Page 191 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

ROMANTIC 1810–1920 189

See also: Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 128–131 ■ “Eroica” Symphony 138–141 ■ Symphonie fantastique 162–163 ■
Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 166–169 ■ Faust Symphony 176–177 ■ Dvorˇák’s Symphony No. 9 212–215

Johannes Brahms The son of a struggling musician, particularly close to his widow,
Brahms was born in Hamburg, Clara, and would be a friend of
northern Germany, in 1833. He hers for life.
received his first music lessons In later life, Brahms focused
from his father, and as a teenager on instrumental music, but in
he helped support his family 1896, the year before his death,
by playing piano in the inns of he wrote Vier ernste Gesänge
Hamburg, before finding work (“Four Serious Songs”), reflecting
as a choral conductor. on the transience of life.
In 1863, Brahms settled in
Vienna, marking the start of a Other key works
highly successful period in which
he composed A German Requiem, 1853 Piano Sonata No. 3 in
the First Symphony, and his F minor, Op. 5
Hungarian Dances. In the years 1868 A German Requiem
following Robert Schumann’s 1869 Hungarian Dances (for
death in 1856, Brahms became piano duet)

of German music, describing the A German Requiem (1868), Brahms Brahms’s First Symphony, like
20-year-old composer as a “man of set Lutheran texts in a manner that Beethoven’s Ninth, moves from
destiny,” placing on Brahms the looked back to the earliest German darkness to light, with a stormy
weight of public expectation. choral music, while his so-called opening from bass and timpani
Haydn Variations (1873) explored an that subsides into a dreamy
First Symphony array of compositional devices old Andante before bringing in
Brahms started sketching his First and new in an orchestral context. urgent pizzicato strings. The third
Symphony soon after Schumann’s This synthesis of tradition movement, the Allegretto, captures
endorsement but did not complete and innovation distinguished the a joyful atmosphere while at the
it until the mid-1870s—more than First Symphony, whose themes same time showcasing Brahms’s
20 years later. In the interim, fused folk song and chorale, as close attention to symmetry.
Brahms tried his hand at other well as allusions to Bach and to
symphonies, but none reached Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Further works
fruition. Meanwhile, he composed Following the success of his First
many orchestral and chamber Symphony, Brahms composed
works, including sonatas for violin, three more, choosing to conclude
cello, and piano. He destroyed the his Fourth Symphony (1885) with a
works he was unhappy with, but thrilling passacaglia—a Baroque
parts of his attempts at symphonic form that develops its material over
writing were recast in other pieces, [Brahms is] someone a constantly repeating bass line.
such as the opening of his First destined to give ideal Brahms’s symphonies may seem
Piano Concerto. presentment to the conservative in comparison to
The intensely self-critical highest expression those who succeeded him—such
composer published his first string of the times. as Gustav Mahler, whose First
quartets—another Beethovenian Robert Schumann Symphony heralded a new direction
genre par excellence—only in when it burst onto the scene in
1873, and they, as well as two other 1889—but Brahms’s development
important works rooted in different of earlier forms and processes
traditions, arguably paved the way would prove influential for a whole
for the symphonic breakthrough. In generation of modernists. ■

US_188-189_Brahms.indd 189 26/03/18 1:01 PM