“Tragic Overture,” Op. 81
Although the “Tragic Overture” had a place on the program of the concert in Breslau at which Brahms, conducting, brought out the “Academic Festival Overture”, the “Tragic” had already been played in Vienna at a Philharmonic Concert on December 20, 1880, under the direction of Hans Richter.
There has long been discussion as to what tragedy this overture sets forth. It has been called “a tragedy not of actual happenings but of soul life. No hero, no event, suggested program music or any specific musical portrayal, although Hanslick says that if it be necessary to associate the overture with a particular tragedy, that tragedy is ‘Hamlet’.” The Hamletians identify the second theme, in F, with Ophelia and the episode in B-flat with Fortinbras.
It has also been said that though the composer denied that in writing this work he had any specific tragedy in mind, he may have received the impulse from a production of Goethe’s “Faust” given by Franz von Dingelstedt in 1876 at the Burgtheater in Vienna, especially since Dingelstedt had asked Brahms to consider supplying incidental music and Brahms, it is said, had consented. To some, then, this is a Faust overture.
Perhaps it is best to allow the overture to stand by itself untroubled by the hazards of literary identification. Heinrich Reimann finds in it the grandeur, the loftiness, the deep earnestness of tragic character, “Calamities, which an inexorable fate had imposed on him, leave the hero guilty; the tragic downfall atones for the guilt; this downfall, which by purifying the passions and awakening fear and pity works on the race at large, brings expiation and redemption to the hero himself.”
Another biographer of Brahms, Dr. Hermann Deiters, sums up the essence as follows: “In this work we see a strong hero battling with an iron and relentless fate; passing hopes of victory cannot alter an impending destiny. We do not care to inquire whether the composer has a special tragedy in his mind, or if so, which one; those who remain musically unconvinced by the unsurpassably powerful theme would not be assisted by a particular suggestion.”
The overture opens (Allegro ma non troppo, D minor, 2-2) with two fortissimo chords, after which the strings give out the first theme. The quieter second theme is uttered by the violins. A more moderate section, in part new and in part derived from earlier material, suggested to Grove a funeral march.