Music: Master from Hamburg

When a Hamburg bull-fiddler and his 44-year-old wife produced a lumpish son 100 years ago, the world was blessed with one of its greatest musical creators. The infant son was Johannes Brahms, who lived to grow a beard which was worthy of his name. At the end of this I season that name will have added luster, for Arturo Toscanini is conducting the New York Philharmonic in no less than 18 all-Brahms concerts.

Thus comes to a climax a new popular enthusiasm for Brahms which has been mounting steadily these past ten years. Last week, after the mighty, culminating finale of Brahms’ First Symphony, three thousand listeners rose, cried “Bravo! Bravo!” They cheered so long that Toscanini had to hurry in order to partake of the 3 5-pound turkey which Clarence Hungerford Mackay had sent him from his shooting-lodge in North Carolina.

During the Philharmonic Brahms cycle, New Yorkers and radio listeners will hear Brahms’ three other great symphonies. They will also hear the three concertos played by Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz and Ossip Gabrilowitsch, who have learned to play as Brahms intended, not with a show of fireworks, but as if their instruments belonged in the orchestra. The German Requiem will offer proof of Brahms’ simplicity. Bach was a Lutheran but for his great mass he chose the Latin of the Catholic liturgy. The Protestant Brahms chose a homely, Biblical text and his words are German.

Brahms’ whole life was homely, consistent with his upbringing. His father taught him music with the hope that it might earn him a living. He was set to playing the piano before he could reach the pedals and he was scarcely in his ‘teens when he could tootle on a horn and play passably on the violin and ‘cello. Father Brahms wanted his son to concentrate on dance tunes, for he often took him to play in the red-light district where they could earn a few thalers and all the supper they could eat. It was to Father Brahms’ despair that the boy kept scribbling notes of his own.

Brahms’ chance came when a popular gypsy violinist visited Hamburg and suddenly needed an accompanist. The gypsy taught Brahms to love Hungarian dances. He introduced him to Joachim who paved the way to the famed friendship with Robert and Clara Schumann. Robert Schumann, one of the great influences of his day, preached Brahms’ genius far and wide. Clara Schumann is supposed to have been Brahms’ lifelong love, the inspiration of his tenderest songs. He never married.

Nor was his career ever exciting save to the few who understood his music. The First Piano Concerto failed at its first hearing, partly because Brahms soloed more vigorously than accurately. The premiere of the Violin Concerto was also coolly received. It was not a display piece and Brahms, who conducted, supplied a diversion by going on stage with his suspenders unfastened. All his life Brahms suffered from the critics who tried to classify him and failed. He was an ardent romanticist, yet he adhered unfashionably to established musical forms. The world in his time was swayed by the amazing music-dreams of revolutionary Richard Wagner. Brahms never wrote for the stage, never for theatric effect.

Brahms lived his last 35 years in Vienna where he was celebrated for his gruff, churlish ways, his eccentric appearance. He went around in a shabby alpaca coat, trousers inches too short. His beard covered his shirt front, so he never wore a collar. On rainy days he took his daily walk in the Prater wrapped in an old-fashioned green shawl fastened in front with an enormous pin. Like Scientist Albert Einstein he scorned socks.

Wagner, the dramatist, was working at his desk when his death stroke came. Beethoven, the Titan, died shaking his fist at a thunderstorm. Brahms’ end was more prosaic and not until lately was it described by his housekeeper, the only one who witnessed it (TIME, Nov. 6, 1933). He had cancer of the liver and he caught a fatal cold standing in the rain at Clara Schumann’s grave. On his death bed he spoke little, because his false teeth kept slipping. His last words were “Ja, das ist schon.” His reference was to some wine that a friend had sent in.