The third movement (Poco allegretto, C minor, 3-8) is not a scherzo, but a romanza touched with melancholy. The first section is followed by a trio of similar mood, after which the first section is repeated with changed orchestration.
The finale (Allegro, F minor, 4-4) starts softly but menacingly in the strings and bassoons. Subsidiary material is employed before we hear the subject that caused Joachim to think of Leander conquering the Grecian waters. Whether or not Brahms had such an idea in mind, this finale is a colossal struggle between titanic powers, culminating in a tremendous climax. Then peace and the major mode. With respect to this tranquil coda Hanslick remarks: “The raging ocean waves calm down to a mysterious whisper. In an enigmatic strangeness, in marvellous beauty, the whole thing dies away....”
Symphony in E-Minor, No. 4, Op. 98
When this symphony was brought out at Meiningen, under the direction of Hans von Bülow, on October 25, 1885, there was a great deal of discussion about the choice of key and actually some dismay. E minor as the key for a symphony was looked at askance, even though Haydn and Raff had both used it. The suggestion has been made that Brahms picked out E minor because of its “pale, wan character, to express the deepest melancholy.” This key has also been described as “dull in color, shadowy, suggestive of solitude and desolation.”
Haydn perhaps felt strongly the key’s doleful implications, for his E minor symphony is the “Symphony of Mourning.” Raff’s E minor symphony, on the other hand, is by no means the autumnal affair that Brahms’s has been called. Its title, “In Summer,” tells us that!
Whatever the motives may have been that determined Brahms’s choice, it fell on E minor, and he proceeded to compose. The work was written at Mürz-zu-Schlag in Styria in the summers of 1884 and 1885. And at Mürz-zu-Schlag in the latter year the manuscript was endangered by fire. Brahms had gone out for a walk. On his return he found that the house where he lodged was burning. Fortunately he had devoted friends there who were rushing his papers out of the building. Brahms pitched in with the rest and helped get the fire under control. The precious manuscript was saved.
Brahms, in spite of his mature years and all the important work that he had put to his credit, was again somewhat timid about a new symphony. In a letter to Hans von Bülow he described it, oddly enough, as “a couple of entr’actes”; he also termed it “a choral work without text.” Yet he was eager for opinions from such valued friends as Elisabeth von Herzogenberg and Clara Schumann. He felt that the symphony had failed to please a group of men, including Hanslick, Billroth, Richter, Kalbeck, to whom he had played a four-hand piano version with Ignaz Brüll. To Kalbeck he said: “If persons like Billroth, Hanslick, and you do not like my music, whom will it please?” Had he forgotten Elisabeth and Clara?
The audience that heard the Meiningen première liked the symphony. Indeed, a vain effort was made to have the scherzo repeated. Nevertheless, the symphony was slow in winning general favor. In Vienna, where Brahms resided, it disappointed his friends and delighted his enemies. Hugo Wolf, an arch-enemy, was then writing musical criticism. He devoted a bitter article to the work, in particular poking fun at the key—at last a symphony in E minor! Brahms’s friends, on the contrary, celebrated the key, in order, it is said, to help cover up their disappointment in the music. It was usual to hear the symphony called grim, austere, forbidding, granitic. However, eventually it made its way, and now there are those who would rank it first among its author’s four.
The initial theme of the first movement (Allegro non troppo, E minor, 4-4), given out by the violins answered by flutes, clarinets, and bassoons, is of a thoughtful and somewhat mournful character, but it could hardly be termed forbidding. Rather it invites to meditation. The second theme, introduced by the wind instruments, is harmonically and rhythmically one of Brahms’s most fascinating inspirations. Some undiscourageable seekers after resemblances have discovered a likeness in the thirteenth and fourteenth measures to a passage in the second act of Puccini’s opera “Tosca,” which followed the symphony after fifteen years. Such resemblances are often mere coincidences.
The second movement (Andante moderato, E major, 6-8), with its unearthly melody announced in the Phrygian mode by the horns, to be taken up immediately by oboes, bassoons, and flutes,