Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 JOHANNES BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna “There must suddenly appear one who should utter the highest ideal ex- pression of his time...and he has come, this chosen youth over whose cradle the Graces and Heroes seem to have kept watch. His name is Johannes Brahms. ” Robert Schumann - 1853 Brahms has often been called the last of the great classical Compos ers. A fervent admirer of Beethoven, he was moved by a desire to be linked to the tradition of the symphony as set by the master. However, Brahms cannot so easily be regarded as a mere neo-classicist (as he was called in life and even after his death); it is only the most superficial listener who could deny that his music possesses qualities of the most intense romanticism. The richness and abundance of his musical ge- nius poured forth in his symphonies, as it did in his chamber works, choral pieces and his long list of songs and works for the piano. Like Beethoven before him, he provided a Strong voice, dramatic content and perfection of structure to the symphony; this however, he complemented with the introduction of the German lied to the essence of Symphonie form. Beethoven had not made use of this lyric, uncom- plicated and somewhat rustic vein in his symphonies as it was later to be found in Brahms’, but the practice was perpetuated into the turn of this Century by Mahler, and to some small degree by Bruckner. Having garnered a substantial reputation with his small scale works (particularly his chamber music), and with Schumann’s pronouncement naming the then twenty-year-old composer as Beethoven’s successor in the realm of the symphony, Brahms feit tremendous pressure and weight of responsibility in presenting his first Symphonie essay to the world. “Writing a symphony is no laughing matter,” he once remarked; “you have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the Steps of a giant like Beethoven.” Although he had a number of successful, large-scale or chestral works to his credit, including the two Serenades (Op. 11 and 16) the First Piano Concerto (which was almost a symphony) and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn, the compositional process for the First Symphony took Brahms fifteen years between initial conception and the production of the completed score, when he was already forty-three years old. This achievement came comparatively late in his life for a com poser of his stature; already at that age, Beethoven had written eight of his nine symphonies, and Mozart, who died at age thirty-five, had writ ten a total of forty. The difficult road to Brahms First Symphony was one of toil, plagued by self-doubts, and marked by trial and error. Brahms began his Symphony
