Johannes Brahms desired to give thanks publicly to the University of
Breslau because he had received from the illustrious dignitaries of that
university the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. How best could he express
his thanks in music? By something stately, pompous? Or by something
profound and cryptic? Brahms acted with shrewdness in the matter; he
took for his thematic material well-known students’ songs. These songs
are familiar throughout Germany, and it is not as though a composer
called upon, for instance, to write an appropriate overture for an
approaching jubilee at Yale should take songs peculiar to that college;
nor is it as though a composer should take “Eli Yale” and “Fair Harvard”
and a Dartmouth or Williams song for his themes. Wherever Brahms’
overture is heard by a German student, whether of Heidelberg, Bonn,
Berlin, or Breslau, the themes are old friends and common property.
But where is the reckless gayety of student life in this overture? Much
of it is dry, on account of the orchestration. For even when you admit
that Brahms was a master builder of musical structures, you are not
thereby estopped from saying in clear, bell-like tones that he was also
color deaf.
The Brahmsite turns triumphantly to the _Fuchslied_—“Was kommt dort von
der Höh”—which is introduced by two bassoons, accompanied by ’cellos and
violas _pizzicati_. “There! there!” he exclaims, “that is excruciatingly
funny. Only a master, only a Johannes could make so easily a master
stroke!” If you cross-examine him you will find that the humor consists
in the choice of instruments.
Somebody once said that the bassoon is the clown of the orchestra.
Therefore the double bassoon should be twice as funny—perhaps even a
Shakespearean clown. And simply because somebody gave the poor bassoon
this name, it must be regarded as funny _per se_. “Funny”? The bassoon
is lugubrious, ghostly, spectral, weird, unearthly, demoniacal. It
smells of mortality. It suggests the glow-worm and the grave. The wicked
nuns in _Robert le Diable_ heard it and obeyed the spell, for corruption
called to corruption. It lends a flavor of the charnal house to
Tchaikovsky’s _Pathétique_. It pictures the mood of Leonora without Di
Luna’s tower. It chatters and gibbers as the murderous artist in the
_Symphonie fantastique_ goes his wretched way to the scaffold. It is the
instrument dear to all that inhabit the night air, the cemetery, the
diseased mind.
But these bassoons appear in Brahms’ overture “_etwas plötzlich_”—a
phrase I once heard used in a Berlin beer hall by a dapper and corseted
and monocled officer, who was extremely thirsty and thus addressed the
waiter. And I defy any sober-minded person who has not the fear of
Brahms before his eyes to find the introduction or the treatment of the
song spontaneously gay or humorous. The song itself is a good freshman
hazing song.
Some of the books—and books of authority—say that the _Academic_ was
written for performance at Breslau on the occasion of Brahms’ receiving
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He did receive the degree, but it
was on March 11, 1879, and if anyone doubts this I shall be happy to
quote to him the degree in the original Latin—which I cannot construe,
except as regards the date. I like to think of Brahms as a doctor of
philosophy. The degree goes so well with the man. It also explains
some—not all—of his music. Let the overture be considered and weighed as
the night work of a Doctor of Philosophy.
* * *
Brahms wrote two overtures in the summer of 1880 at Ischl—the _Academic_
and the _Tragic_. They come between the Symphony in D major and that in
F major in the list of his orchestral works. It is said by Heuberger
that Brahms wrote two “Academic Festival overtures”; so he must have
destroyed one of them. When the _Academic_ was first played at Breslau,
the rector and Senate and members of the Philosophical faculty sat in
the front seats at the performance, and the composer conducted his work.
Brahms was not a university man, but he had known with Joachim the
joyous life of students at Göttingen—at the university made famous by
Canning’s poem:
_Whene’er with haggard eyes I view
This dungeon that I’m rotting in,
I think of those companions true
who studied with me at the U-
niversity of Göttingen—
niversity of Göttingen_;
—the university satirized so bitterly by Heine.
Brahms wrote to Bernard Scholz that the title ‘_Academic_’ did not
please him. Scholz suggested that it was “cursedly academic and
boresome,” and suggested _Viadrina_, for that was the poetical name of
the Breslau University. Brahms spoke flippantly of this overture in the
fall of 1880 to Max Kalbeck. He described it as a “very jolly potpourri
on students’ songs à la Suppé”; and, when Kalbeck asked him ironically
if he had used the “Foxsong,” he answered contentedly, “Yes, indeed.”
Kalbeck was startled, and said he could not think of such academic
homage to the “leathery Herr Rektor,” whereupon Brahms duly replied,
“That is also wholly unnecessary.”
The first of the student songs to be introduced is Binzer’s “Wir hatten
gebauet ein stattliches Haus” (We had built a stately house, and trusted
in God therein through bad weather, storm, and horror). The first
measures are given out by the trumpets with a peculiarly stately effect.
The melody of “Der Landesvater” is given to the second violins. And then
for the first time is there any deliberate attempt to portray the
jollity of university life. The “Fuchslied” (Freshman Song) is
introduced suddenly by two bassoons. There are hearers undoubtedly who
remember the singing of this song in Longfellow’s “Hyperion”; how the
freshman entered the _Kneipe_, and was asked with ironical courtesy
concerning the health of the leathery _Herr Papa_ who reads in Cicero.
Similar impertinent questions were asked concerning the _Frau Mama_ and
the _Mamsell Sœur_; and then the struggle of the freshman with the first
pipe of tobacco was described in song. “Gaudeamus igitur,” the melody
that is familiar to students of all lands, serves as the _finale_.