The success of the performances may be inferred from the fact that the programme was repeated two days later at an additional concert hastily arranged to fulfil the general demand for an encore.
Brahms was singularly unfortunate this year in his efforts to secure a quiet retreat for the pursuit of his usual summer avocations. Flying, after two days' residence in lodgings in Gratwein, Styria, from the attentions of some 'æsthetic ladies' who began to threaten his peace, he took refuge in the attic of the 'Seerose,' an inn in the Bavarian village of Tutzing, on Lake Starnberg, to receive, the very night of his arrival, a formal written invitation to make one, during his stay, of a light-hearted fellowship of youthful authors, painters, and musicians who held their meetings in the house. An early hour of the morning witnessed his second abrupt departure, the only answer vouchsafed to the missive being its torn fragments scattered on the floor of his room. He took refuge this time with Levi at Munich, and made his headquarters at his friend's house during the early part of the summer, seeing much also of Allgeyer, who had been invited to settle professionally in the Bavarian capital shortly after Levi's departure from Carlsruhe. Later on Brahms attended the Schumann Festival at Bonn (August 17-19), arranged, by Joachim's suggestion, for the purpose of assisting a fund for the erection of a memorial to Schumann in the city where the master had passed the two last sad years of his life, and where a Beethoven monument had been unveiled in 1871. There were orchestral concerts on the 17th and 18th, both conducted by Joachim, excepting in the case of one work (Wasielewsky), and a matinée of chamber music on the 19th, the programmes, in which Frau Schumann, Frau Joachim, Stockhausen, and others took part, being entirely selected from Schumann's works. The festival closed with a social function, an excursion by steamer to Rolandseck. The presence at Bonn of each member of the remarkable quartet of great musicians, whom we have seen closely bound together by ties of artistic and personal friendship through nearly twenty years, was made the more interesting by the addition of Ferdinand Hiller, the intimate ally of all four. Many other old friends were there, of whom Freiherr von Meysenbug, as reviving Detmold memories, should be particularly mentioned. Brahms made some new acquaintances also, notably Professor Engelmann and his gifted wife, known in the musical world for a few seasons as the pianist Fräulein Emma Brandes, who retired from a public career on her early marriage.
Brahms, though taking no active part in the concerts, was not at all averse to contributing to the private artistic pleasures of the week. The most memorable of these was the first introduction to a few of his friends of the Variations on a theme by Haydn, which he played with Frau Schumann in the version of the work for two pianofortes. Another day he turned into a pianoforte warehouse in the course of a walk with Wasielewsky, and sitting down before one of the instruments extemporized one waltz after another.
After leaving Bonn he paid his annual visit to Lichtenthal, where Frau Schumann and her daughters also stayed for a few weeks, though it was no longer their place of residence. They moved this year to Berlin, and in future only visited Baden-Baden for occasional change. Brahms sometimes met his old friends there in the summer until the year 1878, when Frau Schumann accepted an appointment at the Conservatoire of Music founded by Dr. Hoch at Frankfurt. She then sold her house at Lichtenthal, and Brahms' subsequent association with the neighbourhood was limited to rare visits of a few days. Frau Schumann continued to live at Frankfurt from this time, though she resigned her duties at the conservatoire some years before her death.
Meanwhile Brahms spent several weeks of this and succeeding summers at his old lodgings, and one day in August of this year he played the finally completed String Quartets in C minor and A minor, and the 'Rain-songs' to Frau Schumann. She had heard the C minor Quartet, as the reader may remember, in the summer of 1866. The composer played both works to Dr. Hermann Deiters when he was staying at Bonn in 1868.
Claus Groth's poem 'Rain-song' and the shorter one 'Echo,' which form the texts of Nos. 3 and 4 of Brahms' Op. 59, were particular favourites of our master. He composed the 'Nachklang,' of which he chose the title, twice. The published version is the second of the two. Musical readers will remember that melody and accompaniment are used again in the duet Sonata in G major.
Both String Quartets were performed privately in Berlin by Joachim and his colleagues. They were played for the first time in public; that in A minor in Berlin at the Joachim Quartet concert of October 18 from the manuscript; that in C minor at the Hellmesberger concert of December 11 in Vienna from the printed copies.
The appearance of these two works as Op. 51, Nos. 1 and 2, forms, as we have said, another and important landmark in the development of Brahms' career. The String Quartet holds a position of peculiar significance in the art of music, and a composer, by selecting this form for the exercise of his powers, exposes them to the most unfailing test to which his calibre as a musician can possibly be submitted. He must possess not only fertility in the production of purely musical concentrated ideas, and ideas capable of development; the power to develop them, which means many things, and the capacity for shaping them into clear structure; but he must be able to express them with the most bare and simple musical means, with four strings. From the rapid effects of strong and strongly contrasted sensation producible by the pianoforte, or the varied tone-colour of the orchestra, he is precluded. With his four strings he can interest, delight, touch, but hardly astonish his hearers. The String Quartet is absolute music in its purest form, and but few works in this domain can survive their birth unless they be destined to attain a long life. The means are perfect for the end, but this is difficult of achievement; only the quartet of a master has much chance of being heard after its first few performances. It will be evident to the reader that Brahms was fitted by many essential characteristics of his genius for success in this branch of art, though it cannot cause surprise that one of his great qualities, the power of waiting for results, should have strengthened his fastidiousness in accepting as final the fruits of his studies in a form which had been brought to ideal perfection by Haydn and Beethoven, each in their day. On the great musicianship manifest in Brahms' quartets, on his mastery over his means, his power of completely balancing his four parts, of making each a separate individuality whilst all blend harmoniously as equal constituents of an organic whole, it is only necessary to insist here in so far as these qualities are elements in another feature which pre-eminently marks our master's chamber music for strings: the extraordinary beauty of its structure. Throughout the three quartets and two quintets for strings composed by Brahms there is not only no mere passage writing, but it would be difficult to point to a single note that could be called superfluous. Each seems to have been placed with loving care by the master hand of the great musical architect, the artist builder, as an essential part of the whole large design. When we examine the thoughts themselves and their development we find that we are, as in all Brahms' works, in the presence of a powerful and fascinating individuality. Ideas and treatment are the master's own, not easy at once to understand, but offering almost inexhaustible opportunity for discovery and enjoyment to listeners willing to earn such rewards. The two quartets, Op. 51, are more or less severally representative of contrasted sides of Brahms' individuality. The first, in C minor, is generally characterized by fire and impetuosity, exquisitely relieved by the tender romance of the second movement; No. 2, in A minor, is conceived in a softer vein. The last movement of this work contains a beautiful example of the characteristic Brahms coda; the augmented vigour of the climax is preceded by a period of tranquillity that seems to place the listener in an atmosphere of mystic exaltation, to afford him 'glimpses of a spirit world' from which the previous thoughts of the movement flow towards him in transfigured tones. Lovers of the master's music will recall a similar feature in other works. In the opening theme of the first movement, which is suggestive of Joachim's early device F.A.E.—
