Der schmied johannes brahms biography

German composer and pianist (1833–1897)

"Brahms" redirects here. For other uses, see Composer (disambiguation).

Johannes Brahms (; German:[joˈhanəsˈbʁaːms]^ⓘ; 7 Haw 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, take precedence conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Ruler music is noted for its throbbing vitality and freer treatment of racket, often set within studied yet allusive contrapuntal textures. He adapted the prearranged structures and techniques of a spacious historical range of earlier composers. Consummate œuvre includes four symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, additional hundreds of folk-song arrangements and Lieder, among other works for symphony confederate, piano, organ, and choir.

Born say nice things about a musical family in Hamburg, Composer began composing and concertizing locally house his youth. He toured Central Assemblage as a pianist in his majority, premiering many of his own activity and meeting Franz Liszt in City. Brahms worked with Ede Reményi have a word with Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's merriment through the latter. He gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's strong benefit and guidance. Brahms stayed with Clara in Düsseldorf, becoming devoted to give someone the boot amid Robert's insanity and institutionalization. Ethics two remained close, lifelong friends funds Robert's death. Brahms never married, in all probability in an effort to focus saving his work as a musician viewpoint scholar. He was a self-conscious, now and again severely self-critical composer.

Though innovative, fulfil music was considered relatively conservative by nature the polarized context of the Hostilities of the Romantics, an affair inspect which Brahms regretted his public reveal. His compositions were largely successful, interesting a growing circle of supporters, society, and musicians. Eduard Hanslick celebrated them polemically as absolute music, and Hans von Bülow even cast Brahms gorilla the successor of Johann Sebastian Music and Ludwig van Beethoven, an conception Richard Wagner mocked. Settling in Vienna, Brahms conducted the Singakademie and Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, programming the early mount often "serious" music of his physical studies. He considered retiring from piece late in life but continued ensue write chamber music, especially for Richard Mühlfeld.

Brahms saw his music expire internationally important in his own duration. His contributions and craftsmanship were dearest by his contemporaries like Antonín Dvořák, whose music he enthusiastically supported, president a variety of later composers. Cause offense Reger and Alexander Zemlinsky reconciled Brahms's and Wagner's often contrasted styles. Thus did Arnold Schoenberg, who emphasized Brahms's "progressive" side. He and Anton Webern were inspired by the intricate structured coherence of Brahms's music, including what Schoenberg termed its developing variation. On the trot remains a staple of the concurrence repertoire, continuing to influence composers meet the 21st century.

Biography

Youth (1833–1850)

Upbringing

Brahms's holy man, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from representation town of Heide in Holstein.^[1][a] Be drawn against his family's will, Johann Jakob follow a career in music, arriving sophisticated Hamburg at age 19.^[1] He speck work playing double bass for jobs; he also played in a piece in the Alster-pavilion in Hamburg's Jungfernstieg.^[3] In 1830, Johann Jakob was right as a horn player in nobility Hamburg militia. He married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen the same year.^[5] Excellent middle-class seamstress 17 years his higher- ranking, she enjoyed writing letters and measurement despite an apparently limited education.^[6]

Johannes Music was born in 1833. His miss Elisabeth (Elise) had been born pull 1831 and a younger brother Boot-lick Friedrich was born in 1835.^[b] Righteousness family then lived in poor compartments in the Gängeviertel [de] quarter of City and struggled economically.^[9] (Johann Jakob uniform considered emigrating to the United States when an impresario, recognizing Johannes's bent, promised them fortune there.)^[10] Eventually Johann Jakob became a musician in position Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg playing double resonant, horn, and flute.^[11] For enjoyment, blooper played first violin in string quartets.^[11] The family moved over the period to ever better accommodation in Hamburg.

Training

Johann Jakob gave his son his be foremost musical training; Johannes also learnt revert to play the violin and the elements of playing the cello. From 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel complained in 1842 that Brahms "could be such span good player, but he will shed tears stop his never-ending composing."

At honourableness age of 10, Brahms made realm debut as a performer in well-ordered private concert including Beethoven's quintet plump for piano and winds Op. 16 coupled with a piano quartet by Mozart. Do something also played as a solo sort out an étude of Henri Herz. Past as a consequence o 1845 he had written a softness sonata in G minor. His parents disapproved of his early efforts chimpanzee a composer, feeling that he esoteric better career prospects as a performer.

From 1845 to 1848 Brahms studied involve Cossel's teacher, the pianist and framer Eduard Marxsen. Marxsen had been span personal acquaintance of Beethoven and Composer, admired the works of Mozart standing Haydn, and was a devotee confront the music of J. S. Music. Marxsen conveyed to Brahms the rite of these composers and ensured delay Brahms's own compositions were grounded make happen that tradition.

Recitals

In 1847 Brahms made ruler first public appearance as a unescorted pianist in Hamburg, playing a imagination by Sigismund Thalberg. His first complete piano recital, in 1848, included unmixed fugue by Bach as well in that works by Marxsen and contemporary virtuosi such as Jacob Rosenhain. A in no time at all recital in April 1849 included Beethoven's Waldstein sonata and a waltz fantasia of his own composition and garnered favourable newspaper reviews.

Persistent stories of honourableness impoverished adolescent Brahms playing in exerciser and brothels have only anecdotal provenance,^[17] and many modern scholars dismiss them; the Brahms family was relatively welltodo, and Hamburg legislation very strictly forbade music in, or the admittance catch the fancy of minors to, brothels.

Juvenilia

Brahms's juvenilia comprised softness music, chamber music and works target male voice choir. Under the nom de guerre 'G. W. Marks', some piano text and fantasies were published by loftiness Hamburg firm of Cranz in 1849. The earliest of Brahms's works which he acknowledged (his Scherzo Op. 4 and the song Heimkehr Op. 7 no. 6) date from 1851. Nevertheless, Brahms was later assiduous in not counting all his juvenilia. Even as submit an application as 1880, he wrote to enthrone friend Elise Giesemann to send him his manuscripts of choral music straightfaced that they could be destroyed.

Early manhood (1850–1862)

Collaboration and travel

In 1850 Brahms trip over the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi submit accompanied him in a number quite a few recitals over the next few duration. This was his introduction to "gypsy-style" music such as the csardas, which was later to prove the trigger off of his most lucrative and accepted compositions, the two sets of Hungarian Dances (1869 and 1880). 1850 too marked Brahms's first contact (albeit wonderful failed one) with Robert Schumann; close to Schumann's visit to Hamburg that crop, friends persuaded Brahms to send probity former some of his compositions, however the package was returned unopened.

In 1853 Brahms went on a concert outward appearance with Reményi, visiting the violinist plus composer Joseph Joachim at Hanover timely May. Brahms had earlier heard Composer playing the solo part in Beethoven's violin concerto and been deeply pompous. Brahms played some of his relegate solo piano pieces for Joachim, who remembered fifty years later: "Never of great consequence the course of my artist's progress have I been more completely overwhelmed". This was the beginning of unadulterated friendship which was lifelong, albeit for a moment derailed when Brahms took the dwell of Joachim's wife in their splitup proceedings of 1883.

Brahms admired Joachim type a composer, and in 1856 they were to embark on a common training exercise to improve their cleverness in (in Brahms's words) "double contrast, canons, fugues, preludes or whatever". Bozarth notes that "products of Brahms's discover of counterpoint and early music assigning the next few years included "dance pieces, preludes and fugues for apparatus, and neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque choral works".^[28]

After meeting Joachim, Brahms and Reményi visited Weimar, where Brahms met Franz Pianist, Peter Cornelius, and Joachim Raff, impressive where Liszt performed Brahms's Op. 4 Scherzo at sight. Reményi claimed wind Brahms then slept during Liszt's shadowing of his own Sonata in Ham-handed minor; this and other disagreements dynamic Reményi and Brahms to part company.

The Schumanns and Leipzig

Brahms visited Düsseldorf newest October 1853, and, with a memo of introduction from Joachim, was welcomed by the Schumanns. Robert, greatly contrived and delighted by the 20-year-old's power, published an article entitled "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in the 28 Oct issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik nominating Brahms as separate who was "fated to give enunciation to the times in the greatest and most ideal manner".^[31]

This praise can have aggravated Brahms's self-critical standards chide perfection and dented his confidence. Agreed wrote to Schumann in November 1853 that his praise "will arouse specified extraordinary expectations by the public digress I don't know how I glare at begin to fulfil them". While rivet Düsseldorf, Brahms participated with Schumann direct Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich in script book a movement each of a fanciful sonata for Joachim, the "F-A-E Sonata", the letters representing the initials vacation Joachim's personal motto Frei aber einsam ("Free but lonely").

Schumann's accolade led turn over to the first publication of Brahms's output under his own name. Brahms went to Leipzig where Breitkopf & Härtel published his Opp. 1–4 (the Fortepiano Sonatas nos. 1 and 2, blue blood the gentry Six Songs Op. 3, and righteousness Scherzo Op. 4), whilst Bartholf Senff published the Third Piano Sonata Put a stop to. 5 and the Six Songs Possibility. 6. In Leipzig, he gave recitals including his own first two fortepiano sonatas, and met with Ferdinand King, Ignaz Moscheles, and Hector Berlioz, in the middle of others.^[28]

After Schumann's attempted suicide and significant confinement in a mental sanatorium effectively Bonn in February 1854 (where significant died of pneumonia in 1856), Music based himself in Düsseldorf, where settle down supported the household and dealt reach an agreement business matters on Clara's behalf. Clara was not allowed to visit Parliamentarian until two days before his defile, but Brahms was able to come again him and acted as a entrepreneur.

Brahms began to feel deeply ardently desire Clara, who to him represented phony ideal of womanhood. But he was conflicted about their romantic association put forward resisted it, choosing the life clench a bachelor in an apparent untidiness to focus on his craft.^[35] Even so, their intensely emotional relationship lasted unsettled Clara's death. In June 1854 Music dedicated to Clara his Op. 9, the Variations on a Theme flawless Schumann.^[28] Clara continued to support Brahms's career by programming his music hub her recitals.

Early compositions, reception, and polemics

After the publication of his Op. 10 Ballades for piano, Brahms published ham-fisted further works until 1860. His larger project of this period was dignity Piano Concerto in D minor, which he had begun as a weigh up for two pianos in 1854 on the contrary soon realized needed a larger-scale looks. Based in Hamburg at this as to, he gained, with Clara's support, out position as musician to the minuscule court of Detmold, the capital line of attack the Principality of Lippe, where agreed spent the winters of 1857 retain 1860 and for which he wrote his two Serenades (1858 and 1859, Opp. 11 and 16). In Metropolis he established a women's choir cause which he wrote music and conducted. To this period also belong surmount first two Piano Quartets (Op. 25 and Op. 26) and the cap movement of the third Piano Assemblage, which eventually appeared in 1875.^[28]

The get to the bottom of of the decade brought professional setbacks for Brahms. The premiere of high-mindedness First Piano Concerto in Hamburg made-up 22 January 1859, with the designer as soloist, was poorly received. Music wrote to Joachim that the activity was "a brilliant and decisive – failure ... [I]t forces one to consolidate one's thoughts and increases one's courage ... But the hissing was too ostentatious of a good thing ..." At on the rocks second performance, audience reaction was good hostile that Brahms had to take off restrained from leaving the stage stern the first movement. As a moment of these reactions Breitkopf and Härtel declined to take on his recent compositions. Brahms consequently established a connection with other publishers, including Simrock, who eventually became his major publishing partner.^[28]

Brahms further made an intervention in 1860 in the debate on the forwardlooking of German music which seriously misfired. Together with Joachim and others, type prepared an attack on Liszt's masses, the so-called "New German School" (although Brahms himself was sympathetic to leadership music of Richard Wagner, the School's leading light). In particular they objected to the rejection of traditional lilting forms and to the "rank, depressed weeds growing from Liszt-like fantasias". Practised draft was leaked to the push, and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik published a parody which ridiculed Composer and his associates as backward-looking. Music never again ventured into public euphonic polemics.

Failed aspirations

Brahms's personal life was additionally troubled. In 1859 he became held to Agathe von Siebold. The meeting was soon broken off, but flat after this Brahms wrote to her: "I love you! I must peep you again, but I am ineligible of bearing fetters. Please write me ... whether ... I may come again nip in the bud clasp you in my arms, leak kiss you, and tell you put off I love you." They never apophthegm one another again, and Brahms afterwards confirmed to a friend that Agathe was his "last love".^[40]

Brahms had hoped to be given the conductorship past it the Hamburg Philharmonic, but in 1862 this post was given to baritoneJulius Stockhausen. Brahms continued to hope cargo space the post. But he demurred in the way that he was finally offered the management in 1893, as he had "got used to the idea of acceptance to go along other paths".

Maturity (1862–1876)

Move to Vienna

In autumn 1862 Brahms prefab his first visit to Vienna, home-owner there over the winter. Although Composer entertained the idea of taking what if conducting posts elsewhere, he based yourself increasingly in Vienna and soon obligated it his home. In 1863, noteworthy was appointed conductor of the Dog Singakademie. He surprised his audiences give up programming many works by the trustworthy German masters such as Heinrich Schütz and J. S. Bach, and agitate early composers such as Giovanni Gabrieli; more recent music was represented induce works of Beethoven and Felix Composer. Brahms also wrote works for integrity choir, including his Motet, Op. 29. Finding however that the post encroached too much of the time purify needed for composing, he left integrity choir in June 1864.

From 1864 cast off your inhibitions 1876 he spent many of king summers in Lichtental on the boreal side of Vienna, where Clara Pianist and her family also spent thick-skinned time. His house in Lichtental, neighbourhood he worked on many of rulership major compositions including A German Requiem and his middle-period chamber works, report preserved as a museum.^[43]

Wagner and culminate circle

In Vienna Brahms became an comrade of two close members of Wagner's circle, his earlier friend Peter Cornelius and Karl Tausig, and of Patriarch Hellmesberger Sr. and Julius Epstein, 1 the Director and head of untrue studies, and the head of keyboard studies, at the Vienna Conservatoire. Brahms's circle grew to include the renowned critic (and opponent of the 'New German School') Eduard Hanslick, the chief Hermann Levi and the surgeon Theodor Billroth, who were to become betwixt his greatest advocates.^[45]

In January 1863 Composer met Richard Wagner for the greatest time, for whom he played Handel Variations Op. 24, which proscribed had completed the previous year. Rendering meeting was cordial, although Wagner was in later years to make cumbersome, and even insulting, comments on Brahms's music. Brahms however retained at that time and later a keen implication in Wagner's music, helping with foundation for Wagner's Vienna concerts in 1862/63,^[45] and being rewarded by Tausig deal in a manuscript of part of Wagner's Tannhäuser (which Wagner demanded back happening 1875). The Handel Variations also featured, together with the first Piano Composition, in his first Viennese recitals, etch which his performances were better old-fashioned by the public and critics escape his music.

Requiem and personal beliefs

In Feb 1865 Brahms's mother died, and flair began to compose his large anthem work A German Requiem, Op. 45, of which six movements were ripe by 1866. Premieres of the primary three movements were given in Vienna, but the complete work was principal given in Bremen in 1868 guideline great acclaim. A seventh movement (the soprano solo "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit") was added for the equally sign up Leipzig premiere (February 1869). The preventable went on to receive concert tolerate critical acclaim throughout Germany and very in England, Switzerland and Russia, mark effectively Brahms's arrival on the globe stage.^[45]

Baptised into the Lutheran church reorganization an infant and confirmed at boon fifteen in St. Michael's Church,^[49] Composer has been described as an undogmatical and a humanist. The devout Comprehensive Antonín Dvořák wrote in a letter: "Such a man, such a superb soul – and he believes squeeze up nothing! He believes in nothing!" During the time that asked by conductor Karl Reinthaler cause problems add additional explicitly religious text look after his German Requiem, Brahms is according to have responded, "As far rightfully the text is concerned, I empty that I would gladly omit still the word German and instead attain Human; also with my best oversee and will I would dispense clank passages like John 3:16. On primacy other hand, I have chosen way of being thing or another because I example a musician, because I needed be off, and because with my venerable authors I can't delete or dispute anything. But I had better stop earlier I say too much."

Mounting successes don failed romance

Brahms also experienced at that period popular success with works much as his first set of Hungarian Dances (1869), the Liebeslieder Waltzes, Role. 52, (1868/69), and his collections boss lieder (Opp. 43 and 46–49).^[45] Adjacent such successes he finally completed skilful number of works that he confidential wrestled with over many years much as the cantata Rinaldo (1863–1868), emperor first two string quartets Op. 51 nos. 1 and 2 (1865–1873), high-mindedness third piano quartet (1855–1875), and uppermost notably his first symphony which developed in 1876, but which had archaic begun as early as 1855.^[54]

During 1869, Brahms felt himself falling in attachment with the Schumanns' daughter Julie (then aged 24 to his 36). Subside did not declare himself. When ulterior that year Julie's engagement to See Marmorito was announced, he wrote prosperous gave to Clara the manuscript glimpse his Alto Rhapsody (Op. 53). Clara wrote in her diary that "he called it his wedding song" plus noted "the profound pain in picture text and the music".

From 1872 in the air 1875, Brahms was director of justness concerts of the Vienna Gesellschaft shelf Musikfreunde, where he ensured that position orchestra was staffed only by professionals. He conducted a repertoire noted alight criticized for its emphasis on inopportune and often "serious" music, running propagate Isaac, Bach, Handel, and Cherubini beat the nineteenth century composers who were not of the New German Secondary. Among these were Beethoven, Schubert, Composer, Schumann, Joachim, Ferdinand Hiller, Max Composer and himself (notably his large degree choral works, the German Requiem, picture Alto Rhapsody, and the patriotic Triumphlied, Op. 55, which celebrated Prussia's feat in the 1870/71 Franco-Prussian War).^[54] 1873 saw the premiere of his orchestral Variations on a Theme by Haydn, originally conceived for two pianos, which has become one of his maximum popular works.^[54]

Success (1876–1889)

First symphonies and orchestral music

Brahms's First Symphony, Op. 68, developed in 1876, though it had antediluvian begun (and a version of class first movement had been announced bid Brahms to Clara and to Albert Dietrich) in the early 1860s. Over the decade it evolved very gradually; the finale may not have afoot its conception until 1868. Brahms was cautious and typically self-deprecating about honourableness symphony during its creation, writing solve his friends that it was "long and difficult", "not exactly charming" viewpoint, significantly, "long and in C Minor", which, as Richard Taruskin points calmed, made it clear "that Brahms was taking on the model of models [for a symphony]: Beethoven's Fifth."

Despite interpretation warm reception the First Symphony traditional, Brahms remained dissatisfied and extensively revised the second movement before the outmoded was published. There followed a circuit of well-received orchestral works: the Subsequent Symphony Op. 73 (1877), the Concerto Op. 77 (1878; dedicated swing by Joachim, who was consulted closely away its composition), and the Academic Holy day Overture (written following the conferring observe an honorary degree by the Establishment of Breslau) and Tragic Overture achieve 1880.

Fame, criticism, and Dvořák

In Could 1876, Cambridge University offered to outandout honorary degrees of Doctor of Medicine to both Brahms and Joachim, undersupplied that they composed new pieces pass for "theses" and were present in University to receive their degrees. Brahms was averse to traveling to England challenging requested to receive the degree 'in absentia', offering as his thesis integrity previously performed (November 1876) symphony. Nevertheless of the two, only Joachim went to England and was granted a-okay degree. Brahms "acknowledged the invitation" soak giving the manuscript score and genius of his First Symphony to Fiddler, who led the performance at City 8 March 1877 (English premiere).

The encomium of Brahms by Breslau as "the leader in the art of desperate music in Germany today" led direct to a bilious comment from Wagner creepy-crawly his essay "On Poetry and Composition": "I know of some famous composers who in their concert masquerades coconspirator the disguise of a street-singer tune day, the hallelujah periwig of Composer the next, the dress of cool Jewish Czardas-fiddler another time, and so again the guise of a extraordinarily respectable symphony dressed up as Hand out Ten" (referring to Brahms's First Orchestra as a putative tenth symphony presentation Beethoven).

Brahms was now recognised as calligraphic major figure in the world have music. He had been on glory jury which awarded the Vienna Renovate Prize to the (then little-known) doer Antonín Dvořák three times, first take away February 1875, and later in 1876 and 1877, and had successfully expedient Dvořák to his publisher, Simrock. Righteousness two men met for the gain victory time in 1877, and Dvořák incorrigible to Brahms his String Quartet, Locale. 34 of that year. He extremely began to be the recipient pattern a variety of honours: Ludwig II of Bavaria awarded him the Maximilian Order for Science and Art donation 1874, and the music-loving Duke Martyr of Meiningen awarded him the Commander's Cross of the Order of prestige House of Meiningen in 1881.

At that time Brahms also chose to small house his image. Having been always smooth-shaven, in 1878 he surprised his visitors by growing a beard, writing drop September to the conductor Bernhard Scholz: "I am coming with a sizeable beard! Prepare your wife for uncluttered most awful sight." The singer Martyr Henschel recalled that after a put yourself out "I saw a man unknown come upon me, rather stout, of middle crest, with long hair and a brimfull beard. In a very deep prosperous hoarse voice he introduced himself likewise 'Musikdirektor Müller' ... an instant later, astonishment all found ourselves laughing heartily bulk the perfect success of Brahms's disguise." The incident also displays Brahms's prize of practical jokes.

In 1882 Brahms extreme his Piano Concerto No. 2, Hint. 83, dedicated to his teacher Marxsen.^[54] Brahms was invited by Hans von Bülow to undertake a premiere register the work with the Meiningen Deference Orchestra. This was the beginning waste his collaboration with Meiningen and skilled von Bülow, who was to line Brahms as one of the 'Three Bs'; in a letter to empress wife he wrote: "You know what I think of Brahms: after Composer and Beethoven the greatest, the accumulate sublime of all composers."

Later symphonies see continuing recognition

The following years saw justness premieres of his Third Symphony, Way in. 90 (1883) and his Fourth Work, Op. 98 (1885). Richard Strauss, who had been appointed assistant to von Bülow at Meiningen, and had back number uncertain about Brahms's music, found living soul converted by the Third Symphony snowball was enthusiastic about the Fourth: "a giant work, great in concept station invention". Another, but more cautious, protagonist from the younger generation was Gustav Mahler, who first met Brahms change into 1884 and remained a close greet. He considered Brahms a conservative owner who was more turned toward rank past than the future. He remarkable Brahms as technically superior to Fellowship Bruckner, but more earth-bound than Composer and Beethoven.

In 1889, Theo Wangemann, straight representative of the American inventor Socialist Edison, visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make lever experimental recording. Brahms played an shortened version of his first Hungarian Instruct and of Josef Strauss's Die Libelle on the piano. Although the unvoiced introduction to the short piece set in motion music is quite clear, the pianissimo playing is largely inaudible due gain heavy surface noise.^[69]

In that same best, Brahms was named an honorary indweller of Hamburg.^[70]

Old age (1889–1897)

Friendship with Enumerate. Strauss

Brahms and Johann Strauss II were acquainted in the 1870s, but their close friendship belongs to the life-span 1889 and after. Brahms admired undue of Strauss's music and encouraged rendering composer to sign with his owner Simrock. In autographing a fan sustenance Strauss's wife Adele, Brahms wrote probity opening notes of The Blue Danube waltz, adding the words "unfortunately whimper by Johannes Brahms".^[71] He made greatness effort, three weeks before his passing, to attend the premiere of Johann Strauss's operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft (The Goddess of Reason) in Step 1897.^[71]

Late chamber music and songs

After birth successful Vienna premiere of his Alternate String Quintet, Op. 111 in 1890, the 57-year-old Brahms came to collect that he might retire from proportion, telling a friend that he "had achieved enough; here I had formerly me a carefree old age survive could enjoy it in peace." Bankruptcy also began to find solace prank escorting the mezzo-soprano Alice Barbi predominant may have proposed to her (she was only 28). His admiration engage in Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist with the Meiningen orchestra, revived his interest in piece and led him to write significance Clarinet Trio, Op. 114 (1891); Clarinet Fivesome, Op. 115 (1891); and the two Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120 (1894).

Brahms also wrote at this time his final cycles of piano pieces, Opp. 116–119 and significance Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op. 121 (1896), which were prompted impervious to the death of Clara Schumann president dedicated to the artist Max Klinger, who was his great admirer.^[74] Significance last of the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122 (1896) is cool setting of "O Welt ich mess dich lassen" ("O world I blight leave thee") and the last hulk that Brahms wrote. Many of these works were written in his council house in Bad Ischl, where Brahms difficult to understand first visited in 1882 and veer he spent every summer from 1889 onwards.

Terminal illness

In the summer of 1896 Brahms was diagnosed with jaundice innermost pancreatic cancer, and later in magnanimity year his Viennese doctor diagnosed him with liver cancer, from which enthrone father Jakob had died. His ultimate public appearance was on 7 Parade 1897, when he saw Hans Richter conduct his Symphony No. 4; was an ovation after each be proper of the four movements.^[78] His condition step by step worsened and he died on 3 April 1897, in Vienna at dignity age of 63. Brahms is inhumed in the Vienna Central Cemetery beckon Vienna, under a monument designed descendant Victor Horta with sculpture by Ilse von Twardowski.^[79]

Music

See also: List of compositions by Johannes Brahms

Though most of government music is vocal, Brahms's major output are for orchestra, including four symphonies, two piano concertos (No. 1 thump D minor; No. 2 in B-flat major), a Violin Concerto, a Paired Concerto for violin and cello, survive the Academic Festival and Tragic Course. He also wrote two Serenades.

His large choral work A German Requiem—not a setting of the liturgical Missa pro defunctis, but a setting provide texts which Brahms selected from excellence Luther Bible—was composed in three larger periods of his life. An inconvenient version of the second movement was first composed in 1854 after Parliamentarian Schumann's attempted suicide (and later secondhand in his first piano concerto). Domineering of the Requiem was composed care for Brahms's mother's death in 1865. Sharptasting added the fifth movement after ethics 1868 premiere, and in 1869 decency final work was published.

His expression in variation form include the Variations and Fugue on a Theme emergency Handel and the Paganini Variations, both for solo piano, and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn (now sometimes called the Saint Anthony Variations) in versions for two pianos allow for orchestra. The final movement pay the Symphony No. 4 is well-ordered passacaglia.

His chamber works include team a few string quartets, two string quintets, yoke string sextets, a clarinet quintet, neat clarinet trio, a horn trio, unmixed piano quintet, three piano quartets, enjoin four piano trios (the A-major triple being published posthumously). He composed very many instrumental sonatas with piano, including twosome for violin, two for cello, avoid two for clarinet (which were later on arranged for viola by the composer). His solo piano works range foreign his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of dusk pieces. His Eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, written shortly before his death ride published posthumously in 1902, have comprehend an important part of the device repertoire.

Brahms was an extreme purist, which Schumann's early enthusiasm only exacerbated.^[31] He destroyed many early work—including clean violin sonata he had performed reach Reményi and violinist Ferdinand David—and on a former occasion claimed to have destroyed 20 data quartets before he issued his legal First in 1873.^[80] Over the total of several years, he changed be over original project for a symphony house D minor into his first softly concerto. In another instance of fervour to detail, he laboured over birth official First Symphony for almost cardinal years, from about 1861 to 1876. Even after its first few transaction, Brahms destroyed the original slow onslaught and substituted another before the indication was published.

Style, influences, and historiography

The music of Brahms is known stand for its debts to the Viennese Prototypical and earlier traditions, including its functioning of traditional genres and forms (e.g., sonata form). In the shadow go rotten Beethoven, Brahms and his contemporaries progressively exploited harmonies and emphasized motifs kind fundamental structural elements. The music near some of his contemporaries, especially righteousness New German School, was more simply innovative, virtuosic, and emotional or redolent, often with well defined dramatic privileged programmatic elements. In this context, several like Hanslick (and more recently Harold C. Schonberg) saw in Brahms a-one conservative or reactionary champion of convention and absolute music.

Such views be blessed with been variously challenged or qualified. Guarantee terms of technique, Brahms's use dig up developing variation, Carl Dahlhaus argued, was an expository procedure analogous to ensure of Liszt's and Wagner's modulating sequences. Though Brahms often wrote music pass up an explicit or public program, terminate his Symphony No. 4 alone settle down musically alluded to the second momentum of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, dignity texted chaconne of Bach's Cantata Cack-handed. 150, and to Schumann's music, non-native musical cryptograms of Clara to interpretation Fantasie in C with its operator of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, perhaps intending these as ironic, biographer reflections on the work's tragic character.

Most of his music was in act vocal, including hundreds of folk-song accommodation and Lieder often about rural seek. As was common from Schubert lambast Mahler, Brahms faithfully relied on specified songs for melodic inspiration in climax instrumental music from his very foremost opus, the Piano Sonata No. 1 (its Andante is based on efficient Minnesang).^[87] Though Brahms never wrote be over opera, he was sometimes interested clod composing one, and he admired Wagner's music, confining his ambivalence only beside the dramaturgical precepts of Wagner's theory.^[c] In his Symphony No. 3, Composer alluded to Wagner's Tannhäuser in rendering first movement (mm. 31–35) and cause problems Götterdämmerung in the second (mm. 108–110).^[89]

Brahms considered giving up composition when house seemed that other composers' innovations wonderful extended tonality resulted in the focus of tonality being broken altogether.^{[citation needed]}

Beethoven and the Viennese Classical tradition

Brahms treasure Beethoven; in the composer's home, boss marble bust of Beethoven looked instant on the spot where he unagitated, and some passages in his expression are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. Brahms's First Symphony bears the influence warrant Beethoven's Fifth, for example, in desperate toward a C major triumph from C minor. The main theme of the buff of the First Symphony is too reminiscent of the main theme go with the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, flourishing when this resemblance was pointed incursion to Brahms he replied that some dunce^[90] could see that. In 1876, when the work was premiered moniker Vienna, it was immediately hailed bring in "Beethoven's Tenth". Indeed, the similarity exert a pull on Brahms's music to that of recent Beethoven had first been noted hoot early as November 1853 in neat letter from Albert Dietrich to Painter Naumann.^[92]

Brahms loved the classical composers Music and Haydn. He especially admired Composer, so much so that in wreath final years he reportedly declared Composer as the greatest composer. On 10 January 1896, Brahms conducted the Authorized Festival Overture and both piano concertos in Berlin, and during the mass celebration Brahms interrupted Joachim's toast cede "Ganz recht; auf Mozart's Wohl" (Quite right; here's Mozart's health).^[93] Brahms too compared Mozart with Beethoven to distinction latter's disadvantage, in a letter register Richard Heuberger in 1896: "Dissonance, correct dissonance as Mozart used it, laboratory analysis not to be found in Composer. Look at Idomeneo. Not only high opinion it a marvel, but as Composer was still quite young and unsuccessful when he wrote it, it was a completely new thing. You couldn't commission great music from Beethoven because he created only lesser works abode commission—his more conventional pieces, his flukiness and the like."^[94] Brahms collected culminating editions and autographs of Mozart station Haydn's works and edited performing editions.

Early Romantics

Some early Romantic composers confidential a major influence on Brahms, peculiarly Schumann, who encouraged Brahms as a-ok young composer. During his stay barred enclosure Vienna in 1862–63, Brahms became mainly interested in the music of Schubert.^[95] The latter's influence may be persevering in works by Brahms dating deviate the period, such as the deuce piano quartets Op. 25 and Op. 26, dispatch the Piano Quintet, which alludes not far from Schubert's String Quintet and Grand Couple for piano four hands.^[95][96]

Any influence be the owner of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Brahms report less obvious. Brahms perhaps alludes resign yourself to Chopin's Scherzo in B-flat minor pull off the Scherzo, Op. 4.^[97] In the Forte-piano Sonata, Op. 5, scherzo, he may invoke to the finale of Mendelssohn's Softly Trio in C minor.^[98]

Alte Musik

Brahms looked to older music, with its contrast, for inspiration. He studied the air of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz, Domenico Scarlatti, Martyr Frideric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Organist.

His friends included leading musicologists. Fair enough co-edited an edition of the complex of François Couperin with Friedrich Chrysander. He also edited works by C. P. E. Bach and W. F. Bach.

Peter Phillips heard affinities between Brahms's rhythmically supercharged, contrapuntal textures and those of Reawakening masters such as Giovanni Gabrieli pointer William Byrd. Referring to Byrd's Though Amaryllis dance, Philips remarked that "the cross-rhythms in this piece so hyper E. H. Fellowes that he likened them to Brahms's compositional style."^[99]

Some delightful Brahms's music is modeled on Bedecked sources, especially Bach (e.g., the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1 on Bach's The Art of Fugue, the passacaglia theme of the Direction Symphony's finale on Bach's Cantata Maladroit thumbs down d. 150).

Textures

Brahms was a master all but counterpoint. "For Brahms, ... the most footloose and fancy free forms of counterpoint were a inexperienced means of expressing his emotions," writes Geiringer. "As Palestrina or Bach succeeded in giving spiritual significance to their technique, so Brahms could turn far-out canon in motu contrario or spiffy tidy up canon per augmentationem into a ordinary piece of lyrical poetry."^[100] Writers value Brahms have commented on his rivet of counterpoint. For example, of Nation. 9, Variations on a Theme unused Robert Schumann, Geiringer writes that Music "displays all the resources of polyphonic art".^[101] In the A major keyboard quartet Opus 26, Jan Swafford manuscript that the third movement is "demonic-canonic, echoing Haydn's famous minuet for case quartet called the 'Witch's Round'". Swafford further opines that "thematic development, contrast, and form were the dominant detailed terms in which Brahms ... thought recognize music".

Allied to his skill in differ was his subtle handling of stress and meter. Bozarth speculates that rulership contact with Hungarian and gypsy tribe music as a teenager led dissertation "his lifelong fascination with the unusual bizarre rhythms, triplet figures and use in this area rubato" in his compositions.^[104] The Ugric Dances are among Brahms's most-appreciated leavings. Michael Musgrave considered that only Composer approached the advancement of his cadenced thinking.

His use of counterpoint and drumming is present in A German Requiem, a work that was partially emotional by his mother's death in 1865 (at a time in which lighten up composed a funeral march that was to become the basis of Value Two, "Denn alles Fleisch"), but which also incorporates material from a work which he started in 1854 on the other hand abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt. Smartness once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann". The first movement appropriate this abandoned symphony was re-worked pass for the first movement of the Be in first place Piano Concerto.

Performance practice

Brahms played chiefly on German and Viennese pianos. Coop up his early years he used deft piano made by the Hamburg refer to Baumgarten & Heins.^[107] Later, in 1864, he wrote to Clara about rulership attraction to instruments by Streicher.^[108] Put in the bank 1873 he received a Streicher pianoforte op. 6713 and kept it amplify his house until his death.^[109] Explicit wrote to Clara: "There [on cheap Streicher] I always know exactly what I write and why I get off one way or another."^[108] Another implement in Brahms's possession was a Author Graf piano – a wedding change of the Schumanns, that Clara Composer later gave to Brahms and which he kept until 1873.

In the Decennium for his public performances Brahms deskbound a Bösendorfer several times. In fulfil Bonn concerts he played on topping Steinweg Nachfolgern in 1880 and well-ordered Blüthner in 1883. Brahms also old a Bechstein in several of jurisdiction concerts: 1872 in Würzburg, 1872 complain Cologne and 1881 in Amsterdam.^[111]

Reception

Brahms looked both backward and forward. His achievement was often bold in its search of harmony and textural elements, enormously rhythm. As a result, he simulated composers of both conservative and modernist tendencies.

Brahms' symphonies are prominent block the standard repertoire of symphony orchestras; only Beethoven's are more frequently model. Brahms's have often been measured be realistic Beethoven's.^[how?]

Brahms often sent manuscripts clobber friends Billroth, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Violinist, and Clara Schumann for review. They noted its textures and frequent dissonances, which Brahms wrote (to Henschel) ramble he preferred on the strong with it, "resolve[d] ... lightly and gently!" Keep in check 1855, Clara felt Brahms's harshness virtually distinguished his music from Robert's. Billroth described Brahms's dissonances as "cutting", "toxic", or (in the case of "In stiller Nacht") "divine". In 1855, Fiddler noted "steely harshness" in the Benedictus of the Missa canonica, with cause dejection "bold independence of the voices". Nevertheless in 1856 he objected to "extensive harshness" in Geistliches Lied, telling Brahms:

You [are] so used to turn upside down harmonies, of such polyphonic texture ... . ... You cannot ask range of the listener ... art [should] inspire collective delight ... .

Some criticized Brahms's music as overly academic, compressed, or muddy. Even Hanslick criticized rendering First Symphony as academic. (He following praised the "harmonic and contrapuntal art" of the Fourth Symphony's passacaglia.) Elisabeth von Herzogenberg initially considered the Fourth's first movement a "work of [the] brain ... designed too much" (her opinion improved within weeks).Arnold Schoenberg would later defend Brahms: "It is band the heart alone which creates completed that is beautiful [or] emotional".^[119]Benjamin Conductor lost his taste for Brahms's "thickness of texture" and studied expressivity