Brahms

Brahms’ Trio in E-flat Major for Horn, Violin, and Piano: Music of Nature

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In May of 1865, following the death of his beloved mother Christiane three months earlier, Johannes Brahms retreated to the picturesque seclusion of Baden-Baden in Germany’s Black Forest. It was here that Brahms composed his Trio in E-flat Major for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Op. 40. He worked in a room which, in his words, “looks out on three sides at the dark, wooded mountains, the roads winding up and down them, …

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Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture: A Witty Musical “Thank You”

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In 1879, the University of Breslau in Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland) awarded Johannes Brahms an honorary doctorate in philosophy. The acclaimed composer, who never attended college, had little use for academic titles. When Cambridge University attempted to bestow a similar honor three years earlier, Brahms declined, forgoing lionization and sea travel—both of which he despised—for the quiet comfort of his home. His postcard response to the faculty in Breslau was met with …

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Martha Argerich Plays Brahms: The Rhapsodies, Op. 79

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The title, “rhapsody,” suggests free and improvisatory music in which raw emotion supersedes formal structure. Johannes Brahms’ two Rhapsodies, Op. 79 for solo piano only partially conform to this definition. While both are passionately Romantic, they unfold with a clearly defined sense of structure—ternary or “ABA” in the first movement, and sonata form in the second. Brahms wrote the Op. 79 Rhapsodies during the summer of 1879 at the Austrian resort town …

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Brahms’ Two Motets, Op. 74: Sacred Music for A Cappella Choir

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In the Old Testament Book of Job, God allows Satan to strip the righteous Job of his family and wealth as a test of his faith. Job cries out in anguish (“Why has light been given to the weary of soul?”), and reflects on existential questions of worldly evil and divine grace. This is the subject of the first of Johannes Brahms’ Two Motets, Op. 74, Warum ist das Licht gegeben den …

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Brahms’ Second Symphony: Pastoral Sunshine and Shadows

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When it came to writing his First Symphony, Johannes Brahms felt the anxiety of influence. The nine symphonies of Beethoven were so transformative that Brahms was haunted by the “footsteps of a giant” marching behind him. The situation was made worse by Robert Schumann’s enthusiastic public prediction that the young Brahms was destined to become “the heir to Beethoven.” He would carry forward the mantle of “absolute” music, as opposed to the …

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Brahms’ Serenade No. 2 in A Major: A Pathway to the Symphony

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As a musical form, the serenade implies light, entertaining music of the evening, set in a loose collection of movements which resembles a divertimento. The two youthful Serenades which Johannes Brahms wrote in his early twenties conform to this description. Yet they can also be heard as trial runs on the path to a symphony. It was Robert Schumann who heard “veiled symphonies” in Brahms’ early piano music, and who anticipated that …

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Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major: A Conversation Between Opposites

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Following the completion of his Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, the often self-critical Johannes Brahms wrote to his publisher, “You have not yet had such a beautiful trio from me and very likely have not published its equal in the last ten years.” By the time Brahms started work on the Trio in 1880, he had become a well-established, mature composer. For two years, he set the score aside to …

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