Mezzotints in modern music /

The death of Johannes Brahms in 1897 removed from the sparsely settled land of music the last of the immortals; the one whom Bülow justly ranked with Bach and Beethoven; the one upon whom Schumann lavished both praise and prophecy. Not by any wrench of the imagination can we conjure the name of Antonin Dvorák, despite his delightful gift of saying naïve and Slavic things; not by any excess of sentiment can we dower Italy’s grand old man Verdi with the title, nor yet France’s favorite son, Saint-Saëns; not any one nor all of these three varying talents can be compared to the great, virile man who died in Vienna, the city of his preference but not of his birth.

When the printed list of Brahms’ achievements in song, sonata, symphony and choral works of vast proportions is placed before you, amazement at the slow, patient, extraordinary fertility and versatility of the man seizes upon you. It is not alone that he wrote four symphonies of surpassing merit, two piano concertos, a violin concerto, a double concerto for violin and violoncello, songs, piano pieces, great set compositions like the Song of Destiny and the German Requiem, duos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, sestets, all manner of combinations for wood, for wind, for strings and voices; it is the sum total of high excellence, the stern, unyielding adherence to ideals sometimes almost frostily unhuman—in a word, the logical, consistent and philosophic bent of the man’s mind—that forces your homage. For half a century he pursued the beautiful in its most elusive and difficult form; pursued it when the fashions of the hour, day and year mocked at such wholesale, undeviating devotion, when form was called old-fashioned, sobriety voted dull, and the footlights had invaded music’s realm and menaced it in its very stronghold—the symphony.

When a complete life of Johannes Brahms is written, this trait of fidelity, this marvellous spiritual obstinacy of the man will be lovingly dealt with. There seems to be a notion abroad that because Brahms refused to challenge current tendencies in art and literature he held himself aloof, was remote from humanity, was a bonze of art, a Brahmin, and not a bard chanting its full-blooded wants and woes with full throat. Nothing could be wider of the truth. Brahms’ music throbs with humanity; with the rich red blood of mankind. He was the greatest contrapuntist after Bach, the greatest architectonist after Beethoven, but in his songs he was as simple, as manly, as tender as Robert Burns. His topmost peaks are tremendously remote, and glitter and gleam in an atmosphere almost too thin for dwellers of the plains; but how intimate, how full of charm, of graciousness are the happy moments in his chamber music!

It is not rashly premature for us to assign to Brahms a place among the immortals. Coming after the last of the most belated romanticists, untouched by the fever for the theatre, a realist with great imagination, both a classicist and a romanticist, he led music back in her proper channels by showing that a phenomenal sense of form and a mastery of polyphony second only to Bach are not incompatible with progress, with the faculty of uttering new things in a new way. Brahms is not a reactionary any more than is Richard Wagner. Neither of these men found what he needed, so one harked back to Gluck and the Greeks, the other to Bach and Beethoven. Consider the massiveness of Brahms’ tonal architecture; consider those structures erected after years of toil; regard the man’s enormous fertility of ideas; enormous patience in developing them; consider the ease with which he moves shackled by the most difficult forms—not assumed for the mere sake of the difficult, but because it was the only form in which he could successfully express himself—consider the leavening genius, the active geniality of the man, which militates against pedantry, the dryness of scholasticism and the mere arithmetical music of the kapellmeister; consider the powerful, emotional and intellectual brain of this composer, and then realize that all great works in art are the arduous victories of great minds over great imaginations! Brahms ever consciously schooled his imagination.

Brahms was Brahms’ greatest critic. He worked slowly, he produced slowly and, being of the contemplative rather than the active and dramatic type, he incurred the reproach of being phlegmatic, Teutonic, heavy and thick. There is enough sediment in his collected works to give the color of truth to this allegation, but from the richness and the cloudiness of the ferment, is thrown off the finest wine; and how fine, how incomparably noble is a draught of this wine after the thin, acid, frothing and bubbling stuff concocted at every season’s musical vintage!

Brahms reminds one of those mediæval architects whose life was a prayer in marble; who slowly and assiduously erected cathedrals, the mighty abutments of which flanked majestically upon mother earth, and whose thin, high pinnacles pierced the blue; whose domes hung suspended between heaven and earth, and in whose nave an army could worship, while in the forest of arches music came and went like the voices of many waters.

He was a living reproach to the haste of a superficial generation. Whatever he wrought he wrought in bronze and for time, not for the hour. He restored to music its feeling for form. He was the greatest symphonist in the constructive sense since Beethoven. He did not fill it with a romantic content as did Schumann, but he never defaced or distorted its flowing contours. Not so great a colorist as Schumann or Berlioz, he was the greatest master of pure line that ever lived. He is accused of not scoring happily. The accusation is true. Brahms does not display the same gracious sense of voicing the needs and capabilities of every orchestral instrument as have Berlioz, Dvorák and Strauss. He is often very muddy, drab and opaque, but his nobility of utterance, his remarkable eloquence and ingenuity in treatment make you forget his shortcomings in color. But in writing for choral masses, for combinations, such as clarinet and strings, piano, violin and ’cello, or for piano solo, he had few masters. There seems to be a perverse vein in his handling of orchestral color. He gives you the impression of mastery, but writes as if to him the garb, the vestment were naught, and the pure, sweet flesh and form, all.

Brahms had his metaphysical moments when he wrestled with the pure idea as speculatively as a Pascal or a Spinoza. There are minutes in his music when he becomes the purely contemplative mind surveying the nave of the universe; when Giotto’s circle is for him an “O Altitudo.” It cannot be said, then that Brahms the philosopher, the utterer of cryptic tones, is as interesting as Brahms the composer of the second and third symphonies, the composer of the F minor piano sonata, the F minor piano quintet, the creator of the Schicksalslied, the German Requiem or those exquisite and fragrant flowers, the songs.

Brahms is the first composer since Beethoven to sound the note of the sublime. He has been called austere for this. He has sublimity at times; something that Schumann, Rubinstein, Raff or Tschaïkowsky never quite compassed. To this is allied that forbidding quality, that want of commonplace sympathy, that lack of personal profile which make his music very often disliked by critic, amateur and professional. He would never make any concessions to popularity; indeed, like Henrik Ibsen, he often goes out of his way to displease! The facile, cheap triumph he despises; he sees all Europe covered with second and third rate men in music, and he notes that they please; their only excuse for living is to give cheap pleasure.

This, and the naturally serious bent of the man, superinduced excessive puritanism. It is a sign of his great culture and flexible mental operations that he grew to study and admire Wagner toward the close of his hardworking life.

Brahms’ workmanship is almost impeccable. His mastery of material is as great as Beethoven’s and only outstripped by Bach. I have dwelt sufficiently upon his formal and contrapuntal sense. His contribution to the technics of rhythm is enormous. He has literally popularized the cross-relation, rediscovered the arpeggio and elevated it from the lowly position of an accompanying figure to an integer of the melodic phrase. Wagner did the same for the essential turn.

A pure musician, a maker of absolute music, a man of poetic ideals, is Brahms, without thrusting himself forward in the contemporary canvas. Not Berlioz, not Wagner, but the plodding genius Brahms, was elected by destiny to receive upon his shoulders the mantle dropped by Beethoven as he ascended the slope to Parnassus, and the shoulders were broad enough to bear the imposing weight.

They are fast becoming sheeted dead, these great few left us. Who shall fill Wagner’s tribune; who shall carve from the harmonic granite imperishable shapes of beauty as did Johannes Brahms?

I

With the death of the master the time has come for an extended and careful investigation of the piano sonatas, the rhapsodies, the intermezzi, the capriccios, the fantasias, the ballades and all the smaller and curious forms left us; a collection, let me preface by declaring, that is more significant and more original than any music since Chopin. Now that I have sounded the challenge I must at once proceed to attenuate it by making some qualifications and one explanation. Brahms occupies an unsought for and rather unpleasant position in the history of contemporary music. Without his consent he was championed as an adversary of Wagner, and I believe Eduard Hanslick, most brilliant of critics, had something to do with this false attitude. Hanslick hated Wagner and adored Brahms. There you have it; and presently the silly spectacle was observed of two men of straw being pitted one against the other and all musical Europe drawn into a quarrel as absurd as the difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Wagner and Brahms are the very antipodes of art, and let it be said most forcibly that art contains easily without violence the various music of two such great artists, although some critics differ from me in this.

Wagner was a great fresco painter, handling his brush with furious energy, magnificence and dramatic intensity. Beside his vast, his tremendous scenery, the music of Brahms is all brown, all gray, all darkness, and often small. It is not imposing in the operatic sense, and it reaches results in a vast, slow, even cold blooded manner, compared with the reckless haste of Richard of the Footlights. One is all showy externalization, a seeker after immediate and sensuous effects; the other, one of those reserved, self-contained men who feels deeply and watches and waits. In a word, Wagner is a composer for the theatre, with all that the theatre implies, and sought to divert—and nearly succeeded—the tide of music into theatrical channels.

Brahms is for the concert room, a symphonist, a song writer and, above all, a German. I wish to emphasize this point of nationality. Wagner was the Celt, with a dash of the Oriental in his blood, and he bubbled and foamed over with primal power, but it was not the reticent, grave power of the Teuton, who, as Amiel puts it, gathers fuel for the pile and allows the French to kindle it. Whether it was Wagner’s early residence in Paris, or perhaps some determining pre-natal influence, he surely had a vivacity, an esprit, imagination and a grace denied to most of his countrymen, Heine excepted. You may look for these qualities in Brahms, but they are rarely encountered. Sobriety, earnestness, an intensity that is like the blow of a steam hammer, and a rich, informing spirit are present, and undoubted temperament also, but as there are temperaments and temperaments, so the temperament of Brahms differs from the temperament of Wagner, the temperament of Chopin and the temperament of Liszt. There is a remoteness, a sense of distance in his music that only long pursued study partially dissipates. He is a chilly friend at first, but the clasp of the hand is true, if it is not always charmful. I find the same difficulty in Beethoven, in Ibsen, in Gustave Flaubert, and sometimes in Browning, but never in Schumann and never in Schubert. As Emerson said of Walt Whitman, there must have been a “long foreground somewhere” to the man, and that foreground is never wholly traversed with Brahms.

You will ask me what is there then so fascinating in this austere, self-centred man, whose music at first hearing suggests both a latter-day Bach and a latter-day Beethoven?

The answer is simply this: Brahms is a profound thinker; his chilliness is in manner, not matter; he is a thinker, but he also feels sincerely, deeply, and maybe, as Ehlert says, feels with his head and thinks with his heart. He is hardly likely to become popular in this generation, yet he is a very great artist and a great composer. Von Bülow was enjoying a little of his perverse humor when he spoke of the three Bs. Brahms is not knee-high to Bach or Beethoven, yet he is their direct descendant, is of their classic lineage, although a belated romanticist, and the only man we see fit to mention after the two kings of the tone art.

This does not mean that Schumann, Berlioz, Tschaïkowsky, Liszt, Wagner and the rest are not as great, or even greater, but simply that certain immutable and ineluctable laws of art are understood by Brahms, who prefers to widen in his own fashion the beaten path rather than conquer new ones.

In 1853 Schumann wrote his New Paths, and Brahms became known. Schumann had doubtless certain affinities with the young man of twenty, and he also recognized his strangeness, for in the first bar of Brahms you are conscious of something new, something strange. It is not in the form, not in the idea, not in the modulation, rhythmical change, curve of harmonic line, curve of melodic line, yet it is in all these that there lurks something new, something individual. This same individuality caused Schumann to rub his eyes when he heard the C major sonata, and made Liszt grow enthusiastic when he read the scherzo in E flat minor.

I quite agree with Spitta that it is a mistake to suppose that Brahms worked altogether on the lines of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Schumann. I called him a belated romanticist a moment ago because much of the content of his music is romantic, and in his latter days excessively modern. It is because of his adherence to classic forms, and his harking back to the methods of the sixteenth century, that the music of Brahms so often misleads both critic and public. Spitta dilates most admirably upon the richness and variety of his tonality, by his reversion to almost forgotten manners and modes; the Doric, his characteristic use of the octave, the sharpening of minor thirds and sixths, his remarkable employment of the chord of the sixth, sharp transitions in modulation, the revival of playing common time against triple time, and the use of rhythms and tonalities that are vague, indeterminate and almost misleading, without damage to the structural values and beauty of the music.

Then in form Brahms knows the canon as no other composer. Listen to Spitta: “Schumann had already seriously studied and revised the canon, which had sunk to the level of an amusing exercise; Brahms interested himself in its stricter construction and used it in a greater variety of forms. The extension and diminution of the melody again—that is to say, the lengthening of the strain by doubling the value of the notes, or shortening it by diminishing their value, which was such an important element of form in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, came to light again for the first time with all its innate musical vitality when Brahms took it up, and even in his earliest works (for instance, op. 3, no. 2) showed how thoroughly he understood it. The same is to be said of the method of inversion, the derivation of a new melody from the former by reversing the intervals. When the use of such ‘artifices’—as they were called with an amazing misapprehension of the very essence of music—had from time to time been admitted, they had always been restricted to what was termed a ‘Gelehrten Satz’; that is to say, they were worked out as school exercises and formed no part of the artist’s living work. But with Brahms they pervade all his music, and find a place as much in the piano sonata and the simple ballad as in the grand choral pieces with orchestral accompaniments.

“The basso ostinato, with the styles pertaining to it—the Passacaglia and the Ciacona—resume their significance for the first time since Bach’s time, and their intrinsic importance is enhanced by the support of the symphonic orchestra.”

And with all this, as Ehlert truly says, “Brahms’ art undoubtedly rests upon the golden background of Bach’s purity and concentration.”

I know it may be questioned whether Brahms belongs to the romantic camp, but while he has absorbed with giant-like ease the individualization of voices and the severity of Bach, yet he is a modern among moderns. How modern, you will discover if you play first the early music of Schumann, or the music of Chopin’s middle period, and then take up the B minor rhapsody or some of the later fantasias. Brahms then seems so near, so intimate, so full of vitality, while the romantic music has a flavor of the rococo, of the perfume of the salon, of that stale and morbid and extravagant time when the classics were defied and Berlioz thought to be a bigger man than Beethoven. But all passes, and time has left us of Schumann’s piano music, the Symphonic Variations, the F sharp minor and the F minor sonatas, the fantasy in C and the concerto, while the mists are slowly enveloping most of Chopin’s earlier music. Doubtless the studies, preludes, the F minor fantasy, one polonaise, the barcarolle, the F minor ballade, the C sharp minor and the B minor scherzi will live forever, and I am not so sure that I could predict the same of the piano music of Brahms. However, escape this fact we cannot: Brahms is our most modern music maker, and if, as Edward MacDowell says, Tschaïkowsky’s music always sounds better than it is, the music of Brahms is often better than it sounds!

Now I have made all of my qualifications, and my single explanation is this: I am not a reckless Brahms worshipper. There is much in his music that repels, and I have often studied his piano with knitted brow. After the exquisite, poetic tenderness of Chopin, the overflowing romance of Schumann, the adorable melody of Schubert, and the proud pose of Weber—who prances by you on gayly and gorgeously caparisoned arpeggios—Brahms may sound cold, formal, and much of the mathematician, but strip him of his harsh rind, taste the sweetness, the richness, the manliness of the fruit and you will grow enthusiastic.

It would be easy and it would look imposing for me to map out three styles in Brahms, as De Lenz did with the piano sonatas of Beethoven. But it would be manifestly absurd, for as much as Brahms gained in mastery and variety in his later years, yet he was more Brahms in his op. 1 than was Chopin in his op. 2—the famous La Ci Darem, the variations that led Schumann to his famous discovery. Take, for instance, the E flat minor scherzo, so different from Chopin’s glorious one in the same key in the B flat minor sonata. This scherzo of Brahms is an op. 4, and he played it for Schumann during the historical visit to Düsseldorf. It has in it something of Chopin, more in color than idea, and it is so free, so flowing, so plastic, so happily worked out, that it must have come upon Liszt and Schumann as something absolutely new. Yet I find it old-fashioned compared to his op. 116 or 117 or 118 or 119. Even the rhapsodies strike a new note, so I may without impropriety, and I hope without pedantry, make a general division of his piano music into two groups. In the first I include the three sonatas, the scherzo—which is a separate opus—the variations, the four ballades, and the Walzer, op. 39. There is then a skip to op. 76 before we encounter solo music, and here I begin my second group with the eight capriccios and intermezzi. Then follow the two rhapsodies, and until op. 116 we encounter no piano soli. With op. 119 Brahms’ contributions to piano literature end. The two books of technical studies, fifty-one in all, will be considered, as will the Hungarian dances, arranged by the composer from the orchestral partition.

This grouping is purely arbitrary, and I warn you that the composer cannot be pinned down to any such cataloguing, for we find in his second sonata, the one in F sharp minor, stuff that is kin to his latest works and in some of his new fantasies a reversion to the Brahms of the Ballades.

Regarding his technics I can only recommend to you a close study of the music. There is much that is unusual side by side with the most trite patterns. He has a special technic, sudden extensions, he is fond of tenths and twelfths—the interlocking—for instance, in the capriccio in D minor with its devilish rhythms and cross accent, and the spreading of the triplet over two bars of three-four time—the rapid flights in chord playing—all these things require a firm seat in the saddle, hands with ten well individualized voices and a light wrist. The best preparation for Brahms is Bach, then the toccata of Schumann, and then the Brahms studies. There are scales in Brahms’ music, but not many. His passage work is of the most solid character, broken chords, double notes, especially thirds and sixths, and few arpeggios. The triolen he has idealized as did Wagner the essential turn, and his accompaniment figures are always simple, indeed vital parts of the composition. Brahms is not a great original melodist. Like Schumann his melodies can hardly be divorced from his harmonies. He had his moments of ecstatic lyrism, and I can show you many specimens of perfect melodies in his piano music. He is not always gloomy, forbidding, cross-grained and morbid. Take the first movement of the D major symphony, the slow movement of the F minor sonata, some of the songs, the horn trio, and tell me if this man cannot unbend the bow, say lovely, gracious things and be even nimble of wit and of gait?

Regarding Brahms’ muddy orchestration, this is a question I leave to my betters. Scored in the high, violent purples and screaming scarlets of Richard Strauss, the grave, reflective, philosophic accents of the C minor and E minor symphonies would be as foolishly attired as Socrates the day Plato insisted upon his donning the fashionable costume of Athens’ gayest youth.

Touching the muddiness and heaviness of the doubled basses of the piano music, I may say that it is a matter of taste. Some pianists, indeed some musicians, do not care for a broad foundational bass. The arpeggio figure in the left hand has been worked to death, and it is a relief to find Brahms making his accompaniment figures an integer of the piece itself.

He has dealt the death blow to the tyranny of virtuoso passage work. No composer dare follow him and expect to build up, to advance, who employs passage work for the sake of mere display of the desire to dazzle. Every note of Brahms belongs to the framework, to the musical scheme. He is more Hellenic than Mozart in his supreme economy, and not even Beethoven is more devoted to formal beauty. He has not much sense of humor, and the scherzi, while not being as ironical or as brilliant as Chopin’s, are none the less misnomers. In his working-out sections the marvellously inventive and logical brain of Brahms is seen at its culminating splendor. As free in his durchführungsatz as the wind, he has emancipated the sonata form in the matter of tonality and in the matter of emotional content. Excepting Chopin and Wagner, no composer has ever exhibited such versatility in the choice of keys. His use of mixed scales—a result of his studies in Hungarian music—gives his music its intensely foreign coloring. There you have Brahms, a German, a follower of Bach and Beethoven as regards polyphony and form, a reticent romanticist and a lover of certain colorings that I call foreign, because they are certainly not European. He has appropriated the Magyar spirit with infinitely more success than Liszt—take the last movement of the B flat major concerto—and when I say Magyar I mean almost Asiatic.

Brahms has in the piano concerto freed the form forever, while writing within the limits of that form. His two concertos are concertos, not rhapsodies and fantasies, and the solo instrument, instead of being a brilliant but loquacious gabbler of glittering platitudinous passage work, is now the expounder of the musical idea and the stanch ally of the orchestra.

Despite his vast knowledge, an almost magical erudition, there is a certain looseness and want of finish about Brahms that is refreshing in these days of Art for Art’s sake and the apotheosis of the cameo cutter. He is never a little master, although he can work exceeding fine and juggle for you by the hour the most gorgeous balls of bitter-sweet virtuosity. He is not, I say, always the pedant, and he can be as dull as ditch water two times out of ten. He has his feminine side—his songs—but in the main he is a muscular male, not given to over-expansion and not always companionable.

I agree with Mr. Edgar Kelley that his music is not always klaviermässig, but the same objection was urged against Beethoven, Schumann and even Chopin! I prefer a granitic bass, although the doubling is not always agreeable. But Schumann and Chopin were sinners in this respect, especially the former. That is why I recommend the great toccata in C as a preliminary study to Brahms. To sincere antagonists of Brahms, such as Mr. Henry T. Finck, I can only say that not every poet is to one’s taste. Browning’s Sordello is crabbed music after Tennyson, and Swinburne cloying, after Matthew Arnold or Arthur Hugh Clough. But the inner, the spiritual ear is longer enamored of the harmonies of a Brahms or Bach than of the sonorous splendors of Wagner or Verdi. It is the still, small voice discerned in a Brahms adagio or a Chopin prelude that abides by us and consoles when the music of the theatre seems superficial and garish. Those who do not care for Brahms—let them choose their own musical diet. There are, however, some of us who prefer his lean to other composers’ fat. The light that beats about his throne is a trifle dry at times, but it is at least white, and the time comes to all when the chromatic ceases to make thrall, and line, not color, seems the more beautiful. Therefore do not follow me further if you are a genuine anti-Brahmsianer. You might hear unpalatable truths.

II

Brahms must have been completely worn out when he presented his credentials to Schumann one memorable October morning in 1853. He had walked part of the way to Düsseldorf because his money was gone, and not being of Heinrich Heine’s mercurial temperament, he probably did not think of the witty poet’s “fine plums between Jena and Weimar,” but to Schumann’s questioning, answered by playing the C major sonata, his op. 1.

Little wonder Schumann, great artist and great critic, should have declared of it that it was “music the like of which he had never heard before,” and proclaimed the shy, awkward youth a master. It was enough to turn the head of anyone but a Brahms, who had just played at Weimar. Through Liszt’s golden generosity the young man played in concert his op. 4, the scherzo in E flat minor, which Liszt praised warmly, and its romantic flush and passion caused Brahms’ name to be added as a strong, promising one to the revolutionary and romantic party.

We heard Von Bülow interpret the sonata in C when he played here last. It is a sterling work, clearly, forcibly presented, the keynote of the opening movement being virile determination. Here was a young giant who delighted in wrestling with his material, who enjoyed its very manipulation. You can see the big muscles in his broad back bulge out to the bursting point, for the task he had set himself was no facile one. Nurtured on Bach and Beethoven, the new music-maker started out full of the ideals of these two masters, and you are not surprised by the strong and strange resemblance to Beethoven’s op. 106, the Hammer-Klavier sonata in B flat. This resemblance is more than rhythmic, but it stops after the enunciation of the first subject, for following a subsidiary the lyric theme is surely Brahms’, while the working-out section, which begins with the use of the second theme, is simply extraordinary for a beginner. It reveals all the devices of counterpoint used in the freest fashion, and doubtless led Schumann to class the composer as a romanticist, for learning never moved about with such airy fantasy. Doubtless, too, Schumann’s monophonic sins rose before him in the presence of this genial polyphony. Just compare the Abegg variations with the slow movement of this sonata and you may realize the superior educational advantages enjoyed by Brahms.

The andante is built on the theme of an old German Minnelied, the words of which begin so: “Verstohlen geht der Mond, blau, blau, Blümelein.” The left hand sounds eight single tones: then both hands, imitating the chorus, play in transparent four-part harmony. The effect is simplicity itself and seems to upspring from the very soil of the Fatherland; Brahms takes his subject and treats it with sweet reticence, even to the coda, one of his most charming. The scherzo leaps boldly into the middle of things, a habit of Brahms, and is Beethovian in its economy of material and sharply defined outlines. The trio is very melodious; the whole movement impresses you as the work of a musical thinker. The finale in strict form interests me less, although there is a characteristic song theme. The entire sonata overflows with vigor and imagination.

The second sonata, op. 2, in F sharp minor, brings us from the study chamber to more stirring life. The design of the first movement is large. We get the first touch of the grand manner—and Brahms is genuinely dramatic, the drama of the physical plane as well as of the psychical. There can be no mistaking the accents of the introduction, with its well sustained element of suspense, its skips—a familiar feature in the Brahms piano music—and the thundering octaves. Here is virtuosity in plenty for you in the first two pages, and if after playing pages three and four you find Brahms deficient in romantic warmth, then let us unclasp hands and seek you some well-footed byway.

This second theme is nobility itself, and written in full chords; the harmonies are not so dispersed as you might imagine; the effect is sonorous and beautiful; of darkness there is none, and the clarity of the design is admirable. The polyphonic branches of this great trunk are finely etched against a dramatic background, and this most energetic of allegros has no savor of Schumann’s sonata in the same key; and yet the temptation to imitate must have been well-nigh irresistible to a neophyte. The very key color might tempt even the most strong headed, but Brahms was too prepossessed with his own thoughts, and so we get a movement that is a great step in advance over the first sonata.

Both the second and third movements are built on the same thematic idea, an extremely simple one of four notes, B, C, D, A sharp, with an answer. The key is B minor. The scherzo is extremely ingenious. The trio is in D, and abounds in harmonic and rhythmic variety. The last movement actually contains in the introduction a scale run. The movement itself reminds me, but in an odd, perverted way, of the second movement of Beethoven’s sonata, op. 90, in E minor. The finale contains a big climax, also in scales that look very un-Brahmsian. This sonata in F sharp minor is much more significant than its predecessor.

When you have reached the third sonata in F minor, op. 5, the broad, far-reaching uplands of the composer’s genius are clearly discerned, for his two earlier efforts in the sonata form, despite their mastery of technics of form, still remain grounded on the territory of Beethoven and even of Schumann. But in the third sonata we are impressed by a certain passionate grandeur and originality of utterance, a freedom and elasticity of movement, a more nervous fibre, a deeper feeling, a deeper fire. I consider—and remember that my single opinion is nothing as compared to the number of them that believe the same—that in the F minor sonata the most beautiful in the genius of Brahms has flowered. The first allegro is heaven-storming, the second theme, oh! so like the master at his best, while page after page unrolls for us the warp and woof of the most logical musical imagination since Bach. Brahms not a melodist! Read that first movement, and if that does not convince you, play the andante in A flat, the most exquisite lyrical thing he has ever penned for piano. Its motto is from Sternau, “Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint,” and the picture is magical in its tender beauty and suggestiveness. It harks back to the old world romance, to some moonlit dell, wherein love hovers for a night, and about all is the mystery of sky and wood.

Take the poco pin lento, in four-sixteenth time, with its recurring sixths, divided so amorously for two hands; with any one else but Brahms this well used interval would be banal, but he knows its possibilities and the entire section with the timid-sweet chords of the tenth evokes a mood seldom met with. Moonlight may be hinted at, as in the middle part, the trio of Chopin’s scherzo in B minor. Here is an analogous picture. The coda has always brought back to me Hans Sachs’ “Dem Vogel der heut’ sang.” Yes, Brahms knew his Wagner, too, and no doubt would have laughed in his gnomic beard if you had mentioned the mood-resemblance. Moriz Moszkowski has also seized the same idea, for in his Momen Musicale in C sharp minor he has for a second subject this identical one. It comes originally from Schumann’s song, Sonntags am Rhein. The resemblance to the Meistersinger lies principally in the third bar of this coda in the upward inflection. Brahms has treated the entire movement with unsurpassable poetry. In the scherzo which follows he is at his best; a certain grim, diabolic humor being hurled at you as if some being, ambuscaded in Parnassus, took pleasure in showering heavy masses of metal on your unprotected head. The tempo suggests the valse, but an epical valse. This is the greatest scherzo ever composed by Brahms, and the trio takes us back to Beethoven.

In the intermezzo—the Rückblick—the resemblance to Mendelssohn has not escaped Mr. Fuller-Maitland. It is in the key of B flat minor, and is a far-off echo, as if heard through sad, falling waters, of the theme of the andante. The bass is naught else—and this no writer has dared or perhaps thought necessary to notice—than the Funeral March from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. The familiar triplet in thirty-second notes emphasizes the similarity, but what a vast distance there is in this tragic page, full of veiled suffering, and the pretty and elegiac march of Mendelssohn!

The finale is strong and full of characteristic agitation. The technics throughout are Beethoven’s, but a latter day Beethoven. Heavy chord work, no scales, passages, extreme clearness and plenty of involved rhythms. The character of this sonata is lofty, not altogether serene, but the strong, self-contained soul is there; it is music for men of strong nerves and big hearts, and not for the sick or shallow brained.

There is a piano sonata arranged from the sextet in B flat for strings. It is not the arrangement of Brahms, but by Robert Keller, and is not difficult. It is chiefly interesting because of its being an agreeable and available score of the famous chamber music.

The scherzo in E flat minor is a separate opus—four in the published list. Whether it was ever intended to fit in the more extended scheme we do not know; probably Dr. Hanslick could enlighten us. It is the airiest and loveliest thing imaginable, and while the composer solves some very pretty canonic problems, the learning is never burdensome. As if Brahms had resolved to let gravity go hence, he wings his way in graceful plastic flight, not forgetting in his second theme to give Grieg the melodic idea for the first allegro of the popular piano concerto. There are two trios, both interesting, the second more to my taste, because of its lyricism. Just here we get a Chopin touch in the C sharp minor theme, with its rolling, arpeggiated basses. The development and return of the subject is most happily managed. Why this piano piece does not figure often upon the programmes of recitals is only to be explained by the hide-bound, timid conservatism of the average concert pianist. I swear to you I firmly believe that the decadence of the piano recital—and who can deny that it is not in decay—is to be ascribed to the fact that the scheme of the programmes is so lugubriously monotonous. Bach-Liszt, Beethoven sonata, Chopin or Schumann group, Liszt Hungarian rhapsody, there you have it season after season; whereas, a far-seeing pianist might introduce an occasional novelty by Brahms, or indeed by any one, and with the thin edge of the wedge once in, a complete topsy-turveying of old methods would ensue, and what a boon would it not be for the concert-goer!

The ballades do not next claim our notice by right of opus, for the variations, op. 9, follow the sonata in F minor, ops. 6, 7 and 8 being given over to two sets of six songs and the familiar piano trio in B. But I prefer treating the six books of variations together. The ballades, four in number, are labelled op. 10. The first in D minor has the narrative quality imperatively demanded by the form, but Brahms has his own notions about the time beat, and so we find the first two in common time instead of the usual triple measure. Thus there is a gain in dignity and stateliness. The D minor ballade is rather a lugubrious work divided into an andante and allegro. The empty fifth harmony in the bass, the slow progression in the treble, gives the theme a mournful and Gaelic character. In runic tones the tale of Herder’s Scottish ballade, Edward, is told, and the dead hero home to his love is brought. The section in D, with its triplets, gives us some surcease from the gloom, although there is a peculiarly hollow effect in the triplet imitation in the bass. This ballade is almost sinister in coloring and touches of Brahms’ irony are present. It is not a piece for joyous, festive celebrations, but is nevertheless, finely felt, finely wrought music.

The next one in D is almost popular and is very lovely and original. The theme, so gentle, so winning, so heartfelt, is sung in octaves, and although the intervals are not favorable for a legato, yet a perfect legato is demanded. The first page of this ballade must needs loosen the obdurate heart strings of a Finck. The second theme in B minor is in strong contrast rhythmically, in content being stern and imperious. I confess the molto staccato leggiero is a bit of Brahms that always puzzles me. I find analogies in Beethoven, in those mysterious pianissimi in his symphonies and concertos where the soul is almost freed from the earthly vesture and for a moment hovers about in the twilight of uncertain tonalities and rhythms. Brahms, as Ehlert says, has this gift of catching and imprisoning moods that for want of a better name we call, spiritual. The awe, the awful mystery of the life in us, the life about us, is felt by Beethoven and Brahms and marvellously expressed by them. The reappearance, to give an example of what I mean, of the theme of the scherzo in the last movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony has just such a ghostly effect. Later on I shall quote other instances in Brahms. In the D major ballade the return to the first idea and in the luscious key of B is charming, and the piece ends in soft æolian harmonies. This ballade is a masterpiece in miniature.

The third ballade in B minor is in the nature of an intermezzo. The open fifths in the bass give the piece an ironic tinge, and the figure of the opening recalls instantly to the student a similar one in the E flat minor scherzo. Indeed, to push the simile further, this intermezzo might be almost taken for a sarcastic, an ironic commentary upon the earlier composition. In six-eight time, it is a swinging allegro, and the ethereal hush of the second part is an excellent foil. The fourth ballade in B commends itself to the pianist of moderate ability, for it is not difficult and is very cantabile. Simplicity of idea and treatment is maintained throughout. The middle section is full of intimate feeling and poetic murmurings. It requires a beautiful touch and a mastery of the pedals. These four ballades should be on the piano of every aspiring pianist. They are able illustrations of what Brahms can do in small, concise forms. They must not be compared to the more extended form and more florid content of the Chopin ballades, which are in the main unapproachable. With Brahms there is no suspicion of a set piece; in Chopin the virtuoso often faces us. It is, after all, the German and the Pole, and further commentary would be superfluous.

And now to the piano variations. Brahms is not only the greatest variationist of his times, but with Bach and Beethoven the greatest of all times. Oddly enough, we must join Brahms’ name with the two earlier masters whenever we approach the serious, the severe side of the art. I refer to Spitta’s pertinent remark about the variation form.

The old variation form, above all, he says, is brought out from the treasures of the old composers, and glorified in his hands. Brahms’ variations are something quite different from what had been commonly known by that name. Their prototype is Bach’s aria with thirty variations, and this work is an elaboration of the form known as the passacaglia. In this the determining idea is not the addition of figures or of various accompaniments to the theme or melody, but the persistent identity of the bass. This continues the same through all the variations; upon that, a free treatment is worked out—not, however, excluding an occasional reference to the original melody. Beethoven so far adhered to the usually accepted form as to restrict the supremacy of the bass to alternate use with variations in the melody, and Schumann followed his example. This form was not adopted by other great masters, and even Beethoven and Schumann only occasionally used it. Brahms, so rich in inventive combinations, stands nearer to Bach than to Beethoven, but has much of Beethoven’s freer style of treatment. Augmentation or diminution of the phrases forming the theme are a manner of variation never used by Beethoven, and employed by Brahms only in the variations in the two first sonatas, and in the independent Air with Variations, op. 9. In this it is often surprisingly ingenious, but he must have thought the process incompatible with his strict sense of form, just as he gave up changes of key from one variation to the next, which Schumann often used and Beethoven allowed himself only once (op. 34).

The first set of variations made by Brahms is on a theme of Schumann in F sharp minor. It is a beautiful theme, marked Ziemlich Langsam, and is familiar to all Schumann students; for it is, if I remember aright, the first of the Albumblätter. These variations dimly reveal the inexhaustible fancy of the composer. He views his subject from every possible viewpoint; he sees it as a philosopher, he grimly contemplates it as a cynic; he sings it in mellifluous accents, he plays with it, teases it contrapuntally, and alternately freezes it into glittering stalactites and disperses it in warm, violet-colored vapors. The theme is never lost; it lurks behind formidable ambushes of skips, double notes and octaves, or it slaps you in the face, its voice threatening, its size ten times increased by its harmonic garb. It wooes, caresses, sighs, smiles, coquets, and sneers—in a word, a modern magician weaves for you the most delightful stories imaginable, all the while damnably distracting your attention and harrowing your nerves by spinning in the air polyphonic cups, saucers, plates and balls, and never letting them for a moment reach the earth.

Louis Ehlert believes that the Brahms variation was begotten by a classical father, the thirty-two variations of Beethoven; and a romantic mother, the Symphonic Studies of Schumann. The comparison is apt enough. The first variation on the F sharp minor theme of Schumann seems more like a quiet restatement of the idea; in the second the bass becomes very important; the third calls for no special mention, but the fourth and fifth are bold, capricious, and the sixth very brilliant; the seventh is very short, but pregnant, and the eighth is superb. A pedal bass supports the faintly whispered theme, which is heard in waving rhythms, as the sobbing of the wind through the trees. In Paderewski’s strongly individualized Variations in A minor there is a variation built in this fashion, and you may find, in Tschaïkowsky’s interesting Variations in F, another example.

In the famous ninth variation of this set we find Brahms indulging in a very delicate and ingenious fancy. He has combined with the original theme the entire arpeggio work of Schumann’s little piece in B minor from the Bunten Blättern, op. 99, no. 5. As Spitta says, how thoroughly Brahms had thought out the spirit of the variation is seen in the fact that he is fond of interchanging the modulatory relations of the two phrases of the theme. The place where this generally occurs is at the beginning of the second part; but also in the second half of the first part. The digressions, more or less important, which he admits, are always so chosen that the effect of the newly introduced key approximately answers to that produced by the original key of the preceding or following phrase. Even the cadenzas appear altered from this point of view.

In the tenth the bass is used in the upper part, and the subject derived from the diminishing to half or quarter notes of the beginning of the subject; the essential harmonies are preserved in the same succession, while the subject is worked out to fill the required measures, so the reflections of the theme are diverse and glancing.

The eleventh variation is brief, but full of meat, and in it the main idea almost disappears in cloudy octaves, in which an occasional middle voice may be faintly discerned. The twelfth is a heart-breaker, and bold to extremes. The coda ends in a whirlwind of skips, and the wonder-working of the Paganini studies is dimly presaged.

No. 13 is in the shape of a toccata in double notes, and is capital; but my favorite variation, over which you may dream soft, summer night dreams, is the next, the fourteenth. This is a true nocturne, and its hesitating tones, over an undulating bass, tell of the dear, dead Chopin, lying near Bellini, in Père la Chaise.

Variation fifteen is in G flat and in the Lydian mode, the coda-finale is as if Brahms feared to part from his theme and took a lingering leave taking. These variations are worthy of the deepest study.

III

The Walzer, op. 39, were not written first for two hands, but for four. The composer arranged them afterward for solo-purposes. They are divine specimens of the dance, and I prefer them even to Rubinstein, and that is saying much, for the Russian has left many admirable examples.

Any comparison with the Chopin valse is of course out of the question. Chopin wrote, as Liszt truthfully said, for countesses, and in his aristocratic measures we feel the swirl of silken skirts, divine the perfume of the fashionable salon and hear the soft pulsations of delicate, half uttered confidences. The room rustles with the patter of beauty’s feet, but after all it is a drawing room; not a breath of the open is there.

There are some of the Chopin valses that are not only mediocre, but positively bad. Take the first, the one in E flat, is it not actually vulgar? And the one in A flat that follows is not much better. The A minor valse is elegiac, even unto the Mendelssohnian point. It is when the A flat valse, op. 42, is reached that we get a taste of the true Chopin. This with the one in C sharp minor, the posthumous valse in E minor and the delightfully developed dance in A flat are Chopin at his dancing best. The D flat valse is something to be avoided, simply because of the woful way it has been misrepresented by pianists. I don’t allude to double-noting the unfortunate piece, but to the erroneous fashion of playing the first section too fast and the second too slow. Georges Mathias, of Paris, a genuine Chopin pupil, said that the master took the tempo rather moderately, making an accelerando on the up run, ending with a little click on B flat. The rubato, so M. Mathias declared, was indescribably beautiful; therefore, unless the Chopin tradition is carried out, let the Valse de Chien rest its tiresome little bark in peace. With the E flat nocturne, it has become a nuisance.

The musical content of the Chopin valse is a certain suavity, distinctive grace, charming rhythm and aristocratic melody, and it is safe to say that few of these qualities can be found in the Brahms Walzer. But as is the case with Schubert, Brahms dances more poetically, and always in the open air. Sometimes the round verge of the sun blazes overhead in the blue, and you hear the muscular jolt of large limbed men and women taking their pleasure heartily, then the aromatic night of the forest encompasses you, and the sound of dancing is heard, but afar. Poetry is in the air and passion too, and exquisite is the sound and exquisite the suggestion.

Take the first dance of the op. 39. It is in the key of B, and harmonized in the lustiest, freest fashion imaginable. It opens boldly, joyously, with the decisiveness we know so well in the preambule to Schumann’s Carneval. It is but a page long, and a small page at that, but there is no mistaking its worth.

The second valse in E has an entrancing lilt, marked dolce; it is well named. The mood is nocturnal, the color subdued, but none the less full of glancing richness. Then follow two tiny gems, as precious almost as some of Chopin’s preludes. The one is in the warm and neglected key of G sharp minor, the other in E minor. The first has the pulse beat of Chopin, the second is Hungarian and lovely, and the brace of harmonic progressions at the close is worth living for.

If there could be such a thing as a sacred valse, then No. 5 of the series is sacred. In the key of E, you can sense the valse, but the theme is serious to gravity, just as a Chopin scherzo is a tragic poem. One feels like echoing Robert Schumann’s “How is gravity to clothe itself if jest goes about in dark veils?”

C sharp major is the key of No. 6, and has a touch of the fantastic element that we find in the variations. No. 7 in C sharp minor-major is full of harmonic variety. My two favorites of the set are the valses in B flat and D minor. Both are poems. The one in B flat is a proof positive of Brahms’ “geniality.” In a small piano piece by the Russian Liadow, the same melodic and rhythmic idea is utilized; even the pretty modulation from B flat to D flat is not overlooked. Then on the page opposite in the valse in D minor, Brahms pilfers boldly from Schumann. In the Pièces Caractéristiques (Die Davidsbündler) No. 18, in C, certainly prompted Brahms, but with what ease and variety has he not handled the other man’s theme! It is like a sigh, an unshed tear, and is more Brahms than it is Schumann.

By a clever suspension we are at once led to dance No. 10 in G. The next valse in B minor might have been written by Schubert. It is a charming pendant to the Momen Musicale, or is it an impromptu in F minor?

There are sixteen in all and I have briefly indicated the principal ones, although there is yet another in the key of G sharp minor and a delightful one in A flat, No. 15. This has the true tang of Brahms, the amiability, the large, sweet nature, the touch of life that we call universal when we find it in Shakespeare. Brahms is far from being a poet of the universal, for he is too German, lacks marked profile and is more the philosopher than the bard. Yet has he something of fulness of life; the strenuous ideality that is always found in world-poets.

Remember, too, that I am considering the man from the points of view of his piano works. Consider the great German Requiem, the C minor symphony, the D minor piano concerto, before you class this composer as a specialist working within well defined limitations. I dislike playing the part of an advocate when all should be so clear in the Brahms question, but I do so because of his supreme indifference to what anyone thought of his theory and practice, and also because of the cloud thrown over him by his warmest enemies and most misguided admirers. That he lives, that he gains continually in strength, and this, too, in spite of the Brahmsianer, is a satisfactory guarantee of his genius.

Let me quote for you what Louis Ehlert—by no means a Brahmsianer—wrote of the Walzer: “Having in time assumed an ordinary and most material character, dance music has been led back to the domain of high art by Schubert and Chopin. Dancing may be accomplished in many ways: passionately, indifferently, distractedly or symbolically. The symbolic dancer will introduce in his motions the poetic idea underlying the dance; that is, the fleeting, half confidential, and yet not binding, contact of one person with another of the opposite sex, a sort of rhythmic dialogue without words. And Brahms possessed the gift of substantiating his mastery in this field by the charm of half revealed sentiment, by the modest denial of the scarcely uttered confession and by his power of rendering the wildest yearnings speechless with confusion.

“At times, it is true, he handles his subject in a more decided manner, but the most beautiful among his waltzes are those whose cheeks are tinged with blushes. Brahms carried the freshness of youth into his later years, and blushes are peculiarly becoming to him. His sweetest melodies are merely tinted with a rosy hue; they do not possess the deep, summery complexion of Schubert’s. The small opus has become the ancestor of a small literature, and many of our contemporary musicians have walked in the way of the Brahms waltzes.”

Elsewhere he says of the Love Song Waltzes for mixed quartet, with four-handed piano accompaniment: “Schumann and Chopin have themselves scarcely succeeded in arriving at a more intellectual and poetic form of the dance.” And remember Ehlert wrote of Brahms: “His fancy is lacking in melodic tide,” and also, “Brahms’ music has no profile; ... by this remark I do not mean absolute censure, for, like Handel, one can have too much profile, too much nose and chin, and too little of the full glance of the eye.”

I transcribe all this to show you the impression made upon his doubting contemporaries by this richly gifted composer.

IV

In op. 21 there are two sets of variations—one in D, on an original theme, the second in the same key, on a Hungarian song. They are both excellent preparatory studies for the more famous pair. In them we get the peculiar Brahms technic amply illustrated—for instance, the first variation of the opus. It begins with a characteristic figure in the bass, the harmonic extensions showing how ingeniously Brahms handled the arpeggio, avoiding a tone, accentuating another and gaining new color. There are some interesting variations in this set, No. 7, with its wide intervals; No. 9, another pedal bass effect with huge skips that look like yawning precipices, yet I do not particularly care for the set, although constant study of Brahms reveals new points of interest. The variations on a Hungarian song are even less fruitful in treatment, but will repay study.

When, however, we take up op. 24, variations and fugue on a theme by Handel, we begin to sense the extraordinary fertility of Brahms. The theme itself, in B flat, is a square-toed aria, and what Brahms does with it is most entertaining, ingenious and musicianly. From the very first variation, surely full of humor, we get a view of the possibilities of the variation form. I am not sure but that these variations are more ingenuous, less sophisticated, and contain less of the étude than the Paganini variations. As they are occasionally played I shall not go into detailed description of the difficulties, except to say that the entire twenty-five are alive with musical invention and a certain genial feeling, a geniality that eminently suits the ruddy-cheeked tune of Handel. There is the fifth variation in B flat minor, there is the fourth with its bass and treble dialogue, the fourteenth in double sixths and the energetic attack of the nineteenth are all noteworthy.

The fugue is a capital specimen of close treatment, yet in spirit very free. I do not begin to find it as dry as certain of the Beethoven fugues, and it is devilishly tricky.

The variations on the Paganini theme in A minor are frankly studies, but transcendental studies, only fit to be mentioned in company with Liszt’s. Apparently the top-notch of virtuosity had been reached and there remained nothing for Brahms to do but let an astonishingly fantastic imagination loose and play pranks that would have caused Schumann to shout with admiration. The very first variation is a subtle compliment to Schumann’s toccata, and the second, with the sixths in the left hand, is very trying for players with short-breathed fingers. In the third we get rolling rhythms that excite more than they lull. In the fourth Brahms asks too much of mortal man with a top trill on a chord, the left hand gambolling over the impossible. Then follow some octave studies the reverse of easy, especially the ninth in chords. The eleventh is a veritable toccata; the thirteenth one of the most brilliant and popular of the set. The fourteenth is terrible, exacting and long, for it closes the set. Brahms, to use a faded figure of speech piles Pelion upon Ossa in the coda.

The second book starts in with a tremendous and exciting study in double notes, and the sudden muscular contractions and expansion caused by alternations of double thirds and octaves is exhausting to anyone but a virtuoso. The tenth variation, marked Feroce, energico, exhibits skilful use of arpeggio forms, and the eleventh variation is simply baffling. In the next one we get a breathing spell, one of those green melodic oases in which Brahms proves to you how easy it is for a great, strong soul to be gentle and tender.

It may not be considered amiss here to take a passing glance at some of Brahms’ daily studies for the piano. Naturally a man fond of solving abstruse technical problems, he could scarcely let pass the studies of other composers without considering them in varied aspects. So he has taken Chopin’s tender, whispering study in F minor (op. 25), and broken it on the wheel of double sixths and thirds. It may be magnificent technic, but, as Rudyard Kipling would ask: Is it art? It is certainly legitimate experimenting, but I fancy not fit for publication. A flood of imitations have resulted, and in some cases Chopin has suffered exceedingly. Happily the extreme difficulty of the Brahms transcriptions will prevent them from ever becoming as popular as much of Chopin. They are written for a parterre of virtuosi.

The étude after Chopin is entertaining for the fingers, and of more educational value than Franz Bendel’s treatment of sixths in his B flat minor study, the étude Heroique.

But what shall I say of the Weber rondo, the so-called perpetual movement, topsy-turvied by Brahms, and actually played by him in concert? It is very bewildering and finally laughable. As a left hand study in velocity it is supreme. He has subjected a presto by Bach to two rather drastic treatments, and the famous chaconne he arranged for the left hand alone. This latter has one good point, it can be played easily by both hands, and the immortal piece enjoyed, for with Bach, Brahms is reverent to a degree.

The fifty-one studies recently published are little gold mines for the student of Brahms. They are more musical than Tausig’s daily studies and also more normal. In them may be found all the norms of Brahms’ technical figuration, the mixed rhythms, the curious extensions, the double notes in thirds and sixths, with all manner of ingenious fingering. Examine the fifth study, occupying but a page, and you will find the key to one of the most formidable difficulties in the Paganini studies. It is in broken octaves, arranged in scale fashion and taken at a rapid tempo. Various examples will be found of this figure. Then there are single finger exercises, skips, scales and interlocked octaves and chords. Both books are of the highest importance. Max Vogrich says that the title of the studies should be A Hospital for Disabled Virtuosi.

The twenty-one Hungarian dances were originally arranged for the piano and afterward transferred to the orchestra. They are so familiar in their orchestral garb that I need hardly allude to them except to say that some of them are not so well adapted for the piano. But there are a half dozen that will outlive all the Liszt rhapsodies, for Brahms has penetrated more deeply the Hungarian spirit, has caught color, swing, perfume, mad melancholy and reckless joy without a suspicion of the glittering embroidery of Liszt’s virtuoso-like paraphrases. These dances of Brahms can be made to sound superbly if played by a pianist with temperament, above all a pianist who has in his veins Magyar blood.

I wish I had been in Leipsic in January, 1859, among the big-wigs of music and listened to the first performance of the D minor, the first piano concerto, played by its composer, Johannes Brahms. The Gewandhaus must have been disgusted by “the symphony with piano obbligato,” as the critics called it; curiously enough, this work has set the pace for the modern concerto, of which Eugen d’Albert’s two works in B minor and E major are extreme examples.

Yet carefully read the D minor concerto to-day, and much of its so-called obscurity vanishes. When I first heard the work played by Wilhelmine Claus, an excellent artist, I confess that, fresh from “Chopinism,” this concerto sounded mournfully vague and uncertain. Its seriousness was, however, not its only drawback to popularity. “Where,” asked a bewildered public, accustomed to the panderings of “pianism,” “where are our trills, our scales, our runs all over the landscape of the keyboard? Give us our cadenza, our big triumphal entrance, and our brilliant finale, and we will endure a few bars from the orchestra;” bars, let it be said, that about suffice to allow the solo player to settle in his seat, recover his wind and nerve and warm his fingers.

But Brahms thought differently from the critic and public; to him a piano concerto was the sonata form amplified, and the piano, unless it had something to say, must hold its tongue between its burnished ivory teeth. Do not, however, imagine that the pianist has a few doleful chords to play. There are difficulties enough, and of a trying and unusual order. As for the seriousness of the work we cannot deny that it is dark at times, especially in the orchestra, and full of the strenuous, solid sincerity of the composer. I cannot help thinking here of what Hadow wrote for the benefit of those who find Brahms too grave and earnest:—