BRAHMS, Johannes, German composer: b. Hamburg, 7 May 1833; d. Vienna, 3 April 1897. His father was a double-bass player in the Stadt-Theatre of his native town and from him he received his first instruction in musical technique, but his artistic taste was developed under the guidance of the eminent musician, Eduard Marsden, of Altona. At the age of 14 years he made his first public appearance as a pianist at Hamburg, playing a set of variations composed by himself. In 1853 he traveled with the noted Hungarian violinist Remenyi on a concert tour of Germany as piano accompanist; this tour was critical for his whole career. In the program of the concert given at Gottingen was Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. The piano was a half tone below the true pitch, but Brahms straightway remedied the defect, play ing the part from memory and transposing it from A to B-flat —a feat which won the ad miration of the celebrated violinist Joachim, who was in the audience, and who after the performance made himself known to the young musician; thus commenced a warm friendship which lasted during Joachim's life. He gave the young man commendatory letters to Liszt, then at Weimar, and to Schumann at Diissel dorf, and advised him to give up the concert tour. Brahms acted instantly on this counsel, visited Schumann and showed him some of his compositions, with the result that Schumann recognized in the young artist supreme musical genius, and in his enthusiastic admiration hailed him in an article entitled eNeue Bahnen," pub lished in his Neue Zeitung fur Musik, as al ready a master, the great composer of the future, and, in the words of John the Baptist (Matt. xi, 3) as rendered in the Latin vulgate, as "he that is to come?' Brahms, he declared, had not attained mastership by a gradual de velopment, but had "burst upon us fully equipped as Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter?' Yet at this time the young maestro had produced but very few works—a string quartet, a scherzo in E-flat and a few songs, among them the dramatic His eminent gifts were now generally recog nized and, after giving a concert in Leipzig, two music publishers made an engagement with him to publish his compositions; and in 1854 he was appointed music master and choir con ductor to the Prince of Lippe-Detmold. From 1858 to 1862 he resided first in Hamburg and then in Zurich, making musical tours and pur suing his musical studies. Going to Vienna in 1862, he was director of the Singakademie there in 1863, but after a few months resigned that office and quitted Vienna to resume his con cert tours throughout Germany. He took up his residence again in the Austrian capital in 1872 and thereafter till his death Vienna was his home, though for some years he made musical tours occasionally; but toward the close of his life he devoted himself almost exclusively to the work of musical composi tion. In 1877 the English University of Cam bridge apprised him of its senate's intention to honor him with the degree of doctor of music, but Brahms seems to have ignored the intended courtesy.
By his (German Requiem,' produced in the cathedral at Bremen in 1868, at a solemn re ligious function commemorative of the Ger man soldiers who died in the war with Austria, he fully justified the prophetic utterance of Schumann and won for himself a place in the hearts of the whole German people. He called
it the
Requiem' to indicate the differ ence in tone and spirit between it and the tradi tional requiem, which echoes the doleful strains of the (Dies Irw.) In the
mann, W. Brahms als Liederkom ponist" (Leipzig 1912); Knorr, J., and Rei rnann, H., Brahms, Symphonien and andere Orchesterwerke erlautert' (Berlin 1908).