BRAHMS

Johannes Brahms

• 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897

• Was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period.

• The Three Bs: Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven AND Johannes Brahms.

• Brahms was considered by many to be the "successor" to Beethoven

Johannes Brahms

• His father, who gave him his first music lessons, was a double bassist.

• Music was introduced to his life at an early age. Brahms began playing piano at the age of seven.

• When he was a teenager: Brahms was already an accomplished musician, and he used his talent to earn money.

Brahms’s Personality• Brahms is often considered both traditionalist

and an innovator.

• Descriptions the Brahms’s personality were contradictory: He was called gruff, generous, withholding, unpleasant, secretive, shy, mean, serious, boorish, and immature.

• Like Beethoven, Brahms was fond of nature and often went walking in the woods around Vienna.

Brahms’s Compositions• Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra,

including four symphonies, two piano concertos, a Violin Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and the large choral work A German Requiem (Ein deutsches Requiem).

• Brahms was also a prolific composer in the theme and variation form, having notably composed the Variations and Fugue on a theme by Händel, Paganini Variations, and Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, along with other lesser known sets of variations.

Brahms’s Compositions

• Brahms also wrote a great deal of work for small forces. His many works of chamber music form part of the core of this repertoire, as does his solo piano music. Brahms is also considered to be among the greatest of composers of lieder, of which he wrote about 200.

• Brahms never wrote an opera, nor did he ever write in the characteristic 19th century form of the tone poem.

Influences

• Like most of the Romantic composers, Brahms venerated Beethoven, and his works contain what seem to be outright imitations of Beethoven's work, including the Ninth Symphony and the Hammerklavier sonata. Brahms also loved the earlier Classical composers Mozart and Haydn.

• He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and also edited performing editions.

TRIBUTES:Later that year, the British composer Hubert Parry, who considered Brahms the greatest artist of the time, wrote an orchestral Elegy for Brahms. This was never played in Parry's lifetime, receiving its first performance at a memorial concert for Parry himself in 1918.