Johannes Brahms

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Johannes Brahms : biography

Summer seasons of 1858 and 1859 he spent in Gottingen. That was the place he got acquainted with Agathe von Siebold, a singer and daughter of a professor of university. Brahms took a fancy to her but as soon as the question of marriage turned up he gave up. Afterward all the love affairs of Brahms would be fleeting.

In 1862 the director of the philharmonic orchestra in Hamburg died but the position was given to Stockhausen instead of Johannes Brahms. Soon after that the composer moved to Vienna where he got a position of a bandmaster in “Singakademie”. Since 1872 till 1874 he worked as a bandmaster for all important concerts of the society “Musikfreunde». After that Brahms devoted most of his time to composing. His first visit to Vienna was mentioned with recognition and praise.

In 1868 the premiere of Brahms’s“A German Requiem” took place. It was held in Bremen cathedral and had tremendous success. Later there were a few successful opening productions of some new composition. They were First Symphony C minor in 1876, Fourth Symphony E minor in 1885, a quintet for clarinet and stringed instruments in 1891.

In January of 1871 Johannes took a letter from his stepmother saying that his father was seriously ill. In the beginning of February Johannes Brahms arrived in Hamburg and the following day his father passed away. Brahms took the death very hard.

In autumn of 1872 Brahms started working as an artist director of “Musical friends’ society” in Vienna. However the job seemed boring for Brahms and 3 seasons were the longest period he could manage to work.

As the composer was becoming more and more popular he could afford travelling around. He visited Switzerland and Italy, although his favorite place was Austrian health resort Ischl.

Having become a well-known musician, Johannes Brahms listened and appraised compositions by young musicians. When one of the young talents came to Brahms with a song to the poem of Shiller, Johannes Brahms claimed that it was perfect – he again got added evidence that Schiller’s poem was immortal.

Leaving one German resort where he had had a healing course Brahms answered the doctor’s question about his health: “Thank you, I’ll take back all the diseases I brought”. Being a very nearsighted person, Brahms avoided using spectacles saying that many unpleasant things slipped off his side.

By the end of his life Johannes Brahms became an unsociable person. When the organizers of one rout decided to please the composer and let him strike anybody he didn’t want to see off the list he crossed his own name.

His last years Brahms spent suffering from diseases, but he was still composing. Those years he managed to finish the circle of German folk songs.

Johannes Brahms died on the third April in 1897 in Vienna. There he was buried at Zentralfriedhof.

Creativity.

Brahms never wrote a single opera but tried himself almost in every other genres.

Brahms composed more than 80 musical works. They were one voiced and polyphonic songs; serenades for orchestra; the variation for Haydn’s theme for orchestra; two sestets for stringed group; two concerts for piano; a few sonatas for one piano and for piano and violin, piano and cello, piano and clarinet and viola duets. He also composed piano trios, quartets and quintets, variations and plays for piano, cantata “Rinaldo”, a solo for tenor, men chorus and orchestra, a rhapsody for viola to Goethe’s “Harzreise im Winter”, “A German Requiem” for solo, chorus and orchestra, “Triumphlied” devoted to French-Prussian war for chorus and orchestra, “Schicksalslied” for chorus and orchestra, a violin concert, a concert for a violin and cello, two overtures: one tragic and the other – academic.

Brahms’s symphonies gave him most of his popularity. In his early compositions Brahms showed the originality and independence of his talent. Thanks to his persistent work he managed to work out his own style. Judging by the impressions of Brahms’s compositions one couldn’t easily say that Brahms was under the influence of some preceding composers. The most bright and distinguished composition by Brahms was definitely “A German requiem” expressing the composer’s creativety.