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Biography
Early years
Brahms's father, Johann Jakob Brahms, came to Hamburg from Schleswig-Holstein, seeking a career as a town musician. He was proficient on several instruments, but found employment mostly playing the horn and double bass. He married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress, who was seventeen years older than he was. Initially, they lived near the city docks, in the Gängeviertel quarter of Hamburg, for six months before moving to a small house on the Dammtorwall, located on the northern perimeter of Hamburg in the Inner Alster.
Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training. He studied piano from the age of seven with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. It is a long-told tale that Brahms was forced in his early teens to play the piano in bars that doubled as brothels; recently Brahms scholar Kurt Hoffman has suggested that this legend is false. Since Brahms himself clearly originated the story, however, some have questioned Hoffman's theory.[1][2]
For a time, Brahms also learned the cello, although his progress was cut short when his teacher absconded with Brahms' instrument.[citation needed] After his early piano lessons with Otto Cossel, Brahms studied piano with Eduard Marxsen, who had studied in Vienna with Ignaz von Seyfried (a pupil of Mozart) and Carl Maria von Bocklet (a close friend of Schubert). The young Brahms gave a few public concerts in Hamburg, but did not become well known as a pianist until he made a concert tour at the age of nineteen. In later life, he frequently took part in the performance of his own works, whether as soloist, accompanist, or participant in chamber music. He was the soloist at the premieres of both his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1859 and his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1881. He conducted choirs from his early teens, and became a proficient choral and orchestral conductor.
Meeting Joachim and Liszt
He began to compose quite early in life, but later destroyed most copies of his first works; for instance, Louise Japha, a fellow-pupil of Marxsen, reported a piano sonata that Brahms had played or improvised at the age of 11. His compositions did not receive public acclaim until he went on a concert tour as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi in April and May 1853. On this tour he met Joseph Joachim at Hanover, and went on to the Court of Weimar where he met Franz Liszt, Peter Cornelius, and Joachim Raff. According to several witnesses of Brahms' meeting with Liszt (at which Liszt performed Brahms' Scherzo, Op. 4 at sight), Reményi was offended by Brahms' failure to praise Liszt's Sonata in B minor wholeheartedly (Brahms supposedly fell asleep during a performance of the recently composed work), and they parted company shortly afterwards. Brahms later excused himself, saying that he could not help it, having been exhausted by his travels.
Brahms and Schumann
Joachim had given Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and after a walking tour in the Rhineland Brahms took the train to Düsseldorf, and was welcomed into the Schumann family on arrival there. Schumann, amazed by the 20 year-old's talent, published an article entitled "Neue Bahnen" (New Paths) in the October 28, 1853 issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik alerting the public to the young man who he claimed was "destined to give ideal expression to the times."[3] This pronouncement was received with some skepticism outside Schumann's immediate circle, and may have increased Brahms' naturally self-critical need to perfect his works and technique. While he was in Düsseldorf, Brahms participated with Schumann and Albert Dietrich in writing a sonata for Joachim; this is known as the F-A-E Sonata. He became very attached to Schumann's wife, the composer and pianist Clara, fourteen years his senior, with whom he would carry on a lifelong, emotionally passionate, but probably platonic, relationship. Brahms never married, despite strong feelings for several women and despite entering into an engagement, soon broken off, with Agathe von Siebold in Göttingen in 1859. After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement in a mental sanatorium near Bonn in February 1854, Brahms was the main intercessor between Clara and her husband, and found himself virtually head of the household.
Detmold and Hamburg
After Schumann's death at the sanatorium in 1856, Brahms divided his time between Hamburg, where he formed and conducted a ladies' choir, and the principality of Detmold, where he was court music-teacher and conductor. He first visited Vienna in 1862, staying there over the winter, and in 1863 was appointed conductor of the Vienna Singakademie. Though he resigned the position the following year and entertained the idea of taking up conducting posts elsewhere, he based himself increasingly in Vienna and soon made his home there. From 1872 to 1875 he was director of the concerts of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; afterwards he accepted no formal position. He declined an honorary doctorate of music from University of Cambridge in 1877, but accepted one from the University of Breslau in 1879, and composed the Academic Festival Overture as a gesture of appreciation.
He had been composing steadily throughout the 1850s and 60s, but his music had evoked divided critical responses and the Piano Concerto No. 1 had been badly received in some of its early performances. His works were labelled old-fashioned by the 'New German School' whose principal figures included Liszt and Richard Wagner. Brahms admired some of Wagner's music and admired Liszt as a great pianist, but the conflict between the two schools, known as the War of the Romantics, soon embroiled all of musical Europe. In the Brahms camp were his close friends: Clara Schumann, the influential music critic Eduard Hanslick and the leading Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. In 1860 Brahms attempted to organize a public protest against some of the wilder excesses of their music.[citation needed] His manifesto, which was published prematurely with only three supporting signatures, was a failure and he never engaged in public polemics again.
Years of popularity
It was the premiere of Ein deutsches Requiem, his largest choral work, in Bremen in 1868 that confirmed Brahms' European reputation and led many to accept that he had fulfilled Schumann's prophecy. This may have given him the confidence finally to complete a number of works that he had wrestled with over many years, such as the cantata Rinaldo, his first string quartet, third piano quartet, and most notably his first symphony. This appeared in 1876, though it had been begun (and a version of the first movement seen by some of his friends) in the early 1860s. The other three symphonies then followed in 1877, 1883, and 1885. From 1881 he was able to try out his new orchestral works with the court orchestra of the Duke of Meiningen, whose conductor was Hans von Bülow.
Brahms frequently traveled, for both business (concert tours) and pleasure. From 1878 onwards he often visited Italy in the springtime, and usually sought out a pleasant rural location in which to compose during the summer. He was a great walker and especially enjoyed spending time in the open air, where he felt that he could think more clearly.
In 1889, one Theo Wangemann, a representative of American inventor Thomas Edison visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make an experimental recording. He played an abbreviated version of his first Hungarian dance on the piano. The recording was later issued on an LP of early piano performances (compiled by Gregor Benko); while the spoken introduction to the short piece of music is quite clear, the piano playing is largely inaudible due to heavy surface noise. Nevertheless, this remains the earliest recording made by a major composer. Analysts and scholars remain divided, however, as to whether the voice that introduces the piece is that of Wangemann or of Brahms.[4]
In 1889 Brahms was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg, until 1948 the only one born in Hamburg. [5]
Later years
In 1890, the 57 year-old Brahms resolved to give up composing. However, as it turned out, he was unable to abide by his decision, and in the years before his death he produced a number of acknowledged masterpieces. His admiration for Richard Mühlfeld, clarinetist with the Meiningen orchestra, moved him to compose the Clarinet Trio Op. 114, Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 (1891), and the two Clarinet Sonatas Op. 120 (1894). He also wrote several cycles of piano pieces, Opp. 116-119, the Four Serious Songs (Vier ernste Gesänge), Op. 121 (1896), and the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122 (1896).
While completing the Op. 121 songs, Brahms developed cancer (sources differ on whether this was of the liver or pancreas). His condition gradually worsened and he died on April 3, 1897. Brahms is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.
References
1. ^ Kurt Hoffman, Johannes Brahms und Hamburg (Reinbek, 1986) (in German: includes detailed refutation of the traditional story of Brahms playing piano in brothels, using the writings of those who knew the young Brahms, as well as evidence of the Hamburg's close regulation of those places, preventing the employment of children)
2. ^ Swafford, Jan (2001). "Did the Young Brahms Play Piano in Waterfront Bars?". 19th-century Music Vol. 24 (No. 3): pp. 268–275. doi:10.1525/ncm.2001.24.3.268. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
3. ^ "Robert Schumann's Artikel Neue Bahnen". Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
4. ^ J. Brahms plays excerpt of Hungarian Dance No. 1 (2:10) at YouTube
5. ^ Stadt Hamburg Ehrenbürger (German) Retrieved on June 17, 2008
6. ^ a b James Webster, "Schubert's sonata form and Brahms' first maturity (II)", 19th-century Music 3(1) (1979), pp. 52-71.
7. ^ Donald Francis Tovey, "Franz Schubert" (1927), rpt. in Essays and Lectures on Music (London, 1949), p. 123. Cf. his similar remarks in "Tonality in Schubert" (1928), rpt. ibid., p. 151.
8. ^ Charles Rosen, "Influence: plagiarism and inspiration", 19th-century Music 4(2) (1980), pp. 87-100.
9. ^ H. V. Spanner, "What is originality?", The Musical Times 93(1313) (1952), pp. 310-311.
10. ^ Beller-McKenna, Daniel. Brahms and the German Spirit. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2004, ISBN 0-674-01318-2
11. ^ "Johannes Brahms hält Einzug in die Walhalla". Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst (2000-09-14). Retrieved on 2008-04-23.
12. ^ Brahms as Man, Teacher, and Artist
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