with Joachim for companion. The pair visited Schaffhausen, Winterthur,
and Zurich, playing everywhere to enthusiastic audiences, but meeting
with no adventure worth recording. The days of flat pianos and officious
superintendents had long gone by, and in the path of two such artists
there were no longer any obstacles to retard progress, or arouse
reminiscence. At the end of November they separated; Joachim to fulfil
an engagement in Paris; Brahms to return for the usual winter season in
Vienna, where, in January 1867, Hellmesberger led the first performance
of the G major Sestett. It is no discredit either to composer or to
audience that the new work was received with more astonishment than
delight. The extremely elaborate polyphony, which is one of its
distinguishing attributes, is probably too intricate to be comprehended
by anyone at a single presentation, and we may infer that the public
actually did not hear the melodies for the simple reason of their
abundance. The complaint of tunelessness which has been brought against
every great composer in turn, usually emanates from a criticism that
cannot see the wood for the trees, and on this occasion it may be noted
that Vienna saved its repute by wisely reserving judgment; and that
Brahms' only repartee was to publish forthwith a delightful set of
four-hand waltzes, in which the top part had the tune and the other
parts had the accompaniment, and everybody was satisfied.
In March and April, he gave a couple of pianoforte recitals, at which,
as usual, his own works were very sparsely represented. It was at the
former of them, by the way, that he brought out his Paganini Variations,
and, on being enthusiastically recalled, played the Finale of
Beethoven's third Rasoumoffsky Quartett as an encore. Towards the end of
April came two concerts at Pesth, and in the early summer appeared a
fine set of part-songs for male voices, usually known by the title of
Soldatenlieder. But the great musical achievement of the year was the
German Requiem, of which the original six numbers, written, it is said,
as a monument for the Austrio-Prussian War, seem to have been completed
by November. A seventh movement, the exquisite soprano solo, with choral
interludes, was inserted next year in commemoration of a more intimate
and personal sorrow.
As a preliminary, the first half of the Requiem was given at a
Gesellschaft concert on December 1, and at once visited with a storm of
Theological criticism. It was not a Requiem, said the purists; it was
not even ecclesiastical in tone; it was a sacred cantata, far less
suited to the church than to the concert-room. Even its defenders looked
upon it with some misgiving, and could only plead that it was
'confessionslos aber nicht religionslos.' Now and then the controversy
diverged as on a side issue to consider the music and discuss its
relation to Bach and Beethoven, but, for the most part, critics seem to
have been occupied in pointing out the impropriety of the name, and
raising the equally important objection that there is nothing
distinctively 'German' in the sentiment of the words. However, the world
soon had an opportunity of judging the matter from a more appropriate
standpoint. On Good Friday, 1868, the entire six numbers were performed
in the Great Church at Bremen, to an audience of over two thousand
people, including Joachim, Dietrich, Max Bruch and Madame Schumann.
Representative musicians came from Austria, from Germany, from
Switzerland, from England itself, and the impression that they carried
away with them has steadily gathered and developed into a reverence that
is almost too deep for praise. Grant that there are some genuine lovers
of Music who find the Requiem an unequal composition, which only means
that to them it makes an unequal appeal; the fact remains that there is
nothing in the whole work, unless it be the difficulty of execution,
against which any objective criticism can be directed. 'You cannot touch
them,' said Heine of some disputed passages in Faust, 'it is the finger
of Goethe.' And as the faults are imaginary, so the beauties are
incontestable. If there be any man who can listen unmoved to the
majestic funeral march, to the serene and perfect melody of the fourth
chorus, to the two great fugues, which may almost be said to succeed
where Beethoven has failed, then he can only conclude that he stands as
yet outside the precincts of the art. It is no more a matter for
controversy than are the poetic merits of the Antigone or the Inferno.
We are not here dealing with a product of the second order, in which
blemishes are to be condoned and qualities set in antithesis, and the
whole appraised by a nice adjustment of the balance. To find a defect
here, is to criticise our own judgment, and to stigmatise as imperfect
not the voice that speaks but the ear that listens.
The summer of 1868 was spent at Bonn, partly in preparing the German
Requiem for the press, partly in strenuous composition. The only other
works published during this year, were five volumes of songs (Op. 43 and
Ops. 46 to 49),[54] but it seems pretty certain that Rinaldo and the
Rhapsodie from Goethe's Harzreise were written at the same time, and we
may probably add the first set of Liebeslieder Waltzes for pianoforte
duet, with vocal accompaniment, which appeared early in 1869. Of the
songs, it is only necessary to say, that they include Von ewiger Liebe,
Botschaft, Herbstgefühl, An ein Veilchen, and the Wiegenlied; the two
cantatas have long established their position as the finest male-voice
choruses in existence; and the Liebeslieder, though naturally conceived
in a lighter mood, are as dainty as Strauss and as melodious as
Schubert. Finally, there is some slight internal evidence for assigning
to 1868, at least one of the two string quartetts which were printed a
few years later as Op. 51. In any case, whether this assignment be
correct or not, the year's record is one which would do honour to any
artist in musical history.
After this period of vigorous activity there followed two years of
almost entire repose. In 1869, a couple of concert tours were
projected--one in Holland and one in Russia, but the plans were
abandoned almost as soon as conceived, and meanwhile the only fresh
publications were the first two books of Hungarian dances, which, by an
odd irony of fate, have come to be more intimately associated with
Brahms' name than almost any of his own compositions. It is no longer
requisite to point out that the melodies of all the dances are of
national origin; one alone (the graceful little Csárdás, in A major)
being traditional, and the rest, written by Rizner, Kéler Béla, and
other 'popular' Hungarian composers. But it is worth noting, as an
illustration of critical method, that more than one journal of the time
disregarded the specific announcement on the title-page, and accused
Brahms of plagiarising the tunes which he only claimed to have arranged
in duet form. Of course, the accusation broke down, but equally, of
course, it ought never to have been made.
It may be remembered that, in 1859, Brahms had emerged from his second
period of studentship with a Pianoforte Concerto in D minor, which at
the time was received with considerable disfavour by its Leipsic
audience. The work had been printed in 1861, and had slept ever since on
the shelves of Rieter-Biedermann, waiting in patience until the public
was ready to appreciate it. Now it seemed as though the hour had come.
The world was wiser by the experience of a dozen years; the composer
was no longer a _débutant_ to be sacrificed on the altar of critical
conservatism; Vienna had shown herself disposed to listen with sympathy
and intelligence. Accordingly the work was recalled from its obscurity,
presented at a Philharmonic concert on January 20, 1871, and, it is
pleasant to add, received with acclamation. No doubt the critics
repeated their old joke, that it was a 'symphony with pianoforte
obbligato,' but the attention with which it was heard, and the applause
with which it was welcomed, gave sufficient evidence that the interval
of education had not been fruitless. 'It is,' says Dr Helm, writing to
the _Academy_, 'the most original production of its composer, except the
Requiem, and the most genial composition of its kind since the days of
Beethoven.' Perhaps 'genial' is not precisely the epithet that we should
most naturally employ, but when a victory is announced it is ungracious
to carp at the terms of the bulletin.
In 1871 appeared two new works of considerable importance. First
came the Triumphlied, written to commemorate the victories of the
Franco-Prussian war, and produced, together with the Requiem, at
a solemn Good-Friday service in Bremen Cathedral; then, a few
months later, there followed at Carlsruhe, what is perhaps the most
widely-loved of all Brahms' compositions, the exquisite and flawless
setting of Holderlein's Schicksalslied. It was only natural that the
former should rouse some criticism in the French papers, which were
still chafing at the foolish humours of _Eine Kapitulation_. The shout
of victory however noble and dignified its expression, is always a
little discordant to the vanquished and we may almost sympathise with
the _Gazette Musicale_, which ended its review by remarking, in a tone
of grave irony, 'Et M. Brahms, l'auteur du Triumphlied, est né à Vienne,
près Sadowa.'
Of the Schicksalslied, it is hard to speak without incurring some charge
of extravagance. Perfection is a word of such serious meaning, and of
such loose and careless employment, that a writer may well hesitate to
apply it, even if there be no lighter one that is adequate to the case.
Yet, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how, in the present
instance, any hesitation is possible. The work deals with the most
tremendous of all contrasts:--the pure, untroubled serenity of Heaven,
the agonies and failures of a baffled humanity, the message of peace,
tender, pitying, consolatory, which returns at last to veil the wreck of
man's broken aspirations; and to say that the treatment is worthy of
such a theme, is to announce a masterpiece that has as little to fear
from our criticism as it has to gain from our praise. It is almost
superfluous that one should commend the more technical beauties: the
rounded symmetry of balance and design, the pellucid clearness of style,
the sweetness and charm of melody, the marvellous cadences where chord
melts into chord as colour melts into colour at the sunset. If it be the
function of the artist that he be 'faithful to loveliness,' then here at
least is a loyalty that has kept its faith unsullied.
After such a climax, it was almost inevitable that there should follow a
period of reaction, and in 1872 no new compositions made their
appearance. As a subsidiary cause we may note that, in the summer of
this year, Brahms accepted the important post of conductor to the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. His tenure of office, which lasted until
1875, is marked by the very noticeable frequence of Handel's name in the
programmes of the Society. It has become so much the fashion to regard
our admiration for Handel as a peculiarly British error, that we may
well feel some relief at finding it shared by the greatest and most
essentially German of recent musicians. _Saul_, _Solomon_, _Alexander's
Feast_, the _Dettingen Te Deum_, and the Organ Concerto in D minor, were
all presented in the course of the next two seasons,--a remarkable
record, if we remember that a season consisted of six concerts, and that
the range of selection extended from Johann Rudolph Ahle to Rubinstein
and Goldmark.
Once established in his new position, Brahms found no further difficulty
in reconciling its duties with the needs of his own productive activity.
During the years 1873-5 he poured out a continuous stream of new works,
including not only many songs, duets, and choruses, but the _Neue
Liebeslieder_, the fine set of orchestral variations on a Theme of
Haydn, and the Pianoforte Quartett in C minor, which, although it
suffers from an almost inevitable comparison, may yet be said to contain
two of the most delightful melodies that its composer has ever written.
It was in this last work that some candid friend pointed out an obvious
structural resemblance to the Finale of Mendelssohn's C minor Trio, and
was met with the placid, if somewhat direct rejoinder, 'Das sieht jeder
Narr.' Brahms does not belong to the artistic type that can be readily
stirred by an accusation of plagiarism.
Such an accusation, however, was shortly to be repeated in more vehement
terms. At the beginning of November 1876, the Symphony in C minor was
played (from MSS.) at Carlsruhe, and at once attracted a great deal of
attention, not only because it was the composer's first work in this
form, but for the less satisfactory reason that its Finale is based on a
melody curiously similar to that of Beethoven's 'Freude.' To make
matters worse, an enthusiastic Hamburg admirer labelled the new
composition 'A Tenth Symphony,' and so emphasised the resemblance in a
manner which would have been hardly possible to an open antagonism. The
artistic importance of this question will be considered later: at
present it is enough to note, that the resemblance undoubtedly exists,
and that it holds a prominent place in almost all the contemporary
criticisms. Yet, on the whole, the Symphony was favourably received. The
first movement aroused some controversy:--'We cannot make head or tail
of it,' said a Munich correspondent, 'so we suppose that it is a
Symphonic Poem;'--but the Andante, the Allegretto, and even the
offending Finale, appear to have met with a due share of popular favour.
It must be remembered that the opening Allegro is essentially tragic in
character, and that, with the general public, tragedy takes longer than
comedy to win its way.
As the publication of the Requiem had been followed immediately by a
great outburst of choral works, so that of the first Symphony stimulated
Brahms to further attempts in the great epic forms of the orchestra. In
December 1877, the D major Symphony was produced by Richter at a
Philharmonic concert in Vienna, and in 1878, after a short holiday tour
in Italy, Brahms completed the triptych with his superb Violin
Concerto, second only, in the record of musical art, to that of
Beethoven. The _début_ of this last composition, which took place on
January 14, 1879, was characterised by a very unusual mark of respect
and interest. Not only was it received with a veritable ovation--when
Joachim is playing Brahms that is only to be expected--but at the close
of the concert a large part of the audience remained in the hall, and
constituted itself into an impromptu debating society to discuss its
impressions. This forms a remarkable contrast to the panic flight which
usually follows on the first moment of liberation, and must be taken as
the sign and witness of a more than superficial enthusiasm. Men may
applaud from good-nature, from impulse, from a desire to be in the
fashion; but something stronger than this is required to keep them in
their seats after the performance is over.
Meantime works of less long a breath were appearing in their usual
copious abundance. In 1876 came the bright genial Quartett in B flat,
then followed a series of songs, duets and pianoforte pieces, then a
couple of motets for mixed chorus and orchestra. In November 1879 the
Violin Sonata in G was given for the first time at a Hellmesberger
Concert, and succeeded almost immediately by the two well-known
Rhapsodies for piano solo, and the second set of Hungarian dances. Of
course, fertility is not in itself a mark of genius--otherwise Raff
would be the greatest composer of the century--but at least it gives
additional opportunity for the marks of genius to appear. And it may be
added that, even in the periods of most rapid production, Brahms hardly
ever shows any signs of haste. If he escapes the self-torture which
drove Chopin day after day to the revision of a single page, it is not
because his ideal is lower, but because his judgment is more robust.
In 1880 he accepted the degree of Doctor in Philosophy, offered him by
the University of Breslau, and at once set himself, during a summer stay
at Ischl, to write his thesis. A ceremonial of so solemn and academic a
character naturally demanded an unusual display of learning. Symphonies
were too trivial, oratorios were too slight, even an eight-part _à
capella_ chorus in octuple counterpoint was hardly adequate to the
dignity of the occasion. Something must be done to mark the doctorate
with all the awe and reverence due to the Philosophic Chair. So Brahms
selected a handful of the more convivial student songs--'Was kommt dort
von der Höh',' 'Gaudeamus igitur,' and the like--and worked them into a
concert overture, which remains one of the most amusing pieces of pure
comedy in the whole range of music. It was an audacious experiment, and
one which could only have succeeded in Germany. Not even Brahms could
offer, as a Doctor's exercise at Oxford or Cambridge, a work based on
the melodies with which our own studious youth beguiles its leisure
moments.
Two other compositions appear to have been written at Ischl during the
same summer--the Tragic Overture and the Pianoforte Trio in C major. Of
these the Trio remained for some time in abeyance; the Overture,
together with its 'Academic' companion, was produced at Breslau on
January 4, 1881, and repeated at Leipsic on January 13. It is equally
intelligible that the lighter mood should have won a more immediate
sympathy, and that a mature decision should have reversed the verdict.
In the Academic Overture men met old friends, cracked old jokes,
recalled old memories of the Kneipe, and so rather put themselves out of
court for dispassionate criticism: the Tragic brought them nothing but a
cheerless vision of crumbling steeps and mysterious shadows, of dark
recesses and haunted glades, of
'Moonlit battlements and towers decayed by time,'
through all of which we can fancy Vetter Michel passing with his coat
tightly buttoned and his hat pressed over his brows, only anxious to
escape as soon as possible from the enchanted spot, and return to warmth
and light and good fellowship. At the same time, the Tragic Overture
strikes a deeper note, and though it is not more masterly in structure,
is certainly more poetic in conception. Besides, it owed no factitious
interest to the particular circumstances of its first appearance, and
so, having been treated from the beginning on its own merits, it is the
more likely to endure.
Other events of 1881 may be dismissed in a few words. At the end of
January the London Philharmonic endeavoured to secure Brahms as
conductor for its coming season; but the offer, like all subsequent
invitations from this country, was immediately declined. 'Je ne veux pas
faire le spectacle,' is the reason which was once given as the ground of
refusal; and, though we may feel a little mortified at the implication,
it is difficult to deny the uncomplimentary truth that it contains. We
have not yet learned to treat genius frankly, and either starve it with
censure or smother it with an irrational excess of enthusiasm. And
further, Brahms was much occupied during the summer, partly in preparing
his two overtures for the press, partly in completing the Nänie and the
new Pianoforte Concerto in B flat. During the autumn came a concert tour
of unusual extent, in which the last-named work was produced at
Buda-Pesth, and repeated at Meiningen, Stuttgart, Basle, Zurich, and
ultimately at Vienna. By this time it had become an article of faith,
that Brahms' concerti showed no claim to their specific title; and, as
the jest of 'Symphony with pianoforte obbligato' had fulfilled its
purpose, the critics struck out a fresh line, and described the new work
as 'chamber music on a larger canvas.' However, the Viennese public was
as indifferent to names as Juliet herself, and received the music
with a cordiality that took no thought of problems in scientific
classification.
The publications of 1882 consist of four volumes of songs, which range
in character from the humour of the Vergebliches Ständchen to the
poetry, as pure and contemplative as Wordsworth, of Feldeinsamkeit and
Sommerabend. After the Vienna season Brahms took his usual holiday at
Ischl, and there composed the String Quintett in F and the Gesang der
Parzen, both of which were printed in the succeeding year. But the next
real landmark was the third Symphony produced at Vienna in the winter of
1883, and repeated at once in almost every great musical centre in
Germany. It is perhaps the finest, certainly the clearest, of all
Brahms' instrumental compositions for orchestra--forcible and vigorous
in movement, delightful in melody, and, of course, faultless in
construction. 'Now at last,' said a member of the Viennese audience, 'I
can understand Brahms at a first hearing': and, indeed, it must be a
cloudy twilight in which so exact a hand cannot be readily deciphered.
In strong contrast is the fourth Symphony in E minor, which followed
after another period of song-writing. On grounds of true artistic value,
it is almost equal to its predecessor; but it deals with more recondite
themes, it traces more involved issues, and it has consequently been
treated with some of that irrational impatience which is the common fate
of prophets who speak in parables. When it was presented at Leipsic in
1886, the critics protested against it as wholly unintelligible; and
when Reinecke repeated it at the beginning of the next year, the
audience trooped out after the third movement and left the finale to be
played to empty benches. It may be remembered that the subscribers to
_Fraser's Magazine_ once threatened to withdraw their patronage unless
the editor discontinued a farrago of exasperating nonsense called by the
unmeaning name of _Sartor Resartus_.
In 1887 Brahms was created a Knight of the German order, 'pour le
mérite,' in company with Professor Treitschke, Gustav Freitag, and
Verdi. He had already received the order of 'Arts and Sciences' from the
King of Bavaria; and, two years later, he was admitted by the Emperor of
Austria to the order of St Leopold--the first civilian, it is said, on
whom that distinction has been conferred. Meantime, he brought his list
of works past its hundredth opus number--that goal which Schubert was so
pathetically anxious to reach--with the 'Cello Sonata in F, the Violin
Sonata in A, the double Concerto and the C minor Pianoforte Trio. The
first of these, which was produced by Hausmann in November 1886, at once
aroused a very curious outburst of structural criticism. It was said,
and the statement is still repeated, that Brahms had been guilty of a
dangerous and radical innovation in choosing for his slow movement a key
removed by only one semitone from that of the work as a whole. The
choice was too near in pitch, it was too remote in signature, it broke
the harmonic unity of the composition by a contrast of colour which was
in itself glaring and extreme. But of attacks on Brahms, as of attacks
on a very different master, we may generally say, 'ça porte malheur.'
The so-called 'innovation,' authoritatively condemned as without
parallel in musical literature, may be found in one of Haydn's
pianoforte sonatas, and can hardly, therefore, be criticised at the
present day as hazardous and revolutionary. Whether the contrast be here
successful or not is a matter on which opinions may conceivably differ,
though, after any serious study of the opening movement, they are likely
to concur; but it is surely unfair to accuse Brahms of violating the
classical tradition, unless, indeed, there be a sense in which any stage
of evolution may be said to violate its forerunner.