Transcript Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms
7 May 1833 –
3 April 1897
German composer
and pianist.
Three “B’s”
• Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family,
Brahms spent much of his professional life
in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader
of the musical scene. I
• n his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and
influence were considerable; following a
comment by the nineteenth-century
conductor Hans von Bülow, he is
sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian
Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of
the "Three Bs".
Musically Diverse
• Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles,
symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus.
• A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own
works; he worked with some of the leading
performers of his time, including the pianist Clara
Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim.
• Many of his works have become staples of the
modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an
uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his
works and left others unpublished.
Musical Master
• Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist
and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in
the structures and compositional techniques of
the Baroque and Classical masters.
• He was a master of counterpoint, the complex
and highly disciplined art for which Johann
Sebastian Bach is famous, and of development,
a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph
Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van
Beethoven, and other composers.
Traditionalist/ Academic
• Brahms aimed to honor the "purity" of these
venerable "German" structures and advance
them into a Romantic idiom, in the process
creating bold new approaches to harmony and
melody.
• While many contemporaries found his music too
academic, his contribution and craftsmanship
have been admired by subsequent composers.
• The diligent, highly constructed nature of
Brahms's works was a starting point and an
inspiration for a generation of composers.
Family Life
• Brahms's father, Johann Jakob Brahms (1806–72), came to
Hamburg, seeking a career as a town musician.
• He was proficient in several instruments, but found
employment mostly playing the horn and double bass.
• Initially, they lived near the city docks, in the Gängeviertel
quarter of Hamburg, for six months, before moving to a
small house on the Dammtorwall, a small city in the Inner
Alster.
• Photograph from 1891 of the building in Hamburg where
Brahms was born. Brahms's family occupied part of the first
floor (second floor to Americans), behind the two double
windows on the left hand side. The building was destroyed
by bombing in 1943.
• Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training. He
studied piano from the age of seven. Owing to the family's
poverty, the adolescent Brahms had to contribute to the
family's income by playing the piano in dance halls.
• Early biographers found this
shocking and played down this
portion of his life. Modern
writers have pointed to this as
a reason for Brahms's later
inability to have a successful
relationship for marriage.
• The young Brahms gave a few
public concerts in Hamburg,
but did not become well
known as a pianist until he
made a concert tour at the age
of nineteen.
Performer
• In later life, he frequently
took part in the
performance of his own
works, whether as soloist,
accompanist, or participant
in chamber music.
• He conducted choirs from
his early teens, and became
a proficient choral and
orchestral conductor.
Brahms in 1853
• He began to compose quite early in life, but
later destroyed most copies of his first works;
for instance, Louise Japha, reported a piano
sonata, that Brahms had played or
improvised at the age of 11, had been
destroyed.
• His compositions did not receive public
acclaim until he went on a concert tour as
accompanist to the Hungarian violinist
Eduard Reményi in April and May 1853.
Brahms and Schumann
• Joachim had given Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert
Schumann, and after a walking tour in the Rhineland,
Brahms took the train to Düsseldorf, and was welcomed into
the Schumann family on arrival there.
• Schumann, amazed by the 20-year-old's talent, published an
article entitled "Neue Bahnen" (New Paths) in the 28
October 1853 issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
alerting the public to the young man, who, he claimed, was
"destined to give ideal expression to the times.“
• Brahms became very attached to Schumann's wife, the
composer and pianist Clara, fourteen years Brahms's senior,
with whom he would carry on a lifelong, emotionally
passionate relationship. Brahms never married, despite
strong feelings for several women and despite entering into
Johannes and Clara
• Brahms became very attached to Schumann's wife, the
composer and pianist Clara, fourteen years Brahms's senior,
with whom he would carry on a lifelong, emotionally
passionate relationship.
• Brahms never married, despite strong feelings for several
women and despite entering into an engagement, soon
broken off, with Agathe von Siebold in Göttingen in 1859.
Intrigue/ Secret Love
• After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement
in a mental sanatorium near Bonn in February 1854, Brahms was
the main intercessor between Clara and her husband, and found
himself virtually head of the household.
• After Schumann's death, Brahms hurried to Düsseldorf and for the
next two years lived in an apartment above the Schumanns'
house, and sacrificed his career and his art for Clara's sake.
• The question of Brahms and Clara Schumann is perhaps the most
mysterious in music history, alongside that of Beethoven's
"Immortal Beloved". Whether they were actually lovers is
unknown, but their destruction of their letters to each other may
point to something beyond a desire for privacy.[8]
Detmold and Hamburg
• After Schumann's death at the sanatorium in 1856, Brahms
divided his time between Hamburg, where he formed and
conducted a ladies' choir, and Detmold in the Principality of
Lippe, where he was court music-teacher and conductor.
• He declined an honorary doctorate of music from University
of Cambridge in 1877, but accepted one from the University
of Breslau in 1879, and composed the Academic Festival
Overture as a gesture of appreciation.
War of the Romantics
• He had been composing steadily throughout the
1850s and 60s, but his music had evoked divided
critical responses, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 had
been badly received in some of its early
performances.
• His works were labelled old-fashioned by the 'New
German School' whose principal figures included Liszt
and Richard Wagner. Brahms admired some of
Wagner's music and admired Liszt as a great pianist,
but the conflict between the two schools, known as
the War of the Romantics, soon embroiled all of
musical Europe.
Years of Popularity
• It was the premiere of A German Requiem, his largest choral
work, in Bremen, in 1868, that confirmed Brahms's European
reputation and led many to accept that he had conquered
Beethoven and the symphony.
• Brahms frequently travelled, both for business (concert
tours) and pleasure. From 1878 onwards, he often visited
Italy in the springtime, and he usually sought out a pleasant
rural location in which to compose during the summer.
• He was a great walker and especially enjoyed spending time
in the open air, where he felt that he could think more
clearly.
Recording
Artist
• In 1889, one Theo Wangemann, a
representative of American inventor
Thomas Edison, visited the composer
in Vienna and invited him to make an
experimental recording.
• Brahms played an abbreviated version
of his first Hungarian dance on the
piano. The recording was later issued
on an LP of early piano.
• Although the spoken introduction to
the short piece of music is quite clear,
the piano playing is largely inaudible
due to heavy surface noise.
Nevertheless, this remains the earliest
recording made by a major composer.
Later years
• In 1890, the 57-year-old Brahms resolved
to give up composing.
• However, as it turned out, he was unable
to abide by his decision, and in the years
before his death he produced a number
of acknowledged masterpieces.
• While completing the Op. 121 songs,
Brahms developed cancer (sources differ
on whether this was of the liver or
pancreas). His condition gradually
worsened and he died on 3 April 1897,
aged 63. Brahms is buried in the
Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.
Tributes and Works
• Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra,
including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano
concertos (No. 1 in D minor; No. 2 in B-flat major), a Violin
Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and two
companion orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival
Overture and the Tragic Overture.
• His large choral work A German Requiem is not a setting of
the liturgical Missa pro defunctis but a setting of texts which
Brahms selected from the Lutheran Bible.
Perfectionist
• Brahms was an extreme perfectionist. He destroyed many
early works – including a Violin Sonata he had performed
with Reményi and violinist Ferdinand David – and once
claimed to have destroyed 20 string quartets before he
issued his official First in 1873.
• Over the course of several years, he changed an original
project for a symphony in D minor into his first piano
concerto.
• In another instance of devotion to detail, he labored over
the official First Symphony for almost fifteen years.
• Even after its first few performances, Brahms destroyed
the original slow movement and substituted another
before the score was published.