In the course of the year, Spina of Vienna (Cranz of Hamburg) published a setting of the 13th Psalm for three-part women's Chorus, with accompaniment for organ or pianoforte; and four Duets for Contralto and Baritone, dedicated to Frau Amalie Joachim. Breitkopf and Hartel issued two Motets for five-part mixed Chorus _a capella_ (the first set to a verse of a church hymn by Paul Speratus, 1484-1551; the second to words from the 51st Psalm); a Sacred Song by Paul Fleming, 1609-1640 (set for two-part mixed Chorus, and written in double canon); and the three Quartets for Solo voices to which we have already referred as Op. 31.

Rieter-Biedermann published a set of nine Songs (Op. 32), No. 9 of which is the exquisite 'Wie bist du meine Konigin,' one of the most fragrant love-songs ever composed; and a set of German Folk-songs, without opus number, dedicated to the Vienna Singakademie.

An Organ Fugue in A flat minor was published as a supplement to No. 29 of the _Allgemeine Musikzeitung_, edited, as the reader may remember, by Selmar Bagge.

[1] Head of the celebrated Vienna firm of pianoforte-makers.

[2] The _Deutsche Musikzeitung_ of November 29, the very day of the concert, announces vocal duets and choruses by Brahms as part of the programme. The review of the concert in the same paper concludes: 'Frau Passy-Cornet and Herr Furchtgott assisted the concert-giver, whose programme was altered, by performing songs and ballads.'

[3] Egg-punch was a birthday institution in the family. The Wednesday in question was probably the birthday of Brahms' mother.

[4] Reimann's 'Johannes Brahms.' Published in facsimile opposite p. 28.

[5] Moser's 'Joseph Joachim,' p. 177.

[6] 'Aus meinem Leben.'

[7] Probably a private performance. Hellmesberger's published programmes give the first concert performance of the work by his quartet party as on December 27, 1863.

[8] 'Brahms Erinnerungen,' by Franz Fribberg (_Berliner Tagblatt_, December 18, 1898).

N.B.--Fribberg was a member of the Philharmonic orchestra of Vienna at the period in question.

[9] The collection is now in the Imperial Gallery on the Burg Ring.

[10] This and the extract immediately following are from some letters first published by Hanslick in the _Neue Freie Presse_ of July 1, 1897, and republished in _Am Ende des Jahrhunderts_ ('Der Modernen Oper,' Part VIII.): 'Johannes Brahms.'

CHAPTER XIII 1864-1867

Frau Schumann in Baden-Baden--Circle of friends there--Hermann Levi--Madame Pauline Viardot-Garcia--The Landgrafin of Hesse and the Pianoforte Quintet--Death of Frau Brahms--Concert-journey--The Horn Trio--Frau Caroline Schnack--Last visit to Detmold--First Sonata for Pianoforte and Violoncello--The German Requiem--Brahms at Zurich--Billroth--Brahms and Joachim on a concert-tour in Switzerland--Hans von Bulow--Reinthaler.

In the year 1864, or possibly at the end of 1863, the domestic troubles that had arisen from Jakob Brahms' early marriage with a delicate woman nearly twenty years his senior came to a crisis which Johannes, loving both father and mother with tender devotion, could no longer bear. By his wish the ill-assorted couple separated. Jakob had long since become fairly prosperous in a small way, holding a recognised position as a double-bass player amongst the orchestral musicians of Hamburg, and had even been appointed a member of the Philharmonic band since Stockhausen's election as the society's conductor. He now found quarters for himself in the Grosser Bleichen; the home in the Fuhlentwiethe was given up. Fritz, who, in spite of his want of energy, was doing well as a teacher, took lodgings in Theaterstrasse, and Frau Brahms and Elise removed to comfortable rooms in the Lange Reihe, Johannes, poor as he was, taking upon himself the sole responsibility of their maintenance.

The time was still distant, in spite of the composer's steadily-growing fame, when his circumstances were to become prosperous. Had money-making been one of his immediate objects, he could certainly have attained it with little difficulty; but his aims were wholly ideal, and directly included pecuniary profit only so far as this was necessary for his own decent maintenance and for the exercise of ungrudging generosity to his family. His income, derived from the sale of his copyrights and from his public activity as a pianist--for he practically gave up teaching on going to Vienna--sufficed for these ends; he had learned from early youth to find happiness in the realities of life, and to treat as superfluities as many things as possible. The cultivation of happiness he viewed, not only as a part of wisdom, but as a duty. 'Let us, so far as we may, retain a fresh, happy interest in life, which we have at any rate to live' was not with him a mere phrase to be offered for the benefit of a friend in trouble, but one of the abiding principles by which he shaped his own daily existence.

No year would have been possible to Brahms without sight of his parents and he stayed near them for part of the summer, his first visit after embracing father and mother being, as usual, to Marxsen. Further plans were not difficult to arrange, and chief among them was that of a long visit to Baden-Baden. 'Johannes took us by surprise on July 30' is Frau Schumann's entry, in her diary, of his arrival. He stayed on for the remainder of the season, residing in a charming villa close to the grounds of the Kurhaus, which was placed at his disposal by Rubinstein, who had taken it for the summer, but left in August.

Frau Schumann's residence at Baden-Baden brought in its train results which are of much interest in the history of Brahms' career. The not-distant capital of the duchy of Baden, Carlsruhe, was to become, in the course of the next few years, an important centre for the cultivation of his art. It seems convenient, therefore, to mention at once the names of a few members of a group of friends belonging to Frau Schumann's circle who resided or stayed frequently in the neighbourhood, and with whom Brahms became more or less intimate.

Jakob Rosenhain (born 1813), a composer now forgotten, but esteemed in his day, and recognised both by Schumann and Mendelssohn, lived at Baden-Baden, and was sometimes to be met at Frau Schumann's house. His name heads the programme of Johannes' first public concert of 1848. The painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880), a little-known and disappointed man in 1864, whose art has attained great posthumous celebrity, came annually with his mother to pass a few weeks there. The name of Frau Henriette Feuerbach appears on the title-page of Brahms' work 'Nanie,'

which was composed soon after the premature death of her son. With the mention of Feuerbach must be associated that of Julius Allgeyer, introduced to our readers in an early chapter as a student of copperplate engraving at Dusseldorf, and now settled in Carlsruhe as a high-art photographer. Allgeyer had a genius for friendship. He was extraordinarily attached to Feuerbach, of whose art he made himself the apostle; but though his four years' residence in Rome (1856-1860) in close intercourse with the painter caused an interruption of his personal intimacy with Brahms, the two men remained in occasional correspondence, and held each other in cordial esteem. Now the old friendship was renewed, and it was not long before Brahms came to occupy a place in the engraver's affections second only to that of Feuerbach.

The thought that he had known and loved both musician and painter through the period of their dawning fame was, in after-years, a source of satisfaction and pride to Allgeyer, whose name has become well known in Germany as that of Feuerbach's biographer.

In the middle of the sixties Carlsruhe, under the encouragement of its reigning Grand-Duke Frederick, occupied an exceptionally brilliant position amongst the smaller European centres of dramatic and musical art, to which it had been raised by the talents and devotion of Edward Devrient, the eminent stage-director of its court theatre, whose name may be familiar to some English readers as that of one of Mendelssohn's intimate friends. A man of wide general culture, the author of the standard work on its subject--'The History of German Dramatic Art'--playwright, singer, actor, possessed of an intimate knowledge of the best traditions of the German stage in the wide sense that includes opera, which had been derived from thirty years of professional association with the court theatres of Berlin and Dresden, Devrient was an ideal man for his post. His own sympathies remained faithful to the classical school of opera upon which his taste had been formed, but he did not allow his devotion to Gluck and Mozart and his interest in the revival of works of an early period to narrow the sphere of his activity. Taking a broad view of the duties of his position, he recognised the claim to hearing of the New-German school, and several of Wagner's musical dramas had been performed in the Carlsruhe court theatre by his permission, if not on his initiative, before his resignation of his post soon after the celebration of his artistic jubilee in April, 1869.

Not the least of his services to music was his choice of a successor to the post of court capellmeister at Carlsruhe, which fell vacant on the resignation of Joseph Strauss (not of the celebrated Vienna family) early in 1864. By recommending Hermann Levi (1839-1900) for the appointment, famous after the middle of the seventies amongst the famous Wagner conductors, and director of the first performances of 'Parsifal'

(July-August, 1882), and by the generosity with which he permitted the youthful musician to profit by the fruits of his own ripe experience, he contributed in no small degree towards perfecting the technical education of an artist whose name will be remembered in musical history as amongst those of the great in his chosen branch of activity.

A gifted pupil of the Leipzig Conservatoire, Levi resolved, at an early age, to aim at achieving distinction as a conductor, and, on entering the service of the Grand-Duke of Baden in his twenty-sixth year, he had already laid the foundation of his future celebrity in successive posts at Saarbruck, Mannheim, and Rotterdam. He had a large and enthusiastic nature which caused him to reject the formal and stereotyped in art and to sympathize with what seemed to him genuinely progressive, and, becoming early in his career a great admirer of Schumann's music, he passed easily to a recognition of the genius of Brahms, with whom he had a slight acquaintance before settling at Carlsruhe.

The singer Hauser, the violoncellist Lindner, the hornist Segisser, the authoress Fraulein Anna Ettlinger--all resident in Carlsruhe--the learned Oberschulrath Gustav Wendt, called there in 1867, whose rooms were the scene of many distinguished gatherings, are to be included in our list; and of particular interest is the name of the violoncellist Bernhard Cossmann, of Weimar celebrity, who settled at Baden-Baden in 1870. Brahms was a willing and heartily welcome visitor at his house, and took part there in performances of his E minor Violoncello Sonata, and, with the hornist Steinbrugger, of the Horn Trio.

A noteworthy and picturesque figure, familiar in the artist circle, was that of Tourgenieff, who visited Baden-Baden annually from early in the sixties until the opening of the seventies. In conclusion is to be added the name of Pauline Viardot-Garcia, who settled at Baden in 1863, building a spacious villa in the Lichtenthaler Allee for her summer residence, which contained a gallery of fine paintings, chiefly of the Spanish and Netherlands schools. Amongst her possessions was Mozart's autograph score of 'Don Giovanni,' which she kept enshrined in a valuable casket. Madame Viardot was a musician in a very comprehensive sense of the word. Her triumphs on the operatic stage belong to the history of musico-dramatic art; she had been a pupil of Liszt on the pianoforte, had studied counterpoint and composition, and composed a good deal. Several of her operettas, for which Tourgenieff furnished the text-books, were performed privately by her pupils and children in her miniature theatre in Baden-Baden, where she was accustomed to entertain many of the celebrities of the time. One was given in German translation by Richard Pohl, as 'Der letzte Zauberer,' on the Court stages of Carlsruhe and Weimar. At the request of some of her girl pupils, Brahms composed a short choral serenade for her birthday one summer subsequent to our present date, and conducted its performance by the young ladies, outside her house, at an early hour of the morning. This pleasant incident of the seventies recalls that of the forties, when the youthful Johannes consented to fill the offices of composer and conductor at Winsen on the occasion of Rector Kohler's birthday.

Brahms was presented by Frau Schumann, in the course of this his first lengthened stay at Baden-Baden, to the Princess Anna, Landgrafin of Hesse on an occasion when the two artists performed his sonata for two pianofortes privately before Her Royal Highness. The work, which, as we have seen, had failed to win public sympathy when performed in a Vienna concert-room, made its mark on this occasion. It appealed strongly to the royal listener, who, at the close of the last movement, warmly expressed to the composer her sense of its beauty. Brahms, gratified and pleased at the Princess's unreserved appreciation, called on her the following day, and begged permission, which was readily granted, to dedicate the work to her; and on its publication the following year in its final form--a quintet for pianoforte and strings--Her Royal Highness's name appeared on the title-page. The Princess acknowledged the compliment of the dedication by presenting Brahms with one of her treasures--the autograph score of Mozart's G minor Symphony. It passed after his death, as part of his library, into the possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna.

An interesting reference to the dedication and the time is in the possession of the present Landgraf of Hesse, whose musical talent was recognised and encouraged by Brahms twenty years later, and is contained in a letter of thanks written by the master in 1892 on the dedication to him of a fantasia for pianoforte published that year by the Prince:

'YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS MOST GRACIOUS HERR LANDGRAF!

'Whilst I venture to express to Your Royal Highness my most respectful and hearty thanks for the dedication of the fantasia, very many and very pleasant recollections occur to me.

'The high and agreeable distinction, as which I regard the dedication, reminds me of the similar pleasure I experienced when I was permitted to inscribe my quintet to your highly-honoured mother, the Frau Landgrafin. That was in beautiful Baden-Baden, and it would be too tempting to go on chatting about the unforgettable music-hours and pleasant days; but much else crowds upon the memory: Meiningen, Frankfurt, Vienna, Baden, etc. I think that by my mere mention of these names Y.R.H. will know what a valued memorial your work and its dedication, by which I am so much honoured, will be to me of many pleasant times.

'With my hearty thanks for the valuable present, I unite the wish that our glorious art may bring to Y.R.H. many more hours as happy as those were of which this fantasia gives such convincing testimony.

'Your Royal Highness's deeply obliged 'JOHANNES BRAHMS.

'VIENNA, _Jan. 1892_.'

On September 12 Frau Joachim's first child was born, and there was no doubt as to what he should be called. Johannes must, of course, be godfather, and give his name to Joachim's boy. Brahms was not present at the christening, but he sent to the parents as his congratulatory gift the manuscript of the little song published long afterwards as No. 2 of Op. 91, the 'Geistliches Wiegenlied,' or, as it is called in the published translated title, 'The Virgin's Cradle Song.' The words are imitated by Geibel from a text of Lope de Vega, 'Die ihr schwebt um diese Palmen' (Ye who o'er these palms are hov'ring). The music, composed for contralto, viola, and pianoforte, is founded upon the melody of an old song,[11] which, given in Brahms' composition to the viola, serves as the basis for the contrapuntal treatment of the voice and pianoforte parts.

Brahms left Baden-Baden on October 10, and, returning to Vienna, passed the next few weeks in quiet pursuit of his ordinary avocations, happy at knowing himself in complete possession of his time, yet perhaps not without an occasional passing regret at the thought of the pleasure he had derived the previous season, as conductor of the Singakademie, from his association with choir and orchestra. The change he had advised in the family arrangements at Hamburg was not greatly to prolong for his mother the peaceful old age he had desired to secure for her. Frau Brahms had taken her last farewell of her dearly-loved son when he quitted Hamburg in the summer. Her health, which had for some time been growing weaker, continued to fail, and on February 2, 1865, she quietly breathed her last.

Johannes, who took the next train to Hamburg after receiving his sister's summons, arrived soon after all was over, and turned immediately towards his mother's bed-chamber. He had once before passed through a great sorrow, but in Schumann's case death had come in the guise of a friend. This was another kind of bereavement, and the loss of the dear, simply-loving old mother wrung his heart. 'Do not go in yet, Hannes,' said Elise, trying to prevent him, and, indeed, as he passed on into the room the sudden complete realization of the mother's tenderness gone from his life broke down his self-command on the instant. He knelt down by the quiet bed and sobbed aloud in uncontrollable grief. When he had somewhat collected himself he presently went out. Solitude, however, often welcome to him, was not what he wanted to-day, nor over-much sympathy, but affection--and affection of a kind that perhaps may have seemed to him something akin to the assured, unreasoning mother's love.

He turned into kind Frau Cossel's and asked her to let him have a child.

His own little goddaughter Johanna was most willingly at his service as a companion, and as soon as she was ready the pair walked away together hand in hand back to Elise, the little girl somewhat awed by the situation and the changed demeanour of the friend whom she was accustomed to regard as the merriest of her companions, but glad to be in his society on any terms. Leaving his godchild with Elise, Johannes almost immediately went out again, and returned after a while with his father, whom he drew with him into the adjoining room, accidentally leaving the door of communication a little open. The scene of the death-chamber was thus made visible to the frightened Johanna from her position in the parlour, and imprinted itself indelibly on her brain.

She watched it spellbound, and was not too young a child to be penetrated and touched by what she saw.

The two men stood together by the bedside for a few seconds without stirring. Then Johannes, putting his hand on his father's arm, gently guided it towards the motionless figure, and, placing the husband's hand over that of the dead wife, kept both covered with his own in a last reconciliation. Kind friends came to the funeral, and true sympathy was at hand, but Johannes shrank in his grief from hearing the expression of condolence. 'I have no mother now: I must marry,' he said miserably when the service was over. Stockhausen and his wife insisted that he and Elise should dine quietly with them that day, and there is little doubt that Brahms was helped by the affectionate consideration shown on all sides, and was quietly grateful for it. He returned to his work in a few days, but the responsibility for the maintenance of Elise, who, having strongly felt the mother's side of the family difficulties, shrank from the idea of rejoining her father, remained entirely his.

The two first books of the 'Magelone Romances,' dedicated to Stockhausen, and the Pianoforte Quintet were published by Rieter-Biedermann early in the year. The version of the quintet as a Sonata for two Pianofortes was issued by the same house in 1872.

The Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, is unquestionably one of the greatest works of chamber music for pianoforte and strings ever written. Some distinguished writers go so far as to give it the first place amongst the composer's works of its class; and if regard be had to the largeness of its proportions, the stormy grandeur and the deep pathos of its ideas, its extraordinary wealth of thematic material, and the astonishing power with which this is handled, it must be admitted that there is something to be said in support of such a view. To the author it certainly appears impossible to select one of Brahms' works of this period and this class for preference as compared with the others. All are so great as, so to say, to defy future competition. They seem as unapproachable and secure on their own lines as the immortal '48'

themselves in another category. The imaginative power which surges through the first movement of the quintet recalls the daring of the youthful Johannes, and is guided now by a master-hand. This movement dominates the whole work. Its contrasted tones of passionate splendour and scarcely less passionate mystery are reflected in the rich pathos of the 'andante un poco adagio,' in the weird fitfulness of the scherzo with its heart-gripping trio, and in the doubtful tranquillity of the finale, bursting in the coda into a rushing impetuosity which carries the movement to a triumphant conclusion. Few of Brahms' compositions contain more striking illustrations than this one of his power of fertilizing his themes and bringing new, out of previous, material, a power which gives to his works a coherence and solidity hardly equalled save in the compositions of Bach himself, and which has a certain artistic analogy with the secret force that governs all natural organic development.

The summer of this year was again spent near Frau Schumann. Brahms took lodgings--two small rooms well provided with windows--in Frau Becker's house, which was situated a little apart from the village of Lichtenthal in an idyllic spot amongst the hills. His plan of life, essentially the same wherever he fixed his summer residence, was to rise with the dawn, and, after making himself an early cup of coffee, to enjoy the fresh delights of early morning by going for a long walk in the surrounding forest. He then returned to work in his rooms until the time arrived for his mid-day dinner, taken usually in the garden of the 'Golden Lion'; for in these days he only dined occasionally, when accompanied by a friend, at the somewhat more expensive 'Bear.' By four o'clock he was generally in Frau Schumann's balcony for afternoon coffee and to pass an hour with her in music, conversation, or walking. More often than not he returned to supper at half-past seven, when his place was laid at table, as a matter of course, at Frau Schumann's right hand.

All the circumstances of his surroundings were favourable to his creative activity, which was unceasing, and the profound emotional experience that had recently moved and enriched his spirit had already caused in him the stirrings of the impulse that was to grow and gradually to dominate him until it had become embodied in a work which, had it been the only child of his genius known to the world, would have sufficed to immortalize his name.

Before Brahms' departure from Lichtenthal a communication from Hamburg added to his feelings of tenderness and regret the shadow of a grave family apprehension.

Having accepted engagements in Switzerland and Germany for the ante-Christmas concert-season, he remained on till the end of October in his quarters at Frau Becker's, and here, about a week before the commencement of his _tournee_, he received the news that his father had resolved to marry again, and had become engaged to a widow. The intelligence, such as it was, came direct from Jakob, but it contained no particulars whatever to soften the anxiety it aroused, no mention being made in it even of the name of the intended wife, and it threw the son into a state of the strongest agitation, in which the tender pang for the dear old mother may very possibly not have been the predominating element. Who could the wife-elect be? Would she make Jakob happy? Could the marriage state be happy except under the rarest combination of circumstances? Were there children of the widow's first marriage to be provided for? if so, by whom? Jakob's means could bear no additional burden. And yet, the dear, homely, uncultured father, often enough a butt for the wit of the younger musicians standing by his side in the Philharmonic orchestra; this musician without musical endowment, who loved his music and his instruments, as Johannes sometimes declared, if such affection were to be measured by proof given, better even than he himself loved his art; who had persevered doggedly through long years of privation and struggle in his endeavours to attain to some small place in the world of art, and had won it, his father--and it needs no prophet to realize the pathos of this thought to the loving heart of the great composer--did he not deserve happiness if happiness should follow the step? Johannes was that day capable of but two resolutions on the subject: first, that his father should be made happy if anything he could say or do could help to make him so, and, secondly, that as soon as his engagements should permit, he would go to Hamburg and judge for himself of the wisdom of Jakob's choice.

The first of Brahms' concert undertakings for the autumn was fulfilled on November 3 in the hall of the Museum, Carlsruhe, where he performed his Pianoforte Concerto at the first subscription concert of the season, accompanied by the grand-ducal orchestra under Levi. The work was received, for the first time, with every sign of approval. 'The people had the surprising kindness to be quite satisfied, to call for me, praise me, and all the rest of it,' he wrote to Dietrich.