Dr. Härtel's note was forwarded to Hanover by Schumann in a letter to Joachim with the words: Give the enclosed to Johannes. He must go to Leipzig; persuade him to do this, or they will get a wrong idea of his works; he must play them himself. This seems to me very important.' After relating the arrangements pending with the publisher, he adds: 'Once again, pray urge him to go to Leipzig for a week;' and concludes: 'Now good-bye, dear friend. Write again before our Dutch journey, and tell Johannes, the lazy-bones, to do the same.'
Johannes had, in fact, not written to Schumann since leaving Düsseldorf, and he still waited, letting nearly three weeks go by before thanking the master for his article in the Neue Zeitschrift. Perhaps this fact may be regarded as confirmation of the surmise that he had not read Schumann's prophetic announcement with feelings of unmixed satisfaction, but if it be so, he allowed no other sign to appear of such a possibility. He very anxiously reconsidered his choice of works for publication, however, and before receiving Härtel's letter to Schumann, had forwarded to Leipzig a somewhat different selection from that decided on at Düsseldorf, withholding from it the string quartet. Having settled this matter as far as he could to his satisfaction, and brought himself to consent to Joachim's persuasions that he should go to Leipzig for a week, his attitude to Schumann remained one of unmixed gratitude and affection, as may be read in the following letter:[40]
'Honoured Master,
'You have made me so immensely happy that I cannot attempt to thank you in words. God grant that my works may soon prove to you how much your affection and kindness have encouraged and stimulated me. The public praise you have bestowed on me will have fastened general expectation so exceptionally upon my performances that I do not know how I shall be able to do some measure of justice to it. Above all it obliges me to take the greatest care in the selection of what is to be published. I do not propose to include either of my trios, and think of choosing as Op. 1 and 2 the Sonatas in C and F sharp minor, as Op. 3 Songs, and as Op. 4 the Scherzo in E flat minor. You will think it natural that I should try with all my might to disgrace you as little as possible.
'I put off writing to you so long because I had sent the four things I have mentioned to Breitkopf and Härtel, and wished to wait for the answer, to be able to tell you the result of your recommendation. Your last letter to Joachim, however, informs us of this, and so I have only to write to you that I shall go, as you advise, within the next few days (probably to-morrow) to Leipzig.
'Further I wish to tell you that I have copied out my F minor Sonata, and made considerable alterations in the finale. I have also improved the violin sonata. I should like also to thank you a thousand times for the dear portrait of yourself that you have sent me, as well as for the letter you have written to my father. By it you have made a pair of good people happy, and for life Your
Brahms.'
'Hanover, 16 Nov. 1853.'
The reader may have noted that the work chosen by Brahms with which to introduce himself, not only to Joachim, but to the Deichmann circle, to Wasielewsky, and to Schumann himself, was the C major Sonata now known as Op. 1; and the natural inference to be drawn, that he considered it his best as it was his latest achievement, is confirmed by his reply to Louise Japha when she asked him, later on, why he had numbered his scherzo, a much earlier work, as Op. 4. 'When one first shows one's self,' he said, 'it is to the head and not the heels that one wishes to draw attention.'
That the composer was not mistaken, if we may thus take his own estimate of his published works by implication, may be safely affirmed. Sharing the fundamental characteristics, technical as well as temperamental, of the earlier written work of the same form—unity of plan, wealth of resource, impetuous vigour, dreamy romance, a breath that is repeatedly suggestive of the folk-lore in which the composer loved to steep his imagination—the Sonata in C gives evidence that the process of crystallization had already begun which was to distinguish Brahms' development towards maturity, which, indeed, did not stop at maturity, but may be traced continuously down to the close of his career. This process is to be observed, as regards the work in question, in the themes of the principal movements, which are not only more pregnant in themselves, but are presented in more concentrated form than those of the Sonata in F sharp minor. That the first theme of the opening movement bears traces of the composer's study of Beethoven's Sonata in B flat, Op. 106, is of no great consequence. The question of musical reminiscence is so frequently misunderstood that it may be well to devote a few words to it on the threshold of our narrative of Brahms' career as a composer, which will take but little account of such occasional examples as may easily be found in his works—in the opening bars of the scherzo of Op. 5, the second subject of the first allegro of Op. 73, and so forth. No one would affirm that reminiscences are in themselves desirable, but they are almost inevitable, and the important question is, not whether this or that rhythmical figure, this or that passing melodic progression, may be found anticipated in some earlier work, but whether it has been so used the second time as to have become an integral part of a composition with a distinct individuality of its own. The parentage of Brahms' sonata Op. 1, as, indeed, of every work published by him, is loudly proclaimed by each one of its pages. The opinion entertained by our composer, when in his maturity, of the self-satisfied reminiscence-hunter, is well illustrated by his reply to a conceited acquaintance who was courageous enough, on an occasion late in the seventies, to draw his attention to a transient resemblance in one of his great works to a passage of Mendelssohn. 'Some booby has already been telling me something of the kind.' (So was hab' ich schon von einem Rindvieh gehört), he answered. 'Such things are always discovered by the donkeys,' he said one day to a friend.