Music Director
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 70
The history of music in the late nineteenth century included a stylistic war between composers seeking to revolutionize musical forms, and those who hoped to base modern musical composition on the principles and techniques of the great composers who preceded them. Franz Liszt, the popular virtuoso pianist and composer, and Richard Wagner, who tried to transform opera into elaborate music dramas, were proponents of program music, music that expresses a specific story or idea from literature. They wanted to follow in the footsteps of Hector Berlioz.
Other composers, like Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms considered the path taken by Josef Hadyn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and especially Ludwig von Beethoven to be the technical ideal from which to begin their own work.
German Composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) had initially been on the side of the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt and the “New German School.” Schumann became disillusioned with Liszt’s revolutionary approach, choosing instead to build upon the formal conventions of the past to create new works. In 1834 Schumann started publishing the journal Neue Zeitschrift fur Music, stating his goals in an editorial:
To be remindful of older times and their works and to emphasize that only from such a pure source can new artistic beauties be fostered; at the same time to oppose the trends of the more recent past, proceeding from mere virtuosity and, finally, to prepare the way for, and to hasten, the acceptance of a new poetic center.
In 1853, Schumann wrote an article entitled Neue Bahnen (New Paths). In it, he expressed his hope that some composer
“…would suddenly appear, destined to give ideal presentation to the highest expression of the time, who would bring us his mastership not in process of development, but springing forth like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove.”
Schumann continued:
"And he is come, a young blood by whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch. He is called Johannes Brahms…He bore all the outward signs that proclaim to us, “This is one of the elect.”
Brahms became principal conductor of the Society of Friends of Music (Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde), in 1872, and he also directed the Vienna Philharmonic for three seasons. Brahms did not finish his Symphony No. 1 in C minor until 1876, when he was already past 40. Brahms worshipped Beethoven, but was intimidated by him. He told conductor Hermann Levi,
“I’ll never write a symphony! You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we’re always hearing a giant like that behind us.”
Brahms took twenty years to complete his Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68. It uses the traditional four movement form, contrasting the musical styles of the alternating movements.
Symphony No. 2 in D Major appeared in 1878. Most notable in this pastoral symphony is the second movement Adagio non troppo, which illustrates Brahms’s organic continuously developing variation of themes. Arnold Schoenberg called this developing variation.
Brahms completed his Third Symphony in F Major, Op. 90 in 1883. The first movement features the wide-spanning melody Brahms likes, and heightens tension through the use of both major and minor forms of the tonic triad. The fourth movement begins in F minor but ends in F major. At the appearance of the second theme, Brahms once again adds drama by using two different simultaneous meters. Brahms’s Third Symphony is the shortest of all the composer’s symphonies, rarely lasting more than thirty minutes. The movements are about equal in length and include the use of themes in transfigured forms. This was perhaps a return to the classical ideal of balance which had been usurped by long symphonic works like Beethoven’s mammoth Symphony No. 9.
Notes by Beth Bergman Fisher