IV
Brahms’ pianoforte works are with comparatively few exceptions in small forms. There are rhapsodies and ballades and many intermezzi and capriccios. Unlike Schumann he never gives these pieces a poetic title to suggest the mood in which they are steeped, though sometimes, rarely indeed, he prefixes a motto, a stanza from a poem, as in the andante of the F-minor sonata, or the title of a poem, as in the ballade that is called ‘Edward,’ or the intermezzo in E-flat major, both suggested by Scotch poems. The pieces are almost without exception difficult. The ordinary technique of the pianist is hardly serviceable, for common formulas of accompaniment he seldom uses, but rather unusual and wide groupings of notes which call for the greatest and most rapid freedom of the arm and a largeness of hand. Mixed rhythms abound, and difficult cross-accents. For one even who has mastered the technical difficulties of Chopin and Liszt new difficulties appear. He seems to stand out of the beaten path of virtuosity. His aversion to display has carefully stripped all his music of conventional flourish and adornment, and his pianoforte music is seldom brilliant never showy, but rather sombre. What it lacks in brilliance, on the other hand, it makes up in richness and sonority; and when mastered will prove, though ungrateful for the hand, adapted to the most intimate spirit of the instrument. The two sets of variations on a theme of Paganini make the utmost demands upon hand and head of the player. It may be questioned if any music for the piano is technically more difficult. One has only to compare them with the Liszt-Paganini studies to realize how extraordinarily new Brahms’ attitude toward the piano was. In Liszt transcendent, blinding virtuosity; in Brahms inexhaustible richness.
The songs, too, are not less difficult and not more brilliant. The breadth of phrases and melodies require of the singer a tremendous power to sustain, and yet they are so essentially lyrical that the finest shading is necessary fully to bring out the depth of the feeling in them. The accompaniments are complicated by the same idiosyncrasies of rhythm and spacing which are met with in the piano music, yet they are so contrived that the melodies are not taken and woven into them as in so many of the exquisite songs of Schumann, but that the melodies are set off by them. In writing for choruses or for groups of voices, he manifested a skill well-nigh equal to that of Bach and Handel. He seems often to have gone back to the part-songs of the sixteenth century for his models.
Compared with the scores of Wagner his orchestral works are sombre and gray. The comparison has led many to the conclusion that Brahms had no command of orchestral color. This is hardly true. Vivid coloring is for the most part lacking, but such coloring would be wholly out of place in the expression of the emotion which gives his symphonies their grandeur. His art of orchestration, like his art of writing for the pianoforte, is peculiarly his own, and again is the most fitting imaginable to the quality of his inspiration. It is often striking. The introduction to the last movement of the first symphony, the coda of the first movement of the second symphony, the adagio of the fourth symphony are all points of color which as color cannot be forgotten; and in all his works for orchestra this is what Hugo Riemann calls a ‘gothic’ interweaving of parts, which, if it be not a subtle coloration, is at any rate most beautiful shading. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Brahms should have scored his symphonies otherwise than he has scored them. As they stand they are representative of the nature of the man, to whom brilliance and sensuousness were perhaps too often to be distrusted. Much has been made of the well-known fact that not a few of his works, and among them one of his greatest, the quintet in F minor for pianoforte and strings, were slow to take their final color in his mind. The D minor concerto for piano and orchestra was at one time to have been a symphony, the great quintet was originally a sonata for two pianos, the orchestral variations on a theme of Haydn, too, were first thought of for two pianos, and the waltzes for pianoforte, four hands, were partially scored for orchestra. But this may be as well accounted for by his evident and self-confessed hesitation in approaching the orchestra as by insensitiveness to tone color. The concerto in D minor is opus 15, the quintet opus 34, the Haydn variations opus 56. The first symphony, on the other hand, is opus 68. After this all doubt of color seems to have disappeared.
Analysis of the great works is reserved for later volumes. The ‘Requiem,’ the quintet for piano and strings, the ‘Song of Destiny,’ the overwhelmingly beautiful concerto for violin and orchestra, the songs, the songs for women’s voices with horn and harp, the ‘Academic Festival Overture,’ and the ‘Tragic Overture,’ the works for pianoforte, the trios, quartets and quintets for various instruments, the four mighty symphonies—all bear the stamp of the man and of his genius in ways which have been hinted at. No matter how small the form, there is suggestion of poise and of great breadth of opinion. It is this spirit of expanse that will ever make his music akin to that of Bach and Beethoven. Schumann’s prophecy was bold. Some believe that it has been fulfilled, that Brahms is in truth the successor of Beethoven. Whether or not Brahms will stand with Bach and Beethoven as one of the three greatest composers it is far too early to say. The limitations of his character and of his temperament are obvious and his music has not escaped them. On the other hand, the depth and grandeur, the heroic strength, the power over rhythm, over melody, and over harmony belong only to the highest in music. He was of the line of poets descended from Schubert through Schumann, but he had a firmer grasp than they. His music is more strongly built, is both deeper and higher. Its sombreness has been unjustly aggravated by comparison with Wagner, but the time has come when the two men are no longer judged in relation to each other, when they are found to be of stuff too different to be compared any more than fire and water can be compared. They are sprung of radically different stock. It might almost be said that they are made up of different elements. If with any composers, he can only be compared with Bach and Beethoven. His perfect workmanship nearly matches that of the former; but Bach, for all the huge proportions of his great works, is a subtle composer, and Brahms is not subtle. The harmonies of Bach are chromatic, those of Brahms, as we have seen, are diatonic. His forms are near those of Beethoven, and his rugged spirit as well. His symphonies, in spite of the lyrical side of his genius which is evident in them, can stand beside those of the master of Bonn and lose none of their stature. But he lacks the comic spirit which sparkles ever and again irrepressibly in the music of Beethoven. He is indubitably a product of the movement which, for lack of a more definite name, we must call romantic; and, though it has been said with truth that some of the music of Beethoven and much of Bach is romantic, it cannot be denied that the romantic movement brought to music qualities which are not evident in the works of the earlier masters. The romanticists in every art took themselves extremely seriously as individuals. From their relationship to life as a whole, to the state, and to man they often rebelled, even when making a great show of patriotism. A reaction was inevitable, tending to realism, cynicism, even pessimism. Brahms stood upon the outer edge of romanticism, on the threshold of the movement to come. He took himself seriously, not however with enjoyment in individual liberty, with conscious indulgence in mood and reverie, but with grim determination to shape himself and his music to an ideal, which, were it only that of perfect law, was fixed above the attainment of the race. If, as it has been often written, Beethoven’s music expresses the triumph of man over destiny, Brahms may well speak of a triumph in spite of destiny. That over which Beethoven triumphed was the destiny which touches man; that in spite of which and amid which the music of Brahms stands firm and secure is the destiny of the universe, of the stars and planets whirling through the soundless, unfathomable night of space, not man’s soul exultant but man’s reason unafraid, unshaken by the cry of the heart which finds no consolation.