Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

The 19th Century
Presentation 11 of 13

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
The Personal Preservation of Art as the Balance of Revolution and Progress.
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, February 14, 1984

Transcript:
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The date is February 14th, 1984. This is the 11th lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on the 19th century tonight's lecture is on Brahms. We'll have 1830, three to 1897, the personal preservation of art as a balance of revolution and progress.
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Yeah, the difficulty with the Brahms is that Brahms is mature. The sophistication of Brahms is the sophistication of a mature human being. Brahm sticks out in the 19th century. Rather like John's go to Sarah Eugenia, stuck out in the middle ages. He's a pinnacle of integrity on a flat plane of mediocrity. Brahms. In fact is one of the most amazing human beings of all time. And if I were to reiterate that during the Wagner lecture, Wagner took a lot of insight from East galas. I should, uh, introduce here the fact that Brahms took his insight from Sophocles and the difference between [inaudible] the difference between the Eagle like soaring of insight and the high plane balance of intelligence and feeling together in a balance is exactly the comparison that we would derive from looking at the lives of Wagner and Brahms. They're the two great contemporaries and they divide the music of the 19th century between them Mozart and Beethoven belong to the age of revolution, Wagner and Brahms represent the lion's share of what was done musically in Europe, in the 19th century, if you subtract the achievement of Browns and Wagner from the 19th century, you have a very paltry duration of time just as vokner is extremely important for the 20th century.
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Brahms also must be resuscitated. He must be appreciated in terms which are appropriate to the perception of his genius. And as we derive timeless improved sensibility from exposing ourselves to the balance of Sophocles. So to the balance of Brahms is necessary. Basically the problem with appreciating Browns is the problem of immaturity for Brahms, never lets the musical line carry you away. He never lets the melody control your feeling. Always there is the balanced individual who has the feelings who hears the melodic line, but who is able to experience these fluid capacities of human being within a formal context of intelligence. So that Brahms always holds the melody and the Palm of the hand. And the Palm of the hand is not a tyrant disciplining, a feeling which would like to be free with Wagner. He cast the melody into the air to see where it will fly and let the subconscious powers carry it wherever it will.
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Brahms insists that man's spirit is intelligent and may follow feeling because feeling itself has an intelligible quantification so that the form of music is a form of human intelligence and thus Brahms schools, us to get off the polarity of trying to do away with feelings because they're bad for us or trying to develop feelings and letting them carry us where they will Brahms is the balance. We will have feelings intense, perhaps more intense than we would have supposed ourselves capable of, but they will be an intensity within a formal recognition of balance. Brahms was born in 1833 in Hamburg. His background was one of poverty. His father was a double bass horn player. The mother was somewhat, uh, older than the father. There were eventually, uh, uh, uh, conditions of, uh, almost extreme poverty. And yet the sensibility of the parents was such that young Brahms had a very, uh, fine childhood.
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He always had the sense that happiness was not dependent upon wealth at all. And even later on, when he became enormously wealthy from the income of his published music, Brahms would never touch the funds except through a small stipend, which he had his music publisher send him we're at the pinnacle of Brahms fame in Vienna. He lived in a three room apartment and, uh, and a great sparsity personal sparsity of, uh, acquisition and Brahms without anyone know what sends sums to young struggling musicians around Europe with, uh, no strings attached, even when his musical publishing agent lost large sums of Brahms money in stock market, uh, uh, escapades Brahms never reprimanded the man. So the early conditions of poverty were rather to set a tone to Brown's his personality when he was just a youngster, it was observed because his father played a instrument in bands.
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It was observed that young Brahms was quite talented. So they began to teach him piano with an eye towards having him become a virtuoso and eventually Brahms would be come, uh, quite a good performer. And, uh, the small income from those performances would augment the family's income. However, when he was 10 and he was about to be sent on to further schooling to become a super star on the stage Brahms's musical teacher told the family, the musical teacher, the first one was named Casell C O S S E L told the family that young Brahms was more talented as a composer than as a virtue of so that it was an extraordinary discovery on his part that the youngster could think in terms of musical structure and that what little indications and, uh, uh, helps Casell had, uh, been able to observe or give to Brahms.
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He felt himself outclassed by the young boys capacities. So he introduced to the Brahms family, the top musical instructor in the city of Hamburg, a man named Markson and Markson who had observed Brahms at several recital sessions, agreed to teach the boy free of charge. This was an extraordinary event in bronzes life, and it was the first time there would be a parallel, uh, later on it was the first time that the young Brahms felt himself singled out by destiny. He was 10 years old and he was told that he was a young genius. Markson instructed a young Brahms for a number of years in Hamburg Brahms at 15 tested himself. He decided to play a composition of his at a concert in Hamburg. This would be 1848, the whole escapade fell flat. And it was the beginning lesson for Brahms that if one bases one's response upon other's responses, you end up in an endless ping pong game of despair, or if it turns out to be triumph, it very quickly explodes and evaporates.
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So the young teenage Brahms' set himself not steal to himself, but set himself to not take the immediate response to his music to heart, whether it would be for good or for ill in order to support himself and bring money into the family. Brahms had to begin giving, um, recitals and concerts at various music halls. This in Hamburg at the time did not pay enough. So he began playing in nightclubs and as a adolescent from ages, um, 13 through 19 Brahms very often would play at these nightclubs late into the night and was exposed to the very CME, uh, nightlife and underground world of Hamburg Brahms acquired at this time, a taste for cigars, a taste for dark black coffee and a taste for young ladies at the age of 19, just before his 20th birthday, a young Hungarian violinist named Romania was going to go on a tour through several cities in Germany and ask, uh, Brahms if he would accompany him so that the two could play violin and piano together, Brahms decided that he would do this.
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And although he let her had arguments with [inaudible] and broke off the, uh, acquaintance ship, it pride Brahms Lewis from Hamburg. I say pride Lowe's because Brahms was one of those individuals who was so extraordinarily sensitive, his feeling tones were sophisticated to a point that any undue motion or activity was very painful to Brahms later on in his life. When he was offered a doctorate from the university of Cambridge in England, his initial delight soon soured because he was told he would have to go to England in person to receive it. And he was so fearful of being SEASET crossing the English channel that he actually turned down this very, very coveted, uh, doctor of musicology from Cambridge. So Brahms was pried Lewis at the age of 20 from Hamburg, and they went South hamburger of course, very far North and in Germany, one of the Hanseatic, uh, free cities for it, quite large Homburg today has several million people. As they went South,
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They met three
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Individuals who would influence bronze for the rest of his life.
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They met a,
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The violinist named Joaquin. Joseph Joaquin, Joseph Walker came was just a few years older than bronze, but had become somewhat of a celebrity in a virtuoso on the violin since he was four.
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In fact,
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When he went to England in the late 19th century, he celebrated, uh, 60 years of touring England from the continent at one of his concerts. Joaquin was one of these extraordinary individuals, uh, very, very, uh, likable, uh, talented, uh, musical genius, able to understand what music, uh, presents to the world rather than what it represents. Very often musicians who simply perform, uh, give us music and its representational mode. That is to say they imitate the notation with their instrument, but different from that is a true virtual also and musical artist who instead of imitating the music, mimics the musical notation and presents the feeling Wakim was one of the great, uh, artists of his day. He was perhaps the most famous violinists in Europe. In the 19th century. He met Browns immediately liked the youngster. Brahms was 20 years old walk came since right away.
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The tremendous integrity, the characteristic, uh, reserve of Brahms was actually even at the age of 20, not so much a reserve, but a self disciplining of oneself knowing full well, the depth and the Heights, the intensity of feeling for which one was capable, not wanting to X these out, not wanting to these feelings from oneself Brahms already at 20 had schooled himself to experience his feelings in a ordered flow. For instance, excuse me, whenever Brahms would drag out of himself, enormous themes, he would always try to do so in pairs, that is to say when he was offered, finally, a, uh, doctorate of philosophy from the university of Breslau, and he wrote the academic festival overture for it, with its great comic, uh, uh, handling of German beer drinking songs within this classical context, he also wrote a, uh, tragic, uh, overture to go along with it, to balance it.
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Brahms four symphonies came out in two pairs whenever he would bring from himself some extraordinary expression. He would try to balance it with another. And this is characteristic of Brown's whole personality at any rate at age 20, he went, he met Joseph Joaquin who at this time was, uh, spending part of his time and, uh, uh, a little community called Glenigan Glenigan near Marburg, uh, in Southern Germany, but he was also at this time, 1853, just about to be appointed to the court of Hanover, where he would, uh, spend about 13 to 15 years of his life as the, uh, personal, uh, musician for the court of Hanover. You have to understand that one was allowed to do tours, but these were positions that secured your, uh, wellbeing. It gave you also a sense of a place in European society. 19th century class distinctions in Europe were extremely well-developed remember.
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Now this was a society before it was shattered by the first world war, so that the court appointments where the legitimising of the talent publicly, it was just as important as, uh, for a writer in our day and age to be published by a good publisher. That's sort of a, of a comparison. The other individuals that Brahms met were Mr. And Mrs. Robert Schumann, Robert Schumann repeated what Markson had observed in bronze, Robert Schumann at this time and his wife, beautiful, excellent wife, Clara were living in Dusseldorf down in the, uh, the Dortmund, uh, in, uh, corridor. There are four large German cities with about five, um, mid-sized German cities, all in this, uh, rear, uh, area there's Dortmund S in Dusseldorf and then a cologne and further South would be bond. And they form a Crescent. The Rhine river Valley runs through there. And, um, my grandmother was from Dusseldorf and, uh, it it's a very, um, Tufts sort of a city industrial has been industrial for a long time.
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And yet, uh, there is great patronage of the arts in Dusseldorf, uh, think to yourself, uh, in the United States of Pittsburgh, uh, the, the civic pride of having a, uh, a decent symphony and so forth, uh, which was characteristic of Pittsburgh. This kind of an attitude was prominent in Dusseldorf. Robert Schumann published an article. Yeah. And, uh, the title of the article was called new paths. And he said of Brian's that this was the new Messiah of music, nothing less. That Brahms was the great hero of the spirit that Europe had been crying for. That the romantic revolution that had seemed to founder in the industrial revolution had finally found its great protagonist. Its great savior night that even at 21 could already discern in bronze, this great spiritual character of the cultural hero who had come to restore balance to the primordial, our music and with it to restore some sense of wholesomeness to the feeling tone of Europe, nothing was okay.
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The article causes sensation Brahms of course, uh, initially stymied by the overwhelming, uh, application of uh, triumph to him premature, no doubt began to assume a very serious concerted effort. His personality began to, uh, uh, assume the tone of a man who has a great mountain to climb because it's been declaimed that he is the one who will climb the mountain Brahm studied with Schumann, but unfortunately Schuman was suffering from a chronic inflammation of the inner ear and the deterioration of his inner ear began to work upon the personality of Schumann. Within six months of meeting Brahms, Robert Schumann tried to take his life by drowning himself in the Rhine river. He had six children, Clara Schumann was pregnant. So Brahms decided to stay in Dusseldorf to accept musical students and to try and help. He has great friends, Schumann begged his wife to let him enter a lunatic asylum. He was deteriorating physiologically and the symptoms were such that he was beginning to fray in his perceptual integration. He was in fact no longer finally even able to see his wife without, as the colloquial phrase goes,
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Going off the deep end.
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So Schumann was kept in an asylum and two and a half years later he would die. And two days before he died, they allowed his wife to come and see him. And uh, he hardly recognized her at all this rapid fire decay of a great musical talent, a man of great integrity. Robert Schuman was really an excellent man, a very fantastic, uh, musician and composer. Uh, if one listens to his Manfred overture, you can, you can sense the, uh, tremendous, uh, uh, vitality within Schumer, but Clara Schumann was also a person of extraordinary depth. It was discovered just a few years ago, I think a decade or so ago. Uh, some of Clara Schumann's compositions were discovered in an old trunk, the proverbial, uh, old trunk in someone's attic. And it turns out that Clara Schumann in her own right was a very, very great composer.
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Um,
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There are in fact, a couple of recordings of some of Clara Schumann's piano works. She was a great concert pianist who toured all over Europe. She was in fact, um, very much like the, uh, uh, popular conception of what, uh, uh, Cosma vokner was supposed to be custom. Uh, of course being the daughter of friends lists, Clara Schumann was the most refined feminine sensitivity of the 19th century in her capacity as a musician in her capacity as a composer in her capacity as a
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Mother and a wife as a full rounded woman, to see her go through this suffering brought Brahms to the point of almost considering suicide himself, or he had fallen deeply in love with her. And in true romantic tradition, the hero may not have a forbidden love. She was the wife of his great friend, even though he was decaying in a lunatic asylum. And so Brahms held himself in this colossal balance of feeling he stayed near her to help her loved her madly was unable to advance himself in any way, except through the platonic kindliness, which he was able to offer in terms of financial aid, uh, counseling, uh, advise being a deep friend, Clara sensing the incredible travail going on in Brahms. Having just rung herself with the travail of her. The keg husband was also in straits in 1856 when Robert Schumann died early in the year, it was rumored that finally Clara Schumann and Johan Brahms would marry, but the facts were these Clara Schumann was 14 years has senior.
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She had seven children. Bronze was a young musical giant whose personality Titanic, really struggling to balance feeling within needed to have a sense of independence, Clara, Schumann, extraordinary woman, that she was finally made the decision. I think for both of them that they would be seen together that they would remain friends throughout their life, but that there would be no wedding, no marriage, no involvement or complication Brahms wrote a tremendous, uh, piano, Sonata and C at this time. And, uh, a friend of his who heard it played said, uh, whatever were you thinking of when you wrote such a piece? And he said, if you've ever seen a man who has the gun to commit suicide and knows he must use it. It is in that frame of mind that I have written this piano Sonata in see by 1857, it appeared to Brahms'
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That he was going to have to put a little bit of distance between himself and Clara and yet stay within contact distance. He accepted an appointment at a small court, a little Dutchie called Detmold Detmold was exactly midway in between Dusseldorf where Clara Schumann was and Hanover where Joseph Joaquin was. So that Brahms good travel the, uh, a hundred or so miles in either direction. And, uh, be with either of his two friends while he was there at the cart at that mall, one of his tasks was to teach voice to the young princess Frederica who was a spry young thing. Well, of course fell in love with her musical teacher and, uh, tempted him with all sorts of Royal coquettish ways, which the 19th century seems to have excelled in Brahms. At this time through the late 1850s began to struggle with the idea of doing a large composition, the feelings that he had experienced with Clara Schumann had engendered in him the production of three movements of a symphony, but the complications with Frederica soon washed away the combination, the finale, the fourth movement, it was unable to come forth in Brahms, taught himself a lesson in balance that one must persevere through indefinitely in order to bring any phenomenal form to a spiritual balance.
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That is to say, there is no way that a spiritual artistic creator can do it part time or episodically. He has to trade himself that he must do it constantly continuously for all time. This is the only way in which any phenomenal manifestation can come forth Brahms at the end of the 1850s hoped that has native city of Hamburg, which was getting ready to change its urban city. Metro metropolitan conductor would appoint him in order to make himself attractive for this position. ROMs began to in fact, uh, uh, compose a number of songs and works, uh, Brahms songs. Uh, we should talk about this for a minute. At this time, uh, became quite well known. If you look at the list of Brahms works, the songs, the choral works occupy fully half or almost two thirds of all of his works. He was a composer for whom the human voice in his melodic mode.
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The song, the lyric was a, a key, uh, element in musical consciousness in human feeling. The song in fact became for Abrahms the, uh, the, the basic, uh, atomic or molecular unit out of which all of his other compositions would, could be composed when he would turn. For instance, to larger Kestrel works in the great, uh, culminating years of his life. The melodic episodes that he would seek to suspend within the somber classical form would be these wonderful songs played by instruments on the orchestra. So that in a Brahms symphony, for instance, our Brahms concerto, one of the large orchestral works. One has the display of enormous gaiety and little bets suspended within a formal classical structure that seeks to allow for the songs to appear, but does not allow for the songs to sweep one away from the formal background, the first piano concerto, the D minor piano concerto, he wrote two piano, concertos was, uh, written and performed at this time.
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It was a tremendous work it was received. Of course, as most of Brahms works by a certain population of enthusiastic people and a large population of unenthusiastic people Browns was seen. Uh, bye. The popular mind of the 19th century as a reactionary, as someone who was going back to the old fashion classical forms, someone who is going back to Mozart or back to Haydn back before Beethoven, where the popular sentiment was to carry on from Beethoven had not Beethoven after all with great giant steps carved out the path by which musical expression of human feeling would, uh, be able to develop was not the new man someplace on that far horizon with this, uh, great exploration and pioneering of musical form. So it was the haunting specter of the giant Beethoven that dominated the 19th century. And in fact, Wagner struggled mightily to become the heir of Beethoven and
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Is the real error of Beethoven Brahms, in fact, sought not to imitate, but to emulate and bronze in the first piano concerto gives us a portrayal of a man, uh, 25, 26 years old, struggling mightily to balance not only his personal feeling, they flamboyant the great romantic feeling bait, uh, Beethoven and Brahms could, uh, could feel, uh, durations of human feeling that, uh, we're all but invisible to most human beings. They made a phenomenally manifest, uh, subtleties of feeling formed that were invisible to mankind before they wrote. We talked when we gave the lecture on Mozart, how Mozart was the great pioneer of individual personal feeling and music that for the first time ever in human history East or West Mozart was the first to make musical form ache, personal expressive mode, and how Beethoven had taken that and had, uh, written these, uh, uh, beautiful, uh, beginnings of Mozart onto vast canvases.
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It was the legacy of this gallery of possibility from Beethoven that stymied the 19th century in terms of feeling and in terms of its, um, uh, artistic expression, especially in music. And it was music that was the primordial art of the 19th century. The parallel to Beethoven and music was Garrett and literature. And the same kind of, uh, influence was felt, but it was clearly Beethoven whose giant steps had set up an almost impossible task for those who would imitate him. And so Brahms realizing that one would verge upon the megalomania of Wagner if one sought to expand Beethoven. So expansion was not the key was not the note, but rather to take the formal structuring of feeling which Beethoven had explored and to bring it back into balance where Beethoven had flung the capacity for a man furthest out in the ninth symphony feelings in the ninth symphony were expressed that had never before been felt so bronze.
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His first piano concerto echoes the seams of Beethoven's ninth symphony. And one has the feeling of the young master bringing in these vast, uh, gestures that had gone out in almost, uh, splayed, light conditions, Holy and the musical consciousness of Beethoven, but become strident in the imitators that had, uh, progressively populated the 19th century. So that by 1860, most romantic music was predictably, a tragic triumphant. They, uh, the wonderful, uh, parody that, uh, Prokofiev would write when he would write the classical symphony, uh, with a little smile and, and, uh, uh, Prokofiev's wonderful, uh, uh, Russian sense of humor that, uh, one had to have, uh, have a dashing theme, a very down movement where everybody was hoping that you'd get back to the action and that, that triumphant a finale where the action and the feelings all came in and everyone felt really great because you were able to indulge yourself in these triumph feelings of, uh, ultimate universal value. Brahms brought back that stridency to a center, to a balance and already in the first piano concerto in 1860, you see Brahms' surveying the field. He was not given the position in Hamburg. And so the age of 29 Brahms went to Vienna.
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Deanna Deanna was the home base for the musical consciousness. It was the place that Mozart loved. It was the place that Beethoven has been in. And those long walks through the countryside around Vienna, where just what bronze needed. He, you got to hold him himself in great, greater esteem. His capacity, uh, began to manifest itself. They, he went on a tour as, you know, conducting orchestras and so forth. And in the, uh, uh, in the summers, he went to various spas. In fact, during the middle 1860s, he went to Barton Barton, which is just off the Rhine river down in Southern Germany, near the, uh, near to, uh, the French, uh, uh, border, uh, somewhere between, uh, Carl's rule and a Basel all through the 1860s, Brahms struggled to pull in the excessive redundancies of the imitators of Beethoven into new musical harmony. He in fact experienced again and again, um, the need to do some major work after all, had he not been held by him, his friend now deceased Robert Schumann is the new musical Messiah, the new musical Messiah of the European feeling tone and sensibility of the age.
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And he had not produced a major work. It produced the first piano concerto. It produced a lot of songs. It produced a number of, uh, chamber pieces. It produced a number of piano solos, many of them for Clara Schumann to perform, to make money, but Brahms had mooted to himself, a work which would bring back the Beethoven sensibility into a harmonic structure by the mid of the 1860s. He had found his Mark. He brought back sketches, which he had done at the point of the death of Robert Schumer and those of travail where he had wavered between asking for Clara Schumann's hand and realizing that he couldn't do it. Then the death of Braum's mother triggered off in 1866, and Brahms began to bring the work together and in the form, which it enjoy in our day, uh, the German Requiem, the German Requiem that is to say this would be a mass, but it would not be a Catholic mass, but a Protestant mass through there.
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It was to be a mass in the sense that it was to be, yeah, a transformative ritual of spiritual import. And it was to be that for the German people, for the German mind, for what had begun to haunt Brahms was the comparison that was, uh, introduced by a conductor named Hans Von Bulow. Uh, the three B's Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. And so Brahms was beginning to be hold up as the, uh, as the, uh, great inheritor of this tradition. Remember now that Bach's music for several hundred years had languished had not been, uh, performed, had been the property of, uh, of little tiny Lutheran churches and communities, and that it was Felix Mendelssohn who had brought the idea of re doing old classics in contemporary concerts had revived Bach in the 1850s. It was Mendelsohn who had done this, so that the giant that was Beethoven in the present, the revive giant of Bach in the past and the future giant Brahms, who was yet to do something, all of this was haunting the young man by now, he was 35 years of age. And where were the great works? The German Requiem was the first great work of bronze. It is with out a doubt, one of the finest spiritual musical compositions ever made for in it ROMs fully takes into consideration. All of the elements that I have outlined for you, the tremendous themes of Beethoven, the tremendous, uh, uh, structural, um, developments of Bach, the great development of personal feeling with Mozart and Haydn, the tremendous excesses that had been done by imitators of Beethoven, the tremendous, tremendous excesses that had been so successfully, um, put forth by Wagner.
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All of this Brahms brought together in the late 1860s in the German Requiem. It is a work which does a sacred transformation for the German people, all the mind, which has been exploded by feeling expectation. We have Bach Beethoven. We have Mozart, we have vokner. Now we have Brahms. We're the great German race. Brahms brought all this back. And instead of getting rid of the notion of the German sensibility, brought it back into a Sophoclean harmony in the German Requiem. In fact, the Catholic mass, which has a five part, um, seriation to its process Brahms was having trouble with the, excuse me, with the fifth part. And so change the structure of the mass and its final presentation. It was, uh, presented several times, uh, in smaller forums, but its final seven part form was presented in 1869. This seven part mass of Brahms is really the first indication that we have of the maturity of secular culture surpassing the religious culture of the authoritarian church.
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That is to say specifically the secular sacred does had passed the authoritarians sacredness of the church structure with Brahms's German Requiem. It was an indication of the maturing of the human individual that he no longer needed to be in an authoritarian church structure to experience the highest transformative qualities of spirituality. He could do it in a concert hall as a private citizen, as an individual who had gone there with his friends and family and still had still had the effective transformation of the spiritual experience. Brahms' German Requiem and its seven part structure was, uh, absolutely tremendous. He had all kinds of offers from, from almost everywhere in Europe. He finally decided that he would take a post in, um, he has, uh, Bella by now beloved, uh, Vienna. There was a, um, a group called the gazelle shopped or music, uh, freehand. They, uh, the society for a music, friends of music and Brahms for three years was the head conductor and the head of this in Vienna.
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He was the, uh, social lion of Vienna of the 1870s. And in order to demonstrate his capacity to them of his masterfulness just as a, for Wagner, his sense of mastery was writing and being able to complete the master singers of Nuremberg that the, the Meister singers of Nurenberg especially Han Sox was the symbolic manifestation of Wagner's mastery of form. So to Braum's presentation of his mastery of form was in a work called variations on a theme by heightened, which is one of the most extraordinary orchestral works ever done. If you get a chance to listen to it, you will see they absolute mastery of forum that Brahms has in fact Brahms who was his own deepest critic could find nothing to criticize and the variations and obtained by heightened. But the theme is not by hiding. The theme is from, uh, uh, an obscure work by, uh, some contemporary of his in Vienna.
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Some, uh, man who we've lost crack up. Why heightened? Why would Brahm say such a thing? Because Brahms was declaring in the title that this was a mastery of form going back to Mozart and heightened back to the beginnings of the Viennese musical consciousness before Beethoven, but after Bach at that juncture where it was just coming out and that Brahms was going to show not only the scene, but all the variations, the carefree dancing of using the whole orchestra to pair a wet around a theme. And in fact, the theme is an old religious chorus, uh, taken from, uh, uh, something called the St. Andrew's chorus that I've been unable to, uh, trace down and locate exactly. But yeah, it was an old religious folk song for a choir for a chorus, which Brahms had brought into orchestral of mastery and had dazzled the Vinny's, uh, uh, uh, audiences with.
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So the variations on a theme of Haydn is alongside the German Requiem of Brahms coming of age. He was now nearing 40 years of age and after acting for three years, the society for the friends of music, he decided to resign. He had brought, uh, extraordinarily interesting programs, but Brahms had a need to be independent. He yearned as a young man for stability for that home, for that position that he could stay in for the rest of his life. And now that he had it, he realized that he couldn't stay with it. He couldn't use it. He could not maintain the pioneering edge of his exploration of further balances in human feeling. If he were to be ground up by the committees, by the, the workaday tasks that would have to be shouldered by staying in one place in one position, Clara Schumann had seen very accurately years before the true heroic character of bronze love him as she did. She loved him as the heroic exploring composer more than as an object for her own personal, uh, satisfaction and feeling she had let him go. And Al Brahms had learned that he must also let himself go. When he resigned. He realized that he had matriculated himself into the final school of life, the school of mastery of expression. And so Brahms sensing the seriousness of the moment, went back to the first three movements of the symphony of 20 years before and sat down to complete it, to finish it.
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And through the 1870s, the late 1870s Brahms would do this again. And again, he would go back to musical problems that had been unsolvable for him when he was younger and he would solve them. And it was not simply the, uh, the, uh, triumphal Della top two was finally able to finish the crossword puzzle if the master who goes back to the origins of his own quandaries and personality, his own knots and feelings and open them up. And as he opened them up, he realized that he was in position finally, as a man, as an artist, that he had been able to bring his balance of feeling to a high enough level, a high enough plateau like that, uh, airy place from where the spiritual Eagles eyes surveys, the all that the world itself becomes a pattern to be understood in its unity. Brahms finished the first symphony.
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And as he finished, it wrote the final movement for it. He also began the second symphony and within a matter of months had finished the second symphony. And so the first two symphonies by Brahms came out. And when you hear the first symphony, the first movement begins with such a driving Beethoven movement. You wonder, how could anyone resolve this? Is there any Coda in music that could handle such a, um, a pile driver of a scene they orchestra comes in and, uh, all the major violins, uh, just spiral and this, uh, this driving thrumming, uh, uh, uh, uh, theme, which is more of a rhythm than a melody. And yet he solved that musical problem. He was able to bring that form to conclusion, but the second symphony to balance that is an extraordinary work it's full of gentleness and delight. It's full of, um, cheerful explorations on the edges of triumph, never once letting one get carried away until the finale, the final fourth, where the audience and the composer have earned the right to strut a little bit to parade a little bit.
(00:53:32):
And so Brahms like a master opens up the final doors as a form and allows for the triumph theme to finally emerge something which had been in suspension for 22 years, finally pulled itself out. And the final, uh, uh, bars of the second symphony in the fourth movement are a joy to behold. One senses the Olympian triumph of the human spirit, being able to fly free because it knows that hit has developed wings to fly free. It's not a triumph of romantic speculation. It is a triumph of classical understanding. And so Brahms second symphony is one of the world's great musical pieces. In fact, if we listen closely to the fourth movement of the second symphony and the fourth movement of the fourth symphony, you notice the parallel Brahms was a master when he wrote the second symphony and the fourth movement was the best triumph he was capable of.
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Then when he wrote the fourth symphony Brahms had transcended all, uh, uh, categories was a universal genius and they finale, I was a fourth symphony is one of those works like Beethoven's ninth. There isn't language to describe the capacity that is demonstrated there, not reached for not struggled for, but presented without effort by 1880 Brahms. In fact was, uh, becoming the lion of Europe. Brahms and Wagner had met in 1863 outside of Vienna at this time, uh, Wagner was living, uh, a dissolute a year. He was at a place called [inaudible] and he had decided that, uh, his life was so messed up, that he was just going to take in a beautiful mistress and, uh, and live a wild life. A year later, he would be taken in by a Ludvig the second, the mad Bavarian King and his financial problems would be solved. And Wagner would set himself then to seriously finish is a musical works in life Wagner and Brahms divide.
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The musical sensibility of the 19th century Brahms had signed a petition. Declaiming this tremendous worship of excess. While those critics from the Wagnerian standpoint, decried Brahms, who was an old fashioned stick in the mud who was trying to turn the clock back. It was actually some kind of reactionary. Both views obviously are wrong. There are miss assessments of the tremendous triumph that each of them had acquired in their own form, but realize Wagner's work is almost all in the opera, the musical drama, as he called it, Brahms never once wrote an opera, never once thought of it. Two completely dissimilar musical sensibilities exploring the 19th century, both of them coming to realize that whatever form was to be manifested, the content could not dominate the form, that there had to be a formal understanding on man's part ultimately, and not one of contextual contextual feeling that is to say the material aspect of the world had to take second place.
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It was the materiality of the world, which could not be pursued to the ultimate. It was only the formal aspect of the world that could be pursued to its ultimate, that progressive revelation by Wagner and by Brahms and their successive, uh, uh, works in the respective ways, demonstrated that the feeling maturity of the 19th century was verging upon maturity, uh, by the 1880s. And in fact, we will see at the conclusion of this series that the 1880s was in fact, a watershed and European consciousness for bronze. He was lionized. He had written towards the end of the 1870s, not only, um, another piano concerto and the second piano concerto was an enormously spry work. In fact, if we listened to it today, you will hear some of the themes of star Wars that John Williams, uh, took from the second piano concerto of Brahms. You'll hear them, uh, played.
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It's almost like a weird deja VU to hear something like that from our time, uh, lurking around in the second panel can share them. One of the, uh, really tremendous, uh, uh, works in the repertoire. Uh, and at the same time, as he wrote this, uh, concerto for piano, he wrote a great violin concerto in D for violin and orchestra, both in the same year at other paralleling and the violin concerto. One of the, uh, really great works. In fact, uh, if you play Beethoven's violin concerto, and then Brahms' violin concerto, you realize that Brahms had matured his style to the mastery of Beethoven at that juncture. And then with 1883 Brahms found in himself, a third symphony and the third symphony came out on was an extraordinary work, uh, unbelievable, uh, work, but to balance it, he wrote the fourth within months, again, pairing these and the fourth symphony, um, like Wagner's Percival was the ultimate statement of the way in which feeling trans mutates itself from content to form that the human big exists, not as a colored patchwork of melody, but exists as an eternal harmony of form.
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And if he can transmute himself to that level, to that horizon of perception, his feeling becomes intelligence, universal abiding, and no longer a wavering Brahms for symphony places, man, there that God's eye view of his own feeling capacity. It's interesting that Brahms gave the fourth symphony to Hans Von Bulow to conduct in the small town where he was by below of course, had lost his wife to Wagner Wagner to become world famous. And, uh, his wife had taken over the collecting of funds for the building of Wagner's great theater at Beatrice problems, understanding balance, being the great gentlemen delivered into the hands of this button below as the constellation for having lost so much the sacredness of the position of performing his own final work, even though Brahms would live a dozen years after the fourth symphony, he never wrote another major work. He wrote songs.
(01:02:00):
He wrote, uh, piano works. He wrote some sacred Carl works, but he let rest what he had achieved. He had understood in himself what had happened in the last month of Brahms life. He was dying of cancer of the liver, the once great, proud manly stance, or has just curled into a huddle, the beautiful hair, just, but strings hanging down. The city of Vienna held a Memorial concert with Brahms in the balcony, and they played the fourth symphony. And at every movement, there were standing ovations and calls for the Maestro. Brahms would stand shakily in the balcony, the tremendousness of the realization of what he had achieved, because by now, it doesn't hear as later the great fourth symphony of Brahms had become apparent to the growing sophistication of European audiences. What, in fact, he had been doing what, in fact, the world had been participating in when it listened to his music, when it was presented by this transformative musical form and seeing the shell of the man brought tears to the eyes of the audience of Vienna and reports at the time said that after the fourth movement and the standing ovation, while the voices were cheering him, the eyes were pouring tears because they could see that this was the last farewell for Bronx.
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He never, again surfaced in public. He died at the age 64 in 1897, April 3rd Braum's legacy has been forgotten in the 20th century because the 20th century has run screaming. Pell Nell for more, the 20th century has become like a gangster or a crying only for more. It has forgotten the lesson. The great 19th century had to finally learn that balance is more important than more. Once you have balance, you can pioneer for more, but if you tried to have more on top of more, you will fall. There is no doubt of that whatsoever. In fact, the little volume of Sophocles that Brahms thumb through while he was writing the great forest symphony shows the master 2,300 years later understood very well. The lessons of the master of before that, in fact, when one has transcended the temporal limitations, one does not just follow one's errors.
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One is not just a inheritor of Beethoven, but one joins that sacred chorus of the human spirit, Sophocles and Brahms alike, who remind us if we, the material world for more, we will fall into an abyss. The only hope for us then is to be clear about our vision into the darkness, to be able to see the patterns of the stars reflected there in that is our only saving grace. We will see next week. One last genius. Before the final one, we turn finally to science. We turned to James clerk Maxwell because he found what all of our individuals that we have given found that the material world vanishes as you become adept at codifying it, as you become adept at seeing it and understanding it, it vanishes before your eyesight and what is left is nothing but pure energetic form. And James clerk Maxwell is great volumes on a treatise on electromagnetic energy set the stage. It was a combination of science such as the world had never seen. And it was the platform on which I'm Stein stood finally to make sense of a vanishing world in a relative universe, by being able to follow the forms through to the starry patterns within there he is.

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