Volltext Seite (XML)
Brahms has often been called the last of the great classical composers. 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 genius 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, uncomplicated 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 tramp of a giant like Beethoven." Although he had a number of successful, large-scale orchestral 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 composer of his stature; already at that age, Beethoven had written eight of his nine symphonies, and Mozart, who died at age thirty-five, had written 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 No. 1 in C minor in 1862 when he produced a sketch of the first movement. Of this initial sketch only the exposition made it to the completed work. In the years that intervened between this first sketch and the completion of the work, each of the symphony's four movements went through multiple revisions. Volumes of numerous drafts and sketches were continually discarded and destroyed as the composer's self- criticism induced him to spare no effort that seemed to promise even the slightest improvement. Simultaneously, Brahms attempted several other Symphonie works, but none of them pleased him enough, and thus were abandoned before their completion. Finally in 1876, Brahms met his Standards and set to paper the last notes of the score of his First Symphony. Still beset by his lack of confidence in his work, rather than choosing one of the European musical capitals to present his work to the world, Brahms opted for the small city of Karlsruhe, where the premiere took place on November 4, 1876, conducted by Otto Dessoff. The First Symphony turned out to be a magisterial work, and having overcome his fears regarding his abilities to compose in the grandest form of instrumental music, Brahms feit confident enough to write three more masterly symphonies. Brahms' Symphony No. 1 begins with a somber and tense, yet imposing introduction, marked Un poco sostenuto. After the initial tonic octave Cs in all Instruments of the Orchestra, rises the primary motif of the entire first movement: a majestic, chromatically ascending sweep of strings against an organ-like descending counterfigure for the woodwinds, as the basses,
