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Reforming Johannes: Brahms, Kreisler Junior and the Piano Trio in B, Op. 8

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Roger Moseley
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Abstract

A comparison of the 1854 and 1891 versions of the Piano Trio in B, op. 8, explores how musical allusion can be interpreted to convey Johannes Brahms's attitudes to critics, friends, other composers and his own past. The young Brahms's attachment to E. T. A. Hoffmann's literary alter ego Johannes Kreisler helps explain the extent to which the music of others makes itself heard in the first version of the trio. Changing standards of criticism affected the nature and scope of Brahms's revision, which expunged perceived allusions; the older Brahms's more detached compositional approach shared elements with Heinrich Schenker's analytical perspective. There are also parallels between Brahms's excisions and the surgical innovations of his friend and musical ally Theodor Billroth. Both Brahms and Billroth were engaged with the removal of foreign bodies in order to preserve organic integrity, but traces of others – and of the past – persist throughout the revised trio.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 132 , Issue 2 , 2007 , pp. 252 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2007

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References

My thanks go to all those who have read and responded to this text as it has made its protracted journey into print. Some remain anonymous, but among the rest I must give special mention to Richard Taruskin, Roger Parker, Katherine Bergeron, Suzannah Clark, Verity Platt, Bettina Varwig and Benjamin Walton.Google Scholar

1 ‘Wie auf einem Bilde sehe ich im Flur eines Hauses in Düsseldorf eine Schar Kinder stehen; die blicken staunend hinauf nach dem Treppengeländer. Dort macht ein junger Mann mit langem blondem Haar die halsbrecherischsten Turnübungen, schwingt sich von rechts nach links, hinauf, hinab; schließlich stemmt er beide Arme fest auf, streckt die Beine hoch in die Luft und springt mit einem Satze hinunter, mitten hinein in die bewundernde Kinderschar. Die Kinder waren wir, ich und meine etwas älteren Geschwister, der junge Mann Johannes Brahms.’ Eugenie Schumann, Erinnerungen (Stuttgart, 1925), 13–14, trans. Marie Busch as Memoirs of Eugenie Schumann (London, 1927), 4. Eugenie's memory is not dated, but probably issued from the late 1850s. Her account suggests that the young Brahms might have been under the influence of the Turnbewegung, the German gymnastic movement. To a large extent, the popularity of the Turnbewegung throughout the nineteenth century lay in its complex relationships with various brands of German nationalism. See Langewiesche, Dieter, ‘“Tür Volk und Vaterland kraeftig zu wirken”: Zur politischen und gesellschaftlichen Rolle der Turner zwischen 1811 und 1871’, Kulturgut oder Körperkult, ed. Ommo Grupe (Tübingen, 1990), 22–61.Google Scholar

2 Florence May, The Life of Johannes Brahms (London, 1905), i, 27–8. Her memory is of Brahms performing his Second Piano Concerto, op. 83, in 1881, three years after he had definitively grown his beard. The Brahms May saw may not have been quite so grey and corpulent as the older man that Michalek's etching depicts, but she vividly describes the gulf that separates him from Laurens's subject.Google Scholar

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Musical Association. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/jrma/fkm004Google Scholar

3 See, for instance, Constantin Floros, ‘Brahms – ein Januskopf’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 144/4 (1983), 4–7, and Elfrieda F. Hiebert, ‘The Janus Figure of Brahms: A Future Built upon the Past’, Journal of the American Liszt Society, 16 (1984), 72–88.Google Scholar

4 ‘Das öffentliche Lob, das Sie mir spendeten, wird die Erwartung des Publikums auf meine Leistungen so außerordentlich gespannt haben, daß ich nicht weiß, wie ich denselben einigermaßen gerecht werden kann.’ Johannes Brahms to Robert Schumann, 16 November 1853; Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms: Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896, ed. Berthold Litzmann (Leipzig, 1927), i, 1–2, trans. Styra Avins and Josef Eisinger, Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, ed. Avins (Oxford and New York, 1997; henceforth Life and Letters), 24. Every Brahms critic ponders the complex ambiguities of Schumann's gesture; see, for instance, Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography (New York, 1997), 83–7. Mark Evan Bonds explores the ideological motives behind ‘Neue Bahnen’ in After Beethoven: Lmperatives of Originality in the Symphony (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 141–5, as does Helmut Kirchmeyer in Robert Schumanns Düsseldorfer Brahms-Aufsatz ‘Neue Bahnen’ und die Ausbreitung der Wagnerschen Opern bis 1856: Psychogramm eines ‘letzten’ Artikels (Berlin, 1993).Google Scholar

5 Nun – wo ist Johannes? … Lässt er noch keine Pauken und Drommeten erschallen? Er soll sich immer an die Anfänge der Beethovenschen Symphonien erinnern; er soll etwas Ähnliches zu machen suchen.' Robert Schumann to Joseph Joachim, 6 January 1854; Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue Folge, ed. F. Gustav Jensen (Leipzig, 1904), 390.Google Scholar

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7 Michael Kube provides commentary on other piano trios from Schumann's circle and on the status of the genre in mid-century German musical culture in ‘Brahms’ Klaviertrio H-Dur Op. 8 (1854) und sein gattungsgeschichtlicher Kontext’, Internationaler Brahms-Kongress Gmunden 1997: Kongreßbericht, ed. Ingrid Fuchs (Tutzing, 2001), 31–57.Google Scholar

8 ‘Das Trio hätte ich auch gern noch behalten, da ich jedenfalls später darin geändert hätte.‘ Brahms to Joachim, 19 June 1854; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, ed. Andreas Moser, Brahms Briefwechsel, 5 (Berlin, 1912), 43.Google Scholar

9 ‘Ich finde es über die Maßen unvernünftig, wenn Sie von Härteis Sachen kaufen – ich kann mir nicht denken, wie teuer – die ihnen beiläufig 100 L'dors gekostet haben, und die in kürzester Zeit nicht einen Schuß Pulver wert sind.’ Brahms to Fritz Simrock, 1 April 1888; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Fritz Simrock, ed. Max Kalbeck, 2 vols., Brahms Briefwechsel, 11–12 (Berlin, 1919), i, 181, trans. Karl Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work (New York, 1982), 364–5. For a while, Brahms considered publishing through Peters; he thought Simrock charged too much for his music, making it inaccessible to the public. See the letters and commentary in Life and Letters, 583 and 654–5. Robert Pascali mentions Brahms's revisions of the piano works in ‘Brahms and the Definitive Text’, Brahms: Biographical, Documentary and Analytical Studies, ed. Pascali (Cambridge, 1983), 59–75 (p. 71).Google Scholar

10 For an exhaustive comparison of all surviving materials from the revisionary process and an account of its unfolding, see Zaunschirm, Franz, Derfrühe und der späte Brahms: Eine Fallstudie anhand der autographen Korrekturen und gedruckten Fassungen zum Trio Nr. 1 für Klavier, Violine und Violoncello Opus 8 (Hamburg, 1988). See also Ernst Herttrich, ‘Johannes Brahms – Klaviertrio H-Dur Opus 8: Frühfassung und Spätfassung: Ein analytischer Vergleich’, Musik, Edition, Lnterpretation: Gedenkschrift für Günter Henle, ed. Martin Bente (Munich, 1980), 218–36; Gottfried Scholz, ‘Zu Johannes Brahms: Klaviertrio in H-Dur Op. 8’, Die Kammermusik von Johannes Brahms: Tradition und Innovation, ed. Gernot Gruber (Laaber, 2001), 139–48; and Norbert Meurs, ‘Das verstellte Frühwerk: Zum H-dur-Trio Op. 8 von Johannes Brahms’, Musica, 37 (1983), 34–9. Brahms made one far-reaching alteration with four single strokes of his pencil: the first movement's common time signature was changed to cut time.Google Scholar

11 ‘Kennst Du etwa noch ein H dur-Trio aus unserer Jugendzeit, und wärest Du nicht begierig, es jetzt zu hören, da ich ihm – (keine Perrücke aufgesetzt –!) aber die Haare ein wenig gekämmt und geordnet.‘ Brahms to Julius Grimm, early March 1890; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit J. O. Grimm, ed. Richard Barth, Brahms Briefwechsel, 4 (Berlin, 1908), 150, trans. Life and Letters, 672.Google Scholar

12 ‘Ich habe mein H dur-Trio noch einmal geschrieben.‘ Brahms to Clara Schumann, 3 September 1889; Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms, ed. Litzmann, ii, 393.Google Scholar

13 ‘Popper hat meine Umarbeitung so gut gefallen, daß er mich gebeten hat, alle seine Werke umzuarbeiten.‘ Quoted in Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel, ed. Otto Gottlieb-Billroth (Berlin and Vienna, 1935), 461.Google Scholar

14 ‘Wegen des verneuerten Trios muß ich noch ausdrücklich sagen, daß das alte zwar schlecht ist, ich aber nicht behaupte, das neue sei gut!‘ Brahms to Simrock, 13 December 1890; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Fritz Simrock, ed. Kalbeck, ii, 37.Google Scholar

15 ‘Was Sie mit dem alten anfangen, ob Sie es einschmelzen oder auch neu drucken, ist mir, im Ernst, ganz einerlei.’ Brahms to Simrock, 13 December 1890; ibid., 37, trans. Life and Letters, 678. ‘Was mit der alten Ausgabe geschehen soll: es ist wirklich unnütz, darüber zu reden und zu beschließen – nur meine ich, man kann sie nicht wohl jetzt mit der neuen Ausgabe zugleich anzeigen. Wird sie verlangt, so schicken Sie sie, und scheint es Ihnen eines Tags nötig oder wünschenswert, so drucken Sie sie neu (lassen ja auch möglicherweise die neue Ausgabe eingehen!).’ Brahms to Simrock, 29 December 1890; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Fritz Simrock, ed. Kalbeck, ii, 38–9.Google Scholar

16 David Brodbeck suggests that the trio was actually ‘the product of the following spring, at which point it enters the composer's correspondence with Joachim’. ‘Medium and Meaning: New Aspects of the Chamber Music’, The Cambridge Companion to Brahms, ed. Michael Musgrave (Cambridge, 1999), 98–132 (pp. 122–7: on p. 298 n. 42).Google Scholar

17 On Brahms and Kreisler, see Floros, Constantin, Brahms und Bruckner: Studien zur musikalischen Exegetik (Wiesbaden, 1980), 84–98; Siegfried Kross, ‘Brahms and E. T. A. Hoffmann’, 19th-century Music, 5 (1981–2), 193–200; Antonio Baldassarre, ‘Johannes Brahms and Johannes Kreisler: Creativity and Aesthetics of the Young Brahms Illustrated by the Piano Trio in B Major, Opus 8’, Acta musicologica, 72 (2000), 145–67; and Heinz Gärtner, Johannes Brahms: ‘Trüge ich nicht den Namen Kreisler': Biografie eines Doppellebens (Munich, 2003). Bozarth offers a thoughtful reading of Brahms and Kreisler vis-à-vis the inception of the First Piano Concerto in ‘Brahms's First Piano Concerto Op. 15‘, 230–8.Google Scholar

18 Hoffmann, E. T. A., trans. Max Knight, ‘Johannes Kreisler's Certificate of Apprenticeship’, 19th-Century Music, 5 (1981–2), 189–92; the piece appeared as ‘Johannes Kreislers Lehrbrief in Hoffmann's Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier, published in 1815. See also Martyn Clarke's translation in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton (Cambridge, 1989), 159–65. More than 40 years after the fact, Joseph Joachim recalled the extent of Kreisler's influence on the young Brahms: ‘Wohl war dieser Jüngling Johannes, Johannes Kreisler junior, wie der dem weltlichen Getriebe abgewendete Neunzehnjährige sich mit Vorliebe nannte, mit seinem reichen Gemüt, seiner Sehnsucht nach dem Unendlichen, tief von dem Zauber der Romantik umfangen.’ Quoted in Über Brahms, ed. Renate Hofmann and Kurt Hofmann (Stuttgart, 1997), 216.Google Scholar

19 ‘Die Form ist etwas durch tausendjährige Bestrebungen der vorzüglichsten Meister gebildetes, das sich jeder Nachkommende nicht schnell genug zu eigen machen kann. – Ein höchst törichter Wahn übelverstandener Originalität würde es sein, wenn da jeder wieder auf eigenem Wege herumsuchen und herumtappen wollte, um das zu finden, was schon in großer Vollkommenheit vorhanden ist.‘ Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein: Aussprüche von Dichtern, Philosophen und Künstlern, zusammengetragen durch Johannes Brahms, ed. Carl Krebs (Berlin, 1909), 143.Google Scholar

20 ‘Ich habe oft Streit mit mir, das heißt, Kreisler und Brahms streiten sich. Aber sonst hat jeder seine entschiedene Meinung und ficht die durch. Diesmal jedoch waren sie beide ganz konfus, keiner wußte, was er wollte, höchst possierlich war's anzusehen. Übrigens standen mir fast die Tränen in den Augen.’ Brahms to Clara Schumann, 15 August 1854; Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms, ed. Litzmann, i, 9, trans. Life and Letters, 51. Floros draws close parallels between the characterization of Florestan and Eusebius on the one hand and Kreisler and Brahms on the other: ‘“Brahms” ist still, scheu, zurückhaltend, diszipliniert, “Kreisler” dagegen impulsiv, erregbar, leidenschaftlich, unbeherrscht und unberechenbar.’ Constantin Floros, Johannes Brahms: ‘Frei, aber einsam': Ein Leben für eine poetische Musik (Zurich, 1997), 36.Google Scholar

21 For this reason, I follow David Brodbeck in referring to op. 8 as the Trio in B (rather than B major). Among Brahms's other chamber works, the Piano Trio in C minor, op. 101, forms the most obvious parallel: all four of its movements are in C, three in minor and one in major. Likewise, all four movements of the Horn Trio, op. 40, are in E♭, three in major and one in minor, although the characteristics of the natural horn may well have contributed to this work's monotonality. In all three cases, it is possible that Beethoven's Piano Sonatas in E, op. 14 no. 1, op. 90 and op. 109, ‘Pastoral’ Sonata, op. 28, and String Quartet in E minor, op. 59 no. 2, provided Brahms with monotonal models.Google Scholar

22 See, for instance, the attitude of Kreisler (and, conversely, that of the dilettantes) to the ‘Goldberg’ Variations, BWV 988, as described in ‘Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler's Musical Sufferings’, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Musical Writings, ed. Charlton, 84–5.Google Scholar

23 Brahms's respect for the past and his keen interest in contrapuntal procedure were soon to be expressed even more literally in his exchange of counterpoint exercises with Joachim. See Brodbeck, David, ‘The Brahms–Joachim Counterpoint Exchange; or, Robert, Clara, and “the Best Harmony between Jos. and Joh.”’, Brahms Studies 1, ed. Brodbeck (Lincoln, NE, 1994), 30–80, and William Horne, ‘Through the Aperture: Brahms's Gigues, WoO 4’, Musical Quarterly, 86 (2002), 530–81.Google Scholar

24 James Webster, ‘Schubert's Sonata Form and Brahms's First Maturity’, 19th-Century Music, 2 (1978–9), 18–35 (part 1), and 3 (1979_80), 52–71 (part 2) (p. 59). If the exposition contravenes Beethovenian norms, its lyricism and tripartite structure hint at connections with Schubert along the lines that Webster establishes in his article; however, Brahms's dalliance with the subdominant has no Schubertian precedent.Google Scholar

25 Nicholas Cook, ‘Performing Rewriting and Rewriting Performance: The First Movement of Brahms's Piano Trio, op. 8‘, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie, 4 (1999), 227–34 (pp. 232n, 229).Google Scholar

26 See Ratner, Leonard, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York, 1980); Wye J. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago and London, 1983); and V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, NJ, 1991).Google Scholar

27 Agawu, Playing with Signs, 137, 142.Google Scholar

28 Jonathan Bellman, Aus alten Märchen: The Chivalric Style of Schumann and Brahms’, Journal of Musicology, 13 (1995), 117–35. Such a style manifested in music what Jürgen Habermas described as ‘romantic modernism’, exponents of which ‘looked for a new historical epoch and found it in the idealized Middle Ages’. Habermas, trans. Seyla Ben-Habib, ‘Modernity: An Incomplete Project’, The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA, 1983), 1–15 (p. 2).Google Scholar

29 Bellman, ‘Aus alten Märchen‘, 119.Google Scholar

30 Horne, ‘Brahms's Op. 10 Ballades and his Blätter aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers’, Journal of Musicology, 15 (1997), 98–115. For a broader consideration of the ballade genre, see Günther Wagner, Die Klavierballade um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1976), esp. pp. 71–142.Google Scholar

31 Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1909–14), i, 149. It seems likely that Kalbeck's terminology referred to Brahms's proposed Blätter aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers.Google Scholar

32 Christopher Reynolds, ‘A Choral Symphony by Brahms?‘, 19th-Century Music, 9 (1985–6), 3–25.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 20.Google Scholar

34 Hess, Carol A., ‘“Als wahres volles Menschenbild”: Brahms's Rinaldo and Autobiographical Allusion’, Brahms Studies 2, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln, NE, 1998), 63–89 (p. 86).Google Scholar

35 Georg Borchardt, ‘Ein Viertonmotiv als melodische Komponente in Werken von Brahms’, Brahms und seine Zeit, ed. Constantin Floros, Hans Joachim Marx and Peter Petersen (Hamburg, 1984), 101–12.Google Scholar

36 Charles Rosen, for instance, has inveighed against the ‘decoders’ of thematic allusion in general and the attribution of meaning to the motif in particular. Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2000), 184–5.Google Scholar

37 Heinz Becker, ‘Das volkstümliche Idiom in Brahmsens Kammermusik’, Brahms und seine Zeit, ed. Floros, Marx and Petersen, 87–99 (p. 89).Google Scholar

38 For Dillon Parmer, the piece's unusual tonal trajectory represents ‘the complete antithesis of Romantic heroism’. ‘Brahms, Song Quotation, and Secret Programs’, 19th-Century Music, 19 (1995–6), 161–90 (p. 182). In similar vein, Kenneth Hull suggests that the allusive relationship between passages in symphonies by Beethoven and Brahms indicates the latter's anti-heroism. ‘Allusive Irony in Brahms's Fourth Symphony’, Brahms Studies 2, ed. Brodbeck, 135–68 (pp. 137–40).Google Scholar

39 Matthias Schmidt locates the meaning of the motif in Brahms's lifelong attachment to this folk song: ‘Die bevorzugte Viertonwendung des Volkslied-Incipts von “Verstohlen geht der Mond auf” (Quart- und zwei Sekundintervalle in aufsteigender Folge) findet sich tatsächlich in zahlreichen Brahms-Werken thematisch aufgehoben: vom Allegro con moto oder dem Scherzo des op. 8-Trios bis zum Andante des Doppelkonzertes op. 102.‘ Johannes Brahms: Ein Versuch über die musikalische Selbstreflexion (Wilhelmshaven, 2000), 103.Google Scholar

40 These songs include Ach, englische Schäferin, WoO 33 no. 8; Maria ging aus wandern, no. 14; Mir ist ein schön's braun's Maidelein, no. 24; Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus, no. 31; Och Moder, ich well en Ding han!, no. 33; Soll sich der Mond nicht heller scheinen, no. 35; Es wohnet ein Fiedler, no. 36; Du mein einzig Licht, no. 37; Des Abends kann ich nicht schlafen gehen, no. 38; Ich weiß mir'n Maidelein, no. 40; and Es saß ein schneeweiß Vögelein, no. 45. In addition, the motif opens Vor dem Fenster, op. 14 no. 1; the Marienlieder, op. 22 nos. 1 and 2 (and the middle section of no. 4); Sandmännchen, WoO 31 no. 4; the Vineta (Aus des Meeres tiefem Grunde), op. 42 no. 2; Sonntag, op. 47 no. 3; and All meine Herzgedanken, op. 62 no. 5.Google Scholar

41 ‘Mir sehen sie in der neuen Gestalt noch viel zu ordentlich und ängstlich, ja fast philisterhaft aus. Ich kann mich noch immer nicht daran gewöhnen, die unschuldigen Natursöhne in so anständiger Kleidung zu sehen.‘ Brahms to Clara Schumann, December 1853; Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms, ed. Litzmann, i, 3, trans. Life and Letters, 30. Brahms's clinging to the Kreisler persona could be interpreted as a symptom of the same unwillingness to set himself before the public.Google Scholar

42 The issue of Brahms and allusion has received much recent attention. See, for instance, Kenneth Hull, ‘Brahms the Allusive: Extra-Compositional Reference in the Instrumental Music of Johannes Brahms’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1989), and ‘Allusive Irony in Brahms's Fourth Symphony’; Dillon Parmer, ‘Brahms and the Poetic Motto: A Hermeneutic Aid?’, Journal of Musicology, 15 (1997), 353–89, and ‘Brahms, Song Quotation, and Secret Programs'; Raymond Knapp, ‘Brahms and the Anxiety of Allusion’, Journal of Musicological Research, 18 (1998), 1–30, and ‘Utopian Agendas: Variation, Allusion, and Referential Meaning in Brahms's Symphonies’, Brahms Studies 3, ed. Brodbeck (Lincoln, NE, 2001), 129–89; Margaret Notley, ‘Discourse and Allusion: The Chamber Music of Brahms’, Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music, ed. Stephen E. Hefling (New York, 1998), 242–86; and Christopher Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2003).Google Scholar

43 Schubring's writings on Brahms have been translated by Walter Frisch as ‘Five Early Works by Brahms’, Brahms and his World, ed. Frisch (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 103–22. See also Frisch's ‘Brahms and Schubring: Musical Criticism and Politics at Mid-Century’, 19th-Century Music, 7 (1983–4). 271–81.Google Scholar

44 Adolf Schubring, ‘Schumanniana Nr. 8: Die Schumann'sche Schule, IV: Johannes Brahms’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 14 (1862), 109–10, trans. Frisch, ‘Five Early Works by Brahms’, 116–17. The Trio in B was performed in Boston on 26 December 1855, after which an unnamed critic anticipated Schubring in reporting ‘no clear impression of [the piece] as an artistic whole’ and described it as ‘strange’, ‘episodical’ and ‘wayward’. Quoted in Michael Struck, ‘Zwischen Alter und Neuer Welt: Unbekannte Dokumente zur Uraufführung und frühen Rezeption des Klaviertrios Op. 8 von Johannes Brahms in der Erstfassung’, Traditionen – Neuansätze: Für Anna Amalie Abert (1906–1996), ed. Klaus Hortschansky (Tutzing, 1997), 663–76 (p. 673).Google Scholar

45 Adolf Schubring, ‘Die Schumann'sche Schule: Schumann und Brahms. Brahms's vierhändige Schumann-Variationen’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1868), 41–2, 49–51, trans. Frisch, ‘Brahms and Schubring’, 275.Google Scholar

46 Adolf Schubring, ‘Ein deutsches Requiem … von Johannes Brahms’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 4 (1869), 9–11, 18–20, trans. Frisch, Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1984), 31.Google Scholar

47 ‘Ich streite, daß in Nr. 3 die Themen der verschiedenen Sätze etwas miteinander gemein haben sollen. (Ausgenommen das kleine Motiv ) Ist es nun doch so (ich rufe mir absichtlich nichts ins Gedächtnis zurück): So will ich kein Lob dafür, sondern bekennen, daß meine Gedanken beim Arbeiten nicht weit genug fliegen, also unabsichtlich öfter mit demselben zurückkommen. Will ich jedoch dieselbe Idee beibehalten, so soll man sie schon in jeder Verwandlung, Vergrößerung, Umkehrung deutlich erkennen. Das andere wäre schlimme Spielerei und immer ein Zeichen armseligster Erfindung.’ Brahms to Schubring, 17 February 1869; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Viktor Widmann, Ellen und Ferdinand Vetter, Adolf Schubring, ed. Max Kalbeck, Brahms Briefwechsel, 8 (Berlin, 1915), 216; trans. Frisch, Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation, 31–2; translation adapted after Giselher Schubert, ‘Themes and Double Themes: The Problem of the Symphonic in Brahms’, 19th-century Music, 18 (1994–5), 10–23 (p. 21n), and Life and Letters, 383. Also see Friedrich Krummacher's commentary on this letter in ‘Reception and Analysis: On the Brahms Quartets, Op. 51, Nos. 1 and 2‘, 19th-century Music, 18 (1994–5), 24–45 (pp. 31–2).Google Scholar

48 Adolf Schubring, ‘Schumann und der Großvater’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 53 (1860), 29–30.Google Scholar

49 Paul Netti traced the Großvatertanz back to a seventeenth-century balletto by the Viennese composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and links it directly to the quodlibet from Bach's ‘Goldberg’ Variations (Example 3c) in ‘Bach and Volksmusik’, The Little Bach Book, ed. Theodore Hoelty-Nickel (Valparaiso, IN, 1950), 123–33.Google Scholar

50 Carl Koßmaly, ‘Ueber Robert Schumanns Claviercompositionen’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 46 (1844), col. 36, cited in R. Larry Todd, ‘On Quotation in Schumann's Music’, Schumann and his World, ed. Todd (Princeton, NJ, 1994), 80–112 (p. non). Papillons and Carnaval aside, Todd enumerates no fewer than 12 instances of the Großvatertanz identified within Schumann's oeuvre by Schubring (pp. 85–91).Google Scholar

51 Anthony Newcomb, ‘The Hunt for Reminiscences in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, Music and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Essays, ed. Karol Berger and Newcomb (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2005), 111–35 (p. 112); see also Reynolds, Motives for Allusion, 3–4.Google Scholar

52 Newcomb, ‘The Hunt for Reminiscences’, 117.Google Scholar

53 In Kalbeck's account, the exchange unfolded thus: ‘Es ist merkwürdig, wie das C-Dur-Thema in Ihrem Finale dem Freudenthema der “Neunten” ähnelt.’ ‘Jawohl, und noch merkwürdiger ist, daß das jeder Esel gleich hört.’ Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, iii, 109n.Google Scholar

54 ‘Er wird wohl das wunderbare Hornsolo in der Introduktion des letzten Satzes aus irgendeinem der sechsundsiebzig Leitmotive der Nibelungen herleiten!’ Theodor Billroth to Brahms, 10 December 1876; Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel, ed. Gottlieb-Billroth, 226. Billroth was not too far off the mark: ‘You won't believe what criminal charges the little Beethoven reminiscence from the Ninth has brought you in Leipzig’, wrote Schubring, only half-jokingly. Quoted in David Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony No. 1 (Cambridge, 1997), 66. The practice continued after Brahms's death: Donald Francis Tovey wrote in 1929 that Brahms's Sonata for Piano and Violin in A, op. 100, was ‘sometimes known by the “mutton-head” title of “Meistersinger” sonata because of its first three notes’. Quoted in Margaret Notley, ‘Brahms's Chamber-Music Summer of 1886: A Study of Opera 99, 100, 101, and 108’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1992), 58. Of course, the First Symphony's ‘Hornsolo’ has a history beyond the reach of Wagner's influence. In general terms, its evocation of Alpine peaks relied on the motif in retrograde; more specifically, Brahms had sent the theme as a birthday greeting to Clara Schumann in 1868 (reproduced in Life and Letters, 368).Google Scholar

55 ‘Ich bitte Dich, mache keine Dummheiten. Eines der dümmsten Kapitel der dummen Leute ist das von den Reminiszenzen. … Verdirb nicht, rühr nicht daran! – Eigentlich hätte ich nichts sagen und hernach mir das herrenlose Gut nehmen sollen. Keine Note darfst du daran ändern. Schließlich weißt Du natürlich, daß ich bei der Gelegenheit auch und viel schlimmer gestohlen habe.’ Quoted in Herttrich, ‘Johannes Brahms – Klaviertrio H-Dur Opus 8’, 230. For commentary on Brahms's exchange with Dessoff see Brodbeck, David, ‘Brahms's Mendelssohn’, Brahms Studies 2, ed. Brodbeck, 209–31 (pp. 226–30); Parmer, ‘Brahms, Song Quotation, and Secret Programs’, 162; and Newcomb, ‘The Hunt for Reminiscences’, 125–7.Google Scholar

56 At first, Brahms had merely wished to indicate that the theme was not his by marking it with the designation ‘alienum’; its non-Brahmsness was more significant than its Scarlattiness (see Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony No. 1, 65–6). George Henschel claimed that mentioning Scarlatti by name was his own idea. Henschel, Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms (Boston, MA, 1907), 33. Applauding Brahms's acknowledgment as a canny pre-emption of his critics' attacks, Schubring suggested that he should similarly credit Beethoven for the Freudenthema-inspired melody in the finale of the First Symphony, to which it seems unlikely that Brahms would have responded positively. Quoted in Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony No. 1, 66–7.Google Scholar

57 ‘Auf die Form wie auf den Geist der ersten Periode hat ohne Zweifel der letzte Beethoven einen großen Einfluß gehabt. Um den Genius dieses Meisters scheint Denken und Sinnen des jungen Brahms wie um eine Sonne gekreist zu haben. In einem Werke, dem in vielfacher Beziehung hochinteressanten Trio op. 8, findet dieser Kultus einen geradezu rührenden Ausdruck. Das zweite Thema in seinem letzten Satze, vom Cello so schön eingeführt, es ist eine offenbare Umspielung vom Hauptgesang aus Beethovens “Liederkreis an die ferne Geliebte” – dieselbe Melodie, die am Ende des Werkes die Worte der Widmung trägt: “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder”. Man begegnet dieser Art symbolischer Verwendung bedeutender Melodien in den Kompositionen von Brahms bis in die neueste Zeit herein. Den Kenner heimelt das an, den Uneingeweihten stört es nicht, da diese poetischen Bezüge in vollendeter musikalischer Natürlichkeit gemacht und verwertet sind. Den “Liederkreis” Beethovens speziell glauben wir in dem Liede “Aus der Heimat hinter den Blitzen rot” [op. 3 no. 5] nochmals berührt zu sehen.’ Hermann Kretzschmar, ‘Johannes Brahms’, Gesammelte Aufsätze über Musik aus den Grenzboten (Leipzig, 1910), 151–207 (p. 158). Tellingly, the text of Brahms's op. 3 no. 5, better known as In der Fremde, had been set by Schumann as the opening song of his Eichendorff-Lieder, op. 39.Google Scholar

58 See Sams, Eric, ‘Brahms and his Clara Themes’, Musical Times, 112 (1971), 432–4; Hull, ‘Brahms the Allusive’, 237–8; and Brodbeck, ‘Medium and Meaning’, 123–7.Google Scholar

59 See Marston, Nicholas, Schumann: Fantasie, Op. 17 (Cambridge, 1992), 36–7, and ‘Voicing Beethoven's Distant Beloved’, Beethoven and his World, ed. Scott Burnham and Michael Steinberg (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 124–47; Todd, ‘On Quotation in Schumann's Music’, 92–5; and Berthold Hoeckner, ‘Schumann and Romantic Distance’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50 (1997), 55–132. A similar melodic outline appears in bars 32–4 of Süsser Freund, du blickest, the sixth song of Schumann's Frauenliebe und -Leben, op. 42.Google Scholar

60 Brodbeck, ‘Medium and Meaning’, 299n.Google Scholar

61 ‘In the Adagio … an annoying similarity… bothered the composer’, and the uneasiness that he experienced on its account ‘compelled him to a complete revision of the … movement.‘ Hans Gál, trans. Joseph Stein, Johannes Brahms: His Work and Personality (New York, 1963), 161–2.Google Scholar

62 Sams, ‘Brahms and his Clara Themes’, 433. Parmer follows Sams in suggesting that the Am Meer reference invites a reading of the poem in terms of Brahms's thwarted love for Clara. ‘Brahms, Song Quotation, and Secret Programs’, 183–5.Google Scholar

63 ‘Mochte das ursprüngliche Seitenthema wegen seiner auffallenden Ähnlichkeit mit Schubert's Lied Am Meer oder wegen anderer Eigenschaften die strengere Prüfung nicht mehr bestanden haben.’ Eusebius Mandyczewski, review of the revised op. 8, Deutsche Kunst- und Musik-Zeitung, 1 March 1890, 61. Perhaps the blatant parallel fifths in the piano's left hand at the theme's reprise (bars 50–2), partially mitigated by the theme's pastoral topos, were among the other factors that Mandyczewski had in mind. Eduard Hanslick and Kalbeck echoed Mandyczewski's observation of the similarity to Am Meer. Hanslick, Aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers: Kritiken und Schilderungen (Berlin, 1892), 321; Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, i, 152. For a consideration of Schubert's influence on Brahms, see Pascali, ‘“My love of Schubert – no fleeting fancy”: Brahms's Response to Schubert’, Schubert durch die Brille, 21 (1998), 39–60, and Webster, ‘Schubert's Sonata Form and Brahms's First Maturity’.Google Scholar

64 While most commentators on allusion test their observations against evidence of compositional intention, Knapp has stressed the listener's role, arguing that allusiveness is aesthetic rather than poietic. ‘Utopian Agendas’, 172–4. Similarly, James Hepokoski argues that ‘more germane than disputing whether this or that allusion is “really there” is the task of attuning ourselves to the generalised aesthetic invitation to hear ad hoc allusions at all – and recognising that invitation as a central component of the music’ ‘Beethoven Reception: The Symphonic Tradition’, The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge, 2002), 424–59 (p. 437).Google Scholar

65 Quoted in Henschel, Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms, 22. By refusing to take credit for the song's melody, perhaps Brahms was also tacitly acknowledging its indebtedness to Chopin's Impromptu in Fl, op. 36 (Example 3g); for a penetrating analysis of these and other issues arising from Brahms's comment, see Reynolds, Motives for Allusion, 104–17. Robert Haven Schauffler, whose testimony is not always reliable, reported that Brahms made a similar remark on the relationship of inspiration and perspiration to Arthur Abell: ‘My themes come to me in a flash. They are intuitive. Long after their arrival I take them up and work very hard over them.‘ The Unknown Brahms: His Life, Character, and Works (New York, 1933), 171–2.Google Scholar

66 Reynolds, Motives for Allusion, 106–7; Hoffmann, trans. Knight, ‘Johannes Kreisler's Certificate of Apprenticeship’, 190.Google Scholar

67 Heinrich Schenker, ‘Erinnerungen an Brahms’, Deutsche Zeitschrift, 46 (1933), 476–7, trans. William Pastille, ‘Schenker's Brahms’, American Brahms Society Newsletter, 5/2 (1987), 1–2 (p. 2). Schenker cherished Brahms's caustic comments as ‘treasures’, and berated his fellow aspiring composers for failing to value them.Google Scholar

68 The remark was attributed to Brahms by Israel Citkowitz in 1933, quoted in William Pastille, ‘Heinrich Schenker, Anti-Organicist’, 19th-Century Music, 8 (1984–5), 29–36 (p. 29). Its appeal is so alluring that Pastille could not help but express his desire to believe it: ‘This remark, if authentic – and one hopes it is …‘ (ibid). Similarly, Brahms is rumoured to have recommended Schenker's compositions to Simrock, but there is no reliable corroboration; the caustic comments that Schenker reported hardly make it seem likely.Google Scholar

69 Quoted in Sandra McColl, Music Criticism in Vienna 1896–1897: Critically Moving Forms (Oxford, 1996), 163.Google Scholar

70 Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 98–100.Google Scholar

71 On the Viennese theoretical tradition and the positions of Sechter, Bruckner, Schenker and Schoenberg within it, see Robert W. Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg (Ann Arbor, MI, 1985). On Schenker's critical activities at the turn of the century, see Karnes, Kevin, ‘Heinrich Schenker and Musical Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 2001).Google Scholar

72 Smith, Peter H., ‘Brahms and Schenker: A Mutual Response to Sonata Form’, Music Theory Spectrum, 16 (1994), 77–103; a revised version of this article appears as Chapter 4 of Smith's Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in his Werther Quartet (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2005), 108–21.Google Scholar

73 Gustav Jenner, trans. Susan Gillespie, ‘Brahms as Man, Teacher, and Artist’, Brahms and his World, ed. Frisch, 198–9.Google Scholar

74 Heinrich Schenker, trans. Paul Mast, ‘Commentary on Brahms's Octaven und Quinten u. A.‘, Music Forum, 5 (1980), 142–92 (p. 151). It is notable how Schenker exerted his accumulated authority in his critical discussion of Brahms's interpretations of his examples, treating Brahms as an equal at best.Google Scholar

75 ‘Alle, die immer wieder zu den Urprinzipien zurückkehrten und Kenntnisse und Fertigkeiten beobachtend, lernend, übend ausbildeten, sind tüchtig geworden.‘ Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein, ed. Krebs, 62.Google Scholar

76 ‘Das as im Baß richtig, weil's weiter tonweise in der Stimme geht as, b, c, d.’ Brahms to Clara Schumann, 20 August 1855; Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms, ed. Litzmann, i, 132, trans. Life and Letters, 108. Avins comments that ‘[Brahms's] ear has picked out the harmonic motion in a manner more akin to the musical thought of a later generation. … Even his method of notation, showing Clara the notes her ears should concentrate on, harkens forward to the structural hearing practices of a later time’ (p. 109). What had puzzled Clara is unclear; perhaps she had thought that the al in question might have been a b♭. The a♭ that Brahms preferred may have struck her as dubious because it lacks a resolving g.Google Scholar

77 Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 102.Google Scholar

78 Schenker, essay on Eugen d'Albert of 1894, trans. Karnes, ‘Heinrich Schenker and Musical Thought’, 183.Google Scholar

79 Schenker, lecture and essay ‘Der Geist der musikalischen Technik’ of 1895, trans, ibid., 182–3.Google Scholar

80 A parallel might be drawn with Bruckner's reliance on large-scale metrical grids when composing his symphonies, an approach that could also be considered analytical. The difference lies in the fact that Brahms's methods anticipated the dominant strain of analytical discourse in twentieth-century Anglo-American musicology, thus ensuring the esteem in which his music has been held; Bruckner has suffered by comparison.Google Scholar

81 Alexander von Zemlinsky, ‘Brahms und die neuere Generation: Persönliche Erinnerungen’ (1922), trans. Frisch as ‘Brahms and the Newer Generation: Personal Reminiscences’, Brahms and his World, ed. Frisch, 205–7 (p. 206).Google Scholar

82 Schenker made fragmentary, unpublished notes on the Trio in B, preserved in the New York Public Library's Oster Collection, reel 12, nos. 176–87. See Allen Cadwallader and William Pastille, ‘Schenker's Unpublished Work with the Music of Johannes Brahms’, Schenker Studies 2, ed. Carl Schachter and Heidi Siegel (Cambridge, 1999), 26–46.Google Scholar

83 The anecdote is related in Tovey, ‘Brahms’, Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (A–H), ed. Walter Willson Cobbett (London, 1929), 158–82 (p. 162). As a violinist, Joachim was doubtless annoyed at being excluded for so long from his partners' rhapsodizing. Schubring had complained about the violin's ‘superfluous’ contributions, likening them to a canary's chirp. Schubring, trans. Frisch, ‘Five Early Works by Brahms’, 117.Google Scholar

84 Cook links the falling thirds of this theme to the Intermezzi op. 117 nos. 2 and 3 and op. 119 no. 1 (‘Performing Rewriting and Rewriting Performance’, 228n), although in his riposte to Cook's article Paul Scheepers disputes the distinction between themes characteristic of ‘early’ and ‘late’ Brahms. ‘What Incoherence? A Response to Nicholas Cook’, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie, 4 (1999), 235–7 (p. 235). My own position on this issue will emerge below.Google Scholar

85 Edward T. Cone notes the derivation of the closing theme from the second subject in ‘Harmonic Congruence in Brahms’, Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. George Bozarth (Oxford, 1990), 165–88 (pp. 174–7).Google Scholar

86 See Cook, ‘Performing Rewriting and Rewriting Performance’, 228, for an evocative account of the recapitulatory moment, which he uses as the basis for an intriguing distinction between ‘spatial’ repetition in the first version of the movement and ‘psychological’ repetition in the second – although, as he acknowledges, each movement makes use of both kinds of repetition. On Brahms's fondness for such recapitulatory sleight of hand, see Peter H. Smith, ‘Liquidation, Augmentation, and Brahms's Recapitulatory Overlaps’, 19th-Century Music, 17 (1993–4), 237–61.Google Scholar

87 Brahms retained the transition from the Am Meer section to the reprise of the opening theme (bars 58–61 in the first version; bars 66–9 in the second), which evokes the ambiguous relationship between E major and G# minor explicit in the exposition of the first movement of the 1854 version and the recapitulation of its successor. These four bars depart from an E major chord, which is congruent in the first version but surprising in the G# minor context of the revised movement: the only preparation consists of bar 65, in which the piano and strings exchange G# minor and E major chords (seemingly without heeding each other).Google Scholar

88 On the other hand, a pair of suspiciously non-pastoral parallel fifths at bar 24, pointed out by Schubring in his review, is neatly circumvented in the revised version. See Avins, ‘Performing Brahms's Music: Clues from his Letters’, Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style, ed. Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman (Cambridge, 2003), 11–47 (p. 45n).Google Scholar

89 Was für ein prachtvolles, reifes, einheitliches Stück ist dieses Trio geworden! Seit ich es gehört, will mir das Original-Trio gar nicht mehr gefallen.’ Hanslick to Brahms, quoted in Scholz, ‘Zu Johannes Brahms: Klaviertrio in H-Dur op. 8’, 140. Mandyczewski also approved of Brahms's having put right ‘was er in seiner Jugend nicht recht gemacht hatte'. Deutsche Kunst- und Musik-Zeitung, 1 March 1890, 61.Google Scholar

90 ‘Bei dem alt-neuen Trio ging mir's eigen. Im Stillen protestierte etwas in mir gegen die Umarbeitung – es war mir, als hätten Sie kein Recht dazu, in die Jugendzüge, die lieblichen, wenn auch ab und zu verschwommenen, mit Ihrer Meisterhand jetzt hineinzukomponieren, und ich dachte, das kann nimmermehr werden, weil niemand derselbe ist nach so langer Zeit.‘ Elisabet von Herzogenberg to Brahms, 9 October 1890; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Heinrich und Elisabet von Herzogenberg, ed. Max Kalbeck, 2 vols., Brahms Briefwechsel, 1–2 (Berlin, 1907), ii, 241–2.Google Scholar

91 Quoted in Margaret Notley, ‘Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, 19th-century Music, 17 (1993–4), 107–23 (p. 120).Google Scholar

92 Ibid. Helm's stance was relatively broad-minded, although his newspaper (the Deutsche Zeitung) became increasingly anti-Semitic during the late 1880s, as described and contextualized by McColl in Music Criticism in Vienna 1896–1897.Google Scholar

93 ‘Durch diese Composition geht eine Luft, so eisig, naßkalt und neblig, daß einem das Herz erfrieren, der Atem benommen werden möchte; ‘nen Schnupfen könnt’ man sich dabei holen. – Ungesundes Zeug.' Hugo Wolf, review of 30 November 1884; Hugo Wolfs Kritiken im Wiener Salonblatt, ed. Leopold Spitzer and Isabella Sommer, 2 vols. (Vienna, 2002), i, 65.Google Scholar

94 See Joachim Köhler, trans. Ronald Taylor, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation (New Haven, CT, and London, 1998). Köhler remarks that Nietzsche's response to Wagner's music acknowledged how it ‘induces in its listeners a state of extreme physical agitation akin to sexual stimulation’ (p. 163). In this sense, Nietzsche was echoing the criticisms of his nemesis Max Nordau, who condemned both Wagner and Nietzsche for their depravity in his polemical screed Entartung (Berlin, 1893).Google Scholar

95 ‘Brahms … dessen Compositionen Bülow in neuerer Zeit mit geradezu krankhafter Manie sich zuwendet’. Wolf, review of 9 November 1884; Hugo Wolfs Kritiken im Wiener Salonblatt, ed. Spitzer and Sommer, i, 60. Bülow was the soloist in the performance of Brahms's First Piano Concerto that gave Wolf the shivers.Google Scholar

96 ‘Um ihm aber doch beizukommen, schlägt er ihn einfach todt. Nun beginnt seine eigentliche Thätigkeit als Beethoven-Spieler. Sorgfältig wird die Leiche secirt, der Organismus in seine subtilsten Verzweigungen verfolgt, die Eingeweide mit dem Ernste eines Haruspex studirt und der anatomische Cursus nimmt seinen Verlauf. … Indem er uns stets nur das Notengerippe entgegenhält und sich hauptsächlich mit den kunstvoll ineinandergefügten Knochen und Knöchelchen des musikalischen Organismus beschäftigt, wird ihm jedes Kunstwerk ein Todtentanz. … Bülow's technisches Geschick ist in der That ganz erstaunlich und seine unfehlbare Sicherheit: auf den ersten Griff sein Opfer zu verwunden oder zu tödten, geradezu erschreckend. Aber dem toten Körper Seele und Leben einzuathmen, dazu fehlt es ihm ganz und gar an dem nöthigen Impfstoffe. Er ist eben nur ein geschickter Chirurg.‘ Wolf, review of 6 February 1887; Hugo Wolfs Kritiken im Wiener Salonblatt, ed. Spitzer and Sommer, i, 188.Google Scholar

97 ‘Alle lagen sie konsterniert vor diesem Gesalbten, der sich gebärdete, als zeige er uns zum ersten Male das Allerheiligste in strahlender Monstranz. Derweil war es aber nur widerwärtige Anatomie, die er trieb, eine Art Kunstübung, wie wenn man einer antiken Statue alles holde Fleisch abzöge und zwänge einen, vor dem Knochen- und Muskelapparat in Anbetung niederzufallen.’ Brahms to Elisabet von Herzogenberg, 27 March 1881; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Heinrich und Elisabet von Herzogenberg, ed. Kalbeck, i, 145, trans. Robert Philip, ‘Brahms's Musical World: Balancing the Evidence’, Performing Brahms, ed. Musgrave and Sherman, 349–72 (p. 353). Clara Schumann shared such reservations, as did Brahms himself; see Robert Pascali and Philip Weiler, ‘Flexible Tempo and Nuancing in Orchestral Music: Understanding Brahms's View of Interpretation in his Second Piano Concerto and Fourth Symphony’, Performing Brahms, ed. Musgrave and Sherman, 220–43 (p. 230).Google Scholar

98 Felix Weingartner, trans. Maude Barrows Dutton, The Symphony Since Beethoven (Boston, MA, 1904), 60–1, 58 (translation adapted).Google Scholar

99 ‘Ich denke selbstverständlich dabei nicht an das Honorar und weiß wirklich nicht, was ich für das Kastrieren verlangen soll.‘ Brahms to Simrock, 29 December 1890; Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Fritz Simrock, ed. Kalbeck, ii, 39.Google Scholar

100 Roses, Daniel F., ‘Brahms and Billroth’, Surgery Gynecology, and Obstetrics, 163 (1986), 385–98 (p. 390).Google ScholarPubMed

101Daniel F. Roses, ‘Brahms and Billroth’, American Brahms Society Newsletter, 5/1 (1987), 1–5 (p. 3). See also W. Kozuschek and C. Waleczek, ‘Die Entwicklung der Magenchirurgie im 19. Jahrhundert’, Theodor Billroth: Ein Leben für die Chirurgie, ed. Kozuschek, D. Lorenz and H. Thomas (Basle, 1992), 28–51.Google Scholar

102 ‘Ich wollte, ich könnte die Symphonie ganz allein hören, im Dunkeln, und fange an, König Ludwigs Sonderbarkeiten zu verstehen. Alle die dummen, alltäglichen Menschen, von denen man im Konzertsaal umgeben ist und von denen im günstigsten Falle fünfzig Sinn und künstlerische Empfindung genug haben, um ein solches Werk in seinem Kern beim ersten Hören zu erfassen – von Verstehen gar nicht zu reden –, das alles verstimmt mich schon im voraus.‘ Billroth to Brahms, 10 December 1876; Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel, ed. Gottlieb-Billroth, 225. Billroth was referring to Ludwig II of Bavaria, who watched Wagner's music dramas in splendid solitude.Google Scholar

103 ‘Es ist sehr arrogant und doch glaube ich, daß es nicht allzu viele Menschen gibt, die sich so in diese Tongedichte versenken können wie ich; wo finde ich Sänger, die mir das zum vollen Genuß bringen könnten, wie es meiner Phantasie vorklingt? Ich kann mir zum Beispiel gar nicht denken, daß der kürzlich verstorbene Ambros, der doch so musikalisch war, auch nur eine Ahnung davon empfunden hat, was in Deinen Liedern klingt. Selbst Hanslick dürfte nur für wenige derselben die innige Sympathie, dies Aus-der-eigenen-Seele-Herausklingen empfinden, wie ich es empfinde.‘ Billroth to Brahms, 2 July 1876; Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel, ed. Gottlieb-Billroth, 221–2. Billroth's attitude recalls Brahms's remark that he would enjoy the best performance of Fidelio at home with the score, an opinion he later restated vis-à-vis Don Giovanni. Schauffler, The Unknown Brahms, 217.Google Scholar

104 On musical literacy in Vienna over the last quarter of the nineteenth century, see Botstein, Leon, ‘Brahms and his Audience: The Later Viennese Years 1875–1897‘, The Cambridge Companion to Brahms, ed. Musgrave, 51–75 (pp. 60–6).Google Scholar

105 Roses, ‘Brahms and Billroth’, American Brahms Society Newsletter, 5/1, 5.Google Scholar

106 ‘Wissenschaft und Kunst schöpfen aus derselben Quelle.’ Billroth to Brahms, 6 January 1886; Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel, ed. Gottlieb-Billroth, 381. ‘Mit Nerven, Blut und Ernährung ist es wie mit dem Dreiklang; wenn eines unrein oder schwach ist, klingt das Ganze nicht mehr recht zusammen. … Bei Pohl ist die Quinte schwach, und die Terz muß sich über ihre Kräfte anstrengen, sich hörbar zu machen; doch der Dreiklang ist noch da und klingt so rein und lieb, wie selten bei anderen viel stärkeren und gleichmäßig starken Instrumenten.’ Billroth to Brahms, 27 July 1883; ibid., 351.Google Scholar

107 Cited in Oswald Jonas, ‘Adventures with Manuscripts’, Notes, 3 (1946), 135–45 (p. 135).Google Scholar

108 In 1927, Daniel Gregory Mason wrote that Brahms's music conveyed ‘the sense of satisfying poise, self-control, and sanity… Brahms alone has Homeric simplicity, [exhibiting] the primal health of the well-balanced man.‘ Quoted in Michael Musgrave, A Brahms Reader (New Haven, CT, and London, 2000), 247.Google Scholar

109 ‘Schade, daß man dabei keine gründliche praktische Revision durch Streichen und neue, bessere Einschattungen vornehmen kann. Man spielt aber das Leben a vista ab nach einer vom Fatum vorgelegten Partitur mit mehr oder weniger Geschicklichkeit.‘ Billroth to Brahms, 26 April 1890; Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel, ed. Gottlieb-Billroth, 454–5.Google Scholar

110 Spitta was the dedicatee of Brahms's op. 74 motets and encouraged Brahms's interest in Schütz and Gabrieli; Brahms worked with Chrysander on his complete edition of Handel's music. Jahn and Nottebohm were also good friends of Brahms's.Google Scholar

111 Heinrich Schenker, ‘Johannes Brahms’, trans. William Pastille, American Brahms Society Newsletter, 9/1 (1991), 1–3 (pp. 2–3). While Schenker's verdict belies his later work, he was in line with many other finde-siècle Viennese critics who privileged the immediacy of experience over the mediation of reflection, discussed by Notley in ‘Brahms as Liberal’.Google Scholar

112 See Cook, ‘Performing Rewriting and Rewriting Performance’, 229–30.Google Scholar

113 Tranquillo appears in the finale of the Piano Quartet in C minor, op. 60 (bar 351), the first movement of the Violin Sonata in G, op. 78 (bar 159), the slow movement of the Piano Trio in C, op. 87 (bar 156), the first movement of the Violin Sonata in D minor, op. 108 (bar 236), and the first movement and finale of the Clarinet Sonata in E♭, op. 120 no. 2 (bar 98). Beyond chamber music, the indication appears toward the end of Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras from Ein deutsches Requiem. Avins has pointed out that Brahms agreed with his editor, Robert Keller, when he suggested that there was a difference between Tranquillo, indicating an expressive change of tempo, and tranquillo, a simple warning against rushing. ‘Performing Brahms's Music’, 22–3. According to Tovey's report from an associate of Joachim's, tranquillo ‘always with Brahms… meant a decidedly slower tempo’. Cited in Sherman, ‘How Different was Brahms's Playing Style from Our Own?’, Performing Brahms, ed. Musgrave and Sherman, 1–10 (p. 8n). Fanny Davies, who performed the Trio in B with Joachim and the cellist Alfredo Piatti in 1891, indicated in her copy of the score that while the first movement should start at , the Tranquillo section should be played at . Cited in Bozarth, ‘Fanny Davies and Brahms's Late Chamber Music’, Performing Brahms, ed. Musgrave and Sherman, 170–219 (p. 185).Google Scholar

114 Reinhold Brinkmann, trans. Peter Palmer, Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1995), 220–6.Google Scholar

115 Schoenberg famously exposed the thirds that constitute the opening theme of the Fourth Symphony in his lecture-cum-essay ‘Brahms the Progressive’, reprinted in both forms in Thomas Nelson McGeary, ‘Schoenberg's Brahms Lecture of 1933’, Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, 15/2 (1992), 5–99. More recently, Brahms's chains of thirds have been associated with notions of death and fate: see Kross, Siegfried, ‘Die Terzenkette bei Brahms und ihre Konnotationen’, Die Sprache der Musik: Festschrift Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Jobst Peter Fricke (Regensburg, 1989), 335–46, and Hull, ‘Allusive Irony in Brahms’ Fourth Symphony’, 137–40.Google Scholar

116 See Bozarth, George, ‘Brahms's Lieder ohne Worte: The “Poetic” Andantes of the Piano Sonatas’, Brahms Studies, ed. Bozarth, 345–78; Parmer, ‘Brahms and the Poetic Motto’; and John Rink, ‘Opposition and Integration in the Piano Music’, The Cambridge Companion to Brahms, ed. Musgrave, 79–97 (pp. 81–5).Google Scholar

117 ‘Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint, / Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint / Und halten sich selig umfangen.‘Google Scholar

118 Schubring, trans. Frisch, ‘Five Early Works by Brahms’, 114.Google Scholar

119 Ibid. Frisch (p. 12211) identifies the folk song as Treue Liebe, which appeared with Hauff's text in Friedrich Silcher, rev. Alfred Dörfel, 100 Volkslieder für eine Singstimme mit Begleitung des Pianoforte (Leipzig, n.d.), 76. It opens with the motif.Google Scholar

120 Perhaps the scherzo, which opens with a clear allusion to the finale of Mendelssohn's Piano Trio in C minor, op. 66, could have originally been Brahms's ‘Reminiscences of Mendelssohn’, a work that he played for Clara Schumann and planned to publish as part of the ‘Leaves from a Musician's Diary, edited by Young Kreisler’. Such a scenario would dovetail with the hypothesis Home sets forth in ‘Brahms's Op. 10 Ballades and his Blätter aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers‘.Google Scholar

121 Noted in Bozarth, ‘Brahms's Lieder ohne Worte’, 348–9.Google Scholar

122 Ibid., 360.Google Scholar

123 Something similar had happened with Robert Schumann's ‘In der Nacht’, from the Fantasiestücke, op. 12, which also opens with a melody (see Example 31). Robert told Clara how he had found the story of Hero and Leander within the piece after he had written it, and how the tale had made him think of his own beloved: ‘I imagine Hero to be just like you, and if you were sitting in a lighthouse, I'd probably learn how to swim, too.’ Robert Schumann to Clara Wieck, 21 April 1838; The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, ed. Eva Weissweiler, trans. Hildegard Fritsch and Ronald L. Crawford (New York, 1994), i, 158. An additional connection between Clara and the Andante of Brahms's op. 5 is provided by the Adagio of the First Piano Concerto, which Brahms called ‘a tender portrait’ of her. (Auch male ich an einem sanften Porträt von Dir, das dann Adagio werden soll.' Brahms to Clara Schumann, 30 December 1856; Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms, ed. Litzmann, i, 198.) The two movements share a distinctive cadential gesture (bars 183–5 in op. 5; bars 12–13 in op. 15).Google Scholar

124 Davies entered in her score at this point that ‘sostenuto by Brahms actually means “slower tempo as though one could not get enough richness out of the sentence –”'. Quoted in Bozarth, ‘Fanny Davies and Brahms's Late Chamber Music’, 185.Google Scholar

125 Brodbeck, ‘Medium and Meaning’, 126. Brodbeck's terminology is apt, given Brahms's description of the revised Trio as a ‘castration’. Tovey also found the revised finale somewhat unsparing: ‘The new [version of op. 8] is not an unmixed gain upon the old, especially in the finale where the experienced Brahms grips the young Brahms so roughly by the shoulder as to make us doubt whether a composer so angry with the sentimentalities of his own youth would not be over-ready to tease and bully, or, still worse, to ignore young composers anxious to learn but less sure of their ground.’ ‘Brahms’, 163.Google Scholar

126 Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms (London, 1990), 341.Google Scholar

127 Quoted in MacDonald, Brahms, 339.Google Scholar

128 Daniel Beller-McKenna discusses the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, op. 109, in this political context in Brahms and the German Spirit (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2004), 133–64.Google Scholar

129 S⊘ren Kierkegaard, trans. Alastair Hannay, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (London, 1992), 235.Google Scholar

130 Ibid., 236.Google Scholar

131 Kevin Korsyn, ‘Brahms Research and Aesthetic Ideology’, Music Analysis, 12 (1993), 89–103. Korsyn borrows the phrase ‘controlled pseudo-ambiguities’ from Paul de Man, ‘The Dead-End of Formalist Criticism’, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (Minneapolis, 1983), 229–45 (p. 236).Google Scholar

132 Cook, ‘Performing Rewriting and Rewriting Performance’, 233–4.Google Scholar

133 Scheepers, ‘What Incoherence?‘, 236.Google Scholar

134 Hans Gál, ‘Editor's Commentary’, Johannes Brahms: Complete Piano Trios (New York, 1988), p. v.Google Scholar

135 Scheepers, ‘What Incoherence?‘, 235.Google Scholar

136 ‘The youth's face / is a poem. / In a man's face / one reads history.’ Quoted and translated in George Bozarth, ‘Johannes Brahms's Collection of Deutsche Sprichworte’, Brahms Studies 1, ed. Brodbeck, 1–29 (p. 13).Google Scholar