Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms spent twenty-one years writing his first symphony because Beethoven had written nine. Born in Hamburg in 1833, the son of a double-bass player, he grew up poor and, by his own account, played piano in dockside taverns as a boy. In 1853 he was introduced to Robert and Clara Schumann. Robert published an article announcing him as the man the age had been waiting for, which was an enormous burden for a twenty-year-old. When Schumann attempted suicide the following year and was confined, Brahms moved in to help Clara, and his attachment to her lasted the rest of his life; neither ever described it fully, and they burned much of their correspondence. He was cast as the conservative in the argument that dominated German music, against Liszt and Wagner's programmatic New German School. He signed a manifesto against them in 1860 that was published prematurely and embarrassed him. In fact his handling of rhythm and of motivic development was radical, and Schoenberg wrote an essay calling him Brahms the progressive. The German Requiem of 1868, written after his mother's death, uses Lutheran Bible texts of his own choosing rather than the liturgy and addresses the living rather than the dead. The First Symphony finally appeared in 1876, and a conductor's remark about its resemblance to Beethoven's Ninth drew the reply that any fool could see it. He destroyed a great deal of his own work, including a string quintet, rather than publish anything he judged inadequate. He was gruff, generous in private, and never married. He died in Vienna in 1897, a year after Clara.

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