In op. 21 there are two sets of variations--one in D, on an original
theme, the second in the same key, on a Hungarian song. They are both
excellent preparatory studies for the more famous pair. In them we
get the peculiar Brahms technic amply illustrated--for instance, the
first variation of the opus. It begins with a characteristic figure
in the bass, the harmonic extensions showing how ingeniously Brahms
handled the arpeggio, avoiding a tone, accentuating another and gaining
new color. There are some interesting variations in this set, No. 7,
with its wide intervals; No. 9, another pedal bass effect with huge
skips that look like yawning precipices, yet I do not particularly care
for the set, although constant study of Brahms reveals new points of
interest. The variations on a Hungarian song are even less fruitful in
treatment, but will repay study.
When, however, we take up op. 24, variations and fugue on a theme
by Handel, we begin to sense the extraordinary fertility of Brahms.
The theme itself, in B flat, is a square-toed aria, and what Brahms
does with it is most entertaining, ingenious and musicianly. From
the very first variation, surely full of humor, we get a view of the
possibilities of the variation form. I am not sure but that these
variations are more ingenuous, less sophisticated, and contain less of
the étude than the Paganini variations. As they are occasionally played
I shall not go into detailed description of the difficulties, except
to say that the entire twenty-five are alive with musical invention
and a certain genial feeling, a geniality that eminently suits the
ruddy-cheeked tune of Handel. There is the fifth variation in B flat
minor, there is the fourth with its bass and treble dialogue, the
fourteenth in double sixths and the energetic attack of the nineteenth
are all noteworthy.
The fugue is a capital specimen of close treatment, yet in spirit very
free. I do not begin to find it as dry as certain of the Beethoven
fugues, and it is devilishly tricky.
The variations on the Paganini theme in A minor are frankly studies,
but transcendental studies, only fit to be mentioned in company with
Liszt’s. Apparently the top-notch of virtuosity had been reached and
there remained nothing for Brahms to do but let an astonishingly
fantastic imagination loose and play pranks that would have caused
Schumann to shout with admiration. The very first variation is a subtle
compliment to Schumann’s toccata, and the second, with the sixths in
the left hand, is very trying for players with short-breathed fingers.
In the third we get rolling rhythms that excite more than they lull. In
the fourth Brahms asks too much of mortal man with a top trill on a
chord, the left hand gambolling over the impossible. Then follow some
octave studies the reverse of easy, especially the ninth in chords.
The eleventh is a veritable toccata; the thirteenth one of the most
brilliant and popular of the set. The fourteenth is terrible, exacting
and long, for it closes the set. Brahms, to use a faded figure of
speech piles Pelion upon Ossa in the coda.
The second book starts in with a tremendous and exciting study in
double notes, and the sudden muscular contractions and expansion caused
by alternations of double thirds and octaves is exhausting to anyone
but a virtuoso. The tenth variation, marked Feroce, energico, exhibits
skilful use of arpeggio forms, and the eleventh variation is simply
baffling. In the next one we get a breathing spell, one of those green
melodic oases in which Brahms proves to you how easy it is for a great,
strong soul to be gentle and tender.
It may not be considered amiss here to take a passing glance at some of
Brahms’ daily studies for the piano. Naturally a man fond of solving
abstruse technical problems, he could scarcely let pass the studies
of other composers without considering them in varied aspects. So he
has taken Chopin’s tender, whispering study in F minor (op. 25),
and broken it on the wheel of double sixths and thirds. It may be
magnificent technic, but, as Rudyard Kipling would ask: Is it art?
It is certainly legitimate experimenting, but I fancy not fit for
publication. A flood of imitations have resulted, and in some cases
Chopin has suffered exceedingly. Happily the extreme difficulty of the
Brahms transcriptions will prevent them from ever becoming as popular
as much of Chopin. They are written for a parterre of virtuosi.
The étude after Chopin is entertaining for the fingers, and of more
educational value than Franz Bendel’s treatment of sixths in his B flat
minor study, the étude Heroique.
But what shall I say of the Weber rondo, the so-called perpetual
movement, topsy-turvied by Brahms, and actually played by him in
concert? It is very bewildering and finally laughable. As a left hand
study in velocity it is supreme. He has subjected a presto by Bach to
two rather drastic treatments, and the famous chaconne he arranged for
the left hand alone. This latter has one good point, it can be played
easily by both hands, and the immortal piece enjoyed, for with Bach,
Brahms is reverent to a degree.
The fifty-one studies recently published are little gold mines for the
student of Brahms. They are more musical than Tausig’s daily studies
and also more normal. In them may be found all the norms of Brahms’
technical figuration, the mixed rhythms, the curious extensions,
the double notes in thirds and sixths, with all manner of ingenious
fingering. Examine the fifth study, occupying but a page, and you will
find the key to one of the most formidable difficulties in the Paganini
studies. It is in broken octaves, arranged in scale fashion and taken
at a rapid tempo. Various examples will be found of this figure. Then
there are single finger exercises, skips, scales and interlocked
octaves and chords. Both books are of the highest importance. Max
Vogrich says that the title of the studies should be A Hospital for
Disabled Virtuosi.
The twenty-one Hungarian dances were originally arranged for the piano
and afterward transferred to the orchestra. They are so familiar in
their orchestral garb that I need hardly allude to them except to say
that some of them are not so well adapted for the piano. But there are
a half dozen that will outlive all the Liszt rhapsodies, for Brahms
has penetrated more deeply the Hungarian spirit, has caught color,
swing, perfume, mad melancholy and reckless joy without a suspicion of
the glittering embroidery of Liszt’s virtuoso-like paraphrases. These
dances of Brahms can be made to sound superbly if played by a pianist
with temperament, above all a pianist who has in his veins Magyar blood.
I wish I had been in Leipsic in January, 1859, among the big-wigs of
music and listened to the first performance of the D minor, the first
piano concerto, played by its composer, Johannes Brahms. The Gewandhaus
must have been disgusted by “the symphony with piano obbligato,” as the
critics called it; curiously enough, this work has set the pace for the
modern concerto, of which Eugen d’Albert’s two works in B minor and E
major are extreme examples.
Yet carefully read the D minor concerto to-day, and much of its
so-called obscurity vanishes. When I first heard the work played by
Wilhelmine Claus, an excellent artist, I confess that, fresh from
“Chopinism,” this concerto sounded mournfully vague and uncertain. Its
seriousness was, however, not its only drawback to popularity. “Where,”
asked a bewildered public, accustomed to the panderings of “pianism,”
“where are our trills, our scales, our runs all over the landscape of
the keyboard? Give us our cadenza, our big triumphal entrance, and our
brilliant finale, and we will endure a few bars from the orchestra;”
bars, let it be said, that about suffice to allow the solo player to
settle in his seat, recover his wind and nerve and warm his fingers.
But Brahms thought differently from the critic and public; to him a
piano concerto was the sonata form amplified, and the piano, unless it
had something to say, must hold its tongue between its burnished ivory
teeth. Do not, however, imagine that the pianist has a few doleful
chords to play. There are difficulties enough, and of a trying and
unusual order. As for the seriousness of the work we cannot deny that
it is dark at times, especially in the orchestra, and full of the
strenuous, solid sincerity of the composer. I cannot help thinking here
of what Hadow wrote for the benefit of those who find Brahms too grave
and earnest:--
The same may be said of Æschylus and Dante, of Milton, of
Wordsworth.... Music is an art of at least the same dignity as poetry
or painting; it admits of similar distinctions, it appeals to similar
faculties, and in it, also, the highest field is that occupied with
the most serious issues.... If we are disposed to find fault with
Brahms because the greater part of his music is grave and earnest,
let us at least endeavor to realize how such a criticism would sound
if it were directed against the Divina Commedia, or the Agamemnon, or
Paradise Lost.
For Ehlert the D minor concerto was “his first crusade into the
promised land of art.” He furthermore finds it penetrating, rugged and
unpleasant, but of “undisguised grandeur.... Its score represents the
act of divorce between the pianist Brahms and the universal composer.”
The first tutti covers all but five pages; but how entrancingly enters
the opening subject! I find it simply captivating and without a trace
of harshness. Of course if you will thump the piano like some pianists
who believe that both Bach and Brahms are dry, pedantic music-worms,
you cannot expect any response full of musical and intellectual charm.
And let me say now that half the harm done to Bach and Brahms is that
so successfully accomplished by pianists who fail to discern the
exquisite musical quality of these composers. Give the public less
arithmetic and more emotional and tonal variety, and presently you
may find Bach and Brahms ending a programme instead of escorting a
reluctant audience to its seat.
On page eleven of the concerto stands the second theme of the first
movement in F. Show me anything lovelier, more suave, even in Mozart,
and I will be surprised. It is the earnest and strict polyphonic
treatment throughout and not any paucity of melodic material that
irritates those that still believe music is made, like bonbons, to
tickle the palate and soothe digestion. There is admirable logic in
the working out section and plenty of finger, wrist and arm breaking
technic. The last two pages--pages thirty-two and thirty-three--coming
as they do, will force any strong musical man to exert himself.
The second movement, an adagio, gives us after Brahms the thinker,
Brahms the poet. It is in the key of D and could only have been
conceived by a man of the highest musical ideas and deep feeling. There
is an episode on page thirty-six that gives the lie to the critics with
strabismic hearing. It is in melody and harmony, simply golden. The
rondo is in strict form, full of classic glee, and very effective, even
in the old-fashioned piano sense. It demands enduring, honest fingers,
and much breadth of style.
Properly speaking, the second piano concerto in B flat, op. 83,
belongs to my so-called second manner of the composer. In it there
is less of the philosophic brooding of the first concerto. It is more
passionate, more fluent, more direct and more dramatic. It shows the
same unerring grasp of construction; but there is, throughout, more of
the musician of the world, less of the introspective and contemplative
poet. It is brilliant--especially the passage work--for the piano. The
enunciation of the first theme by the horn is memorable; beautiful,
too, is the violoncello solo in the slow movement, while the Hungarian
finale contains some of the most charming pages written for piano and
orchestra. It is dashing and piquant, and the second theme is truly
Magyar.
This concerto is always sure to be more popular than the first, with
its Faust-like questionings. Brahms has dared to be worldly and less
recondite for once.
V
It seems to me that the pièce de résistance of the Brahms piano music
is the Paganini Variations; those famous, awesome, o’er-toppling, huge,
fantastic, gargoylean variations erected, planned and superimposed by
Brahms upon a characteristic theme of Paganini.
Brahms and Paganini! Was ever so strange a couple in harness? Caliban
and Ariel, Jove and Puck. The stolid German, the vibratile Italian! Yet
fantasy wins, even if brewed in a homely Teutonic kettle. Brahms has
taken the little motif--a true fiddle motif--of Paganini, and tossed
it ball-wise in the air, and while it spiral spins and bathes in the
blue, he cogitates, and his thought is marvellously fine spun. Webs of
gold and diamond spiders and the great round sun splashing about, and
then deep divings into the bowels of the firmament and growlings and
subterrene rumblings, and all the while the poor maigre Paganini, a
mere palimpsest for the terrible old man of Hamburg, from whose pipe
wreathed musical smoky metaphysics, and whose eyes are fixed on the
Kantean categories.
These diabolical variations, the last word in the technical literature
of the piano, are also vast spiritual problems. To play them requires
fingers of steel, a heart of burning lava and the courage of a lion.
You see, these variations are an obsession with me.
Now take up the Chopin Preludes, and the last, a separate one, op. 45,
in the key of C sharp minor. It begins with an idea that Mendelssohn
employs in his Song Without Words in A minor, “Regret,” I think, is
the fanciful name given it by the publishers; but play until you come
to the thirteenth bar, and, behold, you are landed in the middle of
Brahms. I do not mean to say that Brahms copied Chopin, but the mood
and its physical presentation are identical with some of the music of
the later Brahms, the Brahms of the second period. The most curious
part about this coincidence is that the ten bars that follow do not
sound like Chopin, but Brahms--oh, so Brahmsian, that bitter-sweet
lingering, that spiritual reverie in which the musical idea is gently
propelled as if in some elusive dream. Then there are the extended
chords, the shifting harmonic hues, the very bars are built up like
Brahms. Of course Brahms would have been Brahms without Chopin; he
really owes the Pole less than he owes Schumann, nevertheless here we
are confronted with a startling similarity of theme and treatment.
I fancied that Bach anticipated everyone in modern music, but Chopin
anticipating Brahms is almost in the nature of a delicate, ironical
jest; yet it is not more singular than Beethoven anticipating Schumann
and Chopin in the adagio of the sonata, op. 106, and in the arioso
dolente of the sonata, op. 110.
There is nothing new under the sun, said some venerable polyphonic
pundit, in omphalic contemplation on the banks of the Ganges, and music
amply illustrates this eld saying.
But to op. 76, Clavierstücke von Johannes Brahms. This opus is divided
into eight numbers, capriccios and intermezzi; for the composer
disliked excessively giving his music set names, although it seems to
me that with his intense Teutonism he might have followed Schumann’s
example and avoided the Italian nomenclature as much as possible.
Then again these little pieces are not always well named, for the
rhapsodies are seldom rhapsodies in the conventional sense, and the
intermezzi are, I suppose, intended to fill in, as the name indicates,
some intermediate place; but as a matter of fact they do not, for they
are often bunched together. It is to be supposed that Brahms attached
some intellectual significance to these titles that is caviare to the
general.
The first capriccio of op. 76 is in the key of F sharp minor, the
brief, restless introductory suggesting, but rather faintly, Schumann.
The principal melody is structurally in the style of Mendelssohn, but
the harmonization and development of a sort that would have repelled
the gentle Felix, who disliked anything bristling or forbidding. The
mood-color is gloomy, even to despair. There is a ray of light in
the diminished chord that preludes the return of the theme, which is
treated in inversion--a characteristic trick of Brahms. Near the close
the melody is sounded in quarter-noted chords and most resolutely,
but soon melts away into vaporous figuration, the piece ending in the
major, but without a ray of sunshine.
The second capriccio is the familiar one in B minor, played staccato
throughout, and a piquant and almost agreeable piano composition. Do
you know that I never hear it without being reminded of the fourth
number in Schumann’s Die Davidsbündler, which is also in B minor. It is
as if Brahms took that syncopated page and built over it his capriccio,
with its capricious staccati and ingenious harmonic changes. Of course
the resemblance vanishes after the third bar; it is really more
spiritual than actual.
Interesting it is to follow the permutations of the composer. On page
nine there is a refreshing and perfectly sane modulation from E major
to F, and the return to the subject is cleverly managed. The frisky
yet somewhat saturnine character is maintained to the end, and the
doubling up on page twelve is very effective. A genuine piano piece is
this B minor capriccio.
We now come to the lovely A flat intermezzo, which occasionally strays
in an uneasy fashion on the concert stage. A few pianists play this
tender wreath of moonbeams and love, but either too slow or too fast.
To play Brahms sentimentally is to slay Brahms; yet this charming
intermezzo in A flat must not be taken too slow. It exhales an odor of
purity, of peace, that is not quite untroubled, and nothing sweeter can
be imagined than the dolce on the first page that follows a ritenuto
and introduces a break in the melody. Its two pages are the two pages
of a masterpiece. They give us Brahms at his best and in his most
lovable mood.
The next intermezzo is more shy and more diffident. Marked allegretto
grazioso, its graciousness is veiled by a hesitating reserve which
further on becomes almost painful. Mark where the double notes begin,
mark the progression and its dark downward inflection. But it is
a beautiful bit of writing, with some of the characteristics of a
nocturne, but full of questionings, full of enigmatic pain. Brahms,
too, suffered severely from Weltschmerz.
The second book of op. 76 is a distinct advance in mastery of material,
in the expression and realization of moods almost too recondite and
remote. The C sharp minor capriccio which begins the book is more
lengthy and more ambitious than any in the work. It is an agitated,
passionate composition, driving through darkness and storm without
relief, until a silent poco tranquillo is reached; but the point of
repose is soon abandoned and the turmoil begins anew and the ending
is full of gloom and fierceness. I catch Schumann in spots; for
example, near the end of the second line on the second page, when a
rank modulation stares you in the face, but with the eyes of Robert
the Fantastic. The tempest-like character of the capriccio is marked.
It is a true soul-storm in which the spirit, buffeted and drenched by
the wind and wave of adversity, is almost subdued; but the harsh and
haughty coda shows indomitable courage at the last. It is a powerful
companion picture for Schumann’s Aufschwung.
Then follow in the next intermezzo perfect calm, perfect repose of mind
and body. In the slow moving triplets Brahms indicates those curves of
quiet that enfold us when we are at one with ourselves, with nature.
Indescribably lovely is the first page of this intermezzo. Even the
section in F sharp minor is gracious and without a hint of the tragic.
The piece ends in A major stillness.
The next number is also an intermezzo, and with my absurd feeling for
similarities I hear in it an echo of Chopin’s F minor nocturne. The
resemblance is not as rhythmic as it is melodic. For gray days this
intermezzo was written; go play it when the sun is holding high and
heated revelry in the heavens and you will feel, rather than see, a
shadow cross your inner vision. It is our pessimistic Brahms again, and
the mood for the moment is almost one of mild self-torture. A nocturne
in gray, not too profound, too poignant, rather a note of melancholy is
sounded, a thin edge of light that stipples the gloom with really more
doubt than despair.
The eighth and last number of the opus is a capriccio, a genuine,
whirling, fantastic capriccio. It is not easy to play; needing light,
sure fingers and a light, gay spirit. In the second section we
encounter a melody of the later Brahms type. It delights in seizing
remote keys, or rather contiguous keys, that are widely disparate in
relationship and forcing them to consort, the result being perversely
novel and sometimes startling. Some of the modulatory work is very
interesting, particularly the enharmonic progressions at the bottom
of the second page. The capriccio fitly closes a volume of original
and suggestive piano music, but music that is sealed to the amateur
searching for showy or mere mellifluous effects. After you have played
Bach and Beethoven, after you have exhausted--if such a thing is
possible--Chopin and Schumann, you will perhaps grasp the involuted and
poetical music contained in op. 76 of Brahms.
At last we reach op. 79, the two rhapsodies much talked of, much
wrangled over and seldom played.
The first rhapsody is in B minor and is as unrhapsodic as you can well
imagine. It is drastic, knotty, full of insoluble ideas, the melodic
contour far from melting and indeed hardly plastic. The mood is sternly
Dorian and darkling. It is the intellectual Brahms who confronts us
with his supreme disdain for what we like or dislike; it is Brahms
giving utterance to bitter truths, and only when he reaches the section
in D minor does he relax and sing in smoother accents; but those common
chords in B flat ruthlessly interrupt the Norse-like melody, and we
are once again launched on the sea of troubled argument. This B minor
rhapsody always sounds to me as if its composer were trying to prove
something algebraic, all the while knitting his awful brows in the most
logical manner. There is little rhapsody in it, but of intellectual
acrimoniousness much. The second melody has an astringency that is very
grateful to mental palates weary of the sweets of other composers.
This melody in B is another typical one of the sort referred to above.
You could swear it is Brahms, even if heard in a dark room with your
ears closed--to be very Irish! The merging of this theme into the first
is characteristically accomplished, and the old dispute is renewed.
As acrid as decaying bronze is this rhapsody, and yet its content is
intellectual and lofty, the subsidiary melody in D minor being the one
bit of relief throughout. There are scales in the piece, but surely not
for display, and the regularly constructed coda is very interesting.
This first rhapsody is for the head rather than the heart.
But the second in G minor is magnificent; more ballade-like than
rhapsodic, yet a distinct narrative and one about which I love to drape
all manner of subjective imaginings. The bold modulation of the theme,
its swiftness, fervor and power are very fascinating. I love to think
of my favorite, Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. With
what mastery and economy of means are not the most dramatic effects
compassed! Begin with the chord in E minor so rapidly translated into
G minor, and thence onward. You can fairly revel in the exhibition of
tragic force, in the free, firm, bold handling of a subject stripped
of all musical verbiage and reduced to its lowest mathematical term.
The working out is famous in its intensity, in its grip; never for a
moment is the theme lost, never for a moment is subsidiary material
introduced. There is no padding, and the great, gaunt skeleton of the
structure would be exposed if it were not for the rush, the color,
the dynamic density of the mass. A wonderful, glorious, bracing
tone-picture in which Brahms, the philosopher, burns the boats of
his old age and becomes for the time a youthful Faust in search of a
sensation. A hurricane of emotion that is barely stilled at the end,
this rhapsody reminds me of the bardic recital of some old border
ballad. In it there is tragedy and the cry of bruised hearts; in it
there is fierce action, suffocating passion and a letting loose of the
elements of the soul. It is an epic for the keyboard, and before its
cryptic tones we shudder and are amazed!