Background
Brahms was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833, the son of Johann Jakob and Christina Nissen Brahms. The father, an innkeeper and a musician of moderate ability, earned a precarious living for his family of five.
Brahms in 1853
Brahms, photographed c. 1872
Johann Strauss II (left) and Brahms, photographed in Vienna
(Johannes Brahms' Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D M...)
Johannes Brahms' Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 77 performed by The Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic Society and David Oistrakh with Guennadi Rosdhestvenski conducting.
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(Johannes Brahms' Waltz No. 15 in A-Flat Major, Op. 39 per...)
Johannes Brahms' Waltz No. 15 in A-Flat Major, Op. 39 performed by the Latvian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra with Ilmar Lapinsch conducting.
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Brahms was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833, the son of Johann Jakob and Christina Nissen Brahms. The father, an innkeeper and a musician of moderate ability, earned a precarious living for his family of five.
Johannes received his first music instruction from his father. At the age of seven he began studying piano. He played a private subscription concert at the age of 10 to obtain funds for his future education. He also learned theory and composition and began to improvise compositions at the piano.
From 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel (1813-1865). From 1845 to 1848 Brahms studied with Cossel's teacher the pianist and composer Eduard Marxsen (1806-1887). Marxsen, who based his teaching on Bach and Beethoven, realized that in Brahms he had an extraordinary talent to deal with.
The university of Breslau made Brahms Ph. D. in 1881.
To help out with family finances, Brahms played the piano in sailors' haunts and local dance salons. This contact with the seamier side of life may have conditioned his lifelong revulsion from physical intimacy with the women he idealized and loved. The late hours proved taxing to the 14-year-old boy and impaired his health. Brahms was offered a long recuperative holiday at Winsen-an-der-Luhe, where he conducted a small male choir for whom he wrote his first choral compositions. On his return to Hamburg he gave several concerts, but, failing to win recognition, he continued to play at humble places of amusement, gave inexpensive piano lessons, and began the hackwork of arranging popular music for piano.
In 1850 Brahms became acquainted with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi, who introduced him to the rich tradition of gypsy dance tunes that were to be influential in his mature compositions. In the next few years Brahms composed several works for piano that are still in the repertoire, and embarked with Reményi on several successful concert tours in 1853.
At Hanover they met one of the greatest German violinists, Joseph Joachim, who arranged for them to play before the King of Hanover and gave them an introduction to Liszt at Weimar. Joachim also wrote a glowing letter to Robert Schumann expressing his enthusiasm for the young composer. The next move was obviously to visit Weimar, where Liszt received them warmly and was greatly impressed with Brahms's compositions. Liszt hoped to recruit him for his coterie of composers, but Brahms could not adapt to the superficiality of Liszt's music. Although no open breach occurred, the two musicians did draw apart.
In 1853 Brahms wrote the Piano Sonata in F Minor. Later that year he met Schumann and his wife, Clara, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Schumann also arranged for Brahm's first compositions to be published. He was summoned to Düsseldorf in 1854, when Schumann had a mental breakdown and attempted suicide. For the next few years he stayed close to the Schumanns, assisting Clara in whatever way he could and remaining near her even after Schumann's death in 1856.
To earn his living, Brahms taught piano privately but also spent some time on concert tours. Two concerts given with the singer Julius Stockhausen served to establish him as an important song composer. In 1857 Brahms went to the court of Lippe-Detmold, where he taught the piano to Princess Friederike and conducted the choral society. Many of his folk-song arrangements were made for this choir. During the summer he went to Göttingen to be near Clara Schumann, for whose children he also arranged several folk songs.
Brahms's Piano Concerto in D Minor (1858) was performed the next year with Joachim conducting at Hanover, Leipzig, and Hamburg. Only in Hamburg was it favorably received. During the Lippe-Detmold period Brahms produced the two Serenades for small orchestra, an evocation of an 18th-century form. He was also appointed conductor of a ladies' choir in Hamburg, for whom he wrote the Marienlieder. In 1860 Brahms became enraged at the propaganda that the avant-garde theories of the "New German" school headed by Liszt were being accepted by all musicians of consequence and took part in a press manifesto against this group of musicians. During this period Brahms moved to Hamburg and buried himself in compositional activities with frequent public appearances sandwiched in. In 1862 his friend Stockhausen was appointed conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic and the Singakadamie. Although Brahms was happy for his friend, he deeply resented being passed over for these important posts.
He became more and more attracted to Vienna, and in 1863 he gave a concert there to introduce his songs to the Austrian public. They were well received, especially by the critic Eduard Hanslick, with whom Brahms became a fast friend. Brahms also met Wagner at this time, and, although the famous manifesto of 1860 made relations between the two composers difficult, each was still on occasion able to admire some things in the other's work.
In 1863 Brahms became conductor of the Singakademie in Vienna. A year later he resigned, but for the rest of his life Vienna was home to him. He began to do what he had always wished - to make composing the main source of his income - and as his fame and popularity grew, he composed more and more with only some occasional teaching and performing. In Baden in 1864 on a visit to Clara Schumann, he wrote the Piano Quintet in F Minor, and a year later the Horn Trio in E-flat Major.
In 1865 Brahms's mother, long estranged from her husband, died. During the next year he worked on the German Requiem in her memory. The next years saw a proliferation of activity as a composer. Brahms's father died in 1872. After a short holiday at Baden, Brahms accepted the post of artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Friends of Music) in Vienna. Imposing masterpieces continued to pour from his pen. Against this background of activity the details of his everyday life seem trivial. He composed, went on concert tours chiefly to foster his own music, and took long holidays.
He resigned the conductorship of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1875, for even those duties were onerous to him. In 1880 the University of Breslau offered Brahms a doctorate, in appreciation of which he wrote the Academic Festival Overture and, for good measure, the companion Tragic Overture. During the intervening years he had discovered Italy, and for the rest of his life he vacationed there frequently. Vacations for Brahms meant composing, and masterpiece now followed masterpiece.
In his later works Brahms showed an austerity that is in a sense a reflection of his own growing inwardness. His native Hamburg gave him the keys to the city in 1889. As a thank offering, he composed the Deutsche Fest-und Gedenksprüche for eight-part chorus. He also became acquainted with the superb clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, for whom he wrote his exquisite clarinet works. They performed these compositions all over Germany.
When he was about 60 years old, Brahms began to age rapidly and the range of his production was noticeably reduced. Nonetheless, the works of this last period are awesome in their grandeur and concentration, and the last of his published works, the Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), are among the high points of his creativity. Brahms's already precarious health was impaired even further by the news of the death of Clara Schumann in 1896. On April 3, 1897, he died, ravaged by cancer of the liver. He was buried next to Beethoven and Schubert, honored by all Vienna and the entire musical world.
(Johannes Brahms' Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D M...)
(Johannes Brahms' Waltz No. 15 in A-Flat Major, Op. 39 per...)
Brahms has been described as an agnostic.
Brahms was always self-critical and impatient with insincerity, and he was an extreme perfectionist. Fundamentally Brahms' nature was kindly; he gave liberally to charity and he could never resist a beggar.
Quotes from others about the person
"For Brahms, . .. the most complicated forms of counterpoint were a natural means of expressing his emotions," writes Geiringer. "As Palestrina or Bach succeeded in giving spiritual significance to their technique, so Brahms could turn a canon in motu contrario or a canon per augmentationem into a pure piece of lyrical poetry."
Brahms's personal life was also troubled. In 1859 he became engaged to Agathe von Siebold. The engagement was soon broken off, but even after this Brahms wrote to her. They never saw one another again, and Brahms later confirmed to a friend that Agathe was his "last love."