I can remember the time I first started to listen to Mahler in earnest (in my teens) ; Shostakovich came later on, when I was just into adulthood. But I can’t remember a time when I didn’t listen to or love Brahms...he has been there forever, my rock of Gibraltar!
Brahms (1833-1897) may be the very representation of classical music, along with Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, but his life, his music and the world’s opinion of him are all full of contradictions.
He came from stolid German stock, the city of Hamburg to be precise and yet, spent much of his maturity in Vienna, the veritable centre of European culture. His upbringing was modest and his teens were spent accompanying a violinist friend on the piano in shady bars on the waterfront, yet in his old age, he was a living legend, mourned by thousands when he died.
He had to struggle mightily to establish himself, first as a performer, then as a composer, literally dragging himself up by the bootstraps, expanding his horizons in music and literature by sheer application and hard work. Yet he was also blessed to have the committed help and support of his seniors: first, his teacher Eduard Marxsen, who literally convinced his parents to allow the young Johannes to devote his life to music and then of course, Robert Schumann (1810-1856), great composer and influential music critic, who announced his arrival to the musical world with a series of glowing articles in 1852.
Brahms was sometimes called a misogynist and indeed never married (though he came close on two occasions); yet the most important influence on his life was a woman, Schumann’s wife Clara, to whom he was devoted till her death, a year before his own. In fact it was his tragedy that the love of his life was already married to another man, and his mentor to boot; what made it all the more difficult were the circumstances of Schumann’s last years, locked away in an asylum after a suicide attempt. Brahms was obviously torn between the two, yet managed to do right by both the Schumanns: he would visit his mentor regularly, while to Clara, he was a constant support (even if he could not be her lover)... Schumann’s physicians had insisted that he not see Clara and so it fell to Johannes to tell her of his visits to her husband, in his letters, which he did with incredible sensitivity and tenderness for them both.
Tenderness and Brahms are not always words that go together. As a man he was known to be gruff and straightforwardly rude, while as a composer, his typical “big” symphonies and concertos would all end with 3 emphatic thumps, letting you know fair and square that it was over. Yet he could be playful and delicate, not least in the famous “Cradle Song” written for the infant son of his childhood sweeheart.
Most contradictory of all is the position of Brahms in the musical world. Early on in his life, he set himself up and was, in turn, set up by his followers as the representative of the conservative musical establishment, the heir of Beethoven, the writer of “absolute” music, as opposed to the programmatic spectacles of Liszt and Wagner. Yet, composers of later years, as extreme iconoclasts as the serialist composer Schoenberg would look to Brahms as a major inspiration, particularly in his fascinating ability to write variations on a theme. Writing variations for Brahms was both an expression of his musical scholarship and his passion: not mere note-spinning, but bases for entire works (eg the 4th symphony).
As a devoted listener, I find it odd to think of Brahms as writer of “absolute” / abstract music: his early works are full of passion and rebellion. The 1st piano concerto, which began life as a symphony around the traumatic time when he was living with the Schumanns, is a conflicted young artist's defiant journey from adversity into light, the very epitome of “programme” music. The 1st symphony is another epic struggle—it was a struggle not just spiritually but physically, by the way, as he was all of 40 when he could finally let it loose upon the world after 17 years of struggling to break free from Beethoven’s legacy. Despite the struggle, it was a success, though it received a somewhat backhanded compliment along the way, of being “Beethoven’s Tenth”—both because of its significance and because the theme of its Finale is so reminiscent of Beethoven’s Ninth!
Even the “late” Brahms is very emotional music for me—the autumnal glow of his late Intermezzos for piano hides (but not completely) a great melancholy; his Clarinet Quintet is heartbreakingly sad, even if it is strikingly beautiful. Life had been a struggle for him, till the end and despite his many close and devoted friends, perhaps old age was a particularly lonely time for this prickly soul.
Much as we may admire his muscular stoicism, I wish we could also revel in the emotional connect that his works have with us; his music is the very essence of what “classical” music should be, serious, noble, perfect in form, but I for one, also celebrate his ability to sublimate the pain and disappointments of life into his immortal masterpieces.
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