Written for and dedicated to the RADIO MEMBERS of THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK Copyright 1940 by THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK 113 West 57th Street New York, N. Y. JOHANNES BRAHMS This pamphlet about the most important compositions in which Brahms employs the orchestra, like its predecessor about Beethoven’s symphonies, makes no claim to originality and no secret of indebtedness to treatises that are open to us all. It is addressed to the radio audience of The Ph

Although Brahms’s earlier works included not only compositions for the piano, songs, and chamber music, but also the Serenade for Full Orchestra in D, it was not till the spring and summer of 1854 that we find him engaged on a symphony. This made such progress that in January, 1855, he could write to Robert Schumann: “I have been trying my hand at a symphony during the past summer, have even orchestrated the first movement and composed the second and third.” The symphony was never completed as s

Now a permanent resident of Vienna, Brahms spent his summer holiday in 1873 at Tutzing on the Starnbergersee in southern Bavaria. A version of the Variations for two pianos Brahms marked “Tutzing, July, 1873.” Whether it was the first of the two versions we do not know. On November 2 the orchestral version was brought out in Vienna at a Philharmonic Concert, Otto Dessoff conducting. The theme by Haydn comes from an unpublished divertimento for wind instruments, preserved at the State Library in

Owing, no doubt, to the experience with the symphony that at last became a piano concerto, Brahms was cautious about trying his hand again at a symphony. In 1862 he had made, however, a version of the Symphony in C minor, without the introduction, of which he wrote to his friend Albert Dietrich, the composer. According to his biographer Walter Niemann, he once remarked it was “no laughing matter” to write a symphony after Beethoven, and the same authority points out that when he had finished the

Having launched a first symphony, Brahms composed a second within a year. However, he kept the writing of it so secret that nobody, we are told, knew anything about it till it was completed. Then, when he did divulge the secret, he was very demure. In September, 1877, he wrote to Dr. Billroth of Vienna, who was a patron of music as well as an eminent surgeon: “I do not know whether I have a pretty symphony; I must inquire of skilled persons.” He meant Clara Schumann, Otto Dessoff, and Ernest Fra

Pörtschach-am-See, a picturesque place in Lower Austria, on the Wörthersee, near the Italian frontier, appealed to Brahms as ideal for a summer holiday. To Hanslick he once wrote that the air at Portschach was so charged with melodies that he must “be careful not to tread on them.” There he began the D major symphony and composed (in 1878) the violin concerto (also in D major). And even now, with his characteristic modesty and still uncertain about the value of his own work, he could say in a le

According to a plaque on the outer wall of a house at Ischl in Upper Austria, “the great tone poet Dr. Johannes Brahms” occupied the house for twelve summers. Indeed, Brahms had a marked fondness for Ischl. In spite of the fact that it was one of the most fashionable of spas and that he disliked fashionable life, his attachment to the town persisted, and in the aforesaid house, in the summer of 1880, he composed two overtures, the “Tragic” and the “Academic Festival.” Notwithstanding the opus nu

Although the “Tragic Overture” had a place on the program of the concert in Breslau at which Brahms, conducting, brought out the “Academic Festival Overture”, the “Tragic” had already been played in Vienna at a Philharmonic Concert on December 20, 1880, under the direction of Hans Richter. There has long been discussion as to what tragedy this overture sets forth. It has been called “a tragedy not of actual happenings but of soul life. No hero, no event, suggested program music or any specific m

It took Brahms some time to complete his second piano concerto. The first sketches were made on May 6, 1878, at Pörtschach on the Wörthersee in southern Austria, but the work was not finished till the summer of 1881, when he gave it the finishing touches at Pressbaum, near Vienna. On the day of completion he wrote to his friends the Herzogenbergs with his customary misleading humor: “I don’t mind telling you that l have written a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo.” A

Brahms finished the third of his symphonies at Wiesbaden in the summer of 1883. In October he returned to Vienna with the completed score, which he immediately took to Hans Richter, by that time the conductor of nearly everything in Vienna. Richter brought it out at a Philharmonic Concert on December 2. The reception was mixed. Though Brahms’s adherents applauded fervently, groups of Wagnerian followers of Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were there to hiss, and hiss they did! It remains for Berlin,

When this symphony was brought out at Meiningen, under the direction of Hans von Bülow, on October 25, 1885, there was a great deal of discussion about the choice of key and actually some dismay. E minor as the key for a symphony was looked at askance, even though Haydn and Raff had both used it. The suggestion has been made that Brahms picked out E minor because of its “pale, wan character, to express the deepest melancholy.” This key has also been described as “dull in color, shadowy, suggesti

After the Fourth Symphony Brahms wrote only one more work in which he employed the orchestra, the double concerto for violin and ’cello. Thenceforth until his death his creative activity was devoted to chamber music, piano compositions, and songs for chorus or for solo voice. This concerto he composed at Thun in Switzerland during the summer of 1887. To Elisabeth von Herzogenberg he referred to it in a letter of July 20: “I can give you nothing worth calling information about the undersigned mus