Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833. He received instruction in music from his father, Otto Cossel, and Eduard Marxsen. At fourteen he gave his first public concert as pianist, in which he introduced one of his own compositions. In 1853 he toured with the Hungarian violinist, Eduard Reményi, as his accompanist. During this period he met and aroused the interest of such notable musicians as Joachim, Liszt, and Schumann. The last of these was one of the first to give Brahms public recognition, through a glowing article in the Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik. After a considerable amount of travel in Germany and Austria, and after holding various musical positions, Brahms established himself permanently in Vienna in 1863. The promise he had shown in his early piano and chamber music became fully realized with his first piano concerto in 1857, the German Requiem written between 1857 and 1868, and the first symphony completed in 1876. In his later orchestral, piano, and chamber music he assumed a position of first importance in the German Romantic movement, the spokesman for absolute music, the genius who succeeded in combining respect for classical discipline and tradition with the Romanticist’s bent for emotion, poetry, and flexible thought. Brahms died in Vienna on April 3, 1897.
The supreme craftsmanship, mature thought, and profound feelings of Brahms’ music do not lend themselves to popular consumption. Occasionally, though not frequently, he chose to give voice to a lighter mood, as he did in his ever-popular Hungarian Dances. In such music, as in his more ambitious works, he is always the master of form and style, and a powerful and inventive creator.
The Cradle Song (Wiegenlied) is Brahms’ universally loved art song, one of the most famous lullabies ever written. It is the fourth in a collection of five songs, op. 49 (1868). Its lyric is a folk poem (“Guten Abend, Gute Nacht”). In its many and varied transcriptions, this lullaby has become an instrumental favorite.
The Hungarian Dances was originally published in 1869 in two volumes for four-hand piano. The first book contained dances Nos. 1 through 5, while the second book had Nos. 6 through 10. Brahms took special pains to point out that these melodies were not his own, but were adaptations. On the title page there appeared the phrase “arranged for the piano.” Brahms further refused to place an opus number to his publication as another indication that this was not original music; and in a letter to his publisher, Simrock, he explained he was offering this music “as genuine gypsy children which I did not beget but merely brought up with bread and milk.”
Despite Brahms’ open candor about the origin of these melodies, a storm of protest was sounded by many newspapers and musicians accusing Brahms of plagiarism. Fortunately, the general public refused to be influenced by this unjust accusation. The two volumes of Hungarian Dances were a formidable success, the greatest enjoyed by Brahms up to that time.
In 1880, Brahms issued two more volumes of Hungarian Dances, still for four-hand piano. Book 3 had dances Nos. 11 through 16, and Book 4, Nos. 17 through 21. This time many of the melodies were original with Brahms, even if modeled after the style and idiosyncrasies of actual Hungarian folk dances and gypsy melodies.
The Hungarian Dances are most popular in transcriptions for orchestra. Brahms himself transcribed Dances Nos. 1, 3, and 10; Andreas Hellen, Nos. 2, 4, and 7; Dvořák, Nos. 7 through 21; and Albert Parlow, the rest. Walter Goehr and Leopold Stokowski also made transcriptions of several of these dances for orchestra. In addition, Brahms adapted Book 1 for piano solo, and Joachim all the dances for violin and piano.
The dances range from sentimental to passionate moods. They abound with abrupt contrasts of feeling and dynamics; they are often vital with vertiginous rhythms and changing meters. These gypsy melodies, both the gay and the sad, warm the heart like Tokay wine; the pulse of the rhythm is similarly intoxicating. As Walter Niemann wrote of these dances: “They are pure nature music, full of unfettered, vagrant, roving spirit, and a chaotic ferment, drawn straight from the deepest well springs of music by children of Nature. It seems impossible to imprison them in the bonds of measure, time, and rhythm, to convert their enchantingly refreshing uncivilized character, their wild freedom, their audacious contempt for all order into a civilized moderation and order.”
Yet Brahms was able to discipline this music with modern techniques without robbing it either of its personality or popular appeal. “He has maintained,” continues Niemann, “and preserved the essential, individual genuine features of gypsy music in his musical idiom: the dances sound like original Hungarian folk music ... and for this reason they delight and enchant everybody: the amateur by their natural quality, the specialist by their art.”