[75] _Neue Freie Presse_, June 29, 1897.

[76] Billroth's Briefe.

[77] _Neue Freie Presse_, July 1, 1897.

[78] Published in Steiner's 'Johannes Brahms,' p. 29.

[79] Published in Reimann's 'Johannes Brahms,' p. 117.

[80] The theme is the one alluded to on p. 156 of our first volume.

N.B. On the occasion of Schumann's opera 'Genoveva' being put into rehearsal at the Hanover court theatre in 1874, Brahms, with Frau Schumann's approval, added a few bars to the close of Siegfried's song in the third act. These do not appear, however, in the pianoforte score of the work included in the complete edition.

[81] See Appendix No. I.

[82] Widmann's 'Recollections.'

[83] Steiner, p. 33.

CHAPTER XXII 1895-1897

The Meiningen Festival--Visit to Frau Schumann--Festival at Zurich--Brahms in Berlin--The 'Four Serious Songs'--Geheimrath Engelmann's visit to Ischl--Frau Schumann's death--Brahms'

illness--He goes to Carlsbad--The Joachim Quartet in Vienna--Brahms' last Christmas--Brahms and Joachim together for the last time--The Vienna Philharmonic concert of March 7--Last visits to old friends--Brahms' death.

But few events remain for record in the life which we have now followed step by step nearly to the end of its progress. Of these few, several have the pathetic interest of last visits to dear and familiar places made, so far as appears, without presentiment that they were final. The composer was present at a three days' festival held in Meiningen September 27-29; 'the Festival of the three B's,' as it has sometimes been called, from the circumstance that the programmes were devoted to works by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Those of Brahms selected for performance included the Song of Triumph, the fourth Symphony, the B flat Pianoforte Concerto, with d'Albert as pianist, the Clarinet Sonatas performed by the same artist with Muhlfeld, some of the Vocal Quartets, amongst them the early favourite 'Alternative Dance Song,' and others.

The festival was an immense success, and the pleasure which the master derived from the concerts is evident in the following lines written to Steinbach immediately after the last one:

'DEAR FRIEND,

'However tempted I may feel, I dare not break in upon your well-deserved rest; but you shall find my hearty greeting awaiting you on your happy awakening; how hearty and grateful it is there is no need to tell you in detail. You must have perceived each day that you gave me and all who took part in your splendid festival, a quite exceptional pleasure....'[84]

Brahms was, of course, a guest at the castle, and he remained on for a few days after the last concert. Leaving Meiningen on October 3, he proceeded to Frankfurt on a flying visit to Frau Schumann. Professor Kufferath of the Brussels Conservatoire, with Mr. and Mrs. Edward Speyer, accompanied him on the short journey, and were, by his particular suggestion, invited to spend the evening at Frau Schumann's house. Professor Kufferath, a pupil of Mendelssohn at Leipzig, and on a very old footing of intimacy at the Schumanns', had been for more than twenty years on terms of cordial friendship with Brahms also, though the two men met but seldom. Frau Schumann's daughters Marie and Eugenie, and Stockhausen, were the only others present. The hours were spent in pleasant chat as between old friends, and music was represented only by a few of Brahms' folk-songs sung by Mrs. Speyer (Fraulein Antonia Kufferath) to the master's accompaniment.

Brahms left the next morning, but before his departure he requested his old friend to play to him. Forty-two years had passed since Schumann had desired him to play for the first time to her, marking both musicians with inevitable outward signs. The traces of suffering and sorrow had deepened of late on Frau Schumann's countenance, but those who were happy enough to listen to her playing at this period, in the privacy of her home, knew that her spirit was still young, and Brahms' last remembrance of the great artist, the remembrance of an old age which had left the poetry of her genius untouched, will have fitly completed the long chain of personal associations begun when Schumann called his wife to rejoice with him in the daring power and romantic enthusiasm of Johannes' inexperienced youth. When she rose from the piano on that October morning, the final link had been added. Frau Schumann and Brahms were not to meet again on earth.

A four days' festival in October (19-22) to celebrate the inauguration of the new concert-hall at Zurich seems to carry us more than one stage nearer the end. It brought Brahms for the last time to Switzerland to conduct his Triumphlied; a fine close--for as such it may almost be regarded--to a noble career.

Let us pause for a moment to picture the robust figure of the composer as he stands before the vast audience completely filling the brilliantly lighted hall, and leads with sure, quiet dignity the 'masses of chorus and orchestra' that swell out in proud tones of thankfulness for his country's glory. Listen! for with the sounds of the grand old hymn 'Now thank we all our God' the bells of victory are pealing, and a sensation of happiness spreads through the mass of hearers, a vibration that stirs something of the feeling which roused the great German audience at Cologne to enthusiasm as they listened twenty years ago to the same jubilant tones. Who so fitted to raise the strain as the patriot citizen of ancient Hamburg, the unique descendant of the mighty Bach, the musician of true, rich, loving spirit, conqueror of life and of himself, our Johannes Brahms? Conqueror, too, of death; for surely we cannot be mistaken in accepting the likeness of the master, that looks down with those of the greatest of his art from the painted ceiling of the new hall, as the symbol of a further life to be his even here on earth, when he has entered the darkness that is soon to cover him from our sight.

Brahms was in overflowing spirits during the entire festival, enjoying the concerts, the private gatherings, the meetings with old friends, in a mood of harmless gaiety that recalls the Detmold days.

'We have seen Brahms and Joachim together again, both in full vigour; may we not hope for a prolongation of this happy state of things?' writes Steiner a few days after the festival.

Widmann was, of course, there, and stayed with Brahms at Hegar's house.

When he bade the master farewell on the day after the concert, the two friends clasped hands in a final grasp.

One of Brahms' late public appearances was on the occasion of the concert given in the Borsendorfer Hall, Vienna, by Signorina Alice Barbi (now the Baroness Wolff Homersee) shortly before her marriage. He pleased himself by acting as accompanist to the distinguished cantatrice, whose programme included a number of his songs. He held the baton for the last time on a Vienna platform when he directed the performance of his Academic Overture by the students of the conservatoire at the festival concert given to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary (1895) of the opening of the present home of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. He officiated for the last time in public at d'Albert's concert in Berlin of January 10, 1896, conducting his two Pianoforte Concertos and the Academic Overture, and was received with the usual enthusiasm. Stanford speaks of being present at a dinner-party given by Joachim during Brahms' brief visit.

'Joachim, in a few well-chosen words, was asking us not to lose the opportunity of drinking the health of the greatest composer--when, before he could say the name, Brahms started to his feet, glass in hand, and calling out "Quite right; here's to Mozart's health,"

walked round clinking glasses with us all. His old hatred of personal eulogy was never more prettily expressed.... The last vision I had of him was as he sat beside the diminutive form of the aged Menzel, drinking in, like a schoolboy, every word the great old artist said with an attitude as full of unaffected reverence as of unconscious dignity.'

Of all modern painters, Adolph von Menzel was the most admired by Brahms. He visited him on several occasions, and spoke of him and his works with unfailing enthusiasm.

That the master had realized a competence some years before his death--more than a competence for one of his extraordinarily simple habits--is generally known. How he regarded it, how he used it, may have been but little suspected outside a small circle. His friend and publisher, the late head of the firm of Simrock, shared his confidence on the subject more than anyone else, for it was often through his agency that Brahms' munificence was applied to its object; the substantial help, perhaps, of a needy musician, or a promising talent.

He contributed more than one large donation to the 'Franz Liszt Pensionsverein' of Hamburg, a society founded by Liszt in 1840 for the benefit of aged or disabled members of the Stadt Theater orchestra.

Several authentic stories are told by accidental witnesses of some of his particular acts of generosity. One has been related to the author by the Landgraf of Hesse, who was sitting with the master one morning when a caller appeared with a tale of distress which touched his heart. He listened quietly, asked some questions, then went to his writing-table, and, handing his visitor the entire sum of money towards which he was asked for a contribution, said quietly, 'Take this from me; I do not need it. I have more money than I want for myself.' This was his usual formula on such occasions, 'I do not need it,' to which was sometimes added, 'If you should ever have it in your power, you can pay me back.'

Brahms' heart was of gold, if ever such existed. He was rough sometimes--often, perhaps--let it be freely granted. The spoiled humours of his last two or three years have already been noted; they do not amount to much. He permitted himself deliberately to repulse strangers or slight acquaintances when he felt so disposed; necessarily, if his time and tranquillity were to be protected. Now and then he was inconsiderate or blunt to his friends. The concentration of mind, the sacrifice of immediate inclination, the devotion of energy, involved in the fulfilment of the career of genius are often but imperfectly realized even by the friends of a famous man. The great poet, the great painter, the great musician, has his brilliant rewards. He has also his bitter disappointments, and one of the hardest of these--which is especially apportioned to the lot of the creative musician--is the discovery that, as in the case of other princes and sovereigns of the world, his path in life must be solitary. Brahms may sometimes have imagined he had reason for his impoliteness; more frequently a gruff manner, an awkward joke, was the result of a constitutional want of presence of mind in trifling matters, which frequently caused him to be misunderstood. His real attitude is expressed in a note published after his death by Hanslick in the _Neue Freie Presse_ article from which we have already more than once quoted.[85] Hanslick had sent him a packet of letters to read, and had inadvertently enclosed in it one from a mutual friend which contained a comparison of Beethoven and Brahms. In it were these words:

'He is often offensively rough to his friends like Beethoven, and is as little able as Beethoven was to free himself entirely from the effects of a neglected education.'

Hanslick was very much upset on remembering what he had done, and immediately wrote to Brahms to throw himself on his mercy and beg his silence on the matter. The master immediately answered:

'DEAR FRIEND

'You need not be in the least uneasy. I scarcely read ----'s letter, but put it back at once into the cover, and only gently shook my head. I am not to say anything to him--Ah, dear friend, that happens, unfortunately, quite of itself in my case! That one is taken even by old acquaintances and friends for something quite different from what one is (or, apparently, shows one's self in their eyes) is an old experience with me. I remember how I, startled and confounded, formerly kept silence in such cases; now however, quite calmly and as a matter of course. That will sound harsh or severe to you, good and kind man--yet I hope not to have wandered too far from Goethe's saying, "Blessed is he who, without hate, shuts himself from the world."'

Brahms was ready for another journey to Italy in the spring, but Widmann was unable to accompany him, and he passed his sixty-third birthday anniversary in Vienna. When it dawned, the work that was for a short time generally accepted as his swan-song had been completed. Deiters writes that the immediate occasion of the composition of the 'Four Serious Songs' was the death of the artist Max Klinger's father, which occurred earlier in the year. The not unnatural assumption that has sometimes seen in these solemn utterances of the great composer a presentiment of his own fast-approaching end may or may not represent a fact. It has not been accepted by those of his friends amongst whom he passed the last few months of his life, and certainly nothing that is known of his individuality lends likelihood to the notion of his going out, as it were, to meet the thought of his death. On the other hand, his repeated assertion that the songs had been composed for his own birthday points to the possibility that his mind may have been under the influence of forebodings of which he was, perhaps, but vaguely conscious. 'Yes, Gruber, we are in the front line now,' he said to his landlord on hearing of the death of some of the old people in the course of one of his last summers at Ischl.

The 'Four Serious Songs' were published in the summer of 1896 with a dedication to Max Klinger, his personal friend, of whose work, including that inspired by his own compositions, he became a warm admirer, though he at first disliked the painter's 'Brahms Fantasie.'

Three of the songs deal grimly with the thought of death (Eccles. iii.

19-22, iv. 1-3; Ecclus. xli. 1, 2); the fourth has for its text St.

Paul's beautiful glorification of love (1 Cor. xiii. 1-3, 12, 13):

'_For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other, for all is vanity...._

'_Though I spake with the tongues of men and of angels, and had not love, I should be as sounding brass or a tinkling bell...._

'_We see now through a glass, in a dark word, but then face to face. Now I know it partly, but then I shall know it as I am known._

'_Now remain faith, hope, love; but the greatest is love._'

It is certain that Brahms speaks to us in the songs from the depth of his convictions. Herr Geheimrath Dr. Engelmann arrived one evening in the course of the summer on a day's visit to Ischl. Brahms called at his hotel at six o'clock the next morning, and after breakfast brought his friend back to his rooms, where they spent several hours together. The composer was in delight over some lately-arrived volumes of the complete edition of Schubert's works, then in progress, and could not sufficiently express his joy in their contents. 'See here,' he said, with his energetic enthusiasm, as he pointed to one place after another with beaming face and lightening eyes--'see here, what a splendid fellow he was! People talk of him as a mere melodist, but look what material he had even in his early works; look what the melodies are, how they grow.'

By-and-by, taking up a copy of the 'Four Serious Songs,' he said: 'Have you seen my protest? I wrote these for my birthday.'

The explanation of these words is that the master viewed with mistrust, or even dislike, modern efforts to revivify and popularize the services of the Evangelical Church by the introduction of sacred musical works composed for the purpose, of which those of Heinrich von Herzogenberg may be taken as the type. Brahms, who subscribed to no church dogmas, regarded this tendency as artificial, and therefore as weak and unhealthy, and much as he admired Herzogenberg's powers, he regretted that they were dominated during the last ten years of his creative activity by his strong ecclesiastical bias.[86] Brahms' love of the Bible and his preference for Scriptural texts was, as we know, not that of what is conventionally called a 'pietist.' He spoke in the language of the people's book as a realist who was at the same time an idealist.

He has so arranged the texts of his German Requiem that it would be difficult to construe the work as the embodiment of a definite belief, and he expressly refused to enlarge it into an account of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ; and yet, as we have endeavoured to show, it contains the presentiment, the inspiration, of something positive. From Brahms' standpoint the attempt to go behind the mysteries of life and death, to construct the unspeakable, the unthinkable, into verbal formulae, is not only predoomed to failure, but is almost irreverent. Yet, as we may remember, 'he had his faith,' and if anything may be judged of it from the story of his life, the spirit of his works, this faith lay in acceptance of the immutability of truth, the sacredness of life, and the sovereignty of love.

Brahms had been settled in his rooms at Ischl scarcely a fortnight, when he was profoundly shaken by the tidings of Frau Schumann's death. She passed away peacefully at her home in Frankfurt on May 20, in the seventy-seventh year of her age, and was laid to rest by her husband's side at Bonn on Whit Sunday, May 24. The story of her life, triply crowned by fame, love, and sorrow, remains amongst the ideal possessions of the world.

A great crowd of musicians and friends assembled at the funeral, those of Frankfurt, Bonn, and Cologne being strongly represented. The custom of the ceremony had changed with time since Johannes had borne Frau Clara's laurel-wreath to Schumann's grave, and on the conclusion of the service, which consisted of the singing of chorales and an address by Dr. Sell of Bonn University, more than two hundred floral tributes were piled up around the spot. Joachim with Herzogenberg, bound by Italian engagements, had attended a service held in the Schumanns' house at Frankfurt. Woldemar Bargiel and Bernhard Scholz were at the cemetery, and of our own particular musicians, Stockhausen and Brahms. Another last meeting.

On the termination of the service, Brahms, whose agitation had been very unpleasantly heightened during his journey from Ischl by the delay of a train, and his consequent anxiety lest he should be late, went to Honnef to stay till the next day with Herr and Frau Wehermann, the near relatives of his Crefeld friends, the von Beckeraths and von der Leyens, who were at the time on a visit there. Professor Richard Barth and his wife, Dr. Ophuls, and two of the Meiningen musicians, Concertmeister Eldering and Herr Piening, were also of the party. The master was very much excited and overcome on his arrival at Honnef, but the soothing influence of the Rhine country, so closely associated with the recollections of his youth, did him good, and he prolonged his visit to nearly a week. Confiding to Barth the day after his arrival that he had with him something new, which he would like to play very quietly to one or two chosen listeners, his three most intimate friends retired with him to a room secure from interruption, impressed by his manner with the feeling that something unusual was about to ensue. When the little party had taken their places, Brahms, with every sign of the most profound emotion, which communicated itself to his companions, played through the 'Four Serious Songs' from the manuscript. 'I wrote them for my birthday,' he said in the same words which he afterwards used to Dr.