In contrast to the decades of work leading to the First Symphony, Brahms spent only the summer of composing his second symphony. The work follows a traditional classical symphonic structure, featuring two fast outer movements with slow and dance movements inside.
A peaceful and somber movement, the Adagio explores two main themes with ongoing variations throughout. This movement is a light and effervescent minuet, built with pizzicato in the strings and dancing melodies in the winds. The final movement of the symphony begins quietly and in earnest before erupting into a glorious Allegro with spirit.
The opening three chords center on the F-Ab-F motif , the second F leading into an exhilarating opening which transitions into a gentle, dance-like autumn scene.
The development carries the audience through cascades of yearning tension before resolving into calmness.
The second movement begins with a folk-inspired melody, trading the material back and forth between the strings and the winds. This call and response pattern becomes increasingly intricate until the two voices nearly collide before despondently returning to the opening material.
One of the most memorable movements in the orchestral repertoire, this breathtaking display of lush strings and soaring melodies sweeps the audience off their seats. Beginning tentatively in the strings, the finale of the symphony brings back material from the other three movements in cataclysmic fashion. In a sign of his close friendship with his mentor and his family, Brahms assisted Schumann's wife, Clara, with the management of her household affairs.
Music historians believe that Brahms soon fell in love with Clara, though she doesn't seem to have reciprocated his admiration. Even after Schumann's death in , the two remained solely friends.
Over the next several years, Brahms held several different posts, including conductor of a women's choir in Hamburg, which he was appointed to in He also continued to write his own music. In the early s Brahms made his first visit to Vienna, and in he was named director of the Singakademie, a choral group, where he concentrated on historical and modern a cappella works.
Brahms, for the most part, enjoyed steady success in Vienna. By the early s he was principal conductor of the Society of Friends of Music. He also directed the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for three seasons. His own work continued as well. In , following the death of his mother, he finished "A German Requiem," a composition based on Biblical texts and often cited as one of the most important pieces of choral music created in the 19th century.
The multi-layered piece brings together mixed chorus, solo voices and a complete orchestra. Brahms' contributions covered light ground too. His compositions from this period included waltzes and two volumes of "Hungarian Dances" for piano duet.
Brahms never married. Following his failed attempt at making Clara Schumann his lover, Brahms went on to have a small string of relationships. They included an affair with Agathe von Siebold in , which he quickly, for reasons never really understood, withdrew from. It does seem as though Brahms fell in love easily.
One account has him having to deny giving a woman piano lessons because of his attraction to her. Stubborn and uncompromising, Brahms was also known to be brusque and sarcastic with adults.
With children, he showed a softer side, often handing out penny candy to kids he encountered in his neighborhood in Vienna. He also enjoyed nature and frequently went for long walks in the woods. Brahms remained in Vienna for the rest of his life.
Summers found him traveling extensively throughout Europe, while concert tours also put him on the road as well. There was an ovation after each of the four movements. His condition gradually worsened and he died a month later, on 3 April , aged Brahms is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.
Later that year, the British composer Hubert Parry, who considered Brahms the greatest artist of the time, wrote an orchestral Elegy for Brahms.
Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos No. His large choral work A German Requiem is not a setting of the liturgical Missa pro defunctis but a setting of texts which Brahms selected from the Luther Bible.
The work was composed in three major periods of his life. The fifth movement was added after the official premiere in , and the work was published in The final movement of the Fourth Symphony, Op. His chamber works include three string quartets, two string quintets, two string sextets, a clarinet quintet, a clarinet trio, a horn trio, a piano quintet, three piano quartets, and four piano trios the fourth being published posthumously.
He composed several instrumental sonatas with piano, including three for violin, two for cello, and two for clarinet which were subsequently arranged for viola by the composer.
His solo piano works range from his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of character pieces. Brahms was a significant lieder composer, who wrote over songs. His chorale preludes for organ, Op. Brahms was an extreme perfectionist.
Over the course of several years, he changed an original project for a symphony in D minor into his first piano concerto. In another instance of devotion to detail, he laboured over the official First Symphony for almost fifteen years, from about to Even after its first few performances, Brahms destroyed the original slow movement and substituted another before the score was published.
A conjectural restoration of the original slow movement has been published by Robert Pascall. Brahms strongly preferred writing absolute music that does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative, and he never wrote an opera or a symphonic poem. During the 20th century, the influential American critic B. Haggin, rejecting more mainstream views, argued in his various guides to recorded music that Brahms was at his best in such works and much less successful in larger forms.
Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works — in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. The first movement of this abandoned Symphony was re-worked as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto. Brahms loved the Classical composers Mozart and Haydn.
He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and edited performing editions. Brahms also edited works by C.
The early Romantic composers had a major influence on Brahms, particularly Schumann, who encouraged Brahms as a young composer. During his stay in Vienna in —63, Brahms became particularly interested in the music of Franz Schubert.
Brahms wrote settings for piano and voice of German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life. His Hungarian Dances were among his most profitable compositions. As a result, he was an influence on composers of both conservative and modernist tendencies. Brahms was honoured by the German Hall of Fame, the Walhalla memorial.
Brahms was fond of nature and often went walking in the woods around Vienna. He often brought penny candy with him to hand out to children. To adults, Brahms was often brusque and sarcastic, and he often alienated other people. Those who remained his friends were very loyal to him, however, and he reciprocated with equal loyalty and generosity.
Brahms had amassed a small fortune in the second half of his career, around , when his works sold widely. But despite his wealth, he lived very simply, with a modest apartment — a mess of music papers and books — and a single housekeeper who cleaned and cooked for him. He was often the butt of jokes for his long beard, his cheap clothes and often not wearing socks, etc. Brahms gave away large sums of money to friends and to aid various musical students, often with the term of strict secrecy.
Brahms was a lifelong friend of Johann Strauss II, though they were very different as composers. Perhaps the greatest tribute that Brahms paid to Strauss was his remark that he would have given anything to have written The Blue Danube waltz. His Requiem employs biblical texts to speak words of comfort to the bereaved while generally omitting statements concerning salvation or immortality. But I had better stop before I say too much. On his religious views, Brahms was an agnostic and a humanist.
He believes in nothing!
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