Page 190 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

188

HE … COMES AS

IF SENT STRAIGHT

FROM GOD

SYMPHONY NO. 1 (1876),
JOHANNES BRAHMS

n the first decades of the Franz Liszt. Brahms believed in
IN CONTEXT 19th century, Beethoven took producing “pure” music, which was
I the symphony to new heights, abstract, rather than associated
FOCUS making it the most important with a plot line.
Fall and rise of genre in the Austro-German In 1853, Brahms met Robert
the symphony
tradition. In the wake of his death, Schumann and his pianist wife,
BEFORE a handful of composers stepped Clara. Schumann, who was the
1824 Beethoven completes in to assume Beethoven’s mantle. composer of four symphonies,
his Symphony No. 9. Among them was German hailed Brahms as the great hope
composer Johannes Brahms, who
1853 Robert Schumann hails deplored program music—music
Brahms as the hope of German that sought to follow or describe Brahms and Adele Strauss, wife
music in an influential essay, a narrative line—and openly of Johann Strauss II, sit down to
breakfast in his villa in the summer
Neue Bahnen (“New Paths”). criticized the New German School of 1894. Brahms often visited their
represented by Richard Wagner and villa in Bad Ischl, Austria.
1858 Brahms completes his
First Piano Concerto, which
at one point was conceived
as a symphony, and his
First Serenade.
AFTER
1877 In a review, the
conductor Hans von Bülow
hails Brahms’s First Symphony
as “Beethoven’s 10th.”

1889 Mahler conducts the
premiere of his Symphony
No. 1 in Budapest, the first of
his nine completed symphonies.

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