Born on May 7, 1833, Johannes Brahms is regarded as the foremost romantic composer of instrumental music in classical forms. He composed virtually every variety of music except opera. Although his music was the object of attacks by followers of Richard Wagner, and Franz Liszt, his popularity grew over time as a great composer of unique individuality (Weinstock 456). His life, influences on him and his music, and his outstanding musical works all take a part in the history of this famous composer.
Born to poor parents in Hamburg, Germany, Brahms’s first music lessons come from his father who played the double bass. Known as a prodigy of the piano at nine, he quickly started to study seriously and began to compose. Incredibly, at fifteen he gave a public concert and by the time he turned twenty, he had composed piano pieces that are still played today. Moreover, after he taught at Dusseldorf for some time, he became attached to the court of Lippe-Detmold in which he settled until 1860. Constantly composing, he again resided in Hamburg after 1860. For the first time, he visited Vienna in 1862 and remained there. He spent increasingly more of his time in composition during the last twenty years of his life. Furthermore, he went on tours to play and conduct his own compositions, and received increasing honors and popularity. Brahms never married and also never left the continent of Europe, refusing to even visit England when Cambridge University desired to grant him an honorary degree. He was a humorous, gruff and a rather disorderly man, and by the 1890’s, he had become one of the most distinguished citizens of Vienna. (Weinstock 457).
Brahms venerated Beethoven, possible more than other Romantic composers did. His works contain wh...
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In 1896, he attended the funeral of his friend Clara Schumann who he had known since 1853. On his return, he was seriously ill and died a year later. Generations later, his music and name may still provoke argument in musical circles. However, there can be utterly no doubt that he is included in the first dozen composers of all music history (Weinstock 456). Part of Johannes Brahms’s unique history include the story of his life, his influences, and his exceptional music. Today, his popularity is still continuing to grow and he will remain in music history as a remarkable and outstanding Romantic music composer.
Works Cited
Weinstock, Herbert. The World Book Encyclopedia. Illinois: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1962. Print.
“Johannes Brahms”. http://www.pensym.org/SymphonySounds/SSOct2012.pdf. Peninsula Symphony, 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Johannes Brahms was a German Composer, Pianist and conductor of the 19th century or the Romantic period. He was one of the 3 B's or the Big three: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Johannes was a very self-critic man he burned many of his pieces before he could get anyone's opinion on them and he burned all of his compositions that he wrote before the age of 19.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, also known as W.A. Mozart, was a very well-known composer of the Classical Period as well as still to this day. Wolfgang Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. He was known for his sonatas, symphonies, masses, chamber music, concertos, and operas. He set the standards high for all composers following in his footsteps.
Johannes Brahms, a striking individual of unmistakable character, is defined by his compositions as meticulous and enlightened. His comprehensive grasp on classical and baroque form, with his familiarity of counterpoint and musical development, allowed him to effortlessly traverse and cultivate upon the musical architecture laid out by the likes of Bach and Beethoven. Born in Hamburg in 1833, he was the son of Johann Jacob Brahms, who travelled from North Germany, in which the family name “Brahms(t)” propagated (Musgrave 4). His father being a musician by profession instigated Brahms into his own domain of music. With Brahms’ first instruments being the violin, cello and the natural horn (predecessor of the French horn), it was discovered that the genius possessed absolute pitch and had also developed a system of notation on his own even before formal introductions into music (Musgrave 9). His astonishing understanding of musical rudiments was further cemented at age seven by his first teacher Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel, with piano literature ranging from Bach to Schubert to Clementi (Musgrave 10). The young gifted talent quickly matured, with his compositions being sedulously characterized in craft similar to the seasoned taste of aged liquor. Following in the wake of Beethoven, his style of romanticism seemed restrained, and viewed as being confined to classical forms. With his preference towards absolute music, his works demonstrated “as [Ian] McEwan/ [Clive] Linley would have it, at the intersection of emotion and reason” and of “powerful intellect and of passionate expressivity” (Platt and Smith 4). However, being the headstrong romantic that he is, he manipulated the limiting factor into an area of expanse, in which he...
For almost half a century, the musical world was defined by order and esteemed the form of music more highly than the emotion that lay behind it. However, at the turn of the 19th century, romantic music began to rise in popularity. Lasting nearly a century, romantic music rejected the ideas of the classical era and instead encouraged composers to embrace the idea of emotionally driven music. Music was centered around extreme emotions and fantastical stories that rejected the idea of reason. This was the world that Clara Wieck (who would later marry the famous composer, Robert Schumann) was born into. Most well known for being a famous concert pianist, and secondly for being a romantic composer, Clara intimately knew the workings of romantic music which would not only influence Clara but would later become influenced by her progressive compositions and performances, as asserted by Bertita Harding, author of Concerto: The Glowing Story of Clara Schumann (Harding, 14). Clara’s musical career is an excellent example of how romantic music changed from virtuosic pieces composed to inspire awe at a performer’s talent, to more serious and nuanced pieces of music that valued the emotion of the listener above all else.
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