 4, 5 Liszt: Faust Symphony, Orpheus;
published.Travels to Düsseldorf to be Wagner: Das Rheingold;
with Clara after Schumann’s attempted Berlioz: L’Enfance du Christ, 1850–4;
suicide. Works on a two-piano sonata in Humperdinck, Janáček born.
D minor, later orchestrated as a
‘symphony’.
1855 Lives in Düsseldorf. Concert tours with Chausson, Liadov, Röntgen born.
Clara and Joachim. Trio Op. 8 given in
Danzig.
1856 Works on a Mass in canonic form; Liszt: Dante Symphony; Wagner: Die
Sonata/Symphony in D minor converted Walküre. Schumann dies; Martucci,
into the D minor Piano Concerto Sinding, Taneiev born.
(Op. 15); first version of the Piano
Quartet in C minor (Op. 60) in C  minor.
Counterpoint exchange with Joachim.

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xiv Chronology

Lives in Hamburg until spring. Lives in


Bonn to be near dying Schumann. Visits
Detmold in Autumn. Subscribes to the
Bach Gesellschaft edition. First Brahms
performance in England (Clara plays
‘Sarabande and Gavotte’ at Hanover
Square Rooms).
1857 Composition and teaching in Hamburg. Czerny and Glinka die; Elgar,
Second visit to Detmold. Appointed to Leoncavallo born.
conduct and teach piano at the Detmold
court, position obtained though Clara
Schumann.
1858 Works at Hamburg on Piano Concerto. Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder; Joachim:
Serenade (Op. 11) begun as octet or nonet. Concerto in the Hungarian Manner;
Folk-song arrangements. Ave Maria Op. Berlioz: Les Troyens. Chrysander
12 and Begräbnisgesang Op. 13 composed. founds the Handel Gesellschaft
Becomes greatly attached to Agathe von Edition. Reubke dies; Puccini, Hans
Siebold. Second autumn at Detmold. Rott, Ethel Smyth born.
1859 Secret engagement to Agathe von Siebold Wagner: Tristan und Isolde;
broken off. Piano Concerto Op. 15 Verdi: Un Ballo in Maschera.
premiered in Hannover; Serenade Op. 11, Spohr dies, Forster born.
‘for small orchestra’, premiered in
Hamburg. Founds the Hamburg
Frauenchor.
1860 Leaves Detmold for Hamburg. Serenade Albeniz, Charpentier, Mahler,
No. 2 in A premiered in Hamburg Paderewski, Rezniček born.
(Brahms); Serenade No. 1 in D ‘for full
orchestra’ premiered in Hannover
(Joachim). String Sextet Op. 18 premiered
in Hannover. The ‘Manifesto’ against the
New Germans published prematurely by
the Berlin Echo.
1861 Mainly in Hamburg and in the summer at Marschner dies; Arensky, Chaminade,
Hamm, on the outskirts. First performance McDowell born.
of the Handel Variations Op. 24 and the
Piano Quartet in G minor Op. 25
1862 Spring in Hamburg. Works on the Verdi: La Forza del Destino: Otto von
Magelonelieder, String Quintet in F minor Bismarck made minister-president of
and C minor Symphony begun. Travels to Prussia; Halévy dies; Debussy, Delius
Vienna (8 September) and remains till born.
spring, meeting many musicians.
Successful performances, including the
first performance of Op. 26. Julius
Stockhausen appointed to conduct
Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
1863 Spring/summer in Hamburg. Appointed Mascagni, Pierné born.
conductor of the Wiener Singakademie for
1863–4. Travels to Vienna in August,
remains until Spring. First performance of
the Paganini Variations and Horn Trio.

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xv Chronology

1864 Summer in Lichtental with Clara Offenbach: La Belle Hélène. Meyerbeer


Schumann. Meets her circle. Returns to dies; Richard Strauss born.
Vienna for the winter.
1865 Death of his mother in Hamburg. Liszt: Missa Choralis.
Summer in Lichtenthal, concert tours Dukas, Magnard, Glazunov,
during the autumn and winter. Nielsen, Sibelius born.
1866 Continuing tour includes Oldenburg and Liszt: Christus; Smetana: The Bartered
Switzerland, with Joachim; completes Bride; Bruckner: Symphony 1 and Mass
Ein deutsches Requiem at Karlsruhe, in E minor. Busoni, Satie born.
Winterthur, Zurich and Lichtenthal.
Returns to Vienna in November.
1867 Concert tours of Austrian provinces in Verdi: Don Carlos; Wagner: Die
spring and autumn; summer walking tour Meistersinger. Marx: Das Kapital.
with his father and Josef Gänsbacher; Sechter dies; Granados, Koechlin born.
returns to Vienna in November. Partial
performance of Ein deutsches Requiem in
Vienna (mvts 1–3).
1868 Tours of Germany and Denmark with Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1.
Stockhausen; first important Brahms Berwald, Rossini die.
performance in France (Op. 34 in
Paris); first performance of Ein
deutsches Requiem in Bremen; June/July
in Bonn; concerts in the Autumn with
Clara and Stockhausen.
1869 First performace of Rinaldo Op. 50 in Joachim becomes first Director of
Vienna; final version of the Requiem the Berlin Hochschule für Musik.
in Leipzig; concerts in Vienna and Berlioz, Dargomizhsky, Loewe die;
Budapest with Stockhausen; summer Pfitzner, Roussel born.
in Lichtental. From now based on Vienna.
1870 First performance of Alto Rhapsody; Franco-Prussian War. Mercadante dies;
attends Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in Léhar, Novak born.
Munich.
1871 First performance of first part of the Verdi: Aida. Establishment of German
Triumphlied; summer at Lichtenthal; Empire under Wilhelm 1. Auber,
first performance of the Schicksalslied; in Thalberg die. Zemlinsky born.
December moves to Karlsgasse 4, thereafter
his permanent home.
1872 Death of his father in Hamburg. First Bizet: L’Arlésienne. Skriabin, Vaughan
performance of the complete Triumphlied Williams born.
in Karlsruhe; summer in Lichtenthal;
becomes artistic director of the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.
1873 Summer in Tutzing. Attends Schumann Bruckner: Symphony No. 3; Dvořák:
Festival under Joachim at Bonn in August. Symphony 3. Rachmaninov, Reger
born.
1874 Summer near Zurich. Meets J. V. Bruckner: Symphony No. 4;
Widmann. Awarded Order of Maximilian Musorgsky: Boris Godunov; Smetana:
by King Ludwig of Bavaria. Visits Leipzig Vltava; Verdi: Requiem. Franz

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xvi Chronology

and Munich, meets the Herzogenbergs Schmidt born. Cornelius dies; Holst,
and Philipp Spitta. Ives, Franz Schmidt, Schoenberg, Suk
born.
1875 Resigns from the Gesellschaft. Works Bizet: Carmen; Goldmark, Die Königin
to complete the First Symphony at von Saba; Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto
Heidelberg and near Zurich. Becomes a No. 1. Sterndale Bennett, Bizet die;
member of the music committee for the Hahn, Ravel, Tovey born.
award of grants from the Austrian
Government. Approves an award to
Dvořák, whose music he is now coming
to know and admire.
1876 Visits to Holland, Mannheim, Coblenz; Bruckner: Symphony No. 5;
summer at Sassnitz, Isle of Rügen where Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake; first complete
completes First Symphony. First Ring cycle at Bayreuth; Goetz dies;
performance of First Symphony at Falla, Wolf-Ferrari, Ruggles born.
Karlsruhe (Dessoff). The beginning of his
estrangement from Hermann Levi.
1877 Summer in Pörtschach and Lichtenthal. Saint-Saëns: Samson et Dalila; Dvořák:
First performance of Second Symphony Symphonic Variations. Dohnányi,
in Vienna (Richter). Karg Elert born.
1878 First Italian holiday in April with Billroth. Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto,
Brahms finds a new supporter in Hans von Symphony No. 4; Dvořák: Slavonic
Bülow. Dances. Schreker born.
1879 Awarded an honorary doctorate by Breslau Bruckner: String Quintet; Franck:
University. Summer in Pörtschach. Piano Quintet. Jensen dies; Bridge,
Concert tour of Hungary, Transylvania Ireland, Respighi born.
and Poland with Joachim. First
performance of the Violin Concerto
(Joachim).
1880 Attends the unveiling of the Schumann Mahler: Das klagende Lied; Dvořák:
Monument in Bonn; concert tour of the Symphony No. 6. Bloch, Medtner born;
Rhine. First summer residence at Ischl, Offenbach dies.
where he meets Johann Strauss II. Serious
rift with Joachim over his suit for divorce
from his wife Amalie.
1881 Tours in Holland and Hungary where he Bruckner: Symphony No. 6. Bartók,
meets Liszt again through Bülow. Spring Enescu, Miaskovsky born; Musorgsky
holiday in Italy with Billroth and dies.
Nottebohm. Summer in Pressbaum near
Vienna. Rehearses the Second Piano
Concerto at Meiningen.
1882 Tours Germany and Holland with the Wagner: Parsifal. Kodaly, Malipiero,
Second Piano Concerto. Summer in Ischl. Grainger, Stravinsky, Szymanowski
Late summer in Italy with Billroth, Brüll, born; Raff dies.
Simrock. Graz in November with the
dying Gustav Nottebohm.
1883 Summer in Wiesbaden, where he forms Dvořák: Scherzo Capriccioso, Casella,
a close attachment to Hermine Spies. Hauer, Varèse, Webern born; Wagner
dies.

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xvii Chronology

1884 Spring in Italy, summer in Mürzzuschlag. Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen;
Winter tour as pianist and accompanist Debussy: L’Enfant Prodigue. Smetana
for Spies in Hamburg, Bremen and dies.
Oldenburg.
1885 Summer at Mürzzuschlag. Premieres Franck: Variations Symphoniques;
the Fourth Symphony at Meiningen, Dvořák, Symphony No. 7;
where he meets the young Richard Berg born; Hiller dies.
Strauss. Subsequently tours with the work
in Holland.
1886 Summer in Hofstetten near Thun. Elected Goldmark, Merlin; Franck: Violin
Honorary President of the Wiener Sonata. Liszt dies.
Tonkünstler-Verein. Visits Meiningen in
October.
1887 Spring holiday in Italy with Simrock and Goldmark: Ländliche Hochzeit
Theodor Kirchner, Summer at Thun. Symphony; Verdi: Otello; Bruckner:
Symphony No. 8. Borodin dies.
C. F. Pohl, archivist of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde, dies; succeeded by
Eusebius Mandyczewski; Marxsen dies.
1888 Meets Tchaikovsky and Grieg in Leipzig. Franck: Symphony in D minor;
Spring in Italy with Widmann. Summer Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5. Alkan
in Thun. dies.
1889 Awarded the freedom of the city of Dvořák: Symphony No. 8; Mahler:
Hamburg. Order of Leopold conferred by Symphony No. 1; R. Strauss: Don
Franz Josef. Summer in Ischl. Juan; Tod und Verklärung; Henselt dies.
1890 Spring holiday in Italy with Widmann. Wolf: Spanisches Liederbuch; Fauré:
Summer in Ischl. Meets Alice Barbi. Requiem. Franck, Gade die; Martin
Plans his will. born.
1891 Hears Mühlfeld play at Meiningen. Wolf: Italienisches Liederbuch;
Visits Berlin in the Spring. Makes Will. Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 1.
Friendship with Adolf Menzel. Attends
Mahler’s performance of Don Giovanni in
Prague.
1892 Spring in Italy. Summer in Ischl. Nielsen: Symphony No. 1; Sibelius:
Death of Elisabet von Herzogenberg and Kullervo and En Saga; Dvořák: Te
of his sister Elise. Deum. Lalo dies; Honegger, Milhaud
born.
1893 Spring holiday in Italy and Sicily. Summer Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6; Dvořák:
in Ischl. Work on the collected edition of Symphony No. 9; Verdi: Falstaff.
Schumann’s works. Hermine Spies dies. Gounod, Tchaikovsky die; Haba born.
Strauss: Guntram
1894 Summer in Ischl. Publishes the Deutsche Debussy: L’Après-midi d’un faune.
Volkslieder in seven volumes. Offered Bülow, Chabrier, Rubinstein, Spitta die.
but refuses conductorship of the Hamburg Fauré: La Bonne Chanson. Mahler:
Philharmonic. Accompanies Alice Barbi Symphony No. 2;
at her final concert. Billroth dies.
1895 Tours German cities with Mühlfeld, Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 1;
performing the Clarinet Sonatas. Summer Dvořák: Cello Concerto;

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xviii Chronology

in Ischl. Visits Clara in Frankfurt, Hindemith, Orff born.


conducts in Zurich.

1896 Last public appearance as conductor. Mahler: Symphony No. 3; Strauss: Also
Conducts both piano concertos with sprach Zarathustra; Puccini: La Bohème.
d’Albert in Berlin. Attends Clara Bruckner, Clara Schumann, Ambroise
Schumann’s funeral in Bonn. Summer in Thomas die.
Ischl. Deterioration of health. Goes to
Karslbad to take the waters. Attends
Bruckner’s funeral.
1897 Last public appearance at a concert. Cowell, Korngold born.
Revises his will. Rapid decline in health
and appearance. Death on 3 April of
cancer of the liver. Public funeral 6 April.

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Preface

Brahms in perspective
The last decades of the twentieth century have seen a striking increase in
scholarly interest in the music of the nineteenth century. As this era
moves yet further into the distance, it has been a fresh experience to find
its repertory – long better known to concert audiences than that of any
other period – viewed in a new setting, now that its social, political and
creative backgrounds have been more fully revealed. In this new perspec-
tive, few images of composers have changed as much as that of Brahms. It
has not been merely a matter of filling in the gaps of knowledge, or even of
exploding certain myths. New examinations of his music have revealed
just how much the received view of its significance was based on what it
was taken to represent in the historical picture of the nineteenth century,
rather than on its actual substance. With changing fashion after Brahms’s
death, an image full of stereotypes became even more firmly entrenched
by neglect. For example, that of Brahms ‘The Absolutist Composer’, the
implacable opponent of Wagner, whose own failure to write an opera
indicated a lack of interest in drama and literature. And, growing from
this, the all-encompassing view of Brahms ‘The Conservative’, in the light
of his preference for instrumental forms in an age of increasing program-
maticism. In few cases can the perception and evaluation of a composer’s
achievement have been so inadequate to the reality as with Brahms; in few
cases can such oversimplified epithets – first the ‘epigone’ of Schumann;
later, more durably, of Beethoven – have been so glibly applied.
There were of course good reasons for this failure to gain his measure.
Brahms cultivated a classical profile in a romantic era, systematically mas-
tering genre after genre in an age where specialism was the tendency. He
commands an extraordinary historical position in the sheer range of the
music he produced (though it does not extend to opera, it includes some
highly dramatic vocal music). Few composers can be represented as typi-
cally in such accessible pieces as the ‘Wiegenlied’, the Hungarian Dances
or the Liebeslieder waltzes, and yet also in complex fugues and variations,
types of works which generally appeal to completely different audiences.
And even to critics surveying the whole output, Brahms gives a different
message – appearing to some as a sonorous Romantic, to others, a musical
ascetic out of his historical time. Of course, Brahms sought to synthesise
[xix] the many dimensions of his music and did so magnificently. But that very

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xx Preface

integration, the richness arising from – for example – the fusion of lyri-
cism and complex counterpoint, has remained a problem for many listen-
ers. For all the revision in attitudes towards his contemporaries, Brahms
has continued to be difficult to categorise – hence the convenience of the
catch-all label ‘Conservative’, which avoids the issue. And as with the
music, so with the life: inherited images of a deprived childhood have
continued to colour our views of Brahms’s mature personality, to leave
him as something of a mystery as a social being.
The sense of distance is perhaps the more remarkable in the light of
Brahms’s actual closeness to us in historical time and personal circum-
stance. Had he lived just a few years longer into the twentieth century (he
was only sixty-three at his death), we would surely view him differently. As
it is, those who remember him personally were still broadcasting their
memories in the early years of the LP record after the Second World War.
As a self-made man in an age of bourgeois culture, with all his lack of sen-
timentality about music and his religious scepticism, he seems much
closer to our world than to those (only twenty years or so older) to whom
he is so often related: Wagner, Liszt, Schumann, Mendelssohn.
Of course, there was always a narrow line of professional knowledge
and admiration on the part of younger composers in the Austro-German
tradition that kept alive a respect for Brahms’s technical achievements as
a composer. This manifested itself most openly in Schoenberg’s famous
essay ‘Brahms the Progressive’ (first broadcast in the centenary year of
1933, then published in revised form in 1950), which did more than any
other text to place Brahms in a position of historical continuity. But
Schoenberg saw Brahms as a ‘progressive’ essentially because of the
Brahmsian principles he made his own: he was legitimising his often
problematic music in claiming Brahms as his mentor. From the technical
standpoint, Schoenberg’s was always a one-sided view of Brahms, as was
his view of the future. And Schoenberg’ s successors would essentially
grant Brahms’s greatness despite rather than because of the full character
of his musical personality: acknowledging the technical dimension,
whilst passing with reserve over the expressive substance.
The situation is very different now. It is Brahms’s place as a pioneer in
reclaiming the past – a past much more distant than that explored by any
other composer-contemporaries in this historicising era – that is now of
interest. Of all composers of the nineteenth century, he seems central to
modern outlooks in his lifelong concerns with the performance and
editing of earlier music and its absorption into his own. Historical refer-
ence has become a new index of ‘meaning’ in modern composition, just as
notions of abstract ‘unity’ and ‘structure’ were the shibboleths of
Modernism. In tracing the continuity, Brahms now seems the most tangi-

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xxi Preface

ble link between the musical past and present. No longer an ‘anti-Pope’ (as
he himself ruefully put it) to the great aesthetic innovator and ‘progres-
sive’ of the century, Wagner, he now stands on an equal footing, relevant
to late twentieth-century listeners as one of music’s most powerful intelli-
gences.
The aim of this book is to reflect changing attitudes in a range of essays
written partly by established Brahms specialists and partly (especially in
discussion of the music) by scholars coming to the music from different
backgrounds. The book’s three sections deal with his life, with his works
and finally with the personal views offered by musicians with some special
involvement with the music.
In Part I, Kurt Hofmann places Brahms’s difficult early years in
Hamburg in a completely fresh perspective with the help of new docu-
mentation. Here the familiar picture of the abused young prodigy forced
to work in a low-life setting is significantly revised in the light of his
family background and the life of the professional musician. Brahms’s
gradual estrangement from Hamburg and his earlier years of association
with Vienna are the subject of my own essay, which sees this as a period of
slow and difficult transition as he continued to attempt to establish
himself as an independent composer from 1862 to 1875. Once estab-
lished, however, Brahms became the most important musical figure in the
city and released the major orchestral works by which he is best known to
concert audiences. Viewing these compositions from a sociological rather
than a purely musical standpoint, Leon Botstein offers new views of both
Brahms’s motivation for composing them and the political dimension of
their performance and reception (so prominent a feature of Brahms’s
mature years in the city).
Part II covers the full range of Brahms’s output. John Rink explores the
three distinctive chronological and stylistic phases of Brahms’s piano
music in the light of the integrity of musical thought and technique which
characterises his output, to reveal the brilliant resolution of striking ten-
sions and dichotomies of style. Kofi Agawu shares an interest in the
dynamic process which interacts with the larger form, pursuing the cre-
ative tensions between ‘architectural’ and ‘logical’ form at the heart of
Brahms’s style through identifying strategic moments in the symphonies.
For all the familiarity of Brahms’s orchestral work in the concert hall, his
instrumental output was overwhelmingly devoted to chamber music,
which exercised great influence on the younger generation. Its deep rela-
tionship with the past on the one hand and its profound originality on the
other are explored in David Brodbeck’s discussion of representative
works from the entire output. A major additional theme, however, is their
extra-musical dimension: reflecting recent emphases of scholarship, he

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xxii Preface

seeks to uncover unsuspected biographical connections that help to erode


the absolutist view of Brahms the composer. Malcolm MacDonald’s dis-
cussion of the four concertos also blends the structural dimension – here
the symphonic element as feeding the complex individuality of the works
– while also emphasising the poetic and extra-musical aspect more than
tradition has generally allowed. With the discussion of texted works, the
issue of meaning in relation to form can be seen from the opposite posi-
tion: that of the role of structure in communicating expression. Brahms’s
large and varied output of choral music, of both small and large propor-
tions, accompanied and unaccompanied, is the least known part of his
oeuvre. Yet, as Daniel Beller-McKenna reveals, the works inter-relate
closely with those of other genres and have the added dimension of a fre-
quently overt link to musical history or social context. Form and expres-
sion interact at a more intimate level in the vast output of solo songs with
piano; my own discussion of them argues for a higher esteem of Brahms’s
ambitions and achievements through formal and stylistic subtleties in a
wide range of examples.
In Part III, the discourse of biography and analysis is set aside for more
personal responses to Brahms today. Roger Norrington approaches the
music from the standpoint of a conductor seeking to realise the score in
an historically informed light, using instruments and performing styles
of the period. Facing similar issues from another perspective, Robert
Pascall draws on the experience of editing the scores themselves for the
new Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe, with the fullest reference to all the
now available evidence, to clarify how Brahms produced them and the
kinds of problems which attend their realisation. Finally, Hugh Wood
places Brahms in the ultimate perspective for the present day, in respond-
ing as a composer himself, providing a further context for many of the
preceding themes in the book: Brahms’s personality, the nature of his
achievement, how we relate to him in historical time, the values he
enshrines and what they mean today.

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