SYMPHONY NO. 1, IN C MINOR, OP. 68
I. Un poco sostenuto; allegro II. Andante sostenuto III. Un poco allegretto e grazioso IV. Adagio; allegro non troppo, ma con brio
Brahms’ First symphony contains remarkable pages, as those of the first movement, passages in the second, and the marvelously poetic introduction to the final allegro. Mr. Apthorp’s belief that this introductory episode may have been suggested to Brahms by the tones of the Alpine horn is not too fanciful, and this impression is made on all that have heard the horn whether in the Oberland or high up in the Canton Vaud. Brahms’ fondness for Switzerland is well known, and he had visited that country before the finale was performed. In this introductory adagio there is a lyric flight and at the same time an imaginative force in superb decoration that are seldom found in the purely orchestral compositions of Brahms.
Brahms was not in a hurry to write a symphony. He heeded not the wishes or demands of his friends, he was not disturbed by their impatience. As far back as 1854 Schumann wrote to Joachim: “But where is Johannes? Is he flying high or only under the flowers? Is he not yet ready to let drums and trumpets sound? He should always keep in mind the beginning of the Beethoven symphonies; he should try to make something like them. The beginning is the main thing; if only one makes a beginning, then the end comes of itself.”
Max Kalbeck, of Vienna, the author of a life of Brahms in 2,138 pages, is of the opinion that the beginning, or rather the germ, of the Symphony in C minor is to be dated 1855. In 1854 Brahms heard in Cologne for the first time Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. It impressed him greatly, so that he resolved to write a symphony in the same tonality. This symphony he never completed. The first two movements were later used for the Pianoforte concerto in D minor, and the third for “Behold all flesh” in A German Requiem.
A performance of Schumann’s Manfred also excited him when he was twenty-two. Kalbeck has much to say about the influence of these works and the tragedy in the Schumann family over Brahms, as the composer of the C minor symphony. The contents of the symphony, according to Kalbeck, portray the relationship between Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann. The biographer finds significance in the first measures, poco sostenuto, that serve as introduction to the first allegro. It was Richard Grant White who said of the German commentator on Shakespeare that the deeper he dived the muddier he came up.
Just when Brahms began to make the first sketches of this symphony is not exactly known. He was in the habit, as a young man, of jotting down his musical thoughts when they occurred to him. Later he worked on several compositions at the same time and let them grow under his hand. There are instances where this growth was of very long duration. He destroyed the great majority of his sketches. The few that he did not destroy are, or were recently, in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde at Vienna.
In 1862 Brahms showed his friend Albert Dietrich an early version of the first movement of the symphony. It was then without the introduction. The first movement was afterwards greatly changed. Walter Niemann quotes Brahms as saying that it was no laughing matter to write a symphony after Beethoven; “and again, after finishing the first movement of the First symphony, he admitted to his friend Levi: ‘I shall never compose a symphony! You have no conception of how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him [Beethoven] behind us.’”
The first movement opens with a short introduction, un poco sostenuto, C minor, 6-8, which leads without a pause into the first movement proper, allegro, C minor. Second movement, andante sostenuto, E major, 3-4. The place of the traditional scherzo is supplied by a movement, un poco allegretto e grazioso, A flat major, 2-4. The finale begins with an adagio, C minor, 4-4, in which there are hints of the themes of the allegro which follows. Here William Foster Apthorp should be quoted: