The young musician's relations with the princely family remained unclouded, and his musical gifts were, on the whole, fairly appreciated by the entire court circle, though he was not regarded personally with unanimous favour by those who did not know him well. Carl's mother, the Frau Hofmarschall, took a few lessons from him to please her friends at the castle, and once accepted his offer to play duets with her; but no subsequent invitation could induce her to repeat this performance. 'The good fellow should not have behaved as he did that once; I cannot put up with it,' she wrote to Carl. Something in Brahms' manner—independence, artistic self-consciousness, or whatever else it may be called—repelled her; and, in view of the fact that she was not the first person whom he had offended in a similar way, since the time when he had visited as a youth at the Japhas' house in Hamburg, it may fairly be assumed that Her Excellency had justifiable grounds for the reserved attitude she maintained towards him.
It is, indeed, certain that Brahms, during his third season at Detmold, began to grow impatient of his position there. His lessons to the Princess, who was really musical and made rapid progress, continued to give him genuine pleasure, but he chafed at the constant demands on his time arising from his fixed duties, and the rigid etiquette observed at the Court of a very small capital gave him a distaste for his work as conductor of the choral society. The circle of Serene Highnesses, Excellencies, and their friends, did not furnish sufficient voices for the adequate rendering of two or three oratorios and cantatas by Handel and Bach which he selected for practice during his second and third seasons; and, with Prince Leopold's permission, he supplemented them by persuading some of the towns-people to become members. His sense of the ridiculous was strongly excited by the rules of conduct prescribed for these not very willing assistants, who were not even permitted to make an obeisance to the Serenities, and scarcely ventured to lift their eyes from the music whilst in their august presence. There were some good performances of great works, however, and Bach's cantata 'Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniss' was given four times; but the difficulty of procuring tenors continued serious, and the entire circumstances of the meetings made Brahms feel increasing desire to be relieved from the necessity of attending them.
To this season is to be referred the first private performance of one of those of Brahms' great works which have made his name not only famous, but popular. The Quartet in G minor for pianoforte and strings, destined to become one of the most familiar of the master's achievements, was tried by the composer, Bargheer, Schulze, and Schmidt, though not altogether as it now appears. The complaint made by the young composer's colleagues at Detmold, that his string passages were often ungrateful and sometimes unplayable, was not unfounded. Brahms, like everyone else, had to buy exact technical knowledge with experience, and the quartet was considerably altered before its final completion. Essentially, however, the work dates from the Detmold period, and the conception of the finale is to be associated with the sudden visit of Joachim, with his Hungarian Concerto, in the autumn of 1858. Of this movement, the magnificent 'Rondo alla Zingarese,' Joachim declared in generous triumph, comparing it with the last movement of his own composition, that Brahms had beaten him on his own ground. It is not the business of our pages either to endorse or contradict this statement, but it may be permissible once again to remind the reader that the increasing perfection of Brahms' instrumental works of the period was in no small degree furthered by the invaluable criticism and self-forgetting sympathy of his friend.
The programmes of the court concerts of the season included the D major Serenade; the 'Ave Maria,' sung by the ladies of the choral society; and the Begräbnissgesang, for mixed chorus and wind instruments (Op. 13).
It is strange that this fine work, composed to a sixteenth-century text by Michael Weisse, the editor of the earliest German church hymn-book, is not more generally known. Like all Brahms' sacred compositions of the time, it gives evidence of the strong impression he had derived from his exhaustive study of the medieval church composers; and the music, austere in its simplicity, is characterized by uncompromising fidelity to the almost grimly severe spirit of the words. Too grave to be in place in an ordinary miscellaneous programme, it is well adapted for performance at a Good Friday concert or as a church anthem in Passion Week. It was performed together with the 'Ave Maria,' both for the first time in public, at Grädener's Academy concert of December 2, and Brahms, who obtained leave to go to Hamburg for the occasion, appeared the same evening with Schumann's Pianoforte Concerto.
The manuscripts were sent immediately afterwards to Göttingen for practice by Grimm's choral society, of which Carl von Meysenbug was an enthusiastic member.
'As Grimm was distributing the parts of the "Ave Maria" and the "Begräbnissgesang" at one of the practices,' says the Freiherr von Meysenbug, 'my neighbour, a glib University student with the experience of several terms behind him, said to me in a surprised tone: "Brahms! who is that?" "Oh, some old ecclesiastic of Palestrina's time," I replied—a piece of information which he accepted and passed on.'
The compositions were given under Grimm's direction at the society's concert of January 19, 1860. There is little doubt that Philipp Spitta, author of the exhaustive biography of Sebastian Bach, whose essay 'Zur Musik' should be read by all earnest students of Brahms' music, took part in the performance of the Begräbnissgesang. His friendship with our composer dates from this period when he was a student of the Göttingen University and one of the intimates of Grimm's circle.
It will be convenient to add here that the invitation to revisit Detmold on the same terms as before was finally refused by Brahms in a letter to the Hofmarschall dated from Hamburg, August, 1860:
'After renewed consideration, I must beg to express to His Serene Highness the Prince my regret that I shall not be able to visit Detmold in the winter. I have to add to the causes of this decision which I have already had the honour to communicate, that I shall be much occupied this autumn with the publication of my works, with revising the proofs of some, and preparing others for the engraver. On this account alone, therefore, I must decide to stay here during the winter. I particularly desire to express my regret to the Princess Friederike that I shall be unable to enjoy her progress in playing and her great sympathy for music....'[86]