Comparatively few musicians will be found in these days to deny that Gehring's words were justified by the development of Brahms' own career, though it cannot be concealed that a new epoch such as that to which the reviewer looked forward seems to have closed for the present with the master's death.
Contrary to Brahms' established custom, he accepted a concert-engagement in the course of the summer, and appeared with immense success at the Baden-Baden Kursaal subscription concert of August 29 as composer, conductor, and pianist, with his own A major Serenade and Schumann's Pianoforte Concerto. Amongst the visitors to Lichtenthal in the course of the season was Reinthaler, who had been present at the performance of the Triumphlied at Carlsruhe, and returned later to spend a short holiday near his friends.
With the beginning of autumn, 1872, a period of ten years had elapsed since Brahms' first visit to Vienna, and it will help the reader to obtain a clear view of the development of his career as a composer if we pause for a moment at this point, to consider what had been its special features during the decade in the course of which he had gradually come to regard Vienna as his home. We shall find that it had been entirely logical and continuous, and singularly independent of those influences of his changed environment to which imaginary effects on his art and temperament have not seldom been attributed.
We observe, in the first place, that only one solo has been added to the long list of important works for the pianoforte, accompanied and unaccompanied, which Brahms carried with him to Vienna in 1862, and of this one it must be said that the Paganini studies in two books, immensely brilliant and ingenious though they be, cannot be seriously regarded from the musical standpoint of the Handel or other preceding sets of variations, but must be accepted more or less as diversions of the composer's leisure hours. Several of the variations are little more than transcriptions for the piano of some of those written by Paganini on the same theme for the violin.
In the domain of chamber music, where, so far as it is yet possible to anticipate the verdict of posterity, Brahms' place will be found amongst the greatest composers of all periods, we find that his first series of masterpieces for pianoforte and strings has been brought to a close with the addition of two works—the Horn Trio performed in the autumn of 1865, and the Sonata in E minor for pianoforte and violoncello, whilst by the side of the String Sextet in B flat has been placed another in G major, not indeed transcending, but different from, and in every way worthy of, its companion. With the enumeration of these published works must be associated the mention of two others of peculiar interest in our survey because they mark a fresh stage of Brahms' matured development. The two String Quartets in C minor and A minor were kept in the composer's desk for some years before they were finally completed. The significance of their appearance, which we shall have to note in 1873, as landmarks in Brahms' career, is best illustrated by the remembrance that twenty years had elapsed since the fastidious self-criticism of the young musician of twenty had caused the withdrawal of a string quartet from the list of works proposed by Schumann for the consideration of the publishers.
Brahms' fertility as a song-writer for a single voice was constant, though it matured and varied in its manifestations with the onward progress of his life. We have already referred to some of the phases of its long middle period. The decade we are considering witnessed the publication of eight books of miscellaneous songs and three books of the Magelone Romances.
In the Liebeslieder, waltzes for pianoforte duet and vocal quartet, we have the riper artistic fruition of the mood which produced the vocal quartets, Op. 31, 'Alternative Dance Song,' 'Raillery,' and 'The Walk to the Beloved,' composed at Detmold; and to the same early period the Waltzes for pianoforte duet dedicated to Hanslick primarily belong.
The splendid achievement, however, which pre-eminently distinguishes this portion of Brahms' career is to be found in another domain: that in which we may now, in 1872, contemplate the literal fulfilment of Schumann's much discussed prophecy; that in which 'the masses of chorus and orchestra have lent him their powers.' The composer has most truly 'sunk his magic staff and revealed to us wondrous glimpses of the spirit world.' The period which produced the German Requiem, the Song of Destiny, and the Song of Triumph (1866-1871) could hardly be surpassed in the brilliancy of its own special branch of achievement, and with the completion of the last of these works the growth of Brahms' powers upon this particular line of development had reached its summit. The choral works in which the master hand of the great composer was to be again revealed, whilst they afford additional opportunities of enjoyment to the lovers of his art, could not, from the nature of those that had preceded them, increase the lustre of his fame.
Of works for orchestra alone the two Serenades published in 1860 are still the only examples. As we have seen,[44] Brahms, in the summer of 1862, showed Dietrich the first movement of the C minor Symphony, 'which appeared, greatly altered, much later on,'[45] but since then the composer's invariable answer to his friend's inquiries had been that the time for a symphony had not yet arrived. The ten years we are considering are, in fact, characteristic of the composer as well by their silence as by their song. We cannot doubt that just as his choral works were the ultimate outcome of a long period of retirement and study, of which we have traced the early as well as the late results, so the period of his symphonic achievement was being gradually prepared for by special work as fundamental and unwearied. Of this we shall very soon have to note the perfected first-fruits on the appearance of a short orchestral composition, now amongst the most familiar and valued of the treasures with which Brahms has enriched the musical world.