'I should like to enjoy myself in Italy from September 15 till October 1. Brahms wishes to accompany me.... He has been very busy lately. Three books of songs have been published. A string quintet and a trio are ready, both of them simpler, shorter, brighter than his earlier things; he strives consciously for shortness and simplicity. He lately sent me the manuscript of a true work of art, the "Parzenlied" [Song of the Fates] from Goethe's "Iphigenia." Very deep but simple.'
The journey to Italy duly took place, the proposed party of two being enlarged to one of four by the addition of Ignaz Brüll and Simrock. Original plans had to be modified on account of the exceptionally wet season, and the chief places visited were Vicenza, Padua, and Venice.
The personnel of Brahms' intimate friends in Vienna had remained on the whole much what it had become a very few years after his arrival in the Austrian capital. Of its closest circle the Fabers, Billroths, and Hanslicks, with whom must be associated Joachim's cousins, the various members of the Wittgenstein family—amongst them Frau Franz and Frau Dr. Oser—still formed the nucleus. An acquaintance with Herr Victor von Miller zu Aichholz and his wife had meanwhile ripened into warm friendship, and their house became one of those whose hospitality was most frequently and gladly accepted by the master. Amongst the musicians, Carl Ferdinand Pohl, author of the standard Life of Mozart, and, since 1866, archivar to the Gesellschaft, was one of his dearest friends. With the leading professors of the conservatoire his relations continued very cordial, and amongst the younger musicians to whom, in addition to his early allies, Goldmark, Gänsbacher and Epstein, he extended his friendly regard, may be mentioned Anton Door and Robert Fuchs. The feeling of warm friendship existing between Brahms and Johann Strauss has been commemorated in several well-known anecdotes. The autumn of 1881, however, brought to permanent residence in Vienna a family that before long made notable addition to the master's intimate circle. Special circumstances conduced to the speedy formation of a bond of friendship between Brahms and the new-comers, Dr. and Frau Fellinger. In the first place, they were friends of Frau Schumann and her daughters, and as such had an instant claim on his courtesy, which he acknowledged by calling on them as soon as possible after their arrival. In the second, his interest was awakened by the fact that Frau Dr. Fellinger was the daughter of Frau Professor Lang-Köstlin, the gifted Josephine Lang, whose attractive personality and talent for composition made a strong impression upon Mendelssohn when he was a youth of twenty-one and some six years the lady's senior. The story of Josephine, who at the age of twenty-six married Professor Köstlin of Tübingen, is given in Hiller's 'Tonleben,' and Mendelssohn's congratulations to her bridegroom-elect may be read in the second volume of the 'Letters.' The talent for art which had come to her as a family inheritance was transmitted to her daughter, though with a difference. Frau Dr. Fellinger's gifts have associated themselves especially with the plastic arts; in the first place with that of painting, but they have become well known in the musical world also by her busts and statuettes of Brahms, Billroth, and others belonging to their circle. Her photographs of our master are now familiar to most music-lovers. When it is added that Brahms found he could command in Dr. Fellinger's hospitable house, not only congenial intellectual sympathy, but the unceremonious intercourse with a simple, affectionate family circle in which he had through life found a pre-eminent source of happiness, it will easily be understood that he became a more and more frequent guest there, until, during the closing years of his life, it became for him almost a second home.
The master introduced two of his new works in the course of a few weeks' journey undertaken in the winter of 1882-83. According to Simrock's Thematic Catalogue, the Pianoforte Trio in C major, the String Quintet in F major, and the 'Parzenlied' constitute the publications of 1883. Early copies of the trio and quintet were sent out, however, and the works were publicly performed from them in December, 1882. An interesting entry in Frau Schumann's diary says:
'I had invited Koning and Müller to come and try Brahms' new trio with me on Thursday 21st [December]. Who should surprise us as we were playing it—he himself! He came from Strassburg and means to stay with us for Christmas. I played the trio first and he repeated it.'
Both works were performed on December 29 at a Museum chamber music concert—the Quintet by the Heermann-Müller party, the Trio by Brahms, Heermann, and Müller.
Amongst the early performances of the Trio were those on January 17 and 22 respectively in Berlin (Trio Concerts: Barth, de Ahna, Hausmann) and London (Monday Popular Concerts: Hallé, Madame Néruda, Piatti), and at Hellmesberger's in Vienna on March 15.
The work has not become one of the most generally familiar of the master's compositions, though it is not easy to say why. It contains no trace of the 'heaven-storming Johannes,' but, like many of the later compositions, it breathes, and especially the first movement, with a rich, mellow warmth suggestive of one to whom the experiences of life have brought a solution of their own to its problems, which has quieted, if it has not altogether satisfied, the aspirations and impulses of youth.
The Quintet in F for strings is, for the most part, bright, concise, and easy to follow. As one of its special features may be mentioned the combination of the usual two middle movements in the second. It was given in Hamburg on the 22nd and in Berlin on the 23rd of January, respectively by Bargheer and Joachim and their colleagues (it should be noted that Hausmann had at this time succeeded Müller as the violoncellist of the Joachim Quartet), at Hellmesberger's on February 15, and at the Monday Popular, London, of March 5.