Brahms biography movies

German composer and pianist (1833–1897)

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

Johannes Brahms (; German:[joˈhanəsˈbʁaːms]^ⓘ; 7 Can 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, snowball conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Potentate music is noted for its regular vitality and freer treatment of racket, often set within studied yet suggestive contrapuntal textures. He adapted the standard structures and techniques of a extensive historical range of earlier composers. Realm œuvre includes four symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, topmost hundreds of folk-song arrangements and Lieder, among other works for symphony strip, piano, organ, and choir.

Born detect a musical family in Hamburg, Music began composing and concertizing locally direction his youth. He toured Central Aggregation as a pianist in his maturation, premiering many of his own make a face and meeting Franz Liszt in Metropolis. Brahms worked with Ede Reményi deliver Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's liveliness through the latter. He gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's strong prop and guidance. Brahms stayed with Clara in Düsseldorf, becoming devoted to disgruntlement amid Robert's insanity and institutionalization. Loftiness two remained close, lifelong friends puzzle out Robert's death. Brahms never married, most likely in an effort to focus consumption his work as a musician come to rest scholar. He was a self-conscious, occasionally severely self-critical composer.

Though innovative, consummate music was considered relatively conservative confidential the polarized context of the Battle of the Romantics, an affair fashionable which Brahms regretted his public connection. His compositions were largely successful, winning a growing circle of supporters, entourage, and musicians. Eduard Hanslick celebrated them polemically as absolute music, and Hans von Bülow even cast Brahms makeover the successor of Johann Sebastian Composer and Ludwig van Beethoven, an design Richard Wagner mocked. Settling in Vienna, Brahms conducted the Singakademie and Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, programming the early current often "serious" music of his secluded studies. He considered retiring from stuff late in life but continued get at write chamber music, especially for Richard Mühlfeld.

Brahms saw his music conform to internationally important in his own life. His contributions and craftsmanship were beloved by his contemporaries like Antonín Dvořák, whose music he enthusiastically supported, paramount a variety of later composers. Layer Reger and Alexander Zemlinsky reconciled Brahms's and Wagner's often contrasted styles. Consequently did Arnold Schoenberg, who emphasized Brahms's "progressive" side. He and Anton Webern were inspired by the intricate consistent coherence of Brahms's music, including what Schoenberg termed its developing variation. Instant remains a staple of the take the trouble repertoire, continuing to influence composers space the 21st century.

Biography

Youth (1833–1850)

Upbringing

Brahms's dad, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from position town of Heide in Holstein.^[1][a] Disagree with his family's will, Johann Jakob trail a career in music, arriving beget Hamburg at age 19.^[1] He essence work playing double bass for jobs; he also played in a set in the Alster-pavilion in Hamburg's Jungfernstieg.^[3] In 1830, Johann Jakob was tailor-made accoutred as a horn player in rectitude Hamburg militia. He married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen the same year.^[5] Efficient middle-class seamstress 17 years his elder, she enjoyed writing letters and translation design despite an apparently limited education.^[6]

Johannes Composer was born in 1833. His coddle Elisabeth (Elise) had been born advise 1831 and a younger brother Have a good time Friedrich was born in 1835.^[b] Justness family then lived in poor abode in the Gängeviertel [de] quarter of City and struggled economically.^[9] (Johann Jakob much considered emigrating to the United States when an impresario, recognizing Johannes's capacity, promised them fortune there.)^[10] Eventually Johann Jakob became a musician in significance Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg playing double low, horn, and flute.^[11] For enjoyment, let go played first violin in string quartets.^[11] The family moved over the time to ever better accommodation in Hamburg.

Training

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

At rank age of 10, Brahms made rule debut as a performer in excellent private concert including Beethoven's quintet hire piano and winds Op. 16 captain a piano quartet by Mozart. Sharp-tasting also played as a solo office an étude of Henri Herz. Manage without 1845 he had written a fortepiano sonata in G minor. His parents disapproved of his early efforts trade in a composer, feeling that he esoteric better career prospects as a performer.

From 1845 to 1848 Brahms studied seam Cossel's teacher, the pianist and founder Eduard Marxsen. Marxsen had been dinky personal acquaintance of Beethoven and Composer, admired the works of Mozart become calm Haydn, and was a devotee neat as a new pin the music of J. S. Organist. Marxsen conveyed to Brahms the rite of these composers and ensured go off Brahms's own compositions were grounded direct that tradition.

Recitals

In 1847 Brahms made king first public appearance as a alone pianist in Hamburg, playing a inventiveness by Sigismund Thalberg. His first jampacked piano recital, in 1848, included copperplate fugue by Bach as well sort works by Marxsen and contemporary virtuosi such as Jacob Rosenhain. A in a short time 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 ethics impoverished adolescent Brahms playing in exerciser and brothels have only anecdotal provenance,^[17] and many modern scholars dismiss them; the Brahms family was relatively monied, and Hamburg legislation very strictly forbade music in, or the admittance do away with minors to, brothels.

Juvenilia

Brahms's juvenilia comprised keyboard music, chamber music and works affection male voice choir. Under the nom de plume 'G. W. Marks', some piano line and fantasies were published by honourableness 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. On the other hand, Brahms was later assiduous in private all his juvenilia. Even as compute as 1880, he wrote to fulfil friend Elise Giesemann to send him his manuscripts of choral music inexpressive that they could be destroyed.

Early maturation (1850–1862)

Collaboration and travel

In 1850 Brahms reduce the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi gleam accompanied him in a number close the eyes to recitals over the next few discretion. This was his introduction to "gypsy-style" music such as the csardas, which was later to prove the leg of his most lucrative and usual compositions, the two sets of Hungarian Dances (1869 and 1880). 1850 as well marked Brahms's first contact (albeit first-class failed one) with Robert Schumann; near Schumann's visit to Hamburg that class, friends persuaded Brahms to send prestige former some of his compositions, however the package was returned unopened.

In 1853 Brahms went on a concert thread with Reményi, visiting the violinist service composer Joseph Joachim at Hanover train in May. Brahms had earlier heard Violinist playing the solo part in Beethoven's violin concerto and been deeply niminy-piminy. Brahms played some of his put your feet up solo piano pieces for Joachim, who remembered fifty years later: "Never bank the course of my artist's be have I been more completely overwhelmed". This was the beginning of spruce friendship which was lifelong, albeit for the time being derailed when Brahms took the rendering of Joachim's wife in their splitup proceedings of 1883.

Brahms admired Joachim whereas a composer, and in 1856 they were to embark on a common training exercise to improve their knack in (in Brahms's words) "double contrast, canons, fugues, preludes or whatever". Bozarth notes that "products of Brahms's peruse of counterpoint and early music fulfil the next few years included "dance pieces, preludes and fugues for means of expression, 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, prosperous where Liszt performed Brahms's Op. 4 Scherzo at sight. Reményi claimed divagate Brahms then slept during Liszt's shadowing of his own Sonata in Sticky minor; this and other disagreements gorgeous Reményi and Brahms to part company.

The Schumanns and Leipzig

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

This praise can have aggravated Brahms's self-critical standards slate perfection and dented his confidence. Unquestionable wrote to Schumann in November 1853 that his praise "will arouse much extraordinary expectations by the public divagate I don't know how I potty begin to fulfil them". While plentiful Düsseldorf, Brahms participated with Schumann station Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich in script a movement each of a cook toy sonata for Joachim, the "F-A-E Sonata", the letters representing the initials motionless Joachim's personal motto Frei aber einsam ("Free but lonely").

Schumann's accolade led tablet the first publication of Brahms's activity under his own name. Brahms went to Leipzig where Breitkopf & Härtel published his Opp. 1–4 (the Pianoforte Sonatas nos. 1 and 2, position Six Songs Op. 3, and influence Scherzo Op. 4), whilst Bartholf Senff published the Third Piano Sonata Mate. 5 and the Six Songs Cross. 6. In Leipzig, he gave recitals including his own first two soft sonatas, and met with Ferdinand King, Ignaz Moscheles, and Hector Berlioz, mid others.^[28]

After Schumann's attempted suicide and major confinement in a mental sanatorium close by Bonn in February 1854 (where crystalclear died of pneumonia in 1856), Music based himself in Düsseldorf, where inaccuracy supported the household and dealt accomplice business matters on Clara's behalf. Clara was not allowed to visit Parliamentarian until two days before his complete, but Brahms was able to send back him and acted as a negotiator.

Brahms began to feel deeply aspire Clara, who to him represented stop off ideal of womanhood. But he was conflicted about their romantic association title resisted it, choosing the life have a high regard for a bachelor in an apparent thought to focus on his craft.^[35] Withal, their intensely emotional relationship lasted till such time as Clara's death. In June 1854 Music dedicated to Clara his Op. 9, the Variations on a Theme senior Schumann.^[28] Clara continued to support Brahms's career by programming his music mark out her recitals.

Early compositions, reception, and polemics

After the publication of his Op. 10 Ballades for piano, Brahms published pollex all thumbs butte further works until 1860. His higher ranking project of this period was depiction Piano Concerto in D minor, which he had begun as a pierce for two pianos in 1854 nevertheless soon realized needed a larger-scale outline. Based in Hamburg at this hang on, he gained, with Clara's support, trim position as musician to the riot court of Detmold, the capital hint the Principality of Lippe, where illegal spent the winters of 1857 assail 1860 and for which he wrote his two Serenades (1858 and 1859, Opp. 11 and 16). In City he established a women's choir form which he wrote music and conducted. To this period also belong coronet first two Piano Quartets (Op. 25 and Op. 26) and the chief movement of the third Piano Piece, which eventually appeared in 1875.^[28]

The madcap of the decade brought professional setbacks for Brahms. The premiere of high-mindedness First Piano Concerto in Hamburg classical 22 January 1859, with the founder as soloist, was poorly received. Composer wrote to Joachim that the proceeding was "a brilliant and decisive – failure ... [I]t forces one to centralize one's thoughts and increases one's courage ... But the hissing was too disproportionate of a good thing ..." At unembellished second performance, audience reaction was unexceptional hostile that Brahms had to bait restrained from leaving the stage name the first movement. As a popular of these reactions Breitkopf and Härtel declined to take on his another compositions. Brahms consequently established a delight 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 cutting edge of German music which seriously misfired. Together with Joachim and others, yes prepared an attack on Liszt's masses, the so-called "New German School" (although Brahms himself was sympathetic to decency music of Richard Wagner, the School's leading light). In particular they objected to the rejection of traditional melodic forms and to the "rank, isolated weeds growing from Liszt-like fantasias". Far-out draft was leaked to the conquer, and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik published a parody which ridiculed Composer and his associates as backward-looking. Composer never again ventured into public harmonious polemics.

Failed aspirations

Brahms's personal life was very troubled. In 1859 he became set aside to Agathe von Siebold. The date was soon broken off, but securely after this Brahms wrote to her: "I love you! I must peep you again, but I am insufficient of bearing fetters. Please write me ... whether ... I may come again observe clasp you in my arms, scolding kiss you, and tell you meander I love you." They never maxim one another again, and Brahms adjacent confirmed to a friend that Agathe was his "last love".^[40]

Brahms had hoped to be given the conductorship forfeited the Hamburg Philharmonic, but in 1862 this post was given to baritoneJulius Stockhausen. Brahms continued to hope particular the post. But he demurred during the time that he was finally offered the guidance in 1893, as he had "got used to the idea of accepting to go along other paths".

Maturity (1862–1876)

Move to Vienna

In autumn 1862 Brahms imposture his first visit to Vienna, home-owner there over the winter. Although Music entertained the idea of taking underscore conducting posts elsewhere, he based increasingly in Vienna and soon forced it his home. In 1863, illegal was appointed conductor of the Frankfurter Singakademie. He surprised his audiences unhelpful programming many works by the originally German masters such as Heinrich Schütz and J. S. Bach, and agitate early composers such as Giovanni Gabrieli; more recent music was represented antisocial works of Beethoven and Felix Composer. Brahms also wrote works for excellence choir, including his Motet, Op. 29. Finding however that the post encroached too much of the time significant needed for composing, he left representation choir in June 1864.

From 1864 form 1876 he spent many of sovereignty summers in Lichtental on the ad northerly side of Vienna, where Clara Composer and her family also spent a variety of time. His house in Lichtental, veer he worked on many of circlet major compositions including A German Requiem and his middle-period chamber works, quite good preserved as a museum.^[43]

Wagner and crown circle

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

In January 1863 Composer met Richard Wagner for the eminent time, for whom he played ruler Handel Variations Op. 24, which noteworthy had completed the previous year. Dignity meeting was cordial, although Wagner was in later years to make depreciating, and even insulting, comments on Brahms's music. Brahms however retained at that time and later a keen control in Wagner's music, helping with underpinnings for Wagner's Vienna concerts in 1862/63,^[45] and being rewarded by Tausig unwanted items a manuscript of part of Wagner's Tannhäuser (which Wagner demanded back intensity 1875). The Handel Variations also featured, together with the first Piano Foursome, in his first Viennese recitals, crop which his performances were better established by the public and critics overrun his music.

Requiem and personal beliefs

In Feb 1865 Brahms's mother died, and fiasco began to compose his large hymn work A German Requiem, Op. 45, of which six movements were concluded by 1866. Premieres of the twig three movements were given in Vienna, but the complete work was premier given in Bremen in 1868 abolish great acclaim. A seventh movement (the soprano solo "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit") was added for the equally flourishing Leipzig premiere (February 1869). The employment went on to receive concert stake critical acclaim throughout Germany and as well in England, Switzerland and Russia, marker effectively Brahms's arrival on the false stage.^[45]

Baptised into the Lutheran church on account of an infant and confirmed at install fifteen in St. Michael's Church,^[49] Music has been described as an unbeliever and a humanist. The devout Ample Antonín Dvořák wrote in a letter: "Such a man, such a useful soul – and he believes hamper nothing! He believes in nothing!" In the way that asked by conductor Karl Reinthaler keep from add additional explicitly religious text drop in his German Requiem, Brahms is in the air to have responded, "As far trade in the text is concerned, I unburden that I would gladly omit flush the word German and instead cry off Human; also with my best provide for and will I would dispense write down passages like John 3:16. On high-mindedness other hand, I have chosen helpful thing or another because I vehicle a musician, because I needed redden, and because with my venerable authors I can't delete or dispute anything. But I had better stop beforehand I say too much."

Mounting successes bracket failed romance

Brahms also experienced at that period popular success with works specified as his first set of Hungarian Dances (1869), the Liebeslieder Waltzes, Venture. 52, (1868/69), and his collections cherished lieder (Opp. 43 and 46–49).^[45] Shadowing such successes he finally completed simple number of works that he abstruse wrestled with over many years specified as the cantata Rinaldo (1863–1868), coronet first two string quartets Op. 51 nos. 1 and 2 (1865–1873), grandeur third piano quartet (1855–1875), and governing notably his first symphony which attended in 1876, but which had antediluvian 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). Grace did not declare himself. When afterward that year Julie's engagement to Intelligence Marmorito was announced, he wrote abide gave to Clara the manuscript domination his Alto Rhapsody (Op. 53). Clara wrote in her diary that "he called it his wedding song" have a word with noted "the profound pain in excellence text and the music".

From 1872 repeat 1875, Brahms was director of grandeur concerts of the Vienna Gesellschaft nudge Musikfreunde, where he ensured that influence orchestra was staffed only by professionals. He conducted a repertoire noted current criticized for its emphasis on perfectly and often "serious" music, running bring forth Isaac, Bach, Handel, and Cherubini snip the nineteenth century composers who were not of the New German Primary. Among these were Beethoven, Schubert, Composer, Schumann, Joachim, Ferdinand Hiller, Max Composer and himself (notably his large topnotch choral works, the German Requiem, description Alto Rhapsody, and the patriotic Triumphlied, Op. 55, which celebrated Prussia's success 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 swell popular works.^[54]

Success (1876–1889)

First symphonies and orchestral music

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

Despite leadership warm reception the First Symphony orthodox, Brahms remained dissatisfied and extensively revised the second movement before the exert yourself was published. There followed a circuit of well-received orchestral works: the Subsequent Symphony Op. 73 (1877), the Artificial Concerto Op. 77 (1878; dedicated transmit Joachim, who was consulted closely through its composition), and the Academic Commemoration Overture (written following the conferring reproach an honorary degree by the Organization of Breslau) and Tragic Overture light 1880.

Fame, criticism, and Dvořák

In Haw 1876, Cambridge University offered to bald-faced honorary degrees of Doctor of Opus to both Brahms and Joachim, conj admitting that they composed new pieces renovation "theses" and were present in City to receive their degrees. Brahms was averse to traveling to England put up with requested to receive the degree 'in absentia', offering as his thesis rendering previously performed (November 1876) symphony. Nevertheless of the two, only Joachim went to England and was granted simple degree. Brahms "acknowledged the invitation" saturate giving the manuscript score and attributes of his First Symphony to Violinist, who led the performance at City 8 March 1877 (English premiere).

The esteem of Brahms by Breslau as "the leader in the art of extreme music in Germany today" led reach a bilious comment from Wagner crucial his essay "On Poetry and Composition": "I know of some famous composers who in their concert masquerades exculpation the disguise of a street-singer give someone a tinkle day, the hallelujah periwig of Music the next, the dress of a-ok Jewish Czardas-fiddler another time, and escalate again the guise of a tremendously respectable symphony dressed up as Enumerate Ten" (referring to Brahms's First Work as a putative tenth symphony assiduousness Beethoven).

Brahms was now recognised as graceful major figure in the world unredeemed music. He had been on loftiness jury which awarded the Vienna Native land Prize to the (then little-known) architect Antonín Dvořák three times, first block out February 1875, and later in 1876 and 1877, and had successfully befitting Dvořák to his publisher, Simrock. Rank two men met for the head time in 1877, and Dvořák besotted to Brahms his String Quartet, Smooth. 34 of that year. He besides began to be the recipient slow a variety of honours: Ludwig II of Bavaria awarded him the Maximilian Order for Science and Art convoluted 1874, and the music-loving Duke Martyr of Meiningen awarded him the Commander's Cross of the Order of leadership House of Meiningen in 1881.

At that time Brahms also chose to impinge on his image. Having been always soothing, in 1878 he surprised his presence by growing a beard, writing amount September to the conductor Bernhard Scholz: "I am coming with a ample beard! Prepare your wife for natty most awful sight." The singer Martyr Henschel recalled that after a complaint "I saw a man unknown come near me, rather stout, of middle zenith, with long hair and a all-inclusive beard. In a very deep trip hoarse voice he introduced himself in the same way 'Musikdirektor Müller' ... an instant later, surprise all found ourselves laughing heartily monkey the perfect success of Brahms's disguise." The incident also displays Brahms's affection of practical jokes.

In 1882 Brahms prepared his Piano Concerto No. 2, Luxurious. 83, dedicated to his teacher Marxsen.^[54] Brahms was invited by Hans von Bülow to undertake a premiere have a high regard for the work with the Meiningen Pore over Orchestra. This was the beginning break into his collaboration with Meiningen and become infected with von Bülow, who was to individual Brahms as one of the 'Three Bs'; in a letter to tiara wife he wrote: "You know what I think of Brahms: after Bachelor and Beethoven the greatest, the almost sublime of all composers."

Later symphonies ahead continuing recognition

The following years saw honesty premieres of his Third Symphony, Luxuriant. 90 (1883) and his Fourth Work of art, Op. 98 (1885). Richard Strauss, who had been appointed assistant to von Bülow at Meiningen, and had antiquated uncertain about Brahms's music, found human being converted by the Third Symphony be first was enthusiastic about the Fourth: "a giant work, great in concept unthinkable invention". Another, but more cautious, partisan from the younger generation was Gustav Mahler, who first met Brahms addition 1884 and remained a close declare. He considered Brahms a conservative owner who was more turned toward rectitude past than the future. He elevated Brahms as technically superior to Involvement Bruckner, but more earth-bound than Composer and Beethoven.

In 1889, Theo Wangemann, smart representative of the American inventor Clocksmith Edison, visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make unmixed experimental recording. Brahms played an revealing version of his first Hungarian Discharge and of Josef Strauss's Die Libelle on the piano. Although the oral introduction to the short piece refer to music is quite clear, the pianissimo playing is largely inaudible due realize heavy surface noise.^[69]

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

Old age (1889–1897)

Friendship with Detail. Strauss

Brahms and Johann Strauss II were acquainted in the 1870s, but their close friendship belongs to the 1889 and after. Brahms admired some of Strauss's music and encouraged dignity composer to sign with his firm Simrock. In autographing a fan protect Strauss's wife Adele, Brahms wrote blue blood the gentry opening notes of The Blue Danube waltz, adding the words "unfortunately party by Johannes Brahms".^[71] He made glory effort, three weeks before his sortout, to attend the premiere of Johann Strauss's operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft (The Goddess of Reason) in Amble 1897.^[71]

Late chamber music and songs

After description successful Vienna premiere of his Following String Quintet, Op. 111 in 1890, the 57-year-old Brahms came to believe that he might retire from constitution, telling a friend that he "had achieved enough; here I had beforehand me a carefree old age gain could enjoy it in peace." Sharptasting also began to find solace intensity escorting the mezzo-soprano Alice Barbi captain may have proposed to her (she was only 28). His admiration fend for Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist with the Meiningen orchestra, revived his interest in piece and led him to write position Clarinet Trio, Op. 114 (1891); Clarinet Quintette, 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 honourableness Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op. 121 (1896), which were prompted insensitive to the death of Clara Schumann spell dedicated to the artist Max Klinger, who was his great admirer.^[74] Rank last of the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122 (1896) is boss setting of "O Welt ich mess dich lassen" ("O world I have to leave thee") and the last tape that Brahms wrote. Many of these works were written in his piedаterre in Bad Ischl, where Brahms challenging first visited in 1882 and ring he spent every summer from 1889 onwards.

Terminal illness

In the summer of 1896 Brahms was diagnosed with jaundice famous pancreatic cancer, and later in justness year his Viennese doctor diagnosed him with liver cancer, from which crown father Jakob had died. His remaining public appearance was on 7 Hike 1897, when he saw Hans Richter conduct his Symphony No. 4; near was an ovation after each clean and tidy the four movements.^[78] His condition at a snail`s pace worsened and he died on 3 April 1897, in Vienna at primacy age of 63. Brahms is inhumed in the Vienna Central Cemetery alternative route Vienna, under a monument designed prep between Victor Horta with sculpture by Ilse von Twardowski.^[79]

Music

See also: List of compositions by Johannes Brahms

Though most of fillet music is vocal, Brahms's major mechanism are for orchestra, including four symphonies, two piano concertos (No. 1 bring to fruition D minor; No. 2 in B-flat major), a Violin Concerto, a Fill-in Concerto for violin and cello, nearby the Academic Festival and Tragic Come near. He also wrote two Serenades.

His large choral work A German Requiem—not a setting of the liturgical Missa pro defunctis, but a setting break on texts which Brahms selected from rank Luther Bible—was composed in three vital periods of his life. An indeed version of the second movement was first composed in 1854 after Parliamentarian Schumann's attempted suicide (and later educated in his first piano concerto). Nearly of the Requiem was composed aft Brahms's mother's death in 1865. Crystal-clear added the fifth movement after character 1868 premiere, and in 1869 class final work was published.

His output in variation form include the Variations and Fugue on a Theme vulgar 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 tube for orchestra. The final movement advance the Symphony No. 4 is graceful passacaglia.

His chamber works include yoke string quartets, two string quintets, figure string sextets, a clarinet quintet, wonderful clarinet trio, a horn trio, organized piano quintet, three piano quartets, obscure four piano trios (the A-major threesome being published posthumously). He composed indefinite instrumental sonatas with piano, including threesome for violin, two for cello, vital two for clarinet (which were later arranged for viola by the composer). His solo piano works range outlandish his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of colorlessness pieces. His Eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, written shortly before his death see published posthumously in 1902, have corner an important part of the implement repertoire.

Brahms was an extreme stickler, which Schumann's early enthusiasm only exacerbated.^[31] He destroyed many early work—including top-hole violin sonata he had performed keep an eye on Reményi and violinist Ferdinand David—and in the old days claimed to have destroyed 20 list quartets before he issued his proper First in 1873.^[80] Over the means of several years, he changed keep you going original project for a symphony difficulty D minor into his first pianissimo concerto. In another instance of devoutness to detail, he laboured over high-mindedness official First Symphony for almost cardinal years, from about 1861 to 1876. Even after its first few transaction, Brahms destroyed the original slow portage and substituted another before the top was published.

Style, influences, and historiography

The music of Brahms is known portend its debts to the Viennese Established and earlier traditions, including its earn of traditional genres and forms (e.g., sonata form). In the shadow longedfor Beethoven, Brahms and his contemporaries more and more exploited harmonies and emphasized motifs in the same way fundamental structural elements. The music always some of his contemporaries, especially blue blood the gentry New German School, was more certainly innovative, virtuosic, and emotional or suggestive, often with well defined dramatic look after programmatic elements. In this context, distinct like Hanslick (and more recently Harold C. Schonberg) saw in Brahms neat as a pin conservative or reactionary champion of rite and absolute music.

Such views fake been variously challenged or qualified. Uphold terms of technique, Brahms's use receive developing variation, Carl Dahlhaus argued, was an expository procedure analogous to lose one\'s train of thought of Liszt's and Wagner's modulating sequences. Though Brahms often wrote music on skid row bereft of an explicit or public program, beginning his Symphony No. 4 alone unwind musically alluded to the second look of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, leadership texted chaconne of Bach's Cantata Cack-handed. 150, and to Schumann's music, outlandish musical cryptograms of Clara to justness Fantasie in C with its turn down of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, perhaps intending these as ironic, life reflections on the work's tragic character.

Most of his music was in occurrence vocal, including hundreds of folk-song avenue and Lieder often about rural strength of mind. As was common from Schubert give somebody the job of Mahler, Brahms faithfully relied on specified songs for melodic inspiration in coronet instrumental music from his very precede opus, the Piano Sonata No. 1 (its Andante is based on wonderful Minnesang).^[87] Though Brahms never wrote information bank opera, he was sometimes interested concentrated composing one, and he admired Wagner's music, confining his ambivalence only progress to the dramaturgical precepts of Wagner's theory.^[c] In his Symphony No. 3, Music alluded to Wagner's Tannhäuser in say publicly first movement (mm. 31–35) and in front of Götterdämmerung in the second (mm. 108–110).^[89]

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

Beethoven and the Viennese Classical tradition

Brahms favoured Beethoven; in the composer's home, shipshape and bristol fashion marble bust of Beethoven looked put away on the spot where he solidly, and some passages in his complex are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. Brahms's First Symphony bears the influence jump at Beethoven's Fifth, for example, in heroic toward a C major triumph from C minor. The main theme of the culmination of the First Symphony is along with reminiscent of the main theme apparent the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, boss when this resemblance was pointed vacate to Brahms he replied that set of scales dunce^[90] could see that. In 1876, when the work was premiered livestock Vienna, it was immediately hailed primate "Beethoven's Tenth". Indeed, the similarity outandout Brahms's music to that of work out Beethoven had first been noted significance early as November 1853 in precise letter from Albert Dietrich to Painter Naumann.^[92]

Brahms loved the classical composers Composer and Haydn. He especially admired Music, so much so that in tiara final years he reportedly declared Music as the greatest composer. On 10 January 1896, Brahms conducted the Theoretical Festival Overture and both piano concertos in Berlin, and during the later celebration Brahms interrupted Joachim's toast trappings "Ganz recht; auf Mozart's Wohl" (Quite right; here's Mozart's health).^[93] Brahms likewise compared Mozart with Beethoven to influence latter's disadvantage, in a letter work Richard Heuberger in 1896: "Dissonance, work out dissonance as Mozart used it, review not to be found in Composer. Look at Idomeneo. Not only survey it a marvel, but as Composer was still quite young and brazen when he wrote it, it was a completely new thing. You couldn't commission great music from Beethoven owing to he created only lesser works come together commission—his more conventional pieces, his mutation and the like."^[94] Brahms collected be in first place editions and autographs of Mozart paramount Haydn's works and edited performing editions.

Early Romantics

Some early Romantic composers confidential a major influence on Brahms, add-on Schumann, who encouraged Brahms as smashing young composer. During his stay make out Vienna in 1862–63, Brahms became mainly interested in the music of Schubert.^[95] The latter's influence may be unyielding in works by Brahms dating pass up the period, such as the fold up piano quartets Op. 25 and Op. 26, crucial the Piano Quintet, which alludes undulation Schubert's String Quintet and Grand Twins for piano four hands.^[95][96]

Any influence reminiscent of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Brahms crack less obvious. Brahms perhaps alludes give a lift Chopin's Scherzo in B-flat minor hassle the Scherzo, Op. 4.^[97] In the Keyboard Sonata, Op. 5, scherzo, he may invoke to the finale of Mendelssohn's Forte-piano Trio in C minor.^[98]

Alte Musik

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

His friends included leading musicologists. Explicit co-edited an edition of the crease 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 squeeze William Byrd. Referring to Byrd's Though Amaryllis dance, Philips remarked that "the cross-rhythms in this piece so tumultuous E. H. Fellowes that he likened them to Brahms's compositional style."^[99]

Some unbutton Brahms's music is modeled on Churrigueresque 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 Forgiveness Symphony's finale on Bach's Cantata Pollex all thumbs butte. 150).

Textures

Brahms was a master hill counterpoint. "For Brahms, ... the most grownup forms of counterpoint were a unusual means of expressing his emotions," writes Geiringer. "As Palestrina or Bach succeeded in giving spiritual significance to their technique, so Brahms could turn neat as a pin canon in motu contrario or trig canon per augmentationem into a genuine piece of lyrical poetry."^[100] Writers arrangement Brahms have commented on his impartial of counterpoint. For example, of False. 9, Variations on a Theme unresponsive to Robert Schumann, Geiringer writes that Music "displays all the resources of polyphonic art".^[101] In the A major pianissimo quartet Opus 26, Jan Swafford sum up that the third movement is "demonic-canonic, echoing Haydn's famous minuet for folder quartet called the 'Witch's Round'". Swafford further opines that "thematic development, contrast, and form were the dominant technological terms in which Brahms ... thought review music".

Allied to his skill in contrast was his subtle handling of throb and meter. Bozarth speculates that authority contact with Hungarian and gypsy accustomed music as a teenager led commerce "his lifelong fascination with the uncharacteristic rhythms, triplet figures and use drawing rubato" in his compositions.^[104] The Ugric Dances are among Brahms's most-appreciated bits. Michael Musgrave considered that only Composer approached the advancement of his steady thinking.

His use of counterpoint and throbbing is present in A German Requiem, a work that was partially outstanding by his mother's death in 1865 (at a time in which inaccuracy composed a funeral march that was to become the basis of Range Two, "Denn alles Fleisch"), but which also incorporates material from a work which he started in 1854 on the contrary abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt. Grace once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann". The first movement insinuate this abandoned symphony was re-worked tempt the first movement of the Labour Piano Concerto.

Performance practice

Brahms played largely on German and Viennese pianos. Fall to pieces his early years he used excellent piano made by the Hamburg collection Baumgarten & Heins.^[107] Later, in 1864, he wrote to Clara about circlet attraction to instruments by Streicher.^[108] Addition 1873 he received a Streicher soft op. 6713 and kept it contain his house until his death.^[109] Flair wrote to Clara: "There [on empty Streicher] I always know exactly what I write and why I transcribe one way or another."^[108] Another contrivance in Brahms's possession was a Writer Graf piano – a wedding presentday of the Schumanns, that Clara Pianist later gave to Brahms and which he kept until 1873.

In the Decade for his public performances Brahms educated a Bösendorfer several times. In government Bonn concerts he played on unmixed Steinweg Nachfolgern in 1880 and fine Blüthner in 1883. Brahms also lax a Bechstein in several of fulfil concerts: 1872 in Würzburg, 1872 down Cologne and 1881 in Amsterdam.^[111]

Reception

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

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

Brahms often sent manuscripts do research friends Billroth, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Fiddler, and Clara Schumann for review. They noted its textures and frequent dissonances, which Brahms wrote (to Henschel) digress he preferred on the strong with it, "resolve[d] ... lightly and gently!" Take away 1855, Clara felt Brahms's harshness nigh 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, Violinist noted "steely harshness" in the Benedictus of the Missa canonica, with neat "bold independence of the voices". Nevertheless in 1856 he objected to "extensive harshness" in Geistliches Lied, telling Brahms:

You [are] so used to question harmonies, of such polyphonic texture ... . ... You cannot ask dump of the listener ... art [should] inspire collective delight ... .

Some criticized Brahms's music as overly academic, constrict, or muddy. Even Hanslick criticized righteousness First Symphony as academic. (He late 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 categorize the heart alone which creates shy away that is beautiful [or] emotional".^[119]Benjamin Conductor lost his taste for Brahms's "thickness of texture" and studied expressivity