Symphony in D Major, No. 2, Op. 73
Having launched a first symphony, Brahms composed a second within a year. However, he kept the writing of it so secret that nobody, we are told, knew anything about it till it was completed. Then, when he did divulge the secret, he was very demure. In September, 1877, he wrote to Dr. Billroth of Vienna, who was a patron of music as well as an eminent surgeon: “I do not know whether I have a pretty symphony; I must inquire of skilled persons.” He meant Clara Schumann, Otto Dessoff, and Ernest Frank. Mme. Schumann recorded on September 19 that he had written out the first movement. Early in the following month he played it to her, as well as part of the finale.
Meanwhile he had delighted in mystifying his friends before letting them hear any of the work by describing it as gloomy and awesome and referring to its key as F minor instead of D major. To Elisabeth von Herzogenberg he wrote in November, 1877: “The new symphony is merely a Sinfonie, and I shall not need to play it to you beforehand. You have only to sit down at the piano, put your small feet on the two pedals in turn, and strike the chord of F minor several times in succession, first in the treble, then in the bass, fortissimo and pianissimo, and you will gradually gain a vivid impression of my ‘latest’.” The day before the first performance he again wrote to Frau von Herzogenberg: “The orchestra here play my new symphony with crepe bands on their sleeves because of its dirge-like effect. It is to be printed with a black edge, too.” Such were Brahms’s little jokes.
When the symphony was actually performed in public, at a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Hans Richter, Brahms’s friends found it anything but a lugubrious and forbidding composition. The date of that first performance, by the way, is variously given as December 20, 24, and 30, 1877, and January 10, 1878, of which December 30 is favored. The success with the audience at the première was progressive. If at first the response was lukewarm, when the Allegretto grazioso was reached there came an insistent demand that it be repeated, an encore which Richter granted.
Today the Second Symphony is usually regarded as lyrical, suave, even Mendelssohnian, a work of serenity and sweet peacefulness, bearing much the same relation to the austere, dramatic, and often tempestuous First Symphony that Beethoven’s “Pastoral” bears to the preceding Fifth, with its conflict between Man and Fate.
Still, not everybody views the D major symphony in quite this gentle light. Walter Niemann in his life of Brahms maintains that the D major is by no means a blameless, agreeable, cheerfully sunlit idyl. Nothing, he declares, could be further from the truth! He describes the period between the 1860’s and 1880’s as having a heart-rending pathos and a monumental grandeur as its artistic ideal. “Nowadays,” he goes on, “regarding things from a freer and less prejudiced point of view, we are fortunately able to detect far more clearly the often oppressive spiritual limitations, moodiness, and atmosphere of resignation in such pleasant, apparently cheerful, and anacreontic[!] works as Brahms’s Second Symphony.”
He points out that the Second, though nominally in the major, has a veiled, indetermined, Brahmsian major-minor character, hovering between the two modes. “Indeed,” he adds, “this undercurrent of tragedy in the Second Symphony, quiet and slight though it may be, is perceptible to a fine ear in every movement.” And he sums up the whole matter by putting down the Second Symphony as really a “great, wonderful, tragic idyl, as rich in sombre and subdued color as it is in brightness.” He even sees mysterious visions of Wagner, who was by no means a friend of Brahms, in the mystic woodland atmosphere of the work, recalling “Das Rheingold” and “Siegfried,” and in many sombre and even ghostly passages.
The opening movement (Allegro non troppo, D major, 3-4) is remarkable for the lyricism of its themes. After the so-called fundamental motive of the first measure (’cellos and double-basses), the melodious chief theme is given out by horns and woodwind.
BRAHMS AT THE AGE OF 34
A graceful subsidiary theme is heard in the violins. The second subject, nostalgic in its wistfulness, appears in the violas and ’cellos. A horn solo in the coda evokes the mystery of forest deeps from an old and bardic time.
The second movement (Adagio non troppo, B major, 4-4) is of a profoundly romantic and yet somewhat elusive character. Not a scherzo, but rather the old-time minuet, is hinted at in the third movement (Allegretto grazioso—Quasi Andantino,—G major, 3-4). The engaging melody
is sung immediately by the oboes over chords in the clarinets and bassoons and pizzicato arpeggios in the ’cellos. Each of the two trios that the movement boasts is a variation on this theme. An acute critic has said of the Allegretto: “Like many well-known things, it is not always remembered in its full variety and range, or we should hear less of its being too small for its place in a big symphony.”
The finale (Allegro con spirito, D major, 2-2) is in sonata form. Thematically it is both rich in invention and reminiscent of passages in the earlier movements. A kinship to the finale of Haydn’s last “London” symphony has also been remarked. Of the four movements this Allegretto con spirito is the most vigorous and vivacious, concluding, after pages of Olympian struggle, in a victorious coda of overwhelming brilliance.