Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Brahms, Johannes
BRAHMS, Johannes, musical composer, was born May 7, 1833, at Hamburg, where his father played the double-bass in the orchestra. He received his first instructions in music from his father, and then studied under Eduard Marxsen. Schumann's warm recommendation in the Neuen Zeitschrift für Musik (Oct. 28, 1853) called the attention of musicians, of the public, and of the publishers to the young man, who subsequently made slow but constant progress on the road to permanent artistic fame. After several years of activity as director of music at the court of Lippe-Detmold he devoted a considerable period of time to assiduous study and composition in his native town. Thence he proceeded, in 1862, to Vienna, which city became his second home, for although he quitted it after holding for one year the post of director of the Singing Academy (1864), he never felt comfortable in the other towns which he visited—Hamburg, Zürich, Baden-Baden—and accordingly, in 1869, he returned to the Austrian capital. He conducted from 1872 to 1874 the concerts of the Society of Amateur Musicians, until Herbeck, who had in the meantime resigned his post of Court Director of Music, resumed the functions of that office. Brahms then resided for some time away from Vienna, namely, at Heidelberg, but returned in 1878. Undoubtedly Brahms is entitled to rank among the greatest composers now living. At first he followed the "new German" school which had been inaugurated by Schumann in the journal already mentioned, but when the heat of youth had been replaced by calmer reflection, he inclined more to the classical school, so that now he is criticised by the Baireuther Blätter, and recognised by Conservative Institutes as a classical composer. In fact he combines in himself the different styles, and may be claimed both by musical progressists and by classicists as belonging to them. Although Brahms attracted public notice in consequence of Schumann's recommendation, the recognition of his genius in wider circles dates only from the year 1868, when his "Deutschen Requiem" (Op. 45) was produced. His later works are "Rinaldo," a cantata; the "Schicksalslied " of Hölderlin; "Triumphlied," "Rhapsodie" from Goethe's "Hartzreise;" three string-quartets; two symphonies; a great number of songs, duets, choruses, concertos, motets, &c.