The German Genius

genius seemed inexhaustible.
    The career of Johannes Brahms (1833–97) overlapped that of Wagner and, while Wagner was alive, Brahms was the only composer who could stand comparison. But how different they were. Wagner changed everything, but Brahms in a strange way looked back. With him, the symphony as evolved by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann achieved a splendid finale. “Brahms, like Bach, summed up an epoch.” At the same time, many of the musical afficionados of Vienna were bitterly divided about his achievement. Mahler described Brahms as “a manikin with a somewhat narrow heart,” while Hans von Bülow, showing the influence of the revolution in physics, put it this way: “ Brahms ist latente Wärme ”—Brahms is latent warmth. 1
    It is undeniable, however, that Brahms is still very much with us. His works have become—and remain—a lively part of the repertoire. The four symphonies, the four concertos (two piano, one violin, one double concerto) are now classics, together with the Haydn Variations and the German Requiem . 2 These have a greater appeal today than many of the more innovative works of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt.
    Perhaps what most appeals is Brahms’s sheer seriousness. From the word go, he set himself the task to write music that would be beautiful but would at the same time counter the self-centered flamboyance of Liszt and Wagner. This meant he became known as a “difficult” composer, even “a philosopher in sound.” And how much did that reflect the fact that he was himself uncompromising and “difficult”? Prickly, oversensitive, cynical, and bad-tempered, he was as much feared and disliked as Hans von Bülow, who was notorious for his tempers and antagonisms. At one party in Vienna, it is said, Brahms left in a huff, grumbling, “If there is anyone here that I have not insulted, I apologise.” 3
    Handsome in his youth, Brahms was slight, with fair hair and vivid blue eyes. He became much heavier as he grew older, his face framed with a beard “of biblical proportions.” 4 The one extravagance he allowed himself was a collection of original music manuscripts, the jewel of which was Mozart’s G Minor Symphony.
    Born in Hamburg in 1833, Brahms was the son of a professional double bass player and was only six when it was discovered he had perfect pitch and a precocious musical ability. By ten he was giving piano recitals in public. Strangely, however, given that his father was a double bass player, Brahms was set to playing in waterfront bars and bordellos in the red-light district of what was, after all, a port city. This may have helped the family finances, but it left its psychological scars. Throughout his life Brahms seems to have been sexually comfortable only with prostitutes, and this almost certainly got in the way of his marrying.
    By the time he was twenty, Brahms had written several works for the piano. They were monumental, with deep-sounding basses in the background, but they hardly let up—there was no spark to draw people in. 5 However, at this time his career as a pianist was going from strength to strength, and in 1853, on tour, he encountered Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), a young violinist already famous who was very much taken with Brahms’s piano playing. 6 Joachim introduced Brahms to Liszt and, more consequentially, to Schumann, the latter making an entry in his diary for September 30, 1853: “Brahms to see me (a genius).” Schumann was in fact so impressed by the young man that, generous as ever, he wrote a lengthy piece about Brahms in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , referring to him as “a young eagle.” The article would be the last Schumann wrote for the publication he had founded, but so intense was the attraction between the two men that Schumann insisted Brahms move in with him. (Brahms almost certainly fell in love with Clara, though for her part, when Schumann died, “she became a professional widow who wore mourning clothes all her life.”) 7
    In 1862 Brahms traveled to Vienna, liked it, went back the following year—and stayed for the rest of his life. His decision was helped by his appointment as conductor at the Academy of Singing though he remained there for just two years, afterward concentrating on composing, with short breaks for concert tours.
    Brahms’s first truly famous work was not a piano piece, as might have been expected, but the Deutsches Requiem , and here there was a paradox. He himself was a