Music Director
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98
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 wildly 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 idea! from which to begin their own work.
German Composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) had initially been on the side of the wildly popular 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."
German composer Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833. His father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was a double bass player in the city theater, who taught his son violin and cello. At seven, Johannes studied piano with F, W. Cosset, and then with Cosset's teacher, Eduard Marxsen.
Johannes helped support his family by playing in saloons and inns on the docks of Hamburg. In 1850, Brahms began playing concerts with Eduard Remenyi, a Jewish-Hungarian violinist, from whom he learned Gypsy music.
Brahms's talent was recognized by the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, who recommended Brahms to Robert Schumann. Brahms and Schumann became close friends. In fact, Brahms was close to the whole Schumann family. Robert's wife Clara was a pianist and composer in her own right. When Schumann became mentally ill in 1854, Brahms helped Clara manage with the children. Many biographers think that Brahms was probably in love with Clara. After Schumann's death in 1856, they remained good friends, but nothing beyond that.
Brahms taught piano and conducted several choral ensembles in Detmold and Gottingen before eventually moving to Vienna in 1863 to take over the Singakademie. Brahms, like Mendelssohn, took an interest in the works of composers who came before Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, especially the music of J.S. Bach and the Renaissance polyphonists. Brahms composed a large amount of choral music, much of it a capella. This was unusual in the nineteenth century, when orchestral music, piano music, and opera were the most popular forms.
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. But Brahms didn't 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."
Symphony No. 2 in D Major appeared in 1878, and Symphony No, 3 in F Major was completed in 1883. Brahms's composed his Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98, during the summers of 1884 and 1885 in Murzzuschlag . Brahms often played piano arrangements of his works for friends before the works were performed. After a preview of his Third Symphony, conductor Hans Richter had said "Long live Maestro Brahms's Eroica, It took two pianists to play the Fourth and the reactions shook Brahms up. His former student Lisl Herzogenberg and her husband Heinrich seemed to imply that the symphony was far too cerebral. His friend, biographer Max Kalbeck urged Brahms to hold back the work Brahms refused.
The first performance of Brahms's Symphony No. 4 took place on October 25, 1885 at Meiningen, Germany under the composer's direction. It was a great success. Hans von Bulow took the work on tour with his Hofkapelle Orchestra, one of the finest ensembles in Europe.
Brahms's Fourth Symphony presents a paradox. The four- movement (fast-slow-scherzo-finale) work sounds highly emotional, but it is constructed using the greatest of classical constraint. The first movement Allegro non troppo begins, uniquely, with a lyrically beautiful theme based on descending thirds, Arnold Schoenberg admired the economy inherent in the construction of this theme, and saw Brahms's technique as foreshadowing the music of the twentieth century.
The second movement, Andante moderate, uses modal harmony for this variation-like movement. The second theme is one of the most beautiful in the repertoire. The third movement, Allegro giocoso, has an energetic, scherzo-like feel, even though it's in duple not triple meter.
The fourth movement, Allegro energico e passionate, is almost a microcosm of Brahms's contribution to the nineteenth century music. The movement consists of 32 variations of a theme over a repeating base line, a baroque style passacaglia/chaconne. In 1880, Brahms was discussing Bach cantatas with conductors Hans von Bulow and Siegfried Ochs. Brahms went to the piano and played the chaconne from an unpublished cantata, Nach Die, Herr, Verlanget Mien. Brahms wondered if the theme would provide the basis for a symphonic movement, but then dismissed it, until he actually turned it into the fourth Symphony's finale.
On his 64th birthday, May 7, 1897, Brahms heard his Fourth Symphony performed and acknowledged the crowd's appreciation. It was the last symphony he ever heard. One month later, he was dead.
Notes by Beth Bergman Fisher