Transcript Johannes Brahms - HCC Learning Web

Johannes Brahms
7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897
• Johannes Brahms 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was
a German composer and pianist, and one of the
leading musicians of the Romantic period.
• Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his
professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was
a leader of the musical scene.
• In his lifetime, Brahms' 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.
• Brahms composed for piano, chamber
ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice
and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered
many of his own works;
• Many of his works have become staples of the
modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an
uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many
of his works and left some of them unpublished.
• 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 method of composition
for which Bach is famous, and also of
development, a compositional ethos
pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
• 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.
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.
• Brahms's works in variation form include the
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel and
the Paganini Variations, both for solo piano, and
the Variations on a Theme by Haydn in versions
for two pianos and for orchestra. The final
movement of the Fourth Symphony, Op. 98, is
formally a passacaglia.
• His chamber works include three string quartets,
two string quintets, two string sextets, a clarinet
quintet, a clarinet trio, a horn trio, a piano
quintet, three piano quartets, and four piano
trios (the fourth being published posthumously).
• He composed several instrumental sonatas with piano,
including three for violin, two for cello, and two for
clarinet (which were subsequently arranged for viola by
the composer).
• His solo piano works range from his early piano sonatas
and ballades to his late sets of character pieces.
• Brahms was a significant Lieder composer, who wrote
over 200 songs. His chorale preludes for organ,
Op. 122, which he wrote shortly before his death, have
become an important part of the organist's repertoire.
• Brahms strongly preferred writing absolute music that
does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative, and he
never wrote an opera or a symphonic poem.
Style and influences
• Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order
in his works – in contrast to the opulence of the music
of many of his contemporaries. Thus many admirers
(though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as
the champion of traditional forms and "pure music", as
opposed to the "New German" embrace of program
music.
• Brahms also loved the Classical composers Mozart,
Haydn, and Beethoven. He collected first editions and
autographs of their works, and edited performing
editions. He also studied the music of pre-classical
composers, including Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph
Hasse, Heinrich Schütz, and, especially, Johann
Sebastian Bach.
• The early Romantic composers also had a major
influence on Brahms, particularly Schumann, who
encouraged Brahms as a young composer.
Brahms often met Robert and Clara Schumann.
During his stay in Vienna in 1862–63, Brahms
became particularly interested in the music of
Franz Schubert.
• his contribution and craftsmanship have been
admired by subsequent figures as diverse as the
progressive Arnold Schoenberg and the
conservative Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly
constructed nature of Brahms's works was a
starting point and an inspiration for a generation
of composers.