The Schicksalslied was published by Simrock in December, and was performed early in 1872 in Bremen, Breslau, Frankfurt, and Vienna.
The only other original publications of 1871, the two books of Songs, Op. 57 and 58, were issued by Rieter-Biedermann.[43] All the texts of Op. 57 are original poems or imitations (Nos. 2, 3, 7) by G. F. Daumer, whose texts are amongst the most passionate of those set by Brahms. The composer seems to have imagined a portrait of the poet more or less in correspondence with his verses, and Claus Groth tells an amusing story of the shock sustained by Brahms on taking the opportunity of a visit to Munich to call on Daumer.
'I loaded myself with all the books of my songs that contain something of his. I found him at last, in an out-of-the-way house, in an out-of-the-way street, and was shown to equally retired apartments. There in a quiet room I found my poet. Ah, he was a little dried-up old man! After my sincerely respectful address, on presenting my music, the old gentleman replied with an embarrassed word of thanks and I soon perceived that he knew nothing either of me or my compositions, or anything at all of music. And when I pointed to his ardent, passionate verses, he signed me, with a tender wave of the hand, to a little old mother almost more withered than himself, saying, "Ah, I have only loved the one, my wife!"'
The opening of the year 1872 marks the beginning of a new period, not in the artistic, but in the private life of Brahms. It found him installed in the historic rooms in the third story of No. 4, Carlsgasse, Vienna, which were to remain to the end of his life the nearest approach to an establishment of his own to which he committed himself. He had lodged in Novaragasse, Singerstrasse, Poststrasse 6, Wohlzeile 23, Ungargasse 2, had stayed with his friends the Fabers—had, in fact, since his first visit to Vienna, changed his residence at least with each new season. When he took possession of his rooms in Carlsgasse 4 on December 27, 1871, he had moved for the last time. Here he lived for a little more than a quarter of a century, here he died. He continued as he began, a lodger in furnished apartments, renting his Carlsgasse rooms in the first instance from a Frau Vogel, who, with her husband and family, occupied the rest of the dwelling. Brahms' accommodation consisted of three small rooms communicating one with the other. The middle and largest contained his grand piano and writing-table, a small square-shaped instrument to which a tradition was attached, and a table and chairs arranged, German fashion, in front of a sofa. Here he received his visitors. In a smaller room were his bookshelves and a high desk for standing to write. There were cupboards for his music, which in time overflowed into the rooms as he required more space for his collections of original manuscripts, engravings, photographs, etc. A few engravings adorned the walls, and his little bust of Beethoven reminded him pleasantly of the old home in the Fuhlentwiethe. Frau Vogel was responsible only for his mending, for the cleaning and dusting of his rooms, and for opening the house-door to visitors. He took his early dinner at a restaurant—the 'Kronprinz,' the 'Goldspinnerin,' the 'Zur schönen Laterne,' and, for about the last fourteen years of his life, at the 'Zum rothen Igel,' in the Wildpret Markt—and read the newspapers afterwards over a cup of black coffee at one of the coffee-houses, in his latter years generally the Café Stadtpark. He supped either at home, with a book for company—when his fare usually consisted of bread-and-butter and sausage, with a glass of beer or light wine—or again at a restaurant, when, as at dinner, he liked to be joined by his intimates. Needless to say, the private hospitality of friends was abundantly at his command whenever he chose to avail himself of it.
The second performance of the Song of Destiny—the first since publication—took place at the Gesellschaft concert of January 21, under the direction of Anton Rubinstein, who held the post of 'artistic director' of the society during the season 1870-71, succeeding Herbeck on his appointment as capellmeister of the imperial opera.
The gratification which must have been felt by the composer at the exceptional impression created by his work on his Austrian public was to be clouded a few days later by news of his father's grave illness. Jakob had been ailing for a year past, and had been obliged to resign his post at the Philharmonic, together with smaller engagements, and accustom himself to the sight of his beloved double-bass standing mute in a corner of his parlour. Johannes, perceiving that advancing years were beginning to tell on his father, had prescribed a change of residence from the fourth story of 1, Anscharplatz to a first-floor flat in the same street, but the failure of strength had not been recognised as serious. Jakob did not complain of any particular symptoms, and it was only on the occasion of his fetching the doctor to his stepson Fritz Schnack, who had been brought home ill from St. Petersburg, that he bethought himself to ask advice on his own account, when his alarming condition became immediately apparent to the physician. Johannes, who was immediately sent for, was on the spot without delay, and spent the next fortnight at the bedside of the stricken man, whom he watched with tenderest care and tried to cheer with loving encouragement. But the end was near. Jakob was in the grip of a fatal malady which had ravaged his constitution continuously during the past twelve months, though his sufferings were neither acute nor prolonged. He died on February 11, in his sixty-sixth year, from cancer of the liver, in the presence of his wife and two sons, and an estrangement of some duration between Johannes and the less energetic Fritz—returned from two years' absence in Venezuela—was healed at his death-bed. The son's grief, as may be expected from all that we have related of his clinging family affection, was profound. His consolation was found in endeavours for the protection and comfort of the woman who had brought contentment to the closing years of Jakob's life, and he stayed on with Frau Caroline after the funeral, helping her to make necessary arrangements and to look through his father's little possessions. The old indentures of apprenticeship, the document of citizenship, memorials of Jakob's early struggles and modest personal successes, passed into the composer's keeping. A small portrait in oils, of little value as a picture, but bearing evidence of having been a good likeness of Jakob in his early manhood, was left with the widow. 'Mother,' said Johannes excitedly the day before his departure from Hamburg, turning suddenly to Frau Caroline after standing for some minutes in silence before the painting, 'as long as you live, this of course is yours, but promise that at your death it shall come to me in Vienna!' The promise, readily given, was destined to remain unfulfilled. Frau Caroline, her stepson's senior by more than six years, was to outlive him.
Brahms' care for his father's widow did not cease with his return to his occupations in Vienna. When Fritz Schnack was convalescent, and the year sufficiently advanced for change of air to be desirable, he was sent with his mother to Pinneberg, a pleasant country town of Holstein in great repute with the citizens of Hamburg on account of its health-giving climate. The visit proved so beneficial that Johannes decided to settle his stepbrother there permanently to carry on the business of a watch and clock maker, which he had hitherto followed in St. Petersburg. He established him in a pleasant shop, providing him with all the requisites for a new start, and wished to guarantee a comfortable home for Frau Caroline as mistress of her son's modest household; but the bright, energetic widow did not like the idea of relinquishing her own activity. It was settled, therefore, that she should return to Hamburg and to her business of taking boarders in the first-floor flat in the Anscharplatz, on the condition, rigorously extorted by Johannes, that she was to draw upon him in all cases of need for herself or her son. Brahms was wont to complain to his stepmother in after-years that she did not sufficiently fulfil her part of the bargain, to scold her because she did not ask for money, and to propose and insist on holiday journeys for herself and Fritz; and from the day of his father's death to that of his own the kind, capable housewife continued to be the representative to the great tone-poet of the simple, restful tie of family affection to which he clung from beginning to end of his career.
Elise Brahms was supported by her brother until her marriage, some time later than our present date, with a watchmaker named Grund, a widower with a family, and was the recipient of his generosity until her death in 1892. Fritz, 'the wrong Brahms,' as he was sometimes called, by way of distinguishing him from Johannes, gained a good position in Hamburg as a private teacher of the pianoforte, and was for some years on the staff of visiting teachers at Fräulein Homann's ladies' school at Hamm—an establishment which enjoyed distinguished English as well as German patronage. He had only so far followed in his brother's footsteps as to have been the pupil successively of Cossel and Marxsen, and to have made a few public appearances in Hamburg as pianist in his own Trio concerts. His talents might have carried him farther if he had been more active and ambitious. 'Is this your pianoforte-teacher's pace?' demanded Johannes sharply on one of his visits to Hamburg, as he was striding along the street in front of his brother, who could not or would not keep up with him. Fritz was a favourite with his friends; he possessed his share of the family humour, and was never known to brag. 'How is your great brother?' an acquaintance asked him one day. 'What do you mean?' retorted Fritz, who was tall and thin; 'I am bigger than he is!' He died unmarried in Hamburg in 1886, at the age of fifty-one.
Preliminary arrangements were made in good time for the performance of the completed Triumphlied at the Rhine Festival of 1872, held in Düsseldorf; but as the date drew near the committee strangely refused to invite the composer to conduct his work, and Brahms therefore withheld the manuscript. It was performed for the first time on June 5 at a farewell concert arranged by the Grand-Ducal Orchestra and the Philharmonic Society of Carlsruhe jointly, for their departing conductor Hermann Levi, who had been called to the post of court capellmeister at Munich, which he held with brilliant success until failing health compelled his retirement in 1896. Both Frau Schumann and Stockhausen contributed to the programme of the concert, Stockhausen, as a matter of course, singing the short solo of the Triumphlied. The performance seems to have been a fine one, though the chorus at command only numbered 150 members. An enthusiastic account of the work sent from Carlsruhe to the Allgemeine Musikzeitung by Franz Gehring concludes:
'We Germans may feel proud that such an artist has been inspired by the impression of the most momentous events to which our history can point, to the composition of such a triumph-song. To the year 1870 attaches, not only the renown of our arms, but a new epoch of our musical art.... It is based upon the modern development of long familiar forms and modes of expression. That this development has shown itself to be true and healthy (who had not foreseen it in Brahms' German Requiem!) is the merit of the German master Brahms, the greatest of the present day!'