Florence May

“ The more familiar they become, the more firmly will they root themselves, as we believe, in the affection of the lovers of his music. The fresh, bounding imagination of youth is, indeed, not in them, nor would we wish it to be there; but both works are pervaded by a warmth and glow as of sunset radiance, which, reflecting the spirit of the composer as he was when he wrote them, fill the mind of the listener with a sense of the mellow beauty, the rich pathos, the unwavering sincerity of his art. ”

“ A ripeness rare in one so young, a creative power springing spontaneously from a rich artist-mind, are revealed in them. We find ourselves in the presence of one of those highly-gifted natures, an artist by the grace of God. Some roughnesses and angularities in the outward, very independent form of Brahms' compositions may be overlooked for the sake of the imposing beauty of their artistic aim. His modulations are often of striking effect; they are frequently surprising, but always fine and artistically justifiable. Brahms' spirit is in affinity with the genius of Schumann. ”

“ During the next four years much of my time was passed in Berlin. I delighted in the concerts and general musical atmosphere of the German capital, and did not allow my plans to be disturbed by a vague invitation to visit Vienna which Brahms had given me in the course of our short interview in the hall of the Singakademie. I felt that however kind and friendly his recollection of me might have remained, yet I could not hope to derive direct musical benefit from one absorbed in the intense thought and brooding to which the life of a really great composer must be largely devoted. ”

“ This no mere fancy; we find as we proceed in the study of Brahms' art, not that the nature of the man changed as he grew older, but that, whilst the sunshine of complete recognition which brightened his later path through life is felt in the clear spirit of some of his works, the reserve which characterizes others is now dictated by the complete self-mastery which it had been one of the efforts of his life to attain, and which lends them a singular and pathetic charm as of consciously half-revealed power and beauty. ”

“ Could any incident of fiction be more heart-rending in its pathos than this occurrence of real life—this picture of the sensitive, highly-strung woman, whose nerves were habitually in a state of strained tension, obliged to force herself, for the sake of her children's existence, to step for the first time on to a London concert platform, a sea of unknown faces before her, her kith and kin far away, a few hours after she had accepted the certainty of her passionately loved husband's tragic doom? ”

“ I, poor composer, am appraised at doubtful value and lose all right to sit at the festival table, next to your wife, let us say. I therefore beg this time for indulgence for my anyway impaired reputation as a polite man. As regards the symphony, indeed, I do not beg for indulgence, but I fear that unless its direction be offered to Joachim as I wish, there will be a miserable performance. Now, the dinners are good in Hamburg, the symphony is of a favourable length—you can dream whilst it is going on that you are in Vienna! ”

“ The fancy, however, has not yet crystallized; the young musician has still to pass out of the stage of mental ferment natural to his age before he will be able to mould his thoughts into the concentrated shape which alone can convince the world. The sonata, not perhaps destined ever to become widely familiar, must always remain a treasure to the sympathetic student of Brahms' art, not only by reason of the beauties in which it abounds, but also because it is absolutely representative of its composer as he was at nineteen. ”

“ Here thou restest now, thou blessed of heaven, in this vast, awful world-solitude; clouds of light float above thee and that of thee which is immortal floats with them through eternal spaces. Ade Meister Johannes, fahr'wohl, fahr'wohl.'
Joachim was in England at the time of Brahms' death, fulfilling long-contracted engagements. Stockhausen, now a man of seventy-three, and not in strong health, was at this period unequal to a hurried and distressing journey from Frankfurt to Vienna. ”

“ The work is impregnated with a breath as fragrant as the spirit of Schubert's muse, and, though perhaps not fully representative of the very powerful individuality now associated with the name of Brahms, bears the distinct impress of his mind, and could have been written by no other composer. Each of the five movements is a gem of the first water. Each has a character of its own, which yet combines with every other to make the serenade a perfect example of a developed form of garden music, night music. ”

“ What more reassuring prelude could prepare the human soul for encounter with its most dreaded foe than these inspired words, heard in the exquisite setting of consolation by which the composer has illumined their meaning? The tenderness of the benediction, the passion of the anticipation, the recurring mournful calm that dies away in the softest whisper of comfort, place the mind in an attitude of awed suspense which finds its solution in the opening bars of the solemn, mysterious march of the second movement. ”

“ Good performances of Brahms' orchestral works may not seldom be heard, and great ones occasionally; but the particular quality of his poetic fancy, by which, when conducting an orchestra, he made the music sound from time to time as though it were floating in some rarefied atmosphere, vibrating now with fairy-like beauty and grace, now with ethereal mystery, was, I should say, peculiar to himself, and is hardly to be reproduced or imitated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The composer's fertile fancy has betrayed him, in the first allegro, into some episodical writing which somewhat clouds the distinctness of outline, and impedes the listener in his appreciation of the distinguished beauties of the movement, and there are places in the finale where a certain disappointment succeeds to the conviction inspired by the impetuous opening subject; but in wealth of material, in the rare beauty of its principal themes, and in noble sincerity of expression, the trio occupies a distinguished place even amongst the examples of Brahms' maturity. ”

“ The first partakes of the nature of an epic in so far as it is conceived on a grand scale and is dominated throughout three of its four movements by a passionate intensity of feeling which is occupied only with the sublimities, whether of pain or of joy, and which, even after the pain has been conquered, seems to touch the joy theme itself with the pathos of a past tragedy. The second symphony is an idyll that is chiefly animated by the spirit of pure happiness and gently tender grace. ”

“ The union of poetry and music in the sense of the instrumental Programme composer is, from the point of view of the creator of Absolute music, fatal, not only to the dignity, but to the vital force, of both arts. The poem becomes a phantom, the music a conundrum; the listener wastes his time and fancy in trying to fit them together, and is without means of knowing how far he has been successful, and the product of these processes is a something which, in the words of Wagner, is neither fish nor fowl. ”

“ The boy of fifteen who arranged folk-songs for practice by his village society, the youth of twenty who used them in his first published works, the mature master who returned to them again and again for inspiration and delight, all live in the veteran of sixty-one, who, as he busies himself in preparing the unique collection, every page of which bears mark of his insight, skill, and sympathetic tact, seems to be looking back over the years of the past with longing to leave behind him a final sign of his love for his great nation and all belonging to it. ”

“ We may well be thankful, we musicians and music-lovers of this generation, to have passed some part of our lives with Brahms in our midst—Brahms the composer and Brahms the man. As his music may be searched through and through in vain for a single bar that is not noble and pure, so also in his mind dwelt no thought which was otherwise than good and true. ”

“ Few who listen with quickened ears to an adequate performance of the C minor Symphony can be in doubt that whilst in outward form and manner of construction it may be regarded as at once the epitome and the latest result of the past history of classical instrumental art, it is in spirit representative of its own time and even anticipatory of the future; that it not only reflects the soul of the musician, poet, and philosopher, but is suggestive of the higher vision of the prophet. ”

“ This was the beginning of the intimate acquaintance between the two youthful musicians, which ripened into the historic friendship that endured until the death of Brahms forty-four years later. What a discovery was each to the other! Alike in no respect, perhaps, save in earnest devotion to art, and a profound feeling of obligation in her service, the dissimilarity of their dispositions was such as to make them mutually interesting and to cement the growing bond between them. To Joachim the worship of art, adored goddess though she might be, could never be all in all ”

“ It is precisely as a man upon whom one can rely that I regard Johannes so highly, with his gifts and his will! There is nothing he cannot undertake, and, with his earnestness, overcome! You know that as well as I, and if all of you in the committee and orchestra had met him with confidence and affection (as you, his friend, always do in private) instead of with doubt and airs of protection, it would have removed the asperity from his nature; whereas it must constantly make him more bitter, with his touching, almost childlike patriotism for Hamburg, to see himself put second. ”

“ They show the composer in one of his Bach-Beethoven-Brahms moods, by which is here meant his learned and profoundly serious vein touched with exquisite tenderness. The theme, in three-four time, has about it, nevertheless, something of the pace of a grave march, and the opening variations are tender reflections on a solemn idea. In the eighth and ninth we have the imposing tramp of pomp, whilst the eleventh and last breathes forth tones of mysterious spirituality which subdue the mind of the listener as to some passing divine influence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brahms, in fact, recognised no such thing as what is sometimes called 'neat playing' of the compositions either of Bach, Scarlatti, or Mozart. Neatness and equality of finger were imperatively demanded by him, and in their utmost nicety and perfection, but as a preparation, not as an end. Varying and sensitive expression was to him as the breath of life, necessary to the true interpretation of any work of genius, and he did not hesitate to avail himself of such resources of the modern pianoforte as he felt helped to impart it ”

“ I have never seen anyone who took such fresh, genuine and lasting interest in the surroundings of life as Brahms, whether in objects of nature, art, or even industry. The smallest invention, the improvement of some article for household use, every trace, in short, of practical ingenuity gave him real pleasure. And nothing escaped his observation.... He hated bicycles because the flow of his ideas was so often disturbed by the noiseless rushing past, or the sudden signal, of these machines, and also because he thought the trampling movement of the rider ugly. ”

“ Brahms' 'Magelone Romances' have become world-famous, and wherever they are heard the delight which stirred the heart of the youthful Johannes as he and Lischen sat together in the pleasant Winsen fields eagerly devouring the old story from Aaron Löwenherz's purloined volume lives also. Lischen was not again to meet her old friend, but she never forgot either him or his music, and he, too, kept a faithful memory for the old pleasant time. ”

“ John, so in the inspired music of the German Requiem. After the lightnings and thunders and all the manifold glory of the throne, the voice of the spirit: 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord henceforth; Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.' Confident, tender, majestic, the message floats through the seventh movement, a veritable requiem, a true song of peace, and, heard at length in the tones of the benediction with which the work opens, sinks into silence with reiteration of blessing. ”