1848-1853
Johannes' first public concert--Years of struggle--Hamburg
Lokals--Louise Japha--Edward Reményi--Sonata in F sharp
minor--First concert-tour as Reményi's accompanist--Concerts at
Winsen, Celle, Lüneburg, and Hildesheim--Musical parties in
1853--Leipzig and Weimar--Robert Schumann--Joseph Joachim.
It was on September 21 that Johannes made his fresh start in life by
giving a concert of his own, thus presenting himself to his circle as a
musician who was now to stand on an independent footing. It took place
in the familiar room of the 'Old Raven,' 'Herr Honnef's Hall,' with the
assistance of Marxsen's friends, Madame and Fräulein Cornet, and some
instrumentalists of Hamburg. The price of tickets was one mark (about a
shilling), and the programme, as printed in the _Hamburger Nachrichten_
of the 20th, was as follows:
FIRST PART.
1. Adagio and rondo from Rosenhain's Concerto in A major for Piano,
performed by the concert-giver.
2. Duet from Mozart's 'Figaro,' sung by Mad. and Fräul. Cornet.
3. Variations for Violin, by Artôt, performed by Herr Risch.
4. 'Das Schwabenmädchen,' Lied, sung by Mad. Cornet.
5. Fantasia on Themes from Rossini's 'Tell,' for Piano, by Döhler,
performed by the concert-giver.
SECOND PART.
6. Introduction and Variations for Clarinet, by Herzog, performed
by Herr Glade.
7. Aria from Mozart's 'Figaro,' sung by Frl. Cornet.
8. Fantasia for Violoncello, composed and performed by Herr
d'Arien.
9. _a_) 'Der Tanz' } Lieder, sung by Mad.
_b_) 'Der Fischer auf dem Meer' } Cornet.
10. _a_) Fugue by Sebastian Bach
_b_) Serenade for left hand only, by E. Marxsen
_c_) Étude by Herz, performed by the concert-giver.
Unattractive as it now seems, this selection of pieces was no doubt made
with a view to the taste of the day, and the inclusion of a single Bach
fugue was probably a rather daring concession to that of the
concert-giver and his teacher. The two vocal numbers from 'Figaro' may
be accepted as echoes of the boy's delight on the evening of his recent
first visit to the opera. No record remains of the result of the
concert, but its success may fairly be inferred from the fact that it
was followed, in the spring of 1849, by a second, for which the price of
the tickets was increased to two marks. This was announced twice in the
_Nachrichten_ as follows:
'The undersigned will have the honour of giving a musical soirée on
April 14 in the concert-room of the Jenisch'schen Haus (Katharine
Street, 17), for which he ventures herewith to issue his
invitation. Several of the first resident artists have kindly
promised their assistance to the programme, which will be published
in this journal.
'J. BRAHMS, Pianist.'
The programme was appended to the third and last advertisement of April
10:
FIRST PART.
1. Grand Sonata in C major, Op. 53, by Beethoven. (The
concert-giver.)
2. Romance from Donizetti's 'Liebestrank.' (Th. Wachtel.)
3. Schubert's 'Ave Maria,' performed on the Horn by Herr Börs.
4. 'O geh' nicht fort,' Lied, by E. Marxsen, sung by Frl. Cornet.
5. Fantasia for Piano on a favourite Waltz, composed and performed
by the concert-giver.
SECOND PART.
6. Concerto for Violin, by Fr. Mollenhauer, performed by Herr Ed.
Mollenhauer.
7. Songs. Me. Cornet.
8. Fantasia on Themes from 'Don Juan,' by Thalberg, performed by
the concert-giver.
9. Duet, sung by Me. and Frl. Cornet.
10. Variations for Flute, by Fräsch, performed by Herr Koppelhöfer.
11. Air Italien, by C. Meyer, performed by the concert-giver.
The performance of Beethoven's 'Waldstein' sonata, Op. 53, was regarded
long after the close of the forties, as a great technical feat, and,
taken together with the execution of the 'Don Juan' fantasia, would
represent something near the height of the pianistic virtuosity of the
time, whilst with the Fantasia on a favourite waltz the concert-giver
made his first public entrée as a composer. This work must be identified
with the variations on a favourite waltz mentioned by La Mara as having
been played at his concert by the young Brahms, of which one variation
took the form of a 'very good canon.' Marxsen's notice of the concert in
the _Freischütz_ of April 17 was the only one that appeared:
'In the concert given by J. Brahms, the youthful virtuoso gave most
satisfactory proofs of advancement in his artistic career. His
performance of Beethoven's sonata showed that he is already able to
devote himself successfully to the study of the classics, and
redounded in every respect to his honour. The example of his own
composition also indicated unusual talent.'
Although the report adds that the room was so full as to oblige many
listeners to be content with seats in the ante-room, it is probable that
the young musician found concert-giving more vexatious and expensive
than useful or profitable. Though he appeared from time to time at the
benefit-concerts of other artists, and repeated his own fantasia at one
given on December 6 by Rudolph Lohfeldt, his third soirée in Hamburg,
given under conditions of which he could not at this time have dared to
dream, did not take place till after the lapse of another decade. The
four or five years immediately succeeding his formal entry into life
were, perhaps, the darkest of Brahms' career. Money had to be earned,
and the young Bach-Mozart-Beethoven enthusiast earned it by giving
wretchedly-paid lessons to pupils who lacked both talent and wish to
learn, and by his night drudgery amid the sordid surroundings of the
Hamburg dancing-saloons.
It was an amelioration in his life and a step forward in his career,
when he was engaged by the publisher, August Cranz, as one of several
contributors to a series of popular arrangements of light music,
published under the name 'G. W. Marks.' We have read in Widmann's pages
of the spirit in which the great composer, a few years before his death,
recalled these passages of his struggling youth:
'He could not, he said, wish that it had been less rough and
austere. He had certainly earned his first money by arranging
marches and dances for garden orchestras, or orchestral music for
the piano, but it gave him pleasure even now, when he came across
one of these anonymously circulating pieces, to think that he had
devoted faithful labour and all the knowledge at his command, to
such hireling's work. He did not even regard as useless experience
that he had often had to accompany wretched singers or to play
dance music in Lokals, whilst he was longing for the quiet morning
hours during which he should be able to write down his own
thoughts. "The prettiest songs came to me as I blacked my boots
before daybreak."'
And if the master could so speak and think of his early trials, must not
we, who are, perhaps, the richer through them, treasure the remembrance
of the nights of uncongenial toil through which he passed to become,
even on the threshold of life, its conqueror and true possessor? The
iron entered his soul, however, and the impression derived from his
night work remained with him till death. He was accustomed to read
steadily through the hours of his slavery. Placing a volume of history,
poetry, or romance on the music-desk before him, his thoughts were away
in a world of imagination, whilst his fingers were mechanically busy
with the tinkling keys. He did not lift his eyes to the scene before him
after his first entrance, though there were times when he felt it with
shuddering dismay. It is, however, right to repeat that, as we have
hinted in a previous chapter, this kind of industry was a more or less
recognised means by which struggling musicians of the class to which
Jakob Brahms belonged, were enabled to help their needy circumstances,
and it would not be difficult to name more than one executant afterwards
well known who fulfilled similar engagements in youth. The position of
Johannes was not in itself exceptional, though the contemplation of it
is now startling from its contrast with his tender nature, his sensitive
genius, and the great place which he ultimately won.
An engagement of which Kalbeck speaks, to act as accompanist behind the
scenes and on the stage of the Stadt Theater, may have been less irksome
to the young musician than his other hack work, and it is possible to
believe that the experience drawn from it may have been of some
appreciable value to him in after-life, even though his artistic
development did not result in dramatic composition. Evidence is not
wanting, however, to show that he kept his thoughts steadily fixed upon
the higher practical possibilities of his profession, and that, though
his position continued very obscure, it did not remain at a standstill.
His terms to pupils increased to about a shilling a lesson, and
occasionally he was able to get more. Every now and then he obtained a
small concert-engagement, or officiated at a private party, and on one
occasion he appeared with Otto Goldschmidt, the then leading pianist of
Hamburg, who was about four years his senior, in a performance of
Thalberg's duet for two pianofortes on airs from 'Norma.'
Conditions at home remained unfavourable for practice, and Johannes now
worked regularly at the establishment of Messrs. Baumgarten and Heinz,
where an instrument was always at his service. Here, one day, he met
Fräulein Louise Japha, who remembered the circumstance, already recorded
in these pages, of having heard him play five or six years previously as
a child of eleven. A talk ensued, a sympathetic note was struck, and a
comradeship quickly grew up between the two young musicians. Louise,
born in 1826, and therefore some seven years the senior of Johannes, was
possessed of high musical endowment. At the time of which we write, she
was the pupil of Fritz Wahrendorf for pianoforte, and of William Grund
for theory and composition. She achieved eminence later on, becoming
well known in Germany and a great favourite with the public of Paris.
Frau Dr. Langhans-Japha is now not far from eighty, but there is still a
peculiar charm in her playing, which is especially distinguished by
beauty of tone and phrasing. Her competent sympathy was a valuable
addition to young Brahms' pleasures in life, in the days when he knew
little of congenial artistic companionship. They met constantly to play
duets and compare notes as to their compositions, for Louise was a
song-writer of ability. Johannes used to discuss with her both his
favourite authors and his manuscripts. One day it was a long exercise in
double counterpoint that he brought to show her, another day a
pianoforte solo. On a third occasion he produced a pianoforte duet in
several movements, which he begged her to try with him, and,
acknowledging its authorship at the close of the performance, asked her
opinion of the work. This proving generally favourable, the composer,
going more into detail, took exception to one of his themes, which he
feared was rather 'ordinary'; but when Louise was half inclined to agree
with him, he cried angrily: 'Why did you not say so yourself? Why was I
obliged to ask you?'
He was always composing, and as time went on, was ably guided by Marxsen
to the practice of the large musical forms, over which he soon acquired
conspicuous mastery, showing extraordinary facility in applying to them
the skill he had gradually attained in free contrapuntal writing, whilst
allowing to his fancy the stimulus of the classical-romantic literature
that appealed with special force to his imagination. 'It came into my
head after reading so-and-so,' he would say. The whole of his small
amount of spare cash was devoted to the purchase of second-hand volumes
from the stalls to be found in the Jews' quarter of Hamburg, and what he
bought he read. Sophocles and Cicero, Dante and Tasso, Klopstock and
Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, Eichendorff, Chamisso, Pope, Young, and
many other poets, were represented in the library collected by him
between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one.[12] His favourite romances
were those of Jean Paul and E. T. A. Hoffmann, whose influence over his
mind is easily recognisable in the published compositions of his first
period. No other work on which he might be engaged, however, prevented
him from the composition of many songs. He threw one off after another.
'I generally read a poem through very slowly,' he said to Louise, 'and
then, as a rule, the melody is there.'
Fräulein Japha was before her time in conceiving an enthusiasm for
Schumann's art, and tried hard to win over Johannes to an appreciation
of its beauties, but he was too entirely under the influence of Marxsen,
who, in training him as a composer rightly proceeded on strictly
orthodox lines, to become a present convert. He, on his part, made
efforts to induce Louise to change her teachers and put herself under
his master. She had quite other views, however. Schumann and his wife
paid a visit to Hamburg in 1850, appearing several times in public, and
Louise resolved that if it could be made possible, she would enter on a
fresh course of study of composition and the piano under the two great
artists respectively. She only waited for a convenient opportunity to
carry out her plan. Johannes approached Schumann in another fashion, by
sending a packet of manuscripts to his hotel and begging for his
opinion. It is no wonder that the master, who was besieged on all sides
during his week's stay, found no time to look at them, and returned the
parcel unopened.
It must not be supposed that the young Brahms was always so
companionable as we have shown him when in the society of his chosen
friends. He had his moods. Christian Miller's early experiences of his
persistent taciturnity had not been exceptional. He spent a few evenings
at the Japhas' house, but Louise's family, her sister Minna only
excepted, by no means took a fancy to her favourite. One evening, when
he was about eighteen, a gentleman of the Japha circle, who had been
interested in hearing him play the scherzo now known as Op. 4, the
earliest written of his published instrumental works, accompanied him on
the way home, and made repeated but quite hopeless efforts after
sociability. Not one word would Johannes say. Perhaps he felt subsequent
secret prickings of conscience, for he made confession to Louise, though
not in any apparently repentant spirit. 'One is not always inclined to
talk,' he said; 'often one would rather not, and then it is best to be
silent. You understand that, don't you?' 'No, you were very naughty,'
she told him, but forgave him nevertheless. She could overlook his
occasional whims. She perceived his genius, admired his candid nature,
and felt her heart warm to him when he talked to her of the old mother
to whom he was devoted, and of Marxsen, whom he revered with all the
enthusiastic loyalty of his true heart. Soon after his walk with the
Japhas' friend he had a chance opportunity of playing his scherzo to
Henry Litolff, who bestowed high praise on the composition.
Meanwhile the friends at Winsen faithfully remembered their young
musician. Uncle Adolph and friend Schröder seldom missed going to see
him when occasion brought either of them to Hamburg, and Lischen came
over to be introduced to Madame Cornet and Marxsen. Johannes persevered
in his desire that her voice should be trained for the musical
profession, and wished her to obtain a good opinion on the subject. The
verdict of the authorities proved, however, unfavourable to the project.
Of the general invitation to visit the Giesemanns Brahms gladly availed
himself, staying sometimes for a few days, sometimes in the summer for a
week or two, as his occupations allowed. He was never again able to
undertake the choral society, but there was always a great deal of music
at the Amtsvogt's house when he was at Winsen, as well as at the
Giesemanns' and Schröders'. Town-musician Koch was a good violinist, and
but too happy to have the chance of playing the duet sonatas of Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven with such a colleague, and every now and again
compositions were looked out in which Uncle Giesemann could take part
with his guitar. Pretty Sophie Koch, the younger of the town-musician's
two daughters, took great interest in these artistic doings, and it was
rumoured, as time went on, that her fondness for music was not untinged
by a personal element connected with the Giesemanns' popular guest. If
this were so, Johannes himself was probably the last person to become
observant of it. He was wholly absorbed in his profession, and several
quite independent informants have concurred in describing him to the
author as being, at this time of his life, something less than
indifferent to the society of ladies, and especially of young ones. For
his early playmate, Lischen, his affection continued unchanged, and with
her he remained on the old terms of frank and cordial friendship.
It happened as a natural consequence of the political revolution which
took place early in the year 1848 in Germany and Austria, that, during
the year or two following its speedy termination, there was an influx
into Hamburg and its neighbourhood of refugees on their way to America.
Conspicuous among them were a number of Hungarians of various sorts and
degrees, who found such sympathetic welcome in the rich, free
merchant-city that they were in no hurry to leave it. Some of them
remained there for many months on one pretext or another, and amongst
these was the violinist Edward Reményi, a German-Hungarian Jew whose
real name was Hoffmann.
Reményi, born in 1830, had been during three years of his boyhood a
pupil of the Vienna Conservatoire, studying under Joseph Böhm, now
remembered as the teacher of Joachim. He had real artistic endowment,
and played the works of the classical masters well, if somewhat
extravagantly; but something more than talent was displayed in his
rendering of the airs and dances of his native country, which he gave
with a fire and abandon that excited his hearers to wild enthusiasm.
Eccentric and boastful, he knew how to profit to the utmost by his
successes in Hamburg, where he created a furore. Johannes, engaged one
evening to act as accompanist at the house of a rich merchant, made his
personal acquaintance, and Reményi, quickly perceiving the advantage he
derived from having such a coadjutor, made overtures of friendship in
his swaggering, patronizing way, which were not repulsed by the young
pianist. Brahms had, in fact, been fascinated by Reményi's spirited
rendering of his national Friskas and Czardas; he was willing that the
chance acquaintance should be improved into an alliance, and, on his
next visit to the Giesemanns' house, was accompanied by his new friend.
The violinist had connections of his own in the neighbourhood. Begas, a
Hungarian magnate, had settled down into a large villa at Dehensen, on
the Lüneburg Heath, that had been placed at his disposal for as long a
time as he should find it possible to elude or cajole the police
authorities, and kept open house for his compatriots and their friends.
To his circle Brahms was introduced, and much visiting ensued between
Dehensen and Winsen, for one or two musicians staying with Begas were
pleased to come and make music with Reményi and Johannes, and to partake
of the Giesemanns' hospitality. It was a feather in Brahms' cap, in the
eyes of many of his friends, that he had been able to capture for Winsen
such a celebrity as Reményi, though they were not all quite of one mind.
Lischen, for example, did not care for him at all, but much preferred
the tall, handsome fiddler Janovitch, with his flashing black eyes and
his velvet jacket, who wrote a splendid characteristic waltz expressly
that he might dedicate it to her. The jolly party broke up suddenly at
last, running off to take speedy ship for America, for they had heard
that the police were on their heels. Johannes, who happened to be at
Winsen when this crisis occurred, accompanied them as far as Hamburg,
where he remained to pursue his ordinary avocations. Meanwhile the
Friskas and Czardas continued to revolve in his brain.
Time went on, the Hungarians were no longer vividly regretted, and
somewhere about the autumn of 1852, Brahms was left more lonely than
ever by the departure of Louise Japha, who found opportunity to carry
out her cherished wish to stay at Düsseldorf, where the Schumanns had
now been settled for about two years. Her sister Minna was to accompany
her, to carry on the cultivation of her own special gift under Professor
Sohn, of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. The thought of losing his friend
caused Johannes great sorrow. 'Do not go,' he entreated; 'you are the
only person here that takes any interest in me!' His prospects do not
seem to have been improving at this time, and his best encouragement
must have been derived from his own sense of his artistic progress. This
was advancing by enormous strides, the exact measure of which is
furnished by the manuscript of the Sonata in F sharp minor now in the
possession of Hofcapellmeister Albert Dietrich. It bears the signature
'Kreisler jun.,' a pseudonym adopted by Brahms out of love for the
capellmeister Johannes Kreisler, hero of one of Hoffmann's tales, and
the date November, 1852.
This work, which, though published later on as Op. 2, was written
earlier than the companion sonata known as Op. 1, is, in many of its
fundamental characteristics, immediately prophetic of the future master.
In it the mastery of form and skill in contrapuntal writing, the
facility in the art of thematic development, the strikingly contrasted
imaginative qualities--here subtly poetic, there large and
powerful--bring us face to face with the artist nature which united in
itself high purpose, resolute will, sure capacity, sensitive
romanticism, boundless daring. The fancy, however, has not yet
crystallized; the young musician has still to pass out of the stage of
mental ferment natural to his age before he will be able to mould his
thoughts into the concentrated shape which alone can convince the world.
The sonata, not perhaps destined ever to become widely familiar, must
always remain a treasure to the sympathetic student of Brahms' art, not
only by reason of the beauties in which it abounds, but also because it
is absolutely representative of its composer as he was at nineteen. We
may read his favourite authors in some of its movements without the need
of an interpreter, and we know, from his own communication to Dietrich,
that the melody of the second movement was inspired by the words of the
German folk-song, 'Mir ist leide, Das der Winter Beide, Wald und auch
die Haide, hat gemachet kahl.'
It would be difficult, and is fortunately unnecessary, to trace the
exact steps of Reményi's career after his flight from Germany. For the
purpose of our narrative the facts suffice that he reappeared in Hamburg
at the close of 1852, giving a concert in the Hôtel de l'Europe, which
does not seem to have created any great sensation, and that he found
himself in the same city in the spring of 1853. Brahms, depressed by the
hopeless monotony of his daily grind, was no doubt glad enough to see
him, and, as his slack time was at hand, it was proposed, perhaps by
Reményi, perhaps by Uncle Giesemann, possibly by Johannes himself, that
the two musicians should give a concert to their friends in Winsen, who
would, no doubt, hail the prospect of such an event, and assist it to
the utmost of their power. Communications were opened, and the proposal
was not only entertained, but developed, as such ideas are apt to do. If
at Winsen, why not also at Lüneburg and Celle? Amtsvogt Blume had
influence in both towns, which he would be too happy to exert. In the
end, the project expanded into the plan of a concert-tour. Johannes and
Reményi would give performances in the three localities named, and from
Celle it would be no distance to go on to Hanover, where the
twenty-one-year-old Joachim, already a European celebrity, had a post at
Court. Reményi had known him for a short time when they had both been
boys at the Vienna Conservatoire; they would go and see him. He was
bound to welcome his compatriot and former fellow-pupil. Who could tell
what might happen?
No doubt Brahms' heart beat fast when he left home on this his first
quest of adventure, and probably not the least ardent of his
anticipations was that of making the personal acquaintance of the
celebrated violinist whose first appearance in Hamburg at the
Philharmonic concert of March 11, 1848, with Beethoven's Concerto,
remained vividly in his remembrance as one of the few great musical
events of his own life. Before starting, he exacted a promise from his
mother that she would write to him regularly once a week--not a mere
greeting, but a real letter of several pages. It was a serious
undertaking for Johanna, who was not practised in penmanship, but she
gave her word to Hannes, and found means to keep it. The travellers took
but little luggage with them. Such as Johannes carried was made the
heavier by his packet of manuscripts, which contained his pianoforte
sonata-movements and scherzo, a sonata for pianoforte and violin, a
pianoforte trio, a string quartet, a number of songs, and possibly other
works. One programme was to suffice for the concert _tournée_, and this
the two artists had in their heads.
The exact date of the Winsen concert is forgotten, apparently beyond
chance of recall, but the event may be fixed with certainty as having
taken place in the last week of April. Both musicians were the guests of
the Giesemanns for several days beforehand, and spent the greater part
of their mornings practising together, beginning before breakfast. They
gave a great deal of time to the Hungarian melodies, and it would seem
as though Johannes had been preparing a pianoforte accompaniment; for
they repeated the periods over and over again, Reményi becoming very
irritable during the process. The season was a warm one; they worked
energetically in their shirt-sleeves, and the violinist more than once
drew a scream of pain from his colleague, by bringing the violin bow
suddenly down on his shoulder to emphasize the capricious _tempo_ he
required. One morning Johannes, very angry, jumped up from the piano,
and declared he would no longer bear with Reményi; but the concert came
off nevertheless, and turned out a brilliant success. It took place in
the large room of the Rusteberg club-house; the entrance fee was about
eight-pence, and the profits to be divided came to rather over nine
pounds. Beethoven's C minor Sonata for pianoforte and violin headed the
programme, and was followed by violin solos; Vieuxtemps' Concerto in E
major, Ernst's 'Elégie,' and several Hungarian melodies, all accompanied
by Brahms, who, it must be remembered, was but the junior partner in the
enterprise. Only one thing was to be regretted. Schröder had been ill,
and could not come to Winsen for the concert. He managed, however, to
attend a repetition of the programme, which the two artists gave the
next day in his schoolroom at Hoopte, expressly in order that he might
get some amount of pleasure out of the great doings of the
neighbourhood.
The next concert took place on May 2 at Celle. It had been arranged for
with the assistance of Dr. Köhler, a well-known inhabitant of the town,
probably a relation of the Rector of Winsen, and a friend of Amtsvogt
Blume, who, besides seeing through the business arrangements, had
neglected no opportunity of arousing general interest in the event. The
single public announcement appeared in the _Celles'sche Anzeigen_ of
Saturday, April 30:
'Next Monday evening at seven o'clock the concert of the Herren
Reményi and Brahms will take place in the Wierss'schen room. The
subscription price is 12 g.gr.[13] Tickets may also be obtained of
Herr Wierss jun. at Herr Duncker's hotel, and on the evening at the
room for 16 g.gr.'
At Celle there was a sensation. The two artists, going, on the morning
of May 2, to try their pieces in the concert-room, were dismayed to
find that the only pianoforte of which it boasted was in such an
advanced state of old age as to be unusable for their purpose. Classical
concerts were rare events in Celle, and it had occurred to no one to
doubt the excellence of the instrument; a piano was a piano. It was
arranged that every effort should be made, during the few hours that
remained, to procure a better one, and a better one was actually
discovered and sent in just as the hour had arrived for the concert to
begin. But a fresh difficulty arose. The second instrument proved to be
nearly a semitone below pitch, and Reményi refused to make so
considerable a change in the tuning of his violin. What was to be done?
The practised and intrepid Johannes made short work of the difficulty.
If Reményi would tune his fiddle slightly up, so as to bring it to a
true semitone above the piano, he himself would transpose his part of
the Beethoven sonata a semitone higher than written, and play it in C
sharp instead of C minor. No sooner said than done. The young musician
performed the feat without turning a hair, though his colleague allowed
him no quarter, and the performance was applauded to the echo. Reményi
behaved well on this occasion. Addressing the audience, he related the
circumstances in which he and his companion had found themselves placed,
and said that all approval belonged by right to Brahms, whose
musicianship had saved the situation for everyone concerned. History
does not relate whether the young hero transposed his parts throughout
the evening, or whether the old instrument was sufficiently serviceable
for the accompaniments of the violin solos, and the question does not
appear to have suggested itself until the present time, when it cannot
be solved. Johannes himself seems to have thought but little of his
achievement. Writing presently to let Marxsen know how he was getting
on, he mentioned the incident, not as worthy of comment, but as one
amongst others.
The day after these events Reményi and Brahms retraced their steps as
far as Lüneburg, where they were to remain for a week as the guests of
Herr Calculator Blume, son of the Amtsvogt. At his hospitable house
they were presented to the musical circle of the town, so far as it
included members of the sterner sex. At the earnest persuasion of
Brahms, no ladies were invited to the party arranged by Frau Blume in
the interests of the forthcoming concert. 'It is so much nicer without
them,' he said, and was so serious about the matter that his hostess
regretfully gave way to him. He played part of the C major Sonata, on
the composition of which he had lately been engaged, on this private
occasion, making but little impression with it. Perhaps the double
consciousness, which cannot but have been secretly present with him, of
his great artistic superiority to Reményi, and of the quite secondary
place to which he found himself relegated whenever they appeared
together, may have increased the awkward shyness which placed him at
such a disadvantage by the side of his colleague. He was incapable of
making any effort to assert himself in general society, and attracted
little notice from ordinary strangers who had no particular reason for
observing him closely. However, everyone behaved very kindly to him
throughout the journey. He was certainly a good pianist, and accompanied
Reményi delightfully.
The concert was advertised in the _Lüneburger Anzeiger_ of May 7, the
twentieth birthday anniversary of our Johannes:
'The undersigned propose to give a concert on Monday evening, the
9th inst., at 7.30, in Herr Balcke's Hall, and have the honour to
invite the attendance of the music-loving public. Amongst other
things, the concert-givers will perform Beethoven's Sonata for
Pianoforte and Violin in C minor, Op. 30, and Vieuxtemps' grand
Violin Concerto in E major.
'Tickets to be had,' etc.
'EDWARD REMÉNYI.
'JOHANNES BRAHMS.'
Again a great success was scored, and the next day a second concert 'by
general desire' was announced, with the same programme and special
mention of the 'Hungarian Melodies,' for Wednesday, May 11. It brought
the visit to Lüneburg to a brilliant conclusion, and the performances
were again repeated on the 12th at a second concert in Celle, advertised
in the Celle journal of the 11th.
With the account of these five soirées, exact record of the public
concerts of the journey is exhausted. Neither advertisement nor local
recollection of any other can be traced, though Heuberger speaks, on the
authority of Brahms' personal recollection, of two given at
Hildesheim.[14] The first was very sparsely attended, and the artists,
after supping at a restaurant where they seem to have made merry with
some companions, paraded the streets with a queue of followers until
they arrived underneath the windows of a lady of position who had been
their principal patron. Reményi greeted her with some violin solos, the
assembled party followed suit with a chorus, and the ingenious
advertisement proved so successful that a second concert-venture on the
following evening drew a crowded audience. The circumstances thus
related point to the conclusion that the first concert at Hildesheim was
hastily arranged, and the explanation may be that some unexpected
introduction caused the musicians to visit the town. This would fit in
with the fact that there is no reference in any Hildesheim journal of
the date to Brahms and Reményi, and with the absence of all knowledge,
on the part of several persons still living who have personal
associations with the journey, of any other concerts than those in
Winsen, Lüneburg, and Celle, and of one other of a different kind in
Hanover, to which we shall return.
It is necessary for the understanding of what is to follow that we
should here part company, for a time, with the travellers. Before
introducing Johannes to the great musical world which he is to enter
before long, we must glance at the party questions by which it was
agitated in the early fifties, and which had hitherto been unknown or
unheeded by our young musician in the inexperience of his secluded life.
The musical world of Leipzig, the city raised by the leadership of
Mendelssohn to be the recognised capital of classical art, had become
split after the death of the master in November, 1847, into two
factions, both without an active head. The Schumannites, whilst
receiving no encouragement from the great composer whose art they
championed, decried Mendelssohn as a pedant and a phrase-maker, who,
having nothing particular to say, had covered his lack of meaning by
facility of workmanship. The Mendelssohnians, on the other hand,
declared Schumann to be wanting in mastery of form, and perceived in his
works a tendency to subordinate the objective, to the subjective, side
of musical art. The division soon spread beyond Leipzig throughout
Germany, and, in the course of years, to England, with the result that
Mendelssohn, once a popular idol, is now rarely represented in a concert
programme.
Meanwhile Franz Liszt, perhaps the greatest pianoforte executant of all
times, and one of the most magnetic personalities of his own, had
exchanged his brilliant career of virtuoso for the position of conductor
of the orchestra of the Weimar court theatre, with the avowed noble
purpose of bringing to a hearing such works of genius as had little
chance of being performed elsewhere. He declared himself the advocate of
the 'New-German' school, and, making active propaganda for the creeds of
Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner, succeeded in attracting to his
standard some of the most talented of the younger generation of artists,
amongst whom Joachim, Raff, and the gifted and generous Hans von Bülow,
were some of the first converts. There were, therefore, three different
schools of serious musical thought in the year 1853, each of which
boasted numerous and distinguished adherents.
The purists of Leipzig held sacred the memory of Mendelssohn, clung to
the methods as well as the forms of classical tradition, and declined to
recognise as legitimate art anything that savoured of progress.
The Schumannites believed it possible to give musical expression to the
world-spirit of the time by expanding their methods within the old
forms--_i.e._, by free use of chromatic harmonies, varied cadences,
mixed rhythms, and so forth.
The Weimarites, rejoicing in the potent leadership of Liszt, declared
they would no longer be hampered either by old methods or old forms,
which they regarded as worn out and perishing of inanition.
The party disputes as to the respective merits of Mendelssohn and
Schumann, were as nothing beside the violent controversies which raged
for years around the theories professed by the founders of the so-called
'music of the future.' For some time the battle was fought chiefly
between the 'academics' of Leipzig and the 'revolutionists' of Weimar.
The classical-romantic art of Schumann had points of contact with that
of each of the extremists. Animated by new impulse and instinct with
modern thought, it was by no means coupled by the leaders of the new
party with that of Mendelssohn, but was accepted by them for some years
with more than toleration, and some of the master's works, as 'Genoveva'
and 'Manfred' were performed at Weimar under Liszt's direction. Schumann
himself, however, whilst warmly appreciating the great qualities of
Wagner's musicianship, was well aware that any relationship between his
own works and that of the new school was merely superficial. He was
second to none in his reverence for the forms of the great masters, upon
which he based his compositions, and, though it is probably the case
that the originality of his art-methods did not attract the sympathy of
Mendelssohn, he clung to the memory of this departed friend as that of a
beloved comrade in arms.
Schumann, who had long since retired from his labours as editor of the
_Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, of which he was the founder, lived quietly
at Düsseldorf, where he had, in 1850, succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as
municipal conductor. The success achieved by him there, during the first
season of his activity as director of the orchestral subscription
concerts and the choral society, was only transient. His reserved
nature, and the progress of the malady that threatened him, unfitted him
for the position, and he was subject to the constant annoyance that
resulted from differences with his committee. To this was added the
serious disappointment of knowing that the periodical to which he had
devoted untiring energy during some of the best years of his life, had
become, under the editorship of Franz Brendel, the organ of the
New-German party, from whose principles he felt increasing alienation.
These vexations probably augmented his nervous condition, and his
habitual silence and reserve increased. His chief pleasure was found in
the absorbing work of composition, and in his generous sympathy with a
group of young musicians who regarded themselves as his disciples.
Perhaps feeling that the best part of his own career was already behind
him, he lived in the constant hope that someone would appear of creative
genius sufficiently decisive to indicate him as the worthy successor to
the prophet's mantle of classical art.
Many of our readers are aware that Joseph Joachim was born on June 28,
1831, at Kittsee, a village near Presburg in Hungary; that at the age of
twelve he had learnt all that the distinguished violinist Böhm, of the
Vienna Conservatoire, master of many famous pupils, could teach him; and
that he lived at Leipzig, well known at the conservatoire, though not
its pupil, for the next six years, happy during the first four of them
in the affection of Mendelssohn, to whom he was passionately attached,
and who lost no opportunity of furthering his protégé's genius and of
laying the foundation of his future career.
It was not until after Mendelssohn's death that either of the party
questions to which we have referred became acute, and Joseph grew up an
unquestioning believer in the principles of musical tradition, which he
reverenced with something of religious fervour. The loss of Mendelssohn
left him, at the age of sixteen, lonely and disconsolate, in spite of
his being himself already a distinguished personality and a universal
favourite. The peculiar place in his life which the master had occupied
could not again be filled, and for more than two years he was unable to
regard anyone as even the partial successor to his best affections. It
happened, however, that two events of the year 1850, awakened in his
heart something of the personal enthusiasm which had made his early
happiness. A week spent by the Schumanns at Leipzig in the month of
March, convinced him of his sympathy with the composer and his art; and
a visit which he paid to Weimar in August, on the occasion of the first
performance of Wagner's 'Lohengrin,' stirred him so strongly that by the
end of the year he had resigned his position in Leipzig and taken up his
residence in Weimar as concertmeister in Liszt's orchestra.[15]
Here he lived for two years, and it seemed for a time as though he would
become one of the most enthusiastic of the band of young musicians,
amongst whom were Bülow, Raff, Cornelius, and the violoncellist
Cossmann, who proclaimed themselves disciples of the new school. His
genius and his already eminent position as an artist made him by far the
most important member of the group, and he was treated by Liszt almost
on equal terms, as a younger colleague. In the constant companionship of
this fascinating master, Joachim felt some renewal of the satisfaction
in life which he had experienced when with Mendelssohn at Leipzig; but
his early convictions and affections were too deeply rooted to be
effaced by newer impressions, and his allegiance to the school of the
future was not permanent. Liszt's aspirations, as the composer of
sounding orchestral works which Joachim ought to have admired, but could
not, gradually caused the young concertmeister to feel his position a
false one, and he was glad to accept a post offered him, at the close of
1852, as court concertmeister and assistant capellmeister at Hanover. By
this step he regained his independence without hurting the feelings of
his Weimar friends. His absence of warmth on the subject of the
Symphonic Poems had, indeed, been observed by Liszt, but Joachim had
naturally refrained from expressing himself about them in detail, and
Liszt could not guess that his young companion had conceived a positive
aversion to his compositions. Joachim remained for some years yet on
terms of affectionate intimacy with Liszt, Bülow, and the others, and
was, indeed, so lonely and depressed during the first few months of his
residence in Hanover, that he was impelled to express his state of mind
by the composition of an overture to 'Hamlet.' Sending the manuscript to
Liszt in the middle of March, he wrote:
'I have been very much alone. The contrast between the atmosphere
which is constantly resounding, through your influence, with new
tones, and an air which is completely tone-still, is too barbarous.
Wherever I have looked there has been no one to share my aims--no
one; instead of the phalanx of like-minded friends at Weimar ... I
took up "Hamlet" ... I am certain that you, my ever-indulgent
master, will look through the score, and will advise me as though I
were sitting near you, dumb as ever, but listening eagerly to your
musical wisdom.'[16]
The Festival of the Lower Rhine, held in the year 1853 at Düsseldorf
(May 15-17), was a particularly brilliant function. The names of Robert
and Clara Schumann, Ferdinand Hiller as chief conductor, Joseph Joachim,
the English artist Clara Novello, and others of high distinction, roused
lively expectations which were perhaps exceeded by the performances.
Schumann's D minor Symphony, Pianoforte Concerto played by his wife, and
Overture and final chorus from the 'Rheinweinlied,' all given under his
own direction, were received with enthusiasm; and the first appearance
on the Rhine of the young concertmeister from Hanover, with Beethoven's
then little-known Violin Concerto, resulted in a triumph that defies
description. 'He opened a veritable world of enchantment,' 'He was the
hero of the festival,' 'We will not attempt to describe his success;
there was French frenzy, Italian fanaticism, in a German audience,' say
the critics of the day.
For our readers, the peculiar interest of the occasion lies in the fact
that Joachim, increasingly attracted by Schumann's art and
individuality, took advantage of his few days' stay in Düsseldorf to
draw closer his relations with the master, and it may be said that his
future attitude was finally determined at this time. He saw in Schumann
the living representative of the music that he loved, and to him and his
he became bound henceforth by ties that death itself was but partially
able to sever.[17]
[12] _Cf._ Kalbeck, p. 186.
[13] Two Guter Groschen were of about the value of 2-1/2d.
[14] Heuberger, 'Musikalische Skizzen.'
[15] The concertmeister is the leader--_i.e._, leading violin of the
orchestra. The capellmeister is the conductor of the orchestra.
[16] Moser's 'Life of Joachim.'
[17] To assist those of our readers to whom the terms 'musical form,'
'absolute music,' 'programme music,' convey no distinct ideas, and who
do not realize with exactness what the real position of Wagner's art was
in its relation to the school of Weimar, we have entered into these
subjects, in Appendix No. I. of this volume, in detail which cannot be
conveniently introduced into the body of our narrative.