(Hamburg, May 7, 1833 - Vienna, April 3, 1897)
Son of a double bass player, already at ten years, he played the piano in public, and to thirteen, he earned his living in orchestrins of the Hamburg Port. However, the study of the composition continued, and in 1853 the violinist Reményi led him on a tour of concerts. Then he met Liszt and Joachim, but above all, the meeting with Clara and Robert Schumann was essential for him to be in Düsseldorf: in the same year, Schumann wrote an article on him who "launched" him as one of the best promises of the young generation. From 1857 to '59 - he had a publisher and was esteemed by many musicians, including Berlioz himself - he was at the court of Detmold, then lived until 1862 in Hamburg, to finally settle in Vienna, where he entered the sudden friendship with the Great musical critic Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), who since then became his decisive supporter.
From 1863 to '64, he directed the Singakademie of Vienna, he then dedicated himself entirely to the composition, electing the Austrian capital at his home, which he found congenial to his spirit more than the Nordic German cities.
Since then, his Viennese home has been interrupted only for periodic travels and concert tours in Germany and Switzerland. At the same time, he made friends with the prominent musicians and poets of the time, from Hans von Bülow to J. Strauss and Gottfried Keller: Clara Schumann, who remained a widow in 1856, continues to nourish a friendship and an affection that border on adoration. In 1878 it was the first trip to Italy, then we will find it in Czechoslovakia and Budapest, where it performed the second concert for piano and orchestra. In the last years of life, he closes more in himself and is often caught by moments of gloomy pessimism and by sinister presentiments, saddened by the gradual disappearance of his closest friends.
He died of liver cancer that had started in Roderlo in 1891: his death was a mourning of international scope, and all of Vienna can be said to have come to his funeral.
Brahms concludes the grandiose parable of German musical romanticism. Far from the fervors of the "Neo German school," represented by Liszt, Wagner, and to a certain extent by Bruckner, he dates back to the origins, returns to Haydn, Mozart, and above all to Beethoven, of which he would like to be the legitimate heir. Declaredly conservative, he does not come true that the impulses of his all-romantic personality place him now, in the eyes of those who - like us - can observe him at a distance, on the same level as his most avid opponent, Richard Wagner, of which all in all he can be considered The equivalent in the symphonic seat.
This certainly does not apply to its harmonious language, controlled and severely maintained within traditional limits, where Wagner overflows to make new destinations for music. Still, it applies to the colossal conception of his symphonic and symphonic-core works, for the tormented lyricism that pervades him and that he often tries in vain to force among the barriers of the form. His orchestra, dense and sometimes plethical, has more in common with that of Wagner than that of Beethoven; And the flow of his lyricism makes you think much more about Schubert than about the "classics" of Vienna. In other words, Brahms is intimately, constitutionally, a romantic that tries to escape from a world of glorious forms that is no longer his. For this reason, sometimes in its symphonic compositions, there are imbalances between the inspiration and the vastness of the realization, between the occasionally enchanting beauty of the themes and certain weaknesses of the developments (but there is no lack of exceptions of important, especially in symphony n. 4).
Undoubtedly he was and remains an admirable manufacturer, and in turn, impressed the sign of a personality who for years dominated the musical evolution, especially in Germany; However, his happiest things are perhaps in chamber production, in the Lies as in the quartets and the chorus and piano pieces.
On the other hand, Brahms, taken from Beethoven, brings to the most extraordinary developments the principle of thematic processing: its best pages are structured up to the more minute cells through complex plastic work processing of the engraved, which is then resolved in complex construction, dense and yet fully responding to the needs of expression. In this, he was much more modern than many of his contemporaries, more modern than Wagner himself: you don't forget that.
Schönberg learned this fundamental principle from him; it is not forgotten that precisely on this street, he then came to the conception of dodecaphony. Wagner and Brahms are side by side with the first origins of today's most daring conquests.
In addition to the symphonic production, which will be said, the Catalog of the works of Brahms includes a large amount of vocal music with orchestra, pieces for chapel or accompanied choir, of chamber music: they are all pages in which the soul is reflected vibrantly. It is sensitive of a man who loved to mask himself in the guise of the gruff solitary.
The cases of works that have had an equally long and tiring gestation of this first symphony are rare in the history of music.
Brahms was not yet thirty years old when the first half ended: but before putting the word "fine" to the large building, they had to pass still fourteen years. Almost three lusters of maturation, therefore, saw born many significant works of Brahms, such as the German Requiem, the two serenades, the variations on a theme of Haydn, and the first concert for piano and orchestra, not to mention the chamber music and the composed choral music during the same period. Formed in Beethoven's severe study, he wanted to reconnect directly to the symphonic tradition of that great teacher: perhaps for this reason, perhaps because he was aware of the immense difficulty of creating this ideal, dragged this job for a long time, concluding only when he felt that the His forces were now mature enough to face such an ambitious task. And it must be said that already with the first Symphony, Brahms was considered by contemporaries as the most worthy continuator of the Beethovenian tradition, if it is true that Hans von Bülow had to call this symphony the "tenth," as if to indicate the worthy continuing of nine in it Symphonies of Bonn's master, and if it is true that Hanslick also from his first review of the work he traced a bold parallel between Brahms' symphonism and Beethoven's symphonism. Today it is already more difficult for us to discover this immediate continuity in the work of the two musicians: if it is true that Brahms makes many Beethovenian procedures, especially from a constructive point of view, it must also be said that his empty is all romantic, often exhausted by chromatisms, dropped in a dimension that is more often lyrical than dramatic.
The first half was considered one of the best songs of the symphony since the first performance, while the second half, "Andante supported" in Mi Major who follows him (note the substantial overhang of shades), is not up to the best pages of Brahms, despite its relaxing lyrical trend. The first half is already a miracle of constructive balance and melodic inspiration, with its first theme that - attacking immediately and therefore without slow introduction - ascends boldly in the violins, then abandoning itself to a vague to be able to sway typically Brahmsian. At the same time, the second theme is more character Tenderly melodic and is also set to chromatic harmonies.
The third half, "a little cheerful and graceful," follows (note how this piece has nothing of the character of the joke, which is usually found at this point and has a very characteristic function primarily in the Symphonies of Beethoven): it acts as a worthy Introduction to the last time, an "adage-allegro" which is the expressive culmination of all symphony. Bed, shortly after the beginning, to the noble theme of the horns, you can admire the popular spontaneity of the theme with which the part in "Allegro attacks" follows the evolutions of these and a new cantabile theme during the following processing. There will already be all the measures of Brahmsian symphonic genius, which he will rarely exceed in the subsequent three symphonies.
