'Brahms is extremely active as a conductor; he has achieved

incomparably fine performances, and receives the fullest

recognition from all who take art earnestly. His "Triumphlied,"

given with organ and an immense chorus, produced a marvellous

effect here; great masses are required for its performance, it is

monumental music....

'At the last concert Brahms ventured upon one of the most difficult

of Bach's cantatas, composed to Luther's text, "Christ lay in bonds

of death," which had never before been performed. The Viennese

accepted this with amiability from such a favourite as Brahms. Two

unaccompanied folk-songs which came next ("In stiller Nacht" and

"Der schönste Bursch am ganzen Rhein") awakened such a storm of

applause, however, that one almost felt afraid the house would fall

in. The old King of Hanover was almost beside himself with musical

intoxication. One becomes quite drunk with the beautiful quality of

sound produced by this choir, whose increase and decrease (_f._ and

_p._) are carried on like those of one voice....'

Sufficient detail has now been given of the Gesellschaft concert-season

of 1872-73 to show the wisdom of the committee in their choice of a new

'artistic director,' and it only remains to mention the advertised

'last' concert of April 6. Two works were brought to a hearing:

1. Bach: Cantata, 'Liebster Gott, wann werd' ich sterben.'

2. Cherubini: Requiem in C minor.

The success of the performances may be inferred from the fact that the

programme was repeated two days later at an additional concert hastily

arranged to fulfil the general demand for an encore.

Brahms was singularly unfortunate this year in his efforts to secure a

quiet retreat for the pursuit of his usual summer avocations. Flying,

after two days' residence in lodgings in Gratwein, Styria, from the

attentions of some 'æsthetic ladies' who began to threaten his peace, he

took refuge in the attic of the 'Seerose,' an inn in the Bavarian

village of Tutzing, on Lake Starnberg, to receive, the very night of his

arrival, a formal written invitation to make one, during his stay, of a

light-hearted fellowship of youthful authors, painters, and musicians

who held their meetings in the house. An early hour of the morning

witnessed his second abrupt departure, the only answer vouchsafed to the

missive being its torn fragments scattered on the floor of his room. He

took refuge this time with Levi at Munich, and made his headquarters at

his friend's house during the early part of the summer, seeing much also

of Allgeyer, who had been invited to settle professionally in the

Bavarian capital shortly after Levi's departure from Carlsruhe. Later

on Brahms attended the Schumann Festival at Bonn (August 17-19),

arranged, by Joachim's suggestion, for the purpose of assisting a fund

for the erection of a memorial to Schumann in the city where the master

had passed the two last sad years of his life, and where a Beethoven

monument had been unveiled in 1871. There were orchestral concerts on

the 17th and 18th, both conducted by Joachim, excepting in the case of

one work (Wasielewsky), and a matinée of chamber music on the 19th, the

programmes, in which Frau Schumann, Frau Joachim, Stockhausen, and

others took part, being entirely selected from Schumann's works. The

festival closed with a social function, an excursion by steamer to

Rolandseck. The presence at Bonn of each member of the remarkable

quartet of great musicians, whom we have seen closely bound together by

ties of artistic and personal friendship through nearly twenty years,

was made the more interesting by the addition of Ferdinand Hiller, the

intimate ally of all four. Many other old friends were there, of whom

Freiherr von Meysenbug, as reviving Detmold memories, should be

particularly mentioned. Brahms made some new acquaintances also, notably

Professor Engelmann and his gifted wife, known in the musical world for

a few seasons as the pianist Fräulein Emma Brandes, who retired from a

public career on her early marriage.

Brahms, though taking no active part in the concerts, was not at all

averse to contributing to the private artistic pleasures of the week.

The most memorable of these was the first introduction to a few of his

friends of the Variations on a theme by Haydn, which he played with Frau

Schumann in the version of the work for two pianofortes. Another day he

turned into a pianoforte warehouse in the course of a walk with

Wasielewsky, and sitting down before one of the instruments extemporized

one waltz after another.

After leaving Bonn he paid his annual visit to Lichtenthal, where Frau

Schumann and her daughters also stayed for a few weeks, though it was no

longer their place of residence. They moved this year to Berlin, and in

future only visited Baden-Baden for occasional change. Brahms sometimes

met his old friends there in the summer until the year 1878, when Frau

Schumann accepted an appointment at the Conservatoire of Music founded

by Dr. Hoch at Frankfurt. She then sold her house at Lichtenthal, and

Brahms' subsequent association with the neighbourhood was limited to

rare visits of a few days. Frau Schumann continued to live at Frankfurt

from this time, though she resigned her duties at the conservatoire some

years before her death.

Meanwhile Brahms spent several weeks of this and succeeding summers at

his old lodgings, and one day in August of this year he played the

finally completed String Quartets in C minor and A minor, and the

'Rain-songs' to Frau Schumann. She had heard the C minor Quartet, as the

reader may remember, in the summer of 1866. The composer played both

works to Dr. Hermann Deiters when he was staying at Bonn in 1868.

Claus Groth's poem 'Rain-song' and the shorter one 'Echo,' which form

the texts of Nos. 3 and 4 of Brahms' Op. 59, were particular favourites

of our master. He composed the 'Nachklang,' of which he chose the title,

twice. The published version is the second of the two. Musical readers

will remember that melody and accompaniment are used again in the duet

Sonata in G major.

Both String Quartets were performed privately in Berlin by Joachim and

his colleagues. They were played for the first time in public; that in A

minor in Berlin at the Joachim Quartet concert of October 18 from the

manuscript; that in C minor at the Hellmesberger concert of December 11

in Vienna from the printed copies.

[Illustration: BRAHMS AT THE AGE OF 40.]

The appearance of these two works as Op. 51, Nos. 1 and 2, forms, as we

have said, another and important landmark in the development of Brahms'

career. The String Quartet holds a position of peculiar significance in

the art of music, and a composer, by selecting this form for the

exercise of his powers, exposes them to the most unfailing test to which

his calibre as a musician can possibly be submitted. He must possess

not only fertility in the production of purely musical concentrated

ideas, and ideas capable of development; the power to develop them,

which means many things, and the capacity for shaping them into clear

structure; but he must be able to express them with the most bare and

simple musical means, with four strings. From the rapid effects of

strong and strongly contrasted sensation producible by the pianoforte,

or the varied tone-colour of the orchestra, he is precluded. With his

four strings he can interest, delight, touch, but hardly astonish his

hearers. The String Quartet is absolute music in its purest form, and

but few works in this domain can survive their birth unless they be

destined to attain a long life. The means are perfect for the end, but

this is difficult of achievement; only the quartet of a master has much

chance of being heard after its first few performances. It will be

evident to the reader that Brahms was fitted by many essential

characteristics of his genius for success in this branch of art, though

it cannot cause surprise that one of his great qualities, the power of

waiting for results, should have strengthened his fastidiousness in

accepting as final the fruits of his studies in a form which had been

brought to ideal perfection by Haydn and Beethoven, each in their day.

On the great musicianship manifest in Brahms' quartets, on his mastery

over his means, his power of completely balancing his four parts, of

making each a separate individuality whilst all blend harmoniously as

equal constituents of an organic whole, it is only necessary to insist

here in so far as these qualities are elements in another feature which

pre-eminently marks our master's chamber music for strings: the

extraordinary beauty of its structure. Throughout the three quartets and

two quintets for strings composed by Brahms there is not only no mere

passage writing, but it would be difficult to point to a single note

that could be called superfluous. Each seems to have been placed with

loving care by the master hand of the great musical architect, the

artist builder, as an essential part of the whole large design. When we

examine the thoughts themselves and their development we find that we

are, as in all Brahms' works, in the presence of a powerful and

fascinating individuality. Ideas and treatment are the master's own, not

easy at once to understand, but offering almost inexhaustible

opportunity for discovery and enjoyment to listeners willing to earn

such rewards. The two quartets, Op. 51, are more or less severally

representative of contrasted sides of Brahms' individuality. The first,

in C minor, is generally characterized by fire and impetuosity,

exquisitely relieved by the tender romance of the second movement; No.

2, in A minor, is conceived in a softer vein. The last movement of this

work contains a beautiful example of the characteristic Brahms coda; the

augmented vigour of the climax is preceded by a period of tranquillity

that seems to place the listener in an atmosphere of mystic exaltation,

to afford him 'glimpses of a spirit world' from which the previous

thoughts of the movement flow towards him in transfigured tones. Lovers

of the master's music will recall a similar feature in other works. In

the opening theme of the first movement, which is suggestive of

Joachim's early device F.A.E.--

[Music: Excerpt from the first movement of Brahms's String Quartet in A

Minor, Op. 51, No. 2, etc.]

we may, perhaps, perceive a passing reference to the remembrance of his

friend which must certainly have been present to Brahms' mind as he

planned these works. Instances of the composer's mastery of the art of

modulation, of his boldness and facility in going to, and returning from

unexpected and distant keys, may be found in the two quartets as in the

majority of his instrumental compositions. They were dedicated by Brahms

to 'his friend Dr. Theodor Billroth of Vienna,' and were published in

the autumn by Simrock.

Amongst those who had looked forward with particular expectancy to the

opening of the great World Exhibition that was held in Vienna in the

autumn of 1873 was the painter Anselm Feuerbach. He had, the previous

year, accepted the offer of an appointment as director of the historical

class about to be formed in the Imperial Academy of Plastic Arts of that

city, but had begged for a year's leave of absence in Rome before

entering on his new duties, in order that he might finish two great

pictures, 'The Battle of the Amazons' and 'The Second Symposium,' the

exhibition of which he conceived likely to establish his fame and to

secure him an authoritative position on taking up his residence in

Austria. The nearly finished pictures were sent to Vienna in March or

April, and Feuerbach followed them in May, 1873, but it turned out that

they could not be hung in the Exhibition gallery on account of their

great size. The painter determined, therefore, to exhibit them one after

the other in the 'Künstler-Haus,' and, in order to secure the advantage

of association in the mind of the public with so favourite a celebrity

of Vienna as Brahms had at this time become, he requested the master to

sit to him on his return in October in order that his portrait might be

exhibited with the other pictures.

Feuerbach was a small man of ultra-refined appearance and manners, and a

countenance of rather melancholy expression that had evidently been of

striking beauty in his youth. He was accustomed to be made much of by

ladies, was extremely sensitive and self-centred, and inordinately vain,

and had confidently persuaded himself that his pictures were to achieve

an instant and overwhelming success.

'My pictures are splendid and all but finished,' he wrote to his

mother on October 2; 'why should I feel a moment's anxiety since I

have eminent power in my hands; genius and position.... The

Symposium also is quite exquisite, I may say so now as I have seen

the Vatican.'[46]

Brahms, who had, as we have seen, a long-standing acquaintance with

Feuerbach and sincerely admired his powers, mounted the many flights of

stairs leading to the artist's temporary studio more than once. His

attention was particularly called to the 'Battle of the Amazons,' on

which, as it was to be exhibited first, Feuerbach was busy with the

finishing touches. He mentioned it several times in a reserved manner to

Groth, who was in Vienna for the Exhibition, saying he was anxious to

have his opinion of it, and persuaded him to pay a visit to the studio

one day to be presented to Feuerbach. Groth, however, on coming away,

found that he was unable, as Brahms had been, to express himself warmly

about the great painting, and merely agreed with our master in 'not

understanding' it. Brahms, intimately acquainted with the artist circles

of Vienna, evidently could not shake off his apprehension as to the

result of the exhibition, and took an opportunity of speaking a word of

warning to Feuerbach, advising him to be cautious, and to introduce

himself to his new public with a smaller work. The integrity of the

composer's ideas of friendship and the misunderstanding of his motives

which was its frequent result, as well as the general soundness of his

judgment in matters on which he ventured to give advice, are well

illustrated by the affair. His words produced an immediate effect very

different from that intended by him. The wound they inflicted on the

irritable susceptibility of the painter was so painful as to deprive him

of the power of concentrating his mind upon the 'Amazons' for several

subsequent days, and he found it impossible to go on with Brahms'

portrait.

'Another evening spoilt by Brahms,' he wrote on November 3; and again:

'I was not for a second angry with Brahms, but I have put his canvas

aside for the present.' It was never taken up again.

The pictures were duly exhibited in turn, and it may be said that the

final breakdown of Feuerbach's never robust constitution was the

ultimate result. Not criticism only or even chiefly, but torrents of

contempt, derision, insult were poured upon his work.

'A storm broke over my head by which I could at least reassure

myself as to the importance of my pictures. I could not sit down

to table without finding jests, raillery, caricature--unfortunately

always bad--beside my plate, and the story of my discomfiture was

related in the house from roof to cellar. I was told that everyone,

from the professor to the porter's boy, was laughing at my bad

picture.'

'Almost the entire press, independent and mercenary alike, was

arrayed against Feuerbach,' says Allgeyer.

His pupils, however, offered him the mute sympathy and support of

punctual attendance and respectful attention at class, and the Minister

remained loyal to him. He retained his appointment till the close of

1876, though ill-health prevented him from performing his duties during

the last half-year. He died at Nürnburg in 1880. His friendship with our

master did not terminate with the incident of the pictures.

'Brahms has lent me his fur-coat for my journey,' he wrote in February,

1875, on the eve of his departure for Rome.

The 'Battle of the Amazons' was presented by the artist's mother to the

city of Nürnburg in the year 1889, and hangs there in the picture

gallery of the Town Hall. Many of the studies for the 'Amazons' and the

'Symposium' were purchased by King Ludwig II. of Bavaria, and presented

by him to the Royal Pinakothek at Munich.

Of the many letters of congratulation received by Allgeyer after the

appearance of his 'Life of Feuerbach' in 1894, one of those most highly

prized by him came from Brahms.

Brahms paid one visit to the great Exhibition in the company of Groth

and other friends, though the noise and bustle of such a scene were by

no means to his taste. He was more anxious that his friend should see

and hear what was really characteristic of Vienna. 'You must go to the

Volksgarten on Friday evening when Johann Strauss will conduct his

waltzes. _There_ is a master; such a master of the orchestra that one

never loses a single tone of whatever instrument!'

Having promised to arrange a meeting between Frau Dustmann of the

imperial opera and Groth, Brahms came to the poet's hotel one morning,

and entering the room where he was lying in bed with a bad feverish

cold, exclaimed delightedly: 'Come to me this evening, the Dustmann will

sing to you.' 'But you see I am ill,' returned Groth testily. 'You will

be astonished,' continued Brahms, whose boast it was that he had never

in his life been really ill, '_there_ is a singer, _there_ is an artist;

_she_ will please you!' 'Ah, my dear fellow, I really cannot come,'

pleaded the other, 'Johann has just put a cold compress on, I am so

miserable!' 'She is very seldom free just now; she cannot come another

day.' 'Surely you see how miserable I am. How I should like to come, but

I cannot,' persisted Groth. Then Brahms turned to go. 'You are a

Philistine!' he declared angrily as he left the room.[47]

The ante-Christmas season of 1873, signalized on its immediate opening

by the performance of the String Quartet in A minor at Berlin, already

referred to, was further rendered distinctive in Brahms' career by the

first performance from the manuscript of the Variations for Orchestra on

a theme by Haydn, which took place at the Vienna Philharmonic of

November 2 under Dessoff's direction. The masterly and attractive work

consists, as most amateurs are aware, of eight variations and a finale

on the 'Chorale St. Antoni.' The composer adheres almost entirely to

Haydn's harmonies in the giving out of the theme. The variations are

constructed on the principle often observable in his works in this form;

they constitute, as it were, a series of little movements each woven

more or less appreciably from the matter of the chorale, but each with a

character of its own and complete in itself, while the entire

composition is gathered together and rounded into a whole by the finale.

Brahms' vivid and original imagination of tone-effect is very clearly

discernible throughout the work, and is especially illustrated in it by

his original and effective employment of the double bassoon.

The variations were received by the crowded audience, and reviewed by

the press, with warm welcome and with grateful appreciation of their

beauty and perfection, if with some trace of disappointment that he who

'held the sceptre' in the domain of music for the chamber and the

concert-room, and must of all living musicians be pre-eminently

qualified for the composition of a symphony, should be the very man to

refrain from writing one. Brahms, however, was well aware of the

gigantic difficulty of the task that lay before him in the writing of a

symphony that should successfully encounter that ordeal of comparison

with the greatest works of its class which had become inevitable by the

fact of his acknowledged supremacy in other forms. The ultimate cause of

his delay and the pledge of his future victory are alike to be found in

the nature of his artistic convictions, which, holding him loyal to the

traditions of the past masters of instrumental music, made it impossible

to him to seek novelty by compromising with modern methods. Brahms

elected to wait until, with the gradual ripening of his powers to full

maturity, he should feel, not only that he had something of his own to

say in the highest domain of pure music, but that he had mastered the

power of expressing it in a manner true to himself. Had he never felt

assured on these two points it is certain that no symphony of his would

ever have been made public, no matter to what sum of months the hours

might amount which he had devoted to the study and practice of writing

for the orchestra. Having now given a sign of his whereabouts he again

drew a veil over the course of his artistic development, and, appearing

before the public during the next three years only on ground which he

had already made his own, revealed no more upward stages of his

achievement until he at length stood victoriously before the world on

its summit.

The variations were performed for the second time on December 10 under

Levi in Munich.

The Gesellschaft season opened under Brahms' direction on November 9,

with Beethoven's Overture, Op. 115, and Handel's 'Alexander's Feast.' A

varied programme was given at the second concert of December 7:

1. Schubert: Overture to Fierrebras.

2. Schubert: Aria for Tenor (written in 1821 for introduction

into Herold's Opera 'Zauberglöcken' at the

Kärnthnerthor Theater, Vienna;

unpublished). Herr Gustav Walter.

3. Volkmann: Concertstück for Pianoforte and Orchestra.

Pianoforte, Herr Smetansky.

4. (_a_) Joh. Rud. Ahle (1662)} Unaccompanied Choruses.

(_b_) J. S. Bach }

5. Bach: Cantata, 'Nun ist das Heil,' for double

Chorus, Orchestra and Organ.

6. Jac. Gallus: Unaccompanied Chorus, 'Ecce Quomodo.'

7. Beethoven: Choral Fantasia for Pianoforte (Smetansky),

Orchestra, and Chorus.

The publications of the year, all issued in the autumn, were, in

addition to the String Quartets, the version for two Pianofortes of the

Haydn Variations (Op. 56_b_), by Simrock, and a set of eight Songs (Op.

59), by Rieter-Biedermann. Of these, four are set to texts by Claus

Groth, which include 'Rain-songs' and the lovely 'Dein blaues Auge hält

so still.' The Variations for Orchestra were published by Simrock in

1874.

Brahms was at this time quite immersed in his various kinds of work.

'I am so enormously occupied that I see my best friends only very

rarely and by accident,' he wrote in December to the present

author.

It had now become his custom to decline invitations for the Christmas

festival, and to spend it, partly at the open-air Christmas market,

where he made himself happy by purchasing gifts for the poor children

whom he found crowding round the tempting wares, and partly at home,

where he would look in for half an hour at the family party gathered in

front of his landlady's Christmas-tree; no doubt contributing his share

to the surprises of Christmas Eve, the 'sacred evening' when, throughout

the length and breadth of Germany and Austria, innumerable trees are

lighted up at about the same hour, and the great exchange takes place of

presents to which, in many cases, the preparation and savings of a year

have been consecrated. A New Year's present of a special kind received

by Brahms this winter was the Maximilian Order for Art and Science

conferred on him by King Ludwig II. of Bavaria.

The year 1874 was unusually full of movement and varied excitement for

our composer. From January onwards he was besieged with invitations,

many of which he accepted, to conduct his works at concerts and

festivals in North Germany, the Rhine, Switzerland, and was obliged to

reply in the negative to Dietrich's request, received in the beginning

of spring, that he would include Oldenburg in his arrangements.

'DEAR FRIEND,

'I am more than sorry, but you are too late! I have already

promised so much, and shall not be coming to your neighbourhood!

'If you had written earlier I could have arranged with Hanover,

Bremen, etc., for, _seriously_, I should be too glad to go to you

again....'

The third Gesellschaft concert of the season (1873-74) took place on

January 25. That the performances under Brahms would be above criticism

had become by this time almost a foregone conclusion, and, beyond

recording the great success achieved by Goldmark's 'Hymn of Spring,' it

is only necessary to give the programme of the occasion:

1. Rheinberger: Prelude to the Opera 'The Seven Ravens.'

2. Goldmark: 'Frühlings Hymne' (May musings, from the Swedish of

Geijer), for Contralto solo, Chorus, and

Orchestra. (First performance, under the

composer's direction.)

3. Mozart: 'Davidde Penitente,' Cantata for Soli, Chorus, and

Orchestra.

A few days later Brahms left Vienna to fulfil a group of engagements in

Leipzig, a circumstance which in itself affords some indication of the

rapid strides by which his career had lately been advancing towards the

full sunshine of success that was to flood the latter portion of his

path through life.

The relations between Brahms and the city which owed its brilliant

reputation as a musical centre to Mendelssohn's influence had been at no

time really sympathetic. The attitude of expectant toleration that had

been more or less adopted towards him by both its extreme parties after

his first visit in 1853 had resulted on the one hand from Schumann's

essay, and on the other, from the confidence felt by the Weimarites and

expressed by Liszt that his 'new paths' must eventually bring him into

close touch with themselves. Gradually, however, it, became clear how

mistaken was the belief that the young musician would drift towards

acceptance of the extreme new tendencies, whilst the originality of his

musical thoughts and of his manner of expressing them was abhorrent to

the inflexible conservatism that had come to represent the traditions of

the Gewandhaus. If, moreover, there is every reason to surmise that

Mendelssohn himself had no hearty appreciation of Schumann's genius, it

is equally probable that neither Rietz, who conducted the Gewandhaus

concerts from 1848 to 1860, nor Reinecke, who succeeded him, was in very

warm sympathy with that of Brahms, and the predilections of the public

followed those of their accredited guides.

Brahms' works were, it is true, generally given at the orchestral or

chamber concerts of the Gewandhaus soon after publication, but,

excepting the Triumphlied, with its special appeal to the patriotic

sentiment of the great German people, they met with but scanty response

from an audience little accustomed to the exertion of trying to follow

the expression of a new and original artistic individuality. That

Reinecke was by no means an ideal conductor of them naturally resulted

from the fact that by training, by conviction, and by practice, he was

attached to a rigidly formal school of modern musical thought, and it

can surprise no one that he should have been unable entirely to realize

the deeper and richer utterances of Schumann's young prophet. Brahms'

chamber music fared differently in the hands of David, who was almost

alone amongst the authorities of the Gewandhaus in his sympathy for the

composer's genius. To these considerations it must be added that not

only the pianist, but the composer Rubinstein, had, as we indicated in

an early chapter, an enthusiastic following amongst the typical Leipzig

public who were disposed to resent any claim to recognition that might

threaten to rival that of their favourite.

In spite, however, of the fact that Brahms was no party man, in Leipzig,

as in almost every other city where his music was heard, it struck a

root, imperceptible at first, but growing deeper and stronger and more

extended with every year that went by. The attention bestowed on it by

Brendel's society has been frequently referred to in these pages; it was

cultivated, also, by Riedel's celebrated choir. A more representative

illustration, however, of a certain mysterious power inherent in Brahms'

works of finding their way sooner or later, and not seldom it is sooner,

to the heart, in spite of their intellectuality, their difficulty, their

reserve, is furnished by the case of two sisters, daughters of the head

of one of the great bookselling houses of Leipzig. The Fräulein Weigand

did not live in a musical 'set,' nor were they personally acquainted

with Brahms or his friends, but not long after their first casual

introduction to his music in the middle of the sixties, when they were

young girls, the appearance of each of his new works had come to be an

event in their lives. 'You from Leipzig!' exclaimed Hermann Levi, with

whom the sisters had a passing acquaintance in the summer of 1871. It

was not until three months before the composer's death that these ladies

had any personal communication with him. Then, hearing of his hopeless

illness, they resolved to address him for the first and last time, and

in January, 1897, they wrote to him telling how they had always loved

his music and followed his career. No one who really knew him will doubt

the pleasure that the letter gave to the dying master. In answer he

sent his photograph with his autograph, 'Johannes Brahms,' and the

inscription, 'To the two sisters as a little token of heart-felt thanks

for their so kind account.'

Of the professional critics of Leipzig, Bernsdorf of the Signale

remained to the last irreconcilable to Brahms' art; but, on the other

hand, Dörffel of the _Leipziger Nachrichten_ watched the appearance of

his works with profound interest and reviewed them with extreme sympathy

and acumen. There was during the sixties no influential 'Brahms'

community in musical Leipzig, no active 'Brahms' propaganda in the

houses of wealthy amateurs. Such occasional admirers as the composer may

have had in this circle were to be met in the drawing-room of the lady

introduced to the reader in an early chapter as Hedwig Salamon, since

married to the composer Franz von Holstein. At the beginning of the

seventies, however, a few well-known residents were to be found who had

a strong bond of union in their common sympathy with Brahms' genius. Of

these, in addition to the von Holsteins, may be particularly mentioned

Philipp Spitta, now remembered in all parts of the musical world as the

author of the standard Bach Biography, Alfred Volkland, Herr Astor, of

the firm of Rieter-Biedermann, and later on its head, and the

distinguished composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg, who settled in Leipzig

in 1872 on his marriage with Elisabeth von Stockhausen. This lady,

endowed in an extraordinary degree with beauty, goodness, intellectual

and artistic gifts, domestic qualities, and any other imaginable graces

and perfections, soon came to be numbered with her husband amongst the

ardent devotees of Brahms' art. It will be convenient to mention here

also that Theodor Kirchner settled in Leipzig in 1875, the year in which

Spitta accepted a call to Berlin.

All these circumstances put together seem to explain the master's visit

to Leipzig, where he had made no public appearance since the Gewandhaus

concert of November 26, 1860, when he and Joachim had conducted each

other's Hungarian Concerto and Serenade in A major without success.

Brahms was now to conduct a performance of 'Rinaldo' at a concert of the

University Choral Society at the Gewandhaus on February 3, and the Haydn

Variations, three Hungarian Dances, and the 'Rhapsody' (solo, Frau

Joachim) at the Gewandhaus subscription concert of February 5. His

presence in Leipzig was further welcomed by the performance of the G

minor Pianoforte Quartet at the Gewandhaus chamber concert of February

1, and by the performance of a Brahms programme by the _Allgemeiner

Musikverein_ on January 30. On January 17 one of the string quartets had

been performed at the Gewandhaus concert by David and his party.

The moment when Brahms stepped on to the Gewandhaus platform, the

acknowledged representative, in at least two domains of musical art, of

the greatest masters who had preceded him, must have been one of quiet

satisfaction to himself if he cast a thought backward to the evening,

more than thirteen years ago, when he had last appeared in the same

hall, and, not for the first time, unsuccessfully sought the suffrages

of the same public. Even now, however, though he was received with the

respect due to a musician of his great standing, he was not to taste the

enjoyment of feeling that he had aroused the enthusiasm, hardly that he

had awakened the sympathy, of his audience. The Gewandhaus public,

rarely demonstrative, preserved its special attitude of coldness and

reserve towards him, and though he may have enjoyed the society of his

personal friends, he was probably glad to find himself back again in the

genial atmosphere of his surroundings in Vienna, where, in spite of the

survival of a hostile attitude in certain organs of the press, his

ground had become practically his own.

The Haydn Variations were performed in February or March at Breslau

(twice), Aachen and Münster, under the respective conductors of the

subscription concerts, and on March 13 the composer assisted, but with

little success, in the performance of a Brahms programme at an Academy

concert, Munich, under Levi, conducting the new work, and playing the

solo of the D minor Concerto. In spite of Levi's continued efforts the

musical circles of Munich remained indifferent to the master's music.

The Haydn Variations were heard for the first time in London at the

Philharmonic concert of May 24, 1875, under W. G. Cusins.

The programmes performed at the two 'extra' concerts of the Vienna

Gesellschaft were: On March 2--

1. Schubert: _Kyrie_ and _Credo_ from the Mass in B flat.

(Unpublished; first performance.)

2. Schumann: Music to 'Manfred.'

On March 31--Handel's 'Solomon.'

'We can only thank the conductor for bringing this work forward;

the performance was ideal,' says one of the critics in his notice

of the oratorio.

The last concert of the season, on April 19, presented a varied

programme:

1. Haydn: Symphony in E flat major.

2. A. Dietrich: Concerto for Violin (Violin, Herr Lauterbach).

3. J. Brahms: Schicksalslied.

4. J. Rietz: Arioso for Violin with organ accompaniment.

5. J. S. Bach: Pastorale for Orchestra from the Christmas

Oratorio.

6. Handel: Last Chorus from the first part of 'Solomon.'

Brahms' leisure was considerably curtailed this summer. Of the numerous

engagements fulfilled by him after the close of the Vienna

concert-season three may be particularly mentioned. He conducted the

Triumphlied at the first concert of the Rhine Festival (Cologne, May

24-27), at the Jubilee anniversary concert of the Basle Choral Society,

and at a concert of the Zürich Music Festival (July), and on each

occasion the great song was received with acclamation. With this work we

may, perhaps, especially associate the honour of the Prussian Ordre pour

le Mérite which was conferred later on the composer by the Emperor

William I. He was elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of

Arts, Berlin, in the course of the summer.

'Brahms is becoming so popular,' writes Billroth on June 2, 'and is

everywhere made so much of, that he could easily become a rich man

with his composition if he could take it lightly. Fortunately this

is not the case.'

The Triumphlied was performed in the German imperial capital on December

17, 1874, under Stockhausen. It was given under Levi at the great

Bismarck Festival in Munich, and was heard in London at a concert given

in St. James's Hall by George Henschel, December 2, 1880, for the

benefit of the Victoria Hospital for Children, Chelsea.

The magnificent work is now but seldom performed: partly, no doubt,

because it was composed to celebrate a particular series of events in

history, partly because of the difficulty of securing the large chorus

necessary for its due effect, partly, perhaps, on account of the demands

it makes on the attention of the listener. Whatever be the cause, the

fact itself is to be deeply regretted. The work has sometimes been

criticised as wanting in contrast of mood. Undoubtedly it is, from

beginning to end, a song of passionate exultation which scarcely makes

pause from the first note to the last, and the listener requires time

and repeated hearings to become familiarized with its brilliancy before

he can follow it with pleasure; but it is full of varied features of

interest to lay hearers, and especially to those who will devote a

little time to its study before listening to its performance. To the

musician it appeals as a marvel of polyphonic art, though it contains no

elaborated features of harmonic or contrapuntal learning that might have

been prejudicial to its character as a national strain. It is literally

'a sound of many voices saying Alleluia.'

The master lodged this summer near Nidelbad, above Rüschlikon on Lake

Zürich. Amongst the friends and acquaintances old and new with whom he

had intercourse were Bargheer, Hegar, G. Eberhard, Gottfried Keller,

Bernhard Hopfer, Professor and Frau Engelmann from Utrecht, and J. V.

Widmann. Brahms made Widmann's acquaintance at this time at the house of

Hermann Götz, and seems to have been immediately attracted by him;

partly, perhaps, because the younger man had the courage of his

opinions, and ventured to oppose him in argument. The acquaintance,

cemented during the three days of the Zürich Festival, grew into an

intimate and lasting friendship, to which the musical world is indebted

for Widmann's well-known and delightful 'Recollections,' already several

times referred to in these pages.

Hegar mentions[48] that the works which occupied Brahms during his stay

at Rüschlikon were the second set of Liebeslieder, the book of songs,

Lieder and Gesänge, Op. 63, and the Vocal Quartets, Op. 64. It was at

this time, also, that he finally completed the Pianoforte Quartet in C

minor. The songs and quartets were published in the autumn by Peters;

the four Duets for Soprano and Contralto, Op. 61, and the seven Songs

for mixed Chorus, _a capella_, Op. 62, were issued about the same time

by Simrock. The Neue Liebeslieder and the C minor Quartet for Pianoforte

and Strings did not appear till 1875.

From this time onward Brahms' copyrights were acquired, as each new work

was completed, by Simrock of Berlin, with only four exceptions--Nänie,

Op. 82; six Vocal Quartets, Op. 112; thirteen Canons, Op. 113, which

were bought by Peters of Leipzig; and a Prelude and Fugue for Organ,

published in 1881 as a supplement to the _Musikalisches Wochenblatt_

without opus number. In future, therefore, we shall mention the

publication, but not the publisher, of the works. Those compositions

which were originally acquired from the composer by Breitkopf and Härtel

were resold by this firm to Simrock later on, and appear, therefore, in

the complete published catalogue of Brahms' works as Simrock's

publications.

The third and, as it turned out, the last season of Brahms' work as

artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde opened in due

course, and at the two ante-Christmas concerts of the season 1874-75 the

following programmes were performed: On November 8--

1. Rubinstein: Overture to the Opera 'Dimitri Donskoi.'

2. Beethoven: Pianoforte Concerto in E flat. (Pianoforte,

Herr Brahms.)

3. Brahms: Songs for mixed Chorus, _a capella_, Op. 62--

(a) Waldesnacht.

(b) 'Dein Herzlein mild.'

(c) Von alten Liebesliedern.'

4. Berlioz: 'Harold in Italy.' Symphony in four parts.

On December 6--Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in D major.

Neither concert seems to have reached the usual high-water mark of

success. Of the first programme the items most heartily appreciated were

the three choral part-songs, which, attractive in themselves and sung to

perfection, were applauded to the echo. Of doubtful wisdom was the

selection of the pianist of the occasion. Brahms, who probably yielded

to the persuasion of his committee, and was, perhaps, guided in his

choice of a concerto by the circumstance of having played Beethoven in E

flat in the spring at Bremen, had, as we have seen, given up regular

pianoforte practice for some years, and it was inevitable that his

performance should be affected by this fact. Berlioz's symphony, which

may have owed its place in the programme to our master's broad view of

his duties as the artistic director of an important society, was not

performed with any great aplomb or heard with particular favour, though

extra time and particular pains had been spent on its rehearsal.

Beethoven's great Mass, given on December 6, was followed with strained

attention that was rewarded by a good, though, if Brahms' supporters in

the press are to be trusted, not a perfect, performance.

'How different are these days from those of the forties,' remarks

one of the critics, 'when many a music lover would rise and leave

the room before the commencement of a work by Beethoven.'

The String Quartet in A minor was performed for the first time in Vienna

at Hellmesberger's concert of December 3, when the andante and scherzo

met with considerable appreciation.

'I have heard the string quartets several times this winter,'

writes Billroth in January, 1875. When we played them in Carlsruhe

as pianoforte duets, we took all the tempi much too fast. Brahms

desires very moderate _tempi_ throughout, as otherwise, owing to

the frequent harmonic changes, the music cannot become clear....

Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, in their riper works of the

last period, all have a preference for the andante _tempo_.

'If you should infer from all I have said that I am much with

Brahms, you would be mightily mistaken. I have only seen him twice

during the whole winter.... We correspond, however; he is pleased

when I write to him about his things.'

The composer was plunged in his own special work, and would allow

neither private nor public calls to occupy his attention, though he made

an exception in favour of Bernhard Scholz's invitation to pay an

artistic visit to Breslau at the close of the year. His doings during

the next few months afford but little material to chronicle, and we have

to record only the last four Gesellschaft programmes given under his

direction, and to lay special stress upon the extraordinary scene of

enthusiasm that followed the performance of the German Requiem on

February 28, 1875. The rendering of the work on this occasion was one of

those, rarely occurring, which seem to hold the audience spellbound by a

magnetic sympathy with the music. It brought with it in some mysterious

way the sudden flash of revelation. The whole audience, as it were, knew

Brahms that day, and most of what was left to be conquered, that was

worth conquering, in the musical opinion of Vienna was finally captured.

The phenomenal demonstration, joined in by musicians of all schools,

Wagnerians not excepted, that occurred on the termination of the great

work, noteworthy from its contrast with that earlier one of 1867 which

followed the performance of the first three choruses, was the more

striking since Wagner had conducted some excerpts from the 'Ring' in the

same hall a few days previously, and had been the recipient of a similar

ovation.

_January 10, 1875_:

1. Mendelssohn: Overture to the Opera 'Camacho's Marriage.'

2. Joachim: Hungarian Concerto. (Violin, Herr Joachim.)

3. Brahms: Rhapsody. (Solo, Frau Joachim.)

4. Schumann: Fantasia for Violin and Orchestra. (Herr Joachim.)

5. J. S. Bach: Whitsuntide Cantata, 'O ewiges Feuer,' for Soli,

Chorus, Orchestra, and Organ.

_February 28_:

1. J. S. Bach: Prelude for Organ in E flat, arranged for Orchestra

by Bernhard Scholz.

2. Mozart: Aria from 'Davidde penitente.'

3. Brahms: A German Requiem.

_Good Friday, March 23_:

J. S. Bach: Passion Music (St. Matthew).

_April 18_:

Max Bruch: Odysseus.

At the close of the season Brahms laid down his conductor's bâton to

make room for the return of Herbeck, whose former services, especially

in the formation of an independent orchestra, had laid the society under

a debt of gratitude, and who, unable to endure the annoyances incidental

to his position as capellmeister of the opera, resigned the post. Brahms

continued his association with the Gesellschaft as a member of the

committee, taking great interest in its councils, and exercising

influence on the concert-programmes and the appointment of professors to

the conservatoire. Each year that went by added to the warmth of the

esteem with which he was personally regarded and to the deference shown

to his judgment by the members of the society, who were all proud of

this link of association with him.

Writing in May to his stepmother from idyllic summer quarters, he says:

'DEAR MOTHER,

'I will let you know in haste, that I am living quite delightfully

at Zigelhausen near Heidelberg. Thank you also for the socks you

have again knitted for me.... I am not leaving Vienna, I have only

given up my appointment. You do not know the circumstances, and it

would be too prolix to tell you why. I am, however, remaining

there--and gladly. Write to me if you want money now, or later when

the holidays come off!...

'Affectionately Your JOHANNES.'

'I must tell you that people are very often surprised at my knitted

socks, and that I am taken such good care of!'[49]

'Brahms has had very interesting programmes. Unfortunately we have

lost him and Dessoff (Philharmonic) as conductors. Both have been

pushed out, and both pushed out by Herbeck,' writes Billroth in the

month of June.

Brahms invited Dietrich to visit him at Zigelhausen.

'I saw his new works, but cannot now be quite sure which they

were,' says Dietrich in his 'Recollections.'

We may confidently conjecture that chief amongst them must have been the

first symphony, upon the completion of which Brahms was at this time

concentrating his attention, and it is probable that he also showed the

sketches of the second symphony to his old friend.

It was this year that Brahms consented to become a member for the music

section of a commission for the awarding of certain gratuities granted

annually by the Austrian Government to poor artists of talent who have

produced promising works. Three members appointed by the Minister of

Education for each of three sections--poetry, music, and the plastic

arts--examine the applications and work sent, and judge between them.

The fund was established in 1863, and the original adjudicators in the

music section were Hanslick, Herbeck, and Essen. Brahms now replaced

Essen, and a little later Goldmark succeeded Herbeck. The compositions

were sent in the first place to Hanslick, who generally made a selection

from them for Brahms' inspection, keeping back such as did not fulfil

the required conditions or were hopelessly bad. In the _Neue Freie

Presse_ of June 29, 1897, Hanslick made public a few of the

communications he had received from Brahms on these occasions, the first

of which, dated September, 1875, was as follows:

'DEAR FRIEND,

'Parcels such as your last are generally so thorny that some kind

preliminary guidance like yours is most welcome and necessary as a

help in finding one's way through. This time, however, things are

not so bad, and seem to me fairly simple. Dvorák and Reinhold

thoroughly deserve your proposal by their performances. In

Lachner's case (blind) well-justified sympathy counts for

something. M. certainly merits some help meanwhile. I mean he ought

to win the money more decidedly next year. N. N. alone appears to

me so undeserving of the gratuity that it might be given uselessly

in his case. Just look again at his small and great sins. They are

the most unmusical in the packet. Alas, if he should progress

further! At all events he should desire and use the money for

instruction and not for a libretto!'

The Quartet in C minor for pianoforte and strings, published in the

autumn, was produced at Hellmesberger's concert of November 18 by

Brahms, Hellmesberger, Bachrich, and Popper, and was played in Hamburg

on January 3, 1876, by Levin, Böie, Schmall, and Lee.

This composition must, as the reader is aware,[50] be referred to more

than one period of Brahms' activity, and it can hardly be accepted as a

representative work of either. Standing about midway, as to date of

publication, between his two great series of masterpieces for pianoforte

and strings, if it is to be classed amongst either, it must indubitably

be reckoned with that of the sixties. Internal no less than external

evidence, however, leaves little doubt that it points back to a still

earlier date. The master of the seventies has so far succeeded in

remodelling the work of early youth as to have given to the world in the

quartet an interesting, and, on the whole, a clear, presentment of many

noble musical thoughts, but it can hardly be said that he has effected

its transformation into a homogeneous or apparently spontaneous work of

art. Kalbeck mentions that a memorandum of Brahms assigns the date

1873-74 to the third and fourth movements. This, however, may probably

refer only to their final completion. The second movement (the scherzo),

which undoubtedly belongs to the period of the pianoforte sonata

numbered as Op. 1, is consistently characteristic of the composer at

that date. The first and third movements suggest a transition period.

The character of the ideas of the opening allegro with its impressive,

deeply serious, first subject, and of the andante with its sustained

melodious phrases, seems to give promise of the power which, manifested

in a different mood, was reached in the earlier-published companion

works. Of the finale it must be said that its themes are lacking in

interest and developed mechanically. It may be surmised that the

composer's pruning-knife was freely used in the course of his successive

revisions of the work, and perhaps not only for the purpose of

shortening it, but also for that of thinning out the score. From the

circumstance that this is neither so luxuriant in detail nor so thickly

instrumented as those of the other two pianoforte quartets, the C minor

has, perhaps, the one advantage amongst the three of being the most

readily appreciable at first hearing. It must, however, as the author

conceives, be rated, as a completed work of art, decidedly below its

glorious companions.

The relative popularity attained by the three pianoforte quartets in

England may be fairly estimated by comparing the numbers of their

respective performances at the Popular Concerts, London. The A major,

introduced in January, 1872, was given ten times up to October, 1900,

inclusive. The G minor, first performed in January, 1874, was given

twenty-six times up to March, 1900. The C minor, first played in

November, 1876, was not heard again until December, 1893.

[46] Allgeyers, 'Life of Feuerbach.'

[47] From the article in the _Gegenwart_ already referred to.

[48] Steiner's 'Johannes Brahms.'

[49] Reimann's 'Johannes Brahms,' p. 117.

[50] See Vol. II., pp. 77 and 138.

CHAPTER XVII

1876-1878

Tour in Holland--Third String Quartet--C minor Symphony--First

performances--Varying impressions created by the work in Vienna and

Leipzig--Brahms and Widmann at Mannheim--Second Symphony--Vienna

and Leipzig differ as to its merits.

A journey to Holland early in 1876 brought unmixed gratification to the

master. He conducted the Haydn Variations, and played the D minor

Concerto at Utrecht on January 22 before an audience which received him

with warm greeting, and gave every possible evidence of appreciation of

his works. Immense applause followed each movement of the concerto, and

at its close, when enthusiasm was at its height, two youthful ladies

advanced to the platform, each bearing a cushion on which a wreath was

placed, one decorated with ribbons of the Austrian colours (black and

yellow), the other with those of Holland (red, white, and blue), which

they smilingly presented to the composer. Brahms, not always inclined to

receive tributes of the kind with urbanity, entered thoroughly into the

happy spirit of this occasion, and showed plainly by his manner of

accepting the compliment his pleasure at the charming way in which it

had been offered. He was the guest during his several days' stay at

Utrecht of Professor and Frau Engelmann, in whose house he at once

became at home, dividing his time between walking, talking, playing with

the children, making music with his hostess, seeing friends, and was in

genial mood throughout the visit. It may be remarked _en passant_ that

Brahms in a companionable frame of mind was not accustomed to let his

friends off easily. His constitution was so robust, his spirit so

active, his interests so numerous, that he liked, and expected others to

like, to sit up talking with vivacity until the small hours of the

morning, and would rise after about five hours' rest as unwearied and

energetic as though he had had what would be for most people a normal

amount of repose. It was a matter of course wherever he stayed that the

means for making a cup of coffee should be left every night at his

disposal for the next morning, and he generally returned from an early

walk at about the hour when the household was beginning to stir.

After leaving Holland the master took part as conductor and pianist in

concerts at Münster, where he directed the Triumphlied, Mannheim and

Wiesbaden, playing the D minor Concerto on each occasion. He was, of

course, the guest at Münster of Grimm and his wife. At Mannheim he

stayed with his friend the well-known capellmeister Ernst Frank, who in

the course of his career was associated as conductor with the musical

life of Würzburg, Vienna, Mannheim, and Hanover. The Wiesbaden concert

is still vividly remembered by the present Landgraf of Hesse, who, then

a young lad, heard Brahms for the first time on the occasion, and

received an impression which laid the foundation of his enduring

enthusiasm for the master's art.

Staying in the summer at Sassnitz in the Isle of Rügen, Brahms there

completed his third String Quartet in B flat major, and announced the

work in September to Professor Engelmann, to whom it is dedicated. It

was played in Berlin before a private audience towards the end of

October by the Joachim Quartet party, and by the same artists for the

first time in public at their concert of October 30 in the hall of the

Singakademie, on both occasions from the manuscript. The first concert

performance after publication was that of the Hellmesberger party on

November 30 in Vienna.

The general remarks offered in the preceding chapter on Brahms' chamber

music for strings are to be applied to the Quartet in B flat major. Of

its particular characteristics we may note the joyousness of the first

movement, and the weird fantastic pathos of the third, in which a

special relation is maintained between the viola and first violin. In

the theme--of distinguished simplicity--and variations, with which the

work closes, we have a concise but beautiful example of the composer's

facility in this form.

The String Quartet in B flat was the first of the three composed by

Brahms to be heard at the Popular Concerts, London. It was played on

Monday, February 19, and Saturday, March 3, 1877, by Joachim, Ries,

Straus, and Piatti. The A minor was performed on Monday, October 31,

1881, by Straus, Ries, Zerbini, and Piatti, and the C minor on Monday,

December 7, 1855, by Madame Norman-Néruda, Ries, Straus, and Franz

Néruda. These (Op. 51, Nos. 1 and 2) were not immediately repeated.

The great event of the year 1876 in the career of Brahms was the

appearance of the long looked for symphony. As in the case of the

Schicksalslied and the completed Triumphlied, the composer chose to

produce his work for the first time at Carlsruhe, preferring, maybe, to

test it for his own satisfaction in the comparative privacy of a small

audience before submitting it to the searching ordeal of performance in

either of the great musical centres of the Continent. The musical life

of Carlsruhe had suffered sadly by the departure of Levi in 1872, and it

was not until the appointment of Dessoff to the post of court

capellmeister, on his resignation of his duties in Vienna in 1875, that

the city began to regain some of its former artistic prestige. The

performance on November 4, 1876, from the manuscript, of Brahms' first

Symphony by the grand ducal orchestra under Dessoff, in the composer's

presence, was a musical event that revived the recollections of a

brilliant past, and added a new and abiding distinction to the artistic

traditions of the small capital.

The work was heard a few days later in Mannheim, and on the 15th of the

month in Munich; on both occasions under the composer's direction. Four

other performances from the manuscript quickly followed--in Vienna

(Gesellschaft), December 17, in Leipzig, January 18, and Breslau,

January 23, 1877, in each case under the composer, and in Cambridge,

March 8, 1877, under Joachim's direction.

The Symphony in C minor, whose appearance marks the period of Brahms'

achievement in the highest domain of absolute music, and the last that

remained to him for conquest, is in the first place remarkable from the

fact that it cannot properly be ranged beside the works in the same form

produced by either of the two masters who were, chronologically

speaking, his immediate predecessors. By its accomplishment, no less

than by its aim, it must be regarded as the immediate successor to the

symphonies of Beethoven in the same sense as these were the direct

descendants of the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, and it establishes

Brahms' right to be accepted in its own domain as the heir, _par

excellence_, of one and all of these masters. This alone were much.

Still more important, however, is the fact that our composer has known

how to graft upon the symphony form inherited from Beethoven, Mozart,

and Haydn, the giant stock of Bach's learning and resource, studied and

absorbed by him until they had become a part of his own artistic

individuality, in such a manner as to revivify it root and branch, and

make it a supple instrument in his hand, not for the mechanical

imitation of what had been done before him, but for the 'highest ideal

musical expression of his own time.'[51] Few who listen with quickened

ears to an adequate performance of the C minor Symphony can be in doubt

that whilst in outward form and manner of construction it may be

regarded as at once the epitome and the latest result of the past

history of classical instrumental art, it is in spirit representative of

its own time and even anticipatory of the future; that it not only

reflects the soul of the musician, poet, and philosopher, but is

suggestive of the higher vision of the prophet. It is this fact, for

those who accept it as a fact, that constitutes the highest significance

of Brahms' first symphony, and lends a real meaning to Bülow's

well-known apophthegm of 'the three B's': Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

The shrill, clashing dissonances of the first introduction at once place

the listener in the atmosphere of stern grandeur, passion, mystery, that

surround, not this or that human life, but existence itself, in its

apprehension by human intelligence; and the allegro to which it leads

seems to the present writer to present as near an analogy as art can

show to the processes of nature, built up as it is--first and second

subjects and their treatment--from a few notes; from what one of the

Vienna critics called 'mere twigs of thematic material'; from germs

which are produced and reproduced, are transformed and reformed, and

developed into a great organic whole instinct with noble, living melody.

The solemnly fervent andante sostenuto, the graceful, innocent

allegretto with its sufficiently contrasted trio, afford the mind the

refreshment of change of tone after the stormy splendour of the first

movement; but the note of tragedy is resumed with the first sounds of

the wonderful adagio that precedes, and essentially contains, the

allegro of the fourth movement. Here, for some twenty-eight bars, the

tension of feeling increases till destiny itself seems to be held in

suspense; then, with the resolution of a chromatic chord, the horn

sounds the unexpected major third of the key in a six-four of the tonic

triad, and, continuing its strange, passionate cry, gradually disperses

the mists of doubt and apprehension that have held the hearer as in a

thrall, and carries him forward to the sublimity of joy that dwells in

the final allegro.

'The last movement of your C minor Symphony,' wrote Billroth to

Brahms in 1890, fourteen years after its first performance, 'has

again lately excited me fearfully. Of what avail is the perfect,

clear beauty of the principal subject in its thematically complete

form? The horn returns at length with its romantic, impassioned cry

as in the introduction, and all palpitates with longing, rapture

and supersensuous exaltation and bliss.'

These words were not written by a fantastic dreamer, but by one of the

most renowned scientific and practical surgeons and busiest men of his

time, and in using them he did not employ a mere rhetorical phrase. The

quality of imagination which speaks through Brahms' first symphony is

akin to that of the early Sonata in F minor, though it is expressed in

the later work with the help of more than twenty years additional study

and experience. It is that of a seer of visions, and seems to culminate,

in the passage to which Billroth alluded, in an ecstasy of wonder and

joy. Brahms undoubtedly rose to the full height of his great powers in

this first symphony, which remains unsurpassed in workmanship and

sustained loftiness of idea, as well as in regard to the range of

emotion to which it appeals.

It goes without saying that the supposed merits and demerits of the work

became the subject of heated argument between the partisans and

antagonists of the composer's art, the particulars of which would

scarcely prove interesting to readers of the present day. In giving some

account of the first impressions made by the symphony, we shall quote

from those notices only which, whilst they are in themselves not without

value, appear to have been written in a candid spirit, and do not

offensively betray the influence of party bias. The reputation attaching

to Hanslick's name, and the moderation of his style, seem to make it

necessary to include something from his report, though he was avowedly a

stanch admirer of Brahms' music, and had little liking for that of the

New-German school. To balance this, we shall give a few sentences from

the _Wiener Zeitung_, a journal to which, as the reader may remember, no

suspicion can attach of handling our master's works with an excess of

cordiality. It is necessary to explain, for the benefit of such readers

as are not familiar with Brahms' large works, that the references to

Beethoven's ninth symphony occurring in some of the press notices are

occasioned by what has sometimes been described as Brahms' intentional

allusion, in the principal theme of his finale, to Beethoven's setting

of Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' in the last movement of the great 'ninth.'

The so-called allusion consists, not so much in a similarity of melody

in Brahms' theme to that of Beethoven, as in its being written in the

same hymn-form and harmonized as plainly as possible. There is no doubt

whatever that everyone who listens to Brahms' first symphony thinks

immediately, on the entrance of the final allegro, of Beethoven's ninth.

The association passes with the conclusion of the subject; Brahms'

movement develops on its own lines, which do not resemble those of

Beethoven.

'In this work,' says Hanslick (_Neue Freie Presse_), 'Brahms' close

affinity with Beethoven must become clear to every musician who has

not already perceived it. The new symphony displays an energy of

will, a logic of musical thought, a greatness of structural power

and a mastery of technique such as are possessed by no other living

composer. It would be a sorry mistake to attempt to criticize a

work so serious and difficult of comprehension immediately after

hearing it for the first time. Various listeners may have found the

music more or less clear, more or less sympathetic; the one thing

that we may speak of as a simple fact, accepted alike by friend and

foe, is that no composer has yet approached so nearly to the great

works of Beethoven as Brahms in the finale of the C minor

Symphony.'

'... Brahms was an important personality, one to be treated most

seriously before he wrote the symphony,' we read in the _Wiener

Zeitung_; 'to our thinking his position remains just as it was. The

strong moral earnestness, the depth and purity of his conception of

the world and of life, and the intellectuality, which have always

obtained for the esteem of the noble-minded and withheld from him

the favour of the masses, are to be found again in this work. None

the less, however, are the shadows there which but too easily

accompany such lights; the want of inspiriting fancy, the absence

of sensuous charm, and a sullen asceticism almost amounting to

insipidity. His musical language has lost nothing of its mysterious

reticence, of its close conciseness, of the elevation that on the

whole distinguishes it, nor has it gained in facility, clearness,

or comprehensibility.... So there is nothing that can be admired

without reserve, until with sure step, with strong, proud gait that

reminds one of the majesty of Beethoven, the finale strides out.

After a bar or two of deeply sorrowful complaint, it braces itself

to a turbulent pizzicato of the strings, as a man who would get rid

of pain by nerving himself to action.... With the entry of the

chorale, the hearer experiences a sensation of brightness as at

the rising of the sun after a night of sorrow. The last mists

disappear as before the breaking light, and the movement closes in

strong, healthy gladness.... Here the arts of music and poetry

mingle indissolubly, and the musical, cannot be separated from the

poetic, impression. Here is a truly great artistic achievement, the

value of which is but slightly prejudiced by the consideration that

the "joy" theme has an unmistakable resemblance as of son to father

to that of the "ninth" symphony. This movement is worthy of the man

who composed the German Requiem.'

Dörffel, of the _Leipziger Nachrichten_, wrote:

'The interest of all present was centred on the new symphony,

which, on the whole, justified the great expectations with which it

had been awaited. Its effect on the audience was the most intense

that has been produced by any new symphony within our remembrance.

Schumann in his time did not attain such.... The composition is to

be viewed and measured from the standpoint of Beethoven's ninth,

and of Schumann's second, symphony. The aim of the three works is

the same. To reach it, Brahms, well-equipped and daring spirit as

he is, goes his own way. He is great in attack as his two

predecessors, and has the same wide vision over the domain of

spiritual-human existence.... As regards uninterrupted energy of

creative power, we would give the palm to the first movement. The

second, with its fervour and longing, accords with it. To the third

we should gladly have listened longer. It supplied a counterpoise

of sentiment to what had gone before which had not been maintained

long enough when the movement closed. Of the finale we would almost

venture to surmise that it gave the composer the most trouble. Here

he relinquishes his independence, and flies to Beethoven in order

to get new force for his climax. We do not regard the resort to

Beethoven as accidental, but believe the composer to have been well

aware of it. He came, however, to one over whom he could not

prevail.

'A long pause followed the symphony; one, however, that was not

long enough in some measure to quiet the exaltation of mind

produced by the work. The songs and variations which followed, and

which we should have welcomed at another time, were almost tiresome

to us. Let the symphony be repeated soon, and, if possible, without

other music.'[52]

Louis Ehlert says of the symphony:

'Brahms has a wide-reaching and speculative brain, and is a mixture

of the musician of the good old times who heard many voices

sounding together within him, whose very cradle cover was

embroidered with a contrapuntal pentagram, and of the man of the

present day with his variously cultured intellect.... What

distinguishes his music from that of all his contemporaries is the

mysterious apparition within it of another world--its gentle,

pathetic tapping at the heart.

'The first movement of the symphony is, perhaps, the most

artistically important of the work.... An inexorable causality

proceeds from bar to bar, stayed by no illusion, and softened only

by the distant light of a few solitary stars. In the introduction

and finale the enigmatical sphinx seems to call to us, "That which

ascends from me, mounting upwards to battle and to life, sinks back

again within me. Of all life I, the eternal riddle, am the

beginning and the end."'

It will be evident from what has been said that whatever the impression

to be derived from familiar acquaintance with the symphony, immediate

enthusiasm could hardly have been anticipated from any large general

public--least of all by Brahms himself; but the presence at most of

these first performances of devotees specially qualified for

apprehending something of the significance of the work generally secured

for it more than a mere _succès d'estime_. The listeners of Munich were

the least appreciative. Those of Carlsruhe, Mannheim and Breslau were

friendly. At Vienna certain favoured friends were privileged to listen

to a private performance of the symphony by Brahms and Ignaz Brüll, in

the composer's arrangement as a pianoforte duet, at the pianoforte house

of his friend Herr Hoffabrikant Friedrich Ehrbar, and went to the

concert, therefore, with minds partially prepared for what they were to

hear. At Leipzig a note of enthusiasm was perceptible at the crowded

public rehearsal which preceded the Gewandhaus concert, owing partly to

the fact that Brahms' Leipzig adherents had been strongly reinforced by

the advent of friends from outside, some of whom added warmth and

prestige to the occasion by their mere presence. The feeling for our

master's art which, as we have seen, had been slowly growing amongst a

number of Leipzig residents who belonged to no musical 'set,' will have

been expressed with added zest and enjoyment when it was found that Frau

Schumann and Joachim and Stockhausen had come to hear the symphony,

whilst to the support of the von Herzogenbergs, von Holsteins, Theodor

Kirchner, and other resident or lately resident friends, was added that

of the Grimms from Münster, Dr. Hermann Deiters from Bonn, Professor and

Frau Engelmann from Utrecht, Simrock from Berlin, and many other

distinguished guests. Enthusiasm is contagious, and already at the

rehearsal a success was ensured for the work, though perhaps it was not

very warmly helped by the official patrons of the Gewandhaus.

'A regular Brahms party meeting had been organized,' says Bernsdorf

in the _Signale_, now as ever inveterate in his own party bias, in

which a fairly strong contingent from outside was associated with

the resident admirers and champions of the composer. It is

therefore a matter of course that the consumption of enthusiasm was

enormous, and that the success of the symphony was one exceptional

in the annals of the Gewandhaus.'

A large party of friends assembled at supper at the Hôtel Hauffe after

the concert. Brahms' health was proposed in genial fashion by

Stockhausen. 'Hab' ich tausendmal geschworen,'[53] he suddenly sang out,

starting to his feet and raising his glass. Needless to say that the

toast, which was the more effective from the sense of victory filling

the minds of those who had assisted at the evening's triumph, was

honoured with the utmost enthusiasm.

The performance of the symphony by the Cambridge University Musical

Society was given under special circumstances. Early in the year the

university offered the master an honorary degree, acceptance of which

would have involved him in a visit to England, since, by one of the

university statutes, its degrees may not be conferred _in absentia_.

Brahms was not asked to write a new work for the occasion, a request he

would properly have resented, but was merely invited to visit Cambridge

for the purpose of receiving the degree, and was so far gratified by the

compliment as to hesitate about his answer. Perhaps his mere reluctance

to decline the invitation in spite of his dread of English customs and

his ignorance of the language, may be accepted as stronger testimony of

appreciation than might have been implied in the effusive acceptance of

many another man. It may be doubted whether he would in any case have

prevailed upon himself to undertake the journey; an indiscreet

advertisement, however, inserted in _The Times_ by the Crystal Palace

directors, who had heard a rumour of his possible visit, that if he

should come he would be asked to conduct one of their Saturday concerts,

immediately decided him to decline the University's proffered honour. He

acknowledged the invitation by entrusting the MS. score and parts of the

symphony to the care of Joachim, who was about starting on his yearly

visit to England, for performance at Cambridge.

The programme of March 8 was as follows:

PART I.

W. G. Bennett: Overture, 'The Wood Nymph.'

Beethoven: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.

Violin, Dr. Joachim.

Brahms: A Song of Destiny.

Bach: Violin Solos, Dr. Joachim.

Joachim: Elegiac Overture (in memory of H. Kleist).

PART II.

Brahms: Symphony in C minor.

The Symphony and the Elegiac Overture, the latter composed by Joachim in

acknowledgment of the honorary degree offered him by the University and

conferred in the afternoon of March 8, were given under his direction;

the remainder of the programme was under that of the society's

conductor, C. Villiers Stanford.

The concert attracted a great audience, which included prominent

musicians from various parts of the United Kingdom. The impression

created by the symphony was profound, and, following that of the German

Requiem and of the great chamber music compositions and songs which had

now for some years been finding their way to the hearts of music lovers

in this country, formed, as Stanford says, 'an imperishable keystone to

Brahms' fame amongst Britons.'[54] The new work was performed in London

a few weeks later at the Philharmonic concert of April 16, under W. G.

Cusins.

Probably Brahms' Vienna friends and admirers little dreamed how near

they had been at this time to losing their favourite. The position of

municipal music-director at Düsseldorf was pressed on his acceptance in

the autumn of 1876, and he was sufficiently tempted by it to be

characteristically unable to decide on a negative answer. He was,

indeed, so long in coming to a final resolution, that the Düsseldorf

authorities had every reason to feel persuaded they had secured him for

the opening of the year 1877. At the last moment he wrote: 'I cannot

make up my mind to it.' This seems to have been the last occasion on

which he entertained the idea of binding himself to the performance of

fixed duties, though it has been surmised that he might have consented

at a somewhat later period to associate himself with a high class for

composition at the conservatoire of the Vienna 'Gesellschaft,' if he had

been approached by the principal, Josef Hellmesberger, on the subject of

forming one.

Certain incidents belonging to the autumn of 1877, related by Widmann in

his Brahms' 'Recollections,' show that at this time, when the master had

successfully proved his powers in every form of composition for the

concert-room, the old desire to try his hand at writing for the stage

revived within him. Brahms and Widmann met at Mannheim, and were present

at the production, on September 30, of Götz's unfinished opera,

'Francesca di Rimini,' under Frank. In the course of a long

_tête-à-tête_, held on their return to their hotel after the

performance, Brahms clearly explained his views on the subject of opera

texts, 'letting it be seen,' says Widmann, 'that any resolution he might

have formed against composing an opera might give way were he to find

himself in possession of a libretto really to his liking.'

The convictions professed on this occasion by the composer may be traced

to an attitude of mind similar to that to which we referred on recording

his conversation with Bulthaupt. Strange as it may appear, they have a

fundamental kinship with those which led Wagner to embark on his career

as a musico-dramatic reformer, though the methods proposed by Brahms

were not only much more drastic than those pursued by Wagner, but ran,

as Widmann has observed, directly in the opposite direction from that

taken by the development of modern art as represented by this master.

'The composition of music to the entire drama seemed to Brahms

unnecessary and even mischievous. Only the culminating points and

those parts of the action should be set for which music would be an

inherently suitable medium of expression. The librettist would thus

gain space and freedom for the dramatic development of his subject,

whilst the composer would be at liberty to devote himself solely to

the purposes of his art which would be best served if he were able

to concentrate his energies on a definite situation such as a

jubilant _ensemble_.'

From this it would appear that the incongruity essential to the very

existence of what is generally understood as Opera, as distinct from the

early German Singspiel, was so strongly felt by Brahms as to seem to him

incompatible with dramatic truth, and to be absolutely prohibitive in

his own case of the dramatic exercise of his art. The matter is,

however, susceptible of another explanation.

It is clear that Brahms, when contemplating the composition of an opera,

was bound by the necessities of his position to seek the attainment of

dramatic truth in a direction other than that in which Wagner had led

the way with such triumphant result. Every circumstance in the careers

of the two men, and not least the representative position achieved by

each in his own sphere, precluded the possibility that Brahms should run

the risk of appearing to seek to emulate Wagner on his own ground,

though it would be difficult to believe that he at no time cast longing

thoughts towards the logical, consistent, rich means of artistic effect

offered by the Melos.[55] No one can doubt that if he had been in a

position, and had chosen, to use it, he would have employed it in his

own way and for his own original purposes and effects. The skill with

which he might have handled it in opera is to some small extent

indicated in the Rhapsody (Goethe's 'Harzreise'), where the method of

the two first sections is very much that of the Melos, whilst the

prayer, affording an opportunity 'inherently suitable for musical

expression,' reverts to the rhythmical melody of musical tradition. That

Brahms had a respect almost amounting to veneration for Wagner's powers

is matter of common knowledge. Though he was never present at a Bayreuth

performance, he had studied Wagner's scores exhaustively, and, in the

sense of his intimate acquaintance with them, was accustomed to call

himself the 'best of all Wagnerians.' An anecdote related by Richard

Heuberger,[56] to whom the master gave informal instruction in

composition for a time from early in 1878, is highly illustrative in

this connection. Heuberger says:

'... Continuing his corrections, Brahms did not confine himself to

remarks on the composition itself, but considered the handwriting

also worthy of his notice. He pointed out that I had not placed

crotchet under crotchet, and that this impaired the legibility of

the manuscript; he advised me to be particular to slur the groups

of notes with exactness.... "Look here," he said, fetching from the

next room Wagner's autograph score of "Tannhäuser," which he opened

at the long B major movement of the second act; "Wagner has taken

pains to place each of the five sharps exactly in its place on

_every_ line of _every_ page, and in spite of all this precision

the writing is easy and flowing. If _such_ a man can write so

neatly, you must do so too." He turned over the entire movement and

pointed reproachfully to almost every sharp. I felt continually

smaller, especially as Brahms talked himself into a kind of

didactic wrathfulness. I was struck completely dumb, however, when,

on my remarking that Wagner must be held chiefly responsible for

the confusion prevailing in the heads of us young people, Brahms

cried as though he had been stung, "_Nonsense_; the _misunderstood_

Wagner has done it. Those understand _nothing_ of the real Wagner

who are led astray by him. Wagner's is one of the clearest heads

that ever existed in the world!"'

That Brahms was aware that the resolution to compose an opera would

place him in a net of difficulties that might practically be summed up

in the one word 'Wagner' is no mere conjecture. Fräulein Anna Ettlinger,

an intimate friend of Levi and Allgeyer, who knew Brahms well both at

Carlsruhe and Munich, relates in an article on Levi, that Brahms

answered a question put to him in Munich in the course of the seventies,

as to why he had written no opera by saying, 'Beside Wagner it is

impossible.' It may fairly be concluded that Brahms, in the late

seventies, merely 'coquetted,' as Widmann expresses it, with the idea of

composing for the stage, though no doubt with considerable regret.[57]

It cannot be said that the subjects he proposed to Widmann appear happy,

but his suggestions must not be taken too seriously.

'He recommended to me Gozzi's magical farces and fabled comedies,

especially "King Stag" and "The Ravens." He was also interested in

"The Open Secret," and preferred Gozzi's lighter arrangement of the

piece to Calderon's more formal original.... After reading "King

Stag" carefully through several times, I was not only seized with a

certain hopelessness as to whether I could ever succeed in making a

rational, poetical opera text out of this mad farce, but disturbed

by the anxiety as to whether, even if it were successfully adapted,

it could really interest a modern theatre-going public.... I found

myself continually thinking that such an opera, even though Brahms

had composed for it the most beautiful, glorious music, as would

undoubtedly have been the case, could not be regarded as

essentially anything else than a sort of second "Zauberflöte," and

thus as a retrogression in the development of operatic art.'[58]

Nothing, in short, resulted from the talk between Brahms and Widmann,

and the suitable libretto was, as we know, never found. This is,

perhaps, little to be regretted. Not, indeed, because the composer

lacked the dramatic instinct necessary for the successful composition of

opera. No one who has heard him quote a few lines from a classical play

can doubt that he possessed this qualification in an eminent degree, and

his sensitiveness to dramatic effect was matter for frequent comment by

those who accompanied him to the theatre. It is, however, difficult to

imagine that Brahms could have been content to compose music to a purely

comic text, or, indeed, to one that did not contain elements of deep

pathos; whilst a quasi-comic opera, in which allegory lay hidden, must

almost certainly have been found, as Widmann perceived, unsuitable to

modern taste. On the other hand, Brahms' constitutional shyness and

reticence, fostered through long years of varied experience until they

became invincible, must, we believe, have proved obstacles to the

successful completion of a serious opera in any practicable meaning of

the word, even if they had allowed him to attempt one. They are more or

less traceable in the libretto difficulty; in his suggestion of 'King

Stag,' which he recommended especially on account of its fun,

'accompanied throughout by the most pathetic earnestness'; in other

words, because the earnestness is covered by the fun. It is difficult to

imagine the man who habitually veiled the tenderness of his nature

behind a playful saying or an abrupt manner, who did not allow himself

to inquire about the possibilities of passionate feeling that might lie

dormant within him, coming out of his reserve to use the strong play of

emotion as the immediate and capital medium for his effects. The energy

of feeling, the deeply pathetic beauty which vitalize the master's

purely instrumental music, are surrounded and protected by an

intellectual atmosphere which, on a first hearing of his larger works,

sometimes seems to amount to austerity, and to repel rather than

attract. His love-songs--those of them which are not folk-songs--are for

the most part dreamings of an ideal, and not the ideal of a man who

could lay his heart bare on the theatre boards. Not wholly fanciful is

the association in which Brahms, in a letter to Widmann, jokingly placed

his two life renunciations, of the composition of an opera and of

marriage. The extracts from favourite authors entered by Johannes during

the early fifties in the little manuscript books described by Kalbeck,

the passages found in 'The young Kreisler's treasure-chest, March,

1854,' remain significant not only of the young musician of twenty, but

also of the master of forty, fifty, sixty years, and the quotation from

Friedrich v. Sallet might probably stand as the true history of Brahms'

inner life.

'One generally finds the highest degree of what is called

_openness_ in the most frivolous and thoughtless persons; of that

which is called _reserve_, in the deepest, richest and truest

minds. And, indeed, I am glad to be communicative, and like a full,

free flow of conversation during the clinking of cups; whatever

noble thought may have occurred to me should not have been gained

for myself, but, if possible, for the world. Nevertheless, there is

in the mind a holy of holies. I would not bring that forth which

shines brightly there, hidden away in the inmost recess, to glimmer

vainly and childishly in the universal light of day. Let it remain

there in sacred night. I dare not even tell it in barren words to

my friend, however noble, not even to my beloved (if I had one). To

what purpose? I might use one single misleading expression, the

other might misunderstand one single expression, and my divine

image, reflected from a concave mirror, become a distortion, common

or trivial, or even deformed and ridiculous.... To analyze and

describe the sacred within us is a shameless desecration. If the

other has a spiritual eye that is worthy to perceive, he may

quietly await one of those blissful moments when the curtain of

mists breaks and a swift, comprehensive glance into the sanctuary

of the temple is allowed to the worthy one, and in such moments is

celebrated the high festival of friendship as of love. For myself,

I dare reveal nothing of it in words save in poetry. There I may do

so, for it happens in some divine way that is incomprehensible to

me....'[59]

We have henceforth, therefore, only to observe the unwearied energy with

which Brahms, during the succeeding years, added one work after another

to the list of his compositions in each and every branch of serious

music for the chamber and the concert-room: songs, vocal duets, choral

works and instrumental solos accompanied and unaccompanied, concerted

music for solo instruments, symphonies. The publications of the year

1877 were the Symphony and the four sets of Songs, Op. 69, 70, 71, 72,

twenty-four songs in all, some of the texts of which are by Carl

Candidus, Carl Lemke, Gottfried Keller, etc., and others imitations of

folk-songs of various nationalities. Dr. Deiters says of them in his

'Johannes Brahms':

'As it seems to us, the composer identifies himself here more and

more closely with classical form and achieves ever purer refinement

of his material. Turn where one will (we mention for instance "Des

Liebsten Schwur" from Op. 69) there can be no hesitation in

counting these songs with the best to be found of their kind. Again

we are constantly reminded of Franz Schubert, whose wealth of

melody is revived, whilst in conciseness of construction, in

conscious mastery of form, he is here greatly surpassed.'

Heuberger gives a pleasant glimpse of Brahms co-operating in a festival

performance arranged for December, 1877, by the Academic Choral Society

of Vienna in honour of its distinguished honorary member, Billroth.

Invited by Heuberger, Dr. Eyrich's successor as conductor of the

society, to take part in the proceedings, the master at once promised

to conduct two of his choruses, 'Ich schnell mein Horn' and 'Lied vom

Herrn von Falkenstein,' as arranged for the occasion for men's voices by

Heuberger, and, on his appearance at the last rehearsal to go through

the well-prepared compositions, was greeted with a hurricane of welcome

by the over two hundred students who formed the choir. At the festival

performance next day

'Brahms joined in the students' songs as lustily as his rough,

broken voice would permit. He had, as he told me, a very good

soprano voice as a boy, but had spoilt it by singing too much

during its mutation period.'

Of another occasion, a party at Billroth's house, when choruses by

Brahms and Goldmark were to be performed, Heuberger relates:

'By Brahms' suggestion I directed the preliminary practices which

took place at the houses of some of his friends, the Osers and

others. The day before the party Brahms and Goldmark came to the

last rehearsal. The so-reputed cross-grained Brahms now conducted

his "Marienlieder" and other works without much alteration of the

nuances that I had practised. Goldmark, on the contrary, who was as

much liked in private life as he was dreaded at rehearsal, studied

indefatigably on and on.'[60]

The publication of Brahms' first Symphony in C minor was almost

immediately followed by the appearance of a second one in D major,

completed during the summer months of 1877 at the beloved Lichtenthal.

It was, like the earlier work, played by Brahms and Brüll before an

invited circle at Ehrbar's as a pianoforte duet (composer's arrangement)

a few days before the date, December 11, first announced for its

performance at a Vienna Philharmonic concert. Cause arose at the last

moment for the postponement of this event, and the work was given for

the first time in public at the succeeding Philharmonic concert of

December 30, under Hans Richter's direction. The second performance,

conducted by Brahms, took place at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on January 10,

1878.

The early fortunes of this second symphony were singularly various, and

contrasted strangely with those of its predecessor. In Vienna, where the

first had been received with reserve, the second achieved an instant,

almost popular, success. It was warmly received by the audience, and was

discussed by nearly all sections of the press in terms of cordial

approval. It was of a 'more attractive character,' more 'understandable'

than its predecessor. It was to be preferred, too, inasmuch as the

composer had not this time 'entered the lists with Beethoven.' The third

movement was especially praised for its 'original melody and rhythms.'

The work might be appropriately termed the 'Vienna Symphony,' reflecting

as it did 'the fresh, healthy life only to be found in beautiful

Vienna.' In Leipzig, on the other hand, the work was little better than

a failure. The impression of the preceding year was felt in the general

applause, emphasized by a thrice-repeated flourish of trumpets and

drums, which greeted the composer's entrance, and the audience

maintained an attitude of polite cordiality throughout the performance

of the symphony, courteously applauding between the movements and

recalling the master at the end; but the enthusiasm of personal friends

was not this time able to kindle any corresponding warmth in the bulk of

the audience, or even to cover the general consciousness of the fact.

The most favourable of the press notices damned the work with faint

praise, and Dörffel, whom we quote here and elsewhere because he alone

of the professional Leipzig critics of the seventies seems to have been

imbued with a sense of Brahms' artistic greatness, showed himself quite

angry from disappointment.

'The Viennese,' he wrote, 'are much more easily satisfied than we.

We make quite different demands on Brahms, and require from him

music which is something more than "pretty" and "very pretty" when

he comes before us as a symphonist. Not that we do not wish to hear

him in his complaisant moods, not that we disdain to accept from

him pictures of real life, but we desire always to contemplate his

genius, whether he displays it in a manner of his own, or depends

on that of Beethoven. We have not discovered genius in the new

symphony and should hardly have guessed it to be the work of Brahms

had it been performed anonymously. We should have recognised the

great mastery of form, the extremely skilful handling of the

material, the conspicuous power of construction in short, which it

displays, but should not have described it as pre-eminently

distinguished by inventive power. We should have pronounced the

work to be one worthy of respect, but not counting for much in the

domain of symphony. Perhaps we may be mistaken; if so, the error

should be pardonable, arising as it does from the great

expectations which our reverence for the composer induced us to

form.'

Possibly Dörffel's expectations had been founded too definitely upon his

admiration of the first symphony, which may have caused him to take for

granted that he would find in the second a reiteration of the exalted

moods of its predecessor. The two works should not, however, be weighed

in the balance one against the other, but should be considered side by

side for the reason that they are not only different, but, as it were,

supplementary. The first partakes of the nature of an epic in so far as

it is conceived on a grand scale and is dominated throughout three of

its four movements by a passionate intensity of feeling which is

occupied only with the sublimities, whether of pain or of joy, and

which, even after the pain has been conquered, seems to touch the joy

theme itself with the pathos of a past tragedy. The second symphony is

an idyll that is chiefly animated by the spirit of pure happiness and

gently tender grace. A second symphony quickly following the first,

which had shown any attempt to emulate that great work on its own

ground, must of necessity have been doomed to result in artistic

failure. The second symphony which the master actually wrote was one

which, whilst it probably satisfied a need of his mind for the

refreshment of change, was the appropriate sequel to its predecessor

both in regard to its calm serenity of mood and to the clear melody of

the thematic material in which the mood is so perfectly expressed. Those

who are inexorable in their demands for 'originality' may, however, be

referred to the 'adagio non troppo,' which, with its melodious phrases

and its beautiful tone effects, its varied rhythms and its mysterious

intention, offers opportunity for the energetic attention even of the

accustomed listener, and is the one movement of the work which can

hardly be at once followed with entire pleasure by the less initiated.

Meanwhile the first symphony was quickly making its way through Europe.

It was given with enormous success on November 11, 1877, at a concert of

the Royal Academy of Arts, Berlin, by the orchestra of the music school

under Joachim, and was very inadequately performed on the 16th of the

same month at a Hamburg Philharmonic concert under von Bernuth. By the

strongly-expressed desire of many musicians of the city, the composer

was invited to conduct a repetition performance at the Philharmonic

concert of January 18, 1878, when the work achieved considerable

success. It was heard the same month in Bremen and Utrecht under Brahms,

in Münster (J. O. Grimm), Dresden (F. Wüllner), and in February for the

second time in Breslau (Scholz), and made its way in the course of a few

seasons to Basle, Zürich, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, the Hague, Edinburgh,

Glasgow, and New York.

Brahms now, at the age of forty-four, was, indeed, in the enjoyment of

almost unclouded recognition and success, which could be but little

affected by the lack of enthusiasm of this or that audience. His

position had become the more firmly established from the circumstance

that very few of his works had taken the public by storm. The majority

of them had grown almost imperceptibly into general acceptance by sheer

force of their intrinsic value, of which but a modicum is to be found on

the surface. It is certainly the case that at the outset of his modest

entry on a public career he had gained with a single stroke, once and

for always, the enthusiastic suffrage of some of the princes of his art;

but the voice of Schumann, potent as it was, could be and had been only

of avail to procure him a hearing--appreciation was, by the nature of

things, beyond its control; and though Frau Schumann and Joachim and

Stockhausen untiringly used the influence of their position as best

beloved among the foremost favourites of the public to make a way for

his music, even they could not immediately secure for it enthusiasm.

This it had gradually to gain by the independent means of its indwelling

virtue, the insistency of its appeal, not to the outward seeming, but to

the very heart of things.

A noteworthy addition was made in the course of the year 1877 to the

ranks of Brahms' most stanch and influential supporters in the person of

Hans von Bülow. Remark has already been made on the change observable in

the early seventies in the attitude of this gifted, witty, whimsical,

uncompromising, true-hearted musician towards Brahms' art. The

publication of the first symphony completed his conversion, and he soon

afterwards began an active propaganda on the master's behalf, to which,

carried on as it was with characteristic vehemence and eccentricity, and

started at the very moment when the great composer was achieving the

highest summit of fame, an entirely fictitious importance has sometimes

been ascribed in regard to its effect upon the outward development of

Brahms' career. That von Bülow during the last ten or twelve years of

his public activity partially devoted his energies to the task of

forcing the master's works upon certain more or less indifferent

audiences, whom he harangued and lectured concerning their lack of

interest, had no bearing on the facts that Brahms' place amongst the

immortals had been assured, by practically general consent, with the

first few performances of the German Requiem, and that by the beginning

of the eighties acceptance of his art had become world-wide. Bülow's new

partisanship, destined to bring in its train distinguished friendships

that were truly prized and reciprocated by the master, was touching from

its sincerity, but is not of essential importance to Brahms' biographer.

It is, however, pleasant to be able to add to the extracts already

quoted from Bülow's writings three which, dated October and November,

1877, mark the beginning of a new epoch in his own career, and in that

of Brahms the commencement of an agreeable and valued personal intimacy.

The paragraphs are to be taken merely as illustrations of Bülow's

changed sentiments, and not as necessarily expressing the personal views

of the present writer.

'Only since my acquaintance with the "_tenth_" symphony, alias the

_first_ symphony of Johannes Brahms, that is since six weeks, have

I become so inaccessible and hard towards Bruch pieces and the

like. I do not call it the "_tenth_" in the sense of its relation

to the "_ninth_"....'

'I believe it is not without the intelligence of chance that Bach,

Beethoven, and Brahms are in alliteration.'

'The imagination of Bach seems, in his clavier works, to be

dominated by the organ, that of Beethoven by the orchestra, that of

Brahms by both.'

[51] Schumann's essay, 'New Paths.'

[52] The variations for orchestra on Haydn's theme and six of Brahms'

songs, sung by Henschel, were included in the programme of the concert.

[53] Goethe's song, 'Unüberwindlich,' set by Brahms and published in

1877 as No. 6 of Op. 72: 'Though a thousand vows I've taken.'

[54] Article in the _New York Outlook_, July 25, 1903.

[55] See Vol. I., Appendix No. 1.

[56] _Die Musik_, in the article referred to in a previous chapter.

[57] Fräulein Ettlinger informs the author that it was she herself who

put the question to the master and received his answer. For the article

on Levi see 'Biographisches Jahrbuch und Deutscher Nekrolog,' 1902.

[58] Widmann's 'Brahms Recollections,' p. 38 and following.

[59] Kalbeck's 'Johannes Brahms,' p. 187 and following.

[60] _Die Musik_, No. 5 of 1902.

CHAPTER XVIII

1878-1881

Hamburg Philharmonic Jubilee Festival--Violin Concerto: first

performance by Joachim--Pianoforte Pieces, Op. 76--Sonata for

Pianoforte and Violin--First performances--Brahms at

Crefeld--Rhapsodies for Pianoforte--Heuberger's studies with

Brahms--Second Schumann Festival at Bonn--The two

Overtures--Breslau honorary degree.

With the rapidly-increasing appreciation of Brahms' art observable

during the second half of the seventies throughout the entire musical

world, the condition of his private circumstances changed rapidly also.

At the time he completed the second symphony it was very far removed

from that of twelve years back, when he had been obliged, by lack of

ready cash, to purchase the music-paper required for the manuscript of

the Requiem in small instalments. He never deviated from the simple

manner of daily life agreeable to him by nature and habit, but we find

that in the early spring of 1878 he added to the short list of his

personal pleasures one that became to him a source of unfailing delight,

that of a journey to Italy. On this his first visit, made in April, in

Billroth's company, he stayed in Rome, Naples, and Sicily, and returned

subjugated once and for all by the witcheries of the South. Neither of

his Italian tours was associated with a musical purpose; they were

undertaken solely for the refreshment of body and mind by a holiday

ramble amidst beauties of nature and art, to which his temperament made

him peculiarly sensitive, and amongst a people whose _naturel_ was

congenial to him.

'I often think of our journey,' writes Billroth on May 7; 'that you

were so charmed with everything doubles my pleasure.'

The new symphony was included in the Rhine Festival, held this year at

Düsseldorf under Joachim and Tausch. Amongst Joachim's duties was that

of conducting the performance of his friend's work, concerning which we

read in a contemporary journal:

'The performance of Brahms' second symphony under Joachim was a

feast such as we have seldom heard. The audience was jubilant after

each movement, and would not be satisfied till the third was

repeated.'

And again in a final summary:

'The most brilliant event of the festival was the performance of

Brahms' symphony.'

The composer spent the summer at Pörtschach on Lake Wörther in

Carinthia, a spot where, as he writes to Hanslick, 'so many melodies fly

about one must be careful not to tread on them.' In the same letter[61]

he talks playfully to his old friend, who, remaining a bachelor till

past fifty, had lately surprised his acquaintances by marrying a lady

many years his junior, of his intention to compose a new symphony for

the winter, 'that shall sound so gay and charming you will think I have

written it expressly for you, or rather for your young wife.'

This idea, probably not seriously entertained, was put aside, but the

reflection of the composer's happy mood is to be found in several of the

pianoforte pieces written by him at this time--notably in No. 2 of Op.

76--and in the last movement of the great violin concerto he was

composing for Joachim.

An event was to take place in the last week of September which no doubt

possessed a peculiar interest for Brahms, though it was not of an

unmixed character: the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the

Philharmonic Society of his native city of Hamburg, which had been

founded in 1828 by a few music-lovers, with W. Grund, a composer and

teacher of the city, as its conductor. The festival was to last five

days, and to include three great orchestral concerts in the Saagebiel

Hall and an excursion up the Elbe to Blankenese. Four symphonies were to

be performed: Haydn in G minor, Beethoven's 'Eroica,' Schumann in C

major, Brahms in D major. Frau Schumann was to play Mozart's Pianoforte

Concerto in D minor; Joachim to perform with Concertmeister Bargheer,

Spohr's Duo Concertante for two violins in B minor. A great assemblage

of musicians was expected, and Brahms had been invited, but at the

beginning of September no one in Hamburg knew whether or not he intended

to be present, and the directors of the festival, finding themselves

very near a predicament, resolved to appeal to Hanslick, who had

received and accepted an invitation, to procure his answer for them. The

letter which Hanslick immediately wrote to Pörtschach elicited from

Brahms the following reply:

'PÖRTSCHACH, _Sept., 1878_.

'You have once already publicly preached to me the doctrine of

decorum; I do not wish this to occur, from no fault of mine, a

second time, and tell you, therefore, that it will be the

Hamburgers' concern if I do not appear at their festival. I have no

opportunity for showing politeness and gratitude; on the contrary,

some rudeness would be in place if I had time and inclination to

lose my temper over the matter. I do not wish to disturb yours by

detailed communication and will therefore only say that in spite of

inquiry, not a word has been said about honorarium or any sort of

remuneration. I, poor composer, am appraised at doubtful value and

lose all right to sit at the festival table, next to your wife, let

us say. I therefore beg this time for indulgence for my anyway

impaired reputation as a polite man. As regards the symphony,

indeed, I do not beg for indulgence, but I fear that unless its

direction be offered to Joachim as I wish, there will be a

miserable performance. Now, the dinners are good in Hamburg, the

symphony is of a favourable length--you can dream whilst it is

going on that you are in Vienna! I am thinking of going to Vienna

very soon....'[62]

This dubious epistle need not be taken too seriously, true though it is

that the composer rightly made it a point throughout his career that his

work should be paid for, and, so to speak, at full market value. The

tone adopted by him on this occasion must be partly referred to the

remembrance of the old sore, which, perhaps, never quite healed--to the

mortification which had on two occasions cut deep into the heart of the

loyal Hamburger when his fellow-citizens offered to a stranger the

opportunity he would have welcomed to settle in their midst. It is not

wonderful that the invitation to attend, and presumably to take part in,

the Jubilee Festival of the society of which, had he so chosen, he ought

since many years to have been the artistic chief should have revived

past memories in the mind of the renowned master whose mere presence

could now invest the occasion with a peculiar significance. All's well

that ends well, however. How Brahms settled the matter with the

committee must be left to conjecture, but it is certain that he

astonished friends and acquaintance by coming to Hamburg with a long

flowing beard grown during the summer, which changed the character of

his face almost beyond recognition. It was, as we know, his second

experiment of the kind, and the beard, which he from this time

permanently retained, certainly added to the grandeur of his head,

though some of his old friends may occasionally have looked back with

regret to the days when the firm, purposeful mouth contributed its share

to the expression of his countenance.

Nothing was ultimately wanting that could contribute to the success of

the Hamburg celebration. The first concert, on September 25, was devoted

to three of the musical giants--Bach, Handel, Beethoven; that of the

26th to Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Schumann, and, in memory of the

society's first conductor, W. Grund. The morning of the 27th was given

up to rehearsal--especially of Brahms' new symphony, under the

composer's direction; the afternoon, to the excursion and banquet.

Almost everyone had come from everywhere. Besides those who were taking

part in the concerts there were Hiller, Gernsheim, Gade, Reinecke,

Reinthaler, Grimm, Flotow, Theodor Kirchner, Verhülst (from the Hague),

Hanslick, Claus Groth, not to mention Grädener, of early days, and a

host of old Hamburg friends. Our master was in genial mood, and chatted

gaily with acquaintances old and new during the run down the river, but

a sign showed that his thoughts were with the past. Claus Groth, who was

placed at the banquet next to Brahms, relates that the proposer of the

composer's health referred in his speech to the old proverb of the

prophet's unworthiness in his own country, and pointed out its

inapplicability in the case of the day's ceremony, 'when the society

unites with me in praise and love of our Johannes Brahms.'

'Brahms turned to me,' continues Groth, 'and whispered in a deep

and serious tone, "This of my case! Twice was the vacant

conductor's post of the Philharmonic Society given to a stranger

whilst I was passed over. If it had been offered me at the right

time I should have become a methodical citizen, and could have

married and become like other men. Now I am a vagabond!"'

That Brahms would under any circumstances have summoned up sufficient

courage to commit himself to the irretrievable step of matrimony we may

be permitted to doubt. That one obstacle which prevented him was his own

fear of the interruption that such a change might cause to his own

almost too orderly and methodical habits is fairly certain.

The boat started from Blankenese on its return journey to St. Pauli's

landing-bridge, Hamburg, at 9.30 p.m., and at the moment of its

departure three rockets were sent up from deck and three shots fired

from shore, by arrangement with the inhabitants of the numerous villas

that line the bank of the Elbe, as a signal for the illumination of

houses and gardens, which accordingly gave graceful testimony to the

returning musicians of the widespread interest felt in the

occasion.[63]

The third and concluding concert of the festival took place on the

evening of Sunday, September 29, with performances of Weber's 'Oberon'

overture, Songs by Schubert, Spohr's Concertante for two violins,

Brahms' second Symphony, under his own direction, and Mendelssohn's

'Walpurgis Nacht.'

'The delight of the public at Brahms' symphony was most

enthusiastically expressed,' says Hanslick. 'Brahms, who was

received with orchestra flourish and laurel wreath, himself

conducted, and Joachim played first violin in the orchestra. At the

close of the symphony the ladies of the chorus and in the first

rows of the audience threw their flowers to Brahms, who stood

there, in the words of his own cradle-song, "covered with roses."'

Ludwig Meinardus, of the _Hamburger Correspondenten_, after giving a

detailed and most appreciative account of the several movements of the

work, continues:

'Brahms himself conducted his symphony, which is sealed with the

stamp of immortality, in his native city before an audience of

thousands raised to festival pitch, in which mingled a large number

of musical authorities from outside. The enthusiasm was increased

by this circumstance, and by the simplicity and quiet energy with

which Brahms handled the bâton. It prepared for him an ovation as

he ascended the conductor's desk in the shape of a big laurel

wreath, a flourish, and a stormy welcome from those upon and in

front of the platform; it broke out after each of the four

movements, and increased at the close of the third to a _da capo_

demand to which the conductor and composer only at length and with

the reluctance of modesty resolved to yield; it was expressed

finally, at the close of the work, by persistent recalls and by a

rain of flowers which poured from all sides upon the admired and

revered composer.'

The last few words seem to remind us of the early sixties, and to bring

us once more face to face with the Halliers, Völckers, Wagners, Fräulein

Laura Garbe, and other former members of the ladies' choir, many of whom

were still resident in Hamburg, and, having retained their old

affectionate admiration of their young musician without a jot of

abatement as they watched his course during the passing years, now

brought affection, admiration, and sympathetic triumph dressed in

graceful guise to throw at the feet of the famous master. Marxsen,

prevented by considerations of health from joining the excursion down

the river, was present at the concert, beaming with joy; Böie, too,

associated with early performances of the B flat Sextet and the G minor

Pianoforte Quartet, was there, whilst the presence of Christian Otterer,

who had played viola as an old friend at the subscription concert given

by the youthful Hannes at the 'Old Raven,' carried the associations of

the evening back almost to the year of the composer's birth. Two names

which we should gladly have included are missing from the list of our

old acquaintances. None would have more heartily rejoiced in the events

of the evening than Friedrich Willibald Cossel, now some thirteen

summers passed away; and what may not be imagined of Jakob Brahms'

exultant pride had six more years of life been spared him! We may

picture the pursed-up lips, the gratified expression of the eyes, the

playful assumption of dignity towards his own particular chums, the

tears of joy with which he would have answered Joachim's cordial

hand-grasp, the shy, gratified whisper to Carl Bade, 'Ik segge nix' (I

shall not speak), when some distinguished musician or charming lady had

desired to be introduced to him as the father of his son. Frau Cossel

was present with her talented daughter Marie (Frau Dr. Janssen), and the

old family ties so treasured by our master were represented by Elise and

Fritz, and by kind Frau Caroline with her son Fritz Schnack, who

entertained an almost adoring affection for his stepbrother. Frau

Caroline was invariably present at any concert in Hamburg in which

Johannes took part, by the composer's express desire. Elise begged her

brother after the concert for the wreaths that had been presented to

him.

'So you want to brag with them?' said he; 'come to me early

to-morrow morning; we will go together and lay them on father's

grave.'

It may be added here, for the sake of completeness, that some time

later, on von Bernuth's contemplated resignation, a representative of

the Philharmonic Society called on Groth to ask his opinion as to the

probability of Brahms' acceptance of an offer of the conductorship. He

pointed out that the then committee could not justly be blamed for the

mistakes of their predecessors, which they were anxious to repair as far

as might now be possible, and Groth, after discussing the matter in

detail, consented to lay it informally before Brahms. We cannot wonder

that no answer was received to his communication; it must seem obvious

to most minds that the master could neither accept nor decline an offer

which had not been made. Had the committee decided to risk the slight

mortification of a refusal from Brahms by writing a definite proposal to

him, it is certain that he would have replied to it, though it seems

unlikely that he would have uprooted himself from the city where he had

formed intimate friendships now that one of the principal attractions

which Hamburg had possessed for him--the presence of his parents--had

ceased to exist.

The publications of the year include, besides the Symphony in D major, a

set of 'Ballads and Romances' for two voices, dedicated to Julius

Allgeyer, the first of which has the Scotch ballad 'Edward' for its

text.

Of other early performances of the second symphony we may mention those

of October 22 in Breslau, under the composer, and of November 23 in

Münster, under Grimm. Such a furore was created in Münster that the work

was repeated by general desire at the concert of December 21.

At the Vienna Gesellschaft concert of December 8, No. 1 of the two

Motets, Op. 74, for unaccompanied chorus was sung, under the direction

of Edward Kremser, from the manuscript parts. All four movements, the

first and last in four, the second and third in six, parts, made a deep

impression, and in spite of the serious character of the work it was

followed by long-continued applause. The texts have the characteristics

usually preferred by Brahms for his sacred compositions, and, taken

together, are expressive of courageous, trustful resignation in the face

of mystery. The music, exquisitely suited to the words, furnishes

another example of deeply serious feeling clothed in the beautiful forms

of early contrapuntal art.

Great interest was aroused in the musical circles of many lands by the

announcement that Joachim would play a violin concerto by Brahms at the

Leipzig Gewandhaus concert of January 1, 1879. Such an event was bound

to raise a particular question, connected not only with Brahms' musical

career, but with the history of musical art. Many concertos for violin

solo with orchestral accompaniment had been produced since the days of

Viotti, through those of Mozart and Spohr, down to the publication in

1877 of Max Bruch's second in D minor, and, of the most favoured, few

had retained more than an occasional place in concert-programmes. Two

only had survived the test of time as the pre-eminent masterpieces of

their class; those of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. If no work of the kind

could be placed exactly with Beethoven's Violin Concerto, yet, even as

compared with this supreme achievement, no thought of inferiority could

be applied to that of Mendelssohn, which immediately on its production

took the place it had ever since held as one of two _chefs-d'oeuvre_.

The question which now naturally suggested itself was whether Brahms'

new work would take its place as a third by the side of its two greatest

predecessors. It was the more interesting because, though the composer

was not now breaking essentially new ground, yet his one previous

concerto had been composed for the pianoforte, and whilst two decades

had elapsed since its completion in final form (Detmold, autumn of

1858), and first public performances (Hanover and Leipzig, January,

1859), it bore distinct traces of a still earlier period, with which we

now know it to have been associated. The experience of a life,

therefore, may almost be said to have intervened between the two works.

Turning to our old friend Dörffel, already doubly proved impartial, for

his immediate impressions of the Gewandhaus concert of January 1, we

find his report very interesting reading.

'No less a task,' he says, 'confronted Brahms, if his salutation to

his friend were to be one suitable to Joachim's eminence, than the

production of a work that should reach the two greatest, Beethoven

and Mendelssohn. We confess to having awaited the solution with

some heart palpitation, though we firmly maintained our standard.

But what joy we experienced! Brahms has brought such a third work

to the partnership. The originality of the spirit which inspires

the whole, the firm organic structure in which it is displayed, the

warmth which streams from it, animating the work with joy and

light--it cannot be otherwise--the concerto must be the fruit of

the composer's latest and, as we believe, happiest experiences.

'The first movement is broad, with sharply defined contrasts

through which, however, the serious-soft mood is preserved; the

second is short, very thoughtful and fervent; the last, very

spirited and attractive. There is, however, a quite unusual

handling of the instrument, and again, a breath in the orchestra,

which make us look forward with delight to the study of the score;

we have seldom been so enthralled by the composer's genius. But

Joachim played, also, with a love and devotion which brought home

to us in every bar the direct or indirect share he has had in the

work. As to the reception, the first movement was too new to be

distinctly appreciated by the audience, the second made

considerable way, the last aroused great enthusiasm.'

Bernsdorf was less unsympathetic than usual. He considered the concerto

'one of the clearest and most spontaneous of the composer's works.' Both

Joachim and Brahms, who conducted the orchestra, had to respond to

numerous recalls.

Joachim, to whom the concerto is dedicated, brought the manuscript with

him to England, and performed it at the Crystal Palace Saturday concert

of February 22 (August Manns), at the Philharmonic concerts of March 6

and 20 (W. G. Cusins), at some of his appearances in the north of

Britain, and, a little later, at a concert of the Royal Academy of Arts,

Berlin, when the accompaniment was played by his school orchestra.

Published in the course of the year, it has ever since held a

conspicuous place in his répertoire. The violinists Brodsky and, a

little later, Frau Roeger-Soldat were amongst those who associated their

names in a special manner with the early life of the work, which has

recently been frequently performed with immense success by Fritz

Kreisler.

If the mood of this great concerto has, as Dr. Deiters remarks,

something in common with that of the second symphony, the sentiment is

maintained at a loftier height than that of the earlier composition, the

limpid grace of which has an immediate fascination for a general

audience. The concerto requires time for full appreciation, and though,

by general consent of the initiated, it undoubtedly occupies a position

on the plane assigned to it by Dörffel, it would be too much to assert

that it has as yet entirely conquered the heart of the great public. It

is gradually making its way, however, to what will probably become

unreserved popularity.