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The following is a list of compositions by Johannes Brahms, classified by genre and type of work. The table is sortable (click on header of " # " column) by opus numbers ( Op. ), works without opus numbers ( W. ), appendix works ( A. ), and uncatalogued works ( A. deest ).
#TitleScoringDateOp. 68Symphony No. 1 in C minororchestra1854–76Op. 73Symphony No. 2 in D majororchestra1877Op. 90Symphony No. 3 in F majororchestra1883Op. 98Symphony No. 4 in E minororchestra1884–85- Overview
- The young pianist and music director
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period, but he was more a disciple of the Classical tradition. He wrote in many genres, including symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works, and choral compositions, many of which reveal the influence of folk music.
What is Johannes Brahms famous for?
Throughout Johannes Brahms’s career there is a variety of expression—from the subtly humorous to the tragic—but his larger works show an increasing mastery of movement and an ever-greater economy and concentration. Some of his best-known compositions included Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4, and Hungarian Dances.
What was Johannes Brahms’s family like?
Johannes Brahms was the son of Jakob Brahms, an impecunious horn and double bass player, who was Johannes’s first teacher. Johannes never married, but he had a close relationship with the pianist Clara Schumann, who was married to his champion, composer Robert Schumann.
How did Johannes Brahms become famous?
The son of Jakob Brahms, an impecunious horn and double bass player, Johannes showed early promise as a pianist. He first studied music with his father and, at age seven, was sent for piano lessons to F.W. Cossel, who three years later passed him to his own teacher, Eduard Marxsen. Between ages 14 and 16 Brahms earned money to help his family by playing in rough inns in the dock area of Hamburg and meanwhile composing and sometimes giving recitals. In 1850 he met Eduard Reményi, a Jewish Hungarian violinist, with whom he gave concerts and from whom he learned something of Roma music—an influence that remained with him always.
The first turning point came in 1853, when he met the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, who instantly realized the talent of Brahms. Joachim in turn recommended Brahms to the composer Robert Schumann, and an immediate friendship between the two composers resulted. Schumann wrote enthusiastically about Brahms in the periodical Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, praising his compositions. The article created a sensation. From this moment Brahms was a force in the world of music, though there were always factors that made difficulties for him.
The chief of these was the nature of Schumann’s panegyric itself. There was already conflict between the “neo-German” school, dominated by Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, and the more conservative elements, whose main spokesman was Schumann. The latter’s praise of Brahms displeased the former, and Brahms himself, though kindly received by Liszt, did not conceal his lack of sympathy with the self-conscious modernists. He was therefore drawn into controversy, and most of the disturbances in his otherwise uneventful personal life arose from this situation. Gradually Brahms came to be on close terms with the Schumann household, and, when Schumann was first taken mentally ill in 1854, Brahms assisted Clara Schumann in managing her family. He appears to have fallen in love with her; but, though they remained deep friends after Schumann’s death in 1856, their relationship did not, it seems, go further.
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The nearest Brahms ever came to marriage was in his affair with Agathe von Siebold in 1858; from this he recoiled suddenly, and he was never thereafter seriously involved in the prospect. The reasons for this are unclear, but probably his immense reserve and his inability to express emotions in any other way but musically were responsible, and he no doubt was aware that his natural irascibility and resentment of sympathy would have made him an impossible husband. He wrote in a letter, “I couldn’t bear to have in the house a woman who has the right to be kind to me, to comfort me when things go wrong.” All this, together with his intense love of children and animals, goes some way to explain certain aspects of his music, its concentrated inner reserve that hides and sometimes dams powerful currents of feeling.
- Hungarian Dances (1869–1880) Brahms was introduced to “gypsy-style” music by the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi, who he met in 1850. His 21 Hungarian Dances were originally written for piano four hands, where two pianists play from the same keyboard, but are best known now in their orchestral arrangements.
- Academic Festival Overture (1880) The Academic Festival Overture was composed in the summer of 1880 in tribute to the University of Breslau, after Brahms discovered he was to be awarded with an honorary doctorate.
- German Requiem (1865–1868) Brahms’s German Requiem (or, to give it its full title, A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures) is a large-scale work for chorus, orchestra, and solo soprano and baritone.
- Violin Concerto (1878) Brahms wrote only one concerto for violin, dedicating it to his close friend and almost lifelong collaborator, Joseph Joachim. The composer leaned heavily on the 19th-century violin virtuoso for support and advice during its composition, noting that he had no patience for slurs that indicated bowing rather than phrasing.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends).
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer and pianist and is considered a leading composer in the romantic period. His best known pieces include his Academic Festival Overture and German Requiem. View more. Brahms features. Brahms: 15 facts about the great composer.
Johannes Brahms: a great Romantic - Classical Music. Meet Johannes Brahms, the Janus-like face of Romanticism. Get to know all the great composers with BBC Music's insightful online guides.
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1. Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 39, No. 15 by Johannes Brahms is a solo piano piece composed in 1892 and is one of the most important works of the German composer. It has been praised for its strong melody and noteworthy harmonic progressions.
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