Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

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Brahms, Johannes was a German composer, pianist, and conductor. He is considered one of the greatest composers of symphonic music and songs. His works include four symphonies, lieder (songs), and concertos for piano and for violin, chamber music, sonatas, and the choral Ein Deutsches Requiem /A German Requiem (1868). He performed and conducted his own works. We regret to announce that Herr Johannes Brahms, the illustrious composer, died in Vienna at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning from acute disease of the liver, from which he had been suffering for many months. The funeral ceremony will take place on Tuesday afternoon at the German Protestant Church; it is probable that the master's remains will be deposited in the municipal cemetery of Vienna, where the site for a tomb will be given by the town.

It is a far easier task to enumerate the outward events of Brahms's life than to attempt to assess his exact ultimate position among the great masters of music, though it is certain that his place is with the greatest of these (Botstein, 1999). Reckoned by the ordinary standards of Court or official appointments, his career has been one of the least eventful that the history of art can show. The son of a double-bass player in the opera band at Hamburg, where he was born May 7, 1833, he was placed, while still a boy, under the care and tuition of Eduard Marxsen, of Altona, with the view of his becoming a pianoforte player. At the age of 20 he was engaged by a once famous violinist, Remenyi, as accompanist on a concert tour, in the course of which the current of his career was completely altered by a meeting with Joachim, whose friendship had the most important results on his life?

Through the great violinist he was introduced to Schumann, who, on the strength of the compositions submitted to him - the earliest pianoforte sonatas and the first set of songs - declared the young man to be the composer for whose advent all Germany was as it were waiting (Brahms, 1971). After his famous utterance on this subject, entitled 'Neue Bahnen,' the older master had but three years to live, but from that time until her death last year Brahms enjoyed the intimate friendship of Mme. Schumann, and treated her with almost filial love and reverence: by a curious coincidence, the chill from the effects of which the composer never quite recovered was brought on by an arduous journey undertaken in order that he might be present at Mme. Schumann's funeral.

In 1854 Brahms was appointed choir-director and music-master to the Prince of Lippe-Detmold, a post he retained for a few years only; he had appeared occasionally at Hamburg as a pianist, and played his own concerto, op. 15, at the Gewandhaus at Leipzig in 1859 (Brahms, 1997). He went first in 1862 to Vienna still mainly as a pianist; in the following year he was appointed director of the Singakademie there, ...