LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Brahms at Ischl | [Frontispiece] |
| Brahms at the Age of Forty | To face page [122] |
| Brahms' Lodgings at Ischl | " [202] |
| Brahms' Lodgings near Thun | " [230] |
| Silhouette by Dr. Böhler | " [260] |
| Brahms at Dr. Fellinger's | " [276] |
THE
LIFE OF JOHANNES BRAHMS
CHAPTER XII
1862-1864
Vienna—Musical societies—Leading musicians—The Prater—Brahms' appearance at a Hellmesberger Quartet concert—Brahms' first concert in Vienna—Conductorship of the Hamburg Philharmonic—First Serenade at Gesellschaft concert—Brahms' second concert—Richard Wagner—Second Serenade at Vienna Philharmonic concert—Return to Hamburg—Brahms elected conductor of the Vienna Singakademie—Return to Vienna—Singakademie concerts under Brahms.
It would be interesting, on accompanying Johannes Brahms in imagination on his first visit to Vienna—a visit that was to lead to results scarcely less important to his career than those of the first concert-journey through the provincial towns of Hanover undertaken nine years and a half previously—to describe the gradual change which had taken place in the musical life of the imperial city since the times when it had counted Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in turn among its inhabitants. It would, however, lead too far from the purpose of this narrative to follow the course by which the art of music, from being a luxury to be enjoyed chiefly by the rich—and in Vienna, perhaps, especially amongst the great capitals of Europe—had been opened to the cultivation of the masses of citizens. Suffice it to say that in the autumn of 1862 the conditions of musical activity in the Austrian capital were essentially the same as we know them in 1905.
The Court Opera, the home of which was the Kärthnerthor Theater, was conducted by Otto Dessoff, who had been a distinguished pupil of the Leipzig Conservatoire, and had succeeded the celebrated capellmeister, Carl Anton Eckert, on his resignation of the post in 1860. In intimate though not official connection with the opera were the Philharmonic concerts given in the same building. These, started in 1849 by the orchestral musicians of the opera as their own undertaking, had, after a period of varying fortune, entered upon a flourishing phase of existence. They were conducted by Dessoff in virtue of his position as capellmeister of the opera, and though his rather cold style at first prevented his winning Austrian sympathy, he by-and-by succeeded in making good his footing by his musicianship and thoroughness, and by the perfect finish of rendering that was attained by the orchestra under his direction.
The annual orchestral concerts given by the great Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Music-lovers), founded in 1813, took place in the Redoubtensaal, and, though given under the Society's own 'artistic director,' had, during the eight or nine years preceding the appointment of Johann Herbeck to this post (1859), been dependent on the services of the opera orchestra. Herbeck, feeling the inconveniences of such an arrangement, determined to form an orchestra of his own, and, whilst successfully carrying out his project, sought to make amends for the first inevitable lack of complete finish in his performances by cultivating a liberal spirit in the choice of programmes, and introducing from time to time unfamiliar works by the best modern classical composers. From this period the Gesellschaft and the Philharmonic concerts came more or less to represent severally the liberal and the conservative spirit of classical art, though it must be added that Dessoff cherished the wish to educate his audience to wider powers of appreciation, and sometimes included the name of Schumann in the Philharmonic programmes, which, before his advent, had been closed to works of more modern tendency than those of Mendelssohn.