BRAHMS, JOHANNES (1$33-1897), German composer, was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833. He was the son of a double-bass player in the Hamburg city theatre and received his first musical instruction from his father. After some lessons from 0. Cossel, he went to Cossel's master, Eduard Marxsen of Altona, whose experience and artistic taste directed the young composer's genius into the highest paths. A couple of public appearances as a pianist were hardly an interruption to the course of his musical studies, and these were continued nearly up to the time when Brahms accepted an engagement as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist, Remenyi, for a concert tour in 1853. At Gottingen there occurred a famous contretemps which had a most important though indirect influence on the whole after life of the young player. A piano on which he was to play the "Kreutzer" sonata of Beethoven with Remenyi turned out to be a semi-tone below the required pitch; and Brahms played the part by heart, transposing it from A to B flat, in such a way that the great violinist, Joachim, who was present and discerned what the feat implied, introduced himself to Brahms, and laid the foundation of a life-long friendship. Joachim gave him intro ductions to Liszt at Weimar and to Schumann at Dusseldorf ; the former hailed him for a time as a member of the advanced party in music, on the strength of his E flat minor scherzo, but the misapprehension was not of long continuance.
The introduction to Schumann impelled that master, now drawing near the tragic close of his career, to write the famous article "Neue Bahnen," in which the young Brahms was pro claimed to be the great composer of the future, "he who was to come." The critical insight in Schumann's article is all the more surprising when it is remembered how small was the list of Brahms' works at the time. A string quartet, the first pianoforte sonata, the scherzo already mentioned, and the earliest group of songs, containing the dramatic "Liebestreu," are the works which drew forth the warm commendations of Schumann. In Dec. Brahms gave a concert at Leipzig, as a result of which the firms of Breitkopf & Hartel and of Senff undertook to publish his com positions. In 18J4 he was given the post of choir-director and music-master to the prince of Lippe-Detmold, but he resigned it after a few years, going first to Hamburg, and then to Zurich, where he enjoyed the friendship and artistic counsel of Theodor Kirchner. The unfavourable verdict of the Leipzig Gewandhaus audience upon his pianoforte concerto in D minor op. 15, and several remarkably successful appearances in Vienna, where he was appointed director of the Singakademie in 1863, were the most important external events of Brahms' life at this period, but again he gave up the conductorship after a few months of valu able work, and for about three years had no fixed place of abode.
Concert tours with Joachim or Stockhausen were undertaken, and it was not until 1867 that he returned to Vienna, or till 1872 that he chose it definitely as his home, his longest absence from the Austrian capital being between 1874 and 1878, when he lived near Heidelberg. From 1871-74 he conducted the concerts of the "Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde," but after the later date he occupied no official position of any kind. With the exception of journeys to Italy in the spring, or to Switzerland in the summer, he rarely left Vienna. He refused to come to England to take the honorary degree of Mus.D. offered by the University of Cam bridge; the University of Breslau made him Ph.D. in 1881; in 1886 he was created a knight of the Prussian order Pour le merite, and in 1889 was presented with the freedom of his native city. He died in Vienna on April 3, 1897.
Brahms has often been called the last of the great classical masters, in a sense wider than that of his place in the long line of the great composers of Germany. Though only the most superficial observers could deny him the possession of qualities which distinguish the masters of the romantic school, it is as a classicist that he must be ranked among modern musicians. From the beginning of his career until its close, his ideas were clothed by preference in the forms which had sufficed for Bee thoven, and the instances in which he departed from structural precedent are so rare that they might be disregarded, were they not of such high value that they must be considered as the signs of a logical development of musical form, and not as indicating a spirit of rebellion against existing modes of structure. His practice, more frequent in later than in earlier life, of welding together the "working-out" and the "recapitulation" sections of his movements in a closer union than any of his predecessors had attempted, is an innovation which cannot fail to have important results in the future; and if the skill of younger writers is not adequate to such a display of ingenuity as occurs in the finale of the fourth symphony, where the "passacaglia" form has been used with an effect that is almost bewildering to the ordinary listener, that at least stands as a monument of inventiveness finely subordinated to the emotional and intellectual purport of the thoughts expressed. His themes are always noble, and even from the point of view of emotional appeal their deep intensity of expression is of a kind which grows upon all who have once been awakened to their beauty, or have been at the pains to grasp the composer's characteristics of utterance. His vocal music, whether for one voice or many, is remarkable for its fidelity to natural inflection and accentuation of the words, and for its perfect reflection of the poet's mood.
His songs, vocal quartets, and choral works abound in passages that prove him a master of effects of sound; and throughout his chamber music, in his treatment of the piano, of the strings, or of the solo wind instruments he employs, there are number less examples which sufficiently show the irrelevance of a charge sometimes brought against his music, that it is deficient in a sense of what is called "tone-colour." It is perfectly true that the mere acoustic effect of a passage was of far less importance to him than its inherent beauty, poetic import, or logical fitness in a definite scheme of development ; and that often in his orches tral music the casual hearer receives an impression of complexity rather than of clearness, and is apt to imagine that the "thick ness" of instrumentation is the result of clumsiness or careless ness. Such instances as the introduction to the finale of the first symphony, the close of the first movement of the second, what may be called the epilogue of the third, or the whole of the varia tions on a theme of Haydn, are not only marvels of delicate work manship in regard to structure, but are instinct with the sense of the peculiar beauty and characteristics of each instrument. The "Academic Festival" overture proves Brahms a master of musical humour, in his treatment of the student songs which serve as its themes; and the companion piece, the "Tragic" over ture, reaches a height of sublimity which is in no way lessened because no particular tragedy has ever been named in conjunction with the work.
As with all creative artists of supreme rank, the work of Brahms took a considerable time before it was very generally appreciated. The change in public opinion is strikingly illus trated in regard to the songs, which, once voted ineffective and unvocal, have now taken a place in every eminent singer's reper tory. The outline in his greater works must be grasped with some definiteness before the separate ideas can be properly understood in their true relation to each other; and while it is his wonder ful power of handling the recognized classical forms, so as to make them seem absolutely new, which stamps him as the greatest musical architect since Beethoven, the necessity for realizing in some degree what musical form signifies has undoubtedly been a bar to the rapid acceptance of his greater works by the unedu cated lovers of music. These are, of course, far more easily moved by effects of colour than by the subtler beauties of organic structure, and Brahms' attitude towards tone-colour was scarcely such as would endear him to the large number of musicians in whose view tone-colour is pre-eminent.
His mastery of form, again, has been attacked as formalism by superficial critics, blind to the real inspiration and distinction of his ideas, and to their perfection in regard to style and the appropriateness of every theme to the exact emotional state to be expressed. In his larger vocal works there are some which treat of emotional conditions far removed from the usual stock of subjects taken by the average composer ; to compare the ideas in the "German Requiem" with those of the "Schicksalslied" or "Nanie" is to learn a lesson in artistic style which can never be forgotten. In the songs, too, it is scarcely too much to say that the whole range of human emotion finds expression in noble lyrics that yield to none in actual musical beauty. The four "Ernste Gesange," Brahms' last compositions, must be considered as his supreme achievement in dignified utterance of noble thoughts in a style that perfectly fits them. The choice of words for these as well as for the "Requiem" and others of his serious works reveals a strong sense of the vanity and emptiness of human life, but at least as strong a confidence in the divine consolations.