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PITTS SANBORN

BRAHMS and some of his works

Written for and dedicated to the RADIO MEMBERS of THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK

Copyright 1940 by THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK 113 West 57th Street New York, N. Y.

FOREWORD

This pamphlet about the most important compositions in which Brahms employs the orchestra, like its predecessor about Beethoven's symphonies, makes no claim to originality and no secret of indebtedness to treatises that are open to us all. It is addressed to the radio audience of The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, and its only object is to present in concise form some information concerning an inexhaustible subject that radio listeners may find of service.

BRAHMS and some of his works

By PITTS SANBORN

In the then free city of Hamburg Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833. His parents were in humble circumstances, and Johannes was born in a poor part of the city. But his father was a well-trained musician and an accomplished double-bass player, and his mother, seventeen years his father's senior, was a woman of fine spirit and unusual intelligence.

From an early age Johannes was clearly destined for a musical career, and at six he had already begun to learn the rudiments of music from his father, who purposed making an orchestral player of him. When he was eight he began to take piano lessons of Otto Cossel, his father feeling he had nothing more to teach the child. Cossel pronounced him an excellent pupil, but complained that he wasted time on his "everlasting composing."

Two years later Cossel, convinced that he deserved more advanced instruction, took him to his own teacher, Eduard Marxsen, the royal music director in the adjacent city of Altona. Marxsen accepted the new pupil unwillingly, but presently he was impressed with the keenness of the boy's mind. Beginning with piano lessons, he later studied composition, and Marxsen, thorough about all instruction, encouraged him to compose as well as to perfect himself as a pianist. Incidentally, Johannes became a great reader of books.

At the age of eleven Johannes appeared, together with his father, as pianist at a private subscription concert organized to raise money to continue his education. Then and there an impresario wanted to engage him for a concert tour that was to include America. But Cossel protested effectively against his being exploited as a prodigy. Nevertheless, the Brahms family was so poor at this time that Johannes was obliged to add to their income by playing the piano in sailors' resorts. This work, which often lasted into the morning hours, affected his health adversely.

He continued to compose, however, and a turning point came when he had the chance to undertake a tour with the young Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi. In the course of this association he not only got acquainted with Hungarian national dances, which were to influence considerably his compositions, but he met a variety of important musicians, among them Joachim, Liszt, Cornelius, Raff, Berlioz, and, above all, Robert and Clara Schumann. Thereafter Robert Schumann, until his tragic death, was the young man's champion and mentor, and Clara Schumann became his devoted lifelong friend.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in D Minor, No. 1, Op. 15

Although Brahms's earlier works included not only compositions for the piano, songs, and chamber music, but also the Serenade for Full Orchestra in D, it was not till the spring and summer of 1854 that we find him engaged on a symphony. This made such progress that in January, 1855, he could write to Robert Schumann: "I have been trying my hand at a symphony during the past summer, have even orchestrated the first movement and composed the second and third."

The symphony was never completed as such, however, but turned into a sonata for two pianos. Still, this was not the end of the matter. Advised that the musical contents of the sonata deserved a more imposing form, Brahms was persuaded to mould the material into a concerto. Accordingly the first two movements took up a corresponding position in the D minor Piano Concerto, the third becoming the chorus "Behold All Flesh" in "A German Requiem."

The first public performance of the concerto took place in Hanover on January 22, 1859, at one of the Court subscription concerts in the Royal Theatre, Brahms being the pianist, Joachim the conductor. Though the cognoscenti admired the new work, the public in general found it a hard nut to crack. And as a matter of notorious fact the concerto was to make its way slowly. Only in the present century, for instance, has it won full recognition in this country.

The first movement (Maestoso, D minor, 6-8) has a long orchestral introduction before the piano enters. Over a roll on the kettledrums the chief subject is announced in the strings:

The second subject is given out by the piano in F major. The movement ends with an extended and brilliant coda. The second movement (Adagio, D major, 6-4) bears in the manuscript score the motto: "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini." Max Kalbeck, Brahm's biographer, says that this inscription refers to Robert Schumann, whose death had affected Brahms deeply and whom he had sometimes addressed as "Mynheer Domine." The first theme, to which the fanciful may fit the Latin words, appears in the strings and bassoons, to be taken up later by the solo instrument. The movement has a contrasting middle section. The finale is a long and elaborate Rondo (Allegro non troppo, D minor, 2-4), ending in a majestic and triumphant coda.

This concerto, owing to the exceeding prominence given to the orchestra, really ranks as an orchestral composition, and it was years before Brahms attempted another on a like scale. In 1873 he brought out the "Variations on a Theme by Haydn." Though meanwhile he had written copiously, only the two modest Serenades had been composed for orchestra.

Variations for Orchestra on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a

Now a permanent resident of Vienna, Brahms spent his summer holiday in 1873 at Tutzing on the Starnbergersee in southern Bavaria. A version of the Variations for two pianos Brahms marked "Tutzing, July, 1873." Whether it was the first of the two versions we do not know. On November 2 the orchestral version was brought out in Vienna at a Philharmonic Concert, Otto Dessoff conducting.

The theme by Haydn comes from an unpublished divertimento for wind instruments, preserved at the State Library in Berlin, which is inscribed "Divertimento mit dem Chorale St. Antoni." Though the melody of the chorale is usually supposed to be Haydn's own, we cannot be sure that he had not taken it from a chorale that has now disappeared.

In Haydn's key of B-flat major the theme

is given out andante in 2-4 time and repeated. Eight variations follow:

I. (Poco piu animato, major mode). Throughout the initial variation the concluding notes of the introduction ring like a tolling of bells.

II. (Più vivace, minor mode). The clarinets and bassoons take the lead. The violins supply an arpeggio figure.

III. (Con moto, major mode). The theme in this tranquil section is given first to the oboes and bassoons.

IV. (Andante con moto, minor mode). New melodic material enters. Oboe and horn announce the theme.

V. (Vivace, major mode). Flutes, oboes, and bassoons have the melody.

VI. (Vivace, minor mode). Brilliant like its predecessor, this variation introduces a new figure.

VII. (Grazioso, major mode). In Siciliano rhythm (6-8), the seventh variation is generally regarded as the crowning glory of the set. Against a descending scale for first violins and clarinets, violas and piccolo play the melody. Then the first violins give out a theme whose first four notes provide the movement with its rhythmic basis. There is a wealth of fascinating detail.

VIII. (Presto non troppo, minor mode). In a mysterious whisper of muted strings the last variation leads darkly to the Finale. (Andante, major mode). A ground bass, five measures long and repeated twelve times below a variety of harmonies, occupies much of this summing up. At a signal from the triangle an outburst of vernal life sweeps through the orchestra, ending with the theme in fortissimo proclamation.

Symphony in C Minor, No. 1, Op. 68

Owing, no doubt, to the experience with the symphony that at last became a piano concerto, Brahms was cautious about trying his hand again at a symphony. In 1862 he had made, however, a version of the Symphony in C minor, without the introduction, of which he wrote to his friend Albert Dietrich, the composer. According to his biographer Walter Niemann, he once remarked it was "no laughing matter" to write a symphony after Beethoven, and the same authority points out that when he had finished the first movement of the C minor symphony he declared to another friend, Hermann Levi, the noted conductor: "I shall never compose a symphony! You have no conception of how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him (Beethoven) behind us."

This extreme modesty persisted, for Niemann assures us that ten years after the completion of the Fourth Symphony Brahms alluded to that majestic work as "halbschürig" ("mediocre").

Opening Brahms's series of four, the Symphony in C minor was given for the first time on November 4, 1876, at the Grand Ducal Theatre, Karlsruhe. It seems that immediately before the orchestral parts were copied for the first rehearsal Brahms abridged the Andante and the Allegretto, saying that he had the Finale to think of. Otto Dessoff, who had left Vienna for Karlsruhe, conducted the performance, as he had done in the case of the "Haydn" variations at Vienna. Brahms had a low opinion of him. He had even written while Dessoff was still in Vienna:

"Now Dessoff is absolutely not the right man for this, the only enviable post in Vienna. There are special reasons why he continues to beat time, but not a soul approves. Under him the orchestra has positively deteriorated." Three days after the première at Karlsruhe the symphony was repeated at Mannheim, this time with the composer as conductor.

At first the C minor Symphony won little more than a success of esteem. Even Hanslick, Brahms's Viennese prophet, was not wholly enthusiastic. Typical is the judgment expressed by the revered John S. Dwight in his Journal of Music after the symphony had been made known to Boston, when it was scarcely fourteen months old. He felt it as something "depressing and unedifying, a work coldly elaborated, artificial; earnest, to be sure, in some sense great, and far more satisfactory than any symphony by Raff or any others of the day which we have heard, but not to be mentioned in the same day with any symphony by Schumann, Mendelssohn, or the great one by Schubert, not to speak of Beethoven's.... Our interest in it will increase, but we foresee the limit; and certainly it cannot be popular; it will not be loved like the dear masterpieces of genius."

In spite of this dark prophecy, the symphony has long been one of the most popular, and it is now the established fashion to find in it not only magnitude and ruggedness, but pathos, tenderness, and a profound humanity.

A portentous introduction (Un poco sostenuto, C minor, 6-8) prefaces the first movement (Allegro, C minor, 6-8). The first theme is given out by the violins in the fifth measure. The second theme (E-flat major) appears in the woodwind. The character of the movement is austere and epic.

The second movement (Andante sostenuto, E major, 3-4) is imbued with a profound lyricism, which flowers into some of the loveliest pages in all Brahms.

Instead of a scherzo there follows a movement marked "Un poco allegretto e grazioso" (A-flat major, 2-4), which Grove aptly characterizes as "a sort of national tune or Volkslied of simple sweetness and grace." The opening subject is sung first by the clarinet. The place of a trio is delightfully filled by a contrasting middle section (B major, 6-8).

The stupendous finale begins with an introductory section (Adagio, C minor, 4-4) that touches briefly on thematic material to be developed later, and here that distinguished American critic, the late William Foster Apthorp, must have our attention:

"With the thirtieth measure the tempo changes to più andante, and we come upon one of the most poetic episodes in all Brahms. Amid hushed, tremulous harmonies in the strings, the horn and afterward the flute pour forth an utterly original melody, the character of which ranges from passionate pleading to a sort of wild exultation according to the instrument that plays it.

The coloring is enriched by the solemn tones of the trombones, which appear for the first time in this movement.

"It is ticklish work trying to dive down into a composer's brain and surmise what special outside source his inspiration may have had; but one cannot help feeling that this whole wonderful episode may have been suggested to Brahms by the tones of the Alpine horn as it awakens the echoes from mountain after mountain on some of the high passes in the Bernese Oberland. This is certainly what the episode recalls to anyone who has ever heard those poetic tones and their echoes. A short, solemn, even ecclesiastical interruption by the trombones and bassoons is of more thematic importance. As the horn tones gradually die away and the cloudlike harmonies in the string sink lower and lower--like mist veiling the landscape--an impressive pause ushers in the Allegro non troppo, ma con brio (in C major, 4-4 time)."

Concerning the rest of the movement Apthorp adds: "The introductory Adagio has already given us mysterious hints at what is to come; and now there bursts forth in the strings the most joyous, exuberant Volkslied melody, a very Hymn to Joy, which in some of its phrases, as it were unconsciously and by sheer affinity of nature, flows into strains from the similar melody in the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. One cannot call it plagiarism: it is two men saying the same thing."

With regard to this symphony, Hans von Bülow has often been misquoted. As Philip Hale puts it: "Ask a music-lover, at random, what von Bülow said about Brahms's Symphony in C minor and he will answer: 'He called it the Tenth Symphony.' If you inquire into the precise meaning of this characterization, he will answer: 'It is the symphony that comes worthily after Beethoven's Ninth'; or, 'It is worthy of Beethoven's ripest years,' or in his admiration he will go so far as to say: 'Only Brahms or Beethoven could have written it'."

What Bülow actually set down in words was this: "First after my acquaintance with the Tenth Symphony, alias Symphony No. 1, by Johannes Brahms, that is since six weeks ago, have I become so intractable and so hard against Bruch pieces and the like. I call Brahms's first symphony the Tenth, not as though it should be put after the Ninth; I should put it between the Second and the 'Eroica,' just as I think by the First Symphony should be understood not the First of Beethoven but the one composed by Mozart which is known as the 'Jupiter'."

Symphony in D Major, No. 2, Op. 73

Having launched a first symphony, Brahms composed a second within a year. However, he kept the writing of it so secret that nobody, we are told, knew anything about it till it was completed. Then, when he did divulge the secret, he was very demure. In September, 1877, he wrote to Dr. Billroth of Vienna, who was a patron of music as well as an eminent surgeon: "I do not know whether I have a pretty symphony; I must inquire of skilled persons." He meant Clara Schumann, Otto Dessoff, and Ernest Frank. Mme. Schumann recorded on September 19 that he had written out the first movement. Early in the following month he played it to her, as well as part of the finale.

Meanwhile he had delighted in mystifying his friends before letting them hear any of the work by describing it as gloomy and awesome and referring to its key as F minor instead of D major. To Elisabeth von Herzogenberg he wrote in November, 1877: "The new symphony is merely a _Sinfonie_, and I shall not need to play it to you beforehand. You have only to sit down at the piano, put your small feet on the two pedals in turn, and strike the chord of F minor several times in succession, first in the treble, then in the bass, fortissimo and pianissimo, and you will gradually gain a vivid impression of my 'latest'." The day before the first performance he again wrote to Frau von Herzogenberg: "The orchestra here play my new symphony with crepe bands on their sleeves because of its dirge-like effect. It is to be printed with a black edge, too." Such were Brahms's little jokes.

When the symphony was actually performed in public, at a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Hans Richter, Brahms's friends found it anything but a lugubrious and forbidding composition. The date of that first performance, by the way, is variously given as December 20, 24, and 30, 1877, and January 10, 1878, of which December 30 is favored. The success with the audience at the première was progressive. If at first the response was lukewarm, when the Allegretto grazioso was reached there came an insistent demand that it be repeated, an encore which Richter granted.

Today the Second Symphony is usually regarded as lyrical, suave, even Mendelssohnian, a work of serenity and sweet peacefulness, bearing much the same relation to the austere, dramatic, and often tempestuous First Symphony that Beethoven's "Pastoral" bears to the preceding Fifth, with its conflict between Man and Fate.

Still, not everybody views the D major symphony in quite this gentle light. Walter Niemann in his life of Brahms maintains that the D major is by no means a blameless, agreeable, cheerfully sunlit idyl. Nothing, he declares, could be further from the truth! He describes the period between the 1860's and 1880's as having a heart-rending pathos and a monumental grandeur as its artistic ideal. "Nowadays," he goes on, "regarding things from a freer and less prejudiced point of view, we are fortunately able to detect far more clearly the often oppressive spiritual limitations, moodiness, and atmosphere of resignation in such pleasant, apparently cheerful, and anacreontic[!] works as Brahms's Second Symphony."

He points out that the Second, though nominally in the major, has a veiled, indetermined, Brahmsian major-minor character, hovering between the two modes. "Indeed," he adds, "this undercurrent of tragedy in the Second Symphony, quiet and slight though it may be, is perceptible to a fine ear in every movement." And he sums up the whole matter by putting down the Second Symphony as really a "great, wonderful, tragic idyl, as rich in sombre and subdued color as it is in brightness." He even sees mysterious visions of Wagner, who was by no means a friend of Brahms, in the mystic woodland atmosphere of the work, recalling "Das Rheingold" and "Siegfried," and in many sombre and even ghostly passages.

The opening movement (Allegro non troppo, D major, 3-4) is remarkable for the lyricism of its themes. After the so-called fundamental motive of the first measure ('cellos and double-basses), the melodious chief theme is given out by horns and woodwind.

A graceful subsidiary theme is heard in the violins. The second subject, nostalgic in its wistfulness, appears in the violas and 'cellos. A horn solo in the coda evokes the mystery of forest deeps from an old and bardic time.

The second movement (Adagio non troppo, B major, 4-4) is of a profoundly romantic and yet somewhat elusive character. Not a scherzo, but rather the old-time minuet, is hinted at in the third movement (Allegretto grazioso--_Quasi Andantino_,--G major, 3-4). The engaging melody

is sung immediately by the oboes over chords in the clarinets and bassoons and pizzicato arpeggios in the 'cellos. Each of the two trios that the movement boasts is a variation on this theme. An acute critic has said of the Allegretto: "Like many well-known things, it is not always remembered in its full variety and range, or we should hear less of its being too small for its place in a big symphony."

The finale (Allegro con spirito, D major, 2-2) is in sonata form. Thematically it is both rich in invention and reminiscent of passages in the earlier movements. A kinship to the finale of Haydn's last "London" symphony has also been remarked. Of the four movements this Allegretto con spirito is the most vigorous and vivacious, concluding, after pages of Olympian struggle, in a victorious coda of overwhelming brilliance.

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 77

Pörtschach-am-See, a picturesque place in Lower Austria, on the Wörthersee, near the Italian frontier, appealed to Brahms as ideal for a summer holiday. To Hanslick he once wrote that the air at Portschach was so charged with melodies that he must "be careful not to tread on them." There he began the D major symphony and composed (in 1878) the violin concerto (also in D major).

And even now, with his characteristic modesty and still uncertain about the value of his own work, he could say in a letter to Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, the day announced for the first performance of the violin concerto being only a fortnight away: "Joachim is coming here and I shall have a chance to try the concerto through with him and so to decide for or against a public performance."

Hanslick once quite justly called this concerto "the ripe fruit of the friendship between Joachim and Brahms." For Joachim it was written and to him it stands dedicated. He, furthermore, was the soloist when at a Gewandhaus Concert in Leipzig, on January 1, 1879, it was given to the world. A local reviewer, on good terms with both the composer and the violinist, remarked after the first performance that only too evidently Joachim found the solo part extremely difficult.

The influence of Joachim on the concerto must have been considerable, for Brahms often consulted him with regard to the practicability of this or that passage, and he supplied not only a cadenza but the fingering and the indications for bowing as well. Subsequently Joachim went still further. After he had played the concerto a number of times in public, he advised Brahms to make alterations in the score that he thought were required, and Brahms consented to the alterations before the concerto was published in October, 1879. To Brahms Joachim wrote from London, where he had performed the work twice with the Philharmonic Society:

"With these exceptions the piece, especially the first movement, pleases me more and more. The last two times I played without notes. That a solo composition has been performed at two London Philharmonic Concerts in succession has happened in the history of the society only once, when Mendelssohn played his G minor piano concerto (manuscript)."