I. Allegro non troppo
II. Adagio non troppo
III. Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino
IV. Allegro con spirito
The latest biographers of Johannes Brahms differ curiously concerning
the character of the Second symphony. The excellent Walter Niemann finds
a tragic undercurrent; “ghostly elements glimmering in a supernatural,
uncanny way”; even “mysterious Wagnerian visions.” The equally excellent
Richard Specht finds sunshine, fair days, warm winds, clarity, and
tenderness. Brahms can on occasion be gloomy and crabbed enough. Why
cannot Mr. Niemann, a devoted admirer of Johannes, allow him to be
cheerful once in a while, as in this Second symphony?
The Symphony in D is the most genial of the four, the most easily
accepted by an audience, for, if there are pages of supreme beauty in
it, as toward the end of the first movement, so there are pages that are
Mendelssohnian in form and in the rhythm of the easily retained melodic
thought. Mendelssohn, a shrewd composer, seldom, if ever, committed the
blunder of surprising an audience. As in the theater, so in the concert
hall, an audience does not wish to be left in doubt, and in this
symphony, which is in reality a storehouse of truly beautiful things,
there is every now and then a passage that is accepted by the hearer as
an agreeable commonplace.
* * *
Chamber music, choral works, pianoforte pieces, and songs had made
Brahms famous before he allowed his First symphony to be played. The
Symphony in C minor was performed for the first time in 1876. Kirchner
wrote in a letter to Marie Lipsius that he had talked about this
symphony in 1863 or 1864 with Mme Clara Schumann, who then showed him
fragments of it. No one knew, it is said, of the existence of a second
symphony before it was completed.
The Second symphony, in D major, was composed, probably at
Pörtschach-am-See, in the summer of 1877, the year that saw the
publication of the first. Brahms wrote Dr. Billroth in September of that
year: “I do not know whether I have a pretty symphony; I must inquire of
skilled persons.” He referred to Clara Schumann, Dessoff, and Ernst
Frank. On September 19, Mme Schumann wrote that he had written out the
first movement. Early in October he played it to her, also a portion of
the _finale_. The symphony was played by Brahms and Ignaz Brüll as a
pianoforte duet (arranged by the composer) to invited guests at the
pianoforte house of his friend Ehrbar in Vienna a few days before the
announced date of the orchestral performance, December 11, 1877. Through
force of circumstances the symphony was played for the first time in
public at the succeeding Philharmonic concert of December 30. Hans
Richter conducted. The second performance, conducted by Brahms, was at
the Gewandhaus, Leipsic, on January 10, 1878.
Certain German critics in their estimate of Brahms have exhausted
themselves in comparison and metaphor. One claims that, as Beethoven’s
Fourth symphony is to his _Eroica_, so is Brahms’ Second to his First;
the one in C minor is epic, the one in D major is a fairy tale. When
Bülow wrote that Brahms was an heir of Cherubini, he referred to the
delicate filigree work shown in the _finale_ of the second. Felix
Weingartner, whose _Die Symphonie nach Beethoven_ (Berlin, 1898) is a
pamphlet of singularly acute and discriminative criticism, coolly says
that the Second is far superior to the First: “The stream of invention
has never flowed so fresh and spontaneous in other works by Brahms, and
nowhere else has he colored his orchestration so successfully.” And
after a eulogy of the movements he puts the symphony among the very best
of the new classic school since the death of Beethoven—“far above all
the symphonies of Schumann.”
Richard Specht, in his Life of Brahms, writes: “The work is suffused
with the sunshine and the warm winds playing on the water, which recall
the summer at Pörtschach that gave it life. The comfortably swinging
first subject at once creates a sense of well-being with its sincere and
sensuous gladness.... This movement is like a fair day in its creator’s
life and outshines the other three sections—the brooding _andante_, the
rather unimportant _scherzo_ ... the broad, sweeping _finale_ which, for
all its lively, driving motion, strikes one as cheerless and artificial
in its briskness. The impression of the unsymphonic nature of this work
is probably due partly to a prejudice that expects to see cosmic images
and not mere genre pictures in such a composition, and partly to the
meter adopted for the first movement. It is remarkable that Brahms did
not employ the common time almost invariably used by the symphonic
masters from Mozart to Schubert in their opening movements until he came
to his Fourth symphony. The round-dance nature of the 3-4 measure in the
D major symphony is especially difficult to take seriously, and rightly
so; for this is a light-hearted work, a declaration of love in symphonic
form.
“Brahms was particularly fond of this dear and tender composition, as
might be judged from the little mystifications with which he raised the
expectations his friends had of the new work that followed its elder
sister within the space of a year. He persisted in describing it as
gloomy and awesome, never to be played by any musicians without a
mourning band on their sleeve.” (As a matter of fact Brahms wrote to
Elisabet von Herzogenberg on December 29, 1877: “The orchestra here play
my new symphony with crape bands on their sleeves, because of its
dirge-like effect. It is to be printed with a black edge, too.”) “He
replied in a tone of waggish secrecy to Elisabet, who was impatiently
waiting for the score and scolded him for not rewarding her discretion
by sending her the work, which she knew to be ready (‘May the deuce take
such modesty!’) and who, incidentally, took exception to his spelling so
noble a word as ‘symphony’ with an ‘f’. ‘It really is no symphony,’ he
writes, ‘but merely a _Sinfonie_, and I shall have no need to play it to
you beforehand. You merely sit down at the piano, put your little 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 _ff_ and _pp_ and
you will gradually gain a vivid impression of my “latest.”’ And he was
as pleased as Punch with the glad surprise and delight of the adored
woman and of all his friends when they saw this sunny work.”