The vitality of his relation with the past is nowhere more strikingly shown than in his indebtedness to the two greatest masters of pure music, Bach and Beethoven. He has gathered up the threads of their dissimilar styles, and knitted them into one solid fabric. The great glory of Bach, as is well-known, was his wonderful polyphony. In his work every voice is a melody, everything sings, there is no dead wood, no flaccid filling. Beethoven, on the other hand, turning to new problems, to problems of structure which demanded a new sort of control of key-relationship and the thematic development of single «subjects» or tunes, necessarily paid less attention to the subordinate voices. His style is homophonic or one-voiced rather than polyphonic. The interest centres in one melody and its evolutions, while the others fall into the subordinate position of accompaniment. But Brahms, retaining and extending the complexity of structure, the architectural variety and solidity, that was Beethoven's great achievement, has succeeded in giving new melodic life also to the inner parts, so that the significance and interest of the whole web remind one of Bach. His skill as a contrapuntist is as notable as his command of structure. Thanks to his wonderful power of assimilating methods, of adapting them to the needs of his own expression, so that he remains personal and genuine while becoming universal in scope, he is the true heir and comrade of Bach and Beethoven.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that in his great work of synthesis and formulation he should sometimes be led into dry formalism. One who concerns himself so indefatigably with the technic of construction naturally comes to take a keen joy in the exercise of his skill; and this may easily result, when thought halts, in the fabrication of ingenuities and Chinese puzzles. Some pages of Brahms consist of infinitely dexterous manipulations of meaningless phrases. And though one must guard against assuming that he is dry whenever one does not readily follow him, it certainly must be confessed that sometimes he seems to write merely for the sake of writing. This occasional over-intellectualism, moreover, is unfortunately aggravated by a lack of feeling for the purely sensuous side of music, for clear, rich tone-combination, to which Brahms must plead guilty. His orchestra is often muddy and hoarse, his piano style often shows neglect of the necessities of sonority and clearness. Dr. William Mason testifies that his touch was hard and unsympathetic, and it is rather significant of insensibility or indifference to tone color that his Piano Quintet was at first written for strings alone, and that the Variations on a Theme of Haydn exist in two forms, one for orchestra and the other for two pianos, neither of which is announced as the original version. There is danger of exaggerating the importance of such facts, however. Austere and somber as Brahms's scoring generally is, it may be held that so it should be to be in keeping with the musical conception. And if his piano style is novel it is not really unidiomatic or without its own peculiar effects.
However extreme we may consider the weakness of sensuous perception, which on the whole cannot be denied in Brahms, it is the only serious flaw in a man equally great on the emotional and the intellectual sides. Very remarkable is the richness and at the same time the balance of Brahms's nature. He recognized early in life that feelings were valuable, not for their mere poignancy, but by their effect on the central spirit; and he labored incessantly to express them with eloquence and yet with control. It is only little men who estimate an emotion by its intensity, and who try to express everything, the hysterical as well as the deliberate, the trivial and mischievous as well as the weighty and the inspiring. They imagine that success in art depends on the number of things they say, that to voice a temperament is to build a character. But great men, though they reject no sincere human feeling, care more to give the right impression than to be exhaustive; and the greatest feel instinctively that the last word of their art must be constructive, positive, upbuilding. Thoreau remarks that the singer can easily move us to tears or laughter, but asks, «Where is he who can communicate a pure morning joy?» It is Brahms's unique greatness among modern composers that he was able to infuse his music, in which all personal passion is made accessory to beauty, with this «pure morning joy.» His aim in writing is something more than to chronicle subjective feelings, however various or intense. And that is why we have to consider him the greatest composer of his time, even though in particular departments he must take a place second to others. Steadily avoiding all fragmentary, wayward, and distortive expression, using always his consummate mastery of his medium and his synthetic power of thought to subserve a large and universal utterance, he points the way for a healthy and fruitful development of music in the future.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. —Of particular works of Brahms that the reader might wish to study, here are some of the most characteristic and well known. Piano pieces: The Waltzes, op. 39; the Clavierstücke, op. 76, particularly No. 2; the two Rhapsodies, op. 79; and, in his later, more complex style, the piano pieces, op. 116, 117, 118 and 119. Songs: Liebestreu, op. 3, No. 1; Wiegenlied, op. 49, No. 4; the Sapphic Ode, op. 94, No. 4; Ständchen, op. 106, No. 1; Meine Liebe ist grün, op. 63, No. 5; O Kühler Wald, op. 72, No. 3. Chamber works: the two Violin Sonatas, op. 78 and 100, are among his most genial works; the Quartets, op. 25 and 26; the Trio, op. 8; the Sextet, op. 18. Of his orchestral works none are finer than the Second and Third Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, op. 77, and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn, op. 56a. The choral works, of which the Song of Destiny is the greatest, are unhappily seldom given.