Johannes Brahms |
Johannes Brahms Notes
(born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
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Preface: Johannes Brahms is considered as one of the three Big B's— Bach, Beethoven, Brahms,
even during his lifetime. Except for Brahms' Hungarian Dances, I'm not familiar with Brahms' music or
his biography. During my conversation with Bob Koski after the
Don Quixote's Lessons on Leadership film at Stanford (February 12, 2003), he mentioned that Brahms' creativity
took a giant leap after his Lullaby. I always thought Brahms' inspiration came from living with
the Schumanns and his love for Clara, but never looked into the matter. These notes were typed from
seven books on Johannes Brahms consulted in the Stanford Music Library. I learned much from reading
them and am more appreciative of Brahms' ranking along with Bach and Beethoven. If there are
any Brahms lovers who wish to enlighten me further on his musical genius (compositions & recordings
for listening, web links), please email me. Thanks!
Johannes Brahms: Quotes from Books
Brahms Love for Clara Schumann
On February 12, 1856, he wrote Clara one of the most revealing letters of his life.
Brahms letter to Clara, 5/31/1856
Clara may have had her own misgivings about marrying someone as young,
inexperienced, and egocentric as Brahms. That summer of 1856 she was 36, he 23.
She wanted to be done with childbearing and was determined to perform full-time.
Yet it is inescapable that Clara did want him, for the same reason she had wanted
Robert, however unrealistic that had been. She loved and admired Johannes, and for
all her gravity Clara respected passion and had always followed hers, purely and
directly... In 1856, she wrote down what she wanted her children, and history,
to know about the relations between herself and Brahms. Her journal, written
for the record as much as for herself, did not note unseemly intimacies. She
wrote a testament transparently idealized and evasive, perhaps self-deluding,
extraordinarily forgiving.
Yet if Brahms denied Clara as a wife, in his heart he could never desert her.
To the end of his life he loved Clara Schumann to the extent of his crippled
capacity to love. But always he placed that in some other time, some other world.
She was the virginal priestess, going to the stage as to the altar. So in his mind
and in his music only the past would seem tryly alive— Young Kreisler's past.
Maybe for that reason, some of the warmest and most haunting moments in his music
seem to voice a lyrical Romantic evocation of what was or could have been: the lost
idyll, the unattainable lightness of life. (p. 165)
Brahms Lullaby: Wiegenlied (Cradle Song), 4th Lieder from Opus 49 (1868)
An exception to the passionate tone of most lieder from that summer [1868] was the
little "Wiegenlied" ("Cradle Song"), from Opus 49, written in honor of Bertha and
Artur Faber's second child. Before long a considerable percentage of humanity was
to know the Wiegenlied simply as "Brahm's Lullaby", if they knew its author at all.
Out in the world it became part of the human community like so many faux "folk songs",
when millions took the melody into their hearts. Its verse (a second was added later)
comes from the texts of Des Knaben wunderhorn:
Brahm's inspiration on a Swiss mountaintop (1868)
Presumably Brahms showed Clara Schumann that summer's lieder as a matter of course,
but she remained oblivious to their mingling of old lost love and yearning for an
impossible new love, in the person of her daughter. Clara was still stewing about
Johannnes's letter saying she must cut back on performing, with its implication that
she should spend more time taking care of her children... On September 12, 1868,
from the Bernese Alps during another vacation with his fater, Brahms sent Clara
a gesture of reconciliation more meaningful than she could have understood until
years later. On a postcard he offered a few measures of music underlined with a
greeting to her, noting, "Thus blew the shepherd's horn today."
But Johannes's clarion call did not resolve the issues between him and Clara.
She was not ready to forgive him yet. Clara wrote to Brahms (10-15-1868):
Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography, Knopf, NY, 1997 (ML410.B8.S93.1997)
Opus 78 of Johannes Brahms' Violin Sonata #1 in G Major
Leon Botstein (Ed.), The Compleat Brahms:
Opus 78 of Johannes Brahms' Violin Sonata #1 in G Major
Ivor Keys, Johannes Brahms, Christopher Helm, London, 1989 (ML410.B8.K44.1989)
Brahms on wine
A wine connoisseur invited Brahms to dinner and in his honor brought out some of his
Views of Brahms from Clara Schumann's Daughter Eugenie
In the spring of 1872 my mother told me that she was going to ask Brahms
to give me lessons during the summer. she thought that the stimulating
influence of a fesh teacher might incite me to a more eager pursuit of
my studies. I felt very unhappy; Mamma could not be satisfied with my
progress, and I thought that I had done my best. There was no one for
whom I would have worked rather than for her. Now Brahms really did come
twice a week. He entered the room punctually to the minute, and he was
always kind, always patient, and adapted his teaching to my capabilities
and the stage of my progress in quite a wonderful way. Also he took a
great deal of trouble in the training of my fingers. He had thought about
such training and about technique in general much more than my mother,
who had surmounted all technical difficulties at an age when one is not
yet conscious of them. He made me play a great many exercises, scales
and arpeggios as a matter of course, and he gave special attention to the
training of the thumb, which, as many will remember, was given a very
prominent part in his own playing. When the thumb had to begin a
passage, he flung it on to the key with the other fingers clenched.
As he kept his wrist loose at the same time, the tone remained full
and round even in a fortissimo. (p. 141)
If I might venture upon comparison between my mother's teaching and his,
I would say: My mother primarily stimulated imagination and feeling,
Brahms the intellect. To have been influenced by both was perhaps
the most perfect teaching imaginable... We children all liked Brahms,
but we treated him as one who had always been there, and this perhaps
made us a little perfunctory in manner towards him. We took for granted
that he was one of the family, and did not take much notice of him.
As a composer we thought very highly of him, and emulated his warmest
admirers in love for his compositions. We were in rapture about his
Serenades and Sextets, and never tired of playing them as piano duets. (p. 147)
Marie [Eugenie's sister, 10 years older] told me that once when she had
accompanied Brahms on a long walk and chattered all the time, he bought
her a lovely Easter egg when they returned to the town. Another time he
brought her a book of blank pages with a clasp, bound in leather. He had
inscribed the first page with:
I did not know at that time what Brahms's friendship had meant to my mother
during the most tragic time of her life. It was not till several years after
her death that I read the words which she had written in her diary and left
to us as a last will and testament— words binding us to lifelong gratitude
towards the friend who had sacrificed years of his young life to her. But I
could and did understand what his existence meant to her, what he, and only
he, could give her. It was Brahms to whom after our father's death she owed
the supreme joy of still being able to follow step by step the creative
musician's art. She had tasted this joy from childhood upwards; had developed
with the creations of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. Her own beloved had
led her deeply into the spirit of Bach's and Beethoven's works. Now it was
Brahms whom she accompanied on his course, whose genius lent her wings to soar.
She once asked me if I could at all realise what it meant to have had a friend
from childhood upwards who stimulated all your noblest and most artistic
qualities, who in daily and hourly intercourse lavished pearls and jewels
upon you; if I did not think it natural that she felt she could not go on
living deprived of such gifts, and that she clung to friends like Brahms
and Joachim who could console her in some measure for what she had lost.
She said she could never have borne her sorrows without the loving efforts
of these friends to bring her back to music. (p. 152)
Brahms's last visit to us was during the last days of October 1895.
He was on his way from Meiningen, and only stayed 24 hours. His mood was
of the happiest owing to his having been fully appreciated... The next morning
I heard Mamma play Prelud and Fugue with Pastorale (both written for organ)
by Bach; then Brahms's Romance in F major and Intermezzo in E flat major, op. 118.
A little while after she had finished I went in. Mamma was sitting sideways at
her writing-table; her cheeks were gently flushed and her eyes shone as though
illumined by a light from within. Brahms, who was sitting opposite to her,
was evidently touched with deep emotion. "Your mother has been playing most
beautifully to me," he said. I stayed with them, and presently Brahms asked me
to find the third volume of Beethoven Sonatas, so that he could look up something.
I took what he wanted from Mamma's shelves. He found a particular page, and
exclaimed, "Really, it is wonderful how infallible your mother's ear is!
Look at this note which is printed in every edition of Beethoven's Sonatas.
I always thought that it must be a misprint, and when I had an opportunity
lately of seeing the sonata in manuscript I found my opinion justified.
Now I see that your mother has already corrected it. No other musician
has an ear like that." How specially proud I was of my little mother!
A few hours later Brahms said good-bye. The friends embraced and kissed as
they had done for years at every meeting and parting, but this time there
was to be no more meeting. Shortly afterwards my mother fell ill, and in
May of the following year she was taken from us [May 20, 1896]. The last time I saw
Brahms he was standing by her grave. (pp. 172-173)
Eugenie Schumann, The Schumanns and Johannes Brahms,
Brahms celebrates his 22nd birthday at Clara Schumann's house
Düsseldorf, 8 May 1855
Brahms's Life Work
Brahms's artistic development proceeded slowly and steadily. Nevertheless, research reveals
several landmarks in the master's creative activities, which can be coordinated with special
events in his life. Thus it is possible to distinguish four periods in Brahms's artistic
development, each of which has a character of its own.
The first period of Brahms's development included the earlies existing works up to 1855.
This was the time of his growing friendship with Joachim, his affectionate relations with
Robert Schumann, and his passionate love for Clara Schumann. Under the influence of a hightly
romantic natue, Brahms then considered the purport of his work to be more important than its form...
The young Brahms was hard, almost to harshness; he loved blunt expression and sudden contrasts,
and avoided concesssions to mere comprehensibility; nevertheless his works were imbued with
simplicity and a profound tenderness. Already in his creative work the folk song played an
important role. In the use of instruments Brahms showed a certain monotony, for— as with
the young Schumann— the piano was his principal means of expression. (p. 201)
In the works of the second period he sometimes directly followed classic models.
The violent eruptions of his earlier works were abandoned, and his compositions became mellower,
softer, more intimate and meditative. His 'twilight' style, with its peculiar blending of moods,
was already in evidence... An example of this is the F minor Piano Quintet [Op. 34, 1864], which
was originally a string quintet, then a sonata for two pianos, before it acquired its final form.
The third period opened with the elaboration of the German Requiem [Op. 45, 1868],
the first great choral composition written by Brahms, which was also the first to make his name
generally known... Brahms had established himself in Vienna... Intellectual and spiritual
concentration became the guiding principle of his work; he expressed himself in as concise and
pregnant a manner as possible, and his compositions gained thereby in power, and even in tragic
violence... It is characteristic of this period that the joyous and effervescent Scherzo of his
youthful works gave way to quieter and serener forms. (p. 202)
In the year 1890, after the completion of his G major String Quintet [Op. 111, 1891],
Brahms felt that his creative powers were exhausted. He regarded his life work as finished,
and a little later, in the spring of 1891, he made his will. Henceforth he purposed only
to set his older unpublished works in order... But Brahms had resigned himself prematurely.
Before long his creative impulse revived and he began to produce works that were in many
respects unlike his former compositions. In the fourth period
Photo: Brahm's Tin Soldiers (p. 96a)
Silhouette: Brahms and Hedgehog (p. 343)
Karl Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work (3rd Ed.)
Personal Characteristics of Johannes Brahms
He was shy and awkward in his boyhood years, and this awkwardness never entirely left him,
and was the chief reason for the accusation of boorishness so often levelled against him...
He was still slender at 20, when he arrived at Schumann's house, but he was energetic,
muscularly strong, and much more masculine, though his fair hair was longer than ever.
Everyone who met him was attracted by the bright blueness of his eyes and the splendid
shape of his head with its wide expanse of brow... His only pleasures, away from his music,
were walking and reading. From his earliest boyhood, and throughout his life, he rose at
daybreak and went for a long walk. All his savings from the wretched money he earned in
his early teens were spent on books, and during the long years of struggle his chief concern
was the replenishing of this library of knoweledge. His Bible was his constant companion,
and in later years he would astonish his friends by his familiarity with its text. He could
repeat whole chapters from memory, and give accurate quotations from the Old or the New
Testaments. This fondness and insight is evident in his numerous settings of Biblical words. (p. 177)
He was a very temperate man, although no one loved his beer better, and few could better
appreciate a fine bottle of wine. Each day he smoked innumerable cigars, mostly of the large
and strong variety. Usually he was a moderate eater, though at times his appetite was prodigious.
His tastes were simple, almost frugal; and even when he became affluent he did not change his
mode of living, or alter the regularity of his daily routine. He would rise at five or earlier,
make himself a cup of very black coffee (he preferred his own brew, for no one else made it
strong enough), and then work until twelve o'clock. He would saunter to the "Roter Igel" for
luncheon, never a costly meal, then walk for about two hours in the Prater, or, for a change,
in the Wiener Wald or some other country spot, and then go to a concert or theatre, after which
he would eat and drink at one or other of his "taverns". He never worked after midday, and did
most of his composing standing up at a high desk, for he deprecated the assistance of a
pianoforte in composition. (p. 185)
His generosity was extraordinary. Many pooe musicians were indebted to him; for he could
never refuse an opportunity to help a colleague, however humble his position in the profession,
if the need were genuine. Only the stipulation was made, and that was silence. Brahms abhorred
the thought of the word hearing of his gifts, and often suffered in consequence... An example
of his generous nature can be found in his letters to Clara Schumann. In July 1888 Clara wrote
to him that she thought she would have to sell her house and live in a smaller one, to enable
her to pay for the education of some of her grandchildren. She was then nearly 70, and she
thought it "dreadful to have to retrench now". Brahms immediately sent her 15,000 marks
(£750) and wrote: "If I wished to hide my identity in sending it I should have been
obliged to get somebody to write the address, and his suspicions would naturally have been
aroused. So please consent and let me lay 15,000 (this includes simple and compound interest!)
most respectfully at your feet. All I most earnestly beg of you is to send me a card to say
it is lying there, but nothing more." Before leaving Hamburg for Vienna for the first time,
he said to his father: "If things are going badly with you, music is always the best consolation;
go and study my old copy of Saul— you will find still more comfort there". When the
father, some time later, did open the copy, he found it full of bank-notes. Probably Simrock,
Brahms' friend and publisher, and the executor of his will, could have enlightened the world
about many of his benefactions; for he acted as the master's chief banker, and must have known
of most of his kind deeds. (pp. 186-187)
William Murdoch, Brahms
Views of Brahms from the Journal of George Henschel
Wiesbaden, February 27, 1876 [Brahms age 43]
July 17, 1876
Perhaps I may be allowed here to interrupt the diary for a moment, and to attention
to the discretion and judiciousness with which Brahms selected the words for his songs.
If we look at the texts to his vocal music, of which there exists a vast mass, we shall
find that the sources— individual or national— from which he drew his inspiration,
have in themselves been, to a greater or lesser degree, inspired. All his songs, duets,
quartets, etc., are set to beautiful, significant, worthy poems; truly a wonderful lesson
to modern composers. (p. 46)
If one of the chief aims of art be to elevate, i.e., to raise mankind for the time being
above the commonplacd routine of life, above paltry everyday thoughts and cares, in short,
from things earthy to things celestial, surely such aim should be discernible even in the
smallest form of the expression of art.
Just as the beauties of nature, testifying to the incomprehensible greatness of the divine
power, reveal themselves as convincingly in a little primrose as in the huge trees of the
Yosemite Valley, in the sweet prattling of a little brooklet as in the roaring thunder of
the Niagara, in the lovely undulations of the Scottish hills as in the awe-inspiring heights
of the Himalayas, so beauty of soul, honesty of purpose, purity of mind, can shine as brightly
in the shortest song as in the longest symphony.
No true artist then in the realm of music will debase his muse by wedding it to sentimental
trash as far removed from poetry as a mole-hill from Mount Parnassus, though it often be a
difficult task, especially for young people, to distinguish sentimentality fro sentiment. (p. 46)
The former may be described as superficial, aimless pity; affected, unreal, unwholesome
emotion. Sentiment on the other hand is true emotion; is the feeling that grows naturally
out of the sympathetic contemplation of a thing; and the sentiment it is, not the thing,
which we ought to look for, even in a little song, in the first place, as a fit object
for poetic and musical expression.
A true artist's spirit will not allow itself to be moved by versifications of penny-a-line
newspaper reports, such as the capsizing of a little pleasure boat with two hapless lovers
in it, or the death by starvation of a poor old seamstress ready to meet her lover in heaven,
or effusions of a similar kind, generally ending in pseudo-religious inferences and exhortations
little short of blasphemy.
"The standing of the pale, hungry little boy, outside the window of a confectioner's shop and
observing inside the shop the rich, ruddy little boy eating his fill, that is not poetry, even
if put into faultless verse and rhyme, but simply a fact, and a sad one, too, the contemplation
of which might, in a fine poetic mind, produce the most beautiful sentiments of compassion with
the sufferings of our fellow-creatures, of tenderness, of love; but to let the poor little chap
march straightway to heaven, to the fortissimo accompaniment of triplets on the last page of
an up-to-date ballad, that is sentimentality, and cruel mockery into the bargain." (p. 47)
I well remember what fun Brahms and I had in later years when I showed him some specimens of
the typical popular English ballad and how we laughed— especially over the sad ones!
But to return to the rest of the journal.
After supper we sat, quite alone in the dark on the terrace of the Fahrnberg. Soon our conversation
took a more serious turn. He spoke of friendship and of men, and how, properly speaking, he believed
very little in either. "How few true men there are in the world!" he exclaimed. "The two Schumanns,
Robert and Clara, there you have two true, beautiful 'Menschenbilder' (images of man).
Knowledge, achievement, power, position— nothing can outweigh this: to be a beautiful
Menschenbilder. Do you know [Julius] Allgeyere in Münich [engraver & photographer]?
There you have one, too." And then he began to talk with touching warmth of the time when, in
Allgeyer's house at Karlsruhe, he wrote his "Mainacht" and the D minor movement of his "Requiem"...
"I sometimes regret," he said to me after some moments of silence, "that I did not marry. I ought
to have a boy of ten now; that would be nice. But when I was of the right age for marrying
I lacked the position to do so, and now it is too late."
Speaking of this had probably revived in him reminiscences of his own boyhood, for he continued:
"Only once in my life have I played truant and shirked school, and that was the vilest day of my
life. When I came home my father had already been informed of it, and I got a solid hiding." (p. 48)
"But still," he said, "my father was a dear old man, very simple-minded and most unsophisticated,
of which qualities I must give you an amusing illustration: You know he was a double-bass player
in the Municipal Orchestra of Hamburg, and in his leisure hours tried to increase his scanty little
income by copying music. He was sitting in his room at the top of the house some fine day, with the
door wide open, absorbed in writing out the parts from an orchestral score, when in walked a tramp,
begging. My father looked up at him quickly, without interrupting his work, and, in his very pronounced
Hamburg dialect, said: 'I cannot give you anything, my dear man. Besides, don't you know it's very
wrong of you to come into a room like this? How easily might you not have taken my overcoat that's
hanging in the hall! Get out, and don't you do it again!' The tramp humbly apologized and withdrew.
When, a few hours later, my father wanted to go out for a walk, the overcoat of course had disappeared."
Brahms then touched upon his relations to the members of his family, and told me he still supported
his old stepmother. (pp. 49)
Though undisguised delighted when finding himself appreciated and acclaimed, he coveted neither fame
nor applause. He was of a very simple, kind, childlike disposition. He loved children, whom— poor
or rich— to make happy, was to himself a source of pure happiness. He loved the poor, to whom
his heart went out in sympathy and pity. He hated show of charity. But where he could comfort in silence
those who suffered in silence, those who struggled against undeserved misfortune, the sick and the
helpless, there the man, so modest, sparing, and unpretentious in his own wants, became a benefactor,
ready for sacrifice. no better summing up of Brahms' character and personality can conclude this little
volume than that contained in the words of his old friend Franz Wüllner of Cologne: He has left us
a precious inheritance, the noble example of a rare truthfulness and simplicity in art and life; of a
relentless severity toward himself, of a hatred of self-conceit and pretence; of a high-minded, inflexible,
unwavering, artistic conviction. To him may be truly applied Goethe's fine words in his Epilogue to
Schiller's "Lay of the Bell":
Photo:
Brahms & Johann Strauss on the verandah
George Henschel (1850-1934), Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms
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Web Links to Johannes Brahms
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