Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms: his work

Johannes Brahms held distinguished musical posts in Vienna, (at the Singakademie then the Gesellschaft der Musikfreune) and his symphonies, concertos and sonatas exemplifying radiant classicism and vigour compelled recognition. They were brilliantly conceived and firmly rooted in the music of Haydn and Beethoven. If Franz Liszt was to innovate the symphonic poem and Richard Wagner revolutionise the musical drama, Brahms dreamed of pure music detached from pretext or picturesque description.

From hieratic fervour to melancholic nostalgia, Johannes Brahms often wrote anxious works with perfectly mastered musical language. A German Requiem, the Four Serious Songs, (Vier ernste Lieder), or Hungarian Dances are perfect protean examples of a composer inspired by both sacred grandeur and light-hearted folklore. His last, crepuscular works for piano (opus 116 to 119), the “lullabies of his pains”, are short poetic pages at the edge of silence. In his article, “Progressive Brahms”, Arnold Schoenberg did not fail to note the modernity of a composer too often judged as classical or conventional.