Having launched a first symphony, Brahms composed a second within a
year. However, he kept the writing of it so secret that nobody, we are
told, knew anything about it till it was completed. Then, when he did
divulge the secret, he was very demure. In September, 1877, he wrote to
Dr. Billroth of Vienna, who was a patron of music as well as an eminent
surgeon: "I do not know whether I have a pretty symphony; I must inquire
of skilled persons." He meant Clara Schumann, Otto Dessoff, and Ernest
Frank. Mme. Schumann recorded on September 19 that he had written out
the first movement. Early in the following month he played it to her, as
well as part of the finale.
Meanwhile he had delighted in mystifying his friends before letting them
hear any of the work by describing it as gloomy and awesome and
referring to its key as F minor instead of D major. To Elisabeth von
Herzogenberg he wrote in November, 1877: "The new symphony is merely a
_Sinfonie_, and I shall not need to play it to you beforehand. You have
only to sit down at the piano, put your small feet on the two pedals in
turn, and strike the chord of F minor several times in succession, first
in the treble, then in the bass, fortissimo and pianissimo, and you will
gradually gain a vivid impression of my 'latest'." The day before the
first performance he again wrote to Frau von Herzogenberg: "The
orchestra here play my new symphony with crepe bands on their sleeves
because of its dirge-like effect. It is to be printed with a black edge,
too." Such were Brahms's little jokes.
When the symphony was actually performed in public, at a concert of the
Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Hans Richter, Brahms's
friends found it anything but a lugubrious and forbidding composition.
The date of that first performance, by the way, is variously given as
December 20, 24, and 30, 1877, and January 10, 1878, of which December
30 is favored. The success with the audience at the première was
progressive. If at first the response was lukewarm, when the Allegretto
grazioso was reached there came an insistent demand that it be repeated,
an encore which Richter granted.
Today the Second Symphony is usually regarded as lyrical, suave, even
Mendelssohnian, a work of serenity and sweet peacefulness, bearing much
the same relation to the austere, dramatic, and often tempestuous First
Symphony that Beethoven's "Pastoral" bears to the preceding Fifth, with
its conflict between Man and Fate.
Still, not everybody views the D major symphony in quite this gentle
light. Walter Niemann in his life of Brahms maintains that the D major
is by no means a blameless, agreeable, cheerfully sunlit idyl. Nothing,
he declares, could be further from the truth! He describes the period
between the 1860's and 1880's as having a heart-rending pathos and a
monumental grandeur as its artistic ideal. "Nowadays," he goes on,
"regarding things from a freer and less prejudiced point of view, we are
fortunately able to detect far more clearly the often oppressive
spiritual limitations, moodiness, and atmosphere of resignation in such
pleasant, apparently cheerful, and anacreontic[!] works as Brahms's
Second Symphony."
He points out that the Second, though nominally in the major, has a
veiled, indetermined, Brahmsian major-minor character, hovering between
the two modes. "Indeed," he adds, "this undercurrent of tragedy in the
Second Symphony, quiet and slight though it may be, is perceptible to a
fine ear in every movement." And he sums up the whole matter by putting
down the Second Symphony as really a "great, wonderful, tragic idyl, as
rich in sombre and subdued color as it is in brightness." He even sees
mysterious visions of Wagner, who was by no means a friend of Brahms, in
the mystic woodland atmosphere of the work, recalling "Das Rheingold"
and "Siegfried," and in many sombre and even ghostly passages.
The opening movement (Allegro non troppo, D major, 3-4) is remarkable
for the lyricism of its themes. After the so-called fundamental motive
of the first measure ('cellos and double-basses), the melodious chief
theme is given out by horns and woodwind.
[Illustration: BRAHMS AT THE AGE OF 34]
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A graceful subsidiary theme is heard in the violins. The second subject,
nostalgic in its wistfulness, appears in the violas and 'cellos. A horn
solo in the coda evokes the mystery of forest deeps from an old and
bardic time.
The second movement (Adagio non troppo, B major, 4-4) is of a profoundly
romantic and yet somewhat elusive character. Not a scherzo, but rather
the old-time minuet, is hinted at in the third movement (Allegretto
grazioso--_Quasi Andantino_,--G major, 3-4). The engaging melody
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is sung immediately by the oboes over chords in the clarinets and
bassoons and pizzicato arpeggios in the 'cellos. Each of the two trios
that the movement boasts is a variation on this theme. An acute critic
has said of the Allegretto: "Like many well-known things, it is not
always remembered in its full variety and range, or we should hear less
of its being too small for its place in a big symphony."
The finale (Allegro con spirito, D major, 2-2) is in sonata form.
Thematically it is both rich in invention and reminiscent of passages in
the earlier movements. A kinship to the finale of Haydn's last "London"
symphony has also been remarked. Of the four movements this Allegretto
con spirito is the most vigorous and vivacious, concluding, after pages
of Olympian struggle, in a victorious coda of overwhelming brilliance.