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A comprehensive biography of the German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Learn about his life, works, influences, and legacy in this article.
- 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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Composers & Their Music
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.
Apr 2, 2014 · Johannes Brahms was the great master of symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th century. He can be viewed as the protagonist of the Classical tradition of Joseph Haydn, Mozart...
May 17, 2023 · Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer of Romantic music best known for his symphonies, songs, and orchestral, chamber, and piano music.
- Mark Cartwright
- Johannes Brahms is most famous for being a 19th-century German composer of classical music, especially symphonies. He was one of the last composers...
- Johannes Brahms was in love with Clara Schumann, wife of the composer Robert Schumann.
- Johannes Brahms was 63 years old when he died.
- Johannes Brahms was an excellent pianist, but he is better known as a conductor and composer.
Aug 16, 2024 · Learn about the life and works of Johannes Brahms, a German composer who revitalized the Classical tradition in the 19th century. Explore his mastery of movement, orchestration, and form in his symphonies, concerti, songs, and piano pieces.
Learn about Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Explore his best known works, such as his Academic Festival Overture and German Requiem, and listen to his music online.
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Watch and listen to Maurizio Pollini perform Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15, with Christian Thielemann conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden. This video was uploaded by Les beaux-arts channel seven years ago.
- 51 min
- 1M
- Les beaux-arts channel
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