Part 19

After this period of vigorous activity there followed two years of almost entire repose. In 1869, a couple of concert tours were projected--one in Holland and one in Russia, but the plans were abandoned almost as soon as conceived, and meanwhile the only fresh publications were the first two books of Hungarian dances, which, by an odd irony of fate, have come to be more intimately associated with Brahms' name than almost any of his own compositions. It is no longer requisite to point out that the melodies of all the dances are of national origin; one alone (the graceful little Csárdás, in A major) being traditional, and the rest, written by Rizner, Kéler Béla, and other 'popular' Hungarian composers. But it is worth noting, as an illustration of critical method, that more than one journal of the time disregarded the specific announcement on the title-page, and accused Brahms of plagiarising the tunes which he only claimed to have arranged in duet form. Of course, the accusation broke down, but equally, of course, it ought never to have been made.

It may be remembered that, in 1859, Brahms had emerged from his second period of studentship with a Pianoforte Concerto in D minor, which at the time was received with considerable disfavour by its Leipsic audience. The work had been printed in 1861, and had slept ever since on the shelves of Rieter-Biedermann, waiting in patience until the public was ready to appreciate it. Now it seemed as though the hour had come. The world was wiser by the experience of a dozen years; the composer was no longer a _débutant_ to be sacrificed on the altar of critical conservatism; Vienna had shown herself disposed to listen with sympathy and intelligence. Accordingly the work was recalled from its obscurity, presented at a Philharmonic concert on January 20, 1871, and, it is pleasant to add, received with acclamation. No doubt the critics repeated their old joke, that it was a 'symphony with pianoforte obbligato,' but the attention with which it was heard, and the applause with which it was welcomed, gave sufficient evidence that the interval of education had not been fruitless. 'It is,' says Dr Helm, writing to the _Academy_, 'the most original production of its composer, except the Requiem, and the most genial composition of its kind since the days of Beethoven.' Perhaps 'genial' is not precisely the epithet that we should most naturally employ, but when a victory is announced it is ungracious to carp at the terms of the bulletin.

In 1871 appeared two new works of considerable importance. First came the Triumphlied, written to commemorate the victories of the Franco-Prussian war, and produced, together with the Requiem, at a solemn Good-Friday service in Bremen Cathedral; then, a few months later, there followed at Carlsruhe, what is perhaps the most widely-loved of all Brahms' compositions, the exquisite and flawless setting of Holderlein's Schicksalslied. It was only natural that the former should rouse some criticism in the French papers, which were still chafing at the foolish humours of _Eine Kapitulation_. The shout of victory however noble and dignified its expression, is always a little discordant to the vanquished and we may almost sympathise with the _Gazette Musicale_, which ended its review by remarking, in a tone of grave irony, 'Et M. Brahms, l'auteur du Triumphlied, est né à Vienne, près Sadowa.'

Of the Schicksalslied, it is hard to speak without incurring some charge of extravagance. Perfection is a word of such serious meaning, and of such loose and careless employment, that a writer may well hesitate to apply it, even if there be no lighter one that is adequate to the case. Yet, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how, in the present instance, any hesitation is possible. The work deals with the most tremendous of all contrasts:--the pure, untroubled serenity of Heaven, the agonies and failures of a baffled humanity, the message of peace, tender, pitying, consolatory, which returns at last to veil the wreck of man's broken aspirations; and to say that the treatment is worthy of such a theme, is to announce a masterpiece that has as little to fear from our criticism as it has to gain from our praise. It is almost superfluous that one should commend the more technical beauties: the rounded symmetry of balance and design, the pellucid clearness of style, the sweetness and charm of melody, the marvellous cadences where chord melts into chord as colour melts into colour at the sunset. If it be the function of the artist that he be 'faithful to loveliness,' then here at least is a loyalty that has kept its faith unsullied.

After such a climax, it was almost inevitable that there should follow a period of reaction, and in 1872 no new compositions made their appearance. As a subsidiary cause we may note that, in the summer of this year, Brahms accepted the important post of conductor to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. His tenure of office, which lasted until 1875, is marked by the very noticeable frequence of Handel's name in the programmes of the Society. It has become so much the fashion to regard our admiration for Handel as a peculiarly British error, that we may well feel some relief at finding it shared by the greatest and most essentially German of recent musicians. _Saul_, _Solomon_, _Alexander's Feast_, the _Dettingen Te Deum_, and the Organ Concerto in D minor, were all presented in the course of the next two seasons,--a remarkable record, if we remember that a season consisted of six concerts, and that the range of selection extended from Johann Rudolph Ahle to Rubinstein and Goldmark.

Once established in his new position, Brahms found no further difficulty in reconciling its duties with the needs of his own productive activity. During the years 1873-5 he poured out a continuous stream of new works, including not only many songs, duets, and choruses, but the _Neue Liebeslieder_, the fine set of orchestral variations on a Theme of Haydn, and the Pianoforte Quartett in C minor, which, although it suffers from an almost inevitable comparison, may yet be said to contain two of the most delightful melodies that its composer has ever written. It was in this last work that some candid friend pointed out an obvious structural resemblance to the Finale of Mendelssohn's C minor Trio, and was met with the placid, if somewhat direct rejoinder, 'Das sieht jeder Narr.' Brahms does not belong to the artistic type that can be readily stirred by an accusation of plagiarism.

Such an accusation, however, was shortly to be repeated in more vehement terms. At the beginning of November 1876, the Symphony in C minor was played (from MSS.) at Carlsruhe, and at once attracted a great deal of attention, not only because it was the composer's first work in this form, but for the less satisfactory reason that its Finale is based on a melody curiously similar to that of Beethoven's 'Freude.' To make matters worse, an enthusiastic Hamburg admirer labelled the new composition 'A Tenth Symphony,' and so emphasised the resemblance in a manner which would have been hardly possible to an open antagonism. The artistic importance of this question will be considered later: at present it is enough to note, that the resemblance undoubtedly exists, and that it holds a prominent place in almost all the contemporary criticisms. Yet, on the whole, the Symphony was favourably received. The first movement aroused some controversy:--'We cannot make head or tail of it,' said a Munich correspondent, 'so we suppose that it is a Symphonic Poem;'--but the Andante, the Allegretto, and even the offending Finale, appear to have met with a due share of popular favour. It must be remembered that the opening Allegro is essentially tragic in character, and that, with the general public, tragedy takes longer than comedy to win its way.

As the publication of the Requiem had been followed immediately by a great outburst of choral works, so that of the first Symphony stimulated Brahms to further attempts in the great epic forms of the orchestra. In December 1877, the D major Symphony was produced by Richter at a Philharmonic concert in Vienna, and in 1878, after a short holiday tour in Italy, Brahms completed the triptych with his superb Violin Concerto, second only, in the record of musical art, to that of Beethoven. The _début_ of this last composition, which took place on January 14, 1879, was characterised by a very unusual mark of respect and interest. Not only was it received with a veritable ovation--when Joachim is playing Brahms that is only to be expected--but at the close of the concert a large part of the audience remained in the hall, and constituted itself into an impromptu debating society to discuss its impressions. This forms a remarkable contrast to the panic flight which usually follows on the first moment of liberation, and must be taken as the sign and witness of a more than superficial enthusiasm. Men may applaud from good-nature, from impulse, from a desire to be in the fashion; but something stronger than this is required to keep them in their seats after the performance is over.

Meantime works of less long a breath were appearing in their usual copious abundance. In 1876 came the bright genial Quartett in B flat, then followed a series of songs, duets and pianoforte pieces, then a couple of motets for mixed chorus and orchestra. In November 1879 the Violin Sonata in G was given for the first time at a Hellmesberger Concert, and succeeded almost immediately by the two well-known Rhapsodies for piano solo, and the second set of Hungarian dances. Of course, fertility is not in itself a mark of genius--otherwise Raff would be the greatest composer of the century--but at least it gives additional opportunity for the marks of genius to appear. And it may be added that, even in the periods of most rapid production, Brahms hardly ever shows any signs of haste. If he escapes the self-torture which drove Chopin day after day to the revision of a single page, it is not because his ideal is lower, but because his judgment is more robust.

In 1880 he accepted the degree of Doctor in Philosophy, offered him by the University of Breslau, and at once set himself, during a summer stay at Ischl, to write his thesis. A ceremonial of so solemn and academic a character naturally demanded an unusual display of learning. Symphonies were too trivial, oratorios were too slight, even an eight-part _à capella_ chorus in octuple counterpoint was hardly adequate to the dignity of the occasion. Something must be done to mark the doctorate with all the awe and reverence due to the Philosophic Chair. So Brahms selected a handful of the more convivial student songs--'Was kommt dort von der Höh',' 'Gaudeamus igitur,' and the like--and worked them into a concert overture, which remains one of the most amusing pieces of pure comedy in the whole range of music. It was an audacious experiment, and one which could only have succeeded in Germany. Not even Brahms could offer, as a Doctor's exercise at Oxford or Cambridge, a work based on the melodies with which our own studious youth beguiles its leisure moments.

Two other compositions appear to have been written at Ischl during the same summer--the Tragic Overture and the Pianoforte Trio in C major. Of these the Trio remained for some time in abeyance; the Overture, together with its 'Academic' companion, was produced at Breslau on January 4, 1881, and repeated at Leipsic on January 13. It is equally intelligible that the lighter mood should have won a more immediate sympathy, and that a mature decision should have reversed the verdict. In the Academic Overture men met old friends, cracked old jokes, recalled old memories of the Kneipe, and so rather put themselves out of court for dispassionate criticism: the Tragic brought them nothing but a cheerless vision of crumbling steeps and mysterious shadows, of dark recesses and haunted glades, of

'Moonlit battlements and towers decayed by time,'

through all of which we can fancy Vetter Michel passing with his coat tightly buttoned and his hat pressed over his brows, only anxious to escape as soon as possible from the enchanted spot, and return to warmth and light and good fellowship. At the same time, the Tragic Overture strikes a deeper note, and though it is not more masterly in structure, is certainly more poetic in conception. Besides, it owed no factitious interest to the particular circumstances of its first appearance, and so, having been treated from the beginning on its own merits, it is the more likely to endure.

Other events of 1881 may be dismissed in a few words. At the end of January the London Philharmonic endeavoured to secure Brahms as conductor for its coming season; but the offer, like all subsequent invitations from this country, was immediately declined. 'Je ne veux pas faire le spectacle,' is the reason which was once given as the ground of refusal; and, though we may feel a little mortified at the implication, it is difficult to deny the uncomplimentary truth that it contains. We have not yet learned to treat genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it with an irrational excess of enthusiasm. And further, Brahms was much occupied during the summer, partly in preparing his two overtures for the press, partly in completing the Nänie and the new Pianoforte Concerto in B flat. During the autumn came a concert tour of unusual extent, in which the last-named work was produced at Buda-Pesth, and repeated at Meiningen, Stuttgart, Basle, Zurich, and ultimately at Vienna. By this time it had become an article of faith, that Brahms' concerti showed no claim to their specific title; and, as the jest of 'Symphony with pianoforte obbligato' had fulfilled its purpose, the critics struck out a fresh line, and described the new work as 'chamber music on a larger canvas.' However, the Viennese public was as indifferent to names as Juliet herself, and received the music with a cordiality that took no thought of problems in scientific classification.

The publications of 1882 consist of four volumes of songs, which range in character from the humour of the Vergebliches Ständchen to the poetry, as pure and contemplative as Wordsworth, of Feldeinsamkeit and Sommerabend. After the Vienna season Brahms took his usual holiday at Ischl, and there composed the String Quintett in F and the Gesang der Parzen, both of which were printed in the succeeding year. But the next real landmark was the third Symphony produced at Vienna in the winter of 1883, and repeated at once in almost every great musical centre in Germany. It is perhaps the finest, certainly the clearest, of all Brahms' instrumental compositions for orchestra--forcible and vigorous in movement, delightful in melody, and, of course, faultless in construction. 'Now at last,' said a member of the Viennese audience, 'I can understand Brahms at a first hearing': and, indeed, it must be a cloudy twilight in which so exact a hand cannot be readily deciphered. In strong contrast is the fourth Symphony in E minor, which followed after another period of song-writing. On grounds of true artistic value, it is almost equal to its predecessor; but it deals with more recondite themes, it traces more involved issues, and it has consequently been treated with some of that irrational impatience which is the common fate of prophets who speak in parables. When it was presented at Leipsic in 1886, the critics protested against it as wholly unintelligible; and when Reinecke repeated it at the beginning of the next year, the audience trooped out after the third movement and left the finale to be played to empty benches. It may be remembered that the subscribers to _Fraser's Magazine_ once threatened to withdraw their patronage unless the editor discontinued a farrago of exasperating nonsense called by the unmeaning name of _Sartor Resartus_.

In 1887 Brahms was created a Knight of the German order, 'pour le mérite,' in company with Professor Treitschke, Gustav Freitag, and Verdi. He had already received the order of 'Arts and Sciences' from the King of Bavaria; and, two years later, he was admitted by the Emperor of Austria to the order of St Leopold--the first civilian, it is said, on whom that distinction has been conferred. Meantime, he brought his list of works past its hundredth opus number--that goal which Schubert was so pathetically anxious to reach--with the 'Cello Sonata in F, the Violin Sonata in A, the double Concerto and the C minor Pianoforte Trio. The first of these, which was produced by Hausmann in November 1886, at once aroused a very curious outburst of structural criticism. It was said, and the statement is still repeated, that Brahms had been guilty of a dangerous and radical innovation in choosing for his slow movement a key removed by only one semitone from that of the work as a whole. The choice was too near in pitch, it was too remote in signature, it broke the harmonic unity of the composition by a contrast of colour which was in itself glaring and extreme. But of attacks on Brahms, as of attacks on a very different master, we may generally say, 'ça porte malheur.' The so-called 'innovation,' authoritatively condemned as without parallel in musical literature, may be found in one of Haydn's pianoforte sonatas, and can hardly, therefore, be criticised at the present day as hazardous and revolutionary. Whether the contrast be here successful or not is a matter on which opinions may conceivably differ, though, after any serious study of the opening movement, they are likely to concur; but it is surely unfair to accuse Brahms of violating the classical tradition, unless, indeed, there be a sense in which any stage of evolution may be said to violate its forerunner.

In the summer of 1889 Brahms was presented with the freedom of the city of Hamburg, a gift which affected him more deeply than any splendour of royal or academic distinction. With its acceptance his public life may be said to close. He was now fifty-seven; he had spent nearly forty years of strenuous and honourable work; his dislike of notoriety grew naturally keener with advancing age; he had no longer any office or appointment to call him from his beloved seclusion. The occurrences of the next seven years may be summed up in a few rare concert-tours or holiday visits. For the rest he lived among his books; reading, editing, annotating until the creative moment came, and the world was made richer by a new masterpiece. Within this period he produced about a score of compositions: an exquisite violin sonata in D minor; a second string quintett, even sweeter and more melodious than the first; two volumes of motets, strong, stately and dignified; two concerted works for clarinet, of which one at least may rank among the chief glories of musical art, and a whole underwood of songs and pianoforte pieces, that grow and blossom in the shadow of the larger forest. But even the records of achievement become more sparse as the years decline. The evening was at hand, and the day's work drawing to its close.

It was in the summer of 1896 that he printed his last composition, the Vier ernste Gesänge. For some little time his health had been giving cause for anxiety. In the autumn his doctors sent him to Carlsbad in hope of a cure; then in the early winter appeared symptoms of some cancerous growth, and the only hope left was for the alleviation of pain. Yet a few more months he lingered, bearing his death sentence with the same unselfish fortitude that had marked his life, until on April 3, 1897, the end came and the sufferings were over. With him passed away one of the noblest figures in all musical history: a great man, generous and upright, without envy, without arrogance, free from all taint of the meaner emotions, wholly single-hearted in the service of his ideal. The happiness which eludes all conscious human pursuit came to him unasked and unsought; the rewards that he would never stretch a hand to seize offered themselves for his acceptance. His life was secure from sordid anxieties, unvexed by the contests and intrigues that have so often marred an artistic reputation, rich in the love of friends and the priceless gift of genius. It is not for him that we should mourn, now that in the fulness of years and honours he has laid his books aside and turned to sleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Shortened from an article in the issue for November 21, 1862.

[54] To them should be added the last three books of Romances from Tieck's Magelone, which were not printed until 1868, though they were almost certainly written some considerable time earlier.

III

THE DIRECTION OF THE NEW PATHS

As Music is the most abstract of the arts, so it is also the most continuous. In each successive generation the Poet and the Painter are confronted by approximately the same facts of nature and life: the truth of representation which forms an essential part of their work is relative to an external model which is comparatively unchanging. Thus, in a certain degree, every age of representative art stands on a level with its predecessors, and however much it is influenced by traditions of style, is even more affected by its direct relation to physical realities. Music, on the other hand, is simply the gradual mastery of a particular medium by the pure action of the human mind. Its actual method contains no concrete element at all, and in it, therefore, every generation must take its point of departure, not from the same universe which appealed to previous artists, but from the actual achievement which previous artists have handed down. The Greeks were as keenly alive to the beauty of music as to that of poetry: to us their poetry is a delight and their music a bewilderment. To the Italians of the great artistic period, the charm of music was as vivid as that of painting; to us their painting is almost a finality, and their music, even in Palestrina, but the supreme expression of a transitory phase. And this is not because music is in any sense the youngest of the arts: for such a theory is refuted by the most casual survey of human history. The real reason would seem to be, that in the representative arts we have a series of comparatively independent periods, each manifesting afresh the attitude of an artistic mind to a fixed world of nature: whereas, in music, the periods are stages of a continuous evolution, and the whole environment of the artist is summed up in the inheritance that he derives from the past.

This distinction must, of course, be stated not as absolute, but as relative. For, in the first place, every work of art is the outcome of its creator's personality, and depends, therefore, on the particular attributes of his character and temperament. Poetry, like the poet, is born, not made: painting, even if it borrow its model from nature, must find its power of vision in the soul of the artist: and music, in like manner, is worth nothing unless it arises from a true and spontaneous emotion. The gift of melody, the sense of ideal beauty, the capacity for genuine and noble feeling, are qualities which cannot be learned or communicated: they constitute the life of the art, and external forces can only influence its training. Further, it is idle to speak of the 'representative' artists as unaffected by the general course of æsthetic history. Only, it is here contended, that their debt to the past is appreciably less than that of the musician, because their debt to the present is appreciably greater.