Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms (May 7, 1833 – April 3, 1897), composer and pianist, was one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms’s popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.

Brahms composed for piano, for chamber ensembles, for symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. An accomplished pianist, he gave the first performance of many of his own works; he also worked with the leading performers of his time, including the virtuoso pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many works and left some unpublished.

Brahms was at once a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined method of composition for which Bach is famous. Yet within these structures, Brahms created bold new approaches to harmony and timbre which challenged existing notions of tonal music. His contribution and craftsmanship has been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. Brahms’s works were a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers, including Schoenberg, who eventually abandoned tonality.

Music – Influences and Style

Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works – in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. Thus many admirers (though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and “pure music,” as opposed to the New German embrace of program music.

Brahms venerated Beethoven: in the composer’s home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven’s style. The main theme of the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony is reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, and when this resemblance was pointed out to Brahms he replied that any ass – jeder Esel – could see that.

A German Requiem was partially inspired by his mother’s death in 1865, but also incorporates material from a Symphony he started in 1854, but abandoned following Schumann’s suicide attempt. He once wrote that the Requiem “belonged to Schumann”. The first movement of this abandoned Symphony was re-worked as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto.

Brahms also loved the Classical composers Mozart and Haydn. He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and edited performing editions. He also studied the music of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz and especially Johann Sebastian Bach. His friends included leading musicologists, and with Friedrich Chrysander he edited an edition of the works of François Couperin. He looked to older music for inspiration in the arts of strict counterpoint; the themes of some of his works are modelled on Baroque sources, such as Bach’s The Art of Fugue in the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1, or the same composer’s Cantata No. 150 in the passacaglia theme of the Fourth Symphony’s finale.

The early Romantic composers also had a major influence on Brahms, particularly Schumann who encouraged Brahms as a young composer. Brahms often met Robert and Clara Schumann. During his stay in Vienna in 1862-3, Brahms became particularly interested in the music of Franz Schubert. The latter’s influence may be identified in works by Brahms dating from the period, such as the two piano quartets Op. 25 and Op. 26, and the Piano Quintet which alludes to Schubert’s String Quintet and Grand Duo for piano four hands. There is less evidence for influence of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Brahms, although occasionally one can find in his works what seems to be an allusion to one of their works (for example, Brahms’s Scherzo, Op. 4 alludes to Chopin’s Scherzo in B-flat minor; the scherzo movement in Brahms’s Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 5 alludes to the finale of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C minor).

Brahms considered giving up composition when it seemed that other composers’ innovations in extended tonality would result in the rule of tonality being broken altogether. Although Wagner became fiercely critical of Brahms as the latter grew in stature and popularity, he was enthusiastically receptive of the early Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel; Brahms himself, according to many sources (Swafford, 1999), deeply admired Wagner’s music, confining his ambivalence only to the dramaturgical precepts of Wagner’s theory.

Brahms wrote settings for piano and voice of 144 German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life. His Hungarian dances were among his most profitable compositions.

Although Brahms’s religious views are not clear, one of his greatest influences was the Bible. He read especially Luther’s translation. His “Requiem” employs biblical texts to convey a humanist message, and focus on the living rather than the dead. Author Walter Niemann declared, “The fact that Brahms began his creative activity with the German folk song and closed with the Bible reveals…the true religious creed of this great man of the people.” Others see Brahms as more of a cultural Lutheran who embraced the cultural aspects of his upbringing but may or may not have adopted the religious beliefs.

Writing in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Denis Arnold concludes, ‘…his appeal to musicians lies in the quality of his craftsmanship. His wider appeal surely lies in the essential conflict between the depth of emotion so often evident yet hidden behind his natural reserve. …’