Brahms in The Home and The Concert Hall

Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall
Johannes Brahms was a consummate professional musician, a suc-

cessful pianist, conductor, music director, editor and composer. Yet he
also faithfully championed the world of private music-making, cre-
ating many works and arrangements for enjoyment in the home by
amateurs. This collection explores Brahms’s public and private musi-
cal identities from various angles: the original works he wrote with
amateurs in mind; his approach to creating piano arrangements of
not only his own, but also other composers’ works; his relationships
with his arrangers; the deeper symbolism and lasting legacy of private
music-making in his day; and a hitherto unpublished memoir that
evokes his Viennese social world. Using Brahms as their focus point,
the contributors trace the overlapping worlds of public and private
music-making in the nineteenth century, discussing the boundaries
between the composer’s professional identity and his lifelong engage-
ment with amateur music-making.
katy hamilton holds the post of Junior Research Fellow in Perfor-

mance History at the Royal College of Music, specialising in the vocal
music of Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries. She is the author
of William Hurlstone: A Catalogue of Works and was assistant to pianist
Graham Johnson for his three-volume encyclopaedia Franz Schubert:
The Complete Songs. In addition, she is an active chamber accompa-
nist and repetiteur, having worked with instrumentalists, singers and
choirs in England, Ireland, Spain and Germany. From 2008 to 2013 she
was the course organiser and music director of ISSMUS, a specialist
summer school for singers, composers, conductors and pianists.
natasha loges is Assistant Head of Programmes at the Royal
College of Music, where she teaches on Brahms, the history of opera
and the German lied. She has published various articles on Brahms’s
songs in journals such as Music and Letters and Nineteenth-Century
Music Review. Supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council
award, she is currently completing a monograph called Brahms and
His Poets. She is also active as a song accompanist and has broadcast
live on BBC Radio 3. As a speaker, she has a long-standing association
with the Oxford Lieder Festival, the UK’s largest festival of art song.
Brahms in the Home and the
Concert Hall
Between Private and Public Performance
Edited by katy hamilton and natasha loges

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Brahms in the home and the concert hall : between private and public performance / edited by
Katy Hamilton and Natasha Loges.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-04270-4 (hardback)
1. Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Music – Germany –
19th century – History and criticism. I. Hamilton, Katy, 1982– editor of compilation.
II. Loges, Natasha, editor of compilation.
ML410.B8B685 2014
780.92 – dc23 2014007602
ISBN 978-1-107-04270-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of illustrations [page vii]

List of music examples [ix]
Notes on contributors [xiv]
Foreword: A different Brahms? New perspectives on his output [xix]
michael musgrave
Acknowledgements [xxiv]
List of abbreviations [xxv]
1 Brahms in the home: An introduction [1]

katy hamilton and natasha loges
2 The Joachim Quartet concerts at the Berlin Singakademie:

Mendelssohnian Geselligkeit in Wilhelmine Germany [22]
robert w. eshbach
3 Domesticity in Brahms’s String Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36 [43]

marie sumner lott
4 Where was the home of Brahms’s piano works? [95]

katrin eich
5 Main and shadowy existence(s): Works and arrangements

in the oeuvre of Johannes Brahms [110]
michael struck
6 Brahms arranges his symphonies [137]

robert pascall
7 At the piano with Joseph and Johannes: Joachim’s

overtures in Brahms’s circle [158]
valerie woodring goertzen
8 Brahms and his arrangers [178]

helen paskins, with katy hamilton and natasha loges
9 Brahms in the Wittgenstein homes: A memoir and letters [221]

styra avins
v
vi Contents
10 The construction of gender and mores in Brahms’s

Mädchenlieder [256]
heather platt
11 Music inside the home and outside the box: Brahms’s vocal
quartets in context [279]
katy hamilton
12 The limits of the lied: Brahms’s Magelone-Romanzen

Op. 33 [300]
natasha loges
13 Being (like) Brahms: Emulation and ideology in late

nineteenth-century Hausmusik [324]
markus b öggemann
14 The cultural dialectics of chamber music: Adorno and the

visual-acoustic imaginary of Bildung [346]
richard leppert
Bibliography [366]
Index [384]
Illustrations
2.1 Felix Possart, Das Joachim-Quartett in der Singakademie zu

Berlin. [page 23]
2.2 Carl Johann Arnold, Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim, c. 1856.
Art Resource, New York. [34]
2.3 Ferdinand Schmutzer, Joachim und Exzellenz von Keudell,
musizierend. Etching and drypoint, 1907. [38]
5.1 Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45. Arrangement for piano
duet, first edition (Leipzig/Winterthur: J. Rieter-Biedermann),
Kate Thompson’s copy, cover page with her signature.
Poltun-Sternberg Music Collection, Vienna. [124]
8.1 Postcard of 9 February 1892, Vienna, from Johannes Brahms to
Fritz Simrock. Courtesy of Michael Freyhan. [199]
9.1 Johann Nepomuk Oser and Joseph Joachim, c. 1895. Photograph
courtesy of Marie Kuhn-Oser. [224]
9.2 The Wittgenstein family tree focusing on Hermann Wittgenstein/
Franziska (Fanny) Figdor and their eleven children. Permission
granted by Ursula Prokop. [225]
9.3 Portrait of Johannes Brahms by Paul Wittgenstein Sr, drawn from
memory after the private performance of Brahms’s Clarinet
Quintet Op. 115 in Karl Wittgenstein’s music room, January 1892.
Chalk sketch. Courtesy of Marie Kuhn-Oser. [227]
9.4 The Music Room in the Wittgenstein home at 4 Alleegasse,
Vienna. Photograph courtesy of Marie Kuhn-Oser. [229]
9.5 List of dinner engagements during a two-week period written on
the back of a visiting card, spring 1896. Brahms-Institut, Lübeck,
Sig. Hofmann. [230]
9.6 A reception room in the Kaunitz Palais, Laxenburg. Photograph
courtesy of Marie Kuhn-Oser. [234]
10.1 Illustration by Paul Thumann for the 1865 edition of Elise Polko’s
Unsere Pilgerfahrt von der Kinderstube bis zum eignen Heerd: Lose
Blätter. [267]
10.2 Title page of Camilla Meier’s 1865 Lieder & Gesänge für
Frauenchor ohne Begleitung, drawings by Franziska Meier. vii
viii Illustrations
Reproduced with the permission of the Sophia Smith Collection,

Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. [269]
11.1 Title page of Liebeslieder Op. 52, first edition (1869). Brahms-
Institut, Lübeck. [284]
11.2 Title page of the Zigeunerlieder Op. 103, first edition (1888).
Brahms-Institut, Lübeck. [294]
14.1 Harry Bedford Lemere (1864–1944), Interior View of the Music
Room, black and white photograph. Holmstead, Liverpool,
UK; C English Heritage. NMR/The Bridgeman Art Library
International. [347]
14.2 Etienne Azambre (fl. 1883–1901), Chamber Music (1890), oil on
canvas. C Jersey Heritage Trust, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library
14.3 Johann Baptist Hoechle (1790–1835), Beethoven’s Study in the
Schwarzspanierhaus (drawing). Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, New York. [349]
14.4 The Apartment of Johannes Brahms in Vienna (nineteenth-century,
artist unknown), watercolour. Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, New York. [350]
14.5 Albert Einstein Making Music during a Chamber Music Hour
on board the liner ‘Deutschland’ on the way to America (1933),
black and white photograph. Photo credit: Art Resource, New
York. [357]
14.6 Gustave Doré (1832–83) Overcome, from Grotesques (1849).
Private collection. [362]
14.7 French School (nineteenth-century) The String Quartet,
lithograph. Private collection. The Bridgeman Art Library
14.8 Vladimir Egorovic Makovsky (1846–1920), Musical Evening
(1906), oil on canvas. Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery/The Bridgeman
Art Library International. [363]
14.9 Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), Murdoch Piano Quartet
(1918), black and white photograph. Rochester, NY, George
Eastman House, acc. no. 1979: 4073:0001. [364]
14.10 Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), Murdoch Piano Quartet
(1918), black and white photograph. Rochester, NY, George
Eastman House, acc. no. 1979: 4073:0002. [364]
Music examples
0.1 Brahms, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, bars 1–11. [page xxi]

0.2 Brahms, Waltz Op. 39 no. 15, bars 1–9. [xxii]
0.3 Brahms, Symphony No. 2, first movement, bars 82–90. Piano
reduction. [xxii]
0.4 Baumann, ‘Du moanst wohl, du glaubst wohl’, bars 1–4. [xxii]
3.1a Onslow, String Quintet in E major Op. 39, first movement,
bars 20–41. [51]
3.1b Onslow, String Quintet in E major Op. 39, first movement,
bars 62–98. [53]
3.2 Spohr, String Sextet in C major Op. 140, first movement,
bars 1–26. [56]
3.3 Spohr, String Sextet in C major Op. 140, third movement,
bars 80–103 and fourth movement, bars 1–16. [59]
3.4 Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, first movement,
bars 1–46. [64]
3.5 Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, first movement,
bars 61–109. [69]
3.6 Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, fourth movement,
bars 1–56. [74]
3.7a Typical Baroque folia theme. [78]
3.7b Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, second movement,
bars 1–17. [79]
3.8a Brahms, String Sextet in G major Op. 36, first movement,
bars 1–20. [83]
3.8b Brahms, String Sextet in G major Op. 36, first movement,
bars 52–98. [85]
3.9 Brahms, String Sextet in G major Op. 36, second movement,
bars 1–34. [90]
duet, first edition, Kate Thompson’s copy, pages 2–3: opening of
first movement, bars 1–38. Poltun-Sternberg Music Collection,
Vienna. [125]
ix
x Music examples
duet, first edition, Kate Thompson’s copy, p. 29: third movement,
bars 54–104, Primo, crossing-out of bars 67–82. Poltun-Sternberg
Music Collection, Vienna. [126]
5.3 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement,
bars 76–83, JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, pp. 21–2. [129]
5.4 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars
77–89, autograph full score, pp. 14–15. The Library of Congress,
Washington, DC, Gertrude Clarke Whittall Foundation
Collection, Music Division. [130]
bars 87–9, transcription of the original version for Violin II and
Viola. JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, p. 169. [131]
5.6 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars
77–89, autograph full score, pp. 14–15. The Library of Congress,
Washington, DC, Gertrude Clarke Whittall Foundation
Collection, Music Division. [132]
bars 80–3 and 87–9, JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, collage of
pages 22–4. [134]
5.8 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, two-piano
arrangement, first edition (Berlin: N. Simrock, 1884), first
movement, bars 77–91. Forschungsstelle der Johannes Brahms
Gesamtausgabe, Musikwissenschaftliches Institut der Christian-
Albrechts-Universität, Kiel. [135]
6.1 Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98, first movement.
Arranged by Brahms for four hands and two pianos, interim
introductory bars. [142]
6.2 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, third movement.
(a) Bars 03 –12: orchestral score, first edition, first issue. (b) Bars
03 –13 for four hands and one piano, JBG edition. [153]
6.3 Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98, first movement.
(a) Bars 04 –7: orchestral score, first edition, first issue. (b) Bars
04 –11 for four hands and two pianos, JBG edition. (c) Bars 04 –11
for four hands and one piano, JBG edition. [155]
7.1 Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Heinrich IV. Op. 7.
(a) Bars 143–54, melody. (b) Bars 473–81, melody. [161]
7.2 Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, autograph
manuscript. A-Wgm Musikautographe Joseph Joachim 1.
(a) Bars 1–4. (b) Bars 37–41. [162]
Music examples xi
7.3 Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, bars 166–8,

‘fate motive’. [164]
7.4a Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, autograph
manuscript, bars 325–35. A-Wgm Musikautographe Joseph
Joachim 1. [172]
7.4b Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4. Arrangement
by Brahms for piano duet, bars 327–35, JBG, Arrangements
fremder Werke I, p. 24. [173]
7.5 Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4. Arrangement
by Brahms for piano duet, A-Wgm Nachlass Johannes Brahms
A145b. (a) Bars 482–5, first version in manuscript copy.
(b) Bars 482–5, incorporating the composer’s revisions in
manuscript copy. [174]
7.6 Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Heinrich IV. Op. 7.
Arrangement by Brahms for two pianos, bars 101–6, JBG,
Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. 85. [175]
8.1 Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24.
Arrangement by Kirchner for four-hand piano (1878),
Variation VII, bars 1–4. [181]
8.2 Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24,
Variation VII, bars 1–4. [182]
8.3 Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24.
Arrangement by Kirchner for four-hand piano (1878),
Variation XXV, bars 1–4. [182]
8.4 Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24,
Variation XXV, bars 1–4. [183]
8.5 Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 13. Arrangement by
Kirchner for solo piano (1881), bars 1–8. [184]
8.6 Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 13, bars 1–8. [185]
8.7 Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 13, bars
9–16. [186]
8.9 Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 14, bars 1–8. [187]
8.10 Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52a no. 14, bars 1–8. [187]
8.12 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90. Arrangement by
Keller for four-hand piano (1884), fourth movement,
bars 172–5. [192]
xii Music examples

Keller for two pianos and eight hands (1884), fourth movement,
bars 172–5. [192]
Brahms for two pianos and four hands (1884), fourth movement,
bars 172–5. [193]
8.15 Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98. Arrangement by
Brahms for two pianos and four hands (1886), first movement,
bars 309–16. [193]
8.16 Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98. Arrangement by
Keller for two pianos and eight hands (1886), first movement,
bars 309–16. [194]
8.17 Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor Op. 38. Arrangement
by Keller for four-hand piano (1875), second movement,
bars 1–5. [195]
8.18 Brahms, Symphony No. 2 in D major Op. 73. Arrangement by
Keller for two pianos and four hands (1890/1?), first movement,
bars 52–62. [197]
8.19 Brahms, Clarinet Quintet Op. 115. Arrangement by Klengel for
violin and piano (1892), first movement, bars 1–7. [200]
8.20 Brahms, Clarinet Quintet Op. 115. Arrangement by Klengel for
clarinet and piano (1893), first movement, bars 1–7. [201]
8.21 Brahms, String Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1.
Arrangement by Kirchner for two-hand piano (undated
autograph), second movement, bars 22–5. Brahms-Institut,
Lübeck. [203]
Arrangement by Klengel for two-hand piano (1896), second
movement, bars 22–5. [203]
8.23 Brahms, String Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1, second
movement, bars 22–5. [204]
Arrangement by Kirchner for two-hand piano (undated
autograph), second movement, bar 52. Brahms-Institut,
Lübeck. [204]
10.1a Brahms, ‘Die Trauernde’ Op. 7 no. 5. [260]
10.1b Brahms, ‘Heimkehr’ Op. 7 no. 6, bars 11–21. [261]
10.2 Franz, ‘Die Trauernde’ Op. 17 no. 4, bars 1–8. [264]
12.1 Neefe, ‘Was frag’ ich viel nach Geld und Gut’. [306]
12.2 Brahms, ‘Vor dem Fenster’ Op. 14 no. 1, bars 1–6. [306]
Music examples xiii
12.3 Curschmann, ‘Aus der schönen Magelone: Ruhe, Süßliebchen’,

bars 1–19. [320]
12.4 Brahms, ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ Op. 33 no. 9, bars 5–10. [321]
12.5 Brahms, ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’, bars 93–100. [321]
13.1 Reinecke, Cello Sonata No. 3 Op. 238, first movement: Adagio –
Allegro moderato, bars 34–49. [328]
13.2 Reinecke, Cello Sonata No. 3, Op. 238, first movement: Adagio –
Allegro moderato, bars 88–96. [329]
13.3 Reinhard, ‘Erinnerung’ Op. 74 no. 11. [330]
13.4 Niemann, ‘Brahms: Geburtshaus’ Op. 107 no. 7,
bars 1–18. [331]
13.5 Heubner, ‘Juli’ Op. 12 no. 3. [337]
13.6 Klauwell, ‘Im Volkston’, published in Blätter für Haus- und
Kirchenmusik 1 (1897). [340]
13.7 Kirchner, Reflexe Op. 76 No. 1, bars 1–16. [343]
13.8 Brahms, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, arranged by Keller.
(a) Bars 1–12. (b) Bars 31–6. [344]
Contributors
styra avins, cellist and musicologist, is past Adjunct Professor of Music

History at Drew University. Born and educated in New York City, she
holds a BA in Social Studies from the City University of New York. She
also studied at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music.
Her research centres on Johannes Brahms, his music and his world, with
particular interest in correspondence and other primary documents. Major
publications include Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters (Oxford University
Press, 1997), and chapters contributed to Performing Brahms: Early Evidence
of Performing Style (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Brahms and His
World (Princeton University Press, 2009). She is the author of the entry on
Brahms in The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford University Press, 2002),
and numerous articles in Brahms-Studien, 19th-Century Music and others.
She has performed with the Seoul Symphony Orchestra in Korea, the New
York City Opera Orchestra and the American Symphony Orchestra as well
as in several chamber groups. She currently serves on the Board of Directors
of the American Brahms Society.
markus b öggemann is Professor for Historical Musicology at the Uni-

versität Kassel, Germany. His main research interests focus on aspects of
modernism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, compositional
theory and practice and contemporary music. He is author of Gesichte und
Geschichte: Arnold Schönbergs musikalischer Expressionismus zwischen avant-
gardistischer Kunstprogrammatik und Historismusproblem (Vienna: Lafite,
2007), a study of Arnold Schoenberg and turn-of-the-century historicism,
and of numerous articles about the composers of the Second Viennese
School and their contemporaries.
katrin eich, born in Germany in 1971, has been a member of the edi-
torial board of the Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe/New Complete Edi-
tion of the Works of Johannes Brahms (Musikwissenschaftliches Institut,
Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel) since 2004. She studied piano at the
College of Music and University of Rostock, followed by studies in musicol-
ogy, German and French at Kiel. During that time she worked as a piano
xiv
Contributors xv
teacher. In 2001 she gained her doctorate with her dissertation Die Kam-
mermusik von César Franck (Kassel, 2002). After this, she worked at the
Max-Reger-Institut/Elsa-Reger-Stiftung in Karlsruhe as a member of the
Reger-Werkverzeichnis/Reger-Briefeverzeichnis project. Her scholarly focus
includes music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 2010
she and her colleagues received the Brahms award from the Brahms Society
Schleswig-Holstein for their editorial work on Johannes Brahms.
robert whitehouse eshbach is Associate Professor of Music at the

University of New Hampshire, where he teaches violin and music history.
He has performed extensively as a violinist and conductor throughout the
United States and in Europe. His scholarly work has focused on the biog-
raphy and artistry of Joseph Joachim, as well as others in Joachim’s circle,
including Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Carl Reinecke, Ede Reményi
and Wilma Norman-Neruda, Lady Hallé. He has recently given papers in
New York, Meiningen, Leipzig, London, Southampton and Cardiff, and
articles have appeared in The Musical Quarterly and Die Tonkunst. Eshbach
maintains a website dedicated to his Joachim research: www.JosephJoachim
.com.
valerie woodring goertzen is Associate Professor of Music History at

Loyola University, New Orleans and holds the Edward J. Kvet Professorship
of Music and Fine Arts. Her edited volume for the New Complete Edition of
the Works of Johannes Brahms containing his arrangements for four-hand
piano and two pianos of works of other composers was published in 2012.
She is working now on a companion volume of arrangements for piano solo.
Goertzen is the author of articles and essays on Brahms’s arrangements,
improvisation by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pianists, and women
composers, and has edited the Preludes and Fugues of Clara Schumann.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Brahms Society
and is co-editor, with William P. Horne, of the Society’s Newsletter. She also
is the President of the Southern Chapter of the American Musicological
Society.
katy hamilton holds the post of Junior Research Fellow in Performance
History at the Royal College of Music, specialising in the vocal music
of Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries. Her research interests also
include the histories and materials of concert programming, and she has
written on the early years of the Edinburgh Festival. She is the author of
William Hurlstone: A Catalogue of Works and was assistant to pianist Graham
Johnson for his three-volume encyclopaedia Franz Schubert. The Complete
xvi Contributors
Songs (Yale University Press, 2014). She is a contributor of several prefaces

to the Repertoire Explorer series issued by Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich,
Munich. In addition, she is an active chamber accompanist and repetiteur,
having worked with instrumentalists, singers and choirs in England, Ire-
land, Spain and Germany. From 2008 to 2013 she was the Course Organiser
and Music Director of ISSMUS, a specialist summer school for singers,
composers, conductors and pianists.
richard leppert is Regents Professor in the Department of Cultural

Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Min-
neapolis. His research and writing are concentrated on Western European
and American cultural history from the seventeenth century to the present.
The most recent of his books are Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music
in Cinema, co-edited with Daniel Goldmark and Lawrence Kramer (Univer-
sity of California Press, 2007), and Sound Judgment (Ashgate, 2007). Much
of his recent work addresses the relationship between human beings and
nature, exploring the issue in social history, literature, visual culture, film
and music. He also writes on the musical and aesthetic work of Theodor W.
Adorno.
natasha loges is Assistant Head of Programmes at the Royal College of

Music, London, where she teaches on Brahms, the history of opera and the
German lied. Her research interests include lesser-known nineteenth- and
twentieth-century German song, German lyric poetry, the history of vocal
pedagogy, nineteenth-century singers associated with Brahms, private and
public practices of music-making in the nineteenth century and current
concert practices around song. Natasha has published various articles on
Brahms’s songs in journals such as Music and Letters and Nineteenth-Century
Music Review. Supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council
award, she is currently completing a monograph called Brahms and His
Poets. Natasha is also active as a song accompanist and has broadcast live
on BBC Radio 3. As a speaker, she has a long-standing association with the
Oxford Lieder Festival, the UK’s largest festival of art song.
robert pascall, born in Colwyn Bay in 1944, studied at Oxford with John
Caldwell, Egon Wellesz and Sir Jack Westrup. He was Professor and Head of
Music at the universities of Nottingham 1988–98 and Bangor 1998–2005. He
is Deputy Chair of the New Complete Edition of the Works of Johannes Brahms,
for which he has edited the symphonies. He has written on composers from
Bach to Franz Schmidt and Schoenberg, with a particular focus on the music
of Brahms; his most recent book is Brahms Beyond Mastery: His Sarabande
Contributors xvii
and Gavotte and its Recompositions (Ashgate, 2013). He served two terms as
President of the Society for Music Analysis, is Corresponding Director of
the American Brahms Society, Honorary Professor of Music Philology at the
University of Cambridge and an Honorary Member of the Royal Musical
Association. He is a conductor and organist.
helen paskins studied at Cambridge University and the Royal College of
Music. She is a freelance clarinet player, teacher and writer. As a performer
she has toured internationally with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields,
the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra and many others. She is also a keen chamber musician and has
performed with the pianists Ivana Gavric and Michael Freyhan, as well
as with larger ensembles such as the London Concorde Ensemble and the
Brodowski String Quartet. Helen Paskins was a Lecturer in Clarinet at the
University of Reading from 2006 to 2013, teaching performance studies and
instrumental pedagogy. She has published in Music Teacher Magazine.
heather platt is Professor of Music History at Ball State University,

Indiana. She is the author of Johannes Brahms: A Research and Informa-
tion Guide (Routledge, 2011) and, with Peter H. Smith, co-edited Expressive
Intersections in Brahms: Essays in Analysis and Meaning (Indiana University
Press, 2012). Her research on Brahms’s lieder embraces the works’ struc-
tural elements and their historical context and reception. Her articles on
these topics have appeared in Brahms Studies, The Journal of Musicology, The
Cambridge Companion to the Lied, the International Review of Aesthetics and
Sociology of Music, Intégral and Indiana Theory Review. She has also pub-
lished review-essays concerning theoretical approaches to Brahms’s music
in Nineteenth-Century Music Review and the Journal of Music Theory. She is
a member of the Board of Directors of the American Brahms Society, and
served as the Society’s President from 2007 to 2011.
michael struck, born in Hanover, Germany, in 1952, is a member of

the editorial board of the Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe/New Complete
Edition of the Works of Johannes Brahms (Musikwissenschaftliches Institut,
Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel), which he helped to establish, includ-
ing its editorial conception. After studies in Hamburg in music pedagogy and
musicology, he gained his doctorate degree with his dissertation Die umstrit-
tenen späten Instrumentalwerke Schumanns (Hamburg, 1984). His many
publications concern music from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, from
Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms to
the émigré composer Berthold Goldschmidt, on whose music he is one of the
xviii Contributors
leading specialists. His editorial work is focused on the Brahms Complete

Edition (he is editor/co-editor of the Double Concerto, the Piano Quintet,
Symphony No. 2 and various other works). He is also active as a music critic
and pianist. In 2009, he was awarded the Schumann Prize of the city of
Zwickau; in 2010, together with his colleagues at the New Brahms Edition,
he received the Brahms award from the Brahms Society Schleswig-Holstein.
marie sumner lott is Assistant Professor of Music History at Geor-

gia State University, Georgia. Her research investigates chamber music in
the nineteenth century, illuminating the relationships between contem-
porary innovations in the publication, performance and composition of
music from Schubert to Brahms. Marie’s interests also include relationships
between gender or class and musical participation, the intersection of paint-
ing and other arts with music, and Romantic medievalism during the long
nineteenth century. She has published articles and reviews in the Journal of
the Royal Musical Association, the Journal of Musicological Research, Ad Par-
nassum and MLA Notes. Her 2012 article on Brahms’s Op. 51 string quartets,
published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, won the Deems
Taylor Award for outstanding writing about concert music given annually
by the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers. Her book
Producing and Consuming String Chamber Music in the Nineteenth Century
is forthcoming from University of Illinois Press.
Foreword: A different Brahms? New perspectives
on his output
michael musgrave
It is very appropriate that the presentation of a fresh perspective on Brahms’s

output should emerge from an event held at the Royal College of Music,1
for few English-speaking institutions can claim as direct a connection to
the composer and his world. The College’s founder-director George Grove
(1820–1900) was personally acquainted with Brahms from the composer’s
relatively early days, visiting him in Vienna in the 1860s and again later in
the 1880s, and kept Brahms informed about the performances of his music
in Britain.2 Of the younger generation Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–
1924), the first professor of composition at the College, also knew Brahms
and passed his knowledge to a yet younger generation of teachers, some of
whom lived to teach today’s musical scholars, the present writer included.3
The Brahms they admired was essentially the Brahms of the great orches-
tral, instrumental and choral works. Though aware of the much wider
range of his output, they took the numerous smaller works as a given in
an overall mastery that was judged first in the public sphere of large-scale
concert music. Grove had seen both the growth of public concert life from
its diverse origins before mid-century, and the growing study of the instru-
mental repertory that enabled Brahms’s major works to assume such a great
status by the later century. And this status was sharpened and made political
by its perceived counterbalance to the radical musical developments of Liszt
and his school in the field of programme music, and of Wagner in musical
drama, trends which, by comparison, received little support from Grove,
Stanford and their circle. For them, Brahms was the natural successor of
Beethoven as the ruling spirit of the orchestral and especially symphonic
tradition.
But if the perspective from which Grove viewed Brahms seems clear,
how fully does this represent Brahms’s own outlook? On the face of it
the answer is obvious: the alleged Beethoven succession in Brahms’s First
1 Brahms in the Home, conference held at the Royal College of Music, 4–6 November 2011.
2 C. L. Graves, The Life and Letters of Sir George Grove, C. B. (London: Macmillan, 1903), pp. 148,
259–60.
3 Such as Stanford’s pupil Herbert Howells (1892–1983).
xix
xx michael musgrave
Symphony has become a compass point in symphonic history, through the

interpretation of various quotes by the composer, as most famously to the
conductor Hermann Levi that ‘You just don’t know what it’s like for one of
us always to hear such a giant marching behind one.’4
Yet, the instrumental tradition was only one aspect of Brahms’s output
and commitment. Of 122 published opuses there are only thirteen orchestral
works, of which only four are symphonies: together with four concertos, two
serenades, two overtures and one set of orchestral variations, these constitute
a tiny part numerically. Even if one includes the chamber works (which were
a much greater preoccupation of the composer) and collections of piano
works with the sonatas and variation sets as larger-scale works, this only
makes twenty-four more chamber opuses (seven works for strings alone;
sixteen with piano, and clarinet quintet with strings); and fifteen piano
opuses and one for organ, Op. posth. 122. Everything else is some kind of
vocal and choral work: well over half. Most are domestic, appropriate for
performance in the home (solo songs with piano, vocal duets and quartets)
or in some local social or religious setting, some pieces requiring organ
instead of piano support. And if the list is extended to works published
without opus number, or posthumously, the bias is even more striking,
with around a hundred solo folk-song settings, and many unaccompanied
choral settings. And to these can be added the numerous arrangements for
four hands of his chamber and orchestral works by the composer himself.
Of course, it can be argued that such a pattern is common to all composers
who wrote for the consumer market rather than, for example, the theatre or
for their own virtuoso professional use. Domestic works must be easier to
perform and market, and are often composed from economic need, and thus
characterised less by originality than by standardised forms of expression –
the template generic dance movements, hunting choruses or barcarolles set
for voices or keyboard that fill the catalogues of the nineteenth century. But
Brahms’s works stand out here because he attached as much importance to
the small as to the large, both as a composer and as a teacher. The smaller
works were integral to his entire achievement and he gave them as much
attention, often commenting to the effect that his small works, even folk-
song arrangements, had given him particular pleasure, and of the necessity
of mastering basic tasks thoroughly before extended ones.
But Brahms’s commitment was not limited to creative discipline for its
own sake: implicit in these values was the sense of potential – that from
small ideas great structures could grow. The interconnection of the small
4 Author’s translation. Kalbeck I, p. 165.

Foreword xxi
Example 0.1. Brahms, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, bars 1–11.
and large is especially apparent in Brahms’s output and can be illustrated by

numerous examples. It is appropriate that one of the clearest of these shows
the relationship of perhaps Brahms’s most famous piece with the general
public – the ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4 for solo voice and piano (composed
1868) – to one of his largest and most expansive works, the Symphony in D
major Op. 73 (completed 1877).
The song represents one of the simplest structures to be found in Brahms:
a four-bar idea enclosing statement and response, repeated four times, the
third statement slightly developmental, and varied, like the second, to make
the tonic cadence (Example 0.1).
In the Waltz Op. 39 no. 15 a very similar idea in the same metre, 34 ,
generates a binary dance structure in which an eight-bar balancing first
section is repeated, and the second section extended by a six-bar digres-
sion/development before a reprise of the opening is stated twice, the second
making the cadence (Example 0.2).
In the Symphony, the second theme of the first movement is clearly a
minor version of the ‘Wiegenlied’ melody, stated in two complementary
four-bar ideas, but then developed, on the basis of the cadential motive,
into a seamless passage of twelve bars that completely transcends the for-
mality of the second half of the waltz, to make a total of twenty bars
(Example 0.3). Furthermore, the theme then serves in varied form in the
xxii michael musgrave
Example 0.2. Brahms, Waltz Op. 39 no. 15, bars 1–9.
Example 0.3. Brahms, Symphony No. 2, first movement, bars 82–90. Piano reduction,
transposed to E minor for comparison.
Example 0.4. Baumann, ‘Du moanst wohl, du glaubst wohl’, bars 1–4.
rest of the exposition, appearing from bar 155 in the major version that
discloses its origin.
But striking as these stylistic sources for the symphonic theme are, the
origin may even be taken a stage further back. For it has been reliably
pointed out that not only was the ‘Wiegenlied’ itself dedicated to a specific
singer whom Brahms held in cherished memory and friendship, but it also
includes in its piano accompaniment the outline of a popular Viennese
waltz song that she often sang. Thus the possible stimulus to Brahms’s own
melody, or at least a borrowed idea, was part of its early conception.5
5 The singer was Bertha Porubsky, later Bertha Faber (1841–1910). The evidence of the
connection to Alexander Baumann’s song beginning ‘Du moanst wohl, du glaubst wohl’ is
provided by Hermann Deiters, quoted by M. Friedlaender, Brahms’ Lieder: An Introduction to
Foreword xxiii
Examples such as these do not merely illustrate craft, however. They

embody larger values intimately connected with the world in which the
works were conceived and performed. Brahms’s domestic music was essen-
tially for performance by amateurs. The role of the amateur was central
to the development of the creative tradition of which Brahms was a part.
Amateurs provided an informed receiving audience for creations intended
for their fuller appreciation, and many were of high technical competence:
even Brahms’s complex chamber music would involve amateur performers.
Amateur performance meant being involved with the technical essence of
the work – its construction as much as its aesthetic effect – the actual art
involved. Such performance developed an instinct for every aspect of musi-
cal meaning, and the typical domestic or social music-making, for example,
as singer, or collaborative or duo pianist, was the basis of musical education
and the means of building musical culture. For if one plays and sings, one
listens differently and more intently, even if the technical standard attained
is not at professional level.
The bifurcation of the function of the amateur and professional on the
grounds of performance standard rather than musical understanding – and
the consequent devaluation and redefinition of the term ‘amateur’ (and
with it the increasing alienation from and ignorance of the basic theoretical
concepts that lay behind music as performed) – is one of the most defining
features of modern musical history. Though the acceleration of professional
executant skills was already well under way in Brahms’s time, the change
was settled by the advent of recordings in the early twentieth century. From
this point the music lover no longer needed to be an executant musician of
any kind in order to access and become deeply familiar with the repertory,
though now only as a vicarious experience.
The culture that lay behind Brahms’s music is now only a memory. But
one can come to a much greater sensitivity towards his music through a
heightened awareness of its full range and of how different genres interact.
And in this, the remarkable breadth of the recorded repertory can play
an essential role in the dissemination of music, little of which is widely
performed or known today. For of all the composers of his era, none – as
the chapters which follow demonstrate – is more rewarding of such study
than Brahms.
the Songs for One and Two Voices, trans. C. L. Leese (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p.
79. The verbal text is given at greater length and, as varied in the bracketed text of Example 0.4,
in Kalbeck I, p. 367.
Acknowledgements
The editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Royal College of

Music, London, for hosting the conference Brahms in the Home (4–6 Novem-
ber 2011), from which the idea for this volume emerged. Thanks are also
due to the Royal Musical Association and the Music & Letters Trust for
financial support. The staff of the Forschungsstelle der Johannes Brahms
Gesamtausgabe graciously offered much expertise as well as access to their
superb library, and the staff of the British Library and the Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin: Preußischer Kulturbesitz were invaluable in dealing with requests
for material.
Many individuals have shown great generosity in supplying illustrations
and permissions. For their kind permission to reproduce images, we wish
to thank Robert Eshbach (Figure 2.3), Michael Freyhan (Figure 8.1), Marie
Kuhn-Oser (Figures 9.1, 9.3, 9.4, 9.7 and 9.8), and Ursula Prokop (Figure
9.2). The editors also gratefully acknowledge the following organisations for
permission to reproduce images: the Forschungsstelle der Johannes Brahms
Gesamtausgabe, Musikwissenschaftliches Institut der Christian-Albrechts-
Universität, Kiel (Example 5.8); the Library of the Gesellschaft der Musik-
freunde (cover illustration and Examples 7.2a, 7.2b, 7.4a, 7.5a and 7.5b); the
Brahms-Institut Lübeck (Examples 8.21, 8.24, Figures 9.5, 11.1 and 11.2);
the Poltun-Sternberg Music Collection, Vienna (Figure 5.1, Examples 5.1
and 5.2); the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College MA (Figure 10.2);
Art Resource (Figures 2.2, 14.3, 14.4 and 14.5); the Bridgeman Art Library
(Figures 14.1, 14.2 and 14.8); and George Eastman House (Figures 14.9 and
14.10). The editors particularly wish to thank Johannes Brahms Gesamtaus-
gabe and Dr Wolf-Dieter Seiffert of G. Henle Verlag for generous permission
to reproduce Examples 5.3, 5.5, 5.7, 6.2b, 6.3b, 6.3c, 7.1a, 7.1b, 7.4b and 7.6.
We also thank Eric Wilson for his expert setting of music examples.
Thanks are due to John Mowitt, Jochen Schulte-Sasse and Keya Ganguly,
editors of the 2005 issue of Cultural Critique; as well as University of Cal-
ifornia Press, publishers of Theodor W. Adorno: Essays in Music, in which
material in Chapter 14 was previously published.
Finally, the editors are very grateful to Fleur Jones and Vicki Cooper of
Cambridge University Press for their unstinting support in the process of
xxiv bringing this volume to completion.
Abbreviations
Briefe I Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. I: Johannes Brahms im

Briefwechsel mit Heinrich und Elisabeth von Herzogenberg,
ed. M. Kalbeck (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft,
1906, repr. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1974)
Briefe III Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. III: Johannes Brahms im
Briefwechsel mit Karl Reinthaler, Max Bruch, Hermann
Deiters, Friedrich Heimsoeth, Karl Reinecke, Ernst Rudorff,
Bernhard und Luise Scholz, ed. W. Altmann (Berlin:
Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1907, repr. Tutzing: Hans
Schneider, 1974)
Briefe V and VI Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vols. V and VI: Johannes
Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, ed. A. Moser
(Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908, repr.
Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1974)
Briefe IX and X Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vols. IX and X: Johannes
Brahms: Briefe an P. J. Simrock und Fritz Simrock, ed.
M. Kalbeck (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1917,
repr. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1974)
Briefe XI and XII Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vols. XI and XII: Johannes
Brahms: Briefe an Fritz Simrock, ed. M. Kalbeck (Berlin:
Schneider, 1974)
Briefe XIV Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. XIV: Johannes Brahms
im Briefwechsel mit Breitkopf & Härtel, Bart[h]olf Senff, J.
Rieter-Biedermann, C. F. Peters. E. W. Fritzsch und Robert
Lienau, ed. W. Altmann (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-
Gesellschaft, 1920, repr. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1974)
Briefe XVI Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. XVI: Johannes Brahms
im Briefwechsel mit Spitta und Dessoff, ed. C. Krebs (Berlin:
Schneider, 1974)
Briefe XVII Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. XVI: Johannes Brahms
im Briefwechsel mit Herzog Georg II. von Sachsen-
Meiningen und Helene Freifrau von Heldburg,
xxv
xxvi Abbreviations
ed. H. Müller and R. Hofmann (Tutzing: Hans Schneider,

1991)
Briefe XVIII Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. XVIII: Johannes Brahms
im Briefwechsel mit Julius Stockhausen, ed. O. Biba, K.
Hofmann and R. Hofmann (Tutzing: Hans Schneider,
1993)
Briefe XIX Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. XIX: Johannes Brahms
im Briefwechsel mit Ernst Frank, ed. R. Münster (Tutzing:
Hans Schneider, 1995)
Kalbeck I–IV M. Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 2nd–4th edn, 4 vols.
(Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1912–21, repr.
Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976)
Schumann-Brahms B. Litzmann (ed.), Clara Schumann-Johannes Brahms:
Briefe I and II Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf
& Härtel, 1927)
Werkverzeichnis M. McCorkle, Johannes Brahms: Thematisch-
Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Munich: G. Henle
Verlag, 1984)
Abbreviations for volumes of the Johannes Brahms

Gesamtausgabe / New Complete Edition of the Works of
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe (JBG): until 2011, ed. Johannes Brahms Gesamt-
ausgabe e. V., Editionsleitung Kiel, in cooperation with Gesellschaft der Musik-
freunde, Vienna; thereafter ed. the Musikwissenschaftliche Institut of the
Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel in cooperation with the Johannes Brahms
Gesamtausgabe e. V. and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna.
JBG, 3. Symphonie Symphonie Nr. 3 F-Dur opus 90 (Series I, vol. 3), ed.
R. Pascall (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2005)
JBG, 4. Symphonie Symphonie Nr. 4 e-Moll opus 98 (Series I, vol. 4), ed. R.
Pascall (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2011)
JBG, Arrangements Symphonie Nr. 1 c-Moll opus 68, Symphonie Nr. 2
1./2. Symphonie D-Dur opus 73, Arrangements für ein Klavier zu vier
Händen (Series IA, vol. 1), ed. R. Pascall (Munich:
G. Henle Verlag, 2008)
JBG, Arrangements Symphonie Nr. 3 F-Dur opus 90, Arrangements
3. Symphonie für ein und zwei Klaviere zu vier Händen (Series IA, vol. 2),
ed. R. Pascall (Munich: G. Henle Verlag,
2013)
Abbreviations xxvii
JBG, Arrangements Symphonie Nr. 4 e-Moll opus 98, Arrangements für

4. Symphonie ein und zwei Klaviere zu vier Händen (Series IA, vol. 3), ed.
R. Pascall (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2012)
JBG, Arrangements Serenaden Nr. 1 D-Dur opus 11, Nr. 2 A-Dur
Serenaden und opus 16, Akademische Festouvertüre c-Moll opus 80,
Ouvertüren Tragische Ouvertüre d-Moll opus 81, Arrangements für ein
Klavier zu vier Händen (Series IA, vol. 4), ed.
M. Musgrave (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2012)
JBG, Klavierstücke Klavierstücke (Series III, vol. 6), ed. K. Eich (Munich: G.
Henle Verlag 2011)
JBG, Klavierwerke Werke für Klavier zu zwei Händen ohne
ohne Opuszahl Opuszahl (Series III, vol. 7), ed. C. Cai (Munich: G. Henle
Verlag, 2007)
JBG, Arrangements Arrangements von Werken
fremder Werke I anderer Komponisten für ein Klavier oder zwei Klaviere zu
vier Händen (Series IX, vol. 1), ed. V. W. Goertzen
(Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2012)
Library sigla
A-Wgm Vienna, Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde

A-Wn Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
D-LÜbi Lübeck, Brahms-Institut
D-Zsch Zwickau, Robert-Schumann-Haus
GB-Lcm London, Royal College of Music, Library
US-NYp New York, Public Library at Lincoln Center, Music Division
1 Brahms in the home: An introduction
katy hamilton and natasha loges
And thus, in a small circle of friends, he played most beautifully and with
an intimacy that completely overwhelmed us.1
Any exploration of domestic music-making is confronted with heavy over-

laps between areas which, if they are considered at all, are usually considered
quite separately. This sort of music-making is necessarily muddied by con-
siderations of venue, performer, performing ensemble and audience, as well
as by the actual music performed and the existence of multiple instantia-
tions. The biggest challenge is the ubiquity – yet impermanence – of both
the activity and its materials. The details of private music-making within
Brahms’s circle can be partially reconstructed, but it is much harder to trace
the extent of this activity beyond the orbit of a known musical personal-
ity or a canonical work. Locating such traces involves drawing a different
kind of information from sources which are not necessarily event-specific,
and often concern themselves with broader categories and practices. Thus,
for example, publishers’ catalogues, private recollections and correspon-
dence by figures within Brahms’s wider circle of friends become central to
reconstructing these musical practices.
The making of Hausmusik sits on the cusp of a significant socio-economic
change, namely the emergence of a moneyed middle class, which triggered
a shift in trade practices including piano manufacture, music publishing
and the growth in musical literacy. As is well known, music publishing
burgeoned during the nineteenth century.2 By the 1830s, the Leipzig-based
music publisher Carl August Klemm already had over 14,000 items in his
catalogue; by 1858 this had increased to 57,000, the vast majority of which
was music specifically aimed at the amateur market, namely Hausmusik.3 In
1 Letter of 1883 from Laura von Beckerath to Agathe Broadwood. K. Stephenson (ed.), Johannes
Brahms und die Familie Beckerath (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 1979), p. 22. All translations in
this chapter are the authors’ own.
2 See, for example, K. van Orden (ed.), Music and the Cultures of Print (New York and London:
Garland Publishing, 2000) and I. Lawford-Hinrichsen, Music Publishing and Patronage. C. F.
Peters: 1800 to the Holocaust (Kenton: Edition Press, 2000).
3 These figures are drawn from W. Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik: Privates Musizieren im
gesellschaftlichen Wandel zwischen 1600 und 1900 (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig,
1982), p. 35. 1
2 katy hamilton and natasha loges
1833 Gottfried Wilhelm Fink made the essential point that the production
of ‘high’ music depended upon the sales of ‘low’ music:
If it were not for the players of dances and polonaises, they could certainly not print
many a concerto, oratorio and the like. Who, then, buys the most? The musician
or the amateur? And thus they promote Art, which is only itself available because
of the twiddlings of amateurs. We must not be too grand, faithful friends! I believe
that we need one another.4
The catalogue of Brahms’s compositions and their arrangements produced

by the publisher Rieter-Biedermann in 1898 lists copious arrangements
by the composer Theodor Kirchner and others, testifying to the enduring
market for such material for private performance.5 Thus a key aspect of
Hausmusik was the flexibility of its repertoire, with multiple instantiations
of the same piece ensuring that it would be playable in the broadest possible
range of social and musical contexts.6 Some of these instances are downright
staggering; according to the composer Robert von Hornstein, the philoso-
pher Arthur Schopenhauer – who was a passionate Rossini fan – owned the
entire operas of Rossini arranged for solo flute!7
Descriptions of works, performers and the social nature of such private
performances can be found in the recollections of Richard Fellinger, Bern-
hard Scholz, Ottilie Ebner and many others.8 These recollections attest to the
extensive musical activities that took place in the homes of Brahms’s friends.
Among the better documented are his friendships with notable families in
Vienna, Leipzig and other cities where he worked, including the Schumanns,
Herzogenbergs, Billroths, Dietrichs, Fabers and Wittgensteins, who often
combined generous patronage with musical proficiency. These activities
embraced both professionals and amateur musicians, and, correspondingly,
repertoire ranging from the simplest to the most technically complex.
Whilst memoirs provide extensive evidence of musical performance, the
challenge of interpreting such sources lies partly in defining what consti-
tutes private music-making. The language surrounding such events is often
4 G. W. Fink, ‘Ueber Dilettantismus der Teutschen in der Musik’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
35 (January 1833), col. 10. With thanks to Uri Liebrecht for his assistance with this translation.
5 [n.a.], Verzeichnis der Kompositionen von Johannes Brahms und ihrer Bearbeitungen aus dem
Verlage von J. Rieter-Biedermann in Leipzig (Leipzig: Rieter-Biedermann, 1898).
6 For a brief discussion of this, see T. Kneif, ‘Das triviale Bewußtsein in der Musik’ in C. Dahlhaus
(ed.), Studien zur Trivialmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1967), p. 30.
7 See R. von Hornstein, Memoiren (Munich: Süddeutsche Monatshefte, 1908), p. 110.
8 See R. Fellinger, Klänge um Brahms: Erinnerungen von Richard Fellinger. Neuausgabe mit
Momentaufnahmen von Maria Fellinger, ed. I. Fellinger (Mürzzuschlag: Österreichische
Johannes Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1997); B. Scholz, Verklungene Weisen (Mainz: J. Scholz, 1911);
and O. von Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner und ihr Kreis (Vienna: Franz Bondy, 1933).
Brahms in the home 3
ambiguous, drawing on terms now more usually associated with public

or professional music-making. In a description of a Schubertiad, arguably
the most important model for subsequent private music-making later in
the century, it is noticeable that the language used by Josef von Spaun is
the vocabulary of public performance (specifically referencing a ‘concert’
taking place within an ‘auditorium’):
A small receptive group was invited, and then the soulful songs began, which moved
everyone so much, that after the rendition of a few heartrending songs, the entire
feminine part of the auditorium, led by my mother and sister, dissolved into tears,
and the concert ended prematurely amidst loud sobbing.9
Furthermore, the differentiation between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ was

seldom clear-cut – an ambiguity which pertained even to large ensembles
like the orchestral society of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna:
The orchestral society (Orchesterverein) of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was

founded in 1859. It was composed exclusively of non-professional musicians, whilst
the orchestra for the Society concerts (Gesellschaftskonzerte) was made up partially
of such non-professionals, professors from the conservatory, and other professional
musicians.10
Despite the difficulties in tracing its details, the importance of encountering

and making music in the home can hardly be overestimated; after all, it is
in the home that all musicians are first exposed to music. The alto Amalie
Schneeweiss, later Joachim (1839–99), came from a music-loving family; her
father was a government official who played the violin in a string quartet;
her mother sang, her sister played piano, her brother cello.11 Although
her future husband Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) came from a relatively
unmusical household, according to his biographer and colleague Andreas
Moser it was the singing of his second-oldest sister Regina at home that
inspired him to play the violin.12 Brahms’s own father played a range of
instruments, principally the double-bass; Clara Schumann’s father was the
renowned piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck. Even when such figures had
gained professional renown, they often continued to place great value on
private music-making. Thus, Joachim wrote to Amalie Joachim in 1867: ‘I
9 Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik, p. 33.

10 O. Biba, Johannes Brahms in Wien, Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 19 April–
30 June 1983 (Vienna: Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 1983), p. 38.
11 B. Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph Joachim: Biographie und
Interpretationsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), p. 148.
12 See A. Moser, Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, revised edn, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag der Deutschen
Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908–10), p. 5.
unwillingly relinquish the time with you and the children, and the quartets
and Scottish songs [by Beethoven] at home.’13 Clara Schumann wrote to
her cousin Elisabeth Werner on 10 April 1861 from Düsseldorf that she had
met the Kufferath family in Brussels, and that the hours of music-making
that she had made with Ferdinand Kufferath ‘were the most beautiful hours
of her entire trip’.14
Bernhard Scholz also suggested that the home provided a venue for
performances of works which might not be successful in the concert hall:
[Joachim] often spent the evenings with us . . . He preferred most of all to play
pieces with me which he could not perform in concerts, such as the Bach and
Mozart sonatas for violin and piano, and the smaller of the Beethoven and Haydn
Trios, in which the pianist can replace the cello part for domestic use.15
Clara Schumann implied the same when she described Brahms’s Variations
on a Theme of Paganini Op. 35 as unsuitable for the concert hall because
of their complexity.16 In addition, professional concert artists could bring
chamber repertoire back into the private sphere through high-quality per-
formances. Willy von Beckerath recalled:
The musical artistry of the master had a profound effect beyond his concerts.
Recommended by Brahms, and already known in the area as the soloist of the
Brahms Violin Concerto, Richard Barth (b.1850), following his appointment as
concertmaster in Krefeld (1882), could call into being a chamber music group
particularly dedicated to Brahms, in which Barth’s brother Alwin von Beckerath
took part as violist and Rudolf von der Leyen as pianist . . . [As von der Leyen
remarked:] ‘In the first place we must thank Barth’s spirited playing for the fact
that Brahms felt so well and comfortable during our private music-making . . . we
studied the entire chamber music literature zealously.’17
Domestic performances were mutually rewarding for composers as well as

for audiences. In various memoirs, a recurring theme is the highly valued
13 Letter to Amalie Joachim, London, late March 1867. Quoted in Borchard, Stimme und Geige,
p. 275.
14 B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann: Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, 3rd edn,
3 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1908), vol. III, p. 100.
15 Scholz, Verklungene Weisen, p. 139. Joachim’s semi-public concerts at the Berlin Singakademie
are discussed in this respect in Chapter 2 (‘The Joachim Quartet concerts at the Berlin
Singakademie’).
16 ‘They seem to me to be unsuitable for concert performance, since if not even the musician can
follow all their original branchings and piquant twists, then how much more will the public
stand before them as before hieroglyphs.’ Litzmann, Clara Schumann, vol. III, p. 157.
17 Stephenson, Johannes Brahms und die Familie von Beckerath, p. 18. See also R. von der Leyen,
Johannes Brahms als Mensch und Freund: Nach persönlichen Erinnerungen (Düsseldorf:
Langewiesche, 1905), p. 23.
intimacy with the composer, and the exclusiveness of the event. Thus, Maria
Fellinger declared: ‘we experienced precious days with Brahms, and they
were most precious when no stranger was present!’18 In the circle around
Franz Schubert, Ignaz von Sonnleithner recalled how ‘the precious dual
gift of song was received with delight by the amateurs of art and at small
intimate gatherings it was pleasant to forget in what tasteless monstrosities
the great public rejoiced’.19 Theodor Billroth, in a letter to Clara Schumann
of 24 October 1882 concerning a Brahms Hauskonzert in his Vienna home,
stipulated that ‘to such evenings, I invite only artists and friends of the
genuine, high art’.20
Music-making outside professional contexts also engendered important
social networks. Beatrix Borchard has interpreted this as a web of private
and professional figures who were united by – and supported each other
through – music-making:
[The] friends Johannes Brahms, Joseph Joachim, Albert Dietrich and Julius Otto
Grimm supported Clara Schumann in the months after Schumann’s suicide attempt.
As often as possible, they made music with her.21
It is clear from various accounts that musical partnerships were an important

unspoken enactment and reinforcer of personal relationships, particularly
in times of trouble.
Domestic music-making embraced a broad spectrum of venues, from the
musician alone in a small living room, to a gathering of two or three friends
in a music room, to a performance for an audience of a hundred people
or more in a large space which was nevertheless private. The terminology
associated with this range does not always make a clear differentiation; thus
Hausmusik, which might imply a smaller venue, is often used interchange-
ably with Salonmusik.22 The first exploration of the notion of Hausmusik in
18 Letter of 17 August 1885 to Robert Hausmann. Fellinger, Klänge, p. 40.

19 O. E. Deutsch (ed.), Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, trans. R. Ley and J. Nowell (London:
A. & C. Black, 1958), p. 226.
20 At this concert, Brahms and the Hellmesberger Quartet played his new trio and string quartet.
See Litzmann, Clara Schumann, vol. III, p. 435. For some, however, domestic music-making
could be burdensome, as in the cases of Josefine Lang and Ottilie Ebner, who were expected to
teach all day and entertain the company all evening. On Lang, see for example F. Mendelssohn’s
Reisebriefen aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1832, ed. P. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Leipzig: H.
Mendelssohn, 1869), pp. 292ff. On Ebner, see Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner, p. 11.
21 Borchard, Stimme und Geige, p. 89.
22 Like Hausmusik, the term ‘salon music’ carries a whole range of social, financial and aesthetic
implications which could be used either positively or pejoratively – as discussed briefly in
Chapter 13. The term is used more often to refer to larger venues, and sometimes has
associations with a particular kind of virtuosic repertoire. For a discussion of this, see
the nineteenth century was probably carried out by C. F. Becker in the Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik, who noted that although one might find no mention
of Hausmusik in the literature of music history, it was all the more deserving
of attention, given how much repertoire it involved.23
Venues for private performances also presented a spectrum of relation-
ships between the hosts and the participants. At one extreme, the performer
was effectively a servant, although money might not actually change hands.
Thus, Schubert taught piano to the Esterházy daughters, composed for their
circle and performed together with the whole family. In the case of the vocal
quartet Gebet D815, Schubert set this text for four voices at the request of
the family, tailoring the vocal parts to the differing abilities of the ensemble
members. It is worth pointing out that, because of the circumstances of
composition, the Esterházys considered it to be their property and the work
remained unpublished until 1840.24 This kind of relationship endured well
into the century: we can compare Brahms’s employment by the court of
Lippe-Detmold in the autumns of 1857–9, during which he also taught
piano to the daughters of the household, composed, and conducted works
for the resident choir. Similarly, Joseph Joachim provided musical enter-
tainment for King Georg of Hanover as concertmaster and Kammervirtuose
of the Hanoverian court between 1853 and 1866.25 Scholz’s memoirs shed
light on the nature of these events:
The King preferred to listen to music in his family circle; Joachim and I were
frequently called to the ruler’s home of an evening . . . The King could cope with
unbelievable quantities of music; he liked appealing and charming music, and also
good music, provided it also had these qualities; and thus he found a way to connect
with Joachim’s art. Certain pleasing pieces, for example a Barcarolle and Gavotte
by Spohr, he requested repeatedly. How often we played these for him! Apart from
H. C. Worbs, ‘Salonmusik’ and I. Fellinger, ‘Die Begriffe Salon und Salonmusik in der
Musikanschauung des 19. Jahrhunderts’ in Dahlhaus (ed.), Trivialmusik. Longer studies
include P. Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert: 1780–1914 (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1989); and A. Ballstaedt and T. Widmaier, Salonmusik: Zur Geschichte und
Funktion einer bürgerlichen Musikpraxis (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989). An
account of Viennese salons in Brahms’s day can be found in the playwright Adolf Wilbrandt’s
memoirs. See A. Wilbrandt, Erinnerungen (Stuttgart and Berlin: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung
Nachfolger, 1905), pp. 162ff.
23 See C. F. Becker, ‘Zur Geschichte der Hausmusik in früheren Jahrhunderten’ in Neue Zeitschrift
für Musik 7/7, 7/8 and 7/9 (25 July, 28 July and 1 August 1837), pp. 25–6, 29–30, 33–4.
24 See G. Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, vol. I (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale
University Press, 2013), pp. 641–4.
25 Scholz, Verklungene Weisen, pp. 139–40. The king, who was blind, was an unusually musical
man; he played the piano and composed over 200 works. See also Borchard, Stimme und Geige,
p. 97.
that, he enjoyed one of the Mozart sonatas and simpler Beethoven sonatas, or the
variations from the Kreutzer Sonata. A programme was not decided in advance; the
King selected from the works which we brought with us; Joachim knew well what
he liked.26
Professional musicians also organised high-profile private performances

themselves, in which they might participate, for example Pauline Viardot-
Garcia, whose home was described in 1878 by Edward Krüger as a ‘temple
of house music’.27
Within the homes of the Fellinger and Wittgenstein families, performers
enjoyed enormously high status and programmed what they wanted, and the
sponsors generally did not participate as active musicians.28 The gatherings
were also notably convivial, often including food and conversation. Brahms’s
friend, the distinguished surgeon Theodor Billroth, hosted regular concerts
at his Vienna home, in which the trappings of professional and amateur
musical events were freely mixed.29 For example, on 14 March 1881, he
hosted a private concert for which a substantial programme, including
the texts of the vocal quartets Opp. 31, 52, 64 and 65, was professionally
printed. Despite this formal approach, the evening was described as a ‘cosy
evening of Brahms’ [gemüthlicher Brahms-Abend]; and the programme also
stated, in large print, ‘the selection and order of the programme numbers
will be determined by the composer’ [Die Auswahl und Reihenfolge der
Programm-Nummern wird vom Componisten bestimmt].30 The repertoire
on offer included the Violin Sonata in G major Op. 78 (‘Regenlied’), solo
piano works and the vocal quartet sets listed above.
The synergy between public performance and music sales was recog-
nised and exploited by the publishing industry, as well as by individual
26 Scholz, Verklungene Weisen, pp. 145–6. Chapter 7 discusses in more depth the four-hand piano
arrangements of Joachim’s orchestral work, and their existence within a private circle.
27 Fellinger, ‘Die Begriffe Salon und Salonmusik in der Musikanschauung des 19. Jahrhunderts’,
p. 137.
28 See also Chapter 9 (‘Brahms in the Wittgenstein homes’) for a discussion of music-making in
the Wittgenstein circle.
29 Otto Gottlieb-Billroth also mentioned another small-scale type of private performance in the
Billroth home, for example the Hellmesberger or Joachim Quartet playing just for Brahms, the
critic Eduard Hanslick and Max Kalbeck. See O. Gottlieb-Billroth (ed.), Billroth und Brahms im
Briefwechsel (Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1935), pp. 115–16.
30 Original programme, D-LÜbi. See also Chapter 4, p. 99 for reference to this concert. In a letter
to Billroth prior to this performance, Brahms remarked that there was far too much vocal
repertoire on offer, and that the booklet could be reused at a later date for a subsequent
performance of those pieces not included on 14 March. Letter of [11 March 1881] in
Gottlieb-Billroth, Billroth und Brahms, pp. 306–7.
performers such as Amalie Joachim, and composers including Brahms

himself.31 But private performances at the homes of notable music pub-
lishers also served the purpose of ‘advertising’ new publications to music-
lovers, thus exemplifying the commercial relationship between public
and private experiences of repertoire. As is discussed in more detail in
Chapters 11 (‘Music inside the home and outside the box’) and 12 (‘The
limits of the lied’), concert audiences who attended performances might
then become performers of the same repertoire in arrangements at home.
In countries like Switzerland, state-sponsored music was still in its infancy
in the 1860s, and the role of this kind of private music-making was even
more crucial for the publishers to disseminate their composers’ new works.
Thus Melchior Rieter-Biedermann’s house concerts at his home ‘Zum
Schanzengarten’ in Winterthur provided an opportunity to hear works
by Brahms which simply could not be heard publicly elsewhere.32 Simi-
larly, Brahms’s publisher Fritz Simrock, together with his wife Clara, hosted
salons at their home ‘Am Carlsbad 3’ for Berlin musicians and artists, which
were ‘more sought after than the concerts’ and furthermore ‘available to
anyone’.33
As discussed in greater depth in Chapters 4 (‘Where was the home of
Brahms’s piano works?’) and 12, the technical ability of the performers
naturally conditioned what could be performed and how. Even Brahms’s
circle, which was hardly typical, embraced everyone from professionals
to exceptionally gifted amateurs like Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, and
moderately able amateurs like Billroth, Doris Groth and the Fellingers.
Since Clara Schumann, in particular, was active as a piano teacher, many
of her students were also involved in informal musical gatherings and
would have performed alongside both amateurs and experienced profes-
sionals. Friedchen Wagner, as a student of both Brahms and Clara Schu-
mann, recalled playing four-hand piano with Brahms, and works such as
31 B. Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim und die gesungene Geschichte des deutschen Liedes’, Archiv für
Musikwissenschaft 58/4 (2001), pp. 265–99.
32 See S. Ehrismann, ‘Die Schweizer Inspirationen von Johannes Brahms’, in Schweizerischer
Bankverein, Seeparkzentrum Thun (ed.), ‘Hoch aufm Berg, Tief im Thal . . . ’: Die Schweizer
Inspiration von Johannes Brahms (Zurich: Musik Hug, 1997), p. 21. Brahms was evidently
deeply impressed with the circumstances surrounding one of his earliest Swiss performances,
on 3 December 1865, when he played the Schumann Piano Concerto with an orchestra led by
Friedrich Hegar and conducted by Kirchner. The whole event was privately organised and
funded. Ehrismann argues that Swiss audiences particularly associated Brahms with
Hausmusik genres.
33 R. Lienau, Ich erzähle: Erinnerungen eines alten Musikverlegers [unpublished], quoted in
Borchard, Stimme und Geige, p. 289.
three-piano concerti by Bach with the composer’s brother Fritz and Clara
Schumann.34
Various aspects of private music-making in Brahms’s circle, such as the
free mixing of amateurs and professionals, show continuity with prac-
tices from Schubert’s day. Within Schubert’s musical circle, singers ranged
from the composer himself to Therese Grob, who sang in the local parish
church, Johann Michael Vogl, a retired opera singer, and Anna Milder-
Hauptmann, an outstanding professional who was perhaps best known for
her performances of the role of Leonore in Beethoven’s Fidelio. In other
situations, performers and hosts also overlapped. Eduard von Bauernfeld
recalled that in February 1825, Moritz von Schwind brought Schubert to
meet him, and upon that occasion they ‘went to the piano, where Schu-
bert sang and we also played duets, and later to an inn till far into the
night’.35 Salmen also mentions the ‘Lese- und Tischgesellschaft’ at the home
of Weber’s son-in-law Friedrich Alberti, which included performances of
songs with refrains in which all could participate.36 Similarly, many com-
petent amateurs who hosted performances within their own homes were
to be found within the Brahms circle. For example, Billroth was a suffi-
ciently accomplished pianist for Brahms to request, in 1870: ‘Most hon-
oured Herr Doctor! Would you perhaps want, and have time, to test
the playability of a four-hand arrangement of my G minor Quartet with
me? I would like to ask about this in advance for tomorrow (Monday)
afternoon.’37
Finally, amateur or professional musicians might perform privately for
pleasure with no audience present at all. For example, Florence May’s biog-
raphy describes how, in Zurich in 1866: ‘After an early dinner . . . [Brahms]
would drop in at a friend’s house, generally Kirchner’s, pass an hour or two
in informal sociability, and often make music with some of the resident
34 S. Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses (Merion, PA: Musurgia Publishers, 1952), p. 10.
These performances took place at Heins’s piano store, since Friedchen’s piano was being
repaired – hence the availability of the three instruments.
35 Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 227.
36 The term ‘Lese- und Tischgesellschaft’ describes a gathering in which people might read
literature and sing, gathered around a table or a piano. ‘Many “songs at the piano” [Lieder beim
Claviere] ended in a choral refrain [Chorrefrain], because one usually sat in a semi-circle
around the instrument, or around a table, and thus was encouraged to join in the singing’:
Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik, p. 31. See also J. F. Reichardt, Vertraute Briefe: geschrieben
auf einer Reise nach Wien und den Österreichischen Staaten zu Ende des Jahres 1808 und zu
Anfang 1809, ed. G. Gugitz, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Kunst- und Industrie-Comtoir, 1810), vol. II,
p. 13.
37 Gottlieb-Billroth, Billroth und Brahms, p. 189. He is referring to the Piano Quartet in G minor
Op. 25.
musicians.’38 Berthold Litzmann’s biography of Clara Schumann also men-

tions several such occasions, such as one in March 1841, when Mendelssohn
visited to play through his newly composed Duo with her. He then followed
this spontaneously with a ‘just beautiful’ rendition of some of his Songs
without Words.39
Repertoire for the home
Carl Dahlhaus has argued that a differentiation between serious music and
music for entertainment was largely a question of perception:
In the second half of the century a division in programmes gradually prevailed,

through which the codes U(nterhaltungsmusik) and E(rnste musik) in broadcasting
language were invented; but in the first [half of the century], it was not seldom that
the same pieces which were played in the opera and symphonic concerts were also
played in the annual market and the beer garden.40
He further argues that all music shares elements of functionality and auton-
omy, although the polarisation between these two ‘types’ has affected the
way in which these repertoires have been treated within musicological
discourse.41 Thus, while it is tempting to imagine that most music which
was performed in private by amateurs was ‘trivial’, evidence suggests that
the boundaries between the different aesthetic categories of music were
much more porous within the home. Any work, including symphonies and
oratorios, bore the potential to be realised in a domestic setting through
the existence of arrangements. Conversely, numerous works which seemed
to be obviously intended for the home crossed into the concert hall; and
different people might perceive the suitability of a work for the home or
the concert hall differently. For instance, Walter Hübbe considered the
Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 to be primarily domestic, despite the fact that they
received many highly acclaimed public performances.42 Thus it was perfectly
acceptable for Brahms to programme a concert at the Kleiner Wörmerscher
38 F. May, The Life of Johannes Brahms, 2 vols. (London: Edward Arnold, 1905), vol. II, p. 46.
39 Litzmann, Clara Schumann, vol. II, p. 86.
40 Dahlhaus, ‘Vorwort’, in Trivialmusik, p. 11. Dahlhaus discusses the various differentiations
between musical types, including Schumann’s division of Classicists (Reaktionären or
Klassikern), the Romantics, who looked to the future, and the Moderns (Modernen). He also
discusses the division between folk music and ‘trivial’ music, because the former is associated
with longevity and the latter is ‘linked to the present’.
41 Ibid., p. 15.
42 ‘The so-called “Liebeswalzer”, which appeared shortly after, found general approval in private
circles, without really succeeding in being effective in public.’ See W. Hübbe, Brahms in
Hamburg (Hamburg: Lütcke & Wulff, 1902), p. 53. See also Chapter 11 of this volume.
Saal in Hamburg in 1861 that included works as substantial as Beethoven’s

Piano Sonata in A major Op. 101, Brahms’s own Piano Quartet Op. 25 and
Schumann’s Karnaval, together with two sets of folk-song arrangements for
women’s choir.43 Conversely, the singer Ottilie Ebner recalled in her diary
of 1856:
I felt like singing, and sang one Schubert Lied after another; some I accompanied
by myself, some Dr Schneider. While the assembled company ate steamed noodles,
I sang the ‘Doppelgänger’ and everyone lost their appetite.44
It is hardly imaginable today to encounter a song as serious as ‘Der Dop-

pelgänger’ D957/13 as background music to the eating of steamed noodles!
Schubert’s more demanding instrumental music was also enjoyed in this
context: in Brahms’s day, the pianist Bernhard Scholz, for example, recalled
playing Schubert trios with Joseph Joachim and August Lindner, a cellist
from the Hanoverian Hofkapelle.45 Ottilie Ebner’s diary entry of 16 Octo-
ber 1856 mentions ‘ein kleines Beethovensches Quartett’, the first movement
of a ‘Mozartkonzert’ and a further concerto with ‘Dr Schneider’ all being
played at home.46
Still, there are particular genres which are more easily identified with
domestic practices, such as dances, song (solo and ensemble), and a wide
range of piano music, including duet repertoire – all categories for which
Schubert was to provide models that endured to the end of the century.47
At a musical-social evening in autumn 1861, Walter Hübbe recollected:
With the greatest alacrity, [Brahms and Clara Schumann] both sat at the piano
and played indescribably beautifully; three Rondos by Schubert and two Marches.
Father remained quietly blissful; it remains unforgettable for us all.48
43 The programme for this concert, performed on 16 November 1861, is held as part of the Clara
Schumann Programmsammlung, D-Zsch 10463, 589-C3. The folk-songs performed in
Brahms’s own arrangements are ‘In stiller Nacht’ WoO 36 no. 1, ‘Mein Herzlein thut mir gar zu
weh!’ WoO 36 no. 2, ‘Wach auf, mein’s Herzens Schöne’ WoO 37 no. 16, ‘Dort unten im Thale’
WoO 35 no. 4, ‘Der Holdseligen’ Op. 44 no. 1 and ‘Wohin ich geh’ und schaue’ Op. 17 no. 3.
44 Diary entry of 16 October 1856. Von Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner, p. 27. Ottilie
Ebner was a good enough singer to share concerts with Joseph Joachim in 1858; shortly after
this, she moved to Vienna where she lived with another musical family, the Fillungers, and she
was also close to the Wittgensteins.
45 Scholz, Verklungene Weisen, p. 139. Joachim founded his first quartet with Lindner, and the
brothers Theodor and Karl Eylert, all members of the Hanover Hofkapelle.
46 Von Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner, p. 27.
47 Brahms also valued other composers’ forays in this field: he gave Ottilie von Balassa (the
daughter of Ottilie Ebner) a copy of four-hand Waltzes by Robert Fuchs, ‘which he found very
beautiful’. See von Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner, p. 107. The waltzes may be either
Op. 25 or the Wiener Walzer Op. 42.
48 Hübbe, Brahms in Hamburg, pp. 42–3.
But depending on technical difficulty, much chamber music and arrange-

ments of orchestral and choral works might also be appropriate in that
context. For example, the first and fourth numbers of the Vier Gesänge für
Frauenchor Op. 17, accompanied by two horns and harp, were performed in
a domestic setting in Leipzig in 1860 at the home of Livia Frege.49 Also, the
Alto Rhapsody Op. 53 was performed on 27 February 1876 at the Munich
home of the author Paul Heyse, with piano accompaniment, together with
pieces by Rheinberger, Schubert and Berlioz as well as other Brahms works.50
Even in the more permanent form of published music, Brahms himself sanc-
tioned a blurring of boundaries when he gave the Leipzig publisher Fritzsch
his song ‘Abendregen’ to be included in the Blätter für Hausmusik, a fort-
nightly subscription series, in 1875. Thereafter, the song appeared more
formally as Op. 70 no. 4 in 1877.
This did not prevent commentators of Brahms’s own time, such as Hugo
Riemann, from attempting to establish theoretical divisions between reper-
toire types, as discussed in Chapter 13 (‘Being (like) Brahms’).51 Louis
Ehlert, in his article ‘Musik und Geselligkeit’ (June 1879), sought to draw
a subtle distinction between ‘niedrigster’ and ‘hoechster Gattung’ (‘lowest’
and ‘highest genres’); the former referred to salon music, the latter to works
by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Franz, Kirchner and Kiel. But he
also said that in between these two extremes, there existed a musical litera-
ture which was attractive without triviality, and serious without profundity,
which could be described as ‘music for the educated world’.52 The issue of
what repertoire could be deemed suitable for domestic or private perfor-
mance remains particularly complex; commentators sought to categorise
the uncategorisable. Ehlert’s ‘music for the educated’ encompasses such a
wide range of music, much of which was equally suitable for the concert
hall, that it is virtually meaningless.
Domestic music-making in Brahms’s circle
Whilst all kinds of music were potentially suitable for domestic performance,
practical expediency played a major role in determining what repertoire was
49 See letter from Clara Schumann to Brahms of 8 December 1860. Litzmann, Ein Künstlerleben,
vol. III, p. 91.
50 R. Münster, ‘Brahms und Paul Heyse: Eine Künstlerfreundschaft’, in K. and R. Hofmann
(eds.), Brahms Studien 7 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1985), p. 64.
51 See also H. Riemann, Meyers Fach-Lexika: Musik-Lexikon (Leipzig: Verlag des
Bibliographischen Instituts, 1882), pp. 797–8.
52 L. Ehlert, Aus der Tonwelt: Essays (Berlin: Behr, 1884), p. 115, quoted in Fellinger, ‘Die Begriffe
Salon und Salonmusik in der Musikanschauung des 19. Jahrhunderts’, p. 138.
most often heard in the home. Factors included the available instruments53
and the size and nature of the space, although the single biggest considera-
tion was the technical limitations of the participants. This was compounded
when the composer did not know the participants personally – that is, when
he was aiming at the large amateur market.54 Brahms responded to all of
these variables during his lifetime, as is discussed briefly in the three case-
studies below.
1. The Hamburg Ladies’ Choir

The origins of Brahms’s so-called Hamburg Ladies’ Choir (‘Hamburger
Frauenchor’) were purely small-scale and private. The three daughters of
the Wagner family in his home city – Friedchen, Thusnelda and Olga – asked
Brahms if he would arrange folk-songs for them to sing; and following the
success of this little ensemble, Brahms appealed to Friedchen to help him
find more singers.55 At the first official meeting of the choir on 6 June 1859,
twenty-eight ladies were invited to the Wagner household; such was the
success of the gathering that they met again the following day, and on 8 June
sang at the Petrikirche in Hamburg.56 Within a few months, the ensemble
grew further: Brahms reported to Clara Schumann on 28 August 1859
that he had ‘at least forty girls’;57 and within this larger ensemble he also
worked with a smaller group, and a solo quartet (Laura Garbe, Marie
Reuter and the two Völckers sisters, Marie and Betty).58 Thus at least three
different configurations of singers were used by Brahms within a single
flexible organisation.
The jovial nature of rehearsals and the non-professional aspirations of
the ensemble made for an atmosphere of conviviality.59 Brahms could even
be prevailed upon to play the piano to amuse the company:
After rehearsal, Brahms played the intermezzo from his Ballad, something by Schu-
mann from the Fantasiebilder, the Davidsbündlertänze, and from Kreisleriana. I
53 For example, Eugenie Schumann played Brahms’s Serenades and Sextets as piano duets. See
E. Schumann, Memoirs of Eugenie Schumann (New York: Dial Press, 1927), p. 147.
54 In some cases, however, Brahms was writing with specific amateurs in mind; for example,
Op. 14 and Op. 19 for Agathe von Siebold; Op. 20 nos. 1 and 2 for Agathe and her friend
Bertha Wagner. See Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, p. 13.
55 Ibid., pp. 11–12. The resulting compositions were probably some of the 28 Deutsche Volkslieder.
56 Ibid., p. 20. Ave Maria Op. 12, O Bone Jesu (later Op. 37 no. 1) and Adoramus (Op. 37 no. 2)
were the three pieces rehearsed on these occasions and sung at the Petrikirche.
57 Ibid., p. 30. 58 Ibid., pp. 43–4 and 49–50.
59 Drinker recounts anecdotes of the choir members singing while walking home in the evening,
in the gardens of members’ houses or simply in the open air as part of a day out. See ibid.,
pp. 51–9.
think about eight different things. Everybody was charmed and delighted. But no
one told him so.60
As a result of the singers’ enthusiasm, Brahms requested that they met once
a week, and produced arrangements and original compositions for them to
sing, as well as conducting them in performances of pieces by Schubert and
Karl Grädener.
Brahms’s compositions for the Ladies’ Choir were important to him
both as a means of gaining practical experience as a young composer in
an amateur context, and as a source of musical material many years later,
well after he had ceased to work with the group. Some of this music was
subsequently published in its original format; other pieces were reworked
decades later for different forces. (Chapter 10, ‘The construction of gender
and mores in Brahms’s Mädchenlieder’, explores Brahms’s understanding of
gender identity in this repertoire.)
Among those pieces which were published in their original form are the
Vier Gesänge für Frauenchor Op. 17 for SSA, two horns and harp, which
Brahms composed in February 1860. This unusual instrumentation pro-
voked consternation from the originally intended publishers, Breitkopf &
Härtel, whom Brahms approached in August 1860. Rather than compro-
mising, the composer offered the pieces to Simrock a month later. He
too expressed misgivings, but following persuasion from Clara Schumann,
agreed to accept the opus as Brahms intended it, and published it in January
1861.61 Although the public premiere of the piece took place on 15 January
1861 in the Großer Wörmerscher Saal, Hamburg, there are mentions of ear-
lier, private performances which doubtless played a significant role in con-
vincing Brahms of the feasibility and desirability of his instrumentation.62
Brahms was of course aware of the practical difficulties of finding a harp
and two horn players, but implied to Simrock that the technical ease would
compensate for this. Brahms’s letter to the publisher of September 1860 also
shows how he sought to tread a fine line between enshrining his desired
instrumentarium on the printed score and acknowledging the fact that it
would hardly ever be realised:
The fact that the harp part can be, and indeed will most likely be replaced by piano
is obvious, still I do not want the piano to be mentioned on the title page.
60 Ibid., p. 39. 61 Werkverzeichnis, p. 60.

62 See letter from Brahms to Peter Joseph Simrock of September 1860, Hamburg, in which he
declares that the songs are ‘very easy to perform, and, as I have had opportunity to observe in
Hamburg over the course of the winter and spring, most effective’: Briefe IX, p. 21.
Everyone knows that this is possible, and since the sound would be significantly
different, I would like even more that the harp be given prominence.
2 horns are easy to find even in the smallest of amateur societies and would not
make performances less likely.63
It is also clear from a letter by Joseph Joachim that other members of

Brahms’s circle had also heard the work, and thus that it enjoyed a significant
public existence prior to appearing in print.64
The folk-song ‘Ich schwing mein Horn ins Jammertal’ presents a more
complex series of compositional stages. These are only traceable thanks to
the survival of several of the Ladies’ Choir partbooks which were individually
maintained by the singers.65 The piece was initially arranged for SSAA,
but Brahms returned to it twice, publishing it in 1867 as the first of his
Fünf Lieder Op. 41 for TTBB, and again the following year as a solo song
Op. 43 no. 3 with the slightly altered title ‘Ich schell mein Horn’. An even
more striking example of Brahms returning to – and reworking – music
dating from his time with the Ladies’ Choir is seen in his various versions
of the folk-text ‘Es glänzt der Mond nieder’. He initially set this text for
SSA, but published a version of it as the solo song ‘Gang zum Liebchen’,
Op. 48 no. 1 in 1868. He had also composed a completely different setting
of the text for SATB and piano, which was published as ‘Der Gang zum
Liebchen’ Op. 31 no. 3 in 1864. This same music reappeared in 1866 as
part of the Waltzes Op. 39 without reference to the poem, an extraordinary
instance of music and text undergoing several different incarnations in four
different genres, all of which are closely associated with Hausmusik.
Much later in his life, the concept of music conceived above all for active
participation, rather than passive listening, was still deeply important to
Brahms. In 1891, he published Dreizehn Kanons Op. 113, in which he
included five canons that he had arranged around thirty years earlier for the
Hamburg Ladies’ Choir.66 Brahms, in a letter to Joseph Joachim of 19 June
1892, declared that ‘The canons are of course to be sung, not listened to!
I except the “Leiermann”, if it is sung really brilliantly.’67 In other words,
63 Ibid., p. 22.
64 Joachim, writing on [8 October 1860], requested a copy of the score for the King of Hanover,
who had asked Bernhard Scholz to rehearse them so that he could hear them. Briefe V, p. 290.
65 For a more detailed discussion of this, see Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, p. 28.
66 The five written for the Ladies’ Choir were nos. 1, 8, 10, 11 and 12.
67 Briefe VI, p. 278. For more on Brahms’s Leiermann Canon Op. 113 no. 13 see K. Aringer, ‘Der
Leiermann von Schubert als Kanon bei Brahms’, Compositionswissenschaft: Festschrift Reinhold
und Roswitha Schlötterer zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. S. Kurth and B. Edelmann (Augsburg:
Wißner, 1999), p. 215.
Brahms recognised the distinction between the pleasures of making music

and of listening to it; music to be listened to needed to be rich enough to
justify a passive engagement, whereas the pleasure of singing the canons was
justification enough for a simple musical texture. (Chapter 3, ‘Domesticity
in Brahms’s String Sextets Opp. 18 and 36’, discusses this participatory
aspect from an instrumental perspective.)
It is striking that the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir – very unusually for a
female-voice ensemble – gave several public performances.68 Both were
arranged by Clara Schumann: the first an informal concert at the Lower
Rhine Festival in Düsseldorf with an invited audience (including Joachim
and the baritone Julius Stockhausen, and in which Clara herself sang when
one of the regular singers was taken ill) on 24 May 1860;69 the second, on
15 January 1861, included the first public performance of Op. 17, as men-
tioned above. The success of the organisation also inspired members to
establish their own choirs. Thus Ottilie Ebner founded her own choir in the
early 1870s, which sang at her home. In a letter of 23 December 1876, she
wrote to Brahms from Görz:
Since I got here, I have been trying to get a vocal quartet together, – finally I’ve
managed to round up 4 voices, but what they can manage I don’t yet know, – I
have found a really good pianist, with whom I play your Sextet Variations [probably
Op. 18/ii], and Waltzes, he was completely taken with them, – he asked me to
perform your Liebeslieder if possible, and if the quartet is not too bad, I will try it.70
Ebner also sang with the children of Marie Fillunger; Mimi (the oldest
daughter Marie) and Tessy were good singers and sang in domestic choral
performances which Brahms attended.71
2. The home of the Fellinger family

The home of the Fellingers is a perfect example of the range of possibilities
captured under the heading ‘domestic performance’. Despite being a private
home, it was witness to an extraordinary range of performances, from the
singing of folk-songs at the piano to the performance of the revised version
of Brahms’s Piano Trio Op. 8, as well as numerous rehearsals for high-profile
public concerts. Maria Fellinger was not a professional musician, although
she was the daughter of the composer Josefine Lang (and Christian Reinhold
Köstlin, whose poetry Brahms set).72 Maria married Richard Fellinger in
68 See Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, p. 68.

69 Ibid., p. 60. Clara Schumann replaced Marie Reuter.
70 Von Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner, p. 90. 71 Ibid., p. 35.
72 Namely ‘Nachtigall’ Op. 97 no. 1; ‘Auf dem Schiffe’ Op. 97 no. 2; ‘Auf dem See’ Op. 106 no. 2
and ‘Ein Wanderer’ Op. 106 no. 5.
1872; they were godparents to the Schumanns’ second son. Richard Fellinger
met Brahms in 1878 in Hamburg, introduced by Clara Schumann. The
Fellingers lived in Berlin from 1877 to 1881, where Clara Schumann had
lived for twenty years. The violinist Joseph Joachim and the cellist Robert
Hausmann, who taught at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik, Berlin,
were frequent visitors.73 Thereafter, the Fellingers lived in Vienna, initially
at the Brentano-Haus, Erdbergstraße 19 and subsequently at Arenberg-
Palais, Hauptstraße 96.
Fellinger’s recollections include accounts of his mother Maria singing
Brahms’s folk-song arrangements, and more complex solo lieder with the
pianist Anna Franz.74 But this sociable family also hosted many musi-
cal evenings, which continued on a larger scale when they moved to the
Arenberg-Palais, and also during the summer of 1885, which they spent very
near Brahms in Mürzzuschlag.75 The scale and nature of these events is cap-
tured in Richard Fellinger’s recollection of a private concert of 2 March 1885
involving Hausmann and an audience of between fifty and eighty people:
[Hausmann] stayed with us, and for the first time a larger group of music-lovers
and friends was invited to our home to take some light refreshment, and this was
repeated each time Hausmann stayed with us in Vienna for concerts or rehearsals.
He played the E minor Sonata [Op. 38] by Brahms, and two days later at an evening
gathering with Brahms, the Hungarian Dances. On the same evening Brahms played
[his own piano arrangement] of his Violin Concerto with Marie Soldat.76
The Fellingers’ home was also a venue for rehearsals prior to public con-
certs. The Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 and Trio Op. 114 with members of the
Joachim Quartet and Richard Mühlfeld were given their final rehearsal at
the Fellingers, on 18 January 1892.77 The audience included Billroth, the
Fabers, Eduard Hanslick, Max Kalbeck and Viktor von Miller zu Aich-
holz.78 Indeed, the Quintet had already had its private premiere (with
Joachim performing the clarinet part on the viola) at the home of Vik-
tor and Olga von Miller zu Aichholz on 16 December 1891.79 It is clear that
some of these domestic performances were very substantial events, and the
anxiety and effort they cost Olga von Miller zu Aichholz is evident from
73 Fellinger, Klänge, p. 16. 74 Ibid., p. 50. 75 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

76 Fellinger, Klänge, pp. 26–7. Similar accounts of such private concerts abound in this volume of
recollections: see also pp. 50–2.
77 See Chapter 9, p. 77 for details of the work’s first private performance at the Wittgenstein
home, a few days earlier.
78 Fellinger, Klänge, p. 60, n. 238.
79 I. Spitzbart, Johannes Brahms und die Familie Miller-Aichholz in Gmunden und Wien
(Gmunden: Kammerhofmuseum der Stadt Gmunden, 1997), p. 94. The first edition of the
Quintet stated that the solo line could be performed on clarinet or viola.
her diary.80 Apart from their practical usefulness, the rehearsals served the
important function of familiarising the assembled company with these new
compositions.
3. The Waltzes Op. 39: perceptions of difficulty, style and public appeal
As mentioned above, the existence of multiple arrangements was a feature
of a musical world in which versions of popular works were regularly pro-
duced for private performance. In Brahms’s case, such arrangements could
be produced either by him or by other figures, as discussed in Chapters 5–7
(‘Main and shadowy existence(s)’, ‘Brahms arranges his symphonies’ and
‘At the piano with Joseph and Johannes’) and Chapter 8 (‘Brahms and his
arrangers’). The Waltzes Op. 39 reveal how ambivalent and even contra-
dictory Brahms’s approach to arrangements of his own works could be. It
also sheds light on Brahms’s perceptions of technical difficulty as related to
issues of genre and gender.
First to be considered is a volume of waltzes (16 in number) by Joh. Brahms

Op. 39 (published by Rieter-Biedermann), which we would like to recommend
most warmly to all friends of music. Even in this form, our admirable young
master’s excellent inventive talent is so conspicuous that one completely forgets the
lowly rank of the genre.81
Dance genres are inseparable from any discussion of domestic music-

making, but Brahms’ Waltzes share only some qualities with the majority
of dances published during the nineteenth century; for example, simplic-
ity and brevity of forms, repetition and characteristic melodic shapes with
harmonisations in thirds and sixths. Nevertheless, these pieces are gen-
erally more complex, both harmonically and technically, than the norm.
Accordingly, they were also heard on the concert platform, as discussed in
Chapter 4.82 Brahms was aware that such complexity would put them
beyond the comfort zone of many amateur pianists, and therefore pro-
vided several different arrangements of the opus to suit a range of abilities:
80 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 105–7.

81 [n.a.], Leipziger allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 33 (15 August 1866), p. 265, quoted in
D. Brodbeck, ‘Primo Schubert, Secondo Schumann: Brahms’s Four-Hand Waltzes, Op. 39’,
The Journal of Musicology 7/1 (Winter 1989), p. 58.
82 Brahms put on a concert with Stockhausen in November 1868 in which the Scherzo Op. 4 and
the Variations on an Original Theme Op. 21 no. 1 were played, but also ‘several of his Waltzes
originally written for four hands (op.39)’. Hübbe, Brahms in Hamburg, p. 52.
a version for solo piano, one for duet, and a third easy arrangement for a
single player.
In the simplified version of the Waltzes, certain leaps are avoided, as
well as chord and octave spans unsuitable for small hands; several were
also transposed into more manageable keys.83 The creation of a simpler
arrangement was initially the publisher Rieter-Biedermann’s idea, and in a
letter of 7 February 1867 Brahms reacted very negatively, arguing that the
pieces were much more entertaining as a four-hand piece than as a two-
hand piece.84 The composer then proposed two versions for two hands: one
‘normal’, and one which he called a ‘Kinderausgabe’ (‘children’s version’),
which he stipulated should not appear under his name.85 He produced both
these arrangements within a few days, and his next letter to Rieter makes
clear that his so-called Kinderausgabe was to Brahms’s mind most suitable
for lady pianists:
I can deliver to you thoroughly excellent versions of the Waltzes for two hands, and
ideally and preferably two, one for sensible hands and one – perhaps for pretty ones.
Neither one is actually difficult!86
Later, he retracted his original request for the arrangements to appear

anonymously, asking that they be published as an ‘original work for two
hands’ (‘2händiges Originalwerk’).87
The Waltzes Op. 39 raise numerous questions regarding Brahms’s feelings
about arrangements. Despite his initial recoil from Rieter-Biedermann’s
suggestion, ultimately he was pleased enough with his arrangement, not
only to publish it under his own name, but to treat it as an entirely differ-
ent kind of object: a simplified version, without opus number – but also
without the word ‘arrangement’ in the title.88 These multiple instantiations
were a necessary means by which Brahms’s more complex compositions
could be made available and accessible to the widest possible range of per-
formers. Nevertheless, they also shed light on Brahms’s notions of what was
acceptably difficult for a broad public. The original two-hand version of
83 For specific details, see J. Brahms, Walzer für Klavier Op. 39 (Die vom Komponisten erleichterte
Fassung), ed. Hans Höpfel (Vienna: Wiener Urtext / UE, 1975) UT 50046, Preface, v. See also
JBG, Series III, vol. 6: Klavierstücke, ed. K. Eich (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2011).
84 Letter of [7 February 1867], Briefe XIV, pp. 139–41. 85 Ibid.
86 Letter of [12 February 1867]. Briefe XIV, pp. 141–2.
87 The ‘normal’ two-hand version was sent on 8 March 1867. At the same time, Brahms
mentioned a further version for two pianists, which was published after his death, in
November 1897. See Werkverzeichnis, pp. 139–40 as well as Chapter 4 of this volume. For
information on other arrangements of the Waltzes, see the table appended to Chapter 8.
88 See letter of [20 March 1867], Briefe XIV, pp. 145–6.
the Waltzes is hardly easy, despite his protestations! He even overestimated

some of the most competent musicians in his circle at times; when he sent
a two-hand arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Presto in G minor BWV 1001 to
the Herzogenbergs on 23 April 1877, he wrote ‘I enclose a Clavier-Study
which will do for you when you have satiated yourself with sweet stuff.
To me it seems very pleasurable to study.’ A few days later, Herzogenberg
replied: ‘the Bach arrangement is splendid, but we mortals can only manage
it four-handed; and scarcely then.’89
All of this reminds us of the sheer extent of Brahms’s involvement in pri-

vate performance on numerous levels – as a participant, as a composer and
arranger of suitable repertoire for himself and his friends, as a provider of
music for the broader amateur market – and as a listener. Brahms cherished
the performance of music in private circles, and, as expressed in the recol-
lection below by Olga von Miller zu Aichholz, was particularly moved and
pleased to see his own, ‘difficult’ compositions played in this context:
After a short time together, Victor proposed playing the second Brahms Violin
Sonata with Holbein, or at least to begin it, so that Brahms would continue. And
after they had played the first movement (very well), Brahms indeed sat at the piano
and played the last movement with Holbein strikingly slowly, which disconcerted
Holbein somewhat . . . [Brahms] mentioned to Holbein again while leaving, that
he had greatly enjoyed playing with him, and assured Victor at the station of the
same. It had pleased him greatly to hear that his works, although played in a private
home (naturally by amateurs), were nevertheless so well understood and performed.
Victor returned from the station most excited and delighted.90
Despite the unarguable value that private performances held for Brahms
and his circle, the difficulty of capturing detail often means that they are
automatically treated as secondary in importance compared with public
performances. This can mean that a work’s ‘premiere’ can take place some
considerable time after it has already been disseminated widely. For the
Duets Op. 28, composed 1860–2 and published in 1863, the official premiere
of Nos. 3 and 4 took place on 5 March 1869.91 By then, the songs had been
known in performance for some considerable time, since in late November
1866, they were sung at a private concert given by Theodor Avé-Lallement in
89 E. Evans, Handbook to the Pianoforte Works of Johannes Brahms (London: William Reeves,
1912), p. 264. Letter of 27 April 1877, Leipzig, from Heinrich von Herzogenberg to Brahms, in
Briefe I, p. 24. The two arrangements Brahms made of this piece are listed as Anh. Ia/1 Nos. 3–4.
90 Spitzbart, Johannes Brahms und die Familie Miller-Aichholz, p. 88.
91 They were performed by Brahms, Julius Stockhausen and Rosa Girzick. See Werkverzeichnis,
p. 95.
Hamburg.92 Nevertheless it is clear that private performance in Brahms’s life

encompassed a vast range of activities, from the playing of his simpler works
by amateurs, to large-scale private performances of substantial chamber
works, to run-throughs for professional concerts. Brahms seems to have
enjoyed all such events, regardless of the standard, and to have given private
performances of works ranging from concert hall beasts to Viennese trifles.
But beyond this one composer, the act of private music-making was
invested with great power and was a defining force of social life during
the century. Furthermore, the fabric of middle-class society was interwo-
ven with such practices; as discussed in Chapter 13, Brahms’s younger
contemporaries often sought actively to retain the essence of that world
in their works. And despite the advent of recorded music sounding the
death-knell for private, amateur music-making, its decline was gradual. As
discussed in Chapter 14 (‘The cultural dialectics of chamber music’), even
twentieth-century figures like Theodor Adorno were raised with a sense
of the importance of being able to make music oneself for pleasure. The
waning of this practice was thus witnessed by Adorno and many others with
great regret and nostalgia.
The affection that Hausmusik could inspire is neatly captured in one final
anecdote. On one occasion at the Beckeraths’ home, following a perfor-
mance of the Violin Sonata Op. 78 by Rudolf von Beckerath and Brahms,
the following occurred:
As the guests were getting ready to depart, [Brahms] sat down at the piano again.
“Shall I just call them all back?” He played Viennese Waltzes, – “as only he could” –
and indeed, those who had already said their goodbyes came back, one after the
other.93
92 See letter from Amalie Joachim to Joseph Joachim, 1 December 1866: ‘The evening before last
we sang duets by Brahms at Avé’s and it made a great impression. We had to repeat them many
times.’ Reproduced in Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim und die gesungene Geschichte des deutschen
Liedes’, p. 271.
93 Stephenson, Johannes Brahms und die Familie von Beckerath, pp. 17–18. See also von der Leyen,
Brahms, pp. 12ff.
2 The Joachim Quartet concerts at the Berlin
Singakademie: Mendelssohnian Geselligkeit in
Wilhelmine Germany
robert w. eshbach
The great Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe spoke of Joseph Joachim’s violin
playing as ‘a consecration, a sort of Bayreuth on a reduced scale, in which
tradition was perpetuated and made beautiful and strong’.1 Nowhere was
this feeling more evident than in the series of chamber-music concerts
that the Joachim Quartet gave in Berlin’s temple to musical Bildung,2 the
circa 800-seat auditorium of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s chaste, Greek-revival
Singakademie, tucked away on a quiet square in the Kastanienwäldchen
(Figure 2.1).
‘Whenever people entered the Berlin Singakademie for a Joachim Quartet
soirée, they greeted one another in a cheerful and familiar way’, wrote
Joachim’s godson Hans Joachim Moser (1889–1967); ‘all were mutually
acquainted – indeed, they knew that all had been brought here for the same
purpose: to pay homage to beauty. Joachim stood, his violin under his arm,
in a corner of the thickly occupied podium and conversed with this one or
that; he chatted and joked as though at home, and when he then walked to
his music stand, it was as if he simply wanted to continue the conversation
with his dear guests.’3
‘The entire absence of the spirit of display at once made itself felt so
that the listeners’ attention, like that of the players themselves, became
almost wholly absorbed in the music alone’, wrote the Scottish violinist
Marion Bruce Ranken. ‘There was something venerable and priestlike in
the appearance of the four elderly men earnestly applying themselves to
1 Quoted in R. Stowell, Beethoven: Violin Concerto (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 36.
2 The German language represents the English word ‘education’ variously as Erziehung,
Ausbildung or Bildung. Each carries a different connotation: Erziehung approximates to
‘upbringing’; Ausbildung, ‘training’. Bildung is perhaps best rendered as ‘edification’ – ongoing
self-improvement through cultural engagement.
3 A. Moser, Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, revised edn, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag der Deutschen
Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908–10), vol. II, p. 205. All translations in this chapter are the author’s
22 own.
The Joachim Quartet concerts at the Berlin Singakademie 23
Figure 2.1. Felix Possart, Das Joachim-Quartett in der Singakademie zu Berlin. The
whereabouts of the original painting are currently unknown. The engraving appeared
as a Beilage to the Zeitschrift Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 4/5 (1903), between
pp. 240 and 241.
their task and one felt a reverent and almost religious spirit in their whole
performance.’4
‘Words cannot describe the reverential atmosphere of those quartet
evenings in the Singakademie’, observed Edith Stargardt-Wolff. ‘The audi-
ence listened to their playing devoutly, like the congregation of a church.
Even if one did not know one’s neighbours and those who were sitting
4 M. [Bruce] R[anken], Some Points of Violin Playing and Musical Performance as learnt in the
Hochschule für Musik (Joachim School) in Berlin during the time I was a Student there, 1902–1909
(Edinburgh: privately printed, 1939), p. 46. The author is indebted to Dr. Dietmar Schenk of
the Archiv der Universität der Künste Berlin for help in ascertaining the author’s identity.
24 robert w. eshbach
nearby by name, one nevertheless felt united with them through regular
encounters at this place which was consecrated to the noblest art.’5
The atmosphere of the Joachim Quartet’s Singakademie concerts was in
many ways exceptional, even for late nineteenth-century Berlin, where the
‘Religion of Art’, rooted in the writings of Novalis, Tieck, Schleiermacher and
Hegel, could still claim a devoted following. One senses in these comments
that the notion of religion is being used in an only slightly extended sense –
that the audience of the Joachim Quartet concerts indeed represented a kind
of ritual ingathering of the faithful who came to experience elevation and
renewal; a community that shared a way of thinking about the role of music
in private life and in society that has since largely been lost to the world.
‘He who arrived jaded from indifferent occupations or wearying work was
here refreshed’, wrote Moser; ‘he who had lived frivolously or thoughtlessly
was here stirringly admonished. He who had experienced sadness, who had
lost that which was dear to him, received solace and comfort; the mourner
smiled, the angry were quieted, and the faithless confessed: ‘I believe again!’6
Joachim in Berlin
Joseph Joachim and his family settled in Berlin in 1868. In August

1869, Joachim founded Berlin’s Königlich Akademische Hochschule für
ausübende Tonkunst (Royal Academic College for Musical Performance).
In the same year, together with Ernst Schiever (1844–1915), Heinrich de
Ahna (1835–92) and Wilhelm Müller (1834–97), he founded the Berlin
incarnation of the Joachim Quartet. During the ensuing thirty-eight years,
the quartet’s annual eight-concert series became the spiritual home of an
important faction of Berlin’s musical, artistic and political elite. It is in
this rarefied environment that a number of the works of Brahms were
introduced to a larger public – the chamber works for strings, of course,
including the premiere performance of the String Quartet No. 3 in B major
Op. 67,7 but also – as a single non-string exception in the thirty-eight-year
5 E. Stargardt-Wolff, Wegbereiter großer Musiker: Unter Verwendung von Tagebuchblättern, Briefen

und vielen persönlichen Erinnerungen von Hermann und Louise Wolff, den Gründern der ersten
Konzertdirektion, 1880–1935 (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1954), p. 149. Edith Stargardt-Wolff
(1880–1961) was the daughter of the impresario Hermann Wolff (1845–1902) and Louise
Schwarz Wolff (1855–1935).
6 Moser, Joachim, pp. 205–6.
7 This performance took place with Joachim, Heinrich de Ahna, Eduard Rappoldi and Wilhelm
Müller on 30 October 1876.
history of the series – Brahms’s chamber music with clarinet.8 Brahms com-
mented on this unique occurrence with a mischievous reference in a letter of
1 December 1891 to Eduard Hanslick: ‘Joachim has sacrificed the virginity
of his Quartet to my newest things. Hitherto he has carefully protected the
chaste sanctuary but now, in spite of all my protestations, he insists that I
invade it with clarinet and piano, with trio and quintet.’9
Joachim’s move to Berlin occurred a decade after his highly public split
with Franz Liszt, and nearly a decade after the embarrassing protest that he
and Brahms had cooked up against Brendel’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and
the New German clique. The twin institutions that Joachim founded – the
Berlin Hochschule and the quartet that bore his name – might equally merit
Ysaÿe’s description of a ‘Bayreuth on a reduced scale’, or perhaps an anti-
Bayreuth, since they quickly became the centre of Berlin’s anti-Wagnerian
faction. In the words of a contemporary writer:
The recently-endowed Königliche Hochschule für Musik, over which Herr Joachim
presides, is famous for its concerts and exercises great influence upon musical
opinion in the most cultivated circles of Berlin society . . . The influence which the
Hochschule has exercised has certainly tended to stem the tide of Wagnerism at
Berlin, Herr Joachim being a leading spirit of the school of Brahms . . . One can
conceive that the anger of the Wagner party was intense at finding this Brahms
garrison suddenly planted in their midst.10
8 The Joachim Quartet programmes focused primarily on classics of the quartet literature –
works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.
Contemporary works (by, among others, Eugen d’Albert, Woldemar Bargiel, Ernö Dohnányi,
Friedrich Gernsheim, Heinrich von Herzogenberg, August Klughardt, Eduard Reuss, Charles
Villiers Stanford and Wilhelm Taubert) were a relative rarity, and were generally performed on
so-called Novitätenabende (novelty concerts). Brahms was treated as an exception among
contemporary composers: he was virtually the only ‘modern’ composer to receive repeated
performances of his works, which were placed among the classics in an effort to include them
in what was clearly meant to be understood as the ‘canon’. Over the years, the String Quartet
No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1 was performed nineteen times, the String Quartet No. 2 in A
minor Op. 51 no. 2 was played twenty-three times, and the String Quartet No. 3 in B major
Op. 67 was given eleven times. The latter two quartets were first performed prior to their
publication. The quintets and sextets were also given repeated performances in the
Singakademie concerts. Performances of multiple Brahms works on one programme were rare.
For a thorough discussion of the Joachim Quartet Singakademie concerts, including their
complete repertoire, see B. Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph Joachim. Biographie
und Interpretationsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), pp. 521–50 and accompanying CD-ROM.
9 F. May, The Life of Johannes Brahms, 2 vols. (London: Edward Arnold, 1905), vol. II, pp. 625–6.
The concert took place on 12 December 1891.
10 H. Vizetelly, Berlin Under the New Empire, Its Institutions, Inhabitants, Industry, Monuments,
Museums, Social Life, Manners, and Amusements, 2 vols. (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1879),
vol. II, p. 271.
Joachim’s ascendancy in Berlin may indeed have helped to provoke Wagner

himself, against all good sense, to reissue his notorious Judenthum article
of nineteen years earlier.11 Wagner’s original 1850 article had been directed
largely against Mendelssohn and the influence of the Leipzig Conserva-
tory, and obliquely against Mendelssohn’s concept of music’s role in the
formation of a gebildete Gesellschaft – that is, a society founded on the
quasi-religious concept of Bildung that had informed the German educa-
tional system since 1810, and that continued to resonate so strongly in
assimilated Jewish circles until well into the twentieth century. Wagner re-
issued his Judenthum attack in 1869, together with his essay on conducting,12
which specifically references Joachim’s activities, no doubt recognising that
Joachim’s plans represented a conscious continuation of the Mendelssoh-
nian Bildungsprojekt, directly inspired by Mendelssohn’s musical, educa-
tional and social ideals.
Mendelssohnian Geselligkeit
The Berlin Singakademie had, of course, a long and distinguished history

of Geselligkeit – a kind of enlightened, culturally edifying sociability for
which there is no equivalent term in English – going back to the days of
Carl Friedrich Zelter, Carl Maria von Weber and the young Mendelssohn
children. That history was surely well known to Joachim, who grew to young
manhood in the intimate company of the Mendelssohn family.
Thirteen-year-old Joseph had been introduced to the extended
Mendelssohn family at the Royal Palace in Potsdam, during the premiere
of the Mendelssohn/Tieck production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(14 October 1843). A month thereafter, he performed for the first time
in one of Fanny Hensel’s Sonntags-Morgenmusiken (Sunday morning musi-
cales), which she had established in 1831, taking up a family tradition that
had lain dormant for several years. The musicales took place in the beau-
tifully embowered garden room of the Mendelssohn family’s Berlin home,
the former Reck’sche Palais at Leipzigerstraße No. 3 – a space suitable for
a gathering of several hundred people, the walls and cupola of which were
adorned with graceful frescoes, and whose movable glass wall opened onto
11 R. Wagner, ‘Das Judenthum in der Musik’, originally published under the pseudonym ‘K.
Freigedank’ (‘K. Freethought’), Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 33/19–20 (3 September 1850),
pp. 101–7; (6 September 1850), pp. 109–12; later published in a revised and expanded edition
by J. J. Weber, Leipzig, 1869.
12 R. Wagner, Über das Dirigieren (Leipzig: C. F. Kahnt, 1869).
a park adjoining the gardens of Prince Albrecht, made fragrant by lilacs,

enlivened by nightingales, and cooled in the summer by the shade of ancient
trees. Hensel’s neighbour, Fanny Lewald (1811–89), recalled the occasion.
Included in the dazzling audience were such notables as Ludwig Tieck
(1773–1853), Henrik Steffens (1773–1845), Friedrich von Raumer (1781–
1873), the Princes Radzivill with their families, a princess from Dessau, the
English ambassador Count Westmoreland (sic),13 and two of Bettina von
Arnim’s daughters. In the middle of Joseph’s performance, Lewald writes,
‘all eyes suddenly turned to the door, and a cheerful smile passed over all
faces as a still-youthful man appeared in the doorway of the room. He was
a slim, mobile figure. He entered silently, head held high, with sparkling
eyes, which had something uncommonly startling, indeed overwhelming
about them. It was Franz Liszt.’14 Somehow, one cannot help viewing Liszt’s
sudden, disruptive appearance at this event as prophetic – it would, after
all, be Liszt, his associates and disciples, who, at mid-century, would pose
an unsettling, radical challenge to music and society in Germany, injecting
a Byronic and French attitude into the comfortable, bourgeois world of
north-German Geselligkeit.
By the 1840s, what had begun as private entertainments had taken on a
more public face. As Fanny described it in 1846:
It has gradually – and naturally without our doing – become a remarkable cross
between private and public in character, so that 150–200 people are present at every
concert, and such that, if I have to cancel, and don’t give notice, no one comes,
because the fact publicises itself.15
What is a public? In the Leipzig and Berlin of Joachim’s youth, the contem-
porary phenomenon of an audience as a gathering of strangers, unknown to
one another, hardly existed. A ‘public’, as young Joachim’s contemporaries
would have understood it, was a social organism – an audience, not a crowd.
As Lewald’s account implies, that which she ingenuously called ‘eine aus allen
Ständen gemischte Gesellschaft’ (‘a mixed company comprising all classes’)
formed a nexus of familiar people: a complex fabric of family, friendship,
business relations and celebrity. While this may seem obvious in the case
of Fanny’s gatherings, the same could also be said of audiences at such
13 The person referenced is clearly John Fane, 11th Earl of Westmorland, who was ambassador to
Prussia during those years.
14 F. Lewald, Meine Lebensgeschichte, ed. U. Helmer, 3 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Ulrike Helmer
Verlag, 1989), vol. III, p. 106.
15 H.-G. Klein (ed.), Die Musikveranstaltungen bei den Mendelssohns: Ein ‘musikalischer Salon’?
(Leipzig: Mendelssohn-Haus Leipzig, 2006), p. 49.
ostensibly fully public events as Felix Mendelssohn’s Leipzig Gewandhaus

concerts, for which he had complete musical and administrative authority,
much as Fanny did in her Sonntagsmusiken. Mendelssohn’s Gewandhaus,
the site of many of Joachim’s early triumphs, had a capacity of barely 500.
Leipzig was a small town, and one can assume that the Gewandhaus patrons
were all acquainted with one another, and with Mendelssohn himself. Many
were musically trained. Some, like Henriette Voigt (1808–39) or Livia Frege
(1818–91), regularly made music with Mendelssohn at home – Voigt as an
amateur, Frege as a professional, with no implied distinction as to the level
of their musical attainments.
For the Mendelssohns, there seems to have been no sharp division
between public and private performance, between professional and ama-
teur. For them, public performance evolved as a natural outgrowth of their
family traditions of salon Geselligkeit. In this, their understanding of public
life was similar to what Herman Grimm (1828–1901) wrote about their
friend Bettina von Arnim:
Bettina’s being, even when she addressed herself to the unnamed public, was still
only bounded by the circle of those whom she knew – a company that was a far
cry from all that we today call the public domain. Our life today hardly enables
us to imagine this. . . . Even when she had her books published, her thoughts went
out only to friends, who would read them, and whose sympathetic understanding
she took for granted. All these friends she believed to be partners in her efforts,
maintaining the high ground with equally noble aims, united with her in the highest
endeavour.16
Shortly after Felix Mendelssohn’s death in 1847, W. H. Riehl wrote that

the composer was ‘the first musician who made music for “fine society” –
in the good sense of the word’. Riehl located the unique depth and breadth of
Mendelssohn’s influence throughout Germany in the fact that the ‘“gebildete
Gesellschaft” [educated society] in which he had lived and worked – whose
spirit he had expressed – was, throughout all of Germany, the same’ (orig-
inal italics).17 He might have gone further to include England in this
sphere of influence – the gebildete Gesellschaft, which originated in the
Enlightenment Republic of Letters, was intrinsically supranational in scope,
16 G. von Arnim, Alt Schottland: Drama in fünf Akten mit einem Vorspiel (privately printed, n. d.
[1889]), pp. iv–v.
17 W. H. Riehl, Musikalische Charakterköpfe: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Skizzenbuch (Stuttgart: J. G.
Cotta, 1853), p. 104.
and Mendelssohn’s sway over the English public was profound and far-
reaching.18
Joachim’s early career was conditioned by these Mendelssohnian ideals,
as were the activities of his maturity. In this respect, the important English
component of his career can be seen as continuous from his early youth
to the end of his life. In Germany, however, the Mendelssohnian ideal of
music-making for the gebildete Gesellschaft was substantially interrupted
by the social changes that came with the revolutions of 1848, and by the
radical challenge from the New German School, which viewed the Bil-
dungsbürgertum (educated middle-class public) as essentially and irrecov-
erably philistine. Joachim’s mid-career work in establishing the Hochschule
and the Singakademie concerts must be seen in this context as a counter-
weight to the social and political programme of the New Germans: picking
up the Berlin Hochschule project that Mendelssohn had left undone, and
attempting to perpetuate the social ideals of pre-March music-making. The
most significant of these ideals was that of Bildung – edification – an ideal
that incidentally formed the basis of Joachim’s friendship with Johannes
Brahms, drawing the two young men together despite their radically diver-
gent backgrounds and personalities.
Bildung
Originally a religious concept, Bildung derives from Bild, an image or pic-
ture, a likeness or representation. To the early German mystics such as
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1327), it was literally the construction of the
human spiritual edifice, the purposeful transformation of the personality
in the image, or Bild, of God.19 From the beginning, then, Bildung was
18 The Republic of Letters (Respublica literaria) was a loosely constituted, international

intellectual community that arose in seventeenth-century Europe and America, which strove
to further the intellectual goals of the Enlightenment through the exchange of letters,
pamphlets, and other published works. Recent interest in the Republic of Letters has come
largely from feminist scholars, who, building on the work of Jürgen Habermas, have focused
on the role that salon sociability and rhetoric played in that exchange of ideas. See D.
Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1994).
19 Eckhart, the originator of the concept of Bildung, considered Man to exist in a state of
estrangement from God – or, more specifically, from his original state of having been created
in the image of God. For Eckhart, the process of Bildung (which begins with a process of self
Ent-Bildung – separating from the image of oneself) was a way back into a state of grace. See
H.-J. Fraas, Bildung und Menschenbild in theologischer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2000), pp. 44ff.
conceived as a teleological, or end-driven, process, carried out in reference

to a normative ideal.
Bildung attained a significantly different meaning in the philosophy of
Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803). For Herder, Bildung had no
telos – no end point, no Bild or archetype towards which it strives.20 Freed
from the telos, Man becomes, in Nietzsche’s memorable phrase, ‘ein aus
sich rollendes Rad’21 (‘a wheel rolling out of its own centre’), a person who
is literally evolving.22 As Emerson expressed it: ‘Man is endogenous, and
education is his unfolding.’23 Herder would have thought more organically:
Bildung is the growth of the individual out of his own seed – the contin-
uous process of becoming, of learning to fulfil the demands of each hour
and age in a unique and personal way. It is not difficult to imagine what
implications this conceptual innovation, this freeing from the telos, had for
the development of Romantic art.24
In later years, the concept of Bildung became secularised, and, in the wake
of the Winckelmann-inspired Hellenic revival, took on a decidedly Attic cast.
The nineteenth-century concept of Bildung has deep concordances with
the Athenian notion of Paideia: the process of educating man to his own
ideal form, the Kalos Kagathos – the ‘beautiful and good’. As S. H. Butcher
expressed it in 1904: ‘The Greek Paideia (paide©a) in its full sense involves
20 See for example J. G. Herder, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der Menschlichen Seele (Riga: J. F.
Hartknoch, 1778).
21 ‘The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of its own
centre, a prime motion, a sacred yea-saying.’ F. Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch
für Alle und Keinen (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1899), p. 35.
22 From the Latin evolvere, to unroll; the noun evolutio referred originally to the unrolling of a
scroll in the process of reading or writing. In this sense of Bildung, each person could be
thought of as gradually revealing the story of his own life, rather than progressing in imitation
of an externally determined ideal.
23 R. W. Emerson, Representative Men: Nature, Addresses and Lectures (Philadelphia, PA: David
McKay, 1892), p. 10.
24 A related aspect of Bildung, a novelty when compared with the older notion of the compulsory
transformation of man in the image of God, is the idea of Selbstbildung: that Bildung should be
a self-directed, self-fulfilling process. Bildung may be influenced by Erziehung, by upbringing,
but its ultimate goal is the mature, self-realising individual. Humboldt organised the Prussian
educational system with this in mind, with general education preceding more specialised
training, allowing ever-greater freedom of choice to each student as he matured. This notion of
self-directedness is related to nineteenth-century Germany’s admiration for the quality of
sincerity – an admiration that we also find in British thinkers like Carlyle, for whom sincerity
was a prerequisite for growth, and for greatness. In this view, the sincere person is one who
always strives for the true, the better. The sincere youth who struggles to achieve spiritual and
moral maturity became the protagonist of the numerous Bildungsromane, the ‘novels of
formation’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, of which Goethe’s Wilhelm
Meister novels (1795–1829) are perhaps the most characteristic and best-known example.
the union of intellectual and moral qualities. It is on the one hand mental
illumination, an enlarged outlook on life; but it also implies a refinement
and delicacy of feeling, a deepening of the sympathetic emotions, a scorn
of what is self-seeking, ignoble, dishonourable – a scorn bred of loving
familiarity with poets and philosophers, with all that is fortifying in thought
or elevating in imagination.’25
To this, the renowned educational reformer – and Mendelssohn family
friend – Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) added a notion derived from
the French Enlightenment: that individual self-realisation can properly take
place only within a social context.26 Personal growth was to be achieved
through creative or critical encounter with others, in an environment that
required feelings and ideas to be expressed and shared. It was this last
aspect of Bildung that informed the salon Geselligkeit of nineteenth-century
Leipzig, Weimar and Berlin. This social context was also understood to
include the family, the Volk, the res publica and, in an ever-widening circle, all
of humanity. In this sense, Bildung was ultimately a social and political ideal
as well as a strictly personal one: a gebildete society was thought to function
like a healthy organism in which each constituent member is responsible
for making a unique contribution to the whole, according to his or her fully
developed talents. Society was thus imagined to be a sort of meta-individual,
itself subject to a dialectical process of self-realisation through history. The
epigraph to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, quoted from Humboldt’s Sphere
and Duties of Government, encapsulates this Bildungsideal, which Humboldt
had absorbed from Berlin’s Jewish salonnières: ‘The grand, leading principle,
towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is
the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest
diversity.’27 ‘The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the
25 S. H. Butcher, Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 124. Similarly,
Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote: ‘Supreme is the morally beautiful character, who through
reverence for the holy and a deeply felt love of the purely good and true, is educated to a noble
revulsion against everything unclean, indelicate and coarse.’ Letter of February 1861, in W. von
Humboldt, Briefe an eine Freundin: Zweiter Theil, 5th edn (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1853), p. 291.
26 In 1809, the year of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth, Humboldt was appointed to head the
Department for Religion and Education of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. In that
capacity, he undertook a top-to-bottom restructuring of the educational system, according to
this particular Bildungskonzept. Humboldt’s work established Germany’s still-extant system
of humanistic gymnasia and trade schools, and culminated in the founding of the Berlin
University in 1810. These educational innovations had a wide-ranging influence.
Mendelssohn’s founding of the Leipzig Conservatory, and Joachim’s of the Berlin Hochschule
can be seen as a continuation and adaptation of this work in the musical realm.
27 J. S. Mill, On Liberty (London: John W. Parker, 1859), p. 4. Quotation taken from W. von
Humboldt, Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen (1792;
individuals composing it’, wrote Mill at the end of his essay, ‘and a State which
postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation . . . a State
which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments
in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no
great thing can really be accomplished.’28 For Humboldt’s Germany, with
its emphasis on Bildung and diversity, the salon was simply the ideal state in
a nutshell: society’s incubator, in which the salonnière’s role was to promote
the ‘mental expansion and elevation’ of each of her guests in a climate of
unforced social interaction.
The Mendelssohn family played a critical role in the establishment of
salon Geselligkeit in Berlin. Under their influence, the Berlin salon took
on a unique character – strongly intellectual, and predominantly Jewish.
Through their occupation as salonnières, women such as Rahel Varnhagen
(1771–1833), Henriette Herz (1764–1847), Sarah Levy (1761–1854), Caro-
line (1781–1864) and Wilhelmine (1798–1865) Bardua, Bettina von Arnim
(1785–1859), and later Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805–47) took on a
powerful role as leaders in Berlin’s intellectual and cultural life.29 Music was
central to Mendelssohn family Geselligkeit, and amongst their circle, music-
making came to exhibit many of the characteristics and foundational values
common to Germany’s Romantic literary salons. The description by Royal
Saxon physician Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869) of Ludwig Tieck’s famous
salon readings captures some of the values and aesthetics common to the
educated classes of Saxony and Prussia in those times – in a way that closely
mirrors the reception that Joachim would later receive for his music-making:
There were three things in particular that distinguished this reading: first the indi-
viduality of the reader; the rich experience, the broad erudition, the fine Attic
Bildung, the sonorous, deeply inward-sounding organ of speech, and his own high
gift as a poet. These attributes explain why, when he performed a poet’s works, we
found it so easy to enter into the thoughts of the poet himself, and in so doing
often forgot the reader, and were able all the better to penetrate the powerful idea
of the work he was performing. – Secondly, a certain Cultus that was adopted at
these readings; a certain solemnity and devotion that tolerated not the slightest
interruption, and thereby made it possible to grasp a whole work truly as a whole,
and not piecemeal. – Once the reading began, a tacit agreement prevailed among
first published Breslau: Eduard Trewendt Verlag, 1851), currently known in English by the title
The Limits of State Action.
28 Mill, On Liberty, p. 207.
29 For an exhaustive and authoritative study of the Berlin salon in all its aspects, see P. Wilhelmy-
Dollinger, Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert: 1780–1914 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1989).
each and every one, to abstain from even the slightest disturbance. Latecomers took
their seats as quietly as possible; those who were called away . . . slipped away as
unnoticeably as possible through the never-creaky doors . . . Thirdly, the choice of
works to be performed came into consideration. – Not that the choice always fell to
the most exquisite, the greatest, the most brilliant; many light-hearted works were
also numbered in the repertoire. But the empty philistine, the merely modern, the
inherently inane was always absent.
In this sense, in particular, these readings by Tieck had an inspiring effect on many;
if I were to express what they meant to me, I would have to say that they produced
in me what every genuine reading should: namely, a deeper insight into my own
breast – into the true art of living – and a freer outlook toward an infinite world.30
The world of the German Romantic salon that tolerated no interruption –

the world that Liszt interrupted – was a world founded upon private expe-
rience. The interrelationship of private experience and social interaction
implicit in the concept of Bildung has seldom been so succinctly captured
as in the well-known painting Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim by Carl
Johann Arnold (Figure 2.2). All the elements are there: the Attic busts cast-
ing shadows on the wall; the model of Bettina’s famous Goethe monument,
depicting a young Bettina in a Mignon-like pose of adoration before her
beloved master; the quartet, led by Joachim, engaged in the musical equiv-
alent of enlightened conversation; and finally the audience, with Bettina
herself isolated from the other auditors, head in hand, lost in her own
thoughts and feelings. Bettina seems almost a member of the ensemble. The
remaining audience is of undetermined size. In this view, the well-realised
individual is a constituent of an expansible, organically interrelated whole.
Though the performance takes place in Bettina’s home, it could as well
have taken place in the Singakademie, with its aura of reverential listening,
surrounded by the trappings of classical culture.31
Priest of the public
The aspect of ‘inwardness’, so salient in these images and descriptions, was

an important element of the nineteenth-century north-German identity,
30 F. von Raumer (ed.), Historisches Taschenbuch, new series, vol. 6 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus,
1845), pp. 205–8 passim.
31 See B. Borchard, ‘Quartettabend bei Bettine’ in S. Fontaine, W. Grünzweig and M. Brzoska
(eds.), Töne, Farben, Formen: Über Musik und die Bildenden Künste, Festschrift für Elmar Budde
(Laaber Verlag, 1995), pp. 243–56.
Figure 2.2. Carl Johann Arnold, Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim, c. 1856.
Original: Frankfurt am Main, Freies Deutsches Hochstift/Frankfurter Goethe-Museum
mit Goethe-Haus.
rooted in native pietistic traditions, and pitted against the supposed materi-
alistic superficiality of French culture. Felix Mendelssohn acknowledged the
local res severa,32 while making the case for the establishment of Germany’s
first conservatory of music in a letter of 9 April 1840 to Leipzig Kreisdirector
Johann Paul von Falkenstein:33
32 The Leipzig Gewandhaus motto (Seneca), Res severa est verum gaudium, translates as ‘a serious
matter is a thing of joy’, or, alternatively, ‘a thing of joy is a serious matter’.
33 The correct date of the letter is 9 April, not 8 April (the date of Mendelssohn’s draft), as it
appears in most sources. The role of Kreisdirektor was that of District Director of the city,
subservient to the Landrat, the Head of District Authority.
For a long time, music has flourished in this country, and precisely that disposition in
music which lies closest to every thinking and feeling art-lover’s heart, an inclination
towards the true and serious, has from time immemorial taken firm root here. Such
widespread interest has certainly been neither accidental, nor without important
consequences for Bildung in general, and through it music has become an important
force – not simply for immediate pleasure, but for serving higher spiritual needs.34
For those who had been brought up in the milieu of salon Geselligkeit,
and particularly amongst assimilated German Jews, music-making was a
spiritual art that gradually assumed the aspect of religious ritual – not in a
formal or dogmatic sense, but in the original sense of ‘re-ligare’: that which
fosters a feeling of reconnection to what Paul Tillich called the ‘ground
of being’.35 In her celebrated study of the Berlin Salons, Petra Wilhelmy-
Dollinger describes the salonnière as the ‘priestess’ of the cult of Geselligkeit,
adding: ‘The closest analogy and prototype for [the] weekly jour fixe of
her “congregation” were the jours fixes of the Jewish and Christian worship
service on the Sabbath and Sunday.’36 For Joachim, who grew to maturity
under the strong influence first of the Mendelssohns and later of Bettina
von Arnim, this quasi-religious aspect of salon culture was central to his
understanding of his role as an artist. In a document entitled Kleine Sätze für
mich (‘Little Sentences for Myself ’) that Joachim sent to Bettina on 10 August
1853, is written the following: ‘Artists should not be servants, but priests of
the public.’37 This epigram later found its way into Brahms’s commonplace
book,38 Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein, together with several of Bettina’s
own – among them: ‘Denken ist beten’ (‘Thinking is prayer’).
‘Artists should not be servants, but priests of the public’ – with time, others
would come to see Joachim as he saw himself. ‘I always felt as though he
were a priest, thrilling his congregation with a sermon revealing the noblest
moral beauties of a theme, which could not help but interest all humanity’,
wrote Leopold Auer.39 A priest ministers not to a public, however, but to a
34 E. Kneschke, Das Conservatorium der Musik in Leipzig: Seine Geschichte, seine Lehrer und
Zöglinge. Festgabe zum 25 jährigen Jubiläum am 2. April 1868 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1868), pp. 5–6.
35 ‘The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God.’ P. Tillich,
The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), p. 57. Tillich, who
was born 75 miles from Berlin in 1886, was a product of Berlin’s humanistic educational
system.
36 Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Der Berliner Salon, p. 3.
37 Versteigerungskatalog 155, 5 July 1929 (Berlin: Karl Ernst Henrici, 1929), p. 59. See also
J. Brahms, Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein: Ausspruche von Dichtern, Philosophen und
Künstlern, ed. C. Krebs (Berlin: Verlag des Deutschen Brahmsgesellschaft, 1909), p. 58.
38 Ibid., p. 60.
39 L. Auer, Violin Playing as I Teach It (New York: Dover Publications, 1980), p. 6.
congregation – and ultimately to each individual within that congregation.

A priest makes house calls. William Makepeace Thackeray’s daughter Lady
Ritchie (1837–1919) wrote movingly of how Joachim played solo Bach to a
mortally ill Mrs Horsley, who ‘wanted to hear him once more’.
In the dim, curtained back room looking across another garden the dying mistress
of the house sat propped up with cushions in a chair. Joachim stood with his back
to the window, holding his violin, and we waited in silence by the doorway while
he played gravely and with exquisite beauty. The sad solemn room was full of the
blessing of Bach, coming like a gospel to the sufferer in need of rest.40
The majority of Joachim’s performances took place in private homes. He

played often in the homes of leading artists, poets, politicians and captains
of industry – not as a hired entertainer, but always as an invited guest.41
‘Joachim would never discuss money matters’, wrote his friend Edward
Speyer.
He never took a fee for playing at private houses. He told me that he once had an
invitation to dine with Mr and Mrs Gladstone and, as was his wont, took his violin
with him and offered to play after dinner. Gladstone, not knowing what to do in
the matter of remuneration, afterwards asked a mutual friend to approach Joachim,
the answer being an absolute refusal. Gladstone thereupon invited him to breakfast
to meet a number of distinguished men.42
The greatest nineteenth-century musicians, from Mendelssohn and Schu-

mann to Meyerbeer, Wagner and Liszt, sought to elevate the intellectual
and social role of music to the status of literature and art. Not for nothing
did Liszt call his piano concerts ‘recitals’. Domestic settings that allowed for
familiarity and intimate conversation were the ideal environment in which
to advance this goal. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s son recalled an evening at home
when his father came to make a connection – to posit an equality – between
Joachim’s art and his own:
My father was fond of asking Joachim to play to him in his own house. One particular
evening I remember, at 86, Eaton Square. My father had been expressing his wonder
at Joachim’s mastery of the violin, – for Joachim had been playing to us and our
friends numberless Hungarian dances, – and by way of thanks for the splendid
40 A. Thackeray Ritchie, Blackstick Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), p. 61.
41 Joachim’s British friends included, among others, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning,
William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Edwin Henry Landseer, Sir
Frederic Leighton, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John Everett Millais, George Frederic Watts,
Charles Darwin, William Gladstone, Percy Hague Jowett, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers
Stanford and George Grove.
42 E. Speyer, My Life and Friends (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1937), pp. 182–3.
music I asked him to read one of his poems to Joachim. Accordingly after the guests
had gone he took the great musician to smoke with him in his ‘den’ at the top of the
house. There they talked of Goethe, especially praising a poem of Goethe’s old age,
‘Der West-östliche Divan,’ and then my father read ‘The Revenge.’ On reaching the
line
And then the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
he asked Joachim, ‘Could you do that on your violin?’43
As the following examples show, Joachim not only played for his circle
of friends, he played with them (Figure 2.3). Many nineteenth-century
auditors were themselves musical amateurs of considerable attainments,
and in those days the boundaries between professional and amateur were
not sharply drawn. This had significant consequences for the art, not only
providing a ready-made support system for professional performers and
composers, but affecting the very nature – the intimacy and depth – of
composers’ works. Antonie von Kaiserfeld (1847–1933) relates a charm-
ing story concerning the first reading of Brahms’s String Quintet in F major
Op. 88, which demonstrates the important intermediate position that musi-
cal amateurs occupied in the fabric of nineteenth-century musical life:
In 1882 we spent our second summer with Brahms in Altaussee; twice a week there
was the most beautiful quartet playing. Professor Wagner from Budapest had built
a villa for himself with a magnificent music room. For matinées, he often invited
as many as 90 people, amongst them a few nobility. Ludwig Strauß, solo violinist
to the Queen of England, was the outstanding first violinist; Professor Wagner, the
host, the second; the lawyer Dr Alois Majer the excellent violist, and Professor Prehn
from Trieste played the cello. Brahms, who already knew the quartet, brought the
manuscript of the F major String Quartet [sic] and that of the C major Trio; for the
latter, he himself played the piano part. But for the F major String Quartet [sic] there
was no one to play the second viola. Brahms knew that my husband was a very good
violinist, and asked him to take over the second viola part. My husband had never
played the viola, and therefore demurred. But Brahms declared categorically: ‘I give
you two days to learn your part!’ Before the performance, there was a rehearsal.
With a cigar in his mouth, his hands crossed behind his back, the master walked up
and down, giving his instructions: ‘the conclusion of the second movement ends
like sighs.’ Saying this, he thumped my husband on the shoulder, looked at me with
a malicious smile, and said: ‘the married ones will do this the best!!’44
43 H. Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1898), vol. II,
p. 233.
44 A. von Kaiserfeldt, Aus den Erinnerungen einer 85 Jährigen (privately printed, 1932), pp. 66–7.
The official premiere of the String Quintet in F major Op. 88 occurred on 29 December 1882
Figure 2.3. Ferdinand Schmutzer, Joachim und Exzellenz von Keudell, musizierend.
Etching and drypoint, 1907.
Like Strauß, Joachim regularly engaged in some form of music-making

either for or with amateur players, even those whose skills were far beneath
his own. As Henriette Feuerbach45 wrote in 1856:
Yesterday evening it put me in a melancholy mood when I heard that Joachim is

spending the entire summer here, and is making music privately nearly every day
with Francis Bunsen, whose playing is quite mediocre and soulless. What would it
mean to me, to test the fruits of my many years of effort against a true artist – but
who here thinks of poor Frau Feuerbach?46
For Henriette Feuerbach, it did not seem out of the question that Europe’s
greatest violinist should make time to play with her. For her, Joachim was
not merely a great performer before the public, but an artist to test her skills
against in private – and not just her skills, but, in a very real way, the level
of her spiritual development, her ‘soul’. Joachim likewise viewed his artistic
role as both social and didactic, and he was, in general, not above taking on
this task. Like Mendelssohn, Joachim made music for ‘fine society’. For him,
as for Mendelssohn, the purpose of art, within this context, was as much
to educate as to entertain. This conviction, which Mendelssohn saw as hav-
ing ‘important consequences for Bildung in general’,47 clearly informed the
philosophy and repertoire of the Joachim Quartet Singakademie concerts,
which were founded and administered as an adjunct to the educational mis-
sion of the Berlin Hochschule, and which explicitly carried the dual objec-
tive: ‘to serve as a model for students and to provide pleasure for the public’.48
Moser’s description of Joachim chatting and joking with audience mem-
bers ‘as though at home’, and walking to his music stand ‘as if he simply
wanted to continue the conversation with his dear guests’, confirms the
impression of informal hospitality that one associates with the Romantic
in Frankfurt. Antonie von Kaiserfeldt was the daughter of the art professor Alfred Ritter von
Franck (1808–84), and wife of Moritz von Kaiserfeld, Edler von Blagatinschegg (1811–85), an
Austrian nobleman and politician.
45 1812–92, mother of Brahms’s friend the painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829–80).
46 H. Uhde-Bernays (ed.), Henriette Feuerbach: Ihr Leben in ihren Briefen (Munich: Kurt Wolff
Verlag, 1926), p. 182.
47 Kneschke, Das Conservatorium der Musik in Leipzig.
48 ‘At the suggestion of the Director, an annual series of public quartet concerts shall be given,
organised by the instrumental class of the music school, which shall be carefully prepared and
performed by the teachers of the same, and which shall serve as a model for students, and to
provide pleasure for the public. The students of the music school’s quartet classes shall receive
free entry to these public quartet concerts. The proceeds from these concerts, after the
payment of costs and of honoraria to the Director and the teachers, shall accrue to the
Hochschule for its purposes; the Director has the right to make suggestions for their use.’ Acta
des Königlichen Geheimen Civil-Cabinets betr: Die Hochschule für Musik zu Berlin, quoted in
Borchard, Stimme und Geige, p. 530.
salon – in Fanny Hensel’s words, that ‘remarkable cross between private and
public’ space. Further, consistent with salon Geselligkeit, a certain Cultus
prevailed at these concerts, as at Tieck’s readings, which involved ‘a certain
solemnity and devotion, that tolerated not the slightest interruption’, so
that exemplary performances of canonic works – performances intended
to serve the cause of Bildung – might be grasped in full, and so ‘produce
a deeper insight into the true art of living’, ‘and a freer outlook toward an
infinite world’.49
Joachim viewed his audience as a congregation of friends. He viewed
himself as a priest of art. As with Bettina, even when he addressed himself to
the unnamed public, his being was still only bounded by the circle of those
whom he knew, whose sympathetic understanding he took for granted, and
whom he believed to be partners in his efforts, maintaining the high ground
with equally noble aims, united with him in the highest endeavour.
Joachim’s audience: three representative men
The term is used here in the Emersonian sense: not of average men, but
of great men, representative of an ideal;50 men of genius who, outside
their fields of endeavour, were lovers of music as the essence of the old
Attic conceit: the indissoluble unity of the beautiful and the good. Three
representative men who exemplified the Bildungsideal of their time, and
who, as it happens, were prominent and faithful patrons of the Joachim
Quartet concerts.
Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800–91) –
one of the pre-eminent military strategists of the nineteenth century and,
together with Bismarck, one of the founders of modern Germany – was a
man of exemplary classical Bildung. A lover of music and poetry, he had
a fine command of Goethe’s works, and could recite whole scenes from
Faust by heart. He and Joachim were introduced in 1871, in the immediate
aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war.
Joachim spoke of Moltke at all times with enormous admiration and
respect. The general was a man of definite, if conservative, musical ideas.51
49 Raumer, Historisches Taschenbuch, p. 208.

50 Emerson was, of course, steeped in German Idealism. Joachim, in turn, was one of the first
Germans to read Emerson, whose works he came to know and admire through his friend
Herman Grimm.
51 His favourite composers were Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert and
Schumann. He also displayed a fondness for the music of Friedrich Kiel (1821–85). Through
Joachim, Moltke became one of the founding honorary patrons of the Beethoven-Haus in
Bonn, of which Joachim was honorary president.
His tastes did not extend to Brahms, whom he found too complex, and, as
for Wagner, he preferred the Reichstag debates, ‘for there one can at least
move to bring a thing to an end’.52 ‘He disliked all virtuosity’, wrote his
biographer Max Jäns.
He had no sympathy for technical pyrotechnics; a melodic Adagio, a beautiful

cantilena would always enthrall him. It was one of his greatest pleasures whenever
Professor Joachim would arrive in the evening to play his violin for him. Then, he
would sit by the hour in the corner of his sofa, almost without moving; and the
master never tired of playing for this quiet listener, for he knew and felt that he was
completely and intimately understood.53
Friedrich Dressler, who often played the piano for Moltke, recalled occasions
when ‘Joachim played and Frau Joachim sang, and De Ahna and Hausmann
joined in . . . Sometimes there was recitation, and whole scenes from “Man-
fred” were declaimed by Richard Kahle. The Field Marshal listened to that
actor with pleasure, and he was often invited. He never left without having
recited Heine’s “Seegespenst.”’54 ‘I never heard Joachim play more magnifi-
cently than at these little parties’, wrote Dressler. ‘He felt how much the Field
Marshal appreciated his art, and it inspired him. The longer he played –
and he played more on one evening at the General Staff Department than
in three concerts – the more genial he became. For his last piece he always
played Schumann’s “Abendlied”, which Moltke used to call “Our Musical
Tattoo”.’55 In the years following their first acquaintance, Moltke became
a regular patron of the Joachim Quartet concerts; indeed, it was said that
Berliners ‘never felt that a Singakademie concert could begin unless Moltke
was in his place’.56
The prominent physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–
94), noted for his work on the perception of sound, was another repre-
sentative figure from Joachim’s audience. A notice of his death in 1894
relates:
He found his chief relaxation in hearing the highest order of music, and his massive
head and broad brow might almost always be seen in one of the front rows of
the Singakademie, at the famous string quartet concerts of Profs. Joachim and
de Ahna, to which he listened with the highest enjoyment. Instances might be
indefinitely multiplied in which a love for music has gone hand-in-hand with
eminent scientific ability, but with Prof. von Helmholtz it was a passion; perhaps
because his investigations had led him to look upon music as a science, even more
52 F. A. Dressler, Moltke in seiner Häuslichkeit, 2nd edn (Berlin: F. Fontane, 1904), p. 47.
53 M. Jäns, Feldmarschall Moltke, 2 vols. (Berlin: Ernst Hofmann & Co., 1900), vol. II, pp. 435–6.
54 Dressler, Moltke, pp. 53–4. 55 Ibid., p. 55.
56 ‘Moltke’, The Outlook [New York], 86/2, (11 May 1907), p. 76.
than as an art. He could analyse every chord, and pass an unerring judgment on
every harmonic progression. If he could have found time to devote himself to such
work, he might have been among the first of musical critics, as his friend the late Dr.
Billroth, the distinguished Professor of Surgery at the University of Vienna, actually
was for some years, until the demands upon his time forced him to give up this
mode of recreation.57
Helmholtz’s memorial service was held in the Singakademie, attended by

the Emperor and the Empress. In his honour, the choir of the Königliche
Hochschule für Musik sang a chorale, and Joachim performed Schumann’s
‘Abendlied’.58
Like many in Joachim’s audience, Helmholtz was himself an amateur per-
former, and deeply susceptible to musical impressions. One evening, after
making music with Joachim, he wrote: ‘Beethoven’s opus 130, monstrously
grandiose and serious, but deeply sad, has only today become totally trans-
parent for me. Every bar of the adagio was played perfectly; it is like a tearful
dream of lost ideals, and perhaps the archetype of Tristan dying for love,
the impalpable wave of an infinite melody.’59
A concluding story may make palpable the sense of intimate personal
relations as well as the shared experience of sacralised listening that prevailed
amongst the audience, and between the audience and performers, at the
Joachim Quartet concerts. A third member of Joachim’s distinguished,
gebildete, Singakademie audience, the artist Adolph Menzel (1815–1905),
attended the Joachim Quartet concerts from the very beginning until his
death on 9 February 1905 – a thirty-six-year span. Edith Stargardt-Wolff
recalled:
A concert of the Joachim Quartet was planned for the same evening. Joachim’s three
partners had already seated themselves at their stands when Joachim appeared,
mounting the ramp, and, with deepest seriousness, spoke these simple words:
‘Before we begin our programme, we wish to play, in memory of the man whose
seat is empty today for the first time, the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Opus 130,
which he particularly loved. – Those present arose, and stood while they listened to
the magnificent movement, which may never have been played or listened to with
greater warmth of feeling than in that hour.’60
57 ‘From the German Capital’, Book News: A Monthly Survey of General Literature 13 (September
1894–August 1895), pp. 72–3.
58 L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholtz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 437.
59 Quoted in M. Meulders, Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience, ed. and trans.
L. Garey (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), pp. 157–8.
60 Stargardt-Wolff, Wegbereiter, p. 149.
3 Domesticity in Brahms’s String Sextets,
Opp. 18 and 36
marie sumner lott
When we speak of domestic music-making in Brahms’s lifetime, piano music

and song frequently dominate the conversation. Scenes of women and, less
often, men gathered around the keyboard to sing through a popular song or
aria or to play four-hand dances and arrangements of larger works spring
readily to mind. Indeed, many music history textbooks and surveys of the
period emphasise new genres and approaches to the piano in order to
illustrate the Romantic style of the 1830s–50s and discuss works like the
piano quintets of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms to demonstrate
the centrality of the keyboard in Romantic musical life.1 Such sources often
imply that this focus on the keyboard and on producing music, instruments
and instruction for domestic pianists replaced previous generations’ interest
in chamber genres like the string quartet and quintet, genres that had
occupied composers and their patrons in the Classical and early Romantic
eras (c. 1770s–1820s).
However, for amateur and professional musicians of the mid- to late
nineteenth century, including members of Brahms’s circle, performances of
string chamber music continued to be a vital part of domestic musical life.
Brahms’s correspondence is filled with references to casual performances of
his chamber works in the private homes of friends, as other contributors to
this volume attest. For instance, the surgeon Theodor Billroth, a close friend
1 The illustrations of nineteenth-century music-making in A History of Western Music, for

example, all feature the keyboard and its players in their typical (often gender-coded) roles at
the heart of domestic musical life: in Arthur Hughes’s The Home Quartet (1883), a mother leads
her daughters in performing a piano quartet; in Sebastian Gutzwiller’s Family Concert in Basle
(1849), a woman at a square piano accompanies a violinist and flautist while other family
members look on; and in the obligatory image for all studies of this period, Moritz von
Schwind’s drawing Schubertiade (1868), Franz Schubert and Johann Michael Vogl perform
from the piano at the centre of an imagined gathering of friends and supporters. See P.
Burkholder, D. Grout and C. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 8th edn (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2010), pp. 566–7, 599 and 609. For a correlating study of the period that focuses on
works involving the piano, see the monumental study, J. Samson (ed.) The Cambridge History of
Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Jonathan Dunsby’s chapter
‘Chamber Music and Piano’ (pp. 500–21) treats only piano trios, piano quartets and piano
quintets by the major figures of this period (Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms) and their solo
piano works, excluding works for winds and for strings alone. 43
44 marie sumner lott
of Brahms from about 1865 until his death in 1894, regularly held soirées
to play music by Brahms and others. Early in their friendship, Billroth
performed one of Brahms’s string sextets in his home in Zurich and wrote
to the composer about the effect it had on him:
Dear Brahms!
Yesterday we played your new sextette at my home, partly with professionals, partly
with amateurs, and I wish to tell you what an extraordinary joy we had in the
playing of it. Playing it as a four-handed arrangement for piano, I could not have any
realization of the extraordinarily beneficent and happy feeling. This is due not only to
the ease with which the stream of melody flows and in which one charming motif
after the other associates itself, but also to the entire construction of this work of art,
to the crescendo of the emotions and the harmonic entity of the whole . . . Please
accept a thousand thanks for the beautiful hours which you prepared for us.2
Billroth’s particular reaction to playing the sextet as a string player – he was

also a very capable pianist, and he often played four-hand arrangements
with Brahms in Vienna – emphasises the communal experience and the
pure sensual pleasure of Brahms’s string style in this work. As a performer
who could (and did) experience works like this one both as an arrangement
for piano and in its true form as a work for strings, he offers an important
reminder that this music was designed to bring pleasure to the players,
and that Brahms made compositional choices with that environment in
mind.
Much string music produced in the 1830s–70s, in fact, addressed its par-
ticular niche in the musical marketplace with a style of part-writing and
an approach to instrumental forms tailor-made for domestic string players
performing recreationally.3 This chapter addresses Brahms’s engagement
with that tradition of domestic string music by examining the musical
style, reception and compositional history of his first string chamber works,
the String Sextets Opp. 18 and 36. These works bear many similarities to
2 Author’s emphasis. Letter of 4 May 1866, Zurich, from Billroth to Brahms, in H. Barkan (ed.)
Johannes Brahms and Theodor Billroth: Letters from a Musical Friendship (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1957), p. 5.
3 The author has explored this phenomenon and the repertoire associated with it in some detail
elsewhere: see M. Sumner Lott, ‘Changing Audiences, Changing Styles: String Chamber Music
and the Industrial Revolution’, in R. Illiano and L. Sala (eds.), Instrumental Music and the
Industrial Revolution: Proceedings of the International Conference, Cremona, 1–3 July 2006
(Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2010), pp. 175–239; and ‘Producing and Receiving Chamber Music in
the Nineteenth Century, c. 1830–1880’, unpublished PhD thesis, Eastman School of Music,
University of Rochester (2008).
Domesticity in Brahms’s String Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36 45
earlier examples of string chamber music designed for performance in the

home, and these features differentiate the sextets from Brahms’s later works,
especially the string quartets, written with a different setting in mind.4 Sit-
uating the sextets in their correct social and cultural tradition allows us to
understand better the role that domestic music-making played in the devel-
opment of Brahms’s musical language during his early maturity. Perhaps
more importantly, it allows us to re-examine the relationships between
the intended settings of musical performance (including the performers
involved in them) and the choices that composers like Brahms made in
writing for those audiences.
The sextet genre
As previous authors have noted, Brahms’s string sextets are essentially with-
out precedent in the musical world.5 Although hundreds of trios, quartets,
quintets and octets survive from the late eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, the combination of paired violins, violas and cellos remained an
unusual grouping until Brahms’s works were published. The Hofmeister–
Whistling catalogues, which provide the most comprehensive record of
music in print throughout the nineteenth century, list fifteen works for this
combination, plus four others for different combinations of six stringed
instruments, published during the nineteenth century (Table 3.1).6 Of
these, only one precedes Brahms’s Op. 18: Louis Spohr’s Sextet in C major
Op. 140, published in 1850.7 Ignoring just for a moment that single impor-
tant predecessor – to which we shall return below – we might ask what
4 On the string quartets and their particular relationship to the Viennese music culture of the
1870s, see M. Sumner Lott, ‘At the Intersection of Public and Private Musical Life: Brahms’s
Op. 51 String Quartets’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 137/2 (2012), pp. 243–305.
5 Three studies have explored the generic questions and problems raised by Brahms’s string
sextets: M. Kube, ‘Brahms’ Streichsextette und ihr gattungsgeschichtlicher Kontext’, in G.
Gruber (ed.), Die Kammermusik von Johannes Brahms: Tradition und Innovation (Laaber Verlag,
2001), pp. 149–74; W. Ruf, ‘Die zwei Sextette von Brahms: Eine analytische Studie’, in F.
Krummacher and W. Steinbeck (eds.), Brahms-Analysen: Referate der Kieler Tagung 1983
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), pp. 121–33; and W. Ruf, ‘Kammermusik zwischen Exklusivität und
Öffentlichkeit: Zum Sextett Op. 18 von Johannes Brahms’, in M. Sammer (ed.), Leitmotive:
Kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Traditionsbildung. Festschrift für Dietz-Rüdiger Moser zum 60.
Geburtstag (Kallmünz: Lassleben, 1999), pp. 427–34. Neither Kube nor Ruf mention Louis
Spohr’s String Sextet in C Major Op. 140 (1850).
6 These catalogues are also referred to in Chapter 11 as the Hofmeister Monatsberichte.
7 Only Niels Gade published a sextet for the same instrumentation between the publication of
Brahms’s Op. 18 in 1862 and his Op. 36 in 1866; the other sixteen works follow Brahms’s
Op. 36. Gade’s E Sextet Op. 44 was published by Kistner of Leipzig in May 1865.
Table 3.1. String sextets published in the nineteenth century.
Date of Hofmeister– Instrumentation if not 2 Vln,

Whistling entry Composer Op. no. and key 2 Vla, 2 Vc
May–June 1850 Spohr, Louis Op. 140 in C major

June 1861 David, Ferdinand Op. 38 in E minor 3 Vln, 1 Vla, 2 Vc
January 1862 Brahms, Johannes Op. 18 in B major
January 1865 Rudorff, Ernst Op. 5 in A major 3 Vln, 1 Vla, 2 Vc
May 1865 Gade, Niels Op. 44 in E major
April 1865 Dietz, Friedrich Op. 15 in D minor 4 Vln, 1 Vla, 1 Vc
September 1866 Brahms, Johannes Op. 36 in G major
October 1873 Raff, Joachim Op. 178 in G minor
November 1874 Hofmann, Heinrich Op. 25 in E minor
November 1879 Dvořák, Antonı́n Op. 48 in A major
September 1880 Davidoff, Carl Op. 35 in E major
May 1882 Franck, Eduard Op. 41 in E major
December 1882 Wilm, Nicolai Op. 27 in B minor
June 1894 Franck, Eduard Op. 50 in D major
September 1896 Glass, Louis Op. 15 in D minor
May 1897 Köhler, Bernhard (WoO) Sextet in A
major
September 1897 Krug, Arnold Op. 68 in D major 2 Vln, 1 Vla, Violotta, Vc,
Cellone OR 2 Vln, 2 Vla,
2 Vc
November 1897 Molbe, Heinrich Op. 64 in D major 2 Vln, 2 Vla, Vc, Cbs
November 1899 Heinrich XXIV Op. 12 in D minor
prompted Brahms to compose string sextets at all, and why he chose to do

so at this particular juncture in his musical career.
The early 1850s had been a time of great productivity for Brahms. He
published nine opuses of piano music and songs in 1853 and 1854, and
he was heralded as the saviour of modern music in Robert Schumann’s
‘Neue Bahnen’ (‘New Paths’) article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.8 But
in 1854, Schumann’s suicide attempt, the stressful period that followed,
and the high expectations the article inspired led Brahms to withdraw
into the study of older music and to contemplate his role in the musical
8 Reprinted in R. Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, ed. M. Kreisig,
2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914), vol. II, pp. 301–2. Schumann’s article laid the
foundation for the critical reception of Brahms’s works in the second half of the nineteenth
century, and twentieth-century scholars have discussed its messianic language at length. See
M. MacDonald, Brahms (New York: Schirmer, 1990), pp. 18–19; J. Swafford, Johannes Brahms:
A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), pp. 83–8; and M. E. Bonds, ‘The Ideology of
Genre: Brahms’s First Symphony’, in After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the Symphony
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 138–74.
world. His next works reflect this period of study with a strong neoclassical
aura, effectively purged of the Romantic impulses that characterise his early
music. James Webster has described the Serenade Op. 11, for instance, as ‘a
compendium of wholesome influences’.9 After Schumann’s death in 1856,
Brahms separated himself from Clara Schumann and the duties as her aide
and confidant that had consumed him for the previous two and a half years.
He was invited to take a position at the court of Prince Leopold III in the
small principality of Lippe-Detmold, and he began in these first years of
freedom to rediscover his own compositional voice.10 The position could
not have been better suited to the composer’s needs at that time. For three
months of the year he resided at the court, giving lessons and conducting a
small choir and, occasionally, the court orchestra. He spent the remaining
nine months in Hamburg with his family – still drawing a generous stipend
from the Detmold court – composing and finishing works for publication
and touring as a performer to promote his compositions. Although the
limitations of the small city’s musical forces would soon push him to resign
and seek a more artistically satisfying position, the three years of his Detmold
tenure offered a degree of stability and comfort that led to the composition
of the two String Sextets, two Piano Quartets Opp. 25 and 26, the Piano
Quintet Op. 34 and much vocal music.
During this time, domestic music-making played an integral role in
Brahms’s everyday musical life. At Detmold, he gave lessons to the royal
family members and their close friends and associates, and he led them in
semi-public performances. In Hamburg, he led the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir,
an amateur women’s chorus for which he wrote or arranged many works,
and a smaller group of female choristers who performed vocal quartets and
sextets.11 His other compositions reflect these experiences with amateur
music lovers. Like the later sets of Liebeslieder-Walzer Opp. 52 and 65,
four-hand waltzes and other ‘light’ works for the domestic market, the
first String Sextet evokes the cosy environment that produced it.12 It also
9 J. Webster, ‘Schubert’s Sonata Form and Brahms’s First Maturity’, 19th-Century Music 2/1 (July
1978), pp. 18–35; 3/1 (July 1979), pp. 52–71.
10 See S. Avins (ed.), Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, trans. S. Avins and J. Eisinger (Oxford
University Press, 1997), p. 155 and MacDonald, Brahms, pp. 48–9. For information on
Brahms’s life in Detmold, see W. Schramm, Johannes Brahms in Detmold, 2nd edn (Hagen:
Lineppe, 1983).
11 The most comprehensive source on Brahms’s Ladies’ Choir activities, the Choir’s
memberships, their repertoire and individual members’ recollections remains S. Drinker,
Brahms and His Women’s Choruses (Merion, PA: Musurgia Publishers, 1952).
12 In 1866, Brahms dedicated the Op. 39 set of sixteen waltzes to his close friend, the Viennese
music critic Eduard Hanslick, to whom Brahms wrote: ‘I was thinking of Vienna, of the pretty
girls with whom you play duets, of you yourself, who like such things, and what not.’ Quoted
in MacDonald, Brahms, p. 191.
demonstrates many musical (especially formal) traits shared by domestic

string music composed and published in the 1840s–60s by now unfamiliar or
less revered composers such as Louis Spohr (1784–1859), George Onslow
(1784–1853) and Václav Veit (1806–64). Publishers including Breitkopf
& Härtel, Peters and Hofmeister reprinted popular string works by these
composers throughout the nineteenth century, demonstrating that a market
for accessible string works thrived well into Brahms’s lifetime and beyond.13
A quick examination of that musical style will provide the context in which
we should place Brahms’s sextets.
Domestic string music in the first half of the nineteenth century
String quartets and quintets by Spohr and Onslow, to choose just two
prolific composers of the early nineteenth century, enjoyed a long period
of popularity among performers and publishers, as evidenced by printing
records.14 Both composers’ works were reprinted well past their deaths, into
the last decades of the century. Despite their very different cultural back-
grounds and career trajectories, Onslow and Spohr employed a common
musical style that connects them to similarly popular works by contempo-
raries throughout Europe. Sometimes described as a ‘gentleman composer’,
wealthy Frenchman George Onslow composed and performed music pri-
marily for his own pleasure. His family’s wealth provided for his needs,
but he published thirty-five string quartets and thirty-four quintets that
found an avid audience in France and in German-speaking lands.15 In his
13 Spohr’s works were published into the 1890s; the works of Veit and Onslow were printed as
late as 1906 and 1910 respectively.
14 The surviving records of these firms hold much valuable information about the process
of producing and distributing music of all kinds in the nineteenth century. The author’s
monograph (currently in progress, under contract to University of Illinois Press) Producing and
Consuming String Chamber Music in the Nineteenth Century considers these sources in detail,
as far as they relate to the composition and performance of string chamber works. On the
history of technical advances in music printing, see H. Lenneberg, On the Publishing and
Dissemination of Music, 1500–1850 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2003) or A. Devriès-Lesure,
‘Technological Aspects’, in R. Rasch (ed.), Music Publishing in Europe 1600–1900: Concepts and
Issues, Bibliography (Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2005), pp. 63–88. Another excellent source
on German publishing in the first third of the nineteenth century is A. Beer, Musik zwischen
Komponist, Verlag und Publikum: Die Rahmenbedingungen des Musikschaffens in Deutschland
im ersten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2000). On the Peters firm
specifically, see I. Lawford-Hinrichsen, Music Publishing and Patronage. C. F. Peters: 1800 to
the Holocaust (Kenton: Edition Press, 2000).
15 Onslow was the first son of former British parliamentarian Edward Onslow (1758–1829), who
had moved from England to France a few years before George’s birth and established a lavish
youth, Onslow studied the piano with Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760–1812)
and Johann Baptist Cramer (1771–1858), then harmony and composition
with Anton Reicha (1770–1836). He took up the cello in his mid-twenties
so that he could play chamber music with friends, which he did regularly
throughout his adult life at his country estate and in Paris during the winter
social season.
Onslow’s contemporary Louis Spohr, on the other hand, was a profes-
sional musician from a family of musicians.16 He became one of the most
respected violin virtuosos of the period and a versatile composer. In addition
to operas and oratorios, symphonies, concertos, lieder and virtuoso pieces
for his own concert appearances – including quatuors brillants, or works
for solo violin accompanied by violin, viola and cello – Spohr composed
and published dozens of string chamber works clearly designed for more
informal performances in his own middle-class home and homes like his.
These quartet parties differed from the more formal musical evenings that
he provided for his patrons in Kassel, as Spohr made clear in his autobiogra-
phy. He described them in relation to the purchase of an especially pleasing
country house:
The only thing I missed in the new house was a spacious music room. I therefore had
a partition wall removed that separated two rooms on the first floor . . . I established
here also a quartet circle, at which, in turn with some other families who were lovers
of music, we gave three quartets every week, and concluded the evenings with a
frugal supper.17
The inclusion of the performers’ families and a ‘frugal supper’ depicts a cosy
environment of entertainment and friendship.
The music of Onslow and Spohr addressed the needs and preferences of
domestic musicians in several ways, but their uniform approach to sonata
form and melodic writing best exemplifies the style. Both composers privi-
leged long, lyrical themes that are frequently repeated in their entirety several
country estate in the town of Clermont-Ferrand. According to some sources, Edward fled
England in the wake of a homosexual scandal; his marriage to a wealthy French woman
Marie-Rosalie de Bourdeilles de Brantôme produced four children and allowed him to live out
his days as a man of leisure. The most recent study of Onslow’s life and works is B. Jam, George
Onslow (Clermont-Ferrand: Les Éditions du Mélophile, 2003), but V. Niaux, George Onslow:
Gentleman Compositeur (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2003) delves
more significantly into matters of musical style. For analysis of the chamber music specifically,
see C. Nobach, Untersuchungen zu George Onslows Kammermusik (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1985).
16 For a study of Spohr’s life and works, see C. Brown, Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography
(Cambridge University Press, 1984).
17 L. Spohr, Louis Spohr’s Autobiography (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green,
1865), p. 150.
times in the work, as opposed to motivically intricate themes that are bro-
ken down and rearranged in transitional and developmental passages. They
favoured short developments built on simple procedures such as sequences
around the circle of fifths rather than tension-mounting explorations of
remote key areas and tonal relationships. In these sequential passages, every
player has a chance to play the main melodic fragment being sequenced,
sometimes creating a sense of tedium for listeners, but capitalising on the
anticipation of the players to give the passage momentum and excitement
in the act of performance. In domestic works, straightforward recapitu-
lations present the movement’s primary and secondary materials exactly
as they were introduced (though transposed to remain in the tonic rather
than modulating) usually without shortening the themes. This emphasis on
repeated melodies and passagework allows each member of the ensemble
at least one turn to play an important melody and to participate in the
procedures of the sonata form being explored. Very often, themes presented
by the first cello and violin in the exposition are recapitulated by the second
violin and viola.
For example, in Onslow’s 1831 String Quintet in E major Op. 39 (1831),
the sonata-form first movement’s exposition features large-scale repetition
in both thematic and tonal areas.18 After a brief introduction, the first
cello presents a lyrical primary theme in the tenor range (marked with a
‘false’ treble clef, intended to be played an octave lower than indicated in
the published part). The first violin repeats it with an extended brilliant-
style ending, highlighting the fact that this movement showcases at least
two highly capable performers (Example 3.1a). After the transition and
modulation to the dominant, the first violin presents the second theme
in bars 62–73 and repeats it in bars 82–98, again with a showy extension
(Example 3.1b). In the sonata-form finale of this work, the primary theme
is introduced by the first violin, then repeated by the first cello. The first
violin plays two iterations of the secondary theme, just as it had in the
first movement: a simple version in bars 41–8 and then a variation with
additional flourishes in bars 59–71.
Most of Onslow’s string quintets deploy this technique or similar ones
that ‘script’ convivial social interactions among the players. As in polite
conversation and friendly debate, each member of the group supportively
attends to the needs of the others, awaiting a chance to interject with some
relevant musical idea or extension of a phrase. Spohr’s works employ the
18 This work is now available at the Sibley Music Library’s online repository of public domain
scores: http://hdl.handle.net/1802/5869 (accessed on 13 February 2014).
Example 3.1a. Onslow, String Quintet in E major Op. 39, first movement, bars 20–41
(exposition and repetition of the primary theme).
Example 3.1a. (cont.)
same techniques – especially in the string quintets and in his String Sextet
of 1848 (published in 1850), the only known predecessor to Brahms’s works
for two violins, two violas and two cellos, as mentioned above.
Like other domestic-style string works, Spohr’s sextet contains ‘loose’,
leisurely forms with repeated themes. As Example 3.2 shows, the sonata-
form first movement opens with a twelve-bar primary theme, presented in
a duet by the first viola and cello. After an imperfect cadence and two bars
of prolonged dominant harmony, the two violins take up the theme, and in
this iteration it cadences in the tonic, in bar 26. Note that this opening allows
four of the six members to participate in the movement’s main theme, each
one in a somewhat prominent role, as a member of a duo. The secondary
theme is likewise presented twice later in the movement: by the first violin
in bars 42–9, then by the first viola in bars 50–7.
Example 3.1b. Onslow, String Quintet in E major Op. 39, first movement, bars 62–98
(exposition and repetition of the secondary theme).
Example 3.1b. (cont.)

The remainder of the work contains some idiosyncrasies worth noting

for their potential interest to composers like Brahms. Most salient among
them is the conflation of the A minor Scherzo with the presto Finale in the
tonic (C major). Spohr presents a sprightly, light Scherzo that continually
plays with the juxtaposition of minor and major modes in a simple A–B–
A form, then provides a transition to the Finale, marked Attacca Subito il
Presto (Example 3.3). The Scherzo material interrupts this Finale (a short
monothematic sonata form in the tonic) twice, interjecting the minor-mode
Scherzo theme after the exposition and the major-mode Scherzo theme in
the midst of the recapitulation. The work closes with a rollicking Prestissimo
in C major.
Spohr’s experimental form does not achieve the arresting suspense of
Brahms’s own later hybrids, such as the middle movement of his 1882 F
major String Quintet Op. 88, with its vacillation between C major and
minor in the grave sections juxtaposed with the A major fast sections.
However Spohr’s Sextet certainly provides an early model for this type of
work, and it demonstrates the innovative tendencies of a composer who has
been labelled a conservative by history. Brahms’s appreciation of composers
like Spohr is apparent in his correspondence and in his assimilation of
contemporaneous styles in his musical works.
In 1859, just as he began composing his Sextet Op. 18, Brahms wrote a
letter from Detmold to two of the members of the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir,
responding to the latest gossip from his home town. In the middle of an
otherwise playful note, Brahms mentioned some sad news he had recently
received and his reaction to it:
Example 3.2. Spohr, String Sextet in C major Op. 140, first movement, bars 1–26
(exposition and repetition of the primary theme).
Example 3.2. (cont.)

Spohr is dead! He may well be the last one who still belonged to a more beautiful
era of art than the one we are suffering through. In those days, one could eagerly
keep a look out every week for what new and even more beautiful work had come
from this or that person. Now it is different. In a month of Sundays I see hardly one
volume of music that pleases me, but on the other hand many that even make me
physically ill.
Possibly at no other time has an art form been maltreated as badly as our dear music
nowadays.
I hope better things are quietly maturing, otherwise, in the history of art, our era
will look like a trash heap.19
Brahms’s choice to write a string sextet around this time may have been
inspired by his encounter with Spohr’s sextet, although no record exists to
confirm whether or not he knew this particular work.
Brahms could also have encountered chamber works by Onslow in the
late 1850s, at the same time that he was studying the music of Schubert
and other early Romantics that would be so influential upon the style
19 Letter of 25 October 1859, Detmold, from Brahms to Auguste Brandt and Bertha Porubsky, in
Avins, Brahms: Life and Letters, pp. 203–4. With this letter in mind, perhaps the funereal
quality of the second movement of Op. 18 should be read as a memorial to Spohr.
Example 3.3. Spohr, String Sextet in C major Op. 140, third movement, bars 80–103
and fourth movement, bars 1–16.


of his first maturity. Just after Robert Schumann was sent to Endenich
following his attempted suicide in 1854, Clara Schumann asked Brahms
to sort through her husband’s library of books and music, and he dili-
gently set to work putting things in order and studying scores, books and
manuscripts that interested him.20 Schumann’s own handwritten catalogue
of his scores shows that he owned several volumes of chamber music by
Onslow, suggesting that Brahms had access to these works during the for-
mative years of the mid-1850s and that they may have influenced his works
composed in the early 1860s.21 Previous studies of Brahms’s first-maturity
works have emphasised the influences of classical composers such as Haydn
and Beethoven, and Schubert’s then newly discovered works.22 Without
diminishing the role of those models for Brahms’s development, we should
also consider the performance situations that Brahms could expect for his
works in these decades as important factors in his compositional choices.
The works of composers such as Onslow, Spohr and others provide one way
to understand the relationship between domestic performance and musical
style at this moment of transition in Brahms’s life as well as in musical
culture more generally in the second half of the nineteenth century.
20 Swafford, Johannes Brahms, p. 117.

21 The author wishes to thank Jennifer Ronyak for sharing information about this privately
owned document.
22 Webster, ‘Schubert’s Sonata Form and Brahms’s First Maturity’, pp. 59–60.
Domesticity in Brahms’s First Sextet Op. 18
As in many domestic quartets and quintets by Onslow or Spohr, Brahms’s

thematic construction in Op. 18 emphasises long, lyrical melodies made up
of repeated phrases that are passed around the ensemble, creating a con-
versational texture that is, contrary to typical Haydnesque or Beethovenian
practices, leisurely and calm.
The primary theme, in B, is a remarkable forty-two bars long, with con-
tinual forward momentum created by overlapping phrases (Example 3.4).
The theme begins with repetition: the first cello exposes the opening idea
(a) to an atmospheric accompaniment from the two violas and gently rock-
ing foundation from the second cello; the first violin repeats this phrase
coupled with the first viola in octaves (a ). Bars 20–30 present an answer
(b) in the violin and viola, now playing in parallel sixths and thirds, thereby
increasing the effect of euphonious, domestic agreeableness. The final phrase
of the first theme (c, in bars 31–42) sustains the harmonic momentum,
prolonging the dominant and suspending musical time as the perform-
ers repeat small one- and two-bar motivic ideas, toying with a variety
of chromatic harmonisations of the principal theme’s components. As in
Spohr’s Sextet, the primary theme group allows three of the ensemble mem-
bers to assume a highlighted role. At the recapitulation of this passage in
bar 234, the two violas present the primary theme, finally allowing the
second viola a chance to shine. The second violin and second cello con-
tinue the theme in bars 269–73. This final pairing creates an unusual and
effective low sonority, providing sonic variety and a new character for the
theme, but more importantly, it closes the circle of repetitions: at the end
of this theme, all six members of the ensemble will have played the move-
ment’s main melody while being accompanied by their colleagues at least
once.
In compositional terms, this opening passage displays a playful approach
to the motivic work that would come to define Brahms’s style. Masked in
the sweet sounds of parallel sixths and thirds, and de-emphasised by the
‘heavenly length’ of the thematic materials and their static accompaniments,
a developing-variation approach to theme building is evident here, though
always at work beneath the surface of the music. With the ear focused on the
kaleidoscopic changes in texture and instrumentation, the motivic play that
underscores the final section of the primary thematic and tonal area does
not disturb the serene texture, but enhances it by extending the thematic
process. For the players, those changes in texture allow each of the members
to play multiple roles in the community of the ensemble, sometimes as
Example 3.4. Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, first movement, bars 1–46
(exposition of the primary theme).



soloist and sometimes as accompanist, always in a new configuration that

explores the relationships among the individual constituents.
Brahms creates a Schubertian three-key sonata form in this movement, a
procedure well suited to a style that favours large-scale repetition instead of
motivic recombination.23 The first secondary theme (S1) has been described
as a ländler; though, if so, the rough, countrified manner of the dance has
been smoothed out somewhat with slurs that de-emphasise the downbeat
and a soft dynamic that suggests an indoor rather than an outdoor style.24
In fact, the pizzicato accompaniment, triple metre and lilting dotted rhythm
in the theme evoke an elegant waltz in A major (Example 3.5), connecting
this work to Brahms’s other light works and to music appropriate for the
home and for entertaining. A more straightforward secondary theme (S2)
is introduced in bar 85, in the dominant, F major. The first cello exposes
the theme in the tenor range, which resembles similar treatments of sec-
ondary themes by Onslow, Spohr and Schubert. The first violin’s repetition
of the theme in bars 94–102 allows another player to enjoy a melody that
she or he has already heard performed by a fellow ensemble member.
Continuing in the domestic style, Brahms’s development section in the
first movement of Op. 18 is short – just ninety-three bars. A new theme is
introduced, then broken down into a four-note motive and passed around
the ensemble, and then the first secondary theme (the waltz-like theme first
presented in A major) is explored in the minor mode (bars 192–213). Rather
than shorten or condense the melody, Brahms presents the entire twenty-
three-bar theme in this new key. As in earlier domestic works, Brahms’s
approach here favours a reiteration of the theme, cloaked in the minor
mode, rather than a developmental exploration of its parts.
The subsequent movements of Op. 18 continue to explore repetition in
forms that favour it as an organisational model. The Finale takes shape as a
rondo, for instance, whose refrain begins in the first cello in the tenor range
and is repeated by the first violin (Example 3.6). In this passage, the six-
instrument ensemble is treated as two trios, and Brahms uses this division
into sub-groups to enhance the repetition of material. The lower three voices
present the theme in the first sixteen bars, the higher voices present it in
bars 17–32, and the two groups join to present a varied form of the opening
theme in tonic before the music modulates to the dominant for the Rondo’s
23 The author has explored the relationships between Schubert’s idiosyncratic approach to sonata
form and domestic performances elsewhere – see n. 3.
24 Webster, ‘Schubert’s Sonata Form and Brahms’s First Maturity’, p. 61; and Ruf, ‘Kammermusik
zwischen Exklusivität und Öffentlichkeit’, p. 432.
Example 3.5. Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, first movement, bars 61–109
(secondary theme/key areas).



B section. Here, as elsewhere, the form provides many opportunities for

ensemble members to interpret individual ideas multiple times and to pass
melodies back and forth within the ensemble.
The second movement’s design as a theme and variations connects this
work to the domestic context in several ways. Free-standing variation sets
provided a way for Brahms and other composers to engage with the music
of a favourite predecessor or contemporary and to experiment with motivic
development, and Brahms composed many of these works on themes by
Robert Schumann, Handel, Haydn and Paganini, in addition to sets on orig-
inal themes and on a Hungarian song. The set of variations on a popular
tune or in a popular style was also a lucrative opportunity for eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century composers and publishers to capitalise on the pub-
lic’s desire to bring music from the stage or from faraway lands into their
homes. For instance, sets of variations on Russian themes (including Alexei
L’vov’s Bozhe, tsarya khrani (‘God Save the Tsar’) after it was composed
and adopted as the Russian national anthem in 1833) were printed in large
numbers throughout the period.25 Publishers sometimes created sets of vari-
ations on opera arias for dozens of different instrumentations, including
25 Brahms himself published an early set of variations, Souvenir de la Russie, under the
pseudonym G. W. Marks in 1852; they include a version of the Russian anthem by L’vov. See
also G. Norris, ‘L’vov, Aleksey Fyodorovich’ in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.) The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 29 vols. (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. XV, p. 400.
Example 3.6. Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, fourth movement, bars 1–56
(repetition of the rondo’s refrain; division of the ensemble into two trios).


solo piano, four-hand piano, flute duo, violin duo, string trio and quartet,
salon orchestra and many others, as the Hofmeister–Whistling catalogues
confirm.
Each of the variations in Op. 18 fills what we might describe as a normative
role in the variation sequence, based on other composers’ typical practice
as well as Brahms’s own. After a shared presentation of the D minor theme
alternating eight-bar phrases presented by the first viola, then the first violin,
the first variation resembles a cello showpiece (like the Bach cello suites)
with arpeggiated chords in the first cello and accompanimental material in
the other five voices. The second variation presents the theme in triplets,
and the third recalls an operatic storm scene with chromatic runs in the
two cellos. The fourth variation is the expected major variation, which
gives a pastoral version of the theme to the first violin, then the second
violin. The pastoral topic continues into the last variation, in which the first
viola plays in a musette style. Here again, we can see Brahms spreading solo
opportunities around the ensemble. The second viola is the only instrument
not featured, though it plays thematic material to ‘accompany’ the cellos in
other variations.
Previous commentators have noted that Brahms based this movement
on the archaic folia dance model (Example 3.7). In a nineteenth-century
context, though, the duple metre, minor mode and dotted rhythms of the
Example 3.7a. Typical Baroque folia theme.
Andante ma moderato also suggest a funeral march, a popular trope of

the period.26 In fact, Brahms arranged this movement alone for the piano
and gifted it to Clara Schumann for her forty-first birthday in 1860. The
bittersweet quality of the funereal variations must have seemed appropriate
because the day before (12 September) should have been Clara’s twentieth
wedding anniversary. The death of Louis Spohr in 1859, when Brahms was
composing this work, may also have prompted him to use the funeral march
style for this movement, as his letter quoted earlier suggests.
In many of its features, Brahms’s Sextet Op. 18 engages the same sort of
domestic performance environment that Spohr’s chamber music addressed,
and it deploys gestures designed to appeal to that audience. That said,
we can already see in this work the intermingling of private and public
musical styles that characterises chamber music throughout the last third
of the century. Documented early performances of the Sextet demonstrate
the middle ground that chamber music already occupied at this point in
musical history: performed by professional musicians in private spaces, the
Sextet reflected its domestic venue with an appropriately intimate musical
style, and when performed in public venues, it evoked the exclusivity and
26 J. Littlewood, The Variations of Johannes Brahms (London: Plumbago Books, 2004) contains a
detailed discussion of the two variation movements of Opp. 18 and 36 (see pp. 135–68) in the
context of Brahms’s lifelong engagement with variation forms and sets. At the end of his
treatment, Littlewood offers a ‘poetic interpretation’ of the sextets based on similarities
between these variations and other variation forms in Brahms’s song output. He connects the
sextets and their similar songs to themes of love, death and transformation, but never discusses
the funeral march style or topos as realised in Op. 18.
Example 3.7b. Brahms, String Sextet in B major Op. 18, second movement, bars 1–17
(folia-based theme).
congeniality of a private soirée. For example, Joseph Joachim performed

the work publicly from the manuscript in 1860 in Hanover as part of a
series of regular recitals that he established there from 1856 to 1868.27 He
also performed the work in private settings for friends and admirers, partly
to promote the work and its composer, who was still a relatively unknown
figure in much of Europe. Joachim wrote to Brahms in November 1860 after
the premiere in Hanover, saying:
Don’t be angry because I am still keeping your work! I want to take it to Leipzig
and play it there on Sunday or Tuesday, at David’s house or Härtel’s . . . It has not
been neglected here, for last Sunday evening we played it privately, as I had arranged
some music for the Ambassador in Vienna, von Stockhausen. It gave us all a lot of
pleasure and went well with the same players as before.28
Not coincidentally, Joachim sought to share the work with his fellow
string players in private, intimate settings. He refers here to his former
teacher, the violin virtuoso Ferdinand David (1810–73), who was also a
friend of Mendelssohn and Schumann and who hosted domestic chamber
music evenings that included some of Europe’s finest players.29 Englishman
William Rockstro (1823–95) describes a seemingly informal performance
by Spohr in Leipzig, probably in the 1840s at one of these gatherings, in
which a veritable who’s who of string players participated:
As a Violinist, he [Spohr] stood unrivalled, save by one great Artist, only, whose
name is now as much a ‘Household Word,’ in England as in Germany. His Quartet
playing was especially delightful. We well remember hearing him lead his Double
Quartet in E minor, at a private party, in Leipzig, in the month of June, 1846, with
a delicacy of expression, and refinement of taste, to which no verbal description
could possibly do adequate justice. He was assisted, on that occasion, by Ferdinand
David, and Joachim; Mendelssohn, and Gade, playing the two Viola parts.30
27 See Werkverzeichnis, pp. 62–6, on the first performance of Op. 18. For a discussion of
professional string quartets in the nineteenth century and Joachim’s string quartet concerts,
see T. Potter, ‘From Chamber to Concert Hall’, in R. Stowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion
to the String Quartet (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 41–59.
28 Quoted in Wilhelm Altmann’s preface to J. Brahms, Sextet in B flat major Op. 18 (London:
E. Eulenburg, 1950).
29 When he refers to playing the work ‘at Härtel’s’, he surely means Hermann Härtel, who, with
his brother Raymund, led the publishing firm Breitkopf & Härtel from 1835 until his death in
1875. Hermann Härtel was friendly with Mendelssohn and Schumann in Leipzig, and he
acquired the rights to Brahms’s early works, but chose not to publish this and some other
mature works based on the assessment of an in-house critic. See G. Bozarth, ‘Brahms and the
Breitkopf & Härtel Affair’, Music Review 55/3 (1994), pp. 202–13.
30 W. Smyth Rockstro, A History of Music for the Use of Young Students, 3rd edn (London: Robert
Cocks, 1879), p. 79. Rockstro studied composition and piano with Mendelssohn at the Leipzig
We can easily imagine a similar gathering arranged to perform Brahms’s

Sextet fifteen years later at Joachim’s request. These private performances
among friends, and semi-private performances such as that for von Stock-
hausen, occurred alongside public ones with larger audiences such as a
performance at the Leipzig Conservatory in the same month.
‘Domesticity’ for the concert stage in Op. 36
Whereas Brahms’s first sextet is clearly a late product of the performer-

centred domestic tradition, the second sextet Op. 36 (1864–5) shows a more
‘public’ or listener-centred approach to chamber-music composition, and
it comes at another important juncture in the composer’s professional and
personal life. During his first visit to Vienna in 1862–3, Brahms met many
of the city’s most influential musicians, including the violinist and quartet
leader Joseph Hellmesberger, founder of an important series of quartet
concerts; and the critic Eduard Hanslick, who would remain one of Brahms’s
closest friends throughout their long lives.31 (In early 1863, Brahms moved
to Vienna on a semi-permanent basis to conduct the Singakademie.32 )
Hellmesberger began programming Brahms’s works during that first visit,
beginning with the String Sextet Op. 18. Wilhelm Altmann reported that
this first Viennese performance ‘fell flat’, which may have prompted Brahms
to reconsider his approach in the next several chamber works written in and
for Vienna, leading to his very successful piano quartets and quintet and the
second string sextet.33
The emphasis on repetition and on communal music-making so notable
in Op. 18 recedes somewhat in Op. 36. The rounded, lyrical themes relayed
from one ensemble member to another are replaced here with slow-moving
melodies theatrically revealed to listeners. For example, when an altered
Conservatory from 1845 to 1846. His reference to a violinist whose name is a ‘household word’
might imply either Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840) or Ferdinand David (1810–73).
31 For Hellmesberger’s biography, see O. Strasser, ‘Joseph Hellmesberger (1828–1893): Eine
philharmonische Vaterfigur’, Musikblätter der Wiener Philharmoniker 48/4 (1993), pp. 117–24.
32 At several points over the next few years, Brahms would move away briefly to help his family
members or he might consider taking a position in another town. He longed for a permanent
position in Hamburg, though his hometown took an embarrassingly long time to recognise his
talent. It was not until 1871 that Brahms moved to Vienna on a permanent basis, and from
then on he considered himself at home there. See MacDonald, Brahms, pp. 123–42.
33 ‘The Sextet very soon experienced great success in other places, most of all Hamburg, but
oddly fell flat in the first Viennese performance by the Hellmesberger Quartet in the autumn of
1862.’ W. Altmann, preface to Brahms, Sextet in B flat major Op. 18.
version of the first movement’s primary theme is presented in bars 53–74,

we first expect a straightforward repetition, but the second half of the theme
is extended and intensified through the next twenty bars, prolonging the
dominant harmony and ratcheting up the harmonic tension of this opening
section (see Example 3.8a for the theme’s first statement and Example 3.8b
for the altered version). The musical texture thickens and unresolved disso-
nances pile up until the downbeat of bar 95, when the ensemble finally strikes
a root-position tonic chord and the first cello bursts free with a cascading
articulated scale. Although, in retrospect, this entire section clearly belongs
to the primary theme area, its function seems introductory in nature as it
gradually unfolds, preparing the listener in calculated steps for a dramatic
revelation at bar 95.
The light rondo finale of Op. 18 is replaced in this work with a weightier
sonata form. This final movement contains almost no direct repetition, and
it elides the development and recapitulation sections, creating a smooth
and refined sonata style. The folk style of the themes tempers the serious-
ness of the form somewhat, and reflects Brahms’s multicultural encounters
in the imperial capital. One of the main developments in Brahms’s musi-
cal language attributed to his move to Vienna is the adoption of musical
dialects prevalent there, such as the music of the Gypsy musicians seem-
ingly found in every corner café. Brahms had encountered Gypsy music
before, and earlier pieces incorporated this style to a certain extent, but it
takes on a new prominence in works such as the Finale of the Piano Quartet
Op. 25 (labelled ‘Rondo alla Zingarese’) and the Scherzo of the Piano Quintet
Op. 34.34
The rustic, even exotic, style employed in the Sextet Op. 36 and Brahms’s
other Viennese chamber works is one of the more palpable differences
between it and its predecessor the Sextet Op. 18. Although the influence
of various ethnic and cultural ‘Others’ in Vienna explains some of this
compositional turn, the contemporary vogue for all things exotic can also
be linked to their popularity in bourgeois salons and parlours, particularly
as the subject of variation sets and collections of songs or characteristic
34 Later incarnations of the style hongrois in Adagio movements and their meaning in Brahms’s
expressive language have been discussed by J. Bellman, ‘Brahms’, in The Style hongrois in the
Music of Western Europe (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1993); and M. Notley,
‘Adagios in Brahms’s Late Chamber Music: Genre Aesthetics and Cultural Critique’, in Lateness
in Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006); see especially pp. 195–203, subtitled ‘Brahms’s Renewal: The Adagios
in Gypsy Style’.
Example 3.8a. Brahms, String Sextet in G major Op. 36, first movement, bars 1–20
(first presentation of primary theme).
Example 3.8a. (cont.)

Example 3.8b. Brahms, String Sextet in G major Op. 36, first movement, bars 52–98
(altered primary theme and long cadential build-up).



pieces that evoke regions then broadly considered ‘the Orient’, including
the middle east, and even sometimes eastern Europe.35
Just as the second movement of Op. 18 employs variations on the folia
theme that also fit a description of contemporaneous funeral marches, the
second-movement Scherzo of Op. 36 recycles an older dance style in a
modern context. The theme of the second movement is based on a Gavotte
for solo piano that Brahms had composed in 1854 or 55.36 Some aspects
of this movement that suggest an ‘archaic’ style, however, also make it
possible to hear the themes as rustic or exotic folk music, increasing the
movement’s appeal for a broader spectrum of listeners or consumers. The
opening theme (Example 3.9) contains frequent parallel motion between
voices, a pizzicato accompaniment in the three lower voices, and short, trill-
like ornaments on the second beats of bars 1, 2, 3 and 5. The folkish quality
of the materials is enhanced by Brahms’s use of the natural minor scale in
many melodic passages (i.e. 6̂ and 7̂, or E and F: see bars 6–8) and an
emphasis on the minor dominant in the second half of the theme (bars
17–32). These features give the entire theme a faux-modal sound that fits a
number of interpretive contexts, including exotic evocations of distant lands
or suggestions of bygone eras in European history, such as the Middle Ages,
or ‘primitive’ folk styles. The contextual ambiguity is part of the charm of
this movement, which allows each listener (and/or group of performers) to
decide which aspects of the style to emphasise in any interpretation. Perhaps
the work’s good reception in Vienna rested on this ability to please a diverse
audience of listeners and performers.
Like the earlier Sextet, Op. 36 was performed in both private and public
settings in its first presentations, but commentators of the time suggested
that it was most at home in an intermediate space, a ‘semi-private, semi-
public’ venue. Theodor Billroth’s enthusiastic response to Brahms’s string
35 For information on salon music and domestic pianists’ apparent predilections, see A.
Ballstaedt and T. Widmaier, Salonmusik: Zur Geschichte und Funktion einer bürgerlichen
Musikpraxis (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989). One example of ‘Oriental’
influence on parlour piano genres is Robert Schumann’s Bilder aus Osten Op. 66, a set of
impromptus for piano, four hands, composed in 1848, during the period that Schumann
seems to have turned to a Hausmusik aesthetic in his new compositions for piano and his
revisions of earlier piano works. See A. Newcomb, ‘Schumann and the Marketplace: From
Butterflies to Hausmusik’ in R. Larry Todd (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, 2nd edn
(New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 258–315.
36 See R. Pascall, ‘Unknown Gavottes by Brahms’, Music & Letters 57/4 (October 1976),
pp. 404–11; and ‘Die Erste in Wien aufgeführte Musik von Brahms und deren Nachklang im
Brahms’schen Schaffen’, in S. Antonicek and O. Biba (eds.), Brahms-Kongress Wien 1983
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1988), pp. 439–48; and Brahms Beyond Mastery: His Sarabande and
Gavotte, and its Recompositions (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
Example 3.9. Brahms, String Sextet in G major Op. 36, second movement, bars 1–34
(primary theme).

style, quoted above, was actually written in response to performing this

second Sextet in 1866. He would later write to Eduard Hanslick that the
Sextet ‘demands a small hall, better even a moderately large room’ because
of its intimate style.37 The European premiere of this work occurred in
Zurich on 20 November 1866, probably at Billroth’s instigation, six months
after he had performed it in his home ‘partly with professionals, partly with
amateurs’. The Zurich Orchesterverein’s first quartet soirée of the 1866–7
season included this work in its programme.38
The first documented public performance on 11 October 1866 featured
a professional group that had evolved from casual domestic performances
in Boston, Massachusetts. The Mendelssohn Quintette Club presented it
as part of their annual subscription concert series in October 1866.39 The
Club began at the mid-century, as did many of the period’s most influential
performance organisations and concert series in both Europe and in North
America. A group of musicians employed by Boston’s theatre orchestras
organised regular reading sessions for their own pleasure and edification on
Saturdays, when theatres in Boston were closed. Like Theodor Billroth and
other well-off music lovers in Austro-Germany at the time, Bostonian John
37 See Barkan, Johannes Brahms and Theodor Billroth, p. 6, n. 1. 38 Werkverzeichnis, p. 130.

39 For a first-hand account of the Club and its history, see T. Ryan, Recollections of an Old
Musician (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1899). This source has been digitised and is available at
www.archive.org/details/recollectionsofo00ryaniala (accessed 6 June 2011).
Bigelow, a local businessman and a chamber-music connoisseur, hosted the

earliest meetings of the Club in his home, and he and his family remained
lifelong supporters. At Bigelow’s suggestion, the group began giving ‘public’,
invitation-only concerts to a select audience of 200 listeners at the Chicker-
ing Piano Company’s salon in 1849; these soon evolved into regular concert
series in the Boston and Providence (Rhode Island) areas. The ensemble
was soon in demand beyond New England, and they began touring in 1859,
making appearances throughout North America and in Australia and New
Zealand over the next thirty-five years.
These origins in private performance and in pseudo-private concerts
mirror the beginnings of chamber concerts in London and Paris, where
groups such as John Ella’s Musical Union hosted evenings of chamber
music for invited guests or members. In Austro-Germany, the origins of
concerts are more diverse, but in general the tradition of public concerts
evolved out of the subscription and charity events organised by individ-
ual musicians.40 In Vienna, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde evolved
from a club for aristocratic and upper-middle-class amateurs to a concert-
giving professional organisation over the course of the mid-nineteenth
century.41
The two sextets bookend the period of Brahms’s first maturity, a period in
which he composed several works that have earned him a permanent place
in modern concert halls. Both works belong to or refer to a long-standing
tradition of domestic music-making that has been largely overlooked or
forgotten. Assessments of this early period in his output have tended to
extract Brahms and his works from their historical and cultural setting,
pointing towards his absorption of musical language from previous genera-
tions and leading to his placement in a linear track of progress from Haydn
40 For more information on Joachim’s concert series and their role in musical life, see Chapter 2.
41 On chamber music concerts in London and their origins in private gatherings, see C. Bashford,
The Pursuit of High Culture: John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London (Woodbridge:
Boydell & Brewer, 2007) and J. Dibble, ‘Edward Dannreuther and the Orme Square
Phenomenon’, in C. Bashford and L. Langley (eds.), Music and British Culture, 1785–1914:
Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 275–98. For a
comparison of continental chamber concert series, see W. Weber, Music and the Middle Class:
The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848, 2nd edn
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); on France see J. H. Cooper, The Rise of Instrumental Music
and Concert Series in Paris, 1828–1871 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983) and J.-M.
Fauquet, Les Sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la Restauration à 1870 (Paris: Amateurs
de Livres, 1986). Regarding Vienna in Brahms’s lifetime, see L. Botstein, ‘Brahms and His
Audience: The Later Viennese Years, 1875–1897’, in M. Musgrave (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Brahms (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 51–75.
and Mozart, through Beethoven and Schubert, to Schoenberg.42 But noting

the relationships between his string sextets and contemporaneous music
traditions, such as domestic music-making and nascent chamber concert
traditions, helps us to place Brahms in his own unique place and time. The
sextets transcend the divide between private music and public performance
by creating intimate musical communications between the players that also
invite listeners to participate vicariously. By employing a musical style asso-
ciated with the home in works adaptable for the stage, Brahms responded to
contemporaneous trends towards concert venues such as Joseph Joachim’s
Singakademie concerts (as discussed in Chapter 2), and John Ella’s Musi-
cal Union that simulated the cosy musical gatherings of earlier decades in
ever-larger spaces.
42 For example, Margaret Notley has long been engaged in a project ‘to counter the common
tendency to regard Brahms in neutralised, ahistorical terms’, and her book Lateness and
Brahms exquisitely situates Brahms’s late music in its cultural milieu at the fin de siècle (this
quotation from p. 5 of that volume).
4 Where was the home of Brahms’s piano works?
katrin eich
Translated by natasha loges
If one were to explore the impact of Brahms’s works in the private realm in
his day – in other words, to consider the relationship between the ‘private’
and ‘public’ sphere for this composer – then the piano would be of particular
significance. It was not only the preferred instrument of the nineteenth cen-
tury, but also embodied manifold uses to an exceptional degree: as a solo and
ensemble instrument within the home and for public concerts, as well as an
aid to learning larger works.1 As an instrument for Hausmusik per se, it was
readily available. In contrast to symphonies or large-scale choral works, for
example, original works and arrangements for piano were of course equally
playable in public and in private, provided that the pianist possessed the
necessary technical skill. Nevertheless, there were undeniable characteris-
tics for the music of each realm: relatively simple, sight-readable works for
the popular combination of four-hand piano, for example, were conceived
much more with the home in mind than highly virtuosic solo works.
How do Brahms’s original piano works position themselves with respect
to this general premise?2 If one wishes to approach this network of ideas
not just in terms of the effect of the works, but also in order to grasp the
composer’s intention as far as possible, then not only are the compositional
features of the work relevant, but also Brahms’s own performance prac-
tices (although the latter naturally might evolve between the genesis of the
work and its performed, longer-term existence). Since Brahms left barely
any statements on this topic, we must draw on reactions of his contem-
poraries as evinced in his correspondence, on performance indications, on
concert programmes and on reviews or recollections and other documents.
However, such contemporary documents must be approached with a certain
1 For a discussion of this, see for example G. Busch-Salmen, ‘Hausmusik’, in L. Finscher (ed.), Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 2, revised edn, 27 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994–2008),
Sachteil vol. IV, cols. 227–34, here col. 232. See also M. Struck, ‘Zwischen Konzertsaal und
Wohnzimmer: Brahms und das Klavier’, in W. Sandberger and S. Weymar (eds.), Johannes
Brahms: Ikone der bürgerlichen Lebenswelt? Katalog zur Ausstellung des Brahms-Instituts an der
Musikhochschule Lübeck 7. Mai–30. August 2008 (Brahms-Institut an der Musikhochschule
Lübeck, 2008), pp. 16–21.
2 Regarding Brahms’s piano arrangements of his own and other works, see Chapter 5. 95
96 katrin eich
caution. This is because announcements, statements or reports can vary in

their reliability or accuracy; furthermore, particularly in the case of piano
music, it was rare that the exact repertoire was stipulated, both in public
and in private performances. Finally, it must be noted that what was played,
and in which order, was not necessarily identical to what was printed in
the programmes. These often offered only very general information, and
naturally none whatsoever about encores. Relevant corrections and addi-
tions were only sporadically transmitted via comments in contemporary
papers, music journals or other documents.3 Brahms himself frequently
took liberties with his programmes and stated once to the conductor Ernst
Frank: ‘For m[y] solo number, just write: “Caprices for P[iano]f[orte]”
then one can basically play what one wants.’4 The documentation of private
music-making is still much more fragmentary,5 and when it is documented,
inaccuracies and occasional contradictions in the accounts must also be
factored in. Music-making in the home is after all a relatively wide field
with porous boundaries, embracing an individual playing, as well as the
gathering of a group for communal music-making, with no audience, or
with a small audience; the testing out in performance of new, unpublished
works in front of friends and acquaintances; or the participation in organ-
ised ‘house-concerts’, which could on occasion be fairly similar to public
concerts.6 All of these factors need to be considered when one explores the
various performance functions encountered in Brahms’s piano music.
Within this oeuvre, Brahms created several works and cycles of works
which were without question primarily conceived as Hausmusik – namely,
the sixteen Waltzes Op. 39 and the twenty-one Hungarian Dances WoO 1.
Although no observations from Brahms have been recorded regarding
the status of these works as Hausmusik,7 the original instrumentation for
3 See also R. and K. Hofmann, Johannes Brahms als Pianist und Dirigent: Chronologie seines
Wirkens als Interpret (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2006), pp. 7, 11. The author is indebted to this
publication for information and stimulation.
4 Letter of [14 January 1880], Cologne, from Brahms to Frank (Briefe XIX, pp. 136–7). Brahms
was referring to his participation in the fourth subscription concert of the Hanover Court
Orchestra on 24 January 1880.
5 See Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 10ff. Thus the authors indicate that, within their overview of
domestic music-making by Brahms, ‘only a fragmentary insight into the variety of private
music-making’ can be offered.
6 See the discussion of terminology in Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 9ff.
7 On the other hand, during the printing of his collection of the Liebeslieder: Walzer für das
Pianoforte zu vier Händen (und Gesang ad libitum) Op. 52, which later also appeared in a version
for four-hand piano Op. 52a, as well as a version for voice and two-hand piano, he clearly stated:
‘hopefully this is a piece of Hausmusik and will be soon be sung a great deal.’ (See letter of
[31 August 1869], Baden Baden, from Brahms to his publisher Fritz Simrock in Briefe IX, p. 80.)
Where was the home of Brahms’s piano works? 97
four-hand piano, as well as the compositional style of the pieces, is a clear

indication of this intention. They were readily playable by competent ama-
teurs of the time, and furthermore present a transparent form and mem-
orable themes within a relatively limited framework. In this, they echo
thoroughly ‘popular’ trends, but without sacrificing musical quality. The
Waltzes Op. 39, which were published in 1866, may partially stem from
Brahms’s time in Detmold at the end of the 1850s.8 The first ten ‘arrange-
ments’ of the Hungarian Dances were published in 1869, followed by the
remaining eleven in 1880.9 Brahms had had the idea of composing Hun-
garian dances for an even longer time – as early as the 1850s, he had
composed ‘Hungarian Melodies’ (Ungarische Weisen) for two-hand piano,
which are however not connected with his later collection WoO 1, as he him-
self emphasised.10 Clara Schumann temporarily possessed the manuscript
of these; she played them several times, also in public. Brahms, how-
ever, requested that they be returned and most probably destroyed these
compositions.11
In this context, it is significant that Brahms made his breakthrough as a
composer with Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45 and the Hungarian Dances –
in other words, on one hand with a large-scale, impressive vocal work which,
in its original version, could only be realised in a sizeable public space,12
and on the other hand with a dance cycle superbly designed for domestic
performance. It only appears paradoxical that the composition of music
for the private home could attract so much public recognition, until one
recalls the typical conditions of composition, performance and reception
during the nineteenth century. It is equally significant that Brahms prepared
alternative versions of the Waltzes as well as the Hungarian Dances, although
this took place to some extent under pressure from the publisher, who stood
to gain more profit from these. In the case of the Waltzes, Brahms had
already vaguely mentioned a ‘two-hand arrangement’ in April 1866, before
the work was printed;13 however, he still reacted rather indignantly the
8 A contemporary of Brahms stated that he had already heard Brahms playing some of the ‘waltz
themes’ in Detmold. See C. von Meysenbug, ‘Aus Johannes Brahms’ Jugendtagen’, Neues
Wiener Tagblatt 36/91–2 (3–4 April 1902), 3 April, p. 1.
9 Thus the word ‘gesetzt’ (‘arranged’) appeared on the title page of the first edition.
10 Brahms wrote to his Swiss publisher Jakob Melchior Rieter-Biedermann on [19] January 1869:
‘In the “Hungarians” [Ungrischen] which should be published now, there is not a single note of
those which Frau Schumann had earlier and played in public’ (Briefe XIV, p. 168).
11 JBG, Klavierwerke ohne Opuszahl, pp. xiii–xv.
12 For a discussion of Brahms’s piano arrangement and vocal score of Ein deutsches Requiem and
the so-called ‘London Version’, see Chapter 5.
13 Briefe XIV, pp. 125–6.
98 katrin eich
following year to the request for a two-hand arrangement from his pub-
lisher Rieter-Biedermann.14 Nevertheless he subsequently delivered not only
a two-hand arrangement, but also a simplified two-hand arrangement.15
Regarding both, he stressed ‘None of them is actually difficult!’16 – in fact,
compared with the four-hand version, the simplified two-hand version is at
least possible for non-professional players to master.
The situation is somewhat different with the two-hand version of the
Hungarian Dances WoO 1 nos. 1–10. At the point of printing of the four-
hand version in 1869, Brahms had already planned, more concretely than
in the case of the Waltzes, to follow this up with a two-hand version.17
Nevertheless, at the point of undertaking the actual work, despite having left
more time for the task than for the waltz arrangements, he told his publisher
Simrock that he could not under any circumstances ‘write them down easily’,
because as a soloist he played some of the Dances very ‘freely’, and some
others were ‘so decidedly made for four hands’.18 The result is a version
which is at times highly virtuosic; thus it barely qualified as Hausmusik any
more and found its way into the public sphere primarily as a concert item
rather than as a suitable Hausmusik work.19 Brahms himself often included
the two-hand version of his Hungarian Dances in his public concerts, not
least because they functioned perfectly as encores.20 It can be assumed that
he usually played them quite freely, and did not force himself to adhere to
14 Briefe XIV, p. 139.

15 Both versions were created and appeared in 1867. Another version by Brahms for two pianos
(four hands) dates from the same year. It is unclear how many Waltzes he arranged for this
instrumentation at the time, but five were published posthumously. Unlike the others, it was
written for a specific performance for the sisters Seraphine Tausig (née Vrabély) and Stephanie
Vrabély. See JBG, Klavierstücke, p. xxiii.
16 In a similar way Brahms wrote to the publisher on 8 March 1867 regarding the two planned
‘editions’: ‘The difficult one is not difficult, and the easy one is really easy. You can be certain
that both are highly practical’ (Briefe XIV, p. 143).
17 See letters of [6 December 1868] and 2 January 1869 from Brahms to Fritz Simrock (Briefe IX,
pp. 60–3).
18 Brahms’s letters to Simrock from December 1869 and [April 1870] (Briefe IX, pp. 91 and
93–4). Even during the printing he wrote to Simrock in February 1872: ‘it is uncomfortable to
write down something which one has simply played for so long, and it needs to be as practical
as possible’ (ibid., pp. 114–15).
19 This is according to research into the reception of Brahms’s music in four leading nineteenth-
century German newspapers, namely the Allgemeine Musikzeitung, the Allgemeine Deutsche
Musik-Zeitung, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and the Signale für die musikalische Welt. The
research was undertaken at the Brahms Research Institute, Kiel, and forms the basis for the
material on reception included in each volume of the JBG.
20 In particular, Brahms frequently performed the Hungarian Dances in Joseph Joachim’s
arrangement for violin and piano. The first two volumes were published by Simrock in 1871,
followed by a third and fourth volume in 1880. See Werkverzeichnis, p. 504.
his own published version.21 Indeed, he similarly also played the two-hand
Waltzes several times in public shortly after their creation, possibly also quite
freely – but these are no longer found in his public concerts after the end
of the 1860s. It seems likely that the Hungarian Dances undertook a kind
of ‘replacement’ role, particularly since the two-hand version was distanced
from Hausmusik on practical grounds. In contrast, it is significant that there
is hardly any evidence of public performances by Brahms of the relevant
versions for four-hand piano – a fact that could underline their status as
Hausmusik.
One Brahms opus that bridged the division between public and private
music in a relatively balanced way is the Two Rhapsodies Op. 79, which
were published in the summer of 1880. Thus they occupy a unique place
within Brahms’s works for piano. On one hand, they are by no means
‘easy’, although they are still relatively playable by a competent amateur.
They therefore demonstrate a thoroughly ‘domestic’ quality, even if in a
relatively technically demanding sphere. On the other hand, the pieces –
and the G minor Rhapsody Op. 79 no. 2 in particular – showed special
effectiveness in public performance. Thus shortly after their publication,
Brahms’s friend Theodor Billroth stated prophetically, ‘I already begin to
fear the popularity of the second Rhapsody in concert’.22 The accuracy
of Billroth’s jokingly expressed assumption that the G minor Rhapsody in
particular would be frequently played in concerts is proven by its subsequent
performance history. Even if the chronology of performances given here
cannot be confirmed indisputably, because at times the works were not
specified on the concert programmes or in the reviews, it can be stated that,
of his own piano works, Brahms clearly played both Rhapsodies (and the
second in particular) with great frequency, and later often combined them
with performances of his Piano Concerto in B No. 2 Op. 83. However,
private and semi-private performances have also been documented, for
example one on 23 August 1885 in Brahms’s apartment in Mürzzuschlag,
as well as – according to the programme – on 14 March 1881 at a Brahms-
Abend at the home of Theodor Billroth in Vienna which was held in honour
of the art historian Wilhelm Lübke.23
21 For his second series of Hungarian Dances WoO 1 Nos. 11–21, which were published for
four-hand piano in 1880, Brahms did not produce a two-hand version himself; Theodor
Kirchner undertook this arrangement.
22 Letter of 11 August 1880 from Billroth to Brahms, in O. Gottlieb-Billroth (ed.), Billroth und
Brahms im Briefwechsel (Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1935), pp. 301–2.
23 Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 249, 199.
100 katrin eich
But why do these works in particular possess an ideal dual suitability

for the domestic and the public realm? One reason could be that Brahms
steered a middle course with them in various respects (which had no asso-
ciations with middling quality). Thus, to put it somewhat crudely, they are
neither too long nor too short, make technical demands which are neither
too great nor too slight, and in artistic terms are neither too complex nor
too facile, and remain ‘comprehensible’ despite their thoroughgoing har-
monic adventurousness: a musical golden mean, as it were. It is therefore
unsurprising that Brahms ‘practised’ the second Rhapsody for the phono-
graph recording which took place at the home of the Fellinger family on
2 December 1889, according to the account by Richard Fellinger Jnr.24 Per-
haps because the composer grew impatient with the lengthy preparations,
ultimately a fragmentary solo version of the first of the Hungarian Dances
ended up being recorded instead.25 Even if, regrettably, no recording of the
G minor Rhapsody was actually made, the intended link between private and
public in this particular instance is telling: for the planned recording, not a
(semi-)public venue, but rather a private space was chosen; but the medium
of the phonograph, at the same time, pioneered the public dissemination
of this playing.
Brahms’s middle and late-period works for piano – i.e. the Klavierstücke
Op. 76 (published in 1879), the Fantasias Op. 116 and the Three Intermezzos
Op. 117 (published at the end of 1892), as well as the Klavierstücke Op.
118 and Op. 119 (published at the end of 1893) – resist a performative
classification even more strongly than the aforementioned works and cycles.
They seem to sit firmly between several stools in this respect, because they
cannot be regarded as typical works for the home, nor as explicitly intended
for public performance, nor as works intended ideally to combine both
aspects. Indeed, Brahms himself played the Klavierstücke Op. 76 (or parts of
it) rarely;26 he did not play the later works in public at all. One rare instance
documented from the 1890s is of him playing the new, still unpublished
piano works at the home of the Simrocks in Berlin in autumn 1892 for a
24 R. Fellinger, Klänge um Brahms: Erinnerungen von Richard Fellinger. Neuausgabe mit

Johannes Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1997), p. 82.
25 Ibid. See also, for example, R. Pascall, ‘“Machen Sie es wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur
schön”: Wie wollte Brahms seine Musik hören?’ in F. Krummacher, M. Struck, C. Floros and
P. Petersen (eds.), Johannes Brahms: Quellen – Text – Rezeption – Interpretation. Internationaler
Brahms-Kongreß Hamburg 1997 (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1999), pp. 26–7.
26 In particular, during the 1879/80 season, it is difficult to distinguish performances of the
Klavierstücke, specifically the four Capriccios, from those of the Rhapsodies Op. 79, since prior
to publication the latter were usually given the title ‘Capricen’. See JBG, Klavierstücke, p. xxvi.
few guests; similarly, he played five of the (still unpublished) piano works
in autumn 1893 at the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein.27 Apart from these semi-
public occasions, he seems to have played the pieces exclusively in private
spaces, for example at the homes of the Miller and Fellinger families.28 This
doubtless stemmed from the fact that he had not appeared in public as
a pianist for several years at this point. At the same time, this had to do
with the fact that Brahms connected these late piano works in particular
with a certain kind of intimacy, melancholy and, to an extent, mourning, a
perspective which contemporary reviews clearly perceived.29 Nevertheless,
following their publication, the pieces – including Op. 76 – were also played
in public by various pianists, most often in a selection from the opuses.
In England, Clara Schumann’s pupils Fanny Davies and Ilona Eibenschütz
championed them in particular.30 But the profundity and complexity of the
works hindered an unreservedly positive early public reception.31
Philipp Spitta summarised this with respect to the Klavierstücke Opp.
118 and 119 when he stated that the Intermezzos in particular were not for
public performance, but were best suited to an intimate space:
The Clavierstücke occupy my mind continually; they are so different from everything
that you have written for piano, and are perhaps the richest and profoundest works
in an instrumental form which I know of yours. They really are meant to be absorbed
slowly in peace and solitude, not just to think about afterwards, but also beforehand,
and I think I understand you correctly when I say that you meant something like
this with the Intermezzo. ‘Pieces in between’ have predecessors and followers which
27 Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 289–90, 293. See also R. Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Johannes
Brahms: Tagebuchnotizen aus den Jahren 1875 bis 1897, ed. K. Hofmann, 2nd edn (Tutzing:
Hans Schneider, 1976), p. 132.
28 Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 290–4.
29 For corresponding statements by Brahms and early reception, see JBG, Klavierstücke,
pp. xxxiv–xliv.
30 Ilona Eibenschütz may have partially inspired the works, especially since it is recorded that
Brahms played her Op. 118 and Op. 119 in the summer of 1893 in Bad Ischl. She recounted
this occasion in an essay which appeared in the 1920s, Mrs Carl Derenburg, ‘My Recollections
of Brahms’, Musical Times 67/1001 (July 1926), p. 599. Additionally she brought several
Brahms compositions into the repertoire shortly after the start of the twentieth century and
after the Second World War. For a discussion of this, see for example K. Rountree, ‘The
Short-Lived Career of Ilona Eibenschütz’, The American Music Teacher 43/5 (April/May 1994),
pp. 14–17; and M. Musgrave, ‘Early Trends in the Performance of Brahms’s Piano Music’ in
M. Musgrave and B. Sherman (eds.), Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style
(Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 302–26.
31 This is indicated by early reviews of performances as well as, for example, the review of a
concert in 1896 by Josef Weisz in Berlin, at which ‘no less than twenty pieces from Brahms’s
final piano works (Intermezzi, Capriccios, etc.) were played, or more accurately, forced upon
the listeners. They did not all approve, and some of them left the hall early.’ Signale für die
musikalische Welt, 54/26 (27 March 1896), p. 408.
102 katrin eich
in this case, each player and listener is to make for himself. If only one could play
them properly! . . . Now I just hope that our virtuosos will not drag them into the
concert hall. Ballade, Romanze, Rhapsodie – fair enough; but the Intermezzi? How
silly the public will look when it sits there.32
Spitta in particular seems generally to have greatly valued intimate con-

tact with music, either through reading or playing through the score, but
in any case more than through poor or mediocre public performances,
as can be inferred from his letter to Brahms of 14 May 1873.33 But one
can infer far more than just a private opinion of the works from his state-
ment. Even so, they cannot be classified unambiguously within the sphere
of domestic music, particularly if one includes under this term music-
making with or for other people. This is because if one accepts the idea
of inwardness or contemplation, then they would be fundamentally suited
for solipsistic playing, without listeners or commentators.34 It is no coin-
cidence that the term ‘monologue’ was used in connection with these late
works.35 Nevertheless, for most of the pieces, the performer needs to have
a high degree of technical and expressive ability in order to perform them
at an adequate level, which without question is difficult for the average
amateur.36
If the late piano works in particular demonstrate functional ambigu-
ity, the relationship between public and private in Brahms’s early works is
entirely different. Here it was most important for the young, still unknown
composer to establish himself as an ambitious and serious figure through
vocal, keyboard and chamber works. For Brahms, from the very outset, the
dual role as piano-playing composer and composing pianist was charac-
teristic: already in 1853, Robert Schumann had emphasised the closeness
32 See Spitta’s letter to Brahms of 22 December 1893, in Briefe XVI, pp. 95–6.
33 Ibid., pp. 46–8.
34 See also W. Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik: Privates Musizieren im gesellschaftlichen Wandel
zwischen 1600 und 1900 (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1969), pp. 27–8.
35 See in particular Eduard Hanslick’s review of Op. 118 and Op. 119: ‘One could label these two
volumes as “monologues at the piano”: monologues which Brahms holds with himself and for
himself in solitary evening hours, in stubborn, pessimistic rebellion, in broody contemplation,
in romantic reminiscences, and every so often also in dreamy wistfulness.’ E. Hanslick, Fünf
Jahre Musik [1891–1895]: Der ‘Modernen Oper’ VII. Teil, 3rd edn (Berlin: Allgemeiner Verein
für deutsche Litteratur, 1896), pp. 258–9. According to Max Kalbeck, Brahms himself used the
expression ‘monologue’ for Opp. 116 and 117, which Hanslick apparently picked up on. See
Briefe XII, p. 105.
36 Even a pianist like Clara Schumann already found Op. 76 ‘mostly very difficult’. See letter of
7 November 1878 from Clara Schumann to Brahms in Schumann-Brahms Briefe II, p. 157.
between Brahms’s compositional output and his own playing.37 It was in

any case inevitable that many of the early performances of Brahms’s compo-
sitions took place in private spaces because he published his own works for
the first time at the end of 1853 and initially had few public engagements as
a pianist. Such private ‘audition-style’ performances initially took place in
his Hamburg circle first and foremost, then in 1853 during various visits to
towns including Hanover, Göttingen, Düsseldorf, Halle and Leipzig. Here,
the still-unknown Brahms introduced himself to composers, musicians,
publishers and other private people, including Joseph Joachim, Robert
and Clara Schumann and the music publishers Raymund and Hermann
Härtel.38 Thus the highly difficult piano works which Brahms published
at the turn of the year 1853/4 (i.e. his Sonatas No. 1 in C major, No. 2 in
F minor and No. 3 in F minor, and his Scherzo Op. 4 in E minor), while
decidedly not conceived especially for the home, were nevertheless often
played in the home. Still, he did have the opportunity to perform publicly
at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 17 December 1853, during which he per-
formed the Sonata Op. 1 and the Scherzo Op. 4, his earliest piano work to be
published.39
If the performative function of Brahms’s early piano works was deter-
mined by external circumstances above all, in later years his piano works
were characterised by a changed, inward approach. From roughly the mid-
1860s onwards, after Brahms was increasingly firmly established as a com-
poser and pianist in the public consciousness and could more freely deter-
mine his own performances and programmes, he could thus have performed
not only the Sonatas and the Scherzo, but also the Ballades Op. 10 (pub-
lished in 1856) and the Variations Op. 9 (already published in 1854) much
more frequently. Instead they largely retained an existence for the com-
poser as a kind of public shadowy presence, not least because he probably
regarded them as immature ‘early works’, and preferred to appear in public
with more recent works.40 This tendency may also have manifested itself in
37 See Schumann’s letter of 9 November 1853 about Brahms to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel:
‘His playing actually belongs to his music’ (F. G. Jansen (ed.), Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue
Folge, 2nd edn (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1904), p. 486).
38 Various run-throughs and performances in private circles are documented from this time. See
Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 25–30.
39 Ibid., p. 30.
40 Thus, for example, Brahms stated to his publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in early 1875 that one
had to ‘show forbearance’ towards these early works (Briefe XIV, p. 243). In spring 1888, he
emphasised this again to Fritz Simrock as follows: ‘revising and making changes is a very
questionable thing, as every second edition of poets and musicians proves. With such dubious
104 katrin eich
private playing, even if less clearly. Thus in later years, the Sonata Op. 1 only
occasionally appeared in Brahms’s public concerts, and the Sonata Op. 2
as well as the Variations on a Theme of Schumann Op. 9 do not appear at
all, or at least no public performances by the composer have been docu-
mented. According to Brahms, the earliest work which seemed to be suitable
for public performance was his Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor; thus, for
example, he played this work at the start of his second Vienna concert on
6 January 1863, at the end of which Robert Schumann’s Piano Sonata in
F minor Op. 14 was played. However, Brahms preferred to extricate the slow
movement, with or without the Scherzo, from the Sonata in performance.
In the case of the Ballades Op. 10, Brahms played them relatively rarely in
public and, as far as we know, never all four pieces together. In the case of
the Scherzo Op. 4, however, one might speak of a ‘rediscovery’ on Brahms’s
part: he played the Scherzo several times in the years 1867–8, within concerts
he gave with the violinist Joseph Joachim or with the baritone Julius Stock-
hausen; and the work recurs again in his concert programmes in the 1879/80
season.41
In Brahms’s piano music overall, we find a performative tendency which
can also be observed in other genres:42 at different times the composer pre-
ferred to play particular works publicly – and where possible, also privately,
in the home – which after a time were replaced by other works. Furthermore,
as is well known, Brahms preferred to play new works in private spaces ini-
tially or, with larger-scale works, organised rehearsals or run-throughs and,
based on this, did further fine-tuning on the compositions as appropriate.
This activity therefore plays a role in this context as a motivation for private
performances or private piano playing. Typically, older works were replaced
by more recent ones, which was surely the case because these works were cur-
rently in his focus; and, furthermore, because a composer could contribute
to the dissemination of his new compositions and to the development of
particular traditions of performance through his own interpretations – an
aspect which was decidedly significant for Brahms. His public (and pre-
sumably to an even greater extent, his private) performance behaviours
were therefore not so much systematic and encyclopaedic as pragmatic and
contingent upon the situation. Furthermore, during different phases, he
also played considerably older works which, among other things, might be
because of how well they combined with certain new works, as for example
products, as indeed my own first works, one should be very careful, etc. etc.’ (Briefe XI,
pp. 176–8, here p. 177).
41 See Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 73, pp. 92–114, 179–89. 42 See ibid., p. 8.
in the aforementioned case of the Scherzo Op. 4, and also in the case of the
Variations on an Original Theme Op. 21 no.1.43
That older works were ‘laid aside’ in favour of newer ones, or that Brahms
tended to draw on newer works for public performance in preference for
older ones, is evinced by the example of his sets of variations for piano,
even if this concrete example cannot be taken wholesale as a parallel for
other groups of works. There is no evidence of a public performance of his
earliest published set of variations, the Variations on a Theme of Schumann
Op. 9, although a few private performances are documented, for example
for Clara Schumann in 1854 (the year of their composition) as well as
in the 1880s at the home of the Beckerath family in Wiesbaden.44 In the
first instance this may be because the work was something of a homage
to Robert and Clara Schumann,45 as a result of which Brahms possibly
felt a degree of reservation towards public performance. Secondly, while
these early Schumann Variations constitute a very artistic, contrapuntally
dense cycle, they are not underpinned by a conception of the variation form
rooted in a ground bass, a conception he later strongly favoured.46 Thus from
both an emotional and also a compositional standpoint, these variations
were apparently problematic for Brahms to some extent. Following the
two variation sets published as Op. 21 in 1862, a ‘transitional’ pair of
works,47 the Variations on a Theme of Schumann Op. 23 (composed in 1861,
published in 1863) most probably constituted an emotionally similar case to
Op. 9, but here the composer chose a formation perfectly suited to domestic
performance, namely four-hand piano. Even if Brahms stated that the theme
was ‘not particularly suitable for variations’,48 technical problems largely do
not apply in this work. This might explain the fact that at least a few public
performances of this work involving Brahms and various partners took
place. Still, on the one hand the work is almost ‘too intimately conceived’
to be suitable for public performance, but on the other hand it is also not
43 The Variations Op. 21 no. 1 appear on concert programmes in a similar time period to the
Scherzo (they are sometimes described just as ‘Variationen’); in other words, Brahms
combined both works in the same concert. See Hofmann, Chronologie, passim.
44 Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 33–4, 224, 226.
45 H. Danuser, ‘Aspekte einer Hommage-Komposition: Zu Brahms’ Schumann-Variationen
op. 9’, in F. Krummacher and W. Steinbeck (eds.), Brahms-Analysen: Referate der Kieler Tagung
1983 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), pp. 91–106.
46 See M. Struck, ‘Dialog über die Variation – präzisiert: Joseph Joachims “Variationen über ein
irisches Elfenlied” und Johannes Brahms’ Variationenpaar op. 21 im Licht der gemeinsamen
gattungstheoretischen Diskussion’, in P. Petersen (ed.), Musikkulturgeschichte: Festschrift für
Constantin Floros zum 60. Geburtstag (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1990), pp. 105–54.
47 Ibid., p. 151.
48 Letter of late December 1862 from Brahms to Joseph Joachim, in Briefe V, p. 331.
106 katrin eich
incontrovertibly suited to four-hand domestic playing, as it is ‘technically

trickier’ than, for example, Op. 39 and WoO 1.49
In his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24, a work he wrote
shortly before Op. 23, and which was published in 1862, Brahms achieved
a pinnacle of variation writing, in its compelling synthesis of the creative
and the performative. Both in terms of compositional technique – the set
is based on a sophisticated, bass-oriented variation concept – as well as in
terms of technical demands on the player, the set was ideally conceived for
public performance. Furthermore, according to various accounts, Brahms
regarded it as his best work at that point.50 Thus it is hardly surprising that
this was the variation set which he most frequently played in public, followed
by the Variations on a Theme of Paganini Op. 35, a considerably demanding
work, which was written and published somewhat later; although this set of
variations, known as ‘studies’, initially could seem inappropriate for public
performance.51 The version for two pianos and four hands of the Variations
on a Theme of Haydn Op. 56b was also predestined for the concert stage,
which incidentally was also the case for the Sonata in F minor Op. 34bis for
two pianos and four hands.52
Additionally, there were compositions and arrangements which were ini-
tially not conceived (at least not unambiguously) for public performance,
which nevertheless with the passage of time revealed a certain suitabil-
ity for this. Since they remained unpublished in Brahms’s lifetime, they
could not in any case find their way into the wider sphere of domes-
tic music-making. Just such an empirically determined development took
place, for example, in the case of Brahms’s early suite movements WoO 3
and 5, which in the first instance may initially have been conceived as suit-
able for private performance by the composer in the company of close
friends, or his two-hand arrangement of the slow movement from the
first String Sextet No. 1 in B major Op. 18, originally a gift for Clara
Schumann.
49 M. Struck, ‘Brahms und das Klavier’, pp. 17–20.

50 See for example Brahms’s letters of [25] March and [14 April] 1862 to his publishers Breitkopf
& Härtel (Briefe XIV, pp. 60–1, 67–8).
51 For dates of performances, see Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 354.
52 The Haydn Variations Op. 56b, published at the end of 1873 (i.e. shortly before the version for
orchestra Op. 56a) were increasingly appreciated by other pianists (see n. 19), yet evidently not
publicly performed by Brahms (see Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 133, 175–6, 261). On the other
hand, the Sonata Op. 34bis – which preceded the alternative version (the Piano Quintet Op.
34) but nevertheless was published only six years later at the turn of the year 1871/2 – was
played by Brahms on 17 April 1864 at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna with Carl
Tausig (ibid., pp. 79–80).
Towards the middle of the 1850s, Brahms wrote several suite movements
in Düsseldorf; Joseph Joachim mentioned that the composer had finished
a complete suite in A minor at this time.53 During Brahms’s lifetime, these
movements were not published, and they seem to have been primarily
conceived as compositional studies. Only the following movements have
been preserved: two Sarabandes (B minor and A minor/major) WoO 5, a
Gavotte in A minor together with a corresponding Gavotte II in A major
WoO 3 and two Gigues (B minor and A minor) WoO 4. Furthermore, the
Sarabande in A minor/major exists in two versions. Brahms had written
the Sarabande and the Gavottes I and II together on a manuscript which
once belonged to Clara Schumann, which has been incompletely preserved.
This combination of suite movements was subsequently – possibly even
contrary to the composer’s original intentions – presented in public con-
certs. First Clara Schumann played a ‘Gavotte’ by Brahms on 29 October
1855 in Göttingen.54 The young composer was pleasantly surprised and
declared in a letter shortly afterwards: ‘I am amazed that you have played
my Gavotte! But I think that the preceding Sarabande will work well, it
makes a more lively impression . . . but I heard it with great pleasure in my
imagination, how beautifully you always played it!’55 This public perfor-
mance by Clara Schumann was also the impulse which pushed the work
over the private boundary, since shortly afterwards, Brahms himself also
played his ‘Sarabande and Gavotte’ on 14 November in Danzig, in a concert
he had co-organised with Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim; in this case,
the term ‘Gavotte’ most probably indicated the performance of Gavotte I –
Gavotte II – Gavotte I.56 In return, Clara Schumann did likewise and per-
formed this combination in several concerts, including in Vienna.57 As
late as 30 November 1860, Brahms played ‘Selected Pieces from a Suite for
53 See J. Joachim and A. Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, 3 vols. (Berlin: Julius
Bard, 1911–13), vol. I, pp. 294–5. For a detailed discussion of the composition (including of
further movements) and posthumous publication of these works, see JBG, Klavierwerke ohne
Opuszahl, pp. xxiv–xxvi, and 189–92 (with further references to literature, including to the
standard works by Robert Pascall on this topic); see also R. Pascall, Brahms Beyond Mastery:
His Sarabande and Gavotte, and its Recompositions (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
3 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907), vol. II, pp. 388–9; see also the concert programme
(D-Zsch, Archive No. 10463: 364).
55 Schumann-Brahms Briefe I, pp. 141–2.
56 Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 35; see also the concert programme (D-Zsch, 10463: 368),
reproduced in C. Jacobsen (ed.), Johannes Brahms: Leben und Werk (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &
Härtel, 1983), p. 40.
57 See Litzmann, Clara Schumann, vol. II, p. 397; see also various concert programmes (D-Zsch,
10463: 378, 387, 408).
108 katrin eich
Pianoforte’ from the ‘manuscript’ during a ‘musical evening entertainment’

at the Leipzig Conservatory.58 Since the programme included his arrange-
ment for four-hand piano of the Serenade no. 2 in A major Op. 16 with Clara
Schumann, he presumably performed pieces from the aforementioned suite
in the corresponding mode of A minor.59
A manuscript with a dedication from 13 September 1860 has been pre-
served of the two-hand version of the slow movement from the String Sextet
no. 1 in B major Op. 18. Brahms gave this to Clara Schumann for her birth-
day, even before the version for strings had been printed. In his accompany-
ing letter of 11 September he wrote: ‘Just play around with the Variations,
make it comfortable for yourself.’ Clara Schumann responded to this on
16 September 1860: ‘how wonderfully you have surprised me! . . . how
pleased I am that I can finally play the D minor Variations myself . . . the
Variations are superbly composed and I don’t need to play around with
them . . . I am already learning them.’60 Thus the starting point was that
this version was a personal gift which was at least initially conceived for
the home, Clara Schumann’s in particular. Furthermore, the wording of
her response indicates that Brahms, in making this gift, was reacting either
directly or indirectly to a request on her part.61 Whether performances were
intended at this point in time by Brahms or by Clara herself must remain
uncertain. Certainly they both occasionally played this two-hand version
of the variations in public concerts some time later.62 This piano version
was first printed in the old edition of Brahms’s complete works.63 Thus in
Brahms’s lifetime it remained a ‘semi-official alternative’64 to the version of
this movement for strings, which, although it was played (if only by a few
people), was not available in print.
The preceding discussion has shown that Brahms’s piano oeuvre, seen from
a contemporary viewpoint, cannot be reduced to a single or even a few
clear perspectives with regard to its private versus public existence. In other
58 Signale für die musikalische Welt, 18/50 (6 December 1860), p. 622.

59 Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 62–3. 60 Schumann-Brahms Briefe I, pp. 323–4, 327.
61 See M. Struck, ‘Um Fassung(en) ringend: Johannes Brahms, das Problem der Fassungen und
das Problem der Brahms-Forschung mit dem Problem der Fassungen’, in R. Emans (ed.), Mit
Fassung: Fassungsprobleme in Musik- und Text-Philologie (Laaber Verlag, 2007), pp. 150–2.
62 For evidence of confirmed and likely performances from 1865 onwards see ibid., p. 150,
n. 23.
63 E. Mandyczewski and H. Gál (eds.), Johannes Brahms: Sämtliche Werke. Ausgabe der
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 26 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1926–7, revised
repr. Wiesbaden, 1965), vol. XV.
64 M. Struck: ‘Um Fassung(en) ringend’, p. 149.
words, it is everything other than one-dimensional in its function. Since

barely any statements by the composer on this topic have been documented,
it is naturally difficult to gain a clear picture of his intentions. Brahms’s own
performative practices are only reliable to an extent since a definition of
intentions need not be incontrovertibly and consistently upheld by the
composer himself. On the other hand, a certain amount can be inferred
from the developments in his performance practices as well as from the
instrumentation and compositional forms of the works and from reactions
of his contemporaries. Depending on the work or cycle of works, these
performative functions were varyingly clear, or could be transformed over
time (entirely disregarding the modern performance practices surrounding
these works). Even so, a definite progression through different versions of a
work can be observed – for example, the effectiveness in public performance
of the two-hand version of the Hungarian Dances WoO 1 or the suitability
for domestic performance of the simplified two-hand version of the Waltzes
Op. 39. Brahms himself, as a pianist, not only moved constantly between
the home and the concert hall, and their intermediate incarnations, but as
a composer also served highly divergent performance spaces and situations
with his piano works.
5 Main and shadowy existence(s): Works and
arrangements in the oeuvre of Johannes Brahms
michael struck
If one were to ask how the music of Johannes Brahms existed in the musical
consciousness of the nineteenth-century public prior to the era of gramo-
phone records and broadcasting up until the compact disc, mp3 and the
Internet, one would instantly answer that it was in the form of notated
scores and through performances. However, in Brahms’s era the way in
which a work existed as written and printed scores was distinctly more
multifaceted than this first, spontaneous answer suggests. In addition, the
tangible traces of musical artworks may exist as recollections of sounds and
notes as well as through spoken and written description. Even if we dis-
regard the creative process behind Brahms’s works1 and consider just the
completed work presented to the public through performances and scores,
the question of regarding the possible ‘existences’ of the work demands a
more nuanced response. In the case of music originally conceived for key-
board and/or voice, the situation is generally unambiguous; the work is
played or sung from a single edition. This is different particularly in the
case of choral, orchestral and chamber music, and opera: here, in addition
to the score, separate parts are needed at the very least.2 Additionally, from
the late eighteenth century onwards, and particularly in the nineteenth
century, two main types of reduction existed involving the piano, which,
corresponding to Margit McCorkle’s 1984 Johannes Brahms: Thematisch-
Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, are referred to below as Klavierauszüge or
vocal/piano scores, and Klavierarrangements or piano arrangements. How-
ever, while this straightforward terminological differentiation is method-
ically logical and helpful, it is hardly historically valid, since considerable
confusion reigned over this terminology in the nineteenth century.3
1 For a discussion of this, see M. Struck, ‘Vom Einfall zum Werk: Produktionsprozesse, Notate,
Werkgestalt(en)’, in W. Sandberger (ed.), Brahms Handbuch (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 2009), pp. 171–98.
2 The practice of individual string quartets or vocal ensembles which rehearse and occasionally
perform their repertoire from scores will not be considered here.
3 Thus the First Symphony in the four-hand reduction appeared under the description ‘piano
score for four hands’ (‘Clavier-Auszug für vier Hände’), but that of the Fourth Symphony as
110 ‘Adaptation for Four-Hand Piano’ (‘Bearbeitung für Clavier zu vier Händen’). Reductions of
Main and shadowy existence(s) 111
The artistic and practical significance of piano scores of solo concer-

tos, oratorios, choral-symphonic works and operas has remained largely
unchanged from the late eighteenth century. In piano scores, the orchestral
parts are transferred into a two-hand piano part, while the solo instrumen-
tal part or choral and solo vocal roles are reproduced in principle exactly
as in the full score. Piano scores were and continue to be used to learn and
rehearse the relevant works, but may also be used for ‘internal’ performances
in conservatoires and music schools, as well as in competitions.4 Brahms
himself created piano scores of his choral-symphonic compositions and his
four concertos.
However, of no less significance for the dissemination of Brahms’s music
were his four-hand arrangements for one or two pianos (henceforth referred
to as ‘piano arrangements’). These exist for virtually all of his orchestral
works, some of his chamber music (the complete chamber music purely
for strings ranging from the sextets to the quartets, and first two piano
quartets) as well as, notably, the First Piano Concerto, Ein deutsches Requiem
and the Triumphlied. In these arrangements, the entire chamber, orchestral,
concertante or vocal-orchestral texture is transferred to a four-hand texture
for one or two pianos.5 As the above listing implies, Brahms himself created
both a (vocal/)piano score and a four-hand piano arrangement of certain
works, namely Ein deutsches Requiem, the Triumphlied and the First Piano
Concerto. However, in many other cases he left the production of piano
reductions to others, as with the majority of the four-hand arrangements
chamber works could be described as a ‘four-hand piano score’ (‘Vierhändiger Clavierauszug’)

as with the First String Sextet; ‘Arrangement for four-hand piano’ (‘Arrangement für das
Pianoforte zu vier Händen’) as with the First and Second String Quartet; or ‘Adaptation for
four-hand piano’ (‘Bearbeitung für Clavier zu vier Händen’) as with the Third String Quartet.
The edition of the Violin Concerto with piano instead of orchestra was publicised as a ‘piano
score’ (‘Clavierauszug’); the corresponding edition of the Double Concerto, in contrast, as
‘Edition with pianoforte’ (‘Ausgabe mit Pianoforte’). For further discussion, see M. Struck,
‘Surrogat und Hybris – Wirkungsbereiche des Klaviers im Umfeld tradierter Gattungen:
Johannes Brahms’ vierhändige Arrangements eigener Werke und Charles Valentin Alkans
Douze études op. 39’, in A. Edler and S. Meine (eds.), Musik, Wissenschaft und ihre Vermittlung:
Bericht über die Internationale Musikwissenschaftliche Tagung der Hochschule für Musik und
Theater Hannover 26.–29. September 2001 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2002), pp. 119–35, in particular
pp. 133–4. Throughout this volume, the term ‘piano duet’ refers to works for four hands and
one piano; the term ‘two-piano’ refers to works for four hands and two pianos.
4 See M. Struck, ‘Werk-Übersetzung als Werk-Alternative? Johannes Brahms’
Klavierbearbeitungen eigener Werke’, in B. Plachta and W. Woesler (eds.), Edition und
Übersetzung: Zur wissenschaftlichen Dokumentation des interkulturellen Texttransfers. Beiträge
der Internationalen Fachtagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für germanistische Edition – 11 March
2000 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002), pp. 447–64.
5 Generally two-hand arrangements for a single piano and eight-hand arrangements for two
pianos stem from arrangers other than Brahms.
112 michael struck
of his chamber music with piano (piano trios and duo sonatas) as well as
the eight-hand and two-hand arrangements.6
In his 1983 dissertation on piano arrangements of orchestral works,
Helmut Loos demonstrated that the nineteenth-century music publishing
industry experienced an increasing demand for arrangements, and that the
sale of such arrangements constituted a significant proportion of publish-
ers’ commercial calculations.7 The countless publishers’ advertisements in
nineteenth-century music journals plainly reflect the availability and the
demand for this segment of music printing. Furthermore, this demand was
by no means restricted to specific parts of Germany or Europe; demand
for arrangements and piano scores was no less in cities with a rich musical
life like Leipzig or London than in smaller places where works involving
orchestra might seldom be heard. Brahms himself did not create his piano
reductions for particular locations or people, but rather because his pub-
lishers asked for them, paid for them, and would otherwise have relegated
their preparation to other arrangers.
Moreover, arrangements bore not only substantial economic signifi-
cance, but also considerable cultural relevance, since prior to the inven-
tion and implementation of new technological means of recording (namely
gramophone records and broadcasting), it was only through arrangements
that music-lovers and musicians could have virtually unrestricted access to
larger-scale works. Even in the realm of chamber music, people resorted to
arrangements when no appropriate ensemble was available. Furthermore,
it was only through arrangements that people could hear the music they
wanted in a private setting – in other words, outside the concert hall or pres-
tigious chamber-music salons. There are two main reasons why four-hand
arrangements for piano were in particular demand: firstly, chamber music,
orchestral or choral-orchestral work was undeniably more effectively – in
other words, both closer to the original and simultaneously also relatively
playable by gifted amateur pianists of the era – transferred into a four-hand
piano texture than a two-handed version, which either omitted many details
because of the enormous simplification required, or was exceptionally diffi-
cult to play. Secondly, one was far more likely to encounter a single upright
6 The arrangement of the Third Symphony initially created by Robert Keller for four-hand piano
is an exception (see n. 44 and n. 49). The same applies to Hermann Levi’s vocal/piano score of
the Schicksalslied Op. 54; both of these were reworked to such a great extent by Brahms that they
might qualify not only as authorised, but authentic. They therefore appear as part of the
Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe.
7 See H. Loos, Zur Klavierübertragung von Werken für und mit Orchester des 19. und 20.
Jahrhunderts (Munich: E. Katzbichler, 1983), pp. 8–15.
or grand piano in middle-class and lower-middle-class households than two

such instruments.
With the advent of recording and broadcasting, arrangements inevitably
became obsolete; thus one might refer, from that moment on, to a shadowy
existence of these incarnations of a work for much of the twentieth century.
These arrangements, which were once so important, were only taken off
the shelf from time to time, dusted down and played by a small handful
of enthusiasts of four-hand piano playing. Only since the mid-1970s have
arrangements once again attracted the increasing interest of musicologists
and musicians; among the more extensive scholarly studies, the dissertations
of Robert Komaiko (1975), Helmut Loos (1983) and Valerie Woodring
Goertzen (1987) as well as Martin Feil’s Master’s dissertation (1997) may
be mentioned.8
In this chapter, the questions surrounding the function and significance
of Brahms’s piano arrangements for his oeuvre and its reception will be
considered against this background. Furthermore, the aesthetic relationship
between ‘work’ and ‘arrangements’ will be explored. The topic will be
examined through the following six subheadings, which are expressed as
statements.
1. Brahms’s piano arrangements were highly significant for the

presence and reception of his music in the nineteenth century
Issues concerning the function and significance of piano arrangements can

only be answered by first of all acknowledging that the piano became the
dominant instrument of the nineteenth century. Thus, in 1866, Eduard
Hanslick referred to the four-hand piano duet as ‘the most intimate, most
agreeable and, within its limitations, most complete type of domestic music-
making’, and added from a historical perspective that, on account of the
‘rapid spread of piano-playing’ and the technical improvements in piano
design, the previous domestic performance of string quartets, trios and
quintets had been eclipsed. Moreover, Hanslick did not have just original
compositions in mind, but arrangements of symphonic works as well as
8 R. Komaiko, ‘The Four-Hand Piano Arrangements of Brahms and Their Role in the Nineteenth
Century’, unpublished PhD thesis, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (1975), 2 vols.; Loos,
Klavierübertragung, in particular pp. 56–64 (the chapter titled ‘Johannes Brahms’); V. Woodring
Goertzen, ‘The Piano Transcriptions of Johannes Brahms’, unpublished PhD thesis, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1987); M. Feil, ‘Die eigenhändigen Klavierbearbeitungen der
Streichquartette von Johannes Brahms’, unpublished Master’s dissertation, University of
Hamburg (1997).
114 michael struck
chamber music in particular. Although the decline of ensemble playing was,

on the one hand, a ‘loss’ of sorts, on the other hand, four-hand arrangements
enabled the ‘best possible knowledge of the orchestral literature in one’s own
living-room’. And he continued:
Nowadays there is no overture or symphony offered in our concerts that one cannot
immediately sample in advance in or relish afterwards in four-hand arrangement. A
source of pleasure and instruction flows from this humble realm to music-lovers. –
‘Wer ist Ihr Vierhändiger?’ [‘Who is your four-handed?’], a passionate amateur
asked me recently. His bold formulation, negating the personality so completely
and stressing only the musical function, did not seem so bad to me. A genuine
‘four-handed’ is the incarnation of reliable qualities . . . he gains in value the less he
makes pretensions to two-handedness . . . Not everyone has a wife, a beloved, or a
bosom friend to call his own, but every mortal should have a ‘four-handed’, as a
committed dancer, so to speak, for their musical lifetime.9
The complementary terms ‘sample in advance’ and ‘relish afterwards’ pre-

cisely capture the essential functions of a nineteenth-century arrangement
in relation to the ‘main’ existence of a work: on the one hand, arrange-
ments allowed music-lovers to prepare themselves at home for public ren-
ditions within the prestigious walls of concert halls, churches or musical
salons. Thus Brahms’s arrangements of the Second, Third and Fourth Sym-
phonies had a preparatory role at the very outset of their existence, since
the composer played them in four-hand arrangements with Ignaz Brüll for
select Viennese friends and the conductor Hans Richter before the relevant
public premieres.10 On the other hand, arrangements also provided the
opportunity to let compositions sound forth again after their public perfor-
mance within domestic environments. The piano and piano arrangements
therefore possessed exactly the same function as subsequent broadcasts and
recordings: they allowed their users to reproduce musical works at any time.
9 E. Hanslick, ‘Waffenruhe am Clavier’, Neue Freie Presse, Morgenblatt No. 714, Vienna,
25 August 1866, pp. 1–2; this text was published with minor alterations as ‘Waffenruhe am
Clavier (Wien, im August 1866)’, in Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, vol. II: Aus dem
Concertsaal. Kritiken und Schilderungen aus den letzten 20 Jahren des Wiener Musiklebens nebst
einem Anhang: Musikalische Reisebriefe aus England, Frankreich und der Schweiz (Vienna:
W. Braumüller, 1870), pp. 404–11, in particular p. 405.
10 In the case of the Second and Third Symphony, this had already evoked a positive response
from the listeners of these premieres in arrangement before the premieres. In the case of the
Second Symphony, it even led to predictions about possible demands for encores in the
forthcoming premiere of the orchestral version. In contrast, the two-piano arrangement
of the Fourth Symphony did not achieve anything like the effect on Brahms’s friends that
the premiere with orchestra achieved with the public during its premiere shortly after at
Meiningen. Hans Richter conducted the premieres of the Second and Third Symphonies as
well as the Vienna premiere of the Fourth Symphony.
Hanslick’s general remarks are affirmed by remarks of Brahms’s friends

and acquaintances. Thus his main publisher, Fritz Simrock, put pressure on
Brahms to publish his arrangement of the Second Symphony for four hands
as early as possible by writing as follows:
I don’t consider it disadvantageous to publish the four-hand score in advance – this

way one can get at least an idea of the thematic treasures and can then enjoy them in a
much more relaxed and calm way during the dress-rehearsals for performances . . . I
felt very relieved, having seen the four-hand version in advance [of the Second
Symphony]; this way I could rejoice in many things even before the performance
took place.11
Elsewhere Clara Schumann, in her diary, expressed her disappointment that

she ‘unfortunately . . . could not get to know the work [Third Symphony]
earlier’, since although she had received from Brahms the piano score of
his two-piano four-hand arrangement, the absence of the second copy
necessary for a play-through prevented her from playing it prior to her first
hearing of the work on 18 January 1884 in Wiesbaden. Only on 29 January
was she finally able, together with her daughter Elise (Sommerhoff), ‘to try
Johannes’s Third Symphony for two pianos . . . I missed too much when I
heard it recently to gain an idea of its beauty – how much I long to hear it
again, now that I know every bar. It was dreadful of Brahms to send just the
half of the arrangement earlier; had I got to know the symphony like that
then, what different pleasure I would have had from the premiere.’12
2. Brahms’s arrangements were conceived as independent

entities rather than literal transcriptions
If one regards piano arrangements as the ‘translation’ of a work from

its original chamber, orchestral or choral-symphonic form into a piano
11 Letter of 14 January 1878 from Fritz Simrock to Brahms, in K. Stephenson (ed.), Johannes
Brahms und Fritz Simrock: Weg einer Freundschaft. Briefe des Verlegers an den Komponisten
(Hamburg: J. J. Augustin, 1961), p. 129. Upon publication the letter was wrongly dated as
14 October 1878 because of the incorrect date on the manuscript. The correct date was
definitively confirmed through comparison with Brahms’s preceding letter from Hamburg of
13 January 1878 (dated through a postal stamp). In this, Brahms wrote to Simrock: ‘Wouldn’t
you like to request the last movement of the “Kattermängs” [Brahms’s humorous mangling of
the French term ‘à quatre mains’ (‘for four hands’)] from Frau Schumann and have this
copied. I have the other three. Then you could have them engraved as far as I’m concerned. But
of course we will not have the arrangement available before the score!?’ (Briefe X, p. 67).
12 B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann: Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, vol. III
(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1908), pp. 447–8.
116 michael struck
work,13 then the act of translation does, in most cases, lead to a reduction
of technical complexity as well as sonorous range and variety. Neverthe-
less, it generally would have the enormous advantage that the recipients,
simultaneously the players, directly participated in the sonorous realisation
of the piano translation – in other words, literally ‘handled’ the work and
‘grasped’ it. The charm of Johannes Brahms’s arrangements lies in the fact
that, at points where a decision had to be made between a note-for-note
transcription or a freer conception according to the musical sense, Brahms
clearly preferred the latter.14 Brahms repeatedly stated that his arrangements
should be comprehensible and clear,15 easy to play as well as practical and
enjoyable.16 Hence it was more than just sarcasm about the successful exe-
cution of an unloved task when he assured his publisher Jakob Melchior
Rieter-Biedermann that his arrangement of the First Piano Concerto for
four hands on one piano was (in consideration of the ‘advantage’ to the
publisher) expressly ‘made for playing and not (as is currently the vogue)
for reading’.17 This means, for instance, that the primary division into soloist
and orchestra,18 and even specific aspects of the voice-leading within the
texture, can be merely alluded to in terms of the musical sense, or are even
fully replaced by an alternative formulation which is more idiomatic for
piano. Such liberties have been described at length in the above-mentioned
studies by Komaiko, Loos, Goertzen and Feil, but also in Gernot Gruber’s
essay on the relationship between the string version and the piano version
of the Second String Quintet.19 And Brahms himself in 1884 wrote in col-
loquial and summary terms to Robert Keller, whom he regarded highly as
an editor but less so as an arranger: ‘I simply treat my piece less respectfully,
13 See Struck, ‘Werk-Übersetzung’, in particular pp. 447–9.

14 While Brahms’s piano arrangements and piano/vocal scores are missing from the old
Brahms-Gesamtausgabe, E. Mandyczewski and H. Gál (eds.), Johannes Brahms: Sämtliche
Werke. Ausgabe der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 26 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1926–7, revised repr. Wiesbaden, 1965), they are accorded their own volumes in the new
complete edition, JBG. Details of the piano scores and arrangements that have appeared in the
JBG thus far are included in the Abbreviations list in this volume.
15 See letter of [28 May 1862] from Brahms to Rieter-Biedermann, Briefe XIV, p. 71. This letter
shows Brahms’s difficulties in producing a four-hand arrangement of the First Piano Concerto,
in which he uses the antithetical terms ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘unclear’ when criticising his
own attempt.
16 Ibid., pp. 83, 85; see also pp. 86 and 71. 17 Ibid., p. 86.
18 In contrast to the four-hand arrangement for one piano, the division of roles in the piano score
for two pianos (which was also by Brahms) was naturally retained, since in performance,
Piano I takes the solo and Piano II the two-hand version of the orchestral part.
19 G. Gruber, ‘Opus 111: Vergleich der Versionen für Streichquintett und für Klavier vierhändig’,
in I. Fuchs (ed.), Internationaler Brahms-Kongreß Gmunden 1997 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider,
2001), pp. 73–86.
more audaciously than you or anyone else can.’20 Expressed more seriously:
this freer, more creative engagement with the original meant that in the case
of the four-hand arrangement of Ein deutsches Requiem, Brahms reduced
the entire framework of vocal and orchestral parts to a radically thinned
four-hand piano work without voice. Brahms himself was not only fully
aware of the aesthetic and historic significance of Ein deutsches Requiem,
but was also proud of the fact that he had arranged a work (which, in line
with his expectations, was highly regarded and often performed in the sub-
sequent decades) so skilfully for four-hand piano that even amateur pianists
could cope with it to some extent. Thus he joked to his publisher that he
had also made his ‘immortal work enjoyable for the four-hand soul’, so
that it would ‘not perish’. If he himself was convinced that it was ‘abso-
lutely excellent . . . and in addition, very easy to play, really utterly simple
and quick to play’, this was a result of his art of ‘selecting the few notes
[of the arrangement] from the many notes [of the main choral-orchestral
version]’.21
3. Brahms’s arrangements were, regardless of their pianistic

creativity, not aesthetically equivalent alternatives, but
replacement versions (surrogates) made for domestic use
When Brahms’s piano reductions were rediscovered in the last decades of

the twentieth century, pianists, concert promoters, recording producers and
musicologists were delighted that they could present and sell known and
loved works in a new form. At times they were so enthusiastic about the
creative liberties Brahms took as an arranger, and the pianistic charm of his
arrangements, that, in a kind of posthumous reversal of paradigms, they
argued that the arrangements of the relevant choral-symphonic, orchestral
or chamber works could be regarded as aesthetically equivalent to their orig-
inals. Furthermore, it was pointed out that in the case of some works, for
example the two Overtures, the Fourth Symphony and the Second String
Quintet, the arrangement was the first version of the work to appear in
print.22 Gernot Gruber, for example, drew some radical conclusions as a
20 G. Bozarth (ed.), The Brahms-Keller Correspondence (Lincoln and London: University of

Nebraska Press, 1996), pp. 75–6.
21 Briefe XIV, p. 172.
22 Academic Festival Overture and Tragic Overture: arrangements presumably published in March
1881, score and parts published in July 1881; Fourth Symphony: arrangement for two pianos
published in May 1886, orchestral score and parts published in October 1886; Second String
118 michael struck
result; he stated that the string quintet version of Brahms’s Op. 111 pre-
sented a ‘linear-unfolding’ phrase structure (Gruber uses the term linear-
fortspinnenden), whereas the four-hand version, in contrast, presented a
‘contrasting-/paratactic phrase structure’. Due to the ‘high degree of indi-
vidualisation’ of both versions, he preferred to regard them as ‘two distinct,
individually differentiated approaches to form on the basis of a common
res facta’. He argued that Brahms offered ‘two solutions, and not a sin-
gle “original” with a subsequently written arrangement’.23 One CD label
did not hesitate to announce a four-hand arrangement of the Second Sym-
phony, which Brahms had composed for the private use of Clara Schumann,
as the ‘Lichtenthaler Version’. Indeed, the arrangement was an obligatory
task, from the very outset a request from Brahms’s publisher Fritz Simrock,
intended for publication by the composer, even if also primarily serving
private usage. The fact that this arrangement was definitely not created in
the company of Clara Schumann in Lichtenthal bei Baden Baden, but later
in Vienna, is further evidence that the historical truth in this, and other,
cases, has fallen victim to the effect of marketing.24
What, then, was the function of four-hand piano arrangements for
Brahms and his contemporaries? They were normally not intended for
public consumption, but replaced public performances of the original,
i.e. a symphony, a string quartet, or Ein deutsches Requiem, by perfor-
mance in private. As mentioned above, they could exist alongside public
performances – in other words, assist preparation or function as a sonic
memory of the original. Arrangements were therefore surrogates for the
original; the replacement ersatz aural rendition at the piano offered music-
lovers ersatz situations which as a rule also took place in private ersatz
locations, namely in private living or music rooms instead of the public
concert hall or in the semi-public salon.25 In contrast to Franz Liszt’s two-
hand piano versions of Beethoven’s symphonies, Brahms’s arrangements
Quintet: arrangement made in February 1891 shortly before the publication of the score and
parts (see Werkverzeichnis, pp. 335, 338, 403, 445).
23 Gruber, ‘Opus 111’, pp. 76, 74, 78ff.
24 J. Brahms, Symphonie D-Dur op. 73 für Klavier zu vier Händen (Lichtenthaler Fassung). Piano:
Karl-Heinz and Michael Schlüter (Münster: Viersen, Aulos-Schallplatten, 1989, PRE 66018
AUL). Booklet: C. de Nys, pp. 4ff: ‘Not long after he had finished composing it, the same
autumn, he made an arrangement of it for piano duet. This was done in Lichtenthal in the
Black Forest, where he used to go every spring and autumn for many years . . . The D major
symphony was one of several works which he arranged for piano duet, probably so as to be
able to try them out with his beloved friend Clara Schumann: they are massive piano parts,
almost complete scores on themselves [sic].’
25 See Struck, ‘Werk-Übersetzung’, p. 450.
are – like numerous other practically conceived arrangements of the nine-

teenth century – fundamentally directed towards middle-class amateur
music lovers, regardless of how accomplished they might be as players.
This remains true even when the technical and ensemble-playing demands
of the arrangements would challenge professional pianists, as in the case of
the Piano Concerto in D minor Op. 15 or Brahms’s four-hand arrangement
of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet.
Under no circumstances should these four-hand surrogate versions be
regarded as aesthetically equivalent alternatives to the original, a situation
which does in fact separately exist within Brahms’s oeuvre.26 Just two exam-
ples are mentioned here, namely the pair of works which constitute the
Piano Quintet Op. 34 and the Sonata for Two Pianos Op. 34bis, which was
composed earlier but published later; and the Haydn Variations Op. 56a
in the orchestral version and the version for two pianos, Op. 56b. In the
latter case Brahms indicated to his publisher Simrock after a short stage
of vacillation that he ‘would not be happy for the version for two pianos
to be regarded as an arrangement’.27 The equal validity of both versions is
indicated by a shared but distinct opus number; this is also the case for the
earlier and later versions of the Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52/Op. 52a and the
Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 65/Op. 65a.28
The fact that arrangements and piano scores occupy a different, namely
aesthetically lower, rank in the hierarchy of versions of a work, is indicated
on the one hand by statements made by the composer himself – for exam-
ple, when he spoke disrespectfully of ‘ruminating’ on one’s own works (he
uses the word ‘wiederkäuen’); therefore he constantly asked his publish-
ers to suppress his name as arranger in the printed arrangements.29 But
26 See for example M. Struck. ‘Um Fassung(en) ringend: Johannes Brahms, das Problem der
Fassungen und das Problem der Brahms-Forschung mit dem Problem der Fassungen’, in
R. Emans (ed.), Mit Fassung: Fassungsprobleme in Musik- und Text-Philologie (Laaber Verlag,
2007), pp. 141–76, in particular pp. 144–61.
27 Briefe IX, p. 150.
28 There is, furthermore, the case of the alternative instrumentations authorised by Brahms of the
Horn Trio, the Clarinet Trio and the Op. 115 Clarinet Quintet, as well as the viola and violin
versions of the Op. 120 Clarinet Sonatas, in which one can assume at least an approximate
aesthetic equivalence, as suggested by the titles of the works: Trio für Pianoforte, Violine &
Waldhorn (oder Violoncello); Trio (a-moll) für Pianoforte, Clarinette (oder Bratsche) und
Violoncell; Quintett für Clarinette (oder Bratsche)[,] 2 Violinen, Bratsche und Violoncell; Zwei
Sonaten für Clarinette (oder Bratsche) und Pianoforte. Ausgabe für Violine und Pianoforte. See
Werkverzeichnis, pp. 146, 461, 464, 482–3.
29 See, for example, Brahms’s letter of [15] October 1870 to Rieter-Biedermann, which contains
an urgent plea to remove his name as arranger in the edition of the First Piano Concerto and
Ein deutsches Requiem. Briefe XIV, pp. 190–1. See also Briefe IX, pp. 95, 97–9 (Brahms’s letters
120 michael struck
the title-pages offer further clarification that piano reductions qualified as

derivatives – in other words, as replacements for the originals: the four-hand
versions for one or two pianos of the Fourth Symphony were not published
as a four-hand sonata, but retained the title ‘Symphony’. And the Violin
Concerto in piano score did not mutate into a violin sonata, but remained
a violin concerto. In any case, soloists would demand that the work qualify
as a ‘violin concerto’, even if performances for exams or competitions could
only take place with piano accompaniment for financial reasons. This is
precisely how Brahms’s contemporaries understood his piano reductions,
however creative they were in terms of their textures and their pianism.
This claim does not conflict with the fact that Brahms’s arrangements
can differ from their original versions not only in textural aspects, but
sometimes also in rhythmic and harmonic details, and occasionally even in
the number of bars.30 When considering such divergences, we have to factor
in the possibility of error, or the possibility of an intentional or inadvertent
mixing-up of different stages of a work’s genesis.
The extent to which Brahms’s contemporaries regarded the relationship
between original and arrangement as a hierarchy is proven particularly
clearly by a comment made by Clara Schumann after Brahms had the four-
hand arrangement of his Second String Quintet sent to her. ‘Dear Johannes,
I cannot wait until I have heard the quintet in its real form, I must tell
you now, after having got to know it à 4/m. [for four hands], how much it
pleases me. Although I cannot yet really imagine the effect of the first and
last movements, I nevertheless had some great pleasure from them at the
piano, particularly from the development of the first movement.’31 The ‘real’
form of the work as a string quintet is here contrasted with the four-hand
reduction, which may not equal the original in terms of sonic concision
and contrast, but nevertheless was already able to effect a preliminary ‘great
pleasure’ of aesthetic enjoyment.
from April as well as 9/[23] October 1870 containing his request to Fritz Simrock not to name
him as arranger on the title page of the arrangement of the First Piano Quartet, and his
subsequent strong protest resulting from Simrock’s initial disregard of his request).
30 Regarding the additional bar in the four-hand piano arrangement of the Presto giocoso section
within the Scherzo of the Second String Sextet Op. 36, see Werkverzeichnis, p. 244. Regarding
the missing bar in the four-hand arrangement of the first movement of the Second String
Quintet Op. 111, see ibid., p. 447. Similarly, bar 167 is missing from the fourth movement, as
indicated by Gruber, Opus 111, p. 75. A particularly large deviation is in the final movement
(Rondo. Allegro) of the Serenade no. 1 Op. 11: the orchestral version is seven bars longer than
the four-hand arrangement, which may have corresponded to the ‘earlier version for small
orchestra’ (see JBG, Arrangements Serenaden und Ouvertüren, p. 210).
31 See letter of 21 February 1891 from Clara Schumann to Brahms, in Schumann-Brahms Briefe II,
p. 439.
Thus one might speak of a historico-aesthetic dialectic in Brahms’s piano

reductions. On the one hand, one cannot deny their surrogacy in terms of
function, their subordinate position in the aesthetic hierarchy of the differ-
ent versions. On the other hand, Brahms invested a high degree of creativity
in producing arrangements and piano scores which were musically rather
than literally equivalent to the original, within the restrictions of their func-
tionality. Of course, arrangements have long lost their surrogate function
since the originals are permanently available through audio reproductions
via twentieth- and twenty-first-century media. Thus they have a changed
significance nowadays and are more appreciated for their status as indi-
viduated versions.32 Only such a differentiated view will do justice to the
particular work-forms of Brahms’s piano reductions.
4. No musical genre of Brahms’s works is as open, variable and,

at the same time, problematic as the piano arrangement in
regard to its sounding realisation
We are aware that Johannes Brahms and Ignaz Brüll met for a first run-
through rehearsal before the preview- (or rather: ‘pre-heard’) style perform-
ance of the Fourth Symphony on two pianos.33 Furthermore we also know
that Theodor Billroth requested the autograph of the still incomplete four-
hand arrangement of the Second Symphony from Brahms in order to ‘read
through it’ once before playing through it with Brahms on the morning
of the next day – as far as it was complete at that stage. However, usu-
ally one might assume that there was either very little or no preparation
time for the performance of arrangements. Arrangements were therefore
to a large extent musical literature for sight-reading; they were prey to the
favourable or unfavourable circumstances of the moment, and to the sight-
reading competence of the players to a far greater extent than works and
versions of works which were intended for public or semi-public perfor-
mance. Indeed, in the case of no other type of musical text by Brahms might
so much be omitted, played inaccurately, and bridged via improvisation
while playing, as in the case of the arrangements. Hence these replacement
versions needed to possess a double textural basis, in order that as much as
possible of the compositional and arrangement-specific substance might,
under such circumstances, be realised and perceived by the listeners, who
32 With thanks to my colleague Dr Katrin Eich for stimulating discussion of this point.
33 See JBG, Arrangements 4. Symphonie, p. x with notes 9–12.
122 michael struck
often were also the players. Thus in this respect, one might speak of an
arrangement as a kind of ‘shadowy existence’ – a special existence which
also evokes, between its lines, the original work; an existence which, through
each aural realisation, gains an ever-changing shape in an almost aleatoric
way.
5. The so-called ‘London Version’ of Ein deutsches Requiem

presents a highly problematic version of this work
A significant freedom can be observed in arrangements, not only as dis-

cussed in statements 2 and 4 with respect to Brahms’s ‘translations’ into
piano language, but also in the case of their rendering, which is often distin-
guished by sight-reading and its corresponding imperfections. This freedom
with arrangements can also take place with regard to their use. A particu-
larly complex and problematic case is that of the ‘London Version’ of Ein
deutsches Requiem.
Firstly, the facts: Brahms created two different piano reductions for
Ein deutsches Requiem, namely a vocal/piano score as well as a four-hand
piano arrangement. As already mentioned, the voice parts are reproduced
unchanged in the vocal/piano score, while the orchestral texture is trans-
formed into a two-hand piano texture, which makes considerable demands
in terms of complexity and, given the duration of the work of approxi-
mately 75 minutes, an extraordinary degree of stamina and concentration
from the accompanist. In contrast, the entire orchestral texture, includ-
ing choral and solo vocal parts, is ‘translated’ into the four-hand piano
arrangement. Thus, according to Brahms’s wishes, the arrangement was to
be only played and not sung when it was rendered in private living and music
rooms. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the passages of text are
only printed upon their first appearance, and then in small print. There-
fore the included text functioned only to assist orientation, rather than to
be sung.
In conflict with the aesthetic and social function of the four-hand piano
arrangement, there is the undeniable historic fact that at the first British
performance, it was performed together with the choral and solo vocal
parts. This performance ‘before an invited audience’, as we know from
Brahms’s biographer Florence May and from George Alexander Macfarren,
took place on 7 or 10 July 1871 ‘at the residence of Sir Henry Thompson’ –
35 Wimpole Street, in the ‘drawing rooms’ of Lady Thompson, who
had been a successful pianist in England under her maiden name, Kate
Loder.34 Brahms’s friend the baritone Julius Stockhausen conducted both

the rehearsals and the performance, as well as singing the baritone solos,
while Anna Regan undertook the soprano solo. The choir consisted of ‘about
thirty good musicians’ and ‘the pianoforte part in the form of a duet . . . was
played by Lady Thompson and Mr [Cipriani] Potter’, whose ‘enthusiasm on
that occasion extended itself to everyone who was concerned in the perfor-
mance . . . and the audience were all aglow with interest in the work and its
rendering’.35
The form in which Brahms’s Requiem was first heard in a private or at
best semi-public space on British soil was certainly makeshift. First of all, the
premises, despite their upper-middle-class proportions, did not permit the
inclusion of a reasonably sized choir and orchestra. Then, accompaniment
from Brahms’s vocal/piano score would have required a skilful and resilient
pianist, but at this time, Lady Thompson’s paralysis had begun to manifest
itself and the venerable pianist, composer and teacher Cipriani Potter was
already 79 (he died soon afterwards).36 Under such circumstances, the use
of the easier four-hand arrangement seems fully understandable.
Fortunately the copy in the possession of Lady Thompson has been
preserved (see Figure 5.1).37 Two details demonstrate how the copy was
specially prepared for performance: as Example 5.1 shows, Lady Thomp-
son inked in the rehearsal letters,38 which Brahms had suppressed in his
arrangement.39 This was the only way in which to facilitate swift coordi-
nation between piano and choir, since the choral parts and vocal/piano
34 See F. May, The Life of Johannes Brahms (London: E. Arnold, 1905), vol. II, p. 87, who
mentions 7 July, and G. Macfarren, ‘Cipriani Potter: His Life and Work’, Proceedings of the
Musical Association 10 (1883–4), pp. 41–56, here p. 52; Macfarren mentions 10 July. It is
possible that these were the dates of the rehearsal and the performance, unless two
performances in fact took place.
35 Macfarren, ‘Cipriani Potter’, p. 52; see also R. Pascall, ‘Frühe Brahms-Rezeption in England’, in
I. Fuchs (ed.), Internationaler Brahms-Kongreß Gmunden 1997: Kongreßbericht (Tutzing: Hans
Schneider, 2001), pp. 293–342, here p. 296.
36 See N. Temperley, ‘Loder, Kate’, vol. XV, p. 59 and P. H. Peter and J. Rushton, ‘Potter, Cipriani’,
vol. XX, pp. 221–3 in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 29 vols. (London: Macmillan, 2001).
37 I am grateful to the Poltun-Sternberg Music Collection in Vienna for permission to view and
reproduce pages from this score.
38 These additions were possibly made in two stages, as suggested by the thinner lines of some of
the alphabets.
39 See letter of [31] January 1869 from Brahms to Rieter-Biedermann in Briefe XIV, p. 173. The
lack of rehearsal numbers further indicates that Brahms did not intend the four-hand
arrangement to be used for rehearsal and performance, but only for private playing-through of
the work at the piano, for which no coordination with a choir or soloists would be required.
124 michael struck
Figure 5.1. Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45. Arrangement for piano duet, first
edition (Leipzig/Winterthur: J. Rieter-Biedermann), Kate Thompson’s copy, cover page
with her signature.
scores being used by the singers already contained these rehearsal letters,
taken from the orchestral score.
Furthermore, at the London performance, a serious sonic problem was at
least alleviated, if not fully resolved. Since the four-hand piano arrangement
comprised all the orchestral and vocal parts, a performance combining
choir, soloists and four-hand arrangement would necessarily result in the
Example 5.1. Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45. Arrangement for piano duet, first edition (Leipzig/Winterthur: J. Rieter-Biedermann), Kate Thompson’s copy,
pages 2–3: opening of first movement, bars 1–38.
126 michael struck
Example 5.2 Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45. Arrangement for piano duet, first
edition (Leipzig/Winterthur: J. Rieter-Biedermann), Kate Thompson’s copy, p. 29:
third movement, bars 54–104, Primo, crossing-out of bars 67–82.
unaccompanied vocal parts in the original now being doubled by both

singers and piano duettists. This doubling was naturally not intended by
Brahms, yet one can hear it today in several of the recordings of the so-
called ‘London Version’.40 However, in Lady Thompson’s copy of the duet
arrangement almost all the bars to be sung a cappella are deleted in pencil,
presumably upon Julius Stockhausen’s request. Example 5.2 shows this
crossing-out for the first choral entry. In other instances, the relevant piano
parts are only selectively deleted, where they overlap with the independently
conceived choral parts. Strangely, the a cappella bars 92–5 of the seventh
movement remained undeleted on pages 76–7 of the printed arrangement
(the text of this passage is ‘denn ihre Werke, ihre Werke [folgen, folgen
ihnen nach]’), while the largely corresponding bars 54–7 on the previous
pages 74–5 are crossed out as expected. It is also intriguing that the male
40 See for example the CD Johannes Brahms (1833–1897): Ein deutsches Requiem op. 45 nach
Worten der Heiligen Schrift, Londoner Fassung. Soprano: Soile Isokoski, baritone: Andreas
Schmidt, piano: Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher. Chorus Musicus Köln; cond. Christoph
Spering (Paris: Opus 111, 1996, OPS 30–140).
solo parts in the third and sixth movements and the soprano solo part in the
fifth movement also remained largely undeleted in Kate Thompson’s copy,
even in passages where no orchestral accompaniment doubles the solo part.
Only a single vocal solo passage is crossed out (see Example 5.2): bars 67–82
of the bass solo in the third movement (‘Herr, lehre doch mich . . . ’), which
in terms of text and melody largely corresponds with bars 2–16 – which
remained intact. Thus it may be assumed that the undeleted a cappella and
solo passages were indeed both sung and played at this London premiere,
provided that the conductor Stockhausen did not spontaneously indicate
that the pianists stop at the relevant passages. (The firm crossing-out of
other passages as well as practical performance reasons would seem to
speak against, rather than in favour of, such an assumption.) Furthermore
it must be admitted that the crossings-out and not-crossings-out are not
consistent overall.
Thus we may draw the following provisional conclusions: the use of
Brahms’s four-hand piano arrangement for the London premiere was a
makeshift solution, to accommodate the practical circumstances of this
particular performance. The four-hand piano accompaniment not only
replaced the orchestra but also provided répétiteur-like support for soloists
and choir in this new and unfamiliar work. In addition, some questions
regarding the actual sonic realisation remain open. The so-called ‘London
Version’ is therefore a historical performative fact, but as it constitutes
neither an authentic representation of the work nor one expressly authorised
by Brahms himself,41 it has no aesthetic relevance in terms of the composer’s
intentions. Rather, the role of the piano part of the arrangement was mixed
with that of a vocal/piano score, without corresponding with Brahms’s own
vocal/piano score. In the light of this summary, various advertising claims
made on the Internet, in concert programmes or in CD booklets, regarding
the apparent authenticity of the ‘London Version’ are downright absurd.42
41 Brahms himself seems only to have become aware of the private London performance through
a letter of 11 March 1872 from Julius Stockhausen, i.e. eight months later; see Briefe XVIII,
p. 79.
42 A search on 22 October 2011 revealed various recordings of the ‘London Version’ available
from a German record distribution company promoted with the claim that this was a version
‘made by Johannes Brahms’ with two pianos [sic!] instead of orchestra, dating from 1869,
which received its premiere in London in 1871. See www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/
Johannes-Brahms-1833-1897-Ein-Deutsches-Requiem-op-45-Londoner-Version/hnum/
6369288 (accessed on 19 February 2014). Similar claims may be read in corresponding concert
announcements of performances for which, for financial or other reasons, no orchestra has
been used. At the time of enquiry, the German Wikipedia article on Ein deutsches Requiem went
still a step further into absurdity; it was claimed there (with reference to a booklet text written
128 michael struck
If, in respect of Ein deutsches Requiem, one poses the question of the forms of
the work and their historical and aesthetic relevance, this ‘London Version’
has a thoroughly problematic existence and one which ultimately does not
stand up to scrutiny. Put more precisely, one should accord it not just a
shadowy existence, but regard it, truly and simply, as a phantom.
6. Arrangements can shed light on the genesis of a work and

reveal earlier ideas and details
The final section of this chapter, taking the example of the Third Sym-
phony, shows not only how a Brahms arrangement was a manifestation of
the work for Hausmusik purposes, but also that it could reflect details of
a work’s genesis and counterbalance potential problems in performance.
A look at the orchestral version of the Third Symphony in comparison
with Brahms’s own two-piano arrangement raises various philological and
analytical questions arising from the interaction between the genesis of the
work, its subsequent versions, and its performance. This is also the case for
other Brahms arrangements.43
At the start of the development of the first movement of the Third
Symphony, Brahms combined the second subject with a syncopated off-
beat quaver accompaniment, stemming from that of the first subject (see
Example 5.3). The modification of the second subject from its original A
major to C minor prompts a change from its former grazioso character
to agitato.44 This transformation also includes figurative development of
by Robert Pascall, whose text on the London performance has evidently been completely
misunderstood by the anonymous author), that in 1869, Cipriani Potter had edited the first
transcription for two pianos in London. See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein deutsches
Requiem (accessed on 19 February 2014). Even the scholar Jan Brachmann, as part of his
otherwise highly informative comparison of different recordings of Ein deutsches Requiem,
erroneously claimed in 2011 that ‘Brahms himself’ produced a ‘version for two pianos and
choir’. See J. Brachmann, ‘Technik des Tröstens: Ein deutsches Requiem im hörenden
Interpretationsvergleich’, in B. Borchard and K. Schüssler-Bach (eds.), Brahms Studien 16
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2011), pp. 31–45, here p. 35.
43 Another instance, not discussed here, is the duet arrangement of Symphony No. 3, mentioned
in n. 6 and n. 48. For further information, see JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, pp. xxviff., p. 145, p. 152;
JBG, Arrangements 3. Symphonie, pp. xvi–xix, 155–7, 191–9.
44 This also results in a change to the accompanying texture of the second subject in the
development, which, in contrast to bars 36–9 of the exposition, is no longer in syncopated,
graduated crotchets (violas and flutes as well as violins and horns), but intensified as the
syncopated off-beat quavers of the higher strings (bb. 77–80: Violin I/II; bb. 83–6: Violin II,
Viola). In bars 83–6, the initial rhythmically syncopated version is additionally emphasised by
the displaced opening of the melody and accompaniment of the wind instruments.
Example 5.3. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars 76–83, JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, pp. 21–2.
Example 5.4. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars 77–89, autograph full score, pp. 14–15: Brahms’s amendments to the parts of Violin
I/II (bars 81–2) and Violin II and Viola (bars 87–9).
Example 5.5. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars 87–9,
transcription of the original version for Violin II and Viola. JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3,
p. 169.
the second subject. This is intensified in bars 81–2 and bars 87–9 through
fragmentation and sequences, as one would expect from the development
of a sonata movement. As can be seen from the autograph, Brahms ini-
tially wanted to continue the off-beat quaver accompaniment in these bars
(Example 5.4): he planned off-beat quavers in bars 81–2 for Violins I and
II, and also in bars 87–9 for Violin II and viola (Example 5.5). At a later
stage the composer changed the syncopated accompaniment with pencil to
on-the-beat quavers with quaver rests.
Yet, following the initial stage of corrections, he still did not want to
relinquish his original idea of syncopated quavers. In the empty staves for
brass, he once again wrote, in ink, the off-beat version of the accompaniment
for violins and viola (Example 5.6). It can therefore be inferred that Brahms
once again undertook a thorough evaluation of the passages at his desk,
not wanting definitively to fix his musical text based on initial negative
experiences in rehearsal or even just the imaginary anticipation of such
experiences. Hence he decided to reverse his alterations. Yet he once again
changed it back later in pencil to how it was in the original corrective stage –
from the desired syncopated version to the rhythmical accompaniment
texture ‘on the beat’. Practical experience may have been responsible for
this, as was possibly also the case in the first stage of corrections. Evidently
an off-beat accompaniment was reasonable in conjunction with the melody
of the second subject in crotchets, but not together with the subsequent
fragmentation of the motive in quaver motion.45
45 The different writing materials – ink for the first and second fundamental layer, pencil for the
two identical rhythmical corrections – suggest that the first stage of corrections with pencil was
not an actual revision during composition, which presumably would have been written in ink.
The second stage of pencilled corrections evident in the brass staves may in any case have only
been made by Brahms after he had trialled the work extensively as conductor and listener. They
Example 5.6. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars 77–89, autograph full score, pp. 14–15: Brahms’s reinstated addition and
changes to the parts of Violin I/II (bars 81–2) and Violin II/Viola (bars 87–9) in the empty brass staves.
Thus with a heavy heart Brahms relinquished his idea of combining the
agitato transformation and development of the second subject with the
ongoing off-beat accompaniment from the main theme. In the definitive
orchestral version, in bars 81–2 and 87–9 (Example 5.7), only the motivic
fragmentation of the second subject provides quaver motion in the fore-
ground of the orchestral setting. Against this, the syncopated enhancement
of the quaver-motion accompaniment is abandoned for practical perfor-
mance reasons or because of fundamental considerations of sound.
Nevertheless the idea of the enhanced syncopated accompaniment in
the Third Symphony did not disappear entirely, for Brahms retained it in
his two-piano arrangement. This was completed in early November 1883,
performed between 9 and 30 November three times by Brahms and Ignaz
Brüll for select groups of friends and colleagues46 and published in early
1884, shortly before the orchestral score and parts.47 This arrangement
contains the continuous syncopated off-beat accompaniment in bars 81–2
and 87–9 – at times explicitly, at other times implicitly (Example 5.8).48
Thus in these bars there is significant rhythmic divergence between the
orchestral and arranged passages. When this was queried by the copy-
editor Robert Keller, Brahms replied firstly with the lapidary comment that
the orchestral accompaniment was ‘correct’ and that of the arrangement
was ‘also correct’.49 He added the elucidation: ‘The passage in question is
correct in both instances; one is better for the piano, as the other is better
could also be a retrospective amendment from (or made in parallel with) corresponding
changes in the copyist’s full score, which is now lost, and which initially served as the
conducting score and later as the engraver’s copy for the full score (see JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3,
pp. 146–9). It can be inferred from a query note written by the copy-editor Robert Keller that
in the intervening string parts which were engraved for the first rehearsals and performances,
the off-beat accompaniment was visible. These must later have been amended through
handwritten additions, pastings or varyingly consistent changes to the engraved parts, even if
not entirely in the case of the first violin part (see Keller’s correction sheet of early June 1884 to
Brahms, Brahms-Keller Correspondence, pp. 66–8).
46 The premiere of the orchestral version of the Third Symphony took place on 2 December 1883
with the k. k. Court Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in the large concert hall of the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. See JBG, 3. Symphonie, p. xvi.
47 Ibid., pp. xxiv–xxv, 142–7.
48 The first edition of the two-piano arrangements corresponds in this sense exactly with
Brahms’s autograph, which indicates no change of opinion in the relevant bars. From the
arrangement for two pianos, the syncopated version was then perpetuated in the version which
was made by Robert Keller and later reworked by Brahms for duet, which appeared in print in
November 1884. See above, n. 6 and n. 43; see also JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, pp. xxvi–xxvii,
p. 145, p. 152 (see source E-KA1 = First edition of the duet arrangement); JBG, Arrangements
3. Symphonie, pp. xvi–xix, 155–7.
49 Bozarth, Brahms-Keller Correspondence, pp. 66–7.
Example 5.7. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, first movement, bars 80–3 and 87–9, JBG, Symphonie Nr. 3, collage of pages
22–4, quaver motion in the melodic foreground of the orchestral texture.
Example 5.8. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, two-piano arrangement, first edition (Berlin: N. Simrock, 1884), first movement,
bars 77–91.
136 michael struck
for the orchestra.’50 This declaration may be considered as a brief résumé

of his failed attempt to rescue the off-beat version for the orchestral score.
Can we therefore plausibly maintain that Brahms deliberately created
divergences in his piano arrangements in order to raise them to a similar
aesthetic status to the original versions? This seems to be an inappropriate,
even wrong view, from both aesthetic and historical perspectives. Instead,
it can be claimed that in the representative case above, Brahms came to
realise that his original rhythmic idea was impractical for orchestra. This
recognition led to his exporting it into his arrangement, or, to be more
precise in ‘genetic’ terms, to let it retain its validity, after having had to
relinquish it for the orchestral version. His original compositional intention
thus lived on in the aesthetically inferior piano version, which nevertheless
was of significance for the existence of the work in his contemporaries’
musical consciousness. And, similarly in the case of other arrangements
which differ from the original in the number of bars, it might be claimed
that the totality of main and surrogate versions possibly embraced earlier
phases of the genesis of the work as well as alternative ideas.
If we consider Brahms’s arrangements from the perspective of ‘Brahms in

the home’, then we see that these arrangements are not merely a historically
significant phenomenon, and also not merely an aesthetic one which has
regained its attraction in musicological research and in the marketplace
today. Rather more, this consideration can be revealing, even decisive, for
understanding Brahms’s creative activity, as we come to know his compo-
sitions in their different ‘genetic’ and specific forms. Thus we may, when
visiting ‘Brahms in the home’, find our way, directly, into his composing
workshop.
50 Ibid., p. 69.
6 Brahms arranges his symphonies
robert pascall
Context
It is quite clear Brahms loved duet playing, on one or two pianos, and
from the beginning of his career onwards.1 At one of his earliest public
appearances, on 27 November 1847, he played a duo for two pianos by
Sigismond Thalberg, with the concert-giver, Therese Meyer,2 and his first
published work was the set of six fantasies on Russian melodies for one piano,
four hands, Souvenir de la Russie, issued as Op. 151 under the pseudonym
G. W. Marks, some time before 1852.3 He went on to play piano duets on
one or two pianos in public, in formal private performances and informally
with a significant number of partners, thirty-two of whom are known,4
with perhaps some still to be discovered. With Clara Schumann, Carl Tausig
(1841–71) and Hermann Levi (1839–1900), for instance, he played both in
1 Throughout this volume, the term ‘piano duet’ refers to works for four hands and one piano;
the term ‘two-piano’ refers to works for four hands and two pianos.
2 R. and K. Hofmann, Johannes Brahms als Pianist und Dirigent: Chronologie seines Wirkens als
Interpret (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2006), p. 18; see also Kalbeck I, p. 43.
3 Werkverzeichnis, pp. 689–91 shows this work as of doubtful authenticity, though the evidence
presented there, and in Johannes Brahms (Pseud.: G. W. Marks) ‘Souvenir de la Russie’ 6
Fantasien für Piano 4-händig, ed. K. Hofmann (Hamburg: K. D. Wagner, 1971), being a reprint
of the original edition with a bilingual essay on the work and its provenance by the editor, seems
to me conclusively to argue for Brahms as composer.
4 All of whom are recorded in Hofmann, Chronologie, passim. with the following three
exceptions: Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Robert Fuchs and Richard Specht, with whom Brahms
played only privately; for Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, see B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann: Ein
Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, 3rd edn, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1908), vol. III, pp. 450ff.; for Robert Fuchs, private communication from Frau Prof. Dr E.
Kieslinger, Vienna (niece of the composer): ‘Brahms used to visit to try out Robert Fuchs’s latest
compositions for piano duet with the composer’; for Richard Specht, see R. Specht, Johannes
Brahms: Leben und Werk eines deutschen Meisters (Hellerau: Avalun-Verlag, 1928), p. 294 – here
Specht remarks on two performances of the Third Symphony in piano duet form in which
Brahms omitted the slow movement, and in one of these performances he was Brahms’s
partner. The tally of thirty-two does not include Marie Soldat-Roeger, shown in Hofmann,
Chronologie as having played ‘Quintettsonate [op. 34bis]’ with Brahms on 11 May 1895 at the
Fellingers’ residence; it is surely much more likely that on this occasion Marie Soldat-Roeger, as
virtuoso violinist, played Paul Klengel’s arrangement of the Clarinet Quintet Op. 115, as a
violin sonata, which had been published in 1892, see Werkverzeichnis, p. 464. 137
138 robert pascall
private and in public; with others he played primarily in public, for example
in concerts including the Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 with Carl Reinecke
(1824–1910), Julius Buths (1851–1920) and Lazzaro Uzielli (1861–1943);
and with yet others he played exclusively in private, perhaps because, like
Emma Engelmann (née Brandes, 1853–1940), she had given up her career
as a professional pianist on her marriage, or like Robert Fuchs (1847–1927)
and Theodor Billroth (1829–94), they did not have public careers of a nature
which promulgated such appearances.
In the home, informal duet-playing on one or two pianos could happen
at any convenient time, planned or spontaneously, and musical households
in which Brahms often made music included those of Clara Schumann,
Theodor Billroth, Richard and Maria Fellinger (1848–1903 and 1849–1925),
and Viktor von Miller zu Aichholz (1845–1910). Undoubtedly the partner
with whom Brahms had the most durable and sustained playing relation-
ship, in private and public, was Clara Schumann, and their playing together
spanned most of the years of their friendship; for instance, they played
three movements from Brahms’s unfinished and lost Sonata in D minor
for two pianos on 24 May 1854 (twice) privately at the Klems piano firm
in Düsseldorf, and they played his Hungarian Dances WoO 1, and Varia-
tions on a Theme of Schumann Op. 23 on 12 January 1889 at her house in
Frankfurt am Main.5
Brahms’s public repertoire as duettist on one or two pianos was quite
naturally of original music for the medium – J. S. Bach’s Concerto in
C major for two keyboards BWV 1061; Robert Schumann’s Andante and
Variations for two pianos Op. 46; his own Variations on a Theme of
Schumann Op. 23; the Sonata for two pianos Op. 34bis; the Waltzes
Op. 39; the Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52; the Variations on a Theme of Haydn
Op. 56b; the Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 65; and the Hungarian Dances.
He arranged works by Robert Schumann and Joseph Joachim and many
of his own chamber, orchestral, and choral works for duet, on either one
or two pianos.6 At the time of arranging his First Symphony Op. 68 in
1877 for instance, he had already arranged for piano duet the First and
Second Serenades Opp. 11 and 16, the First Piano Concerto Op. 15 (an
additional reduction of the orchestral score for one piano also facilitated
performance on four hands and two pianos), the First and Second String
Sextets Opp. 18 and 36, the First and Second Piano Quartets Opp. 25 and
26, the First, Second and Third String Quartets Op. 51 nos. 1 and 2 and
5 Litzmann, Ein Künstlerleben, vol. II, pp. 316ff.; Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 276.
6 Brahms’s arrangements are also discussed in Chapters 5 and 7 of this volume.
Brahms arranges his symphonies 139
Op. 67, Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45 and the Triumphlied Op. 55. Indeed, it
was customarily part of his understanding with his publisher that the price
set for a work would include a piano duet arrangement.7
All this activity reminds us once again of how the arranging and playing
of large-scale works for piano duet constituted such an important musico-
sociological and musico-historical fact of the nineteenth century. Arrange-
ments of Haydn’s symphonies around 1800 stand at the beginning of this
activity8 – this way of life, one might say – the gradual close of which was
brought about by the invention and development of the phonograph (etc.)
and radio. Eduard Hanslick testified to its ubiquity in Brahms’s time: ‘These
days there is no overture, no symphony presented in our concerts, which one
cannot straightaway sample or savour further in a four-hand arrangement.
For music lovers, this modest activity provides a real source of pleasure and
education . . . Not everyone can call a wife, a lover, a best- or soul-mate their
own, but every living person has to have their four-hand-partner.’9
It is an interesting and ironic (in the best sense) aspect of our musical
life today, that at the time when the availability of performances through
internet-download seems to have reached maximum potential, the interest
in piano duet arrangements for one or two pianos is re-emerging, albeit in
the altered forms of concert items, recordings, and as scholarly focus.
Brahms’s developing experience in arranging his symphonies
Each of his own arrangements of the symphonies offered Brahms a different

perspective on their importance and usefulness. For the First Symphony
he took the matter of arranging largely as he had on previous occasions,
something – more a duty perhaps – to be fitted in just before or during
the publication process, and certainly after the finalisation of the main
7 He had also arranged the slow movement of the First String Sextet Op. 18 for piano solo, and
piano reductions for the vocal scores of his Ave Maria Op. 12, Begräbnisgesang Op. 13, Ein
deutsches Requiem Op. 45, Rinaldo Op. 50, the Alto Rhapsody Op. 53 and the Triumphlied Op. 55.
8 Breitkopf & Härtel published a duet arrangement of Symphony No. 97 in 1796 and this was
followed by a whole stream of arrangements. See A. van Hoboken, Thematisch-bibliographisches
Werkverzeichnis, vol. I (Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1957), pp. 810ff., vol. III: Register: Addenda
und Corrigenda (Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1978), pp. 15ff.
9 E. Hanslick, ‘Waffenruhe am Clavier (Wien, im August 1866)’, in Geschichte des Concertwesens
in Wien, vol. II: Aus dem Concertsaal. Kritiken und Schilderungen aus den letzten 20 Jahren des
Wiener Musiklebens nebst einem Anhang: Musikalische Reisebriefe aus England, Frankreich und
der Schweiz (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1870), p. 405. All quotations have been translated by the
author.
140 robert pascall
version for orchestra. He sent off the engravers’ materials for the orchestral
version of the First Symphony, score and parts, on 30 May 1877, and he
arranged the work for piano duet between 10/11 and 24 June, sending the
arrangement off to be engraved before having tried it out with any duet
partner.10 For the Second Symphony Op. 73, for reasons probably to do
with his delight at having completed the Symphony itself, and also, as he
said, in order to give particular pleasure to his duet-playing friend Theodor
Billroth,11 he began the work of arranging immediately after he had finished
composing and writing down the orchestral version, and thus also before
any of its pre-publication performances. He had finished writing down
the score by mid-October 1877 and was already arranging the Symphony
during the first half of November, finishing his arrangement shortly before
11 December.12 He then found an essentially new purpose for it, in that he
gave a private but formal performance of the duet version with his friend,
the composer and pianist Ignaz Brüll, to an invited circle of friends some
time between 5 and 11 December 1877.13 For the Third Symphony Op. 90
he followed a similar plan, completing the orchestral score by mid-October
1883 and making the arrangement immediately thereafter, with the first
of the, this time several, private performances taking place on 9 November
1883, followed by further performances on 22 (twice) and 24 of that month.
This time the performances were given not least to acquaint the conductor
of the orchestral premiere, Hans Richter, with the work and how it might be
performed.14 For the Third Symphony, however, he switched to arranging
for four hands and two pianos. He had arranged for two pianos before,
namely Joachim’s overtures Demetrius Op. 6, and Heinrich IV. Op. 7,15 and
he had composed for the medium from early on – the unfinished and lost D
minor Sonata of 1854, the Sonata for two pianos Op. 34bis and the Variations
on a Theme of Haydn Op. 56b. It may be a combination of factors which
10 JBG, Arrangements 1./2. Symphonie, pp. xiii–xiv.

11 In his letter of [9 November 1877]. See O. Gottlieb-Billroth (ed.), Billroth und Brahms im
Briefwechsel (Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1935), pp. 250ff.
12 JBG, Series I, vol. 2: Symphonie Nr. 2 D-Dur opus 73, ed. R. Pascall and M. Struck, Munich
2001, pp. xiii–xiv; JBG, Arrangements 1./2. Symphonie, p. xvi.
13 This performance took place at Friedrich Ehrbar’s Klaviersalon, as did all Brahms’s
pre-premiere symphony arrangement performances.
14 JBG, 3. Symphonie, pp. xiii–xiv; JBG, Arrangements 3. Symphonie, pp. [xi]–xiii.
15 Ouvertüre zu Hermann Grimms Demetrius Op. 6, composed 1853–4, arranged 1856; and
Overtüre zu Shakespeares Heinrich IV. Op. 7, composed 1853–4 and arranged 1855. See:
Werkverzeichnis, pp. 622–4; JBG, Series IX, vol. 1: Johannes Brahms, Arrangements von Werken
anderer Komponisten für ein Klavier oder zwei Klaviere zu vier Händen, ed. V. Woodring
Goertzen, Munich 2012, pp. xiv–xxi; also Valerie Woodring Goertzen’s study in the present
volume (Chapter 7).
attracted him to this new departure in the series of symphony arrangements:

as we will discover in detail later, two pianos give much increased scope for
representing the details of a complex work, for instance when themes and
accompaniments overlap, or when counterthemes occupy similar registers.
This is, of course, because the complete range of the piano is available to the
arranger twice over, rather than just the once, enabling more of the detail to
shine forth untrammelled by adaptation and constriction. Furthermore, in
the case of symphonies, two pianos can perhaps better suggest something
of the sonic grandeur of the original.
The two-piano arrangement of the Third Symphony was published at
the end of March/beginning of April 1884 and the orchestral score and
parts in the second half of May. Brahms had suggested Theodor Kirchner
for doing the obligatory duet arrangement, but had found that publisher
Fritz Simrock had already commissioned his copy-editor, Robert Keller, to
undertake the work. When Keller had finished the arrangement, Simrock
sent Brahms a proof copy towards the end of September 1884. Brahms
found it not to his satisfaction and, with considerable tact and grace, he
asked Keller whether he could rework it. The reasons he gave are of telling
importance in understanding Brahms’s stance towards arranging, and these
also will occupy us more fully below. The result was that Brahms himself
reworked all the movements of Keller’s arrangement.16
When it came to the Fourth Symphony Op. 98, Brahms again arranged
for two pianos as soon as the score was finished, and again performed the
work to his circle of friends, colleagues and critics. He finished the orches-
tral score around the end of August 1885 and the two-piano arrangement
probably around the middle of September 1885.17 He performed the latter
with Ignaz Brüll at Ehrbar’s Klaviersalon on 14 October before his by now
customary audience. During the preparation of the arrangement, Brahms
had added a four-bar introduction to the Symphony (or effectively 3¾ bars
because of the anacrusis in the main theme). There can be no doubt that he
considered this a firm revision at the time, and that the first performance
of the arrangement was given with these opening bars. The Piano I part is
lost but can be hypothetically reconstructed with some confidence from the
orchestral version (Example 6.1).18
Brahms rehearsed the orchestral version of the work at Meiningen
later that October, both with and presumably (in the light of what then
16 Werkverzeichnis requires correction in this regard, see p. 373.

17 JBG, 4. Symphonie, pp. xiii–xiv, 146–7; JBG, Arrangements 4. Symphonie, pp. [ix]–x.
18 See JBG, Arrangements 4. Symphonie, frontispiece and p. 176 for the Piano II part of these bars.
142 robert pascall
Example 6.1. Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98, first movement. Arranged
by Brahms for four hands and two pianos, interim introductory bars (Piano II –
Brahms; Piano I – reconstruction after the orchestral version by Robert Pascall).
happened) without the added introduction. He conducted the premiere of

the work on 25 October 1885 in Meiningen and also the first performance of
it on the subsequent orchestral tour in Frankfurt am Main on 3 November.
It was after the Frankfurt performance that he decided definitively against
the added introduction, deleting it in all sources. We therefore cannot know
whether he gave the premiere of the orchestral version with or without the
introduction, though it seems relatively certain that the Frankfurt perfor-
mance would have been without.19
The rehearsals in Meiningen had added importance for Brahms, since
the reception his invited audience had given to the private performance of
the arrangement had been drastically negative. Brahms’s biographer Max
Kalbeck, who had been present, took it upon himself to call on the com-
poser the day after this performance to advise him to replace the last two
movements. Brahms’s considered response, which Kalbeck to his credit
records in detail, again gives important insight into Brahms’s view of the
nature of arrangement (see below). The reception of the work in Meinin-
gen was, by contrast, uniformly enthusiastic, and Brahms took it on tour
19 R. Pascall, ‘Zur Meininger Uraufführung der 4. Symphonie und ihrer Bedeutung für
Komponist und Werk’, in M. Goltz, W. Sandberger and C. Wiesenfeld (eds.), Spätphase(n)?
Johannes Brahms’ Werke der 1880er und 1890er Jahre: Internationales musikwissenschaftliches
Symposium Meiningen 2008 (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2010), pp. 46–60, here pp. 52–4. JBG, 4.
Symphonie, p. xi.
with the orchestra, publishing the two-piano arrangement at the end of

May/beginning of June 1886 and the orchestral score and parts in mid-
October. Doubtless because of his experience with Keller’s arrangement of
the Third Symphony, Brahms himself then undertook the duet arrangement
of the Fourth, sending it off for engraving on 2 November 1886.
There is little evidence that Brahms paid much attention to his arrange-
ments after publication, though a few occasions are recorded on which
he played them. He performed his two-piano arrangement of the Third
Symphony with Rudolf von der Leyen (1851–1910) several times for Duke
Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen and his wife, Freifrau von Heldburg, in their
Italian villa, the Villa Carlotta, on 24–5 May 1884.20 The Freifrau recalled
the occasion in a touching letter she wrote to Brahms some twelve and a half
years later, when she knew he was mortally ill. ‘But the memory is so beau-
tiful . . . of your and von der Leyen’s performances at the Villa, where the
nightingales always joined in with their pipings in the second movement.’21
And he performed his two-piano arrangement of the Fourth Symphony at
the country home in Gmunden of the industrialist Victor von Miller zu
Aichholz, with his host, on 26 September 1893. As it appears from Olga
von Miller zu Aichholz’s diary entry concerning the occasion, the decision
to play the Symphony seems to have been a spontaneous result of Brahms’s
reluctance to play solo.22
Brahms had asked to see Keller’s arrangements of the First Symphony
for piano solo and for eight hands and two pianos before publication, and
he approved the eight-hand arrangement without playing it through on 12
March 1878. He received the arrangement for piano solo in the first half of
February 1880 and it provoked an impatient, somewhat scornful remark:
You will know better than I whether such an arrangement for girls’ seminaries is
really necessary. I would only have held an arrangement for piano solo interesting
if made by a particular virtuoso. Like Liszt and the Beethoven symphonies.23
Thus his main focus remained distinctly on playing and arranging for two
pianists. But because of the way his own arranging of his symphonies had
developed, there were, even up to early 1890, no arrangements of the First
20 Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 240.

21 Letter of 13 January 1897: Briefe XVII, p. 147. All translations in this chapter are the author’s
own.
22 Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 293. See also I. Spitzbart, Johannes Brahms und die Familie
Miller-Aichholz in Gmunden und Wien (Gmunden: Kammerhofmuseum der Stadt Gmunden,
1997), p. 138.
23 Letter of March 1880. Briefe X, p. 143.
144 robert pascall
and Second Symphonies for two pianos, four hands. Robert Keller was
entrusted with these; Brahms saw them before publication and made a ‘few
comments’ on them. In the light of these arrangements he altered his view
of Keller’s work, writing positively to several friends, and thus to Clara
Schumann:
It will perhaps interest you that both my first two symphonies are to appear in an
arrangement for two pianos. Unfortunately not by me (it pleases me to write for
two pianos) but perhaps to the delight of you and others done most carefully and
diligently by Robert Keller, in fact throughout as easy to play as possible and not
made demanding through the use of octaves and tremolos!!24
Moments from this history
Three moments from the above history stand out in offering particular
illumination of contemporary attitudes. On 14 January 1878 Fritz Sim-
rock wrote to Brahms justifying the possibility of publishing his duet
arrangement of the Second Symphony before the orchestral score and parts.
Brahms’s relations with his main publisher were close, often argumentative,
often teasing, always upright and on a friendly basis, but Simrock, for obvi-
ous reasons, was naturally inclined to pressurise Brahms into publishing
with him as much as he could get and as soon as he could get it. In the course
of negotiations over the publication of the Second Symphony, Brahms asked
Simrock the innocent question, that they were surely not intending to pub-
lish the arrangement before the orchestral score and parts?25 – as had,
for instance, been the case with the First Symphony. Simrock advanced a
powerful argument for doing so:
Anyhow, I think it not without advantage to issue the four-hand arrangement in

advance – one then has at least an idea of the thematic treasures and is able to enjoy
the final rehearsals with so much more ease and contentment. Very few have the
privilege of a sight of the score, and if they do, they’re not really able to make much
use of it.26
24 Letter of August 1890. Schumann-Brahms Briefe II, p. 419. 25 Briefe X, p. 67.

26 K. Stephenson (ed.), Johannes Brahms und Fritz Simrock: Weg einer Freundschaft. Briefe des
Verlegers an den Komponisten (Hamburg: J. J. Augustin, 1961), p. 129. This letter is wrongly
dated in the published correspondence. It is clear from the content that Simrock is answering
point for point Brahms’s letter of 13 January, and he mentions a concert that has happened on
10 January and another about to happen on 22 January.
In his argument Simrock is not only making the case for the acknowledged
power and importance of arrangements in enhancing familiarisation and
appreciation, he is also testifying to a type of listening, and one he clearly
finds natural and widespread. This type seeks to identify themes, to savour
their beauty, and, by implication, also their treatment – structural/aesthetic
listening therefore, which, as now, is nourished by familiarity based on
a questing, interrogative approach to the work concerned. Furthermore,
as Simrock implies, this quest is not to be gainsaid, for until the listeners
achieve the knowledge to which they aspire, they are going to be without real
‘ease and contentment’. Brahms recognised the force of Simrock’s argument
without question and agreed to allow pre-publication copies to be put on
sale at the 55th Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf in June 1878,27
before the polishing and proofing of the Symphony and its arrangement
were completed to his satisfaction. Subsequently Simrock had another batch
of the arrangement edition printed incorporating later corrections, before
Brahms introduced yet further corrections, entailing more alterations to the
plates. This produced the unusual situation that at the official publication,
when it came, the arrangement appeared in three textual states.28
The second of our moments comes from Brahms’s letter to Robert Keller
of 8 October 1884, in which the composer justifies his critique of Keller’s
duet arrangement of the Third Symphony:
I have my very particular views on arranging, my special tricks if you like . . . Might
I rewrite the arrangement according to my taste? . . . I can promise that the arrange-
ment will be easier, more playable . . . I go about my piece more drastically and more
boldly than you or anyone else can.29
Thus Brahms articulates the heart of the issue: as the composer, he has
unlimited freedom to reform the original, and to do it according to pianistic
idiom and playability. Michael Struck has argued that arranging is similar
to translation, a given in one medium or language is moved over (trans-
lated) into another, an activity which seeks equivalence of signification in
the target language/medium.30 We know how translation is interpretative,
27 The Second Symphony was performed during the Festival on 10 June, conducted by Joseph
Joachim.
28 JBG, Arrangements 1./2. Symphonie, pp. xviii, 187–8.
Nebraska Press, 1996), pp. 75–6.
30 M. Struck, ‘Werk-Übersetzung als Werk-Alternative? Johannes Brahms’ Klavierbearbeitungen
eigener Werke’, in B. Plachta and W. Woesler (eds.), Edition und Übersetzung: Zur
wissenschaftlichen Dokumentation des interkulturellen Texttransfers. Beiträge der Internationalen
146 robert pascall
how it makes compromises between word-for-word, sentence-for-sentence

and overall transference of sense, and how experts in translation are so
fluent in both source and target languages that they can intuitively go for a
translated version which will have equivalent resonance and impact for the
native speakers of the target language. Brahms, as an experienced writer for
orchestra and piano, as a conductor and distinguished virtuoso pianist, had
just this plurality and expertise, an expertise which enabled him to criticise
Keller for not getting things optimally right, for not being idiomatically
suited to the piano in ways which facilitated playing. Furthermore, Brahms
recognised a creative character and consistency in his own arrangements:
‘my special tricks’, ‘my taste’. We do not know how much of Keller’s original
Brahms altered, since the single surviving source is the first edition itself;
but we do know that he made emendations in all movements, and that in
the first and third movements these required additional manuscript paper,
since he found his alterations could not just be notated on Keller’s submitted
proof copy.31
The third moment concerns Brahms’s reaction to the negative reception
of his two-piano arrangement of the Fourth Symphony at the private but
formal performance before an invited audience of friends, colleagues and
critics. As we have seen, Brahms and Ignaz Brüll gave the first performance
of the arrangement of the Fourth Symphony on 14 October 1885 – a little
over a week before the premiere of the orchestral version. We have a detailed
account of the occasion, given by eye- and ear-witness, Max Kalbeck:
While Brahms and Brüll played, Hanslick and Billroth turned pages for them. [Gus-
tav] Dömpke, Richter and I followed in the orchestral score. It was just like two years
previously at the try-out of the Third Symphony, yet it was so completely different.
After the wonderful Allegro . . . Richter mumbled something into his blond beard,
which the keen-eared could take as an expression of approval. Brüll cleared his
throat and shifted about on his seat, timid and embarrassed, the others remained
stubbornly silent, and, since Brahms himself also said nothing, a somewhat numbed
silence set in. At last, Brahms gave a grumpy indication to continue: ‘Okay, on with
it!’; then, as if he had to relieve his feelings and feared he might miss the moment,
Hanslick heaved a heavy sigh and burst out: ‘Throughout the movement I had
the impression I was being belaboured by two frighteningly witty people.’ Every-
one laughed and the two played on. The strange-sounding, melodically saturated
Andante pleased me exceptionally well, and since no one else uttered a word, I
emboldened myself to some sort of thundering banality, which, if anything, had a
Fachtagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für germanistische Edition 8–11 March 2000 (Tübingen:
Max Niemeyer, 2002), pp. 447–64.
31 JBG, Arrangements 3. Symphonie, pp. xviiiff.
more unpleasant effect than the eerie silence . . . Although the friendly owner of the
establishment acted as a most kind host at an opulent night-time meal afterwards,
and many a delightful jest and serious point was advanced, it did not amount to a
mood worthy of the occasion. Each one of us seemed to have something unspoken
weighing irrepressibly on their hearts. As if we had agreed amongst ourselves to
talk of everything but the Symphony, we avoided the awkward issue and contented
ourselves with raising a glass to its author.32
After this private performance, which Kalbeck clearly found both embar-
rassing and artistically disturbing, he decided he would have to call on
Brahms the next day to advise him to withdraw the Symphony (which had
already been advertised by the Philharmonic), and to rework it, deleting
the Scherzo, issuing the Finale as a separate work and composing two fresh
movements, as movements 3 and 4. Brahms listened in patience, remarked
on the precedent of the Eroica finale and concluded by holding his own:
I have no grounds for withdrawing the Symphony . . . It could well be that you are
right. But let us first of all hear what the orchestra thinks of it. Neither of us knows
how the work sounds. On the piano and without animo – that signifies nothing. I’m
travelling to Meiningen directly. Perhaps we will yet be able to help the gruesome
Scherzo to a tolerable countenance.33
In calling the Scherzo ‘gruesome’ Brahms was certainly extending a courtesy

to Kalbeck, rather than offering a considered piece of self-criticism! It is
interesting to unpick the idea that he did not know how the work sounded.
Of course he knew how it went in terms of its pitches, rhythms, melodies,
harmonies, textures, and he knew this intimately and in every detail; here
he is, rather, acknowledging that even the composer’s mental representation
of the sonic presence of a symphony before hearing it with orchestra is but
a simulacrum which needs to be tested by experience: how does the actual
sound in its full impact with its proper forces in a suitable venue match
up to the imagined sound in the composer’s head? But Brahms’s point
surely goes further even than this: the musical material is, quite distinctly
and properly, idiomatically orchestral, and it thus requires the orchestral
palette to be true to its own nature. He is therefore able to criticise the piano
as but a poor substitute for the orchestra, which he does with the added
remark that the performance that he and Ignaz Brüll gave lacked ‘animo’.
When Brahms came to review his tempo markings at proof stage for the
publication of the arrangement, the memory of the performance ‘without
animo’ and its aftermath clearly still rankled, so he racked up the marking
32 Kalbeck III, pp. 452ff. 33 Ibid., pp. 453–5.

148 robert pascall
accordingly – it is the only version of the Symphony in which the marking

for this movement is Presto giocoso as opposed to Allegro giocoso.
What have our three moments taught us? Put synoptically, we have learnt
that arrangements had not only a general role in disseminating a symphonic
work but also a specific one of preparing listeners for the experience of an
orchestral performance; that Brahms really cared about the arrangements of
his works, especially those for two pianists, and that his view of arranging was
one which involved radical handling of the original to achieve an idiomatic
paralleling in the arrangement, thus also rendering the music more practical
in its new format; that an arrangement nevertheless remains a simulacrum
of the original, and one which in advance of hearing the orchestral original
cannot give a true perspective on its quality or power, with the unavoidable
implication that arrangements were and are to be used and heard in relation
to their originals – and it is surely in part to help such imaginative use that
Brahms added instrumental names to his arrangements, identifying aspects
of the orchestration.
Issues in translation
Substantive compositional differences

For each of the symphonies, a Brahms arrangement will show certain com-
positional variances from the orchestral version in matters of pitch and
rhythm, and we shall take examples from each to see how general issues
might emerge. During the polishing and proofing of Brahms’s arrangement
of the First Symphony in the summer of 1877, Simrock’s reader, Robert
Keller noted a discrepancy between the timpani tremolo leading into the
alphorn melody’s first appearance in the Finale and the version of this
tremolo in Brahms’s duet arrangement, and he queried this with Brahms.
In the orchestral score as the composer had finally sent it off, the tremolo in
bar 29 consists of a minim with 4 tremolo strokes plus two dotted crotchets,
each with three tremolo strokes and the figure 12 above; in the arrangement,
however, the last beat of this bar is a tremolo crotchet-value with the figure
8 above. At the new tempo in bar 30, Più Andante, the orchestral timpani
part and the arrangement come together again in having sextuplet motion
underlying the alphorn melody. In the arrangement, therefore, Brahms has
included a composed ritardando which does not appear in the orchestral
version. Brahms wrote to Keller on 28 September 1877: ‘I will leave the
triplet motion in the timpani, since at the beginning of the next section this
is the chief point and the timpanist will grasp that more securely.’34 The
composer thus confirmed that the difference between orchestral version
and arrangement should stand, and he gave as his reason a practical issue in
performance (Brahms was obviously less inclined to trust timpanists than
pianists!).
On the other hand, we have no documentation or rationale for the
omission in the arrangement of the Second Symphony of the telling parts
for Horn I/II and Trumpet I/II at the climax of the fourth movement,
bars 3864 –3872 , 3884 –3892 and 3904 . Similarly, for Brahms’s treatment in
the arrangement of the bare-fifth chord which opens the main theme of
the Finale in the orchestral version, there is no documentary explanation
available to us: in the arrangement Brahms dispenses with the fifth at the
beginning of the movement, while retaining it for the beginnings of the
development and reprise (compare bars 11–2 , 1551–2 and 2441–2 ). These
variants seem, for the moment, the product of creative happenstance and
renewal. In yet other cases an arrangement, made while the definitive score
was out of Brahms’s hands for copying or printing purposes, may well
reflect an earlier draft from which Brahms was working: there is a harmonic
progression in the Finale of the Third Symphony which is different in the
orchestral version and Brahms’s two-piano arrangement. For bars 892 –
901 the bass-line in the orchestral version is crotchets g–a–a–b (oriented
towards E) while in the arrangement it is e–f–f–g (oriented rather towards
C minor). When Keller drew this divergence to Brahms’s attention, he
replied ‘So – that’s no disaster!’ (‘Nun – kein Unglück!’).35 Elsewhere in
this volume, Michael Struck has conducted a detailed historical analysis of
Brahms’s sequence of decisions regarding the rhythmic shape of the upper
string parts in bars 81–2 and 87–9 of the first movement of this Symphony
and how his final version differs from the version of the same passage in his
two-piano arrangement. In commenting on this variance, Brahms wrote to
Keller on 10 June 1884: ‘the one is better for piano, just as the other is for
orchestra.’36
In the second movement of the Fourth Symphony, the rhythm for bar
102–5 c –a –g in Clarinet I is q; in the two-piano arrangement this
melodic line has the rhythm eÅx for Piano I and q for Piano II, the
34 Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, p. 2.

35 Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, p. 206; JBG, 3. Symphonie, p. 202; JBG,
Arrangements 3. Symphonie, pp. xvi (with illustration) and 184.
36 See in this volume, pp. 128–36; Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, p. 69; JBG, 3.
Symphonie, pp. 167–9 (with illustration); JBG, Arrangements 3. Symphonie, pp. xvi (with
illustration) and 166–7 (with illustration).
150 robert pascall
double-dotting responding to and extending the rhythms of the theme itself

(the characteristic rhythms). When he came to make the duet arrange-
ment, this extra sharpness to the rhythm he had created in the previous
arrangement clearly appealed to him and he gave the melody in bar 102–5
the rhythm q, and in bars 112–4 and 115 –121 the rhythm e, all of
which differ from the original rhythms of the orchestral version. We can see
precisely how this micro-variant arose and appreciate the creative thinking
behind it. It serves once again to underline a certain independence for the
arrangement, offering something new, while remaining faithful in a broader
sense to the original. We have already seen how the tempo marking for the
third movement of the Fourth Symphony in the two-piano arrangement
differs from that in all other versions; there can be no doubt that this is
intended, that it is not a matter of oversight, for at proof Brahms specifically
altered the marking from Allegro giocoso to Presto giocoso.37 This encourage-
ment to duettists playing two pianos to keep up the ‘animo’ might seem at
first almost a flippancy deriving from a single bad experience, but we ought
to give Brahms more credit than that: he wants players surrounded by mas-
sive sound and facing considerable technical demands to think ‘fast’ and so
to achieve an effect of fluency akin to that of the orchestra playing allegro.
If this supposition is right, then we have before us another, rather unex-
pected case of idiomatic translation. Thus all in all, compositional diversity
between original version and arrangement, however it arose, was permitted
to stand for reasons of idiomatic suitability, of performance practicality and
of creative renewal.
Ranges, figures, registers

The greater pitch-range of the piano over the orchestra allowed Brahms to
complete lines that in the orchestral version had had to be compromised
for reasons of instrumental range. Thus, at the beginning of the Second
Symphony, the double bass in bar 132 has a rest, because the D (sounding
D ) needed to complete the line was not available on the four-stringed
instrument for which Brahms was writing at the time; in his duet arrange-
ment, he provides this note; or, in the middle of the third movement of
the Third Symphony, at bar 641–3 , Flute I has to intermit doubling the tune
at the upper octave because of range limitations; since no such limitations
apply in the two arrangements, in them the doubling is continued at this
point.
37 JBG, Arrangements 4. Symphonie, pp. 170, 185.

Figures particularly suited to string idiom and technique, but not to

those of the piano, are adapted accordingly, for example, in the Finale
of the Third Symphony at bars 522 –724 and 1942 –2144 , being the second
subject in exposition and reprise, respectively. In the orchestral version, the
Violin I/II, Viola and Cello parts have fast triplet note-repetitions which,
in the two-piano arrangement, Brahms translates into oscillation between
alternate registers an octave apart, while Brahms/Keller go even further in
the duet arrangement, using a mix of registral oscillation, neighbour-note
and arpeggio figures. At the close of the development in this movement, bars
170–1, Violins I/II have neighbour-note elaborations of the tonic 64 major
and minor chords in triplet quavers descending through the registers; in both
arrangements these are converted into arpeggio oscillations, and in the duet
arrangement the register is kept static. These changes result in the first place
from practical performing issues – at this speed, the oscillating arpeggios are
simply easier to play than any reproduction of the neighbour-note figures –
and in the second from the restrictions arising from the availability of just
the one keyboard and the need to keep the sound massive.
Perhaps because of the monochrome nature of the piano tone, Brahms
liked to ‘orchestrate’ for piano (as it were) by altering the registers and
doublings of the orchestral versions in his arrangements. In the first move-
ment of the Third Symphony for instance, for the total of six rising triplet
quaver scales closing the exposition and reprise, only one in each of the two
arrangements exactly parallels the registers and doublings of the orches-
tral version. For the other five, Brahms (or Brahms/Keller) found colourful
variants. In the extreme case of the last such passage in the reprise of the
duet arrangement (bars 1776 –1786 ) the double octaves of the orchestral
version (Violins I and II beginning on f , Violas on f ) are represented by
the scale beginning in the lower register alone (Secondo RH beginning on f,
bar 1776 ), joined by the middle register in bar 1781.1tr (Primo LH beginning
on a ), and by the higher register – not present in the orchestral version –
in bar 1784.1tr (Primo RH beginning on g ). In the reprise of the second
subject in this movement and arrangement, surely Brahms, in this case,
omits the Clarinet I/II parts, reproducing only the under-octave doubling
on Bassoons I/II (see bars 1492 –1509.1 , Secondo RH). This has the delightful
effect of allowing the oboe imitation in bars 1509 –1513.2 , when reproduced
in the arrangement at pitch, to emerge as defining a new register, and hence
offering a new ‘colour’ to parallel the change in the orchestral version from
clarinet to oboe. In the coda to the second movement Brahms takes over the
Violin I part in bars 1081 –1103.1 untransposed in Piano I in the two-piano
arrangement, but in the duet arrangement he doubles it at the octave above,
152 robert pascall
allowing this doubling to substitute for the original register in bars 1084.2
and 1094.2 .
The case of the Third Symphony duet arrangement

Since no notated source for this joint effort of Robert Keller and Brahms
survives from before publication, we can only surmise where Brahms inter-
vened in what Keller had provided. We know he did so more radically in
the first and third movements, and each of those movements has particular
problems at their openings. In the first movement, the motto theme and
the first subject of the orchestral version overlap in range, and in order to
accommodate both meaningfully on one piano, a creative arranging solu-
tion must be found. From bar 43 the octaves presenting the first subject
are partially omitted, and from bar 114 the subject itself is transposed up
an octave to allow space to present the motto theme in recognisable form,
though this itself must in bar 112 –126 now be transposed down an octave
from its orchestral register. In the two-piano arrangement, Brahms doubled
the first subject in bars 3–71 also at the octave below, a piano ‘orchestration’
doubtless undertaken to fill out the sound; a parallel translation in the duet
arrangement was open to him only in bars 45 –52 .
But an even greater challenge was surely presented by the opening of the
third movement, where there are four differentiated strands to represent:
melody, duple semiquaver accompanying figure, triplet semiquaver accom-
panying figure and bass (Example 6.2a). Particularly the melody and the
triplet accompanying figure occupy similar registers, crossing one another
and colliding here and there. The solution is so creative that it must stem
from Brahms himself. The melody and bass are given to the Secondo player,
and the Primo player provides an account of the two accompanying fig-
ures which transposes, varies and combines them in ways which neverthe-
less serve to represent them meaningfully by continuing to suggest their
existence as individual entities (Example 6.2b). Brahms begins the triplet
accompanying figure not on e as in the orchestral version but on c and
alters the pitches of the next five notes by transposing them down an octave
from the orchestral version: the last of these, c , appears both as part of
the triplet accompanying figure and as representative of the first note of
the otherwise quite independent duple accompanying figure, which is then
completed as in the orchestral version; meanwhile, the triplet accompanying
figure ascends to its original register in bar 13 , but must have its rhythm
altered in bar 21.1tr and its pitches altered in bar 21.2tr–2 so as not to encroach
(a)
Example 6.2. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90, third movement.
(a) Bars 03 –12: orchestral score, first edition, first issue.
(b) Bars 03 –13 for four hands and one piano, JBG edition.
on the melody itself. This is a wonderful solution which retains the meaning
of the original in the new medium and does so in ways which are natural
and fluent; also, with the crossed hands, this is a distinctly idiomatic and
delightful piece of duet writing.
154 robert pascall
(b)
Four hands on two pianos or on one

As we have seen in much of the preceding discussion, the need for creativity
applies more readily in duet arrangements, where the scope for full repre-
sentation of an orchestral score is distinctly more limited than in arranging
for two pianos, and inventive solutions have to be found in order to include
as much as possible of the music of the original. Nevertheless, Brahms had
to eliminate many octave-doublings, alter the register of lines, reformulate
(a)
Example 6.3. Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98, first movement.
(a) Bars 04 –7: orchestral score, first edition, first issue.
(b) Bars 04 –11 for four hands and two pianos, JBG edition.
(c) Bars 04 –11 for four hands and one piano, JBG edition.
details of figuration, and simplify part-writing; generally considered, how-

ever, he had to translate the original more thoroughly when working from
orchestra to one piano, and hence to approach his task with more creative
engagement.
At the opening of the Fourth Symphony we can see how such differences
emerge in his expert hands. In the orchestral version the melody-line of the
main theme appears for Violins I/II in octaves, with syncopated imitative
ghosting on woodwind in three octave-registers (Example 6.3a). In his
(b)
(c)

two-piano arrangement, Brahms is easily able to take this over, the melody
on Piano I and the ghosting on Piano II with the omission of just one strand
of the doubling: g –e –c etc. (Figure 6.3b). But for the duet arrangement
he had to intervene more extensively. He amalgamated the melody and its
ghosting in the Primo part and hence could only include an intermittent
suggestion of the octave doubling of the melody itself (octaves just in bars
04 , 21 , 41 , 61 and 81 ), and he set the imitative ghosting in the middle
register only, while still nevertheless having to change some pitches (in
bars 52 , 62 and 72 ) in order to avoid collision with both the melody and
with the accompanimental figures in the Secondo part (Example 6.3c). As
to this accompaniment: in the two-piano arrangement, Brahms is able to
reproduce the cello part note-for-note in Piano I, lower stave, whereas in the
duet arrangement, he found he had to alter its constituent notes in bars 21–2 ,
41–2 and 81–2 to avoid collision with the Primo player’s left hand; however,
there was an advantage, in that this enabled him to give an extra suggestion
of the double-bass part. Yet another wonderful piece of translation – as,
once again, Brahms approaches the task of arranging with his consummate
feel for idiom, practicality and appropriate creativity.
7 At the piano with Joseph and Johannes: Joachim’s
overtures in Brahms’s circle
valerie woodring goertzen
On 26 January 1891 Hans von Bülow conducted a performance of Joseph

Joachim’s Ouvertüre zu Heinrich IV. Op. 7 in Berlin, where Joachim served
as director of the Musikhochschule he had founded in 1869. Brahms, whose
experience with this work and with Joachim’s overtures to Hamlet Op. 4
and Demetrius Op. 6 had spanned several decades, wrote to his friend in
fond recollection:
For the 26th I wish you very good spirits and as much joy as I would have by
hearing – or even studying your Heinrich – or your Hamlet! To know how far into
the past this joy has extended would be the only wish that I would still have – but
certainly another wish is wrapped up in that one!1
Brahms admired these works as highly individual solutions to contemporary

issues of form, harmony, orchestration and programme, written at a time
when he himself had yet to compose for the orchestra. But his partiality to
the overtures grew also out of the circumstances in which he came to know
them during the mid-1850s, a rich but also turbulent period for Brahms
during which he entered into lifelong friendships with Joachim, Julius Otto
Grimm (1827−1903), Albert Dietrich (1829−1908), and Robert and Clara
Schumann, and was deeply affected by Robert Schumann’s illness and death.
In these years, music-making in the Schumann home and in the homes of
Joachim and other friends provided not only intellectual stimulation and
diversion, but also emotional sustenance. Arranging Joachim’s overtures –
Hamlet for piano duet, and Demetrius and Heinrich for two pianos – was for
Brahms a means of studying these new works closely and bringing them into
the circle of music-making with friends and colleagues, including Joachim
himself.2 He also expected that the arrangements would be published and
thus also enter the lives of a wider public.
1 Letter of [17 January 1891]. Briefe VI, p. 262. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are
author’s own. Brahms’s further wish might have been that the overtures would be published or
that Joachim would resume composing. See also J. Joachim and A. Moser (eds.), Briefe von und
an Joseph Joachim, 3 vols. (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1911–13), vol. III, pp. 379–80.
2 Although Joachim was known as one of the greatest violinists of the century, he also played the
piano and composed at least part of a piano sonata, now lost (see W. P. Horne, ‘Late Beethoven
158 and “the first power of inspiration” in Brahms’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21, No. 1’,
At the piano with Joseph and Johannes 159
Arrangements were a main vehicle for musical literacy in the nineteenth

century, not just among non-specialists, but among musical insiders.3 For
orchestral and chamber music, arrangements for piano duet were popular,
since these could encompass multiple instrumental voices and effects, and
the proximity of two players seated on one bench and playing a single instru-
ment provided welcome opportunities for musical and social intimacy.4 As
mentioned in Chapter 5, Brahms created arrangements for piano duet or
two pianos of all of his own orchestral works and nearly all his chamber
works for four or more players, as well as settings for piano duet without
text of Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45 and Triumphlied Op. 55.5 By doing so,
he had the pleasure of working in his beloved four-hand medium, created
arrangements he could play with and for his fellow musicians, and was able
to maintain greater control over the forms and quality of the music that
reached the public under his name.
Both conceptually and historically, piano arrangements derived from the
practice of Partiturspiel, which Hugo Riemann described as a kind of highly
Journal of Musicological Research 30/2 (2011), pp. 93–130, here pp. 101–2). Throughout this
volume, the term ‘piano duet’ refers to works for four hands and one piano; the term
‘two-piano’ refers to works for four hands and two pianos.
3 See, for example, T. Christensen, ‘Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of
Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 52/2
(Summer 1999), pp. 255–98.
4 The author’s dissertation, ‘The Piano Transcriptions of Johannes Brahms’, unpublished PhD
thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1987), pp. 7–12, provides an overview by
genre of compositions arranged for piano solo, duet and two pianos, as listed in Carl Friedrich
Whistling and Friedrich Hofmeister’s Handbuch der musikalischen Litteratur for 1817 and 1819
and in Hofmeister’s musikalisch-literarischer Monatsbericht at ten-year intervals between 1829
and 1899. Orchestral music was also arranged for piano and harmonium, as the latter
instrument could simulate the sustained tones of winds and brasses. Brahms arranged H.
Litolff’s Robespierre Overture Op. 55 for this combination in May 1852 (see Werkverzeichnis,
pp. 676–7, and JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. xxv–xxix).
5 The arrangements and piano reductions are listed in Werkverzeichnis, pp. 777–9, and discussed
in Goertzen, ‘Piano Transcriptions’; R. Komaiko, ‘The Four-Hand Piano Arrangements of
Brahms and Their Role in the Nineteenth Century’, unpublished PhD thesis, Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL (1975); M. Struck, ‘Surrogat und Hybris – Wirkungsbereiche des
Klaviers im Umfeld tradierter Gattungen: Johannes Brahms’ vierhändige Arrangements eigener
Werke und Charles Valentin Alkans Douze études op. 39’, in A. Edler and S. Meine (eds.), Musik,
Wissenschaft und ihre Vermittlung: Bericht über die Internationale Musikwissenschaftliche Tagung
der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover 26.–29. September 2001 (Augsburg: Wißner,
2002), pp. 119–35; JBG, Arrangements 1./2. Symphonie; JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I; and
in V. W. Goertzen, ‘“Auch für vierhändige Seelen genießbar”: Adaptation and Recomposition in
Brahms’s Piano Arrangements’, in S. Oechsle and M. Struck (eds.), Brahms am Werk: Konzepte,
Texte, Prozesse (forthcoming, 2014). Other arrangers supplied arrangements for piano solo
and for various instrumental combinations: see Chapter 8 for a discussion of some of
these.
160 valerie woodring goertzen
constrained improvisation.6 Brahms played skilfully from full score, and

the act of committing a four-hand arrangement to paper was an extension
of this process that enabled him to experience the work in real time with
another pianist and with others who listened. His instructions that Theodor
Kirchner should ‘throw all unnecessary ballast overboard’ when arranging
Brahms’s Piano Quintet for piano duet,7 and that Robert Keller in arranging
the Violin Concerto should ‘jump around very freely with everything as if
I were not even here, just so everything sounds as fine as possible for four
hands and is playable’8 show Brahms’s view of arranging not as an act of
mere reduction, but one of reinvention in which the work was recast in
the voice of the piano and under the hands of two players. (This topic is
discussed in more detail in Chapters 5 and 8.) Brahms’s autographs indicate
that he normally created his arrangements in the course of writing them
out – probably in conjunction with exploration at the piano – and then
revised them in one or more subsequent passes, with at least some revisions
arising as a result of playing the arrangements with another pianist.
Joachim’s Overtures to Hamlet, Demetrius and Heinrich IV. fall squarely
within the tradition of the overtures of Beethoven and Mendelssohn in
their use of a conservative instrumental group and in their hybrid iden-
tity as music for both theatre and concert hall. Joachim composed the
Demetrius Overture for a play by Herman Grimm (1828−1901, the play
written in 1853), and the Shakespeare overtures also could be performed
as introductions.9 All three dramas are intense psychological portrayals of
heroes who are tested: Hamlet is tormented by the duty to avenge his father’s
death by killing his uncle, now his mother’s husband; Demetrius – the false
Dmitri from Russian history – struggles with the realisation that he is not
the legitimate Tsar (his mother had switched him as a baby with the rightful
heir, who now appears); and the young Prince Hal renounces the rowdy
tavern life he enjoys with John Falstaff and friends to take up his duties
6 H. Riemann, Anleitung zum Partiturspiel (Leipzig: Max Hesse, 1902), discussed in Christensen,
‘Four-Hand Piano Transcription’, p. 271.
7 Letter of [6 October 1875] to Rieter-Biedermann, published in Briefe XIV, pp. 252–3.
8 Letter of [12 December 1879] to Fritz Simrock, Briefe X, p. 139.
9 Liszt requested a score of the Hamlet Overture for use with the play in Weimar in January 1854
(Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. I, pp. 135–6). Winkler sees
the theatre overture as an experimental field of nineteenth-century orchestral music; see G. J.
Winkler, ‘Schauspielmusik – Konzertouvertüre – Tondichtung: Joseph Joachim im Weimarer
Gegenlicht’, in M. Calella and C. Glanz (eds.), Joseph Joachim (1831–1907): Europäischer Bürger,
Komponist, Virtuose (Vienna: Mille Tre Verlag, 2008), p. 97. The list of sources here perpetuates
errors in the work list in B. Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph Joachim: Biographie
und Interpretationsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), CD-ROM. Sources for the overtures and
for Brahms’s arrangements are described and evaluated in JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I,
pp. 211–32.
(a)
(b)
Example 7.1. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Heinrich IV. Op. 7.

(a) Bars 143–54, melody (horns, then winds from bar 149).
(b) Bars 473–81, melody (horns).
as England’s King Henry V. Joachim’s preoccupation with the genre and

his use of thematic transformation as a structural and dramatic principle
show the influence of his study with Mendelssohn in the 1840s and of the
impact of Franz Liszt during Joachim’s stint as the Weimar concertmaster in
1850–2. In length (between 482 and 634 bars) and weight of their ideas, the
overtures approach the status of symphonic poems, a designation coined by
Liszt around 1853.10 To convey his characters’ fluctuating emotional states,
Joachim used loose, narrative forms that obscure the underlying sonata
framework. Ideas trail off at times or simply stop as if in mid-thought.
Drama is created by changes in tempo and metre, dynamic contrasts, strik-
ing use of the orchestra and, above all, sharp dissonances and unexpected
harmonic progressions. All of these qualities – in addition to the brooding
tone of Hamlet and Demetrius – made the overtures difficult for orchestral
players to grasp and execute well, and thus for audiences of the mid-1850s
to understand.
Joachim wrote to Robert Schumann on 17 November 1854: ‘The Overture
to Heinrich IV. is no longer so gloomy, but I fear a little long and noisy.
The knightly Percy and the boisterous king’s son, who later on is called to
triumphant majesty, inspired a number of trumpet outbursts.’11 It is clear,
however, that certain moments in the dramas resonated far beyond the
sphere of the play itself. In each autograph score Joachim transcribed a line
from its respective play in abbreviated shorthand. A series of initials over
bars 143–50 of the Heinrich Overture cites a pronouncement of Prince Hal,
in the German translation by Schlegel: ‘So treiben wir Possen mit der Zeit,
und die Geister der Weisen sitzen in den Wolken, und spotten unser’ (‘Well,
10 See A. Walker, Franz Liszt: the Weimar Years, 1848–1861 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1989), pp. 300–8.
11 Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. I, p. 229.
(a)
Example 7.2. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, autograph

manuscript. A-Wgm Musikautographe Joseph Joachim 1.
(a) Bars 1–4.
(b) Bars 37–41.
(b)
thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the
clouds and mock us’).12 The melody thus annotated – at this point circular
12 ‘S. t. w. P. m. d. Z. u. d. G. d. W. s. in d. W. u. sp. u.’ W. Shakespeare, König Heinrich IV., trans.

August Wilhelm von Schlegel (Shakespeare’s dramatische Werke übersetzt von August Wilhelm
von Schlegel und Ludwig Tieck (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1850–1), Part II, Act II, Scene ii). Joachim
quoted this line slightly differently in a letter to Hans von Bülow on 7 January 1891, as Bülow
was preparing for the performance mentioned at the beginning of this essay (Joachim and
Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. III, p. 380). Similar series of initials appear
at the ends of the Hamlet and Demetrius Overtures (see JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I,
pp. 212, 218–19, 224).
Example 7.3. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, bars 166–8, ‘fate
motive’.
and at a slow tempo (Example 7.1a) – is transformed into a purposeful,

triumphant march at the end of the overture, as the young prince takes on
the role of king (Example 7.1b).
Joachim identified strongly with his characters. He began the Hamlet
Overture in Weimar by 22 August 1852 and took up the project again after
moving to the far less stimulating environment of Hanover early the next
year; his autograph score is dated 16 March 1853 and as a signature bears
his motto ‘f.a.e.’ (‘frei aber einsam’; free but lonely).13 His preoccupation
with the indecisive Hamlet seems to have reflected his own dilemma over
the conflicting paths of performance and composition, and frustration over
his time-consuming duties in Hanover. Two related chromatic themes in
D minor embody Hamlet’s conflict, the first one heard in the slow intro-
duction (Example 7.2a), the other a transformed version that serves as the
principal theme of the Allegro agitato (Example 7.2b). Most of the overture
grows out of this pair of themes.
The slow introduction is recalled several times, and a sense of discon-
tinuity is intensified through unexpected resolutions, melodies that trail
off into silence, and Joachim’s use of a broad range of keys (including a
return of the introductory theme a tritone away, in A, that commences
a series of alternations of this slow theme and that of the Allegro agitato,
finally leading to a lyrical ‘Ophelia’ theme in F major, the ‘second’ key
area of the sonata form). In a presto coda, pungent dissonances and cross-
relations lead to a climactic passage where the two versions of the chromatic
main idea coexist. The harmony settles into the subdominant as flights of
angels sing Hamlet to his rest, and the overture closes with a version of
the ‘fate’ motive, first heard in the timpani at the end of the exposition
(Example 7.3).
13 Letters of 22 August 1852 to Joseph’s brother Heinrich, 21 March 1853 to Franz Liszt, and
29 November 1853 to Robert Schumann (Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph
Joachim, vol. I, pp. 33, 44 and 109). Fuller histories of the overtures are given in JBG,
Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. x–xxi. See also M. Musgrave, ‘Frei aber Froh: A
Reconsideration’, 19th-Century Music 3 (March 1980), pp. 251–8.
Both Liszt and Robert Schumann brought their energies and influence
in support of the Hamlet Overture. The court orchestra at Weimar, to
whom the overture was dedicated, performed it in May 1853, and Schu-
mann conducted an unfortunately chaotic performance in Düsseldorf on
27 October, the day before his article ‘Neue Bahnen’ introduced Brahms to
the musical world and included Joachim in a list of ‘aspiring artists of recent
years’.14 In November Schumann recommended the overture to Breitkopf
& Härtel, together with the works that would appear as Brahms’s first four
opuses.15 Joachim revised his overture several times, with the benefit of crit-
icism from Liszt, Woldemar Bargiel (1828−97), Schumann, and Brahms’s
teacher Eduard Marxsen (1806−87), and the experience of hearing the work
in Weimar and Düsseldorf and then under his own direction at the Leipzig
Gewandhaus on 23 March 1854.
A review of the Gewandhaus performance appearing in the Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik, though questioning the work’s generic designation and
form and noting its technical difficulty, nevertheless recognised Joachim as
a promising and highly original talent:
We would not like to keep referring to this work as an ‘overture’, since the composer
oversteps the boundaries of the form described by this term. The composition is a
free fantasy in a completely individual mould. The whole is powerful and thoroughly
sound, the ideas significant, and the handling of the orchestra often brilliant. We
have a great artistic talent before us who is striving most mightily to reach the
highest goal. To be sure, Joachim is not there yet. There is too much detail, and one
notices a certain lack of conciseness that contributes to the work’s excessive length.
The gloomy colouring, a certain stiffness, and the unusual form, in a performance
that left a great deal to be desired – all of this diminished the effect.16
Joachim considered a lack of empathy on the part of musicians to be the

fundamental obstacle to his music’s successful presentation, and believed
14 R. Schumann, ‘Neue Bahnen’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 39/18 (28 October 1853), p. 185, note
below left column. In her diary Clara Schumann noted the difficulty of the work but also the
role of ‘intrigues’ in Düsseldorf (B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann: Ein Künstlerleben. Nach
Tagebüchern und Briefen, 3rd edn, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907), vol. II, p. 244).
Regarding the Düsseldorf performance, see Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph
Joachim, vol. I, p. 67; A. Moser, Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, revised edn, 2 vols. (Berlin:
Verlag der deutschen Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908–10), vol. I, pp. 182–3; Niederrheinische
Musik-Zeitung 1 (1853), p. 158; and B. R. Appel, ‘Robert Schumann als Dirigent in Düsseldorf’,
in W. Frobenius, I. Maaß, M. Waldura and T. Widmaier (eds.), Robert Schumann: Philologische,
analytische, sozial- und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Aspekte (Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag,
1998), p. 124.
15 F. G. Jansen (ed.), Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue Folge, 2nd edn (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1904), pp. 484–5.
16 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 40/14 (31 March 1854), p. 151, article signed ‘F. G.’ [F. Gleich?].
their attitudes were politically motivated. To Brahms he sized the situation

up in this way: ‘Fortunately my music-making is not bound up with that
which normally is considered success . . . It is aggravating how all the little
people are divided in factions; they think that one can’t be friends with
Berlioz or Wagner without composing just like them.’17
It was in the performance conducted by Schumann – and probably also in
rehearsals leading up to it – that Brahms and others in the Düsseldorf circle
heard the Hamlet Overture for the first time. Then, as a guest in Joachim’s
home in Hanover in November 1853 and in January and February 1854,
Brahms had the opportunity to study it with the composer. The overture
presented a steep learning curve, even for Brahms. Hedwig Salomon, present
in the Schumann house on Brahms’s twenty-first birthday, 7 May 1854,
reported that Brahms
spoke enthusiastically about . . . Joachim’s Hamlet Overture. On first hearing he had

not understood it, not understood it at all. But then Joachim had come to him,
had played it for him and shown him the score, and gradually he had developed
a fascination with the work, so that now he viewed it as something far beyond his
own powers.18
When Joachim and Brahms received Albert Dietrich’s letter informing

them of Schumann’s suicide attempt on 27 February, Brahms set out for
Düsseldorf immediately, arriving on 3 March and taking with him Joachim’s
‘only copy’ (‘das einzige Exemplar der Partitur’) of the Hamlet Overture,
probably the autograph score.19 Brahms’s four-hand arrangement, which
he may have started in Hanover, was complete by early April. It was precisely
during this time – spring 1854 – that Brahms began to study the works of
Shakespeare; his copy of the first volume of Schlegel and Tieck’s translation
is dated Düsseldorf 25 (or 15) March 1854.20
In summer 1853, shortly after hearing the Hamlet Overture at Weimar,
Joachim sketched part of the Ouvertüre zu Heinrich IV. in Göttingen. Brahms
17 Letter of 25[?] March 1854, Briefe V, p. 32. Joachim continued to revise the overture even after
sending an engraver’s model to Breitkopf & Härtel. The orchestral parts were published in
November 1854, the full score in 1908, after Joachim’s death (see JBG, Arrangements fremder
Werke I, pp. xii–xiii).
18 Kalbeck I, pp. 169–70 (first published in Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 8 May 1897).
19 Letter of [17 March 1854] from Joachim to Ferdinand David, Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe
von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. I, pp. 174–5; see also JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I,
p. 217, n. 46.
20 A-Wgm, Nachlass Brahms (see JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. xii–xiv). Julius Otto
Grimm wrote on Brahms’s behalf to Joachim on 9 April 1854 asking for the arrangement back
(Briefe V, p. 31 with incorrect date of 9 March; Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an
Joseph Joachim, vol. I, pp. 180–1 with correct date).
spent the summer there with Joachim, and knew something of the overture
in its early stages. But by autumn Joachim was working on an overture for
his friend Herman Grimm’s Demetrius, with the help of an analysis of the
play by Gisela von Arnim – whom Joachim loved but who soon married
Grimm. Joachim’s identification with the title character, haunted by doubt
and yet with a seemingly bright future, is evident in his letter to her:
I had worked myself so fervently into your Herman’s muse that often I myself
became a brooding, raging Demetrius and wrote loud, murderous thoughts in
F-sharp minor; when I came home from an evening walk and put the light on,
in order to continue composing, I would open my little work room very gingerly
and enter softly on tiptoe, like Olga in the dark dungeon – but once inside I again
became a proud, young Demetrius; in my small room I felt like someone who
carried within him an inborn expectation of greatness, of a great kingdom with
innumerable heads (only noteheads certainly!) with the most wonderful voices – I
felt unbelievable courage.21
Joachim completed the Heinrich Overture in July 1854 and also thoroughly
revised Demetrius.22 He sent both overtures to Brahms on 5 September, then
to Liszt in November before sending them again to Brahms on 9 December.
From Hamburg Brahms wrote excitedly to Clara Schumann:
Joachim sent me the letter and his grand overtures. I will write him myself, if only I
also could express how very highly I revere the overtures, what a treasure they are to
me, and how doubly precious the manuscript is. When I see them I am continually
amazed at this giant Shakespearean fantasy and these glowing melodies that burn
like iron . . . How proud and happy it makes me to think that there still are people
with such hearts, so warm, so large.23
Both Brahms and Clara Schumann attended the first reading of the Hein-
rich Overture in Hanover on 4 January 1855. The premiere took place on
24 March in a subscription concert including two other works in C major –
Beethoven’s Triple Concerto Op. 56 and Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony K551 –
a fact that Joachim and Brahms both celebrated in their correspondence.24
21 Letter of [1 February 1854], Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. I,
pp. 151–2. Joachim’s duties as concertmaster slowed his progress, and copying took much
longer than expected, so that the overture seems never to have been performed with Grimm’s
play (see JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. xv–xvi).
22 The version of Demetrius transmitted by Joachim’s autograph ‘Umarbeitung’ differs
substantially from that in an earlier copy. See JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. 219.
23 Letter dated 10–12 December 1854 (Schumann-Brahms Briefe I, p. 51).
24 In a letter of [c. 26 March 1855], Brahms referred to the concert as the ‘wonderfully magnificent
C-major triad’ (‘den “wunderherrlichen” C dur-Dreiklang’) and notated the triad on a treble
staff with the name ‘Beethoven’ next to c , ‘Mozart’ next to e , and ‘Joachim’ next to g .
Brahms had scores of both of the new overtures copied for Robert Schu-
mann and made a first arrangement of Heinrich by 21 March, perhaps for
piano solo, that no longer survives.25
The single verifiable performance of the Demetrius Overture took place
on 21 April 1855 under the direction of Louis Spohr. Although Spohr
acknowledged the work’s originality and the beauty of certain passages,
he found the form difficult and the dissonances harsh, and described the
audience’s reaction as indifferent (‘theilnahmslos’), even given the fact that
some present were ‘quite actively interested in the newest music of the
future, at least Wagner’s’.26 Despite words of support from Brahms, Clara
Schumann and others, Joachim became discouraged by the reception of
his overtures and by his inability to realise fully his ideas in sound; neither
Heinrich nor Demetrius was published.27
In July 1854, about a month before Brahms received the overtures to
Heinrich and Demetrius for the first time, Brahms and Clara Schumann
studied Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Op. 125 in Liszt’s arrangement for
two pianos; Brahms had heard the symphony in Cologne three months
earlier.28 He also had been working on a Sonata for Two Pianos in D minor
that he soon would attempt to make over as a symphony and, eventu-
ally, his First Piano Concerto Op. 15.29 Work in the two-piano medium,
and the presence of two instruments in the Schumann home, led Brahms
to try his hand at arranging Joachim’s Demetrius and Heinrich overtures
for two pianos. The link with Beethoven is important: Brahms associated
Briefe V, p. 104; see also JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. xvii, n. 65, and S. Avins (ed.),
Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, trans. S. Avins and J. Eisinger (Oxford University Press,
1997), p. 101.
25 See Briefe V, p. 103. At Endenich Robert Schumann arranged several pages of the Heinrich
Overture for piano duet (Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. I,
p. 364).
26 Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. I pp. 281–3. Spohr worked
from his knowledge of Schiller’s Demetrius, the plot of which is substantially different from
Grimm’s play.
27 In autumn 1857 Joachim discussed publication of the Heinrich Overture with Rieter-
Biedermann (see JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. xviii). The Hamlet and Heinrich
Overtures were performed at the Berlin Hochschule on 1 March 1889 as part of the celebration
of the fiftieth anniversary of Joachim’s first performance; the Heinrich Overture also was
played as part of the diamond jubilee anniversary of Joachim’s London debut, in Queen’s Hall
on 16 May 1904 (see Moser, Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, vol. II, pp. 259, 311). Charles
Stanford conducted the first English performance of the Hamlet Overture at the Royal College
of Music, London on 19 November 1908, after the composer’s death; I am grateful to Katy
Hamilton for sharing this information with me.
28 Briefe V, p. 35.
29 Some material found its way into Ein deutsches Requiem. See Werkverzeichnis, p. 49.
not only Joachim’s music, but the man himself with Beethoven, due to
Joachim’s definitive interpretation of the Violin Concerto Op. 77, and his
association with individuals who had known Beethoven and continued to
promote his music.30 Brahms may also have been familiar with Joachim’s
assessment of Beethoven as ‘the eternal model, who knew the human soul
better than anyone’, earning him the title, for Joachim, of ‘the musical
Shakespeare’.31
Correspondence of Brahms and his friends offers clues about the place of
Brahms’s arrangements of the overtures in the group’s private music-making
in the 1850s and 1860s. A letter from Brahms, written at the beginning of
January 1857, invited Julius Otto Grimm to hear the Demetrius Overture on
two pianos, Brahms’s Quartet (probably Op. 25), and new organ fugues and
variations in a musical get-together to be held the day after a formal concert
in Hanover.32 This seems to have been Joachim’s first opportunity to hear
the Demetrius Overture in its revised form. Brahms played this arrangement
with Julius Otto Grimm at Grimm’s home in Göttingen in February.33 In July
1865 Clara Schumann and Brahms played the arrangements of Demetrius
and Heinrich, together with Brahms’s four-hand arrangement of his new
G major String Sextet Op. 36 in Schumann’s home in Baden Baden, in which
town Brahms rented summer lodgings.34 Recreating Joachim’s works at the
keyboard was a way for the group to bring the composer into their midst
when his many obligations made a visit impossible. After Joachim missed
acknowledging Clara Schumann’s birthday in September 1856 (her first
birthday since Robert’s death), she wrote to him: ‘[Brahms and I] just played
the splendid Heinrich Overture on my two fine pianos, and again became
fire and flames! The flame of anger at the faithless one was transformed into
a flame of holiest passion through your tones!’35 Brahms also relied upon the
arrangements to expand the circle of those familiar with Joachim’s works;
he played the Heinrich Overture in Hamburg in December 1855 with his
friend Georg Dietrich Otten, leader of the Hamburg Musikverein.36 After
30 See Borchard, Stimme und Geige, pp. 92–106, and Horne, ‘Late Beethoven’, pp. 93–130,
especially pp. 96–102.
31 Letter of [7 April 1853] to Woldemar Bargiel (Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an
Joseph Joachim, vol. I, pp. 46–7).
32 Briefe IV, p. 49. 33 Brahms accidentally left the Piano II part there (see ibid., p. 53).
34 R. and K. Hofmann, Johannes Brahms als Pianist und Dirigent: Chronologie seines Wirkens als
Interpret (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2006), pp. 82–3, from an unpublished letter of Clara
Schumann to Amalie Joachim, dated 1 August 1865.
35 Letter of 28 September 1856 (Joachim and Moser (eds.), Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim,
vol. I, p. 369).
36 Schumann-Brahms Briefe I, p. 159.
his move to Vienna, Brahms continued to enjoy and promote the over-
tures. In December 1863 he requested copies of them from Joachim, and
back in the city again the following year, he reported that Otto Dessoff and
other friends were ‘beside themselves’ over Hamlet: ‘I brought your over-
tures here with me, and I play them, namely the Hamlet, and am warmed
through and through. I always regret that the others lay unprinted all these
years, that you cannot make up your mind to publish them. It would be a
good decision, just the thing to do, of benefit both to you and to others.’37
In autumn 1867 he went so far as to suggest that he and Joachim pro-
gramme either the Heinrich or Hamlet Overture in a joint concert in Vienna,
along with Brahms’s own D minor Piano Concerto, but this did not take
place.38
A copy of the Hamlet arrangement, in parts (with Secondo on the left
and Primo on the right of each opening), probably made in April or May
1854 and used within the Düsseldorf circle, shows how Brahms refined his
arrangements in the course of playing them, including rewriting passages
in which the two players’ hands play the same note. A copy of the Heinrich
Overture in parts, made by Hanover copyist Wilhelm Victor Deierberg,
seems also to have been used by Brahms and his friends.39 Other sources
bring Brahms’s playing of the arrangements closer to the present. William
Kupfer in Vienna prepared two nearly identical manuscripts of both the
Heinrich and Demetrius arrangements in score, Primo over Secondo, in the
1890s.40 One copy of each arrangement was owned by the pianist Emma
Brandes Engelmann, in whose home in Utrecht Brahms, Joachim, Clara
Schumann, and other friends enjoyed socialising and making music.41 Given
that Brahms’s autograph manuscripts served as models for her copies, and
that Brahms and Emma Engelmann are known to have played four-hand
music at the home of Rudolf von Beckerath (Wiesbaden) in July 1883,42 it
37 Letters of end December 1863 and 31 December 1864 (published date corrected according to
online Brahms Briefwechsel Verzeichnis, Brahms-Institut an der Musikhochschule Lübeck)
(Briefe VI, pp. 21–2; 37).
38 Briefe VI, p. 47. Hofmann, Chronologie, pp. 96–7, describes a programme given by the two in
Vienna on 9 November 1867 but including no original works by either of them.
39 Copies in Brahms’s Nachlass in A-Wgm; see JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. 214, 227,
and the Kritischer Bericht in that volume.
40 Thus each player would have been supplied with the entire arrangement. Only one copy of the
Heinrich arrangement by Kupfer survives (see JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. 220–1,
227–8). I am grateful to Johannes Behr and his colleagues at the Forschungsstelle of the
Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe in Kiel for identifying the copyists Kupfer and Deierberg.
41 Werkverzeichnis, p. 285. Brahms dedicated his String Quartet Op. 67 to her husband, physician
and cellist Theodor Engelmann.
42 Hofmann, Chronologie, p. 225.
seems likely that the two also played the Heinrich and Demetrius Overtures
in Brahms’s two-piano arrangements on one or more occasions, and that
Brahms either had them copied for her or allowed her to have copies made.
In his arrangements of Joachim’s overtures, Brahms sought to convey the
structure and details of his model in the voice of the piano. This went well
beyond transferring notes and rhythms to the keyboard(s) in configurations
that could be played by four hands. The music was brought to life in a new
idiom, and equivalent – or sometimes alternative – means found to convey
defining materials and the shape and pacing of the whole. Thus the question
for Brahms was not ‘How can the piano convey what the orchestra plays in
a given passage?’ but rather ‘How can the piano best present the musical
work?’43 His arrangements were much more than guides to the scores;
they were reinventions of the orchestral works, through which players and
listeners could hear and take part in recreating Joachim’s music in their
own private spaces. Although the range of colours is generally narrower
in a piano arrangement, the structure and relationships among materials
may be more readily apparent, on the page and also in sound. Even as
skilled a musician as Clara Schumann claimed to have difficulty reading full
scores.44 For members of Brahms’s circle, studying arrangements enhanced
understanding of the orchestral work in performance and allowed them to
relive a rare concert experience any number of times at the keyboard.
Technical challenges and inventive solutions were part of the fun. Several
of Brahms’s friends were excellent pianists, of course, and they as well as
Brahms enjoyed a good manual workout.45 Thus Brahms was able to bring
a wide range of pianistic techniques to the task of arranging. He revoiced
and thinned textures to bring them under the reach of four hands, devised
43 For discussions of Brahms’s arrangements of his own compositions as these relate to the
question of work identity, see M. Struck, ‘Werk-Übersetzung als Werk-Alternative? Johannes
Brahms’ Klavierbearbeitungen eigener Werke’, in B. Plachta and W. Woesler (eds.), Edition und
Übersetzung: Zur wissenschaftlichen Dokumentation des interkulturellen Texttransfers. Beiträge
der Internationalen Fachtagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für germanistische Edition – 11 March
2000 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002), pp. 447–64, also ‘Um Fassung(en) ringend: Johannes
Brahms, das Problem der Fassungen und das Problem der Brahms-Forschung mit dem
Problem der Fassungen’, in R. Emans (ed.), Mit Fassung: Fassungsprobleme in Musik- und
Text-Philologie (Laaber Verlag, 2007), pp. 141–76.
44 See her letter of 20 December 1858 in Schumann-Brahms Briefe I, p. 233.
45 See, for example, letters of Brahms and Clara Schumann (May–July 1877) about Brahms’s
arrangements of the Presto from Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata BWV 1001 and the Chaconne from
the Partita BWV 1004 (Schumann-Brahms Briefe II, pp. 98, 110–13). On 20 February 1855
Breitkopf & Härtel rejected Brahms’s duet arrangement of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet
Op. 44 as too difficult (see Briefe XIV, pp. 17–19, and JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I,
pp. xxii–xxiii).
Example 7.4a. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, autograph

manuscript, bars 325–35. A-Wgm Musikautographe Joseph Joachim 1.
new rhythmic patterns and introduced small changes of melody and har-
mony to clarify the structure, and invented idiomatic figures to intensify
expression or convey the spirit of effects in strings, woodwinds, brass or
timpani.46 Bars 327–35 of the Hamlet Overture show how Brahms was both
faithful and inventive in his handling of the musical text. In this passage
(Example 7.4a), a motive from the main theme of the Allegro agitato,
now played by strings in repeated semiquavers, climbs more than three
octaves through accented held tones in winds and brass, as the dynamic
level increases from pianissimo to fortissimo. In order to convey these dif-
ferent components and their relative importance within the compass of a
single keyboard, Brahms had to carefully select and reshape Joachim’s mate-
rials. He began by setting the rising string line in simple staccato quavers
that were clearly audible in the tenor register and out of the way of Primo
(Example 7.4b). When this figure rose too near the Primo’s left hand, he
swept it dramatically into the Primo on the second beat of bar 332, an octave
above its placement in Joachim’s violins; the pianist’s alternating left and
right hands recreate the strings’ agitated repeated notes. The wind parts,
46 See Goertzen, ‘Piano Transcriptions’ and ‘Adaptation and Recomposition’.

Example 7.4b. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4. Arrangement by

Brahms for piano duet, bars 327–35, JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. 24.
which had been the source for Brahms’s Primo part in the passage until
now, were dropped an octave into the right hand of Secondo in bar 334
and the extended timpani roll reduced to a one-bar suggestion in the bass.
In this way, Brahms kept the focus on the rising string line derived from
the main theme while also presenting the harmonic context supplied by
winds and brasses. The inclusion of other components, for example the sec-
ondary accents in the brasses and the continuous timpani roll, would have
(a)
(b)
Example 7.5. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4. Arrangement by

Brahms for piano duet. A-Wgm Nachlass Johannes Brahms A145b.
(a) Bars 482–5, first version in manuscript copy.
(b) Bars 482–5, incorporating the composer’s revisions in manuscript copy.
made the passage too crowded, confusing to eye and ear, and awkward to
play.
In his reworking of materials, Brahms paid close attention to detail: appar-
ent inconsistencies in articulation, phrasing or dynamics in his arrange-
ments often point to small intentional differences in parallel materials within
Joachim’s score. He was also careful in his handling of octave tremolos, a
device commonly used in arrangements of orchestral music to represent
effects such as timpani rolls, measured and unmeasured string tremo-
los, trills, and sustained tones in high winds or strings. For each overture
arrangement, he devised an individual plan for the notation of tremolos.
In Hamlet, for example, he rendered timpani rolls in hemidemisemiquavers
and unmeasured string tremolos in demisemiquavers,47 with the result that
attentive pianists are able to distinguish between these very different effects.
Within this general plan, Brahms introduced refinements during the revis-
ing process, in order to make these figures more pianistic and effective. In
the final bars of the Hamlet Overture, he first transferred the ‘fate’ motive to
the piano literally (Example 7.5a) and then reworked it in pencil to include
a tremolo figure incorporating the lower octave (Example 7.5b).48
47 See also JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, pp. 245–6. Brahms rarely included instrumental
cues in his arrangements.
48 See ibid., p. 254. Brahms accidentally notated the tremolo roll in b. 484 with only three beams;
this has been corrected in ibid., p. 34.
Example 7.6. Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Heinrich IV. Op. 7. Arrangement by

Brahms for two pianos, bars 101–6, JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. 85.
For the arrangements of the Demetrius and Heinrich Overtures, Brahms

had two full keyboards at his disposal, and the distribution of materials
between the two players was less dependent on register. Normally Piano I
was assigned the principal themes, with Piano II taking them on at strategic
points, to highlight changes in structure, orchestration or character.49 This
medium gave Brahms a wider range of expressive possibilities and greater
freedom in adapting his materials, and provided pianists with the experience
of collaborating as two soloists. The Piano I part in Example 7.6 shows his
transformation of an essentially static passage of repeated-note triplets in
winds to a figure that glides up and down between two octaves, thereby
reinforcing the contour, dynamics and drama of the string melody played
49 The autograph of the Heinrich arrangement shows Brahms’s process of revising in the course
of writing out a separate Piano II part, and then redistributing material between the players at
a later stage (see ibid., pp. 226–7).
in Piano II. This figure also reflects the volume and momentum contributed
by sustained minim c and c in the trumpets on the second beats of bars
102 and 104 of Joachim’s score.
Joachim’s decision not to pursue publication of the overtures after the
parts for Hamlet were released in November 1854 meant that Brahms’s
arrangements also would not reach print during his lifetime. But Brahms
took steps to ensure that at least the Heinrich Overture would eventually find
its way into pianists’ homes and studios. He left the two-piano arrangement
to Simrock in his will, and it was published finally in 1902 after Brahms’s
estate was settled.50 Eusebius Mandyczewski, archivist of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde, wrote to Joseph Joachim on 17 June 1902: ‘Today I am
sending Simrock a copy of Brahms’s arrangement of the Heinrich Overture
for two pianos, four hands that I have carefully corrected against the original
manuscript. You will see, I think with amazement, what a splendid piano
piece Brahms made out of it.’51 At this point Joachim had known the
arrangement for close to forty-seven years.
The impact of Brahms’s study of Joachim’s music on his own compo-
sitional development has not yet been fully assessed.52 But it is clear that
for Brahms and other members of the Düsseldorf circle, the overtures were
prized examples of how a young composer might interpret and build upon
the legacy of orchestral music in a contemporary idiom, along lines con-
sistent with Robert Schumann’s vision. Members of the group would have
found their own meanings in the music’s unabashed exuberance and dark
musings, and in the stories of destiny and struggle. Brahms was drawn
especially to Hamlet, newly finished as he and Joachim were beginning their
friendship, and to Heinrich, in which the young hero steps up to fulfil the
role he is born to play.53 At a time when opportunities to hear orchestral
readings or performances of these overtures were few and far between,
Brahms drew on his resources as a composer and his intimate knowledge of
50 See ibid. I, pp. xxi, 228, 231. Brahms’s arrangements of the Hamlet and Demetrius overtures are
published there for the first time.
51 Unpublished letter, Berlin, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung catalogue number SM
12/26 2. The author is grateful to Christian Lambour and Johannes Behr for bringing this letter
to her attention. The German text is given in JBG, Arrangements fremder Werke I, p. xxi, n. 111.
52 M. Struck examined connections between Joachim’s Variations on an Irish Elfsong and
Brahms’s Op. 21 Variations in ‘Dialog über die Variation – präzisiert: Joseph Joachims
“Variationen über ein irisches Elfenlied” und Johannes Brahms’ Variationenpaar op. 21 im
Licht der gemeinsamen gattungstheoretischen Diskussion’, in P. Petersen (ed.),
Musikkulturgeschichte: Festschrift für Constantin Floros zum 60. Geburtstag (Wiesbaden:
Breitkopf & Härtel, 1990), pp. 105–54. See also Horne, ‘Late Beethoven’.
53 See Briefe V, pp. 58–9.
the piano to create arrangements – reinventions of the orchestral works –

that he could play with friends and colleagues in their homes for diversion,
study, artistic and intellectual engagement, consolation and celebration. In
doing so he deepened his own understanding of Joachim’s art and invited
others to do the same.
8 Brahms and his arrangers
helen paskins
with katy hamilton and natasha loges
As a prolific arranger of his own music, Brahms understandably held strong

views on how it should be done. The extensive surviving correspondence
between the composer and arrangers of his music demonstrates his varying
levels of interest – and intervention – in their work, and his assessment
of the results. On occasion, he showed great interest in the fine details
of the process, making suggestions and remarks on their work; at other
times, he was simply content to trust to the expertise of colleagues without
interference.1 Over 65 different arrangers produced at least 350 arrange-
ments during Brahms’s lifetime, including at least fifteen arrangements of
the ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4 alone. This chapter explores the relation-
ship between Brahms and the three most important arrangers of his music:
Theodor Kirchner (1823–1903), Robert Keller (1828–91) and Paul Klengel
(1854–1935).2 Between them they were responsible for a large proportion
of the known arrangements made in Brahms’s lifetime, and a table of their
arrangements is included in the Appendix to this chapter. The table includes
details of 176 arrangements, of which 38 were produced by Kirchner, 70 by
Keller and 68 by Klengel. All three men arranged music of all genres, and
understandably the number of works is connected to the time period in
which they were closest to Brahms. Evidently Kirchner attempted more
than he was able to complete, but his particular strength seems to have lain
in smaller-scale vocal music. Keller was adept at tackling the challenges of
large-scale choral and orchestral music, while Klengel handled the arranging
of solo piano music for four hands.
There is an increasingly substantial body of scholarly literature exploring
both the centrality of arrangements to nineteenth-century musical life, and
The authors would like to acknowledge the considerable contribution of Michael Freyhan to
this chapter.
1 Brahms’s own arrangements of his work are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6.
2 There is one further arranger who contributed a sizeable number of arrangements in Brahms’s
lifetime. Friedrich Hermann (1828–1907) was particularly active for Simrock in this regard in
the 1870s. Many of his arrangements were published for piano duet, violin and cello, and can
be found reissued today by Rosewood Publications. However, he receives little mention in
178 Brahms’s correspondence and is therefore not considered in this chapter.
Brahms and his arrangers 179
the relationships between composers and their arrangers.3 This includes the
publication of a considerable amount of correspondence, such as the letters
between Brahms and Robert Keller, and biographical studies of Theodor
Kirchner.4 However, although Brahms’s letters provide the most impor-
tant source material for this chapter, they must be viewed with some cau-
tion. The surviving correspondence is far from complete and letters can
be misinterpreted when their context is not fully known. For example,
Kurt Stephenson’s edited collection of correspondence from Peter Joseph
and Fritz Simrock to Brahms contains only 166 letters, whilst the Briefe
vols. IX–XII contain a staggering 938 numbered letters from composer to
publisher.5 Even so, the letters offer insights into Brahms’s involvement
with the arrangements of his works; and his remarks shed light on both his
opinion of what constituted a good arrangement and how he felt the task
should be tackled. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore in depth
the vast number of arrangements produced by even these three figures, but
it is hoped that this overview and the accompanying Appendix will act as a
stimulus to further research.
1. Theodor Kirchner
A composer, conductor and keyboard player, Kirchner was organist for

many years in Winterthur and Zurich before taking up positions in
3 For recent English-language scholarship on the general topic of four-hand piano arrangement,
see T. Christensen, ‘Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century
Musical Reception’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 52/2 (Summer 1999),
pp. 255–98; I. Shepherd, The Drawing Room Symphony: A History of the Piano Duet
Transcription (Norwich: Kingswood, 2008); and W. Lockhart, ‘Listening to the Domestic Music
Machine: Keyboard Arrangement in the Nineteenth Century’, unpublished PhD thesis,
Humboldt-Universität, Berlin (2011) and ‘Trial by Ear: Legal Attitudes to Keyboard
Arrangement in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Music and Letters 93/2 (May 2012), pp. 191–221.
Nebraska Press, 1996); R. Sietz, Theodor Kirchner: Ein Klaviermeister der deutschen Romantik
(Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1971) and ‘Johannes Brahms und Theodor Kirchner: Mit
ungedruckten Briefen Th. Kirchners’, Die Musikforschung 13/4 (October/December 1960),
pp. 396–404; K. Hofmann, ‘Die Beziehungen zwischen Johannes Brahms und Theodor
Kirchner: Dargestellt an den überlieferten Briefen’, in R. Elvers and E. Vögel (eds.), Festschrift
Hans Schneider zum 60. Geburtstag (Munich: Ernst Vögel, 1981), pp. 135–49; and K.-S. Lee,
‘Kirchner, Theodor’, in L. Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 2, revised edn,
27 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994–2008), Personenteil, vol. X, pp. 155–7 and Stilistische
Untersuchungen am Klavierwerk Theodor Kirchners (Aachen: Shaker, 1998).
5 K. Stephenson (ed.), Johannes Brahms und Fritz Simrock: Weg einer Freundschaft. Briefe des
Verlegers an den Komponisten (Hamburg: J. J. Augustin, 1961). The first five letters, from the
years 1862–6, are from Peter Joseph Simrock, dated 25 October 1862, 7 November 1862, 29 May
1866, 20 June 1866 and 21 November 1866. They were also copied into Simrock’s Copierbücher,
now in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, A-Wn Mus Hs 36, 601. The remaining
letters are from his son Fritz Simrock, who became a close friend of Brahms.
180 helen paskins, with katy hamilton and natasha loges
Meiningen, Würzburg, Leipzig (as a freelance musician) and Dresden. In

1890 he moved to Hamburg, where he lived out his retirement in straitened
circumstances and ill health. His lifelong friendship with Brahms began
when the two composers met at Baden Baden in 1865 (their supposed
meeting at the Lower Rhine Music Festival, Düsseldorf, in 1856 seems to
have been a case of mistaken identity).6 Despite his close acquaintance
with many important musicians and the success of his own compositions
(particularly his character pieces for piano), his life and music have only
received scholarly attention relatively recently: one commentator describes
him as ‘Schumann’s protégé, Mendelssohn’s student, Wagner’s accompa-
nist, Brahms’s friend, Dvořák’s arranger, dedicatee of Reger’s second Violin
Sonata, Clara Schumann’s lover, Mathilde Wesendonck’s would-be lover;
and yet quite forgotten’.7 Nevertheless, he clearly was an equal member of the
musical circles around Brahms, Clara Schumann, Julius Stockhausen, Franz
Wüllner and others. Indeed, Robert Schumann mentioned him in the same
breath as Brahms in his 1853 article ‘Neue Bahnen’.8 Kirchner’s famous
musical friends held him in sufficiently high regard to support him per-
sonally, professionally and financially as needed. He, too, reciprocated this
support where possible – for example, recommending the then unknown
Brahms to his Swiss publisher, Jakob Melchior Rieter-Biedermann.
The correspondence between Kirchner and Brahms shows that the com-
poser had great faith in Kirchner’s arranging skills, and that the tone between
the two men was equal and collegial. For instance, their discussions concern-
ing Kirchner’s four-hand arrangement of Brahms’s Variations and Fugue
on a Theme of Handel Op. 24 are both good-natured and exceptionally
detailed:
Kirchner to Brahms
Leipzig 4 August 1877
May I in the next few days send you your Handel Variations in a four-hand arrange-
ment? . . . I have embellished as little as possible and occasionally risked a few dou-
blings, if it seemed necessary, in order to give the thing somehow a four-hand
appearance? . . . Today the Fugue will be finished.9
6 See Lee, Stilistische Untersuchungen, pp. 67–9.

7 C. Walton, ‘Knowing Kirchner’, Musical Times 144/1885 (Winter 2003), p. 5.
8 R. Schumann, ‘Neue Bahnen’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 39/18 (28 October 1853), p. 185, note
below left column.
9 Sietz, Theodor Kirchner, p. 134. All translations are the authors’ own unless otherwise specified.
Brahms to Kirchner
Pörtschach 9 August [?] 1877
From the many scrawlings you will see that I have looked through your work with
the greatest thanks and pleasure. Just do with it whatever you will. Double up,
cross out, embellish – it’ll be a lovely four-hand piece in any case. In Var. XIX does
the third section seem to me uncomfortable? XXV the arrangement: perhaps the
off-beats would be easier with two hands, almost. Sheet XI or earlier, the doublings
or the crossing of hands seem to me very difficult?10
Without seeing the pages Brahms was evaluating, it is hard to know how
exactly Kirchner adopted these suggestions. However, the arrangement in its
published version does appear to contain at least some of the configurations
that Brahms proposed.11 At the opening, Kirchner adheres quite closely to
the original version, with the right hand part generally taken by the Primo
player and the left hand by the Secondo. The texture of the original is largely
four-part, which divides comfortably between two players. We perhaps see
some of the ‘doubling up’ to which Brahms refers in Variation VII, marked
‘con vivacità’ (compare the arrangement in Example 8.1 with the original
in Example 8.2).
Embellishment can be seen particularly in Variations XIII and XVII,
where Kirchner sometimes thickens the top part so that the melodic line
is given more prominence in the four-part texture. He has also adopted
Brahms’s suggestion that the offbeats in Variation XXV should be rendered
with two hands (see the arrangement in Example 8.3 and the original in
Example 8.4).
Example 8.1. Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24.
Arrangement by Kirchner for four-hand piano (1878), Variation VII, bars 1–4.
10 Hofmann, ‘Beziehungen’, p. 139.

11 Kirchner’s arrangement was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in May 1878. See Werkverzeichnis,
p. 83.
Example 8.2. Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24, Variation
VII, bars 1–4.
Example 8.3. Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24.
Arrangement by Kirchner for four-hand piano (1878), Variation XXV, bars 1–4.
Example 8.4. Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24, Variation
XXV, bars 1–4.
The composer evidently approved of Kirchner’s work as an arranger and

quite often put his name forward to Simrock.12 In one instance, however,
it appears that Brahms changed his mind rather dramatically regarding
Kirchner’s undertaking of an arrangement of the Piano Quintet Op. 34.
Between the following pair of letters from 1870 and 1875 to the publisher
Rieter-Biedermann, he seems to undergo a complete volte-face:
Brahms to Rieter
[Vienna 20 June 1870]
Between ourselves I am not too happy that [Kirchner] is going to arrange my

‘Quintet’, since I have a special fondness for the four-hand version – which I wouldn’t
get from his.13
Brahms to Rieter
[Vienna 6 October 1875]
If Kirchner wants to arrange my ‘Quintet’ [Op. 34] for four hands it would be a
pleasure for me and a mark of distinction.
I would only urge him to do the thing comfortably, throw overboard any unnec-
essary weight and make it as light and playable as in any way possible with this
monster.14
This change of attitude may be accounted for by the fact that Brahms’s
earlier version of the work, for two pianos (Op. 34bis), had been published
12 See, for example, the letter from Brahms to Simrock from 20 August 1891, Ischl: ‘Would you
consider replacing Keller with Kirchner for four-hand arrangements?’ Briefe XII, p. 50.
13 Briefe XIV, p. 189. 14 Ibid., pp. 252–3.
Example 8.5. Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 13. Arrangement by Kirchner for
solo piano (1881), bars 1–8.
in 1872 – in other words, between these two letters. Brahms was subsequently
prepared to give his blessing to a four-hand arrangement by Kirchner, since
his own piano-only rendering had by then been codified in print.
In general, though, Brahms’s letters show him to have held Kirchner’s
work in high esteem. The Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 (also discussed in
Chapter 11) offer us the chance to compare arrangements by both Brahms
himself and Kirchner. Whilst Brahms produced a version for four hands
without voices, Op. 52a, Kirchner undertook an arrangement for solo
piano only.15 These two piano-only versions present contrasting approaches
to reducing the original material effectively. In Brahms’s original version
(with voices) of the thirteenth number, ‘Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft’,
the Secondo piano part supports the vocal melody while the Primo player
provides a two-note semiquaver figure which flits between the hands, rep-
resenting the bird of which the voices are singing. In his four-hand arrange-
ment, Brahms simply preserves the piano parts of the original, making no
attempt to accommodate the vocal lines. However, Kirchner in his solo
piano arrangement incorporates the melody into the right hand in spread
chords. Something of the bird figuration is retained in the left hand but no
attempt is made to be complete or exact about this. In effect he has almost
reversed the texture of the original four-hand version, transposing the bird
calls down into the tenor register, but arguably he comes closer to realising
more of the overall effect of Brahms’s original version with voices than the
composer himself (compare Kirchner’s arrangement in Example 8.5 with
the original in Example 8.6).
15 Op. 52a included the texts of each song, printed above the duet score, at Brahms’s insistence.
The composer also produced a version for four voices with solo piano, not discussed here. See
Werkverzeichnis, pp. 217–20.
Example 8.6. Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 13, bars 1–8.
In the second half of this song Brahms’s four-hand arrangement

(Op. 52a) omits the vocal line. The original score is shown here in Example
8.7 as the piano parts of Op. 52a are the same.
Kirchner, in his solo piano arrangement, makes a different choice, leaving
out material in order to favour the most important voices. In bars 13–16
he changes Brahms’s arpeggio figures, freeing the melody in the upper left
hand from entanglement with the arpeggios (see Example 8.8).
In Brahms’s four-hand arrangement Op. 52a no. 14, ‘Sieh, wie ist die
Welle klar’, he weaves the melody into the right hand of the Secondo part for
the first eight bars (compare the original Op. 52 no.14 in Example 8.9 with
Brahms’s arrangement Op. 52a no. 14 in Example 8.10). Kirchner, on the
other hand, writing for just two hands, abandons the melody, but retains
the important hemiola figure in the right hand (Example 8.11).
Example 8.8. Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 13. Arrangement by Kirchner for
solo piano (1881), bars 9–16.
Example 8.10. Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52a no. 14, bars 1–8.
Example 8.11. Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52 no. 14. Arrangement by Kirchner

for solo piano (1881), bars 1–8.
Thus, rather than remaining completely faithful to the original, Kirchner

chooses to convey its spirit whilst retaining a sense of what would be effective
for a solo pianist. Brahms’s letters frequently indicate that he appreciated
this relatively free and idiomatic approach to the work of arranging.
Robert Keller
Brahms’s relationship with the music editor and proofreader Robert Keller
was on a more exclusively professional footing. Keller worked for Simrock
for some twenty years until his death. His accuracy and eye for detail
earned not only Brahms’s gratitude but his genuine respect. He was an
intelligent musician, identifying discrepancies and inconsistencies between
score and parts, checking for missing accidentals, ties, dynamic markings
and much more. Thus he was a key figure in preparing most of Brahms’s
major works for publication and, in addition, a prolific arranger of his music.
However, although Brahms was deeply appreciative of Keller’s editorial
work, as an arranger he often fell short of his expectations. It would seem
that for Brahms, skill, diligence and accuracy were not enough to produce
a musically rewarding arrangement.
Brahms to Simrock
19 September 1881
K. is a splendid man [vortrefflicher Mann] and does everything so diligently and

neatly that one cannot find fault. But do I need to tell you that a two-hand arrange-
ment by him shows the Philistine and cannot be of interest to any player who is
the least bit gifted? Similar things by [Hans von] Bülow or [Theodor] Kirchner
(cf., arrangements by Liszt) have a different appearance. I wanted to alter [Keller’s
arrangements], but that will not work; one can only start over again.
So do what business demands – but do not use me to hurt dear Keller!16
Brahms uses the word ‘Philistine’ in relation to Keller’s arranging on

more than one occasion in his letters. It is also notable that Brahms was
concerned about the feel of the arrangement for the player, wanting it to be
interesting and stimulating to play, and not just an accurate reduction of
the work. It is perhaps this lack of musical sophistication in Keller’s work
that prompted Brahms’s resigned comment below.
Brahms to Simrock
19 April 1884
With two-hand arrangements a little of the Philistine reveals itself – but that may
even be rather good for business.17
Evidently the two men had quite different conceptions of arrangement

practices, with Keller opting for accuracy and simplicity over imaginative
reinterpretation. Keller would therefore have been unable to follow Brahms’s
injunction in 1879 to work on his arrangements with a greater sense of free-
dom, telling him to ‘act as if I did not exist, treat everything completely
unimpeded – just so it sounds really well for 4 hands and is playable!’18
He also seems not to have shared Brahms’s preoccupation with finding
16 Ibid., p. xxxii. 17 Ibid., p. xxxiii.

18 Letter of 12 December 1879 in Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, p. xxxii.
an appropriate pianistic analogue for the depth of sound and instrumen-

tal sonority of chamber or orchestral writing. For example, in Brahms’s
unpublished two-hand arrangement of the String Sextet Op. 18, made pri-
vately as a birthday present for Clara Schumann in 1860, he uses low octave
doublings, possible on the piano but not on the original string instruments,
to represent the dark timbre of two violas and two cellos without violins.
This realisation is repeated in his four-hand version of 1861.19 In compar-
ison, Keller’s two-hand arrangement (‘of medium difficulty’) published in
1889, accurately reproduces the original score but sounds comparatively
threadbare.20
It seems as if Brahms’s opinion of Keller’s arrangements altered over time,
and in earlier years, he was at least mildly complimentary about both the
standard of Keller’s work and his reliability:
Brahms to Fritz Simrock

22 December 1873
The 2-hand Rinaldo is very conscientiously and nicely done.21
Brahms to Fritz Simrock

[Vienna, 20 February 1877]
Let Keller do the Variations, which will guarantee that it will be good and also reach
the engraver promptly.22
It is not until the 1880s that we encounter some of Brahms’s most vehement
letters regarding Keller’s arrangements. On receiving Keller’s four-hand
arrangement of the Third Symphony Op. 90, Brahms could not contain his
dissatisfaction:
Brahms to Keller
Mürzzuschlag, 8 October 1884
I must request your kind attention!

Your arrangement is a most excellent proof of hard work, a token of devotion
to and reverence for my piece. A great many aspects of it are praiseworthy – but –
I just would have done it differently! How often I have asked Herr Simrock not to
19 Autograph facsimile on IMSLP: http://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/c/c0/

IMSLP107494-PMLP21111-JBrahms String Sextet Op.18 mvt2 4hands ms.pdf (accessed
on 21 February 2014).
20 See Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, pp. 136–9.
21 Briefe IX, p. 163. 22 Briefe X, p. 23.
send me arrangements for perusal and revision. I have my own particular views on
arranging – my whims, if you wish, since most of today’s good musicians will be on
your side, not mine. I would in this case, as usual, have returned your arrangement
without looking at it, had not a visitor recently enticed me to play it through. Now I
cannot help but ask you and request that you tell me sincerely and honestly, without
the slightest misgiving: may I rewrite the arrangement according to my taste? (This
would affect mainly the 1st and 3rd movements, only slightly or not at all the 2d
[sic] and 4th.) . . . I simply treat my piece less respectfully, more audaciously than
you or anyone else can.23
The tone of such a missive stands in marked contrast to the rather friendlier
correspondence Brahms shared with Kirchner. Keller responded politely
and diplomatically, pointing out that arrangements for two players on one
piano are less satisfactory than those on two pianos.
Keller to Brahms
Berlin, 12 October 1884
That your ‘Third’ proves quite intractable to a four-hand adaptation for one piano
you yourself have shown, in a way, by arranging it for two pianos . . . the passages
that pleased you the least in my arrangement are those that indeed caused me the
most trouble and yet still satisfied me the least . . . I know the existing weaknesses of
my arrangement full well . . .24
Brahms did indeed intervene and make adjustments to Keller’s work

where he saw fit, and these adjustments are extensive enough to merit
the arrangement being included in the new complete edition of Brahms’s
works.25 But Keller’s observation regarding the nature of the medium is
important: Examples 8.12–8.14, from bars 172–5 of the Finale, beginning
with Keller’s arrangement for four-hand piano (Example 8.12), demonstrate
the extent to which the character of the arrangement is shaped by its forces.
Keller’s version for eight hands on two pianos (Example 8.13), rich in
doublings, was published the same year (1884). For obvious reasons, the
addition of two more pianists necessarily resulted in less adventurous indi-
vidual parts.
Finally, in the arrangement for two pianos and two pianists made by
Brahms himself (Example 8.14), the freedom the players can enjoy, with an
entire keyboard each, produces remarkably different results. The writing,
especially for the second piano, features wide leaps, surpassing all other
23 Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, pp. 75–6. 24 Ibid., p. 80.

25 See JBG, Arrangements 3. Symphonie.
Example 8.12. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90. Arrangement by Keller for
four-hand piano (1884), fourth movement, bars 172–5.
Example 8.13. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90. Arrangement by Keller for
two pianos and eight hands (1884), fourth movement, bars 172–5.
versions in dramatic impact and coming closest to the character of the

orchestral original.
A similar contrast is apparent in the arrangments of the Fourth Symphony
Op. 98 by Brahms (for two pianos and two pianists; Example 8.15) and Keller
(for two pianos and four pianists). Brahms’s ability to replicate an orchestral
timbre is once again in evidence.
Example 8.14. Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90. Arrangement by Brahms
for two pianos and four hands (1884), fourth movement, bars 172–5.
Example 8.15. Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98. Arrangement by Brahms
for two pianos and four hands (1886), first movement, bars 309–16.
Meanwhile, in his version for eight hands on two pianos (Example 8.16),
Keller retains the rhythmic interjections heard on oboe and horn in the
recapitulation (see Piano I Secondo player’s left hand, treble stave), which
Brahms has omitted in his own arrangement. He refrains from asking the
unemployed left hand to reach up from its position at the lower end of the
Example 8.16. Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98. Arrangement by Keller
for two pianos and eight hands (1886), first movement, bars 309–16.
keyboard, which would have resulted in an awkward angle of the hand and
physical discomfort. In so doing, however, he sacrifices the tripling of the
main melody in bars 310 and 314, where interference might render the oth-
erwise unrepresented rhythmic figure less effective. Clearly performability
by players of varying standards was Keller’s priority.
Example 8.17. Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor Op. 38. Arrangement by Keller
for four-hand piano (1875), second movement, bars 1–5.
Difficulties in decision-making were not restricted to the arrangement

of orchestral music. In 1875, Keller had produced a duet arrangement of
Brahms’s first Cello Sonata Op. 38. Here, despite the less complex texture, a
redistribution of the musical material across a single keyboard still presented
problems for the arranger (Example 8.17).
It seems a strange decision to compromise the intimacy of Brahms’s
original texture by placing the whimsical A string cello melody an octave
too low, where the piano sonority is naturally dark. If the Primo player’s left
hand omitted the lower part, the melody could be played an octave higher
by the Secondo player’s right hand, with only minor adjustment in the
Primo part to avoid a clash. It is also surprising that Keller, the immaculate
proofreader, has overlooked a misprint in his own work. The first crotchet
in bars 3 and 5 (Secondo’s left hand) is legato, not staccato, in Brahms’s
original cello part. When the melody returns in the Primo player’s right
hand, bars 16 and 18 (not shown here), the error is not repeated.
Overall, Keller’s arrangements show a fine understanding of what is man-
ageable by an amateur player – and although this sometimes led Brahms to
view him as an unimaginative or even unsuccessful arranger of his music,
such a skill had its benefits. It is possible that Brahms had Keller’s particular
talent in mind when he proposed making an arrangement for solo piano of
the third book of Hungarian Dances, with a simplified version by Keller to
follow.
Brahms to Simrock
6 June 1880
There is no particular hurry for the arrangements of the Hungarian Dances. As soon
as you arrive I shall quickly see whether I want to set them for 2 hands – if this is
acceptable to you? In that event Keller would probably make an easier version after
this edition more comfortably.26
In the event it was Theodor Kirchner, not Brahms, who produced a techni-
cally challenging two-hand version of the Dances; but Keller did undertake
the simplified version.27 This might suggest that Brahms trusted Kirchner,
above all, to understand his own likely approach to the task, but Keller’s
skilfully targeted arrangements for amateurs were evidently in demand. It
is for this reason, perhaps, that there were many more arrangements of
Brahms’s music made by Keller than Kirchner.
In 1890, it seems that Simrock may have used Keller as an arranger even
in preference to Brahms himself, presumably because of the commercial
success of Keller’s earlier work. Hiding behind the excuse that there was ‘no
demand’ for two-piano arrangements of Brahms’s first two symphonies,
Simrock then wrote to the composer and presented arrangements of both
pieces as a fait accompli:
Brahms to Simrock
2 May 1890
For a two-hand [actually, two-piano] arrangement of the first two symphonies,

though, I have expressly offered myself, because often the wish for this has been
expressed to me. But you replied that there was no demand for this and no prospect
of sales. Since you commissioned neither me nor Kirchner, and Keller has the work
finished, I can only wish for its acceptance.28
Despite this ruse on Simrock’s part, Brahms’s reaction upon receiving

Keller’s arrangements was almost wholly positive. However, he could not
resist making some amendments:
Brahms to Simrock
30 May 1890
I am rather pleased that I had the arrangement by Keller sent to me; I had no
displeasure in it, but genuine joy. Not only are they set in a touchingly diligent
manner, but they are also pleasing to the ear and skillfully done. My fingers would
rather play differently – but otherwise I have nothing to desire and alter in his very
good work.29
26 Briefe X, p. 150. 27 Ibid., n. 2. See also Werkverzeichnis, p. 504.

28 Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, p. xxxiv. 29 Ibid., p. xxxiv; Briefe XII, pp. 23–4.
Example 8.18. Brahms, Symphony No. 2 in D major Op. 73. Arrangement by Keller
for two pianos and four hands (1890/1?), first movement, bars 52–62.
Brahms to Simrock
7 July 1890
Keller needs to have the symphonies temporarily, because of a few suggestions [I’ve
made].30
Example 8.18 illustrates the careful layout of instrumental entries and

subtle doubling between the players which can be found in Keller’s two-
piano transcription of the first movement of the Second Symphony. It is
not known which, if any, were Brahms’s ‘suggestions’.
Keller’s death on Tuesday 16 June 1891 in Berlin was a grave loss for both
Brahms and Simrock. Thereafter, Brahms once again proposed Kirchner’s
name as an arranger. But already by the late 1880s, Kirchner’s eyesight was
in decline and he was suffering from tremors in his hands. By the 1890s, he
had had several strokes and was wheelchair-bound. His friends had done
their best to support him, even raising a large sum of money by subscription
30 Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence, p. xxxv and Briefe XII, p. 25.

in 1884 to stabilise his finances.31 Brahms’s recommendation was therefore

doubtless an act of loyalty to his old friend.
Brahms to Simrock
Ischl, 20 August 1891
Would you consider replacing Keller with Kirchner for four-hand arrangements?
I would like to recommend this also particularly for Strauss. His elegant, buoyant
style of writing would be much finer than the empty stiffness we now have. Who is
taking care of the confusion that now reigns in Keller’s place?32
Paul Klengel
The man who was to take up the mantle from Keller was not, in the event, the
rapidly declining Kirchner, but the composer, conductor and violinist Paul
Klengel. The elder brother of the cellist Julius Klengel (1859–1933), Paul
was a member of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and was a professor
at the Leipzig Conservatory, where he had previously studied. He is now
remembered mainly for his contributions to violin pedagogy. His arrange-
ments of Brahms’s works date from the 1890s onwards (see Appendix), and
he was to continue making arrangements of Brahms’s music long after the
composer’s death. However, it seems that he was not Brahms’s first choice –
nor even his second – for what was probably his first arrangement of the
composer’s music, that of the Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 for piano duet:
Brahms to Simrock
Vienna, 15 January 1892
I spoke to Brüll about the four-hand arrangement, just on my own initiative, and
he was quite ready to do it. But on reflection I am not happy about it. Above all on
your account, and then because I don’t know any four-hand work by Brüll. One can
be very skilful in many things (as far as writing music is concerned) and then write
like a pig for four hands: see Reinecke. Hopefully it’ll work out with Kirchner, who
writes well for amateurs. But give him time, otherwise it’ll be a disaster! If I were
you I would meanwhile have the Trio printed and give the Quintet to Kirchner.33
31 This subscription was a remarkable testament to the regard in which Kirchner was held by his
friends; signatories included Brahms himself, Hans von Bülow, Eduard Hanslick, Heinrich von
Herzogenberg, Joseph Joachim, Carl Reinecke, Niels Gade, Edvard Grieg, Bernhard Scholz,
Philipp Spitta, and the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, Augener, Simrock and Rieter-
Biedermann. See Sietz, Theodor Kirchner, pp. 54ff.
32 Briefe XII, p. 50. 33 Ibid., p. 57.
Figure 8.1. Postcard of 9 February 1892, Vienna, from Johannes Brahms to Fritz
Simrock. Courtesy of Michael Freyhan.
Brahms’s suggestion smacks of pure optimism, as Kirchner was in no con-

dition to undertake this work. Klengel’s arrangement was delivered within
three weeks.
Brahms to Simrock
Vienna, 5 February 1892
I am looking with complete joy at the arrangement [of the Clarinet Quintet], it
seems to me really very good! Since you appear to want to send me the Adagio too
I will wait for it and then return the whole thing immediately . . .
NB. I checked over Klengel with my pencil and beg you to tell him expressly and
precisely that in so doing I have no wish to review his work – but I am allowing
myself to be led astray. His work is good, and it makes no sense for two people to
say or work on the same thing! I therefore ask his forgiveness!
But don’t send me the four-hand version of the Trio!34
Four days later Brahms wrote again to Simrock (Figure 8.1):

I am sending off the Adagio to you now and have only praise for it, as I have for the
whole arrangement – despite my many scribblings in it! . . .35
34 Ibid., pp. 59–60.

35 The text of this postcard is reproduced in Briefe XII, p. 60. One may speculate on the possibility
that Klengel’s manuscript, containing Brahms’s ‘many scribblings’ (‘viel Krakelfüße’), may still
Example 8.19. Brahms, Clarinet Quintet Op. 115. Arrangement by Klengel for violin
and piano (1892), first movement, bars 1–7.
Ultimately, Klengel made five different arrangements of the Clarinet Quintet

(see Appendix). He tackled his task with a strong sense of integrity and
a desire to capture as much of the original sound world as possible –
which, given Brahms’s criticisms of Keller’s approach, must have pleased
him greatly. For example, the opening of the violin and piano version is
played on the violin (Example 8.19), whereas in the clarinet and piano
arrangement, the clarinet remains silent until the fifth bar, as in the original
(Example 8.20).36
One can deduce from the foregoing correspondence that the praise which
Brahms lavished on Klengel’s work related to the first of his arrangements
lie in the Simrock Archive, currently missing. Documents from file Börsenverein 12 2 56 in the
former East German Leipziger Staatsarchiv (now the Sächsisches Staatsarchiv) indicate that the
Archive, containing 2,000 packets, survived the Second World War intact. See M. Freyhan, The
Authentic Magic Flute Libretto: Mozart’s Autograph or the First Full-Score Edition? (Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), pp. 157–60.
36 The clarinet and piano arrangement of the piece made by Pamela Weston (London: Fenette
Music, 1974) preserves the clarinet part of the original with a simple piano part in keeping
with the educational purpose of this twentieth-century arrangement.
Example 8.20. Brahms, Clarinet Quintet Op. 115. Arrangement by Klengel for clarinet
and piano (1893), first movement, bars 1–7.
of the Clarinet Quintet, for four hands.37 Brahms was happy to send this to
his friends:
Brahms to Simrock
[Vienna, 6 March 1892]
Would you kindly send one score [of the Clarinet Quintet] for two hands and one for
four hands to Frau Schumann. For four hands is sufficient for Hanslick, and please
send the same to Direktor Gustav Wendt in Karlsruhe and Widmann in Bern.38
It is not clear who had made a ‘score for two hands’ at this point. Clara
Schumann became acquainted with the work in the four-hand arrangement,
and after ten months she had still not heard it in its original form:
Clara Schumann to Brahms

Frankfurt am Main, 25 January 1893
I have been playing your Quintet a lot for four hands and I long more and more
to hear this heavenly work with Mühlfeld. I know it so well now I would hear
every detail, it’s absolutely true! Marie is my companion and shares my joy in
it.39
37 The sequence of the arrangements can be inferred from Simrock’s plate numbers. Klengel’s five
arrangements of the Clarinet Quintet were published in this order: 1892, plate No. 9717, four
hands; plate No. 9790, violin and piano; plate No. 9804/9805, two pianos and four hands;
1893, plate No. 9982 clarinet and piano; 1904, plate No. 11935, piano solo.
38 Briefe XII, p. 62. 39 Schumann-Brahms Briefe II, p. 500.
Yet Clara Schumann had her own reservations about Klengel as an

arranger:
Clara Schumann to Brahms

Interlaken, 23 August 1895
I just received the four-hand version of the [Clarinet] sonatas, but I am a little
worried about Klengel, what he writes is often so difficult to play. Well, we shall see
then.40
Clara Schumann’s remark once again makes clear the absolute importance of
making an arrangement ‘playable’, and this is a common theme in Brahms’s
correspondence, despite his determination to maintain, where possible, a
sense of the original sound world of a piece.
One Klengel arrangement of which Brahms clearly disapproved was his
violin and piano version of the Clarinet Quintet. But the composer could be
equally critical of his own arrangements, as in the case of his transcription
of the Clarinet Sonatas Op. 120 for viola:
Brahms to Joachim
[Vienna, 17 October 1894]
I hope Mühlfeld will be able to come – for I fear the two pieces are very clumsy and
unsatisfactory as viola sonatas.
It reminds me of the secret anger I felt when you told me quite simply and casually
that you had played my Clarinet Quintet as a violin sonata. Why does one take the
trouble to write in a way that makes some sense?41
Klengel and Kirchner obviously had certain affinities as arrangers. It is

also possible to make a direct comparison of their work, since both made
arrangements of the same work for the same medium. Klengel’s piano solo
arrangement of the String Quartet in C minor Op. 51 no. 1 was published by
Simrock in 1896; but Kirchner had also made a solo version of the Romanze
from this quartet, the unpublished manuscript of which is still extant.42
Both composers are concerned to maintain a rich sonority, and this has
sometimes led each of them to thicken the piano writing beyond the precise
replication of Brahms’s score. They each fill out bar 23, even to the extent of
adding an E in the second half of the bar, not present in the original quartet
score. Here Kirchner writes in six parts, Klengel dropping to five later in the
40 Ibid., p. 595. 41 Briefe VI, p. 295.

42 This is currently held at the Brahms-Institut, Lübeck, D-LÜbi ABH 2.1.32.
Example 8.21. Brahms, String Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1. Arrangement by
Kirchner for two-hand piano (undated autograph), second movement, bars 22–5.
Brahms-Institut, Lübeck.
Example 8.22. Brahms, String Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1. Arrangement by
Klengel for two-hand piano (1896), second movement, bars 22–5.
bar, but creating a rising contrapuntal line of his own in the upper voice of
the left hand. In bar 24 Klengel’s version is the denser, with notes added in
the left hand (his arrangement is evidently designed for a pianist with a large
stretch), while Kirchner thins out the texture to reproduce the exact notes
of the quartet. Kirchner also demonstrates his sensitivity to part-writing in
bar 25 by introducing the second violin entry in the pianist’s right hand.
Example 8.21 shows Kirchner’s arrangement, Example 8.22 Klengel’s and
Example 8.23 Brahms’s original.
In a similar attempt to maintain clarity of texture, Kirchner thins out
the writing in bar 52 so that the important two-against-three rhythm
between the bass and upper voices is clear and easy to play. This clearly took
some time to perfect, as is evident from his crossings-out and corrections
(Example 8.24): he first changes, then loses, the rhythmic pattern of the inner
parts.
All of the above examples were intended to bring large-scale concert
works into the home via instrumental configurations that were suitable for
Hausmusik. Very occasionally, this process was reversed in order to scale
pieces up for concert performance. Of this kind of arrangement, however,
Example 8.23. Brahms, String Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1, second
movement, bars 22–5.
Example 8.24. Brahms, String Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 51 no. 1. Arrangement
by Kirchner for two-hand piano (undated autograph), second movement, bar 52.
it seems that Brahms did not approve, as is evident in his letter to Simrock
regarding Klengel’s orchestration of the piano Intermezzo Op. 117 no. 1:
Brahms to Simrock
[Ischl, 17 September 1894]
Tell me now: do your damned orchestral arrangements bring in so much money,

and is their quite inartistic tastelessness absolutely necessary?
I have meanwhile been thinking about putting together several piano pieces to
make a kind of larger Rhapsody for Orchestra. The single piano piece is definitely
not an orchestral piece and can never be one. If it is important for business at least
wait until someone does it of their own accord – and makes an effect with it! It
certainly isn’t a task for Leipzig Conservatory types.43
43 Briefe XII, p. 150.

Here, Brahms’s tolerance for the commercial aspect to arrangement produc-

tion seems to have reached its limit – and his remarks once again stress the
importance of producing appropriate and idiomatic arrangements. Clearly
he did not see the Intermezzo as a suitable work to be recast in such a
public and large-scale form . . . the music had to be appropriate to its new
medium.44
Brahms’s correspondence with Kirchner, Keller and Klengel, and his
various ideas, complaints and instructions about their work, provides us
with important insights into the way in which such arrangers were expected
to work, and the intricacies of their job. In seeking to provide enjoyable
and playable versions of large-scale chamber and orchestral compositions,
arrangers constantly walked the tightrope between practical expediency and
the need to retain the character, sonority, texture and other characteristics
of the original.
However, while arrangements may not have retained their original pur-
pose, they never disappeared entirely. Brahms’s Piano Quintet Op. 34 can
be heard on YouTube in an innovative arrangement with string quartet
plus piano and jazz quartet.45 His Cello Sonata in E minor Op. 38 has
been arranged for four cellos.46 Arrangements continue to be made today,
despite the fact that we now have greater access to the ‘original’ version of
a composition than ever before. Whatever Brahms might have thought of
some of these arrangements, the following remark by him (according to
Fanny Davies), ‘Machen Sie es wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön’47
(‘Do it as you wish, but just do it beautifully’) is still one by which we should
continue to live.
Appendix: table of arrangements
The table which follows is a list of the arrangements made of Brahms’s music
by the three arrangers discussed in this chapter: Robert Keller, Theodor
44 See also Philipp Spitta’s comments regarding this music in Chapter 4, n. 32.
45 ‘A Dream of Brahms’ of the Diogenes Quartett and the Max Grosch Jazz Quartet playing
Brahms’s Piano Quintet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQvpcX4xSc8 (accessed on 21 February
2014).
46 Brahms Sonata in E minor arranged for four cellos: www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NJZJHPemE-Y (accessed on 21 February 2014).
47 Quotation cited in G. Bozarth, ‘Fanny Davies and Brahms’s Late Chamber Music’ in M.
Musgrave and B. Sherman (eds.), Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style
(Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 176.
Kirchner and Paul Klengel.1 The music is organised by genre. Compiling

this table has opened a window into the fascinating reception history of
arrangements. It is immediately clear from their large number that they
formed an important part of the publishing business in the nineteenth
century.
Dating the arrangements has proved problematic as this information is
not given consistently in the sources, especially where reprints of popular
arrangements exist. Where possible, plate numbers or alternative sources
have been used to extrapolate missing or erroneous date information. How-
ever, discrepancies exist even in the publication dates of Brahms’s own
works.2 The other factor which has proved peculiar to arrangements is that
at times the arranger is not credited or is incorrectly attributed. In general,
where mistakes of this kind have occurred it has been possible to judge from
the date or context which arranger was most likely in that instance.
Finally, the table also includes three unpublished arrangements, all made
by Theodor Kirchner. These are solo piano transcriptions of single move-
ments from the two String Quartets Op. 51 and the Piano Quartet in C
minor Op. 60. Little is known about these arrangements, and their year
of production is uncertain. It is possible that they may date from c. 1883,
around the time that Kirchner was making other chamber music arrange-
ments for Simrock.
1 This table has been compiled mainly from the following sources: N. Simrock, Thematisches
Verzeichniss sämmtlicher im Druck erschienenen Werke von Johannes Brahms. Nebst
systematischem Verzeichniss und Registern. Neue Ausgabe (Berlin: Simrock, 1902); J. Rieter-
Biedermann, Verzeichniss der Compositionen von Johannes Brahms nebst ihren Bearbeitungen aus
dem Verlage (Leipzig: J. Rieter-Biedermann, 1898 and 1908); Hofmeister XIX, www.hofmeister
.rhul.ac.uk (accessed on 21 February 2014); Bozarth, The Brahms-Keller Correspondence; A.
Lengnick, A Complete Catalogue of Johannes Brahms’ Works, Original and Arrangements
(London: Alfred Lengnick, 1906); M. Hinson, The Pianist’s Guide to Transcriptions,
Arrangements and Paraphrases (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); and
Werkverzeichnis.
2 See G. Bozarth and W. Frisch, ‘Brahms, Johannes’ in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. IV, pp. 201–21.
Orchestral music
Arranged
Op. Title Published (publisher) Arranger (publisher) Forces Notes
11 Serenade No. 1 1860/1 (Breitkopf) P. Klengel 1898 (Simrock) 2pf 4h

P. Klengel 1898 (Simrock) 2pf 8h
P. Klengel c. 1934 (Peters) vn, pf Arrangement of Minuets I & II
15 Piano Concerto 1861/2 [parts] & 1874 T. Kirchner 1885 (Rieter) 2pf 8h
No. 1 [score] (Rieter)
16 Serenade No. 2 1860 (Simrock), rev. P. Klengel 1898 (Simrock) pf
1875/6 P. Klengel 1898 (Simrock) 2pf 4h
56a3 Variations on a 1874 (Simrock) R. Keller 1877 (Simrock) pf 4h Briefe X, p. 23, n. 4: Brahms to Simrock, [20 February 1877]
Theme by P. Klengel 1896 (Simrock) 2pf 8h
Haydn
68 Symphony No. 1 1877 (Simrock) R. Keller 1878 (Simrock) 2pf 8h Briefe X, p. 29, n. 1: Brahms to Simrock, [21 April 1877]
R. Keller 1880 (Simrock) pf
R. Keller 1890 (Simrock) 2pf 4h Keller is not identified as the arranger in the Simrock Catalogue;
Werkverzeichnis suggests, incorrectly, that Kirchner produced this
arrangement (see p. 293)
Briefe XI, p. 170: Brahms to Simrock, [7 January 1888]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxiv
Briefe XII, pp. 21–2: Brahms to Simrock, [2 May 1890]
Bozarth, p. 147: Brahms to Keller, [25 May 1890]. Although this letter
is lost, the content can be deduced from Keller’s reply. See Bozarth,
pp. 147–9: Keller to Brahms, 30 May 1890.
(cont.)
3 This entry incorporates arrangements of both Op. 56a and Op. 56b, which are not always consistently distinguished on the title page.
Orchestral music (cont.)
Arranged
Briefe XII, pp. 23–4 and p. 23, n. 4: Brahms to Simrock, [30 May
1890]. The arrangement mentioned in this letter is probably not
the Double Concerto Op. 102, as Kalbeck infers in n. 4.
Briefe XII, p. 25: Brahms to Simrock, [7 July 1890]; see also Bozarth,
p. xxxv. This letter confirms that Keller was working on
arrangements of the first two symphonies.
T. Kirchner Never realised pf Briefe XI, p. 170: Brahms to Simrock, [7 January 1888]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxiv
73 Symphony No. 2 1878 (Simrock) R. Keller 1879 (Simrock) 2pf 8h
R. Keller 1890 (Simrock) 2pf 4h Briefe XI, p. 170: Brahms to Simrock, [7 January 1888]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxiv
Bozarth, p. 147: Brahms to Keller, [25 May 1890]. Although this letter
is lost, the content can be deduced from Keller’s reply. See Bozarth,
pp. 147–9: Keller to Brahms, 30 May 1890.
Briefe XII, pp. 23–4 and p. 23, n. 4: Brahms to Simrock, [30 May
1890]. The arrangement mentioned in this letter is probably not
the Double Concerto Op. 102, as Kalbeck infers in n. 4.
Briefe XII, p. 25: Brahms to Simrock, [7 July 1890]; see also Bozarth,
p. xxxv. This letter confirms that Keller was working on
arrangements of the first two symphonies.
T. Kirchner Never realised 2pf 4h Werkverzeichnis suggests, incorrectly, that Kirchner produced this
arrangement (see p. 313)
Briefe XI, p. 170: Brahms to Simrock, [7 January 1888]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxiv
77 Violin Concerto 1879 (Simrock) R. Keller 1880 (Simrock) pf 4h Briefe X, p. 132: Brahms to Simrock, [8] October 1879
Briefe X, p. 138, n. 3: Brahms to Simrock, [5] December 1879
Briefe X, p. 139: Brahms to Simrock, [12 December 1879]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxii
Briefe X, p. 142: Brahms to Simrock, [15 February 1880]
Briefe X, p. 147: Brahms to Simrock, [12 May 1880] probably refers to
the Violin Concerto
P. Klengel 1923 (Simrock) pf
80 Academic 1881 (Simrock) R. Keller 1882 (Simrock) pf Briefe X, p. 178: Brahms to Simrock, [28 June 1881] probably refers to
Festival Opp. 80 and 81
Overture Briefe X, p. 179: Brahms to Simrock, [5 July 1881] probably refers to
Opp. 80 and 81
Briefe X, pp. 185–8: Brahms to Simrock, [19] September 1881
Bozarth, p. xxxii
R. Keller 1882 (Simrock) 2pf 8h Werkverzeichnis has publication date of 1881 (p. 337)
81 Tragic Overture 1881 (Simrock) R. Keller 1882 (Simrock) 2pf 8h Werkverzeichnis has publication date of 1881 (p. 339)
Briefe X, p. 178: Brahms to Simrock, [28 June 1881] probably refers to
Opp. 80 and 81
Briefe X, p. 179: Brahms to Simrock, [5 July 1881] probably refers to
Opp. 80 and 81
P. Klengel c. 1919 2pf 4h
(Simrock)
83 Piano Concerto 1882 (Simrock) R. Keller 1882 (Simrock) pf 4h
No. 2
(cont.)
Orchestral music (cont.)
Arranged
90 Symphony No. 3 1884 (Simrock) R. Keller 1884 (Simrock) pf

R. Keller 1884 (Simrock) pf 4h Brahms’s intervention in the first and third movements of this
arrangement was explicitly publicised by Simrock (see Simrock
Catalogue, p. 92)4
Briefe XI, p. 56: Brahms to Simrock, [10 April 1884]; see also Bozarth,
p. xxxiii
Briefe XI, p. 58: Brahms to Simrock, [19 April 1884]; see also Bozarth,
p. xxxiii
Briefe XI, p. 72, n. 1: Brahms to Simrock, [27 September 1884]; see
also Bozarth, p. xxxiii
Briefe XI, p. 73: Brahms to Simrock, [8 October 1884]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxiii
Bozarth, pp. 75–6: Brahms to Keller, 8 October 1884
Bozarth, pp. 82–3: Brahms to Keller, 18 October 1884
R. Keller 1884 (Simrock) 2pf 8h
T. Kirchner Never realised pf Briefe XI, p. 56: Brahms to Simrock, [10 April 1884]
Bozarth, p. xxxiii
Briefe XI, p. 58, n. 2: Brahms to Simrock, [19 April 1884]
98 Symphony No. 4 1886 (Simrock) R. Keller 1886 (Simrock) pf Briefe XI, p. 130: Brahms to Simrock, [18 October 1886]
R. Keller 1886 (Simrock) 2pf 8h
102 Double 1888 (Simrock) R. Keller 1889 (Simrock) pf 4h The work is mentioned by Kalbeck (probably incorrectly – see notes
Concerto for on Keller’s arrangements of the First and Second Symphonies,
Violin and Cello above) in Briefe XII, p. 23, n. 4: Brahms to Simrock, [30 May 1890]
4 It is for this reason that Keller’s duet arrangement is to be published as part of the JBG (Series IA, vol. 2, ed. R. Pascall).
Chamber music
Arranged
8 Piano Trio No. 1 1854 (Breitkopf), rev. R. Keller 1891 (Simrock) pf 4h

1891 (Simrock) P. Klengel c. 1923 pf Plate Number 14537. c. 1923 date suggested in RCM library catalogue
(Simrock)
T. Kirchner Never realised pf 4h Briefe XII, p. 29: Brahms to Simrock, [1 October 1890]
18 Sextet No. 1 1861/2 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1883 (Simrock) vn, vc, pf Briefe XI, pp. 18–19 and p. 19, n. 1: Brahms to Simrock, [13 March
1883]
Briefe XI, p. 19: Brahms to Simrock, [25 March 1883]
R. Keller 1889 (Simrock) pf Bozarth, pp. 135–6: Brahms to Keller, 17 November 1888
Bozarth, pp. 136–7: Brahms to Keller, 22 November 1888
Arrangement published as ‘Sonate’, described as being ‘of medium
difficulty’
25 Piano Quartet 1863 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1897 (Simrock) 2pf 4h Werkverzeichnis (p. 87) incorrectly lists this arrangement as having
No. 1 been made by Julius Klengel
26 Piano Quartet 1863 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1897 (Simrock) 2pf 4h Werkverzeichnis (p. 91) incorrectly lists this arrangement as having
No. 2 been made by Julius Klengel
34 Piano Quintet 1865 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1884 (Rieter) pf 4h Briefe XIV, p. 189: Brahms to Simrock, [20 June 1870]
Briefe XIV, pp. 252–3: Brahms to Simrock [6 October 1875]
P. Klengel By 1908 pf Included in Rieter-Biedermann 1908 catalogue (p. 9) but not in
(Rieter) previous catalogue of 1898
36 Sextet No. 2 1866 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1883 (Simrock) vn, vc, pf Briefe XI, pp. 18–19 and p. 19, n. 1: Brahms to Simrock, [13 March
1883]
Briefe XI, p. 19: Brahms to Simrock, [25 March 1883]
P. Klengel 1898 (Simrock) pf Arrangement published as ‘Sonate’, described as being ‘of medium
difficulty’
(cont.)
Chamber music (cont.)
Arranged

38 Cello Sonata 1866 (Simrock) R. Keller 1875 (Simrock) pf 4h
No. 1
40 Horn Trio 1866 (Simrock) R. Keller 1875 (Simrock) pf 4h Briefe IX, p. 195: Brahms to Simrock, May 1875 [2 June 1875].
Brahms appears to have dated this letter with the wrong month
51 String Quartet 1873 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1897 (Simrock) pf
No. 1 T. Kirchner c. 1883? pf Completed arrangement of ‘Romanze’ (second movement). Held at
(unpublished) D-LÜbi ABH 2.1.32
No. 2 T. Kirchner c. 1883? pf Arrangement of ‘Andante moderato’ (second movement), complete
(unpublished) but for one bar missing LH. Held at D-LÜbi ABH 2.1.31
60 Piano Quartet 1875 (Simrock) R. Keller 1877 (Simrock) pf 4h Hinson incorrectly lists this arrangement as having been made by
No. 3 Brahms (p. 31)
Briefe X, p. 21: Brahms to Simrock, [21 December 1876]; see also
Bozarth, p. xxxii
T. Kirchner c. 1883? pf Arrangement of ‘Andante’ (third movement), several bars missing.
(unpublished) Held at D-LÜbi ABH 2.1.32
No. 3
78 Violin Sonata 1879 (Simrock) R. Keller 1880 (Simrock) pf 4h
No. 1 P. Klengel 1897 (Simrock) va/vc, pf
87 Piano Trio No. 2 1882 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf 4h
88 String Quintet 1882 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1907 (Simrock) pf
No. 1
99 Cello Sonata 1887 (Simrock) R. Keller 1887 (Simrock) pf 4h
No. 2
No. 2 P. Klengel 1919 (Simrock) pf
101 Piano Trio No. 3 1887 (Simrock) R. Keller 1887 (Simrock) pf 4h
P. Klengel c. 1919 pf
(Simrock)
111 String Quintet 1891 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1904 (Simrock) 2pf 4h Arrangement published as ‘Duo’
114 Clarinet Trio 1892 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1892 (Simrock) pf 4h Briefe XII, p. 66: Brahms to Simrock, [10 April 1892]
115 Clarinet Quintet 1892 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1892 (Simrock) pf 4h Briefe XII, pp. 59–60: Brahms to Simrock, [5 February 1892]
Briefe XII, p. 60: Brahms to Simrock, [9 February 1892]
P. Klengel 1892 (Simrock) vn, pf Arrangement published as ‘Sonate’
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) cl, pf Arrangement published as ‘Duo’
T. Kirchner Never realised pf 4h Briefe XII, pp. 55–6: Brahms to Simrock, [24 December 1891]
Briefe XII, p. 57: Brahms to Simrock, [15 January 1892]
120 Clarinet Sonatas 1895 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1895 (Simrock) pf 4h
Keyboard music
Solo piano
Op. Title Published (publisher) Arranger Arranged (publisher) Forces Notes
1 Sonata in C major 1853 (Breitkopf) P. Klengel 1894 (Simrock) pf 4h

2 Sonata in F minor 1854 (Breitkopf) P. Klengel 1894 (Simrock) pf 4h
5 Sonata in F minor P. Klengel c. 1919 (Simrock) 2pf 4h
9 Variations on a Theme by 1854 (Breitkopf) P. Klengel 1907 (Simrock) pf 4h
Robert Schumann
21 2 Sets of Variations 1862 (Simrock) R. Keller 1876 (Simrock) pf 4h
24 Variations and Fugue on a 1862 (Breitkopf) T. Kirchner 1878 (Breitkopf) pf 4h Briefe XIV, p. 272: Brahms to Simrock, 14 July
Theme by Handel P. Klengel 1897 (Simrock) 2pf 4h [1877]
35 Variations on a Theme by 1866 (Rieter) P. Klengel 1910 (Rieter) pf 4h
Paganini
79 Two Rhapsodies P. Klengel 1906 (Simrock) pf 4h
116 Fantasias 1892 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) pf 4h Published in two volumes
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) vn, pf Arrangement of ‘Intermezzo’ (no. 4)
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) vc, pf Arrangement of ‘Intermezzo’ (no. 4)
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) cl/va, pf Arrangement of ‘Intermezzo’ (no. 4)
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) orch Arrangement of ‘Intermezzo’ (no. 4)
117 Three Intermezzi 1892 (Simrock) P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) pf 4h
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) vn, pf Arrangement of no. 1
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) vc, pf Arrangement of no. 1
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) va, pf Arrangement of no. 1
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) orch Arrangement of no. 1
Briefe XII, p. 104, n. 1: Brahms to Simrock, [7
September 1893]
P. Klengel 1893 (Simrock) orch Arrangement of no. 1
P. Klengel c. 1919 (Simrock) string orch Arrangement of no. 1
Piano four hands
Published Arranged
Op. Title (publisher) Arranger (publisher) Forces Notes
23 Variations on a 1863 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf

Theme of T. Kirchner 1885 (Rieter) 2pf 4h
Schumann
39 Waltzes 1866 (Rieter) P. Klengel 1911 (Peters) vn, pf
P. Klengel 1911 (Rieter) va, pf Arrangement of nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 and 16
P. Klengel 1919 (Peters) pf
P. Klengel 1933 Piano trio/
(Breitkopf) quartet/
quintet
56b Variations on a 1874 (Simrock) See Op. 56a, above
Theme by Haydn
WoO1 Hungarian Dances 1869 [Books I & R. Keller 1873 (Simrock) 2pf 8h Books I and II (complete)
II] & 1880 Briefe IX, p. 142, n. 2: Brahms to Simrock, [31] May 1873
[Books III & Simrock Catalogue has publication date of 1874 (p. 150)
IV] (Simrock) R. Keller 1876 (Simrock) pf easy Briefe IX, p. 142, n. 2: Brahms to Simrock, [31] May 1873
Books I and II (complete)
R. Keller 1876 (Simrock) pf 4h easy Published in two volumes, many transposed.
Book I: nos. 2, 3 and 4
Book II: nos. 5, 7 and 6
(cont.)
Piano four hands (cont.)
Published Arranged
R. Keller 1877 (Simrock) pf 6h Briefe IX, p. 142 n. 2: Brahms to Simrock, [31] May 1873
Published in four volumes.
Book I: nos. 1–2
Book II: nos. 3–5
Book III: nos. 6–7 and 9
Book IV: nos. 8 and 10
R. Keller 1881 (Simrock) pf 4h easy Published in two volumes, many transposed.
Book III: nos. 12, 15, 13 and 16
Book IV: nos. 17, 18, 20 and 21
R. Keller 1881 (Simrock) 2pf 8h Books III and IV (complete)
R. Keller 1881 (Simrock) pf easy Books III and IV (complete)
Briefe X, p. 150: Brahms to Simrock, [6 June 1880]
Briefe X, p. 152: Brahms to Simrock, [22 June 1880]
T. Kirchner 1881 (Simrock) pf Books III and IV (complete)
Briefe X, p. 150, n. 2: Brahms to Simrock, [6 June 1880]
Brahms offered to make the solo piano arrangement himself.
Briefe X, p. 156: Brahms to Simrock, [8] September 1880
Briefe X, pp. 156–7: Brahms to Simrock, 2 October 1880
R. Keller 1890 (Simrock) 2pf 4h Published as individual pieces: nos. 1–8, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20 and 21
P. Klengel c. 1925 (Peters) vn/fl, pf
Organ
Arranged
WoO7 Chorale Prelude and Fugue: ‘O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid’ 1882 (E. W. Fritzsch) P. Klengel c. 1905 (Siegel) pf 4h
P. Klengel c. 1905 (Siegel) pf
Solo songs
Published Arranged
14 Lieder und 1860/1 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangements of ‘Ein Sonett’ (no. 4) and ‘Ständchen’ (no. 7)
Romanzen
19 Fünf Lieder 1862 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
32 Lieder und 1865 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangement of ‘Wie bist du, meine Königin’ (no. 9)
Gesänge Briefe XIV, pp. 293–4, n. 3: Brahms to Edmund Astor, [1 July 1878]
33 Magelone 1865 & 1869 T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangements of ‘Sind es Schmerzen’ (no. 3), ‘So willst du des
Romanzen (Rieter) Armen’ (no. 5), ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ (no. 9), ‘Muß es eine
Trennung geben’ (no. 12) and ‘Wie froh und frisch’ (no. 14)
43 Vier Gesänge 1868 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangements of ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ (no. 1), ‘Die Mainacht’ (no. 2)
and ‘Das Lied vom Herrn von Falkenstein’ (no. 4)
46 Vier Lieder 1868 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
47 Fünf Lieder 1868 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1882 (Simrock) pf with text Free transcription of ‘Sonntag’ (no. 3)
R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
48 Sieben Lieder 1868 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
49 Fünf Lieder 1868 (Simrock) R. Keller 1873 (Simrock) pf Paraphrase of ‘Wiegenlied’ (no. 4)
R. Keller 1877 (Simrock) pf 4h Paraphrase of ‘Wiegenlied’ (no. 4)
R. Keller 1877 (Simrock) pf 6h Paraphrase of ‘Wiegenlied’ (no. 4)
T. Kirchner 1882 (Simrock) pf Free transcription of ‘An ein Veilchen’ (no. 2)
P. Klengel c. 1934 (Peters) vn, pf Arrangement of ‘Wiegenlied’ (no. 4)
(cont.)
Solo songs (cont.)
Published Arranged
57 Acht Lieder und 1871 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Simrock) pf Arrangements of ‘Wenn du nur zuweilen lächelst’ (no. 2), ‘Es träumte
Gesänge mir’ (no. 3) and ‘Strahlt zuweilen auch ein mildes Licht’ (no. 6)
58 Acht Lieder und 1871 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangements of ‘Die Spröde’ (no. 3), ‘O komme, holde
Gesänge Sommernacht’ (no. 4), ‘Schwermut’ (no. 5) and ‘Serenade’ (no. 8)
59 Acht Lieder und 1873 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangements of ‘Auf dem See’ (no. 2), ‘Agnes’ (no. 5) and ‘Dein
Gesänge blaues Auge’ (no. 8)
69 Neun Gesänge 1877 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1882 (Simrock) pf Free transcriptions of ‘Abschied’ (no. 3) and ‘Des Liebsten Schwur’
R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text (no. 4)
70 Vier Gesänge 1877 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
71 Fünf Gesänge 1877 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1882 (Simrock) pf Free transcription of ‘Minnelied’ (no. 5)
72 Fünf Gesänge 1877 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1882 (Simrock) pf Free transcription of ‘Alte Liebe’ (no. 1)
85 Sechs Lieder 1882 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
86 Sechs Lieder 1882 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
WoO31 Volks-Kinderlieder 1858 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1878 (Rieter) pf Arrangement of ‘Sandmännchen’ (no. 4)
P. Klengel c. 1934 (Peters) vn, pf Arrangement of ‘Sandmännchen’ (no. 4)
Vocal duets
Arranged
20 Drei Duette 1862 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text

61 Vier Duette 1874 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text Briefe IX, p. 212: Brahms to Simrock, [5 November 1875]
66 Fünf Duette 1875 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
75 Balladen und 1878 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1882 (Simrock) pf Free transcription of ‘So laß uns wandern!’ (no. 3)
Romanzen R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text Arrangements of ‘Guter Rat’ (no. 2) and ‘So laß uns wandern!’ (no. 3)
84 Fünf Romanzen 1882 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text
und Lieder
Vocal quartets
Arranged
52 Liebeslieder- 1869 (Simrock) R. Keller 1877 (Simrock) pf 6h Published in two volumes

Walzer
T. Kirchner 1881 (Simrock) pf Briefe X, p. 171: Brahms to Simrock, [22] March 1881
65 Neue 1875 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1881 (Simrock) pf
Liebeslieder-
Walzer
103 Zigeunerlieder 1888 (Simrock) T. Kirchner 1888 (Simrock) pf
T. Kirchner 1888 (Simrock) pf 4h
112 Sechs Quartette 1891 (Peters) T. Kirchner 1892 (Peters) 1v, pf Arrangements of ‘Zigeunerlieder’ (nos. 3–6); no. 6 here transposed to
F minor
T. Kirchner 1892 (Peters) pf Arrangements of ‘Zigeunerlieder’ (nos. 3–6)
Accompanied choral works
Op. Title Published (publisher) Arranger Arr. published (publisher) Forces Notes
12 Ave Maria 1860/1 (Rieter) R. Keller 1878 (Rieter) pf 4h

T. Kirchner 1885 (Rieter) org
13 Begräbnisgesang 1860/1 (Rieter) R. Keller 1878 (Rieter) pf 4h
17 Vier Gesänge für Frauenchor 1861 (Simrock) R. Keller 1876 (Simrock) pf 4h with text
45 Ein deutsches Requiem 1869 (Rieter) T. Kirchner 1885 (Rieter) pf
P. Klengel 1914 (Rieter) 1v, pf Arrangement of ‘Ihr habt nun
Traurigkeit’ (fifth movement)
50 Rinaldo 1869 (Simrock) R. Keller 1874 (Simrock) pf 4h
53 Alto Rhapsody 1870 (Simrock) R. Keller 1876 (Simrock) pf 4h
54 Schicksalslied 1871 (Simrock) R. Keller 1874 (Simrock) pf
R. Keller 1874 (Simrock) pf 4h
89 Gesang der Parzen 1883 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf 4h with text
Unaccompanied choral works
Op. Title Published (publisher) Arranger Arr. published (publisher) Forces Notes
62 Sieben Lieder 1874 (Simrock) R. Keller 1883 (Simrock) pf with text

9 Brahms in the Wittgenstein homes: A memoir
and letters
styra avins
Of all the homes in which Brahms was welcome and where his music was
promoted during his lifetime, none were more prominent or more numer-
ous than those of the various Wittgensteins, that large, wealthy, influential,
art- and music-friendly family which played such a major role in Vienna’s
business and cultural life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Dur-
ing the course of Brahms’s life there, from his first arrival in 1862 until his
death in 1897, two generations of the family considered themselves hon-
oured by Brahms’s presence at social and musical occasions. For virtually
all of them, music was taken for granted as an indispensable activity either
for themselves or for their children. Some of them studied with him, and
one, at least, allowed his palatial home to be used as the venue for private
performances of Brahms’s music.
Brahms’s connection to the Wittgenstein homes is simple: it comes
directly from his best friend, Joseph Joachim, who was the cousin of Fanny
Figdor, later Fanny Wittgenstein.1 Born in Kitsee, the same small Hungarian
town as Joachim, Fanny grew up in Vienna as the daughter of a wealthy wool
merchant and banker. She was a lively, cultured and musical girl, and a good
pianist. When the child Joachim outgrew his violin teacher in Budapest,
he was sent to live with her in her father’s Viennese home for several years
while he studied violin there. When she married Hermann Wittgenstein and
moved to Leipzig, Joseph was sent there too. He grew up, therefore, not only
with a sometime surrogate mother, but in due course with surrogate broth-
ers and sisters, eleven of them. In time they would become or marry judges,
Many people helped me to clarify details in these documents. My deep thanks to Ursula
Prokop and Allan Janick for giving me the benefit of their long experience in researching the
Wittgenstein family. Grateful thanks to Michael Lorenz for his willing archival help, to Peter
Prokop for his detailed knowledge of Brahms’s Vienna and its surroundings; to Robert
Eshbach for insights into Joseph Joachim and his family; to Simon Eisinger for producing the
illustrations, to Josef Eisinger for his ever-ready suggestions on translating from German as well
as his preparation of the print-ready genealogy table; and to Eric Koch for his literary acumen.
To Mariele, Marie Kuhn-Oser, long gone, but of unrivalled courtesy and readiness to provide
anything she could in the service of the memory of her family and of Brahms, my continued
appreciation and affection. This chapter is dedicated to her.
1 Dates for all members of the Wittgenstein family are included in the family tree (Figure 9.2). 221
222 styra avins
philanthropists, bankers, an army general, a musician, a sculptor, an artist, a

professor, and one of Austria’s wealthiest and most important industrialists.
It was Fanny who created a home atmosphere which cultivated the arts,
to which she invited well-known personages of Leipzig including Friedrich
Wieck (1785–1873), Clara Schumann’s father. Family tradition has it that
Wieck advised them on piano lessons for their eldest daughter, Anna.2
In 1860, Hermann Wittgenstein moved his family to Vienna. When
Brahms decided to test the waters there in late 1862, nothing was more
natural to Joachim than to give him introductions to his family. In his letter,
he praised Brahms as someone who had already achieved great things –
with the promise of much more to come. This was surely a clever move on
Joachim’s part, who would have known of Hermann’s cultural and social
ambitions. Clara Schumann, too, wrote on his behalf.3 On the advice of
Joachim, Anna studied piano with Brahms, with her sister Clara follow-
ing suit. Anna, in particular, became a fine pianist. The girls sang in an
impromptu women’s chorus conducted by Brahms, and in one way or
another virtually all of them opened their doors to him after they had
become adults and founded their own homes.
The most immediate result was the formation of a women’s chorus organ-
ised by Julie von Asten (1841–1923), one of Clara Schumann’s Viennese
pupils. Learning that Brahms missed the Ladies’ Choir he had left behind
in Hamburg, she invited several of the young women who sang with her in
the Gesangverein of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde – among whom was
Anna, now Anna Franz, and her sister Bertha. It is unclear whether or not
Brahms had already made contact with the Wittgensteins, but the women’s
chorus was surely an ‘open sesame’, for Anna’s sister, Josefine, soon added
her particularly beautiful voice to the chorus.4
2 As noted in H. Wittgenstein, Familienerinnerungen (unpublished, 1944–9), p. 33. This

typescript of 250 pages was written in Austria during the Second World War by the eldest
daughter of Karl Wittgenstein, when it was clear that the Axis powers would be defeated and
Hermine feared that the history of her extraordinary family would be obliterated in the
destructive aftermath of the war (verbal communication from Hedwig Salzer (Mrs Felix Salzer),
her niece by marriage). It was virtually complete by 1944 with some additional pages dated 1948,
then copied and distributed to many members of the far-flung Wittgenstein clan, for whose eyes
only it was intended. I was able to see one copy at the New York City home of Hedwig Salzer,
another in Oxford, England at the home of Marie Kuhn-Oser (great-granddaughter of
Hermann Wittgenstein). Hedwig Salzer’s copy is now at the Research Library at Lincoln Center
in New York as part of the Research Papers of Felix Salzer (US-NYp, JPB 07–1).
3 This correspondence is referred to in Wittgenstein, Familienerinnerungen, p. 34.
4 Kalbeck II, pp. 12ff. S. Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses (Merion, PA: Musurgia
Publishers, 1952), p. 80, agrees with this basic account – probably because it is based on
Kalbeck’s account, as is Karl Geiringer’s.
Brahms in the Wittgenstein homes 223
The family memoir recounts an occasion when Clara and Josefine

Wittgenstein were accompanied home from a concert by Brahms and the
singer Julius Stockhausen, who was in town for a series of concerts with
Brahms. Encouraged by Brahms’s enthusiasm for Josefine’s fine voice, Stock-
hausen tried, but failed, to persuade her to sing for him. Instead, he sang for
her. Once arrived at the Wittgenstein house he sat himself down at the piano
and accompanied himself in one song after another, unwilling to stop. ‘An
exquisite delight, marred only by the anxious worry that father might hear
the singing in his bedroom, and what he would probably say about the
nocturnal music-making’.5 Josefine studied voice with Josef Gänsbacher
(1829–1911), the dedicatee of Brahms’s Cello Sonata no. 1 in E minor
Op. 38, and Clara continued her piano studies with Carl Goldmark (1830–
1915), both people in Brahms’s circle, and probably recommended by him.
Richard Fellinger, in his account of Brahms and his own family, also
recognised Joachim’s role, and has his own understanding of how the young
composer became acquainted with so much of the family: ‘Most likely,
Brahms was a regular guest in the very musically sophisticated house from
his very first sojourn in Vienna. He was the teacher of several of the young
daughters of the house at the start of his time in Vienna.’ Since Fellinger’s
parents struck up their friendship with Brahms in 1881, just as the first
generation of Wittgenstein children had married and now had children of
their own, he was able to witness the interaction of Brahms with the younger
generation of Wittgensteins, several of whose children were his own friends:
‘Brahms frequented all of these young houses, in all of which music was
seriously cultivated. He took a lively interest in the doings of the spouses
who were without exception in prestigious professions and positions; and
in the development of the children, who all loved him enthusiastically.’6
Indeed, Brahms’s acquaintance with these families put him in touch
with a very broad range of the upper echelons of commercial and social
life in Vienna. For example, Ludwig Wittgenstein (‘Louis’, uncle of the
famous philosopher of the same name in the next generation, a man whose
company Brahms enjoyed and in whose house he dined) was not only a
5 Clara Wittgenstein, as quoted in Wittgenstein, Familienerinnerungen, p. 34. The event would

have occurred some time between late February and late April 1869, when Brahms and
Stockhausen gave four concerts in Vienna. Josefine was 25 years old, Clara 19. The Wittgenstein
family had quarters in the city in the Heumarkt or the Salesianergasse, in Vienna’s third district
near the centre of the city. See A. S. Janik and H. Veigl, Wittgenstein in Vienna (Vienna:
Springer, 1998), pp. 195–6, 198, 212.
Johannes Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1997), p. 18. See also this chapter, n. 19.
224 styra avins
Figure 9.1. Johann Nepomuk Oser and Joseph Joachim, c. 1895.
noted philanthropist, but was in the timber business with two of the Figdor
brothers, Joachim’s relations.7 Lydia (known as Lydie) was married to Josef
von Siebert, a general in the Imperial Cavalry. Emilie (known as Millie)
was the wife of the judge Theodor von Brücke. Karl became one of the
wealthiest men in Austro-Hungary, a founder of Austria’s new industrial
economy. Illustrating the cross-connections, a photograph of Joachim taken
on the balcony of Ludwig/Louis’s country home in Miesenbach, Lower
Austria, overlooking the wooded hills and mountains, shows him talking
with Johann Nepomuk Oser, Josefine’s husband (Figure 9.1).
The network of relationships of the family by blood, marriage and busi-
ness connections is intricate, best understood by reading the fine print in the
detailed genealogy of the Wittgenstein family published by Georg Gaugusch
in 2001.8 There were so many Wittgenstein siblings and relatives in the two
generations which concern us here, and so many of them had the same name,
that some confusion is inevitable. A family tree is included as Figure 9.2.
7 See S. Avins, Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, trans. S. Avins and J. Eisinger (Oxford University
Press, 1997), pp. 590–1, for a letter specifically praising Ludwig.
8 G. Gaugusch, ‘Die Familie Wittgenstein und Salzer und ihr genealogisches Umfeld’,
Heraldisch-Genealogische Gesellschaft ‘Adler’ 4 (2001), pp. 120–45. Most extraordinary is the
close network of godparents, tying the large family together with bonds that crossed
generations and connected different branches.
Wittgenstein Family Tree
Adapted from Ursula Prokop, Margaret Stoneborough-Wittgenstein (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005)
With kind permission of the author.
Moses Meyer ∞ Bernadine Simon Wilhelm Figdor ∞ Amalie Veith
Hermann Christian Wittgenstein ∞ Franziska (Fanny) Figdor

*1802 Korbach – †1878 Vienna *1814 Vienna – †1890 Vienna
baptised 1838 baptised 1838
Anna Marie Paul Sr Josefine Ludwig Sr Karl Bertha Clara Lydia Emilie Clothilde
(1840–1896) (1841–1931) (1842–1928) (1844–1933) (1845–1925) (1847–1913) (1848–1908) (1850–1935) (1882–1920) (1853–1939) (1854–1937)
∞ Emil Franz ∞ Paul Pott ∞ Justine ∞ Johann Nepomuk ∞ Maria ∞ Leopoldine ∞ Karl unmarried ∞ Josef ∞ Theodor unmarried
Hochstätter Oser Wilhelmine Kalmus Kupelwieser v. Siebert v. Brücke
Franz
Clärchen Hedwig Franz Bertha Lydia Ida adopts Franziska Ernst Dorette
(1873–1945) (1874–1893) (1878–1936) (1882–1965) Lydia Oser
(adopted by Clara)
∞ Eric ∞ Hugo Pauli ∞ Herman Nohl
Zwiedenik
MARIE
(1909–2008)
∞ Heinrich Kuhn
Figure 9.2. The Wittgenstein family tree focusing on Hermann Wittgenstein/Franziska (Fanny) Figdor and their eleven children. Names in bold indicate people
whom Brahms knew in person. Shown in detail is daughter Josefine, husband Nepomuk Oser, their four children, and granddaughter Marie, source of the
documents presented in this chapter.
226 styra avins
One may wonder at the chance that produced so many artistically talented
children as the Figdor–Wittgensteins, but two things are clear: firstly, that
Fanny, and then her husband Hermann, having nurtured Joachim as he went
from child pupil to child prodigy to acclaimed artist, knew very well the
kind of dedication it took to become proficient at an instrument. Josefine,
for example, would be locked in the piano room to practise if she had not
put in her quota of time at the instrument.9 And secondly, the Wittgensteins
seem to have had no objection to the arts as an intensely pursued private
occupation. In addition to their musical activities, Anna and Bertha were
capable sculptors. Paul became a skilled artist, producing from memory
a fine portrait of Brahms sitting in his nephew Karl’s grand music room,
listening to his Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 (Figure 9.3); but as an adult, he ran
one of the family ironworks in Lower Austria.10 Karl, after having first run
away from home, started his rise to the top of Austria’s industrial class when
ordered by his father to run several of the family’s business undertakings.
But as a child he was given a good violin (which he would pawn whenever
he needed money, only to have it rescued by his mother). When he ran away
at age 17, he supported himself in New York City with his violin, sometimes
on the streets, sometimes by giving lessons. He wooed his wife, Leopoldine,
while playing violin and piano sonatas with her, as she was an excellent
pianist who studied with Carl Goldmark. Throughout their married life,
when Karl was at home, he and Leopoldine played Beethoven sonatas almost
every evening.
The next generation of Wittgensteins continued the pattern. With the
exception of Ludwig Jr (the philosopher), every one of Karl and Leopol-
dine’s children learned to play a musical instrument. Leopoldine herself
in later years played the piano for three or four hours daily, usually four-
hand with daughters Helene or Hermine, or accompanying a singer.11 Jose-
fine’s sister Bertha (married to Karl Kupelwieser) encouraged the vocal
talents of her daughter Ida, who is mentioned in family letters for her
9 Wittgenstein, Familienerinnerungen, pp. 24–5.

10 U. Prokop, Margaret Stoneborough-Wittgenstein: Bauherrin, Intellektuelle, Mäzenin, 2nd edn
(Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), p. 40.
11 Letter of Leopoldine Wittgenstein to Ludwig Wittgenstein of 8 August 1920, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Teilnachlass Wittgenstein Autogr. 1276/19 Han. My thanks to Ursula
Prokop for bringing the letter to my attention. In adult life, Ludwig was nevertheless obliged to
learn to play some kind of instrument as a precondition for teaching school, and chose the
clarinet. His lack of musical training did not prevent him from expressing strong opinions as
to how a piece of music should be played.
Figure 9.3. Portrait of Johannes Brahms by Paul Wittgenstein Sr, drawn from
memory after the private performance of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 in Karl
Wittgenstein’s music room, January 1892. Chalk sketch.
performances of Brahms lieder at family gatherings. Josefine’s children

studied with the cream of the Viennese performers around Brahms: Marie
Baumayer (pianist, 1851–1931) and Marie Soldat-Roeger (violinist, 1863–
1955), who became intimates of the family, and Helene Magnus von
228 styra avins
Hornbostel (1840–1914).12 Bertha, Josefine’s second daughter, became an

excellent pianist and violinist, completing her education at Joachim’s Berlin
Hochschule für Musik as a student of Ernst Rudorff (1840–1916). As the
wife of a young academic in Göttingen, she was as well known for her piano
playing as for her home, a centre of music where the chamber works of
Brahms were particularly promoted.13
The arts in all forms were supported and furthered in Wittgenstein homes.
When Marie Soldat settled in Vienna, Louis (Ludwig Sr) bought her the
beautiful Guarneri del Gesù violin she played for the rest of her life; and when
she founded her novel all-women’s quartet in Vienna in 1889, he supplied the
rest of the group with first-rate instruments as well. Karl was an important
supporter of contemporary art, amassing a substantial personal collection
and giving financial support to the Secession – the group of rebellious young
artists who led Viennese art in an entirely new direction. (His activities will
come up again in conjunction with the Oser letters and memoir.) After 1892,
his home was the setting for many splendid musical evenings, usually with
performances by leading musicians of the day. The most important evening,
for our purposes, is the soirée and elaborate banquet the household laid on
for the first Viennese performance of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet Op. 115,
on 5 January 1892. Brahms had let it be known that he would like to hear
the Quintet in a small room before the first public performance in Vienna
a few days later – not a concert hall, was what he meant, for Karl’s music
room was not exactly small: in it were two Bechstein grand pianos ranged
keyboard to keyboard without overwhelming the space (Figure 9.4). The
evening is described in the family history.14 In the winter of 1896–7, when
12 Pianist Marie Baumayer made her career largely in Vienna. She was the piano teacher of many
of the Wittgenstein offspring, and often performed with Marie Soldat-Roeger, Brahms’s
protégée. Soldat came to his attention during his summer holiday in Pörtschach in 1879. He
brought her to Joachim, who took her as his student in Berlin. She was the first woman to
perform Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D major Op. 77, thought until then to be too strenuous
for a female. Brahms was intensely proud of her, and took her to the Prater to celebrate after
the Concerto performance. See M. Musgrave, ‘Marie Soldat 1863–1955: An English
Perspective’ in R. Emans and M. Wendt (eds.), Beiträge zur Geschichte des Konzerts: Festschrift
Siegfried Kross zum 60. Geburtstag (Bonn: Gudrun Schröder, 1990), pp. 219–330. For more on
Helene Magnus see n. 28.
13 Personal communication from Lori Lax, née Courant, whose mother frequently played
chamber music with Bertha in the years before 1933. See also J. Lemmerich, Science and
Conscience: The Life of James Franck, trans. A. M. Hentschel (Stanford University Press, 2011),
p. 120. Göttingen’s flourishing cultural life is described in the biography of the Nobel Laureate
in physics (1925), who left his professorship in Göttingen in 1933, along with the
mathematician Hans Courant, because of Hitler’s policies.
14 Wittgenstein, Familienerinnerungen, pp. 79ff. The given date is incorrect, but the description is
vivid. See also Avins, Brahms: Life and Letters, p. 590.
Figure 9.4. The Music Room in the Wittgenstein home at 4 Alleegasse, Vienna. Note
the two grand pianos ranged face to face against one wall.
Brahms was already very ill, Karl Wittgenstein organised another private
house concert, this time a dress-rehearsal for the Soldat-Roeger Quartet.
Brahms’s music was not performed, but he was present, along with many
Wittgenstein siblings, and cousins and aunts of Karl: the Oser women,
Bertha Kupelwieser, Millie (Emilie) von Brücke and her family, Frau Marie
Wittgenstein and Clara Wittgenstein, as well as Marie Schumann (1841–
1929), Helene Magnus von Hornbostel, Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857–
1929) and Gustav Jenner (1865–1920). One meets these names familiarly
in the memoir and letters the Oser family wrote to each other.
It is fair to say that the activities carried on by the Wittgensteins took place
not specifically for the purpose of emulating aristocratic practices, but out
of genuine appreciation and love of music or art, heightened in some cases
by personal skill and intimate knowledge. To be sure, their involvement
with the arts did not harm their social position, but rather helped them –
some of them, at least – to inhabit the highest echelons of that newly created
world, the ‘zweite Wiener Gesellschaft’, Vienna’s Second Society, hovering
between great wealth and aristocracy. This is a world in which Brahms felt
surprisingly comfortable.
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Figure 9.5. List of dinner engagements during a two-week period written on the back
of a visiting card, spring 1896. Brahms-Institut, Lübeck, Sig. Hofmann.
The manner of Brahms’s integration into the life of one branch of the
Wittgenstein family comes vividly to life in the unpublished papers of
Josefine Oser and her daughters. These consist of letters written to each
other over the course of the last six months of Brahms’s life, and a memoir
produced by the eldest daughter. We will come back to them later. But first,
we consider a suggestive scrap of paper presently held at the Brahms-Institut
in Lübeck (Figure 9.5).
It must have been while travelling in a horse-drawn fiacre one day in 1896,
to judge from the erratic handwriting, that Brahms made a list of his dinner
engagements for the coming weeks on the back of a visiting card. Five of
the names are Wittgensteins: Oser, Franz (two invitations), an unidentified
Wittgenstein, and Karl Wittgenstein (identified by the address, Alleegasse).
‘Oser’ refers to Josefine, now married to Johann Nepomuk Oser, with four
children; ‘Franz’ refers to Anna, now the widow of Emil Franz, with three
children; ‘Wittgenstein’ refers to Karl, now married to Leopoldine, with
eight children. The other Wittgenstein could be either Ludwig Sr or Paul
(the artist). As an aside, it is worth noting that the other names on the
list are a Who’s Who of families amongst whom Brahms felt most com-
fortable: Arthur (1839–1900) and Bertha Faber (1841–1910), Ignaz Brüll
(1846–1907) and his family, Nelly Chrobak (née Lumpe, 1847–1900, singer
and friend from his earliest days in Vienna), Max Kalbeck (1850–1921), Olga
and Viktor von Miller zu Aichholz (1853–1931 and 1845–1910), Helene
Magnus von Hornbostel, Bertha von Gasteiger (1860–1940, a pianist best
known for her performances of Brahms’s music), and Hugo Conrat (1845–
1906, whose wife kept a list of dishes she had fed Brahms, so that she never
repeated herself). Not all of Brahms’s Wittgenstein connections are present
on the list of dinner engagements. Missing is Ludwig Sr, Bertha Kupelwieser,
Marie Wittgenstein-Pott, and several of the next generation. On the other
hand, two of the non-Wittgenstein names – von Hornbostel and von Miller
zu Aichholz – will appear again in the letters and memoir, as they were part
of that world that both Brahms and the Wittgensteins occupied.
That Anna and Josefine were still so closely associated with Brahms after
thirty years testifies to their friendship. As Hedwig Oser’s memoir will make
clear, Brahms was a frequent guest at her family’s dinner table. Anna was a
friend Brahms could call upon for favours: when the singer Hermine Spies
(1857–93) came with her sister to Vienna to perform, Brahms asked Anna
to accommodate them for the duration. Many musical evenings involving
Brahms took place at her home; the first rehearsals of his Clarinet Trio
Op. 114 took place at her summer residence in Berchtesgaden. It is she who
commissioned the bust of Brahms by Viktor Tilgner (1844–96), one of the
busiest and most fashionable sculptors of the day. And for Brahms’s sixty-
third (and last) birthday, Anna arranged a luncheon for a group of his close
friends. She and her sister Bertha had neighbouring villas in Pörtschach;
during the summers Brahms was there, both sisters were helpful to him in
various ways. When it was discovered that the piano Brahms had obtained
would not fit up the stairway of the tower he was living in, for example,
Bertha exchanged her little upright for his grand. She sculpted the Brahms
bust which still stands in the courtyard of the (new) Leonstein Castle in the
town.
The following memoir and letters which constitute the major part of this
chapter come from Marie Nohl Kuhn-Oser, Bertha Oser’s daughter. I met
her quite by chance. When an old friend of my husband’s casually asked
me for news of myself, I mentioned my work on Brahms’s life and letters.
‘You must meet my neighbour Mariele in Oxford’, she said promptly. ‘She
has lots of Brahms material’ – as indeed she did. Marie Kuhn-Oser had
arrived in Oxford in 1933 as the wife of the physicist Heinrich Kuhn, who
had been offered a research fellowship at Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratory.
Kuhn had two Jewish grandparents, sufficient to make him ‘unfit’ to work
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in Germany under its new racial policies. He had therefore been fired from
his position in Göttingen as soon as Hitler came to power. He was rescued
by Professor Frederick Lindemann (1886–1957, later Viscount Cherwell),
who arranged to bring four outstandingly gifted physicists to Oxford, Kuhn
among them.15 I now find it extraordinary that Mrs Kuhn-Oser, at such a
tumultuous moment in her young life (they had been married for only two
years), thought to take with her to England the very considerable amount
of material relating to her family history.16
At the time I met Mrs Kuhn-Oser I had no hint of her Wittgenstein
connection. But proud of her family history, and with a native talent for
compiling an archive, she had carefully organised a wealth of valuable pho-
tographs and other items concerning many players in Brahms’s world,
including Clara Schumann and her family, Hermann Levi (1839–1900),
Joachim (to whom she was related) and Brahms himself. I learned soon
enough about her personal connection to the Wittgenstein/Figdor family:
she was the great-granddaughter of Hermann and Fanny Wittgenstein, the
founders of the Viennese family, and therefore the grand-niece of all of
their eleven children; in this way, too, she was related to the Figdor branch
of the family. She was the grandniece of Karl Wittgenstein and first cousin
of all of his children; the granddaughter of Hermann and Fanny’s daugh-
ter Josefine, the lovely singer so admired by Brahms; and the daughter
of Bertha Oser, the talented pianist and violinist. Equally important, she
was the grandniece of Betty Oser, piano student and sometime travel-
ling companion of Clara Schumann and Marie Schumann. Betty was her
grandfather’s sister, and is mentioned not infrequently in the Schumann
correspondence and in the family letters. Over the course of my five visits
to Oxford, Mrs Kuhn-Oser – eventually I called her Mariele – gradually
took me through her collection of documents, commenting while doing so.
She granted me the use of her considerable photo archive17 and one day
brought out a sheaf of family letters, written by her mother Bertha, her
aunt Hedwig, and her grandmother Josefine, to her aunt Lydia when the
latter, aged 14, had been sent to boarding school in Dresden. Mariele had
transcribed the letters and made typescripts with occasional parenthetical
explanatory identifications or handwritten comments. Some she gave me
in person, during the course of my several visits. Others came by mail.
15 An informative obituary is to be found at www.independent.co.uk/news/people/

obituary-heinrich-kuhn-1446524.html (accessed on 27 February 2014).
16 Marie Kuhn added her mother’s maiden name to her own after her husband’s death, and as
that is the way she wished to be known, I have followed her own practice.
17 They are listed and acknowledged in Avins, Brahms: Life and Letters, p. 837.
We corresponded from 1991 until about a year before her death in 2008,
her letters always containing additional morsels of information about the
family.
She also mentioned the typescript of a short memoir by her aunt Hedwig,
regretting that it had never been published. One day it too arrived in my
mail. The letters and the memoir are presented here in my translation.
Hedwig Oser’s memoir is short and unpretentious, written in a simple
colloquial style. My translation attempts to maintain that tone. While it
carries no date, circumstances point to 1939.18 It is set in three locations: the
family’s flat in Vienna at 8 Hegelgasse, just off the Park Ring (the building
still exists); the family villa in Kalksburg, a village in the Vienna Woods
about a mile from Rodaun; and the Kaunitz Palais located in Laxenburg,
a fashionable suburb about 15 kilometres to the south, near the Imperial
Summer Palace of Schönbrunn. The building was later called the Esterházy
Palais, and for a time the Wittgenstein Palais, because in the mid-1860s
Hermann moved his large family there for a time, while keeping a residence
in Vienna as well. After Hermann’s death in 1878, Clara and her brother
Paul took possession of the Palais. On occasion the large reception rooms
were used for concerts by the piano students of Marie Baumayer, teacher of
various Wittgenstein offspring (Figure 9.6).
My memories of Johannes Brahms

by hedwig oser
The old friend of my youth, Richard Fellinger, in whose house Brahms was a
frequent visitor, has urged me repeatedly to set down my memories of Brahms.19 I
have resisted for a long time. To begin with, because I had the feeling that after such
18 An unpublished memoir in manuscript by a member of the Oser family dating from 1939 is
mentioned by Elisabeth Blochmann in her book Herman Nohl in der pädagogischen Bewegung
seiner Zeit: 1879–1960 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), p. 219, n. 7. Herman Nohl
was Bertha’s husband, Hedwig’s brother-in-law, and Mariele’s father.
19 Richard Fellinger Jr (1872–1952). In keeping with his advice, Fellinger himself had written an
important memoir, Klänge um Brahms (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1933). It was
republished by his granddaughter, the musicologist Imogen Fellinger in 1997, enlarged with
her annotations and many photographs by her grandmother, Maria Fellinger. See n. 6. Richard
Sr (1848–1903) and Maria Fellinger (1849–1925) were among Brahms’s closest friends in
Vienna from 1881 until his death. The Fellingers soon took on the role of family, including him
in important holidays and eventually caring for him when he was ill. Maria was a gifted artist
and photographer; Richard Sr was the director of the Austro-Hungarian branch of Siemens &
Halske. Their home, the Arenberg-Palais, which gave directly onto the Arenberg Park, was the
luxurious setting for many musical soirées and rehearsals of Brahms’s music, and the park
served as the background for some of the best-known photos of Brahms.
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Figure 9.6. A reception room in the Kaunitz Palais, Laxenburg. The room in Clara
Wittgenstein’s home was used for recitals by Marie Baumayer’s pupils, among them
Bertha Oser. Note Paul Wittgenstein’s portrait of Brahms leaning against the wall.
charming memoirs, for example and above all such as J. V. Widmann’s, the likes
of us could only offer something inconsequential.20 Partly too, however, because
it is my conviction that memoirs are always tinged with self-admiration. And it is
precisely Brahms who stands out in my memory as someone who abhorred nothing
so much as vanity and self-promotion. But perhaps, after all, small incidents from
those days spent in my parents’ house will seem worthwhile to my nieces in later
years,21 and above all, for me myself, in this grave year of war, it has been a blessing
for me to be able to immerse myself in fond recollections of my happy youth.
When Johannes Brahms arrived in Vienna, he had been recommended to
both my maternal and paternal grandparents by Clara Schumann,22 and so it
was only natural that he should then continue those social contacts in my par-
ents’ home. I believe I may say that he entertained sincere and high regard
for both parents; for Mama as a capable Hausfrau and prudent mother; and
20 J. V. Widmann, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel, 1898, rpt. Zurich:
Rotapfel-Verlag, 1980).
21 Marie Kuhn-Oser was one of them.
22 It is curious that Hedwig seems not to know of, or at least does not mention, the connection to
Joachim.
as he once mentioned to Joseph Joachim, he took pleasure in Papa’s delightful

and original toasts, which often made reference to Grimm’s Fairy Tales or some
such.23
My earliest recollection of Brahms is from my sixth year; when with hair nicely
slicked smooth, I appeared at the table to say, ‘guten Tag’. He ran both hands through
my hair so that my mother, appalled, immediately sent me and my Struwel-head
away.24 Later, my brother Franz and I carried many a dinner invitation to Karls-
gasse 4, and to this day I still see before my eyes the glass door which led to his
rooms. Brahms was not one to disdain food, and since he had once praised Mama’s
lingonberries it became the custom every autumn for a few jars of homemade
preserves to make their way to his flat. Once, at dinner, when he was offered lin-
gonberries for a second time, he declined, saying ‘No thanks, I have much better
at home.’ But next to culinary pleasures, he craved stimulating conversation; he
particularly enjoyed listening to the interesting remarks of the art historian Prof.
Josef Bayer, for which reason my parents often invited him with Brahms.25 Or
else Auguste Wildebrandt-Baudius came.26 With her beautiful eyes and original
turns of phrase, she quickly and completely conquered the old bachelor, reversing
the aversion he felt towards the actress, who at that time was separated from her
husband and son – for the sake of art. But Brahms was also up for less intellec-
tual stimulation. For example, he took much pleasure in looking through what
were called the Münchner Bilderbogen [‘Munich Illustrated Broadsides’] which
Mama had acquired for my younger sisters before Christmas, in which delight-
ful pictures by Oberländer and others frequently appeared. The verses, too, were
very nice; one about the visit of an old aunt to her family had remained in my
memory:
23 Marie Kuhn-Oser told me that what Brahms prized about her grandfather was his
straightforward simplicity and his love of the outdoors.
24 In 1879. The reference is to H. Hoffmann, Der Struwwelpeter: Lustige Geschichten und drollige
Bilder für Kinder von 3 bis 6 Jahren (Frankfurt: Loewes Verlag, 1845). The naughty boy neither
cut his nails nor combed his hair for a year and is punished cruelly. The book is still in print,
and still to be found in many homes.
25 Presumably the Germanist and art historian Joseph Bayer (1827–1910). Bayer was involved
with the excavation and restoration of the Augustinian house found in the garden of the Villa
Farnesina in Rome. His small book, Stuck-Reliefs eines Tonnengewölbes aus der ‘Casa Farnesina’
in Rom: Einführende Besprechung (‘Stucco-reliefs of a Barrel Vault Ceiling of the Casa Farnesina
in Rome: Introductory Review’) was published in 1897 (Vienna: Schallehn & Wollbrück), so
it is plausible that this was one of the topics of their conversations. Brahms, who knew Rome
and was interested in antiquities, would have enjoyed what Bayer had to say: his book was
favourably reviewed as ‘the most worthwhile and practical overview of the discovery and
reconstruction’ (Deutsche Literaturzeitung für Kritik der internationalen Wissenschaft, 18/40
(9 October 1897), p. 1358).
26 Recte: Auguste Wilbrandt-Baudius (1845–1937), one of the most famous actresses in Vienna,
also engaged for a time at the Meiningen Court Theatre. She was married to the equally
renowned playwright and novelist, and eventual director of the Burgtheater, Adolf von
Wilbrandt.
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‘Hat sie Bahnprioritäten, wird zur Patin sie gebeten.’

(‘Has she a permit to ride trains free, a godmother she will often be.’)27
When my sister Lydia was sent to boarding school in Dresden, she once wrote a
letter with such vivid, humorously critical descriptions of her schoolmates that we
read Brahms a portion of it. As a result he then often said, ‘Don’t you have any
Dresden letters to read?’
Now I want to relate a few episodes that have particularly remained in my memory.
Although I had only a very small voice, Helene von Hornbostel-Magnus (the
famous Stockhausen pupil) took me on as a student, out of friendship for my
mother. After a little while I was also admitted into the small women’s chorus
which used to meet at her house every other Friday, under the direction of Eusebius
Mandyczewski.28 Once, when we had rehearsed a programme particularly well,
Aunt Helene invited Brahms to hear for himself. Brahms accepted because he had a
very high regard for Mandyczewski, the long-time archivist of the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde. Aunt Helene offered him a comfortable armchair facing the chorus,
[but] Brahms said, ‘No, I’m sitting behind the little Oser so I can hear what kind of
mistakes she makes.’ I made a dreadful grimace at the time, but basically I wasn’t
apprehensive because I could have sung the Brahms chorus even in my sleep. With
Palestrina one had to pay more attention. As the youngest member of this circle
which included famous concert singers such as Tschampa, Aszelos, Prasch-Passy,
etc.,29 I was treated somewhat as the baby; so it was also my duty to distribute the
vocal parts. At intermission, I had to hand round sweets meant for soothing dry
throats. I offered some to Brahms as well, who took one with a smile although he
probably would have preferred a cigar. Incidentally, the long intermission always
27 The Münchener Bilderbogen were a series of single sheets of charming drawings by famous
artists, accompanied by clever little poems. Braun & Schneider in Munich published them in
sets fortnightly from 1848 to 1898. Adolf Oberländer (1845–1923) was a German painter and
graphic artist, one of the most popular caricaturists of his time. His humorous drawings
portrayed human frailties in animal bodies.
28 As Imperial Kammersängerin Helene Magnus, she gained fame as an outstanding Schubert
singer. Married to the lawyer Erich von Hornbostel Sr, she was also the mother of Erich von
Hornbostel (1877–1935), the pioneering ethnomusicologist who with Kurt Sachs developed a
system of classifying all types of musical instruments still in use today. Julius Stockhausen
(1826–1905) was the pre-eminent German baritone of his generation, conductor, friend of
Brahms and leading voice teacher in German-speaking Europe. Mandyczewski was a
composer, conductor, teacher and musicologist: one of Brahms’s favourites, he was eventually
appointed as archivist and librarian of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde at Brahms’s
suggestion. He conducted a small women’s chorus, which met for a while at the Viennese
home of Brahms’s old Hamburg friend Bertha Porubsky Faber, and then at the Hornbostel
home, as mentioned in this memoir.
29 Anna Prasch-Passy, königliche Sängerin, well-loved concert singer and vocal teacher
(R. Heuberger (ed.), Musikbuch aus Österreich (Vienna and Leipzig: Fromme, 1904)), p. 143;
Fanny, Marie and Amalie Tschampa, members of the Österreisches Damengesang-Quartett
founded in Graz in 1878. Brahms noted an early version of one of his Thirteen Canons Op. 113
in Fanny’s autograph album. Bertha von Asztalos (1855–1921), pianist and singing teacher.
included tea with good Sandwiches [in English], and there the illustrious guest
would probably have been offered something to smoke.
Many years later, as Brahms was already suffering from his serious illness, he
asked me, ‘What are you singing now in your choir?’ After I had given my report,
Mama, who was not otherwise a proud mother, found herself saying, ‘They are well
satisfied with Hedwig; recently, when Hedwig was absent, Mandyczewski is said to
have remarked, “Oh, how one does miss the little Oser.”’ In healthier days, at this
point, Brahms would have made some sort of ironic remark; that time, however,
he looked at me with eyes that had become so sad and said, ‘Oh nay, that you
needn’t believe. My God, when such a conductor has a young girl under him who
is otherwise also nice, he no longer hears when she sings a wrong note. Nay, you
certainly needn’t believe that.’ At that time I said, ‘Herr Doktor, I don’t believe it
anyway, that sort of thing only mothers believe.’ By the way, he also once asked
Mama what she was now singing in her chorus (she had been a member of the
Singverein years earlier). As Mama said she had resigned, Brahms remarked, ‘You
don’t say! You’re just getting to the right age!’ That is to say, in the Singverein, seated
indeed in the very first row, were very old ladies some of whom even had white kiss
curls.30
It was the time the so-called Secession was founded, which held its first exhibit in
the Viennese Horticultural Society [‘Gartenbau-Gebäude’], and while Brahms was
dining with my parents, he made fun of this departure from the Künstlerhaus.31
Now, our drawing teacher, Anton Nowak, a student of Leopold Carl Müller, and all
of his friends and colleagues belonged to this very organisation; and I, who would
normally never have dared to utter any opinion in front of Brahms, felt myself
obliged to come to the defence of the young artists. I said that this new direction was
called ‘plein air’ in Munich, and had long been recognised even in Paris, and that only
the old, inflexible Viennese painters baulked at it. The pictures of young painters
were always badly hung, whereas Friedländer’s old wounded veterans, which return
in every exhibit, are shown in the best light and no other means remained for them
30 American English: spit curls. That is, tight little curls wound around the finger, moistened, and
pressed flat against the forehead or side of the cheek. A very archaic fashion!
31 The Künstlerhaus, on the Karlsplatz near to Brahms’s flat in the Karlsgasse, was the major
venue for art and sculpture exhibits by Vienna’s established artists. Built in 1865–8 by imperial
sanction, it was one of the first buildings to go up on the new Ringstrasse. The artists of that
time were the moderns of their day; but by the 1890s, trends in art had changed drastically.
Secessionist movements had already taken place in Munich and Paris; dissatisfaction among
younger painters soon led to the Vienna Secessionist movement as well, culminating eventually
in their own exhibition space dedicated specifically to the presentation of contemporary art,
and bankrolled by the forward-thinking and immensely wealthy Karl Wittgenstein. Until the
new building was ready, the Vienna Secession artists held their first show in the Horticultural
Society Building, the Gartenbau, another fine building on the Ring. Brahms’s taste in art
favoured the classicist style of the establishment (therefore his attachment to the work of
Anselm Feuerbach; see n. 37), although he was also a great admirer of Adolf Menzel, a long-
lived and productive painter who straddled old and new.
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to make a mark.32 In short, I blurted out everything our drawing teacher had said
about the efforts of the young Secession. Brahms heard me out without saying
anything in response, which still surprises me today. Perhaps, though, it pleased
him that I took the part of my teacher so ardently; for of course it was not my own
opinion I was championing, I was merely echoing my teacher.
But when, after a long chat over black coffee and cigars, it came time to take his
leave, Brahms stretched his hand out with a mocking, ‘Adieu, Miss Raphael.’
So many stories about Brahms’s impoliteness are in circulation that for a change
I would like to tell about his amiability.
In those years where Easter did not fall too early in the year, it was my parents’
custom to move out to our summer place for the short holiday, and so it came about
that Mama invited Brahms to Kalksburg for midday dinner on Easter Saturday. Apart
from him, my two Salzer girlfriends were invited, along with their brother, Hans.33
As we and Papa went to the train station in Rodaun, there was Herr Stelzer, standing
right in front of his famous restaurant, and since Brahms was often in the habit
of eating there together with Mandyczewski, Door and others, Papa told him that
we were on the way to pick Brahms up from the train.34 When we then returned
with our guests, Herr Stelzer was again standing there in order to greet Brahms,
who said, smiling, ‘Tja, I’m sorry that today I can’t eat at your place; but a kind of
rival establishment has opened up’ – nodding in the direction of my father. Our
route would have led us through the boring, stretched-out village,35 but since we
knew that Brahms loved the woods we had asked Mama to push back the dinner
hour so that we could make a detour through the Lichtenstein Forest. So as not to
make the route too long, we had the idea to lead our guest down the hillside [Bergl]
across from our villa. For this purpose, on the previous evening my sisters and I
32 Friedrich Friedländer (1825–1901), an academic painter whose speciality was to depict the
pensive hospital life of wounded veterans.
33 The Salzer and Wittgenstein families were intricately intertwined by marriage, adoption and a
web of godparents. Mentioned here are the sisters Marie (Mitzi) Salzer (1873–1936) and
Hermine Salzer (1875–1935), and their brother Johannes (Hans) Heinrich Salzer (1871–1944).
Hans finished his medical training and married one of Hedwig’s Wittgenstein cousins; Mitzi
shared a birthday with Brahms.
34 Brahms’s regular Sunday excursions to the Vienna Woods were a happy fixture among a small
circle of his male friends: Anton Door, Julius Epstein, Carl Goldmark, Ignaz Brüll, Robert
Fuchs, Mandyczewski, and a few of the younger composers, including Ludwig Rottenberg and
Richard Heuberger. Winter weather did not keep them at home. Horse trams ran from the
Südbahnhof to Liesing, and then to the village of Rodaun, from which there were paths and
roads with an inn or restaurant never far away. Brahms’s group often ended their walk at the
Stelzer Restaurant, noted for its good food, and located in what had been the old hot springs
bath house. See P. Hofmann, The Spell of the Vienna Woods (New York: Henry Holt, 1994),
pp. 200ff. See also Brahms’s letter to Fritz Simrock, describing one of these walks in Avins,
Brahms: Life and Letters, p. 702.
35 Known as a Strassendorf. Many villages in Austria and Eastern Europe grew over time by
adding houses side by side in one long row fronting on the single village street, with kitchen
garden, farmyard and pasture behind. The walk from Rodaun through the woods was more
than one mile long.
had constructed a crossing of stepping stones over Liesing Brook, a shallow stream
which separated our garden from the hillside. Well, overnight, this stone crossing
had become a little wet again; but Brahms, whom Papa had told about our work,
scrambled across nimbly and cheerfully, and so we reached the house from the rear,
through the garden. Over black coffee, on the big veranda facing the Vienna Woods,
Brahms was in the best of moods, for my friends were picture-pretty, jolly girls, and
Brahms seemed to take a liking even to Hans, one of Billroth’s medical students.
Hans showed us a little stone that he had found in a brook, with a beautiful colour
like pink marble, and so polished by water that it had the shape of a large lens.
Hans said that ever since finding it he carried it with him everywhere for good luck,
and once when he forgot it, he turned back to fetch it even though a lecture was
about to begin. The stone passed from hand to hand. Even Brahms looked at it with
interest. In the course of the conversation, my father suggested that we three girls
might want to sing something, since we took regular trio lessons together. But that
would never have occurred to us. Brahms cut off further persuasion by Papa with
the words, ‘Oh do let it be. First they’ll want to be talked into it, and then they won’t
stop.’ I believe I said, ‘Oh, we won’t even begin.’ And then, suddenly, the black cord
to which Brahms’s eyeglass was attached tore, and he said, a bit put out, ‘By the time
I get back to town all the stores will be closed, and at home I don’t have a spare.’
Then Mitzi, a lively girl whom Brahms liked in any case, said if he gave her the
cord she would tie a weaver’s knot which would not come undone. But once tied,
the knot would have sat right in front, and so I asked for the cord. I detached the
glass and slowly pushed the eyelet which the cord passed through, until the knot
was all the way in back. After reattaching the glass I pushed the cord under the
collar of Brahms’s frock coat, where the knot now disappeared. Smiling, Brahms
looked carefully at the glass and cord, then said, ‘Tja, it’s very nice, but it has just
one failing – now I won’t be able to throw it away.’
A few days later Mama received a visiting card from Brahms with the following
words: ‘Dear Frau Professor, I wanted to repeat from here [i.e. from home] my
thanks for the exceedingly delightful society, and for the amiable hours spent with
you – but just now yet another Easter Bunny comes running by and so I have to
send a triple thank you. Your most devoted, Johannes Brahms.’ The Easter Bunny
was wine and cigars and the card, which I asked Mama to give me and which is in
my possession to this day.36
Once, when Brahms was with us at table after Christmas, he asked me what presents
I had received. I checked off the gifts, ending with ‘books’. ‘So, books, what kind,
then?’ Now a few weeks earlier, Brahms had praised Allgeyer’s recently published
book, Anselm Feuerbach, to my parents.37 And so this is what I had asked for. In
36 It is rare that Brahms signed his full name as described here.

37 J. Allgeyer, Anselm Feuerbach: Sein Leben und Seine Kunst. Mit einem in Kupfer gestochenen
Selbstbildnis des Künstlers und 38 Text-Illustrationen in Autotype (Bamberg: C. C. Buchner,
1894). Thirty years earlier Brahms, Allgeyer and Feuerbach had been close friends in
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addition, I mentioned the Rauch–Rietschel correspondence.38 Brahms opined: ‘Tja,

those are no kind of Christmas books.’ I looked questioningly at him, at which he
said, ‘Nay, those are not Christmas books at all. Christmas books are Ebers, Wolff,
Ganghofer and the like.’ Upon which I said, somewhat proudly, ‘Such things I do
not read.’39
It was a peculiarity of Brahms that he often spoke in grumbling tones about things
which basically, in fact, had pleased him; I have two examples of this. The concert
recitalist Raimund von Zur-Mühlen had come to Vienna for the first time and had
programmed Brahms’s Regenlied.40 Brahms heard him, that evening, while leaning
against the wall in the standing room section of the Bösendorfer Saal. A few days
later, at my parents’ dinner table, the talk was about how marvellously Zur-Mühlen
had sung. ‘Yes,’ said Brahms, ‘but when I come to a city for the first time, where I
am not known, the first thing I do is to promote myself. Why did he need to sing
my Regenlied? After all, people have shown only too well that they don’t like it.’ To
this day I am sorry that at the time I couldn’t muster the courage to say, ‘and it is the
Regenlied in particular that thrills me’. Indeed, the very next day I ran out to get a copy,
since it was not among Mama’s music. But a few days later, Zur-Mühlen was with
us at dinner, and said suddenly, ‘Well, just think what a great joy I have had. Brahms
came to see me and when I apologised for smoking one cigarette after another, that I
was always very nervous after a concert, he stroked my hand.’ That Zur-Mühlen had
chosen this practically unknown song to sing in a concert seemed to have pleased
Brahms: indeed, the great artistry of this rare singer contributed to its success.
Another time Brahms grumbled, ‘A few days ago I received an invitation to the
Court Ball. What use is that to me, I don’t even have a dress coat. I suppose the
Archduke is behind this, he recently paid me a visit.’ Everyone in Vienna knew that
this Archduke was a great music lover, that he was a voice student of Prof. Rokitansky
and, moreover, played a wind instrument. At the time we had the impression that
Brahms was not indifferent to the uncommon distinction paid him by a member
of the Ducal house.41
Karlsruhe. Allgeyer’s biography of their mutual friend had great personal meaning for Brahms.
His Nänie Op. 82 was written in Feuerbach’s memory and dedicated to the painter’s mother.
38 Christian David Rauch (1777–1857), important German sculptor, teacher of another
prominent sculptor, Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel (1804–61).
39 Georg Ebers (1837–98), German Egyptologist, had the idea to popularise Egyptian lore by
writing historical romances. They were very successful. Ludwig Ganghofer (1855–1920) wrote
German nationalistic novels, some with Alpine settings. Seen by some as kitsch, they have
retained their popularity today.
40 Op. 59 no. 3. Recte: Raimund von zur Mühlen, subsequently referred to as Mühlen. So
eminent was Mühlen in his day (1854–1931), particularly for his performances of the Vier
ernste Gesänge Op. 121, that he set the standard for decades to come. A student of Julius
Stockhausen and the French singer Romain Bussine, Mühlen also studied the interpretation of
the songs of Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert with Clara Schumann.
41 Archduke Ludwig Viktor (1842–1919), youngest brother of the Kaiser, generous patron of the
arts and of worthy social causes. One of the more colourful characters in the royal family, he
My brother and I were about 10–12 years old when my father, on a trip to the
Salzkammergut, paid Brahms a visit in his lodgings.42 We found him in shirtsleeves;
on the table beside him was his coffee machine, which he used to brew his own
coffee. After a while Brahms said to Papa, ‘I always eat at the [restaurant] Post.
Would you like to join me?’ So we set out, and were soon surrounded by children.
From out of his jacket pocket came sweets which Brahms sprinkled on the ground,
now and then pointing out the pebbles, as he called them, if any had gone unnoticed.
As we came onto the Esplanade Brahms offered me his right arm, and to this day I
don’t know which was greater – my embarrassment or my pride at this honour.43
A last reminiscence that I would like to relate is of a sadder nature. In early 1893
my only brother, 19 years old, fell ill with leukaemia. In the course of half a year,
this blooming youth, full of vigour, became deathly ill. That autumn, Brahms came
back to Vienna comparatively late, and as he announced himself to my mother one
evening, things were already in such a bad way that Mama said to me, utterly in
despair, ‘No, I cannot speak to him, you receive him.’ That had never happened
before, because when Brahms came to us it was almost as if the Kaiser had been
announced. So Brahms was led to the dining room, and sitting at the dining table,
heard the news from me. What I had to say was sad enough and because I had the
feeling that he must be wondering that Mama did not make an appearance, I ended
my account with the words, ‘Poor Mama, it is very difficult for her just now.’ At
which he stroked my hand, which lay on the table, saying, ‘and for the dear sister,
too’. A week later it was all over; towards midday, about an hour after my brother had
passed away, Brahms appeared suddenly to express condolences to my parents. In the
distraction of fresh sorrow, no one asked how it happened that Brahms had learned
of it so soon; but later we heard from the concierge that during the last period,
Brahms came by daily on the way to his midday meal to make enquiries of her, and
so was the first to learn the news. In the course of the following winter Brahms often
invited himself to dinner, which had never been the case before; probably because
he thought that in one’s sorrow, one should not give in to loneliness.
In the autumn of 1896, Marie Schumann, the eldest daughter of Robert and Clara
Schumann, came to Vienna after the death of her mother and for the time being
was staying with Aunt Clara in Laxenburg. From the very first I had been seized
was also known as Lutzi-Wutzi, famous for his love of the arts, opera, music, high living, men
and cross-dressing. He was also well known for his stylish courtesy to the older women in his
circle. The professor was the legendary Hans Freiherr von Rokitansky (1835–1909), the
Austrian basso profundo who sang at the Court Opera and other major opera houses in
Europe to great effect for thirty years. From 1894 he was professor of singing at the Vienna
Conservatory, where he was much sought after.
42 In Ischl. Brahms spent his last eight summers there. The visit would have been c. 1895.
43 Kieselsteine, little sweets that looked like pebbles, popular in Vienna. This habit of Brahms has
been reported by many people. The Esplanade runs along the Traun River at the centre of town,
where it borders the major park area of the resort. It is the place where everyone goes to be seen.
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with a special admiration for this unusual woman, and knowing this, Aunt Clara
was so kind as to invite me to Laxenburg for a few days. One afternoon just as
we were having our Jause [afternoon coffee and cake], Director Fellinger appeared
unexpectedly, having come by fiacre to Laxenburg with Brahms, then already gravely
ill. He wanted to return Marie Schumann’s visit. After a good hour, Dr Fellinger
moved to end the visit with the remark that it was already late, and they had a
long journey ahead of them. At that, Aunt Clara whispered to me to ‘Hold them
back a bit’, and slipped out the door. Now I was greatly embarrassed. Surrounded
only by older, important people, it would have been out of the question for me
to start a conversation. I set my hopes on the past experience that getting dressed
and, above all, saying farewell always took some time. But here both men headed
for the door and Aunt Clara was still not there. So with outstretched arms I placed
myself before the door and said, with a smile, ‘No, I may not let you go.’ ‘Oho,’ was
the response, and now they tried to guess at the reasons, at which I only said, ‘On
higher authority’. In the end, though, I had to open the door since I noticed that
Brahms was becoming impatient, and we all went downstairs together. We had just
reached the ground floor when Aunt Clara came running in from the garden and
with a bow, handed Brahms a white Malmaison rose.44 Dr Fellinger told us later
that in the carriage, Brahms said that in her youth, Aunt Clara was the most poetic
girl he had ever seen. Many years later, when I was a guest of Marie Schumann
in Interlaken, I saw a photograph there of her deceased sister Julie, later Countess
Marmorito, a youthful love of Brahms. I was astonished at the resemblance to Aunt
Clara.
The letters
When Lydia Oser was sent to boarding school in Dresden, at age 14, her
sisters Bertha (1878–1936) and Hedwig (1873–1945) were assigned the job
of writing to her every week to keep her informed of life at home. What fol-
lows are excerpts from a selection of those letters, mostly from Bertha (Mrs
Kuhn-Oser’s mother), with short excerpts from Hedwig and her mother
Josefine. Some are dated, and most of the others can be reliably identified
from known events in Brahms’s life, Viennese cultural life, or other family
letters. Even when that is not so, there is no doubt that they were all writ-
ten, with one exception, in the period 1896–7. Mrs Kuhn-Oser made an
attempt to order them, but sometimes changed her mind. I have dated a
few myself, based on events she would not have been able to ascertain. If
they provide an extraordinary face-to-face account of the last six months
44 An old-fashioned, fragrant, highly prized Bourbon rose, one of the most beautiful.
of Brahms’s life, the letters also highlight the extent to which Brahms was
part of their world, and the extent to which music was integrated into
everyday family life not only in the Oser home, but in interaction with
members of the extended Wittgenstein family. Along with news about var-
ious musical activities come news of balls, theatre performances, bicycle
riding, family engagements and weddings, tennis outings – in no particular
order.
Several names appear more than once: the art historian Prof. Josef Bayer,
Mitzl (= Marie Soldat-Roeger) and Mitzi (= Marie Baumayer). Many mem-
bers of the extended family appear in the letters, not surprising in view of
the fact that the huge family made up the core of the girls’ social lives: Aunt
Betty (Oser), Aunt Millie (Wittgenstein-von Brücke) and Uncle Theodor
(von Brücke)and their daughter Dorette, Aunt Anna (Wittgenstein-)Franz
and her daughter Clärchen, Uncle Josef (von Siebert) and Aunt Lydia
(Wittgenstein-von Siebert) and daughter Franziska, Aunt Clara, and Aunt
Poldy (wife of Karl Wittgenstein; it is almost always she who is mentioned,
not Karl).
As already noted, Lydia was 14 years old at the start of the correspondence.
She could read music, and judging by the content of the letters, already
understood some of the details of what makes a good performance.
1. This letter was written from the family villa in Kalksburg. Brahms had
returned from a month-long ‘cure’ in Karlsbad a few days before, on the eve of
2 October.
Bertha to Lydia
[Kalksburg], 5.10.96
Today Papa visited Brahms, who has just returned and is neither better nor worse;
however, he is greatly emaciated. He is coming here on Friday for a meal.
2. While Brahms was in Karlsbad, Anna Franz died of diabetes. Upon returning
to Vienna, one of his first actions was to visit the Franz household; a few days
previous to the above letter, Josefine had written to Lydia to say that her niece
Clärchen (Anna Franz’s daughter) had been shocked when she received Brahms
at home ‘because he looked so dreadfully bad. He was also so deeply moved by
Aunt Anna’s death that she felt she had to console him. Papa has visited him and
on Friday he’s coming to dinner. We are only inviting Professor Bayer, but I am
quite anxious about it.’
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Bertha to Lydia
[Kalksburg, 15 October 1896]
Dear Lyderl,
No doubt you have already received a very exact account from Hedwig about
yesterday’s visit from Brahms (I estimate it from the number of pages I saw her
write), but all the same she cannot have written everything . . .
Brahms was exceedingly nice, but it is terribly sad to see him so changed. When
he was asked whether he would enjoy a trip to Breitenfurth he agreed;45 Professor
Bayer said ‘The mild, warm air would also do you good, Herr Doktor,’ whereupon
Brahms said slowly, half wistfully, half ironically, ‘As if something would do me
good!’ Sometimes, of course, the old Brahms came to the fore; Bayer talked about
an article in the newspaper that described a theatre in very vague terms, for example,
that a window or something or other was built in Rundbogenstil. ‘Rundbogenstil ’, said
Brahms, ‘but that’s very simple. Rundbogenstil is what I was formerly, Spitzbogenstil
is what I am now.’46
Sitting alone with him and Hedwig in the carriage on the way from Breitenfurth
to Liesing, he was very charming. He spoke unusually fondly of Frl. Baumeyer, Edi
Bittner [?] and Frau Schumann . . .
Aunt Betty and Aunt Milly were over here today.
Anton Bruckner died a few days ago: Brahms was at the funeral.47
Yesterday I left my handbag in the coupé as I got out at Liesing; fortunately a lady
tossed it out of the window as the train was already moving.
. . . Starting from a week from this Sunday you can write to us in Vienna, we are
probably moving on Wednesday the 21st. Hedwig sends many greetings, will write
soon and send her photo.
Your Bertha kisses you most warmly.
Absence decidedly increases affection, for you as well as for me.
3. Bertha to Lydia
Friday 13 November 1896
Dearest Lydia!
Many, many thanks for your dear letter (which made me very happy, as all your
letters please me enormously, not only those to me, but also those to the household
and Hedwig, because your letters are common property).
So now, yesterday Brahms was here and was unusually pleasant; we had invited Frl.
Baumayer as well and Brahms was extremely nice to her. In our stairway the railings
had been painted, and Brahms came in covered with paint. Hedwig immediately
cleaned his overcoat with turpentine. As he greeted Mama he asked after you; ‘So, and
45 A resort town a few miles further westward. Liesing, mentioned in the next paragraph, is a
town in the opposite direction, now a suburb of Vienna.
46 Rundbogen, literally ‘round arch’, here also meaning Romanesque arch; Spitzbogen, ‘pointy
arch’, or Gothic arch.
47 On 11 October. Brahms attended services in the Karlskirche.
how’s the poor schoolgirl in Dresden?’ He looks much better and was with us from
1:30 until 4:30 without falling asleep, as that time in Kalksburg. He spoke a great deal
and was very good-natured and jolly. He ate a lot and again and again praised the
Rhine wine, the fish sauce, the risotto, the lingonberries etc. Unfortunately I had to
be away after dinner for an hour, because I had a lesson with Frl. Krug. He recounted
many interesting things, among others, that here in Vienna Messchaert had received
a petition to sing Brahms’s new songs, and had brought this very prettily drawn-up
paper to Brahms to ask him to sign it too. Brahms wanted to write beneath it ‘Eines
Mannes Rede, keines Mannes Rede, man soll sie billig hören beede’ [‘One man’s
speech is no man’s speech: you’ve got to hear them both’], but he could only think
of the last part of the proverb (namely, in fairness one should listen to both sides)
and so he couldn’t do it. Hedwig told him the beginning of it yesterday.48
Brahms said he had been very offended to see that no Wittgenstein or Oser had
signed, which we couldn’t have since the petition didn’t come to us. Then he told
us that his favourite singer was a Herr Wüllner, although he didn’t have the tenth
part, not an idea of Messchaert’s voice (and he doesn’t have much himself), but
whose singing was to die for [‘zum hinwerden schön’] and he could listen to him
all day. Brahms had only heard him in a room, but now Wüllner gave five lieder
evenings in Berlin, and by the end the hall was sold out, so much did he please
[audiences] there. Herr Wüllner is a philologist, apart from which he plays excellent
violin and has even played Brahms’s Violin Concerto in public, and this concerto
is well known to belong to the most difficult, and thirdly, he is an actor, presently
without engagements. Just now he gave three evenings in Meiningen: for the first,
he played Hamlet, the second he sang Tannhäuser, and the third he played Macbeth.
Then Brahms told us that the Shakespeares from London (they were once in
Vienna and often at Aunt Anna Franz, he’s a singer) again sent him something, first
a silk shawl, so large that he didn’t know whether to tie it around his head or his
body; and then a knitted vest with sleeves: ‘Now I can’t judge whether it fits me
because I can’t get into it; maybe if I had it let out Frau Roeger could get into it, I
absolutely cannot fit into it. Those people must never have seen me.’ Of course the
Shakespeares know him personally.49
...
48 This old proverb paraphrases the Latin legal principle of Audiatur et altera pars (‘One must
listen to both sides’). ‘Beede’ is dialect for beide (both), ‘billig’ is old German for ‘simply’. If
Brahms could have remembered the entire proverb, might this have been his sly way of
suggesting there should also be a petition for Messchaert not to sing the Vier ernste Gesänge?!
Johannes Messchaert was a Dutch baritone (1857–1922) highly regarded by Brahms, a student
of Stockhausen and then Ludwig Wüllner (1858–1938). Wüllner was the son of one of his
oldest friends, the conductor and pianist Franz Wüllner (1832–1902); Brahms had known him
since he was a child, and had watched his development first with great interest and then greater
admiration, as he developed the talents described in the next paragraph. The concert took
place on 11 November, Messchaert accompanied by Julius Röntgen (sometimes rendered
Roentgen, 1855–1932), another young friend of long acquaintance.
49 William Shakespeare (1849–1931), English tenor and composer, long-time professor at the
Royal Academy of Music in London. He was eager to meet Brahms; the introduction was
arranged through Joseph Joachim.
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Hedwig will most likely have written to you that Brahms’s newest songs are very
beautiful. The texts are very fine ones from the Bible. Yesterday I went on my own
to the concert by Messchaert and took an Einspänner [a one-horse carriage] to the
Bösendorfer Saal, checked my coat, bought a programme, and as I saw that it said:
Piano Evening by Herr Victor Staub, I turned it over, nothing about Messchaert.
Then it dawned on me that in fact he was performing in the Musikvereinssaal, and
indeed my ticket said: Kleiner Musikvereinssaal [small hall of the Musikvereinssaal].
I quickly collected my coat again, ordered another Einspänner which didn’t come,
so I waited by the door a long time until one came which was dropping someone off,
quickly climbed in and said, ‘Quick, to the Musikvereinssaal.’ To my astonishment
I arrived quite in time, because they didn’t begin punctually. Messchaert sang
superbly, and Roentgen also played very beautifully.
Today I was at Frau Soldat to invite her and Tizerl for tomorrow; they are also
coming.50 . . . Last Sunday the Kalksburg Hunt took place in the most dreadful
weather, rain pouring continuously. The beaters didn’t want to continue beating
and were only encouraged when they were promised first half a litre of wine and
finally a whole litre of wine (each one a litre!). Bamberger came out in the afternoon,
but took little pleasure in it and said that the day before yesterday, too, there were
a couple of courageous hunters there (Papa, Axel Pazzani and some others) with
whom he couldn’t keep up. Twenty-five hares were shot, though, five of them by
Papa.51
. . . I kiss you a thousand
times in affectionate love,
your Bertha
4. Bertha to Lydia
[Vienna, 22 January 1897]
Dearest Lydia,
Many, many warm thanks for the letter you sent me, even though I ‘did not deserve
it’ (as you write), and I thank you therefore doubly and completely understand that
it must annoy you not to have had a letter from me for so long. But if you knew how
much I have to do and in what a perpetual rush I live the whole time, you would not
blame me. It is true that my day starts late, unfortunately, but it is always so dark
50 Soldat-Roeger’s young son.

51 Bamberger was the family house physician for several Wittgenstein families, including the
Osers. The hunt was an important social event, open only to local landowners, notables and
their invited guests. They would walk the Kalksburg fields and shoot hares, pheasants and
partridges flushed by beaters. The hunt could only begin once the harvest was over, when the
fields had been cleared but not yet ploughed; and in a wine-growing village like Kalksburg, the
grape-picking would have had to be finished so that farmhands would be available as beaters, a
side job much sought-after because munificent tips could be expected.
and cold when I get up, and sleep is so good that I cannot decide to jump out of bed,
and every morning my good intentions of the day before fly out the window . . .
I dropped my violin, it was so damaged that it has to spend two weeks in the
repair shop; it had to be completely disassembled, which will probably cost a few
of my ducats because Mama must not find out. In the meantime, Aunt Betty was so
good as to lend me hers, a very beautiful Guarneri.
Concerts: Gabrilowitsch, piano thrasher with a great deal of enormous technique,
little feeling, and apart from a few more modern things, absolutely no conception.52
The best thing about it was that we sat next to Uncle Theodor, Mademoiselle and
Dorette. Yesterday concert Roeger-Soldat, very fine, Mitzl great. Kalbeck held out
for the entire concert, sat next to Papa, even clapped after the Beethoven, so this
time not dubbed a sheep by a certain member of the Oser family.53
Parties: at Aunt Poldy on Monday, very jolly, supper with R. Wollheim also not
to be sneered at . . . Tomorrow, unfortunately, ball at Mitschas’, the second quadrille
with Max [Salzer], otherwise dire emptiness, many young girls will be there, Augi,
Hermine Hardt, Helene Wittgenstein and I. Lenka [Helene] is already looking
forward enormously to her first ball. Invitation to Miller-Aichholz for the 6th of
February, probably also all sorts of dancing there.
...
Hedwig must naturally have already given you piping hot news about the Brahms
dinner so that of course nothing is left for me. Brahms was rather quiet, very kind,
but sad and he’s not at all well. Poor Brahms! Bayer was very friendly and nice.
The past three days cold again, 4–0o Réaumur, big snowfall today. Yesterday and
today ice skating, some acquaintances, yesterday Mitzl Hochstätter and Wollheim,
today Mitzi, Mine, Max, Paula, Ida, Pazzanis54 . . .
If it interests you, but you must not tell anyone about it, especially not Mama:
Paula Kupelwieser is engaged to Oberlieutenant Mathes. I found out by chance, and
must not announce it, so don’t mention it in your letters, not even to Hedwig.
5. The heavy snowfall made possible a sledging party to the tiny village of
Miesenbach, about 20 miles (31 kilometres) towards Mürzzuschlag. Sarasate
also provided news, as did the elaborate Schubert exhibition at the Art Museum
(Künstlerhaus) celebrating the centenary of Schubert’s birth in an exhibit
which featured not only displays of several manuscripts of Schubert’s music
52 Ossip Gabrilovitch (1878–1936), distinguished pianist and conductor, eventual son-in-law of

Mark Twain. The Viennese performances mentioned in this and a later letter came just at the
start of his career. The Osers seem not to have appreciated his playing, although he was one of
the best of Theodor Leschetizky’s stable of outstanding students, and went on to a world-class
career. The concert date was 11 or 12 January.
53 A mildly derisive description of Max Kalbeck, the music critic and eventual biographer of
Brahms.
54 Almost all of them cousins or the closely related Salzers.
248 styra avins
(some of them borrowed from Brahms), but the paintings of Moritz von
Schwind, Josef Danhauser and Leopold Kupelwieser, all of the Schubert circle.55
Bertha to Lydia
Thursday [Vienna, 28 January 1897]
Dearest Lydia!
I’m unfortunately very short on time today, otherwise I would write more and more
often. Saturday was a ball, Sunday Philharmonic concert, Monday lessons, Tuesday
ditto, Wednesday concert, Sarasate, Thursday, today, theatre, Friday, tomorrow
morning, a gathering of professors at our house, Saturday I’m going on a sledging
party the whole day to and in Miesenbach, Sunday another concert etc.
When someone asks me how it was at the Mitschas’, I answer ‘it was a very fine
ball’, which does in fact correspond to the truth. That I myself had a good time I
cannot claim. My first Quadrille was with a younger brother of Lieutenant Rath, an
exceptionally stupid, silly person, conceited, to boot . . . The second Quadrille was
with Max Salzer; we sat it out with Lena and Rudi Franz. Third Quadrille, supper
and Cotillion56 with Dr von Kratzer, a cousin of the Mitschas, a very nice, calm man
but boring, although he takes a lot of care over his speech so that he speaks fluently
but tediously . . . the best thing about the Mitschas’ ball, actually, is the lovely, cool
side room, where one can withdraw.
My violin has been released [from the repair shop], all mended; unfortunately I
didn’t have time to try it out. It seems to me that it has not become more beautiful,
and the whole adventure has cost me something over 12 florins.
. . . The Philharmonic was marvellous. At the end a Schubert Symphony in C
major was played with such fire and drive that it was magnificent. The symphony
is gloriously great in any case. You know that just now there is nothing on but
Schubert exhibits and concerts. I have not seen the exhibit yet; it’s said to be very
fine and interesting. Beautiful pictures by Schwind which one otherwise never sees,
they come partly from abroad and are being exhibited on this occasion. There are
also many by Kupelwieser, the painter.
I was at Sarasate’s concert with Mama. He played the First Concerto by Bruch,
a Suite by Raff and as encore the First Nocturne by Chopin, which I know very
well and also heard [played] by Barcewicz;57 which Sarasate so distorted that he
went and turned one bar into three, either to hold one note excessively long, or to
55 15 January–28 February, with an excited public marvelling at the electric lighting, supplied by
Siemens & Halske, of which Richard Fellinger was the director for Austro-Hungary.
56 The ballroom dance called the Cotillion appears frequently in Bertha’s letters. All good
middle- and upper-middle-class Viennese children went to dancing school, and learned not
only the Waltz, but the Quadrille and the Cotillion, a more intricate version of the former.
57 Bertha heard Sarasate perform with the Vienna Philharmonic on 27 January, the same concert
which ended with the performance of Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major D944 (the
‘Great’). Stanislaw Barcewicz (1858–1928) was an important Russian violinist, composition
student of Tchaikovsky, and leading teacher, who arranged and performed transcriptions from
the piano repertoire. Tchaikovsky’s Valse-Scherzo Op. 34 was written for him.
eliminate another. The accompanist had a hard time of it! He played everything with
a big, beautiful tone, faultless technique and purity of intonation, but of greatness
or intelligent conception I noticed nothing.58
Today will be boring! Our only bright spot is Uncle Theodor, and for me, since
Hedwig has arranged things so well that she is sitting next to my favourite uncle
and I next to Prof. Hofrath Wiesner – on top of that I have to get up at five in
the morning tomorrow in order to be at the train station in time. The Salzers have
arranged an all-girls party. We’re going not only in big sledges, but on personal
sledges, it will be a wild time! I’m being outfitted as if I were going to Siberia, I have
never been so warmly dressed in my life.
The ball at Miller-Aichholz is on the 6th of February. I have to get dressed now,
and make myself pretty for the old folks! Therefore (I just have time for a declaration
of love) a thousand greetings and kisses from your dearly loving sister Bertha.
6. At just this time bicycles were becoming the rage in Vienna. Brahms had
already complained to his friend Josef Viktor Widmann about them (he disliked
how silently they could come up from behind when one was walking in the
park); but various members of the family were eager to learn. They took lessons
and were fitted out in the appropriate clothing. Even Uncle Karl and Papa Oser
took lessons.
Bertha to Lydia
[Vienna, after 20 February 1897]
...
Mama will already have told you of my great triumph, [but] what you don’t know
is how energetically Barbieri was in favour, and how quickly he settled it – so that
Mama couldn’t get a word in edgeways. From now on I am a Barbieri enthusiast.
He’s an Italian and speaks very fast and has an interesting face. When Mama asked
him if I should to be allowed to ride a bicycle, he said I must do so, that these days
everyone must learn, that no one could get along without it, and that just as I walk
and dance, I should be allowed to ride a bicycle; it could only strengthen my knee.
In three minutes I was outside and so overjoyed that once on the street I had a hard
time to keep from laughing – people kept looking at me. Now I’m going to get my
outfit and then I’m going to learn and in the spring I’m getting my bicycle.
Saturday was the Roeger Quartet, Mozart D major I think, Labor Piano Quartet
and the A minor by Schubert.59
58 Compare the 19-year-old Bertha’s comment with Andreas Moser’s, forty-four years later in
1923, when discussing Sarasate’s performances of Brahms’s string quartets. Moser maintained
he played them poorly because he was unskilled in ‘read[ing] between the lines’ of the music.
‘Only the dead letters were left to him, i.e. tedium.’ A. Moser, Geschichte des Violinspiels
(Berlin: M. Hesse, 1923), p. 179.
59 Incipits of Schubert String Quartet in A minor (D. 804), first and second movements. Written
out by Bertha Oser in the letter to her sister c. 20 February 1897.
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Except for Labor it was splendid, especially the wonderful Schubert quartet. There
was much applause and there should be several very good reviews today.60
. . . Today Aunt Clara is coming to us for the first time in a very long time, so I
have to get moving. Lucy Campbell was here today for dinner.61 The quartet had
terribly many adventures during their tour – on their way to the train station, Mitzl’s
[Roeger] coachman let one of her suitcases fall off without noticing. She did not get
it back, it has disappeared without a trace . . .
7. Bertha visited her Aunt Lydia and family – daughter Franziska and husband
Josef Norbert von Siebert, a general in the Imperial Cavalry – stationed at the
time down the Danube in Pressburg (now Bratislava). She then provided a
first-hand account of Brahms’s last appearance at a concert of the Vienna
Philharmonic, a scene which has also been reported in many biographies.62
Bertha to Lydia
[Vienna, 7 March 1897]
It was very pretty in Pressburg, you can just about imagine what we did . . . talked,
went for walks, read old letters, looked at all sorts of things, ate ice cream, went
to Mayer Gyula without – thank God – running into the Archduke’s family. After
dinner I had to play the piano, naturally only dance music. As always, Uncle Josef
was very kind, and the most considerate public that one can imagine; I must come
to Pressburg soon again and play something from Carmen, he said.
Last week we went to 1) War and Peace. Mama, Marie Schumann Aunt Betty
and I; it was very well acted and very funny. Aunt Betty and Frl. Schumann had a
splendid time together. 2) Mama and I went to Carmen, which I really liked. Renard
sang and played the title role outstandingly; Frau Forster was also very good.63
60 Josef Labor (1842–1924), much esteemed by the Wittgenstein family. Bertha’s comment is
prescient: although Labor was highly regarded in his day, his music is rarely heard today.
61 Lucy Campbell (1873–1944), cellist of the Soldat-Roeger Quartet. American-born but brought
up in Germany, she was a prize-winning student of Robert Hausmann at the Berlin
Hochschule für Musik and one of only seven cellists on the roster of Germany’s leading
impresario, Hermann Wolff. She was about the same age as the Oser daughters, and a favourite
friend. It is striking that no information about her appears in any of the major musical
dictionaries. For an informative web biography, see S. Wenzel, ‘Lexikalischer Artikel zu Lucy
Campbell’, in MUGI Musik und Gender im Internet: http://mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/A
lexartikel/lexartikel.php?id=camp1873 (accessed on 27 February 2014).
62 Kalbeck IV, pp. 506–7.
63 Marie Renard (Pölzl) (1864–1939), Austrian mezzo-soprano especially known for her Carmen.
Ellen Brandt-Forster (1866–1921), Austrian soprano, sang Adele at the first performance of
Die Fledermaus at the Court Opera. Both women had long careers in Vienna.
There are some melodies in it that we know very well; you too, and I was utterly
astonished that they come from Carmen, by Bizet. For example:64
On the next day we all went to Das grobe Hemd, a play now at the German
Volkstheater which is so popular that the house is always sold out and one gets
tickets only with the greatest effort; everyone is entranced by it. When you come,
you will probably see it too. It is enormously funny and a genuine Viennese popular
work.65
. . . Today was the Philharmonic Concert. The first piece played was a symphony
by Brahms, the Fourth in E minor. It is magnificently beautiful. Brahms was in
the Director’s loge and had to take a bow after every movement; there was stormy
applause; the sight of the poor, sick man – even while his symphony was being
played he was deeply sad, and I couldn’t hold back my tears. But the ovation seemed
to give him pleasure; Princess Mary of Hanover spoke to him and shook his hand
across the divider that separates the Court loge from the Director’s loge.
8. The dress rehearsal of the Roeger-Soldat Quartet took place at Karl

and Leopoldine Wittgenstein’s palatial home in the Alleegasse [today
Argentinierstrasse]. It was a festive gathering of family and friends of the
Brahms–Wittgenstein circle, and included Marie Schumann, Gustav Jenner,
Josef Labor, Erich and Helene Magnus von Hornbostel, Max Kalbeck, and a
large number of the Wittgenstein siblings with their children and spouses.66
The date was 21 March. One week later Brahms took to his bed for good.
8. Bertha to Lydia
[c. 27 March 1897]
Dearest Lydia,
...
As promised, I’m going to give you my daily schedule: Sunday I got up, not too
late, put on my bicycle outfit, and wanted to go to the bicycle school just as Ernst
and Dorette [von Brücke] came to invite me to eat . . . I rode for an hour, came
home, had to do some sewing on my dress, had a visit from Frl. von Gasteiger, ate,
went to a concert of the Philharmonic at 12:30. Programme: Overture to Euryanthe,
Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, inspired by Nietzsche. It is the music
to a crazy book written by the philosopher Nietzsche – half-crazy at the time, and
64 Incipit of the Toreador Song from Bizet’s Carmen. The tune was obviously set down by ear,
since there are small variants from the printed score.
65 The Work Shirt, a satirical comedy by Carl Karlweis, first performed in Vienna at the Deutsches
Volkstheater, on 10 February 1897.
66 For Kalbeck’s description see Kalbeck IV, p. 508.
252 styra avins
completely crazy now (he is in an asylum). Although the music is also mad, it
contains individually beautiful passages and sounds, and the work was masterfully
played. There was fanatical enthusiasm and great indignation among the public.
Then one of the finest Beethoven symphonies, No. 5, C minor.
From the concert I went directly to the Brückes, met Uncle Theodor on the
way . . . and went with them and Aunt Betty to Aunt Poldy, where the rehearsal with
Mühlfeld was taking place for the concert the next day.
To begin they played a delightful, merry, fresh Weber, which Mühlfeld played
enchantingly.67 It makes enormous demands of the clarinettist, which I believe
Mühlfeld alone commands, as no other; he is an eminent artist. Then Frau Roeger,
Lucy, Mühlfeld and Frau Baumayer played a new quartet by a young Viennese
composer, Dr of Law Walther Rabl, a friend and acquaintance of the Pichlers and
Herzfelds. The Quartet was awarded this year’s first prize by the Tonkünstlerverein.
Brahms has recommended it to Simrock for publication.68 It is very fine and natural,
and Mühlfeld liked it extraordinarily well. Then the Quartet played a Beethoven.
Brahms was there to listen, having dined at Aunt Marie Wittgenstein’s earlier that
day. In between he had gone home, had rested a bit, and returned in time for the
rehearsal. So he has fabulous energy, but today is the first day that he can no longer
go out, and has taken to bed.
. . . Monday, Papa and I dined at Bertha von Gasteiger’s with Brahms and
Mühlfeld. Brahms again said ‘Greet your Dresden sister for me.’ The poor man
looked dreadful and left very soon, accompanied by Papa.
I must end . . .
Sister Bertha
9. Excerpts of letters from Hedwig to Lydia, from January 1897
Today dinner with Brahms, Bayer and Roeger; Brahms asked after you again. I found
him looking worse again, however, and he complained a lot about his condition,
was also less talkative than usual. Nevertheless he was very friendly [gemütlich], and
ate many of the stuffed mushrooms I had prepared.
Brahms hasn’t received more of our lingonberries since he doesn’t eat them as much
any more, and Mama thinks that he probably gets them from all sides. He is not
better, and will consult Dr Breuer soon.69 Brahms need only praise a dish, or to say
he likes this or that, and he is soon showered with it by the entire family, just to
provide a bit of pleasure.
67 The Clarinet Quintet in B minor Op. 115.

68 According to Kalbeck, Brahms had second thoughts and declined to recommend it, worrying
that he was too quick to approve any new work which had passed muster on first hearing.
69 Josef Breuer (1842–1925), one of the founders of modern psychoanalysis and for a time
collaborator with Sigmund Freud, became Brahms’s personal physician at this time and
attended him until his death.
c. 28 January 1897
Brahms was invited for this week, but couldn’t set a firm date since D’Albert is
here.70 Yesterday Dr Breuer examined him and calmed him again, but what he said
to others about Brahms we do not know; yet it’s also not important, in the end,
because doctors never tell the truth.
Brahms looked poorly again but didn’t complain, and at his departure sent
greetings to you once more; he enjoyed the oysters hugely, though, and ate three
dozen.
10. Excerpts of letters from Josefine Oser to Lydia
This letter was written after Lydia returned to school following the Christmas
holiday. Josefine describes a dinner with some of Lydia’s ‘favourite people, such
as Brahms’.
Warmest thanks for your dear letter of 10 January which made me very happy
because of all your good news . . . Today Brahms, Mitzl Roeger, and Frl. Gasteiger
dined with us and everything went well, although beforehand there was a lot of
excitement . . . Brahms came so very late that we thought he had forgotten the meal;
even without this there was a big fuss over Frau Roeger because she had cancelled
three concerts in Madrid, which Brahms didn’t find proper and had a telegram sent
himself that Mitzl would go to Madrid after all etc. Early today came a telegram
saying that it was now too late, which of course did not delight Brahms. But in spite
of all that it was relaxed [gemütlich].
. . . There is always a lot going on. Hedwig lay in bed the whole day with a headache
and had to miss her morning singing lesson, afternoon trio lesson, evening theatre,
and that is why I was very annoyed when she went, totally unnecessarily, to hear
a concert of Gabrilowicz [sic] or Bruckner’s latest, and now she has to tell me
her daily schedule beforehand. That, of course, is always full enough! For the
evening, first with Fr. Fleischhandel, then social gathering at Aunt Betty’s. Today
in the morning [Helene] Magnus, afternoon and evening trios, afternoon [Lucy]
Campbell. Tomorrow Brahms for dinner, and so on it goes. Hedwig told Bamberger
you admire Brahms so much that you asked him for his photograph.
Vienna, 1 April 1897
70 Eugen d’Albert (1864–1932), brilliant pianist and prolific composer, who performed Brahms’s
concertos under his baton on more than one occasion. Brahms was apparently very fond of
him. His visit to Vienna included a solo recital at the Bösendorfer Saal on 3 February.
254 styra avins
. . . Poor Brahms has been completely bedridden for the past week. I go daily to see
if his Frau Truxa needs anything. Mostly she asks me to perform an errand for her.
I also sent her my ice box, and a bed for the caretaker who sleeps next to him at
night.
I was just with Frau Soldat and Tizerl in the Prater. At the end he was thoroughly
cross and didn’t say thank you for anything, because he didn’t want to go home yet.
I’ll write to you next Sunday in any case, dearest Lydia, a thousand kisses from
your mother who loves you tenderly,
Mama
11. Brahms was no longer alive, but his presence was real. The student concert
that Bertha describes took place in one of the spacious reception rooms in the
Laxenburg Palace owned since 1878 by Clara Wittgenstein and her brother Paul.
His large drawing of the honoured friend was part of the decor (see Figure 9.6,
above).
Bertha to Lydia
[Kalksburg, October 1898]
Today Tante Betty is here and nevertheless I have to sit here writing to you, because
if not, Your Royal Highness will complain even more. I’ve been going to bed every
day at about half past midnight. Just as last year in Laxenburg, I had to play a lot
of wrong notes [verspielen]. I played the last movement of a Hummel concerto, an
Intermezzo by Schumann, and a sonata by Scarlatti. Frl. Baumayer was pleased with
me. It’s terribly hot and sultry and I feel less desire than ever to write. Aunt Betty is
so kind as to play four-hand piano with me every time she’s here, which naturally I
enjoy enormously.
I have to close, and so, until the next meeting! And until then be a good girl [in
English], which means not touchy and grumpy. One can have fine feelings and be
sensitive [empfindsam] without having to be touchy [empfindlich].
In true heartfelt love, your B.
Don’t take the good advice amiss!
Ending note
There is a striking difference between the picture provided by these docu-

ments and that given by Max Kalbeck’s first-hand account of Brahms’s life
during the last three months of his life.71 Although both describe the social
life he led almost to the end, the actors involved virtually never overlap.
Kalbeck’s account describes his own regular circle including his family, Carl
71 Kalbeck IV, pp. 478–513.

Goldmark, the Brüll family, and Wilhelm Singer (1847–1917),72 names

never mentioned in the Wittgenstein–Oser papers. Conversely, Kalbeck
refers to the Wittgensteins only in his capacity as reporter, although it is
clear from Bertha’s letter of 22 January that they knew him. Even at the end of
his life, when Brahms was so often in Wittgenstein homes, Kalbeck scarcely
mentions them. This must explain why the magnitude of the connection
between Brahms and the extended family has remained so little known until
now; they do not figure in what is still the most encyclopaedic biography
of the composer. One can only speculate as to the reason: Kalbeck and his
circle were not part of that Second Society of great new wealth created as
Austria’s industry gained prominence, a society existing in proximity to the
old aristocracy. Kalbeck’s circle were professionals and intellectuals, influen-
tial opinion-makers or actively involved in Vienna’s cultural life as the case
might be, but hardly likely to be invited to Court functions. It is possible that
Kalbeck was unaware of the extent of Brahms’s friendship with the family,
or it may be that he was unwilling to acknowledge it. The Wittgenstein clan
had its own boundaries, of course. The children were educated at home,
meaning that contact with the middle-class world was largely avoided. They
were invited to Court balls. In addition to frequent interactions within their
own family, they socialised with high-ranking government ministers, peo-
ple of wealth, military officers, titled people, and the most famous artists of
the day. Brahms’s world was constructed quite differently from either. His
borders transcended those formed by station, rank, wealth or religion.
This memoir and these letters fill a gap in Brahms biography and make
clear that at the same time as he had a large circle of friends and associates
among professionals and the middle class, Brahms was quite at home with
his semi-aristocratic friends, and they with him; aside from the fact that
they seemed genuinely to like each other, the fundamental point of contact
between them was music, both in the concert hall and at home.
72 Editor-in-chief of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt.

10 The construction of gender and mores in
Brahms’s Mädchenlieder
heather platt
Biographers of Brahms often reference the intolerant attitude he frequently

displayed towards women. The noted suffragette Ethel Smyth recalled that
he was either ‘incredibly awkward’ in their presence or, if they were pretty,
he openly stared at them ‘as a greedy boy stares at jam-tartlets’.1 And Georg
Henschel reported an 1876 discussion in which Brahms asserted that ‘poet-
icising or music-making females have indeed been a horror to me’.2 Despite
such colourful quips and notwithstanding the very real issues behind them,
Brahms did have a female following, and it extended beyond the musical
intelligentsia, including Clara Schumann and Elisabeth von Herzogenberg,
who populated his immediate circle of friends. Moreover, throughout his
life Brahms composed songs about women as well as songs and small vocal
ensembles for female performers.
In E. Marlitt’s (Eugenie John, 1825–87) posthumous 1888 novel, Das
Eulenhaus, we read that a young duchess practises the piano part of a Brahms
lied for two hours.3 Marlitt was a highly successful author of Frauenromane
(‘women’s fiction’), many of which, including this story, were serialised in
the popular family magazine Die Gartenlaube (The Arbour).4 The charac-
ters found in Das Eulenhaus are not professional or skilled musicians, like
many of Brahms’s friends, but rather a duchess and her young, unmarried
1 E. Smyth, Impressions That Remained: Memoirs (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919, rpt
1946 and 1981), p. 236.
2 G. Bozarth, Johannes Brahms & George Henschel: An Enduring Friendship (Sterling Heights, MI:
Harmonie Park Press, 2008), p. 49.
3 E. Marlitt, completed W. Heimburg, Das Eulenhaus, translated as The Owl’s Nest by A. L. Wister
(Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1888), pp. 132–3. The difficulty of the Op. 3 songs, which the
author references, was also mentioned in an anonymous review published in Die Gartenlaube
43 (1854), p. 520.
4 Die Gartenlaube – Illustrirtes Familienblatt (The Arbour), a weekly magazine that was published
between 1853 and 1944 by Ernst Keil and Ferdinand Stolle in Leipzig, was intended for
middle-class families to read in their homes, though it was also available in public venues such
as cafés and lending libraries. It published articles on a variety of subjects, including poetry and
music, as well as illustrations and serialised fiction. Kirsten Belgum provides an overview of the
wide dissemination of Die Gartenlaube before turning to the ways in which it addressed its
female readers, and in particular the fiction of Marlitt, which it published. ‘Domesticating the
256 Reader: Women and Die Gartenlaube’, Women in German Yearbook 9 (1993), pp. 91–111.
The construction of gender and mores in Brahms’s Mädchenlieder 257
companion. Although such women’s fiction often depicts social music-

making, this is one of the infrequent references to a specific composer. And
even more notably we are subsequently told that the song to be performed
is ‘Liebestreu’ Op. 3 no. 1. That Brahms’s first published song makes its
appearance in a story specifically geared to the female market suggests his
songs were familiar to numerous women readers.
Further evidence of Brahms’s female enthusiasts occurs in an article
by Hermann Kretzschmar in the 1880 edition of Die Gartenlaube.5 This
overview of Brahms’s compositions includes a small number of remarks that
appear to be specifically addressed to women. In particular, Kretzschmar
observes that Brahms’s lieder have earned the praise of women through their
‘loving depiction’ and ‘glorification’ of maidens. And he suggests that an
essay on women in music should not only include Beethoven’s Leonore, but
also Brahms’s ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ and ‘Das Lied vom Herrn von Falkenstein’
Op. 43 nos. 1 and 4.
Lieder portraying women represent a significant, recurring element in
Brahms’s song output. Approximately one quarter of his solo lieder have
texts with a female narrative voice, in addition to which there are numerous
other songs that describe women. Nevertheless scholars have not expounded
upon Kretzschmar’s comments and examined these works as a distinctive
group within the composer’s oeuvre. Karl Geiringer’s influential monograph
on Brahms is indicative of the type of attitude that might have hindered
a serious consideration of these lieder. Although he praises specific songs
with female protagonists, and in particular cites the expressiveness and
poignancy of the late ‘Mädchenlied’ (‘Auf die Nacht in den Spinnstubn’
Op. 107 no. 5), he nevertheless reaches the following conclusion:
The majority of the songs of [the period following the Requiem] are fundamentally
masculine in conception, not merely because Brahms was involuntarily thinking of
the familiar voice of the great [Julius Stockhausen], but rather because it was his
nature to express, even in his lyrics, robust and virile emotions. Brahms would never
have attempted a work like Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, which is entirely
rooted in the sphere of feminine emotion.6
5 H. Kretzschmar, ‘Johannes Brahms: Eine Charakterstudie aus der Componistenwelt der

Gegenwart’, Die Gartenlaube 14 (1880), pp. 220–4. This article was subsequently cited in the
journal’s obituary for the composer: ‘B. J.’, ‘Johannes Brahms: Ein Nachruf’, Die Gartenlaube 17
(1897), p. 283.
6 K. Geiringer and I. Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work, 3rd edn (New York: Da Capo Press,
1984), p. 275. In emphasising the ‘masculine’ character of Brahms’s compositions, Geiringer
perpetuates an assessment that began with Brahms’s contemporaries; see M. Citron, ‘Gendered
Reception of Brahms: Masculinity, Nationalism and Musical Politics’, in I. Biddle (ed.),
258 heather platt
To be sure Brahms did not attempt a cycle organised around a woman’s

life, but, as Kretzschmar implies, he nevertheless created highly effective
portrayals of female characters, and did so throughout his career.
Most of Brahms’s songs concerning women portray Backfische – that is,
late adolescents who, like the daughter in ‘Liebestreu’, are yet to marry. The
three pieces that Marlitt and Kretzschmar cite, however, are in fact not typ-
ical exemplars of Brahms’s Mädchenlieder. The two songs that Kretzschmar
praises along with the widely venerated ‘Immer leiser wird mein Schlum-
mer’ Op. 105 no. 2, which was composed after his article was published,
are atypical in that they depict unusually strong heroines. Furthermore,
whereas ‘Liebestreu’, ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ and ‘Immer leiser’ display the types
of motivic, harmonic and rhythmic sophistication for which the composer
is well known, many of Brahms’s other Mädchenlieder are more clearly
aligned with the style of folk music.
In contrast to Kretzschmar’s publication, the present chapter concen-
trates on Brahms’s typical folk-style Mädchenlieder. A survey of Brahms’s
compositions and a comparison of his Mädchenlieder with those by other
composers will establish that the coupling of texts about young women
and folk-style music is a distinctive aspect of his solo lieder; moreover,
such pieces contrast with the texts and musical styles of his songs depict-
ing men. The musical portraits of the maidens in these songs align with
depictions in contemporary German literature and art, and suggest that, in
spite of repeated claims of insensitivity, Brahms was cognisant of the types
of behaviour that society expected from women. Given this correlation, it
is not surprising that the Mädchenlieder quickly established a place in the
parlours of Brahms’s young female admirers.
Brahms’s Mädchenlieder and folk-song
Approximately a quarter of Brahms’s lieder are settings of texts that either

originated in folk-songs or were written by poets renowned for adapting
folk style, including Johann Gottfried Herder, Ludwig Uhland and Anton
Masculinity and Western Musical Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 141–60. Marion
Gerards enumerates many more examples of gendered discourse in nineteenth-century
reactions to Brahms’s instrumental music, noting the specific movements, or places within
movements, that were heard as either masculine or feminine, or were described by using
attributes associated with a specific gender: Frauenliebe-Männerleben: Die Musik von Johannes
Brahms und der Geschlechterdiskurs im 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010), pp. 248–325.
Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio.7 Sixty per cent of these texts have a female
narrative voice, or an unidentified narrator who describes a woman. By
comparison, just over one quarter have a male narrative voice, but in almost
all of them, including ‘Scheiden und Meiden’ and ‘In der Ferne’ Op. 19 nos.
2 and 3, the man describes or talks to his young sweetheart. (A further 10
per cent of the songs employing folk/folk-like texts are dialogues in which
a man and woman speak.)8
A comparison of the songs with female and male narrative voices
corroborates the thesis that Brahms associated women with folk style.
Whereas at least two-thirds of Brahms’s songs with a female narrative
voice have texts and/or music in the style of folk-song, the overwhelming
majority of his songs with a male narrative voice are not influenced by
this genre.9 This distinction is particularly clear when one compares the
Mädchenlieder of Op. 7, for instance ‘Die Trauernde’, to the one song in
the opus with a male narrative voice, ‘Heimkehr’ (see Example 10.1).10 In
‘Die Trauernde’ short two-bar segments, simple rhythms, repeated pitches,
and mostly diatonic harmonies replicate the style of folk-song that early
writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, J. A. P. Schulz and Johann Friedrich
Reichardt extolled and viewed as natural.11 By contrast ‘Heimkehr’ has
frequently been described as operatic. It is characterised by a thicker texture,
wider range, louder dynamics, more strongly emphasised chromatic and
dissonant harmonies, and denser motivic work. The text of this song, which
was written by Uhland, depicts a protagonist valiantly striving to return to
his sweetheart. He seems to be more optimistic than the type of rejected or
7 Virginia Hancock provides a list of these songs in ‘Johannes Brahms: Volkslied/Kunstlied’ in R.

Hallmark (ed.), German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century, new edn (New York: Routledge,
2010), p. 146. In addition to the fifty songs that she lists, ‘Sehnsucht’ Op. 14 no. 8 also sets a
text originating in a folk-song. For more detailed studies of the influence of folk-song on
Brahms’s lieder see W. Morik, Johannes Brahms und sein Verhältnis zum deutschen Volkslied
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1965), and S. Helms, ‘Die Melodiebildung in den Liedern von
Johannes Brahms und ihr Verhältnis zu Volksliedern und volkstümlichen Weisen’, unpublished
PhD thesis, Freie Universität, Berlin (1968).
8 Brahms’s arrangements of folk-songs do not exhibit a similar distribution of narrative voices,
and they are not dominated by texts with a female narrative voice. In contrast to the solo lieder,
many of the texts of the 49 Deutsche Volkslieder (WoO 33) portray a couple in conversation.
9 See Gerards’s Frauenliebe-Männerleben for a somewhat contrasting approach to gender.
Gerards does not discuss folk-style music or how it relates to gender.
10 The translations of the song texts given in Example 10.1 are by Lucien Stark. A Guide to the
Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 38 and 39.
11 Matthew Gelbart discusses Rousseau’s linkage of nature and music and also Herder’s coinage
of the term Volkslied in The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’: Emerging Categories from
Ossian to Wagner (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 67–9, 102–10.
260 heather platt
My mother doesn’t like me, and I have no sweetheart, Oh, why don’t I die? What
am I doing here?
Yesterday there was a parish fair, but I’m sure nobody looked at me, because I am
so unhappy that I do not dance.
Leave alone the three roses that bloom near the little cross: Did you know the girl
who lies beneath it?
Example 10.1a. Brahms, ‘Die Trauernde’ Op. 7 no. 5.
despondent male character Brahms often portrayed. Nevertheless, many

of the compositional techniques in ‘Heimkehr’ may also be heard in his
other men’s songs, such as the Lieder und Gesänge Op. 32 (1864).12 Similar
depictions of female and male characters are also to be found in later works;
compare, for instance, ‘Klage’ Op. 105 no. 3 and ‘Mein Herz ist schwer’ Op.
94 no. 3. This comparison reveals that although songs like ‘Die Trauernde’
concern such universal themes as love and loneliness, the gender of the
narrative persona or the person being described shaped the style of Brahms’s
music.
12 Some of the gender issues surrounding the Op. 32 songs will be considered in the third section
of this chapter.
O footbridge, don’t break – you are trembling so! O cliff, don’t crumble – you are
threatening so! World, do not perish; sky, don’t fall down, until I’m with the girl I
love!
Example 10.1b. Brahms, ‘Heimkehr’ Op. 7 no. 6, bars 11–21.
As Kretzschmar’s Die Gartenlaube article demonstrates, Brahms’s con-

temporaries recognised the gender of the characters in his lieder. Theodor
Billroth was among the composer’s friends who used the term Mädchenlieder
for the songs about young women, and Manneslieder for songs about men,
262 heather platt
such as those in Op. 94.13 Moreover, Brahms and his publisher Fritz Sim-
rock discussed using the term Mädchenlieder for the title of the songs to be
published as Op. 69. (The poetic persona in seven of these songs is a young
woman.) Although they abandoned this idea, Hans Simrock (1861–1910),
Fritz’s nephew and successor, revived it when he created a posthumous
anthology of Brahms’s songs portraying women.14
Despite such marketing techniques, during the nineteenth century the
sex of a song’s protagonist did not imply that the performer should be
of the same sex, and two of Brahms’s favourite singers, Gustav Walter
and Julius Stockhausen, performed works such as ‘Mädchenlied’ Op. 95
no. 6 (‘Am jüngsten Tag’) in which a young woman ‘speaks’. Likewise,
female performers, including Amalie Joachim, performed songs, such as
‘Minnelied’ Op. 71 no. 5, that use a male narrative voice. In such cases the
singer was understood to be projecting the emotions of someone of the
opposite sex.15
To be sure Brahms was not the only nineteenth-century song composer
to associate contrasting musical styles with men and women; Friedrich
Reichardt’s 1810 setting of Schiller’s 1796 ‘Würde der Frauen’ serves
as a particularly clear example of this practice.16 Reichardt created two
strophes of music; the first for the stanzas describing female attributes, and
13 See, for instance, letters to Brahms of 10 April 1877 and 6 August 1884 in O. Gottlieb-Billroth
(ed.), Billroth und Brahms im Briefwechsel (Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1935), pp. 235–7
and 362. Gottlieb-Billroth discusses some of the issues surrounding Brahms’s Mädchenlieder
and Männerlieder in n. 8, pp. 238–9.
14 Letters from Brahms to Fritz Simrock, 18 and 22 April 1877. Briefe X, pp. 27–8. The preface to
the Mädchenlieder (Berlin: Simrock, 1904) quotes from the second letter, using it to suggest
that Brahms would have sanctioned the anthologising of these lieder. This volume includes
songs from Opp. 69, 85, 95 and 107. I am grateful to Natasha Loges for bringing this edition to
my attention.
15 Occasionally such practices did lead to criticism. When a certain Hr Dr Gunz performed
‘Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer’, which is normally performed by a woman, the critic
Emil Fritzsch noted that although the performance was so effective that it had to be repeated
he still considered the text to be more suitable for a female performer. E. Fritzsch, ‘Hanover’,
Musikalisches Wochenblatt 21/49 (27 November 1890), p. 613. For further discussion of the
relationship between the sex of the narrative persona and that of the performer see Chapter 4,
‘Gendered Voices’ in L. Tunbridge, The Song Cycle (Cambridge University Press, 2010),
pp. 50–63.
16 Schiller’s work was well known, and it was referenced by writers that Brahms read, including
Schlegel and Schopenhauer. Brahms owned Schiller’s collected works and also the volume by
Schopenhauer that cites ‘Würde der Frauen’. See K. Hofmann, Die Bibliothek von Johannes
Brahms: Bücher- und Musikalienverzeichnis (Hamburg: Wagner, 1974), pp. 100–2 and 104.
Aside from Reichardt, composers who set Schiller’s poem included Johann Andreas Anschütz
(1772–1855?) and Conradin Kreutzer (1780–1849). It is not clear whether Brahms knew any of
these settings.
the second for those about men. His strophe for the female stanzas is lyri-
cal, in major, in 34 and is marked Mit Würde und Anmut (with dignity and
grace) and piano. In contrast, the strophe setting the stanzas about men
has a significantly more angular melody, it is in the minor, with an alla
breve metre, and is marked Stark (strong) and forte. Although the stan-
zas describing women have musical elements in common with Brahms’s
Mädchenlieder, there is also a significant difference: Brahms’s melodies hew
more closely to folk style and are often syllabic. The type of dainty orna-
ments that Reichardt uses, which usually involve setting a syllable to two
notes, are, however, characteristic of Mädchenlieder by other composers,
including Schubert’s setting of Klopstock’s popular ‘Vaterlandslied’ (‘Ich
bin ein Deutsches Mädchen!’ D287) and Friedrich Heinrich Himmel’s 1803
setting of Karl Friedrich Müchler’s cycle Die Blumen und der Schmetterling,
which includes ‘Zueignung an Deutschlands Töchter’.
The high degree of correlation between Brahms’s songs about young
women, texts derived from folk sources, and folk-music style seems to be
a special aspect of Brahms’s oeuvre. Aside from the contrasting attitude
to ornaments discussed above, Mädchenlieder by composers of the mature
nineteenth-century lied do not exhibit the same reliance on folk sources as
Brahms’s songs. To be sure, the types of maidens who populate Brahms’s
works are to be found in the songs by such composers as Schubert, Schu-
mann, Fanny Hensel and Robert Franz. But most of their works employ
poems by professional writers, such as Mörike, and their music is not as
reliant on folk style as Brahms’s Mädchenlieder.
When other composers did reference the folk style, they did not always
opt for the type of transparent, diatonic settings that characterise Brahms’s
songs. Compare, for instance Brahms’s setting of ‘Die Trauernde’ with that
of Robert Franz. Although Franz’s setting (Op. 17 no. 4) is marked as ‘Im
Volkston’, his thicker chorale-style harmonisation is more complex than
Brahms’s. The tonal centre of the first phrase moves from A major, via E
major to C minor before settling in E major (the tonic) for the second
phrase (see Example 10.2).
Certainly, some of Brahms’s songs are closer to folk music than others.
For the most part, those that are diatonic and have the simplest piano
parts set texts from German folk-songs that portray innocent maidens. The
clearest exception to this association with German sources is ‘Mädchenlied’
Op. 85 no. 3 (‘Ach, und du mein kühles Wasser!’), which employs a text
by Siegfried Kapper translated from the Serbian. Unlike some of his other
translations, for instance those Brahms used in Opp. 69 and 95, there are
264 heather platt
Example 10.2. Franz, ‘Die Trauernde’ Op. 17 no. 4, bars 1–8.
no sexual innuendos or even a hint of flirtatiousness; instead, much like

‘Die Trauernde’, ‘Ach, und du mein kühles Wasser!’ depicts a lonely young
woman. In contrast to such works depicting innocent maidens, the lieder
that exhibit fewer folk-like elements and have thicker, frequently changing
piano figurations are more likely to have texts dealing with the harsh realities
of life. For instance ‘Gold überwiegt die Liebe’ Op. 48 no. 4 tells of a woman
whose sweetheart marries another because she has more money, and ‘Treue
Liebe’ Op. 7 no. 1 depicts a maiden who is reunited with her loved one
only after committing suicide. Some of the other songs with thicker and
more varied piano parts have texts drawn from non-German sources that,
as Natasha Loges has noted, depict bolder and more confident women.17
The girl in ‘Mädchenfluch’ Op. 69 no. 9, for instance, seems to be telling
her mother that she has lost her virginity to a man whom she curses; but
then in equally passionate terms she prays he will return to her.
Although one might be tempted to deduce that the simplicity of the music
in the folk-inspired Mädchenlieder is just another aspect of Brahms’s well-
documented boorish, perhaps even misogynistic, behaviour toward women,
many of these songs also exhibit subtle yet artful compositional techniques
17 N. Loges, ‘Singing Lieder with a Foreign Accent: Brahms’s Slavic Songs’, Indiana Theory Review
26 (Spring–Fall 2005), p. 84.
that imply Brahms did have some understanding of the feminine emotional
world.18 Again, ‘Die Trauernde’ will serve as one brief example. As shown
in Example 10.1a, its first two verses are repeated to the same music, but
Brahms modifies this strophe in order to capture the heart-wrenching image
of a grave in the last stanza. The first two two-bar segments of this second
strophe feature a stark cross-relation between C and C; and Brahms
subtly distorts the normal hypermetric stress by emphasising the second
bar of each unit, rather than the first. Thoughts of death are already present
at the end of the text’s first stanza, and are perhaps also foreshadowed in
the music by the bass’s tritone progression in bars 1–2 (B to F) and its
Phrygian cadence at the end of the first phrase (F to E). The first strophe
comprises a repeated four-bar phrase. The first phrase ends in bar 4 with a
typical 64 –53 sighing gesture. However, when Brahms repeats this bar for the
end of the strophe, he changes the order of the two sonorities, and because
he cannot conclude the strophe on a 64 he adds a fifth bar that supplies a
pianissimo perfect cadence. This cadential phrase segment is subsequently
repeated and slightly varied at the end of the song. In both strophes, the
perfect cadence creates tonal closure, but it does so in a way that draws
attention to the melody’s lack of closure, and its modal scale degrees 6̂ and
7̂. In addition to their usual function as a point of resolution, the perfect
cadences create a subtle conflict between tonal function and the melody’s
modality. Furthermore, the cadential bars’ abrupt shifts in register make
the cadences sound like an afterthought, as if they are imposed on the
melody from the outside. In this way Brahms creates a musical metaphor
for the forlorn maiden’s claim that she does not fit into the community that
surrounds her.19
Along similar lines, departures from folk style, such as delayed or sup-
pressed closing perfect cadences, that influence the large-scale tonal struc-
ture characterise a number of Brahms’s other Mädchenlieder, including
18 Biographers often reference Brahms’s demeaning attitude to women. For instance Jan Swafford
reports that female admirers were ‘apt to draw the full blast of [Brahms’s] scorn’. One lady who
asked him, ‘How do you write such divine adagios?’ received the response ‘Well, you know my
publisher orders them that way.’ J. Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1997), pp. 431–2.
19 Natasha Loges provides an insightful comparison between Brahms’s ‘Die Trauernde’ and a
melody using the same text that Friedrich Silcher (1789–1860) harmonised for male chorus.
This melody was published as no. 110 in the first volume of A. Kretzschmer (with A.
Zuccalmaglio et al.), Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Original-Weisen (Berlin:
Vereins-Buchhandlung, 1838), a copy of which Brahms owned. N. Loges, ‘How to Make a
Volkslied: Early Models in the Songs of Johannes Brahms’, Music and Letters 93/3 (August
2012), pp. 327–8. Silcher created a purely diatonic setting in strophic form that retains
four-bar phrases.
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‘Anklänge’ Op. 7 no, 3, ‘Mädchenlied’ Op. 85 no. 3 (‘Ach, und du mein

kühles Wasser!’), ‘Vorschneller Schwur’ Op. 95 no. 5, ‘Mädchenlied’ Op. 95
no. 6 (‘Am jüngsten Tag’) and ‘Klage’ Op. 105 no. 3. As in ‘Die Trauernde’,
the structural or stylistic elements that do not adhere to folk style create a
touching and sympathetic depiction of the emotional plight of the specific
young woman who is the topic of the work.20 By contrast, the folk elements
allude to cultural expectations for the female sex as a whole.
Brahms’s Mädchenlieder in relation to contemporary German

arts and society
Although some modern listeners might scoff at the type of passive day-
dreaming exhibited by the characters in many of Brahms’s Mädchenlieder,
during the nineteenth century this occupation was considered typical of
adolescent girls. The female characters in popular women’s fiction, includ-
ing Marlitt’s Das Eulenhaus and the stories about Backfische by Clementine
Helm, frequently dream of their ideal man or their future life as a married
woman. And Elise Polko, in her behaviour manual for women Unsere Pilger-
fahrt von der Kinderstube bis zum eignen Heerd: Lose Blätter (Our Pilgrimage
from the Nursery to One’s Own Hearth: Loose Leaves), also mentions such
dreams. Of course Polko prescribes numerous other ways for young women
to fill their time, including studying music and painting. Nevertheless, her
chapter devoted to adolescents includes an illustration in which two young
women participate in music-making while a third seems to be occupied
with her own thoughts (see Figure 10.1).21
The type of introverted posture and downturned gaze of the dis-
tracted maiden in this illustration was employed in numerous other
works of art depicting pensive or lamenting maidens. For instance, in
the 1864 Deutsche Lieder in Volkes Herz und Mund (German Songs in the
Hearts and Mouths of the People) a similar maiden clad in peasant dress
accompanies the text of ‘Da Unten im Thale’, one of Brahms’s favourite
20 The following publications provide analyses of the expressive tonal structures of these songs.
H. Platt, ‘Brahms’s Mädchenlieder and Their Cultural Context’, in H. Platt and P. H. Smith
(eds.), Expressive Intersections in Brahms: Essays in Analysis and Meaning (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 80–110; ‘Anklänge as Brahms’s Lied Manifesto’, American
Brahms Society Newsletter 28/1 (Spring 2010), pp. 6–9; and ‘Dramatic Turning Points in
Brahms Lieder’, Indiana Theory Review 15/1 (Spring 1994), pp. 75–87.
21 E. Polko, Unsere Pilgerfahrt von der Kinderstube bis zum eignen Heerd: Lose Blätter, 2nd edn,
illustrated by Paul Thumann (Leipzig: C. F. Amelang, 1865), Part 3, ‘Eintritt in die Welt!’,
pp. 78 and 79. Polko was a well-respected professional singer but after her marriage she
devoted herself to writing. In addition to this behaviour manual and reminiscences of
Mendelssohn, she wrote a variety of stories marketed to women readers.
Figure 10.1. Illustration by Paul Thumann for the 1865 edition of Elise Polko’s Unsere
Pilgerfahrt von der Kinderstube bis zum eignen Heerd: Lose Blätter.
folk-songs.22 This particular maiden is perhaps a better representative of

the type because she leans forward, with her head more clearly bowed, as
22 A. Traeger (ed.), Deutsche Lieder in Volkes Herz und Mund, illustrations by Gustav Süs and Paul
Thumann (Leipzig: C. F. Amelang, 1864), p. 31. Brahms arranged the folk-song ‘Da Unten im
Thale’ at least three times (49 Deutsche Volkslieder, WoO 33 no. 6; 12 Deutsche Volkslieder WoO
35 no. 5; ‘Trennung’, 16 Deutsche Volkslieder WoO 37 no. 10). One of these arrangements, WoO
37 no. 10, was created for the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir. In addition, he also employed the text of
this folk-song in his solo folk-style Mädchenlied ‘Trennung’ Op. 97 no. 6.
268 heather platt
if physically (as well as emotionally) turning in on herself. These poses

visually represent the assertion that a ‘woman willingly bows her head and
finds comfort and help in her tears’, which is to be found in the 1817
edition of Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus’s Conversations-Lexicon oder en-
cyclopädisches Handwörterbuch für die gebildeten Stände.23
This type of introspective maiden, dressed in peasant garb, also appears
on the illustrated title page of a music book belonging to Camilla Meier,
one of the former members of the Hamburg chorus that Brahms conducted
(see Figure 10.2).24 The title page, drawn by Camilla’s sister Franziska,
is in the same folk style as the cover page that Adrian Ludwig Richter
(1803–84) prepared for Schumann’s Album für die Jugend Op. 68 (1848); like
Richter’s page it includes sketches of the characters depicted in the follow-
ing compositions.25 According to Anna Lentz (the daughter of Franziska),
the work that corresponds to Meier’s sketch of the lonely seated maiden
is Brahms’s a cappella three-voice arrangement of the folk-song ‘Altes
Liebeslied’ (Deutsche Volkslieder, WoO posth. 38 no. 14).26 As in many
of the composer’s solo Mädchenlieder, the text of this chorus portrays a
young girl who describes how her heart aches at the thought of being parted
from her sweetheart.
In contrast to this passive maiden, Meier depicts similarly aged males as
walking or singing with their heads held high and facing out to the world,
even when they are thinking about an absent sweetheart. The internal life
of women, as opposed to the outward world view of men, is referenced in
numerous German nineteenth-century works of fiction and non-fiction,
including Joseph Meyer’s Das grosse Conversations-Lexicon (1848).27 One of
23 ‘Geschlecht’, Brockhaus’s Conversations-Lexicon oder encyclopädisches Handwörterbuch für

gebildete Stände, 4th edn, 10 vols. (Altenburg & Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1817), vol. IV, p. 214.
24 Brahms conducted the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir, an amateur chorus of young women, from
1859 to 1863. The choristers sang from scores that they had written out by hand. A few years
later Franziska Meier and her sister Camilla repeated this tradition for their own amateur
chorus in Cuxhaven. See S. Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses (Merion, PA: Musurgia
Publishers, 1952), pp. 77–9, and Chapter 1 of this volume. The Meier songbook is now part of
the Sophie Hutchinson Drinker Papers, 1859–1990 (box 3, folder 3), at Smith College.
25 Bernhard R. Appel includes a reproduction of Richter’s cover and describes the collaboration
between the artist and Schumann. ‘“Actually, Taken Directly from Family Life”: Robert
Schumann’s Album für die Jugend ’, trans. J. M. Cooper, in R. Larry Todd (ed.), Schumann and
His World (Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 181–8.
26 As told to Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, pp. 77–9.
27 Karin Hausen surveys nineteenth-century publications, including Meyer, that discuss the
disposition of sexes in ‘Family and Role-Division: The Polarisation of Sexual Stereotypes in the
Nineteenth Century – An Aspect of the Dissociation of Work and Family Life’, in R. J. Evans
and W. R. Lee (eds.), The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1981), pp. 53–7.
Figure 10.2. Title page of Camilla Meier’s 1865 Lieder & Gesänge für Frauenchor ohne
Begleitung, drawings by Franziska Meier. Reproduced with the permission of the
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College in Northampton, Massachussetts.
the items that the young Brahms copied into his notebook of quotations
demonstrates that he too was aware of the ways in which German culture
defined the two genders. This particular excerpt was originally spoken by the
character Agnes in Christian Dietrich Grabbe’s Kaiser Heinrich der Sechste
(1830):
270 heather platt
Woman sees deep while man sees far.

For you the world is the heart,
For us the heart is the world.28
Although one may very well interpret the binary opposition of inward and
outward as representing degrees of alleged importance or seriousness, the
manner of expression that these terms allude to should not be ignored.
That is to say, that the emotional issues experienced by women, and in
particular young women, were real and important to their existence, but,
due to societal customs, it was expected that these authentic emotions would
be expressed in an intimate or restrained manner. The illustrations of the
inward-turning maidens discussed above convey this type of quiet longing,
and contemporary lexicons, including Brockhaus, likewise describe this
behaviour. Brahms’s manner of subtle departures from folk-song, such as
the cadences in ‘Die Trauernde’ or the minor subdominant in ‘Am jüngsten
Tag’, along with soft dynamic markings and simple piano parts, musically
reenact a young woman’s restrained emotions and the intimacy of her
world.
Softer dynamic levels even characterise many of the optimistic
Mädchenlieder. ‘Der Jäger’ Op. 95 no. 4, for instance, begins forte with
a piano prelude and the maiden’s exclamation ‘Mein Lieb ist ein Jäger’,
but most of the subsequent phrases are to be sung more quietly; only the
restatements of the first line and the music of the prelude (which function
as a type of refrain) are marked forte.29 By contrast, ‘Meine Liebe ist grün’
Op. 63 no. 5 (Junge Lieder I) and ‘Liebesglut’ Op. 47 no. 2 provide exam-
ples of the type of the more assertive, wider world view that was typically
described as male. The former is an exuberant love song based on a poem by
Felix Schumann and, although it carries the same Lebhaft tempo marking
as ‘Der Jäger’, its melody has a wider range and the dynamics are predomi-
nantly various shadings of forte. Similar contrasts are also evident in songs
depicting abandoned or rejected men and women. The male protagonist
in ‘Liebesglut’ is tortured by rejection, but his emotional outburst has little
in common with Brahms’s abandoned maidens who quietly lament. The
28 J. Brahms, Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein: Aussprüche von Dichtern, Philosophen und
Künstlern, ed. C. Krebs (Berlin: Verlag des Deutschen Brahmsgesellschaft, 1909), trans. A.
Eisenberger as The Brahms Notebooks: The Little Treasure Chest of the Young Kreisler –
Quotations From Poets, Philosophers, and Artists, Gathered by Johannes Brahms, annotations by
Siegmund Levarie (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2003), p. 153.
29 There are, of course, instances of more assertive, knowing women singing loudly, as is the case
of ‘Salome’ Op. 69 no. 8 and ‘Mädchenfluch’ Op. 69 no. 9.
harmonies and piano figurations are more complex and the dynamics are
louder; moreover, the text (one of Georg Friedrich Daumer’s renditions of
Hafiz) has a type of strident accusatory tone that does not appear in the
Mädchenlieder. Its invocation of humanity in general in the line ‘Accuse
yourself, accuse the destiny that governs all human souls!’ is not character-
istic of any of Brahms’s songs with a female narrative voice.
Just as the postures of the young men and women in Meier’s vignettes
(Figure 10.2) reflect contemporary society’s view on gender differences, so
too their peasant clothing references the origins of the folk-songs Brahms
arranged and also the influence of widely disseminated artworks depicting
peasant life, including those by Richter and Franz von Defregger (1835–
1921). In the closing decades of the nineteenth century prints of Defreg-
ger’s works, and others in similar style, were widely disseminated, with
reproductions appearing in a variety of mass-produced publications read
by women, including Die Gartenlaube. These demurely clothed maidens,
with aprons wrapped around their waists to underscore their domestic
duties, displayed the type of modesty young women were expected to
embody.
To be sure, such references to the Volk had relevance to all members of
society, not just women. But these artworks should not be taken as calls
for the literal recreation of peasant life, but rather as referencing concepts
and ideals that peasants were understood to represent. As the reactionary
but nevertheless widely read cultural historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl
(1823–97) argued, peasants exhibited the types of morals that German
society should follow. This process of recognising societal values in depic-
tions of peasants was also relevant to music.30 Folk-songs’ connotations of
purity and naturalness align with personality attributes that German society
expected of young women and with the long-held belief that women were
closer to nature than men. Brahms’s small-scale folk-like Mädchenlieder
likewise evoke these traits. By way of contrast, as Raymond Monelle has
30 See W. H. Riehl, The Natural History of the German People ed. and trans. D. J. Diephouse
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), p. 163, for instance. This is a translation and
abridgement of Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Sozial-Politik. The
four volumes of this work originally appeared separately, with the first appearing in 1851. The
complete series was first published under one title in 1869. In our own time, David Gramit has
recognised that the texts in Schubert’s early songs such as ‘Fischerlied’ D351 were not merely
understood as literal depictions of peasants but were read as metaphors, advocating ‘diligence
and contentedness’ in whatever activities Schubert and his friends took up. D. Gramit,
Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 83.
272 heather platt
observed, ‘it is hard to attribute purity and innocence to the folk spirit of
Liszt, Smetana, [and] Dvořák . . . ’.31
In some ways the reception of Brahms’s folk-style Mädchenlieder is anal-
ogous to that of German paintings depicting people in peasant garb and the
Frauenromane of writers such as Marlitt.32 Unlike the art and literary works,
these songs have avoided being labelled as kitsch. But they have not received
the same critical appraisal as Brahms’s other more complex songs, nor
are they among the most frequently performed or recorded of his works.
Moreover even some well-known Brahms advocates have disparaged his
repeated portrayals of innocent maidens, implying this was a personal pec-
cadillo rather than a reflection of societal values concerning gender, and
ignoring the likelihood that contemporary audiences would have recog-
nised the songs’ sensitive representations of these gender tropes.33 Although
Brahms’s songs do not literally depict the type of feminine occupations that
some contemporary paintings and stories dealt with, they do portray the
types of emotions and behaviours that society viewed as appropriate for
young women, including quiet introspection, passivity, restrained emotion
and purity. Through their portrayal of these personality traits, these songs
performed the same type of cultural work that Ruth Solie attributes to
Schumann and Chamisso’s Frauenliebe und -leben.34 Countless other songs,
including Peter Cornelius’s Brautlieder (1856), served similar functions, but
31 R. Monelle, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2006), p. 257. Hermann Glaser provides a harsh view of the significance of female purity
in German nationalism, and the role of women’s fiction, including stories by Marlitt, in
propagating this system of values. In particular he cites the influence of a skewed, chaste
version of Goethe’s Gretchen. See H. Glaser, The Cultural Roots of National Socialism, trans.
E. A. Menze (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), pp. 177–86. Romantic writers admired
by Brahms, including Schlegel and Schiller, perpetuated the belief that women were closer to
nature than men. For a more recent study of this premise see Sherry Ortner’s widely discussed
article ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’, in M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds.),
Women, Culture and Society (Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 68–87.
32 Todd Kontje, for example, explores both the conservative and progressive aspects of Marlitt’s
female characters and the mixed reception of her works. T. Kontje, Women, the Novel, and the
German Nation 1771–1871 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 183–201. Along similar
lines, Jo Briggs considers Defregger’s popularity and also the contrasting interpretations of the
significance of his paintings. See J. Briggs, ‘Recollection and Relocation in Gründerzeit Munich:
Collective Memory and the Genre Paintings of Franz von Defregger’, Art History 35/1 (2012),
pp. 107–25.
33 See, for instance, Eric Sams’s reference to Brahms’s ‘idealised white-clad girl’ in his discussion
of the composer’s changes to the text of ‘Das Lied vom Herrn von Falkenstein’. E. Sams, The
Songs of Johannes Brahms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 129, n. 1.
34 R. Solie, ‘Whose Life? The Gendered Self in Schumann’s Frauenliebe Songs’, in S. P. Scher (ed.),
Music and Text: Critical Inquiries (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 219–40.
what makes Brahms’s lieder distinctive is his choice to portray the emotional
world of young women through folk style.
Brahms’s young female friends and the early reception of his

Mädchenlieder
Despite their current status, Brahms’s Mädchenlieder, like the related visual
and literary works, were admired during the nineteenth century. Indeed, an
1885 critic of a recital by Hermine Spies noted that numbers from Brahms’s
Sieben Lieder Op. 95 (most of which are Mädchenlieder) were just as well
received as more complicated songs. Similarly, Bernhard Vogel praised a
recital by Amalie Joachim in 1887, which included Mädchenlieder such as
‘Dort in den Weiden’ and ‘Trennung’ Op. 97 nos. 4 and 6 as well as more
serious and demanding numbers such as ‘Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht’
Op. 96 no. 1.35
Aside from such performances in concert halls, many of Brahms’s
Mädchenlieder were performed by amateurs at home. The most detailed
records to have survived relating to such social music-making concern
Brahms’s young female friends in Hamburg and Göttingen during the late
1850s and early 1860s. These amateur musicians enjoyed performing a
number of Brahms’s folk-style lieder and his folk-song arrangements. From
these experiences Brahms may well have deduced that the musical style
and texts of folk-songs pleased and were appropriate for young women.
This impression was probably reinforced when his Hamburg piano student
Friedchen Wagner asked him to arrange folk-songs for her and her siblings
to perform.36 Wagner subsequently helped Brahms to establish the Ham-
burg Ladies’ Choir (Frauenchor), and many of the pieces he wrote for this
chorus were either arrangements of folk-songs or settings of texts taken
from folk-songs. In addition to formal rehearsals conducted by Brahms, the
women often sang his arrangements of folk-songs during informal social
gatherings, including picnics.37
35 ‘E. U.’, ‘Wiesbaden’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 81/23 (5 June 1885), p. 256. B. Vogel, ‘Leipzig’,
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 83/18 (4 May 1887), p. 196.
36 Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, p. 11.
37 Ibid., p. 72. Brahms wrote numerous pieces in other styles for this group, including a
significant number of contrapuntal sacred and secular works. The Dreizehn Kanons Op. 113,
which he published at the end of his life, includes a number of pieces that had initially been
performed by the Ladies’ Choir. Brahms described these works to Dr Abraham of the Peters
publishing house as ‘amorous, innocent little verses which ought to be easily and gladly sung
by beautiful girls’. See Kalbeck IV, p. 220.
274 heather platt
The Ladies’ Choir was populated by young women who were still living
at home with their parents. Their letters and diaries reveal their innocence
and high spirits, and at times their flirtatious exchanges with Brahms. A
number of them were quite eager to promote the composer’s music and
they recalled purchasing scores of pieces that were not part of the choir’s
repertoire. One chorus member, Franziska Meier, complained to her diary
that the shops in Hamburg rarely had scores of Brahms’s new compositions
and that one of her friends (Susanne Schmaltz) was going to order the score
of the solo song ‘Volkslied’ Op. 7 no. 4 (‘Die Schwälble ziehet fort’). This
song must have made a particular impression on the girls because Franziska
also wrote the words to its first stanza in her diary.38
‘Die Schwälble ziehet fort’ is one of the five Mädchenlieder in Brahms’s
Op. 7. Although Brahms wrote this song when he was only 19, it is typical
of many of the Mädchenlieder he wrote throughout his life. The text, which
comes from Georg Scherer’s Deutsche Volkslieder (1851), tells of a lonely
maiden quietly yearning for the same freedom as a swallow soaring on high.
Like that of the surrounding songs in Op. 7, the music is characterised by
stylistic elements of folk-song, including strophic form, a regular phrase
structure, diatonic harmonies and simple repeated rhythms in the melody.
As is typical of Brahms’s Mädchenlieder, the song has a light piano part and
carries piano and pianissimo dynamic indications. In bars 10–13 a gradual
increase in volume paired with a hint of C major convey the idea of going
out into the world, but this change is short-lived, suggesting that travel is
merely a passing dream. Frequent tonic pedal points throughout the rest
of the song reference the type of passivity that was considered to be a key
indicator of the female personality.
A similar blending of stylistic markers, including subtle contrasts rather
than dramatic outbursts, occurs in many of Brahms’s other Mädchenlieder,
including ‘Sehnsucht’ Op. 14 no. 8. The text of this song, which comes from
Kretzschmer and Zuccalmaglio’s Deutsche Volkslieder, depicts a lamenting
maiden. As in the case of ‘Die Schwälble ziehet fort’, ‘Sehnsucht’ seems to
have resonated with Brahms’s young female audience. He wrote this song
for Agathe von Siebold, his one-time fiancée, in 1858, but he also gave
autographed manuscript copies of it to other young women. In 1862, he
sent two of the members of the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir, Marie and Betty
Völckers, the scores of this song and the similarly folk-styled ‘Sonntag’ Op.
47 no. 3 arranged for three parts. Another member of the choir, Susanne
Schmaltz, claimed that Brahms wrote the song for her and presented her
38 Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, pp. 39 and 41.

with a beautiful manuscript of it just before he left Hamburg for Vienna.

Although the manuscript was lost during her later travels, she recalled most
of the words of the song and quoted them in her published reminiscences.39
Some ten years later, at the end of the 1870s, Brahms still considered this
type of text and song appropriate for young women, as he gave an autograph
manuscript of another Mädchenlied, ‘Über die Sie’ Op. 69, no. 7, to Anna von
Huymann, one of the members of the Singverein associated with Vienna’s
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.40
Like the members of the Ladies’ Choir, Agathe and her Göttingen friends
entertained themselves by practising Brahms’s songs. In the autumn of
1858, while Brahms was away from Göttingen, Julius Otto Grimm taught
his young wife ‘Gur’ and Brahms’s beloved Agathe the composer’s latest
songs, ‘Trennung’ Op. 14 no. 5, ‘Ständchen’ Op. 14 no. 7, ‘Scheiden und
Meiden’ Op. 19 no. 2 and ‘In der Ferne’ Op. 19 no. 3.41 Even though these
pieces employ folk-style elements, one of Grimm’s letters to Brahms implies
that the learning process was not always easy, and, as suggested by Marlitt’s
Das Eulenhaus, mentioned above, other women singing at home likewise
found Brahms’s songs quite demanding.42
The songs that Grimm mentions have texts in which a male narrative
voice speaks of separation from a loved one, and Agathe and her friends
interpreted these works as love letters from the composer. But although the
songs might have been based on Brahms’s own emotions, they were to be
performed by Agathe, and the musical style, which is the same as that of
Brahms’s Mädchenlieder, is a type of impersonation of Agathe’s voice rather
than a replication of Brahms’s own. In this way, Brahms followed the model
of writers such as Goethe and projected his own emotions onto his beloved.
Comparisons between these ‘Agathe’ songs and the Lieder und Gesänge
Op. 32 of 1864, which some scholars consider to be reflections of
Brahms’s own experiences, support this idea of impersonation because the
39 S. Schmaltz, Beglückte Erinnerung: Lebenslauf eines Sonntagskindes (Dresden: Deutsche

Buchwerkstätten, 1926), p. 40.
40 This Albumblatt is held at the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna, A-Wgm A 99
a. The author is grateful to the Director of the Archiv, Otto Biba, for his assistance in
identifying this document.
41 E. Michelmann quotes letters between Brahms and Grimm in Agathe von Siebold: Johannes
Brahms’ Jugendliebe (Göttingen: Häntzschel, 1930), p. 164.
42 Doris Groth, the wife of one of Brahms’s favourite poets Klaus Groth, took many hours to
learn Brahms’s songs, and in some cases needed the assistance of more highly accomplished
musicians. See, for example, her letter to Brahms of 24 April 1873 and also Klaus Groth’s
‘Musikalische Erlebnisse’ in D. Lohmeier (ed.), Johannes Brahms – Klaus Groth: Briefe der
Freundschaft, new edn (Heide: Boyens, 1997), pp. 67 and 173.
276 heather platt
Op. 32 works are in the denser, more complex style that is associated
with lieder depicting men, including ‘Über die Heide’ Op. 86 no. 4. These
‘Männerlieder’, as Philipp Spitta labelled Op. 32, were not written so they
could be performed (or filtered) by Agathe, and Spitta argued that they
should be performed only by men.43
In a letter from 1896, Brahms told Gustav Ophüls that he had sometimes
suppressed verses, especially from folk-songs, so that his songs would be
appropriate for ‘every young lovely maiden’.44 He also modified the words of
some of his chosen texts, as is the case in ‘Der Jäger’, a chorus that he wrote
for the Ladies’ Choir and eventually published as no. 4 of the Marienlieder
Op. 22. This text, which came from Uhland’s Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche
Volkslieder (1844/5), portrays the scene of the Annunciation, with the angel
Gabriel depicted as a hunter. According to the chorister Franziska Meier,
during their 1859 rehearsals of this work one of the singers, a certain Mme
Nordheim, complained about the text.45 A few years later, in 1862, Brahms’s
publisher Rieter-Biedermann objected to a line that read: ‘Your body will
bear a child without any husband.’ Although Brahms defended the text,
he eventually agreed to a version that did not allude to giving birth to
a child outside of wedlock: ‘Your womb will nourish and carry a child
tender and small.’46 Nevertheless, in other cases Brahms ignored protests
concerning his texts, perhaps realising that young women were not the
only ones who enjoyed and purchased his Mädchenlieder. For instance,
he correctly anticipated that Clara Schumann would object to the text of
‘Mädchenfluch’.47 Billroth likewise recognised the problematic nature of
this text, but although he kept this song away from one of his daughters he
enjoyed its ‘glowing sensuality’.48
43 According to Sams the Op. 32 lieder were ‘inspired by a devoted love for Clara Schumann’: The
Songs of Johannes Brahms, p. 77. Max Kalbeck, in a somewhat veiled reference, describes this
cycle as a ‘highly personal story from the heart’: Kalbeck II, p. 139. P. Spitta, ‘Johannes Brahms’
in Zur Musik: Sechzehn Aufsätze (Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel, 1892), p. 405.
44 Letter of 20 December 1896, transcribed by A. Dombrowski in ‘Der Autographen-Bestand des
Brahms-Museums in Hamburg’, in M. Meyer (ed.), Brahms Studien 13 (Tutzing: Hans
Schneider, 2002), pp. 73–4.
45 Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses, p. 28. 46 Briefe XIV, pp. 59ff.
47 Letter to Clara Schumann of 24 April 1877; letter to Brahms 2 May 1877. Schumann-Brahms
Briefe II, pp. 5 and 6.
48 Letter to Brahms of 10 April 1877; letter to Hanslick of 25 October 1887. Billroth und Brahms
im Briefwechsel, pp. 235–42. Billroth’s daughters sang the Op. 69 Mädchenlieder as the family
relaxed at home in the evenings and during the walks they took while on vacation in the
country. In a letter of 9 September 1887 (p. 247), while on vacation in Berchtesgaden, Billroth
describes his daughters singing ‘Salome’ Op. 69 no. 8 with unrestrained joy. From this report it
seems that he and his family did not dwell on the sexual innuendos of this song, which Wolf
more forthrightly emphasised in his later setting of the same text.
Documents penned by members of the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir and

Brahms’s Göttingen friends confirm that folk-songs or songs in folk style,
be they solo lieder or pieces for ensembles, were a staple of the social
music-making of young women. Whether Brahms was influenced by this
preference, and by the limited musical abilities of such amateurs, when he
drew on folk-song for so many of his Mädchenlieder can only be surmised.
What is just as likely, and more significant, is that he considered the purity
and naturalness often associated with German folk-song as an ideal match
for the much-venerated innocence of the adolescent females who are the
topic of these songs.
Kretzschmar ends his 1880 Die Gartenlaube article by saying, ‘No, dear
readers, [Brahms] is not married.’49 It seems that it was not uncommon for
female admirers to ask Brahms himself about his marital status. According
to one of the composer’s friends, Josef Viktor Widmann, his wicked retort
was usually, ‘It is my misfortune still to be unmarried, thank God!’50 The
type of negative attitude to women to which this remark alludes is a well-
worn topic of Brahms biographers. Indeed Georg Henschel was just one
of the composer’s friends to describe his insensitivity to women, recalling
that Brahms’s jokes ‘were not always characterised by that sense of delicacy
which the presence of ladies should have made desirable’.51 Nevertheless,
the composer’s interactions with members of the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir,
and his ability to sensitively and realistically recreate the emotional world of
young women, reveal that his view of the female sex was not unrelentingly
harsh and that he did – at least at times – demonstrate an understanding
of societal conventions regarding women.52 In order fully to appreciate
Brahms’s small-scale Mädchenlieder, modern listeners and performers must
also understand these conventions.
49 Kretzschmar, ‘Johannes Brahms: Eine Charakterstudie’, p. 224.

50 J. V. Widmann, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms (1898, rpt. Zurich: Rotapfel-Verlag, 1980),
p. 51.
51 Bozarth, Johannes Brahms & George Henschel, p. 93. Henschel, however, went on to note
Brahms’s somewhat more positive interactions with women, recalling an 1894 gathering of
members of the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein where Brahms was ‘surrounded, as always on such
occasions, by a host of admiring ladies, young and elderly, to whose charms and homage his
susceptibilities had not by any means lessened with the advancing years’.
52 In her discussion of the significance of Brahms’s friendships with numerous women, Styra
Avins forcefully refutes the representation of Brahms as a misogynist. ‘Brahms the Godfather’,
in W. Frisch and K. C. Karnes (eds.), Brahms and His World, new edn (Princeton University
Press, 2009), pp. 44–7.
278 heather platt
By the end of the nineteenth century, when greater industrialisation and

a concomitant rise in urban populations initiated profound changes to
society, the innocent young maiden associated with rural life depicted by
the likes of Richter came to represent traditional values and an opposi-
tion to the emerging modern era.53 The view of womanhood presented in
romance fiction by writers such as Marlitt, Helm and Polko was increasingly
understood as conservative, although volumes by these authors continued
to be reprinted well into the twentieth century. Shifts in societal values
and aesthetics likewise impacted depictions of women in lieder. Composers
younger than Brahms, including Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and Arnold
Schoenberg, did not emphasise the type of delicacy and purity in their
Mädchenlieder that Brahms conveyed through the use of folk-song style,
but rather introduced greater chromaticism and dissonance to convey a
more extreme level of emotion – a type of emotion that would not have
been appropriate for many of the young women of Brahms’s generation.54
53 David Ehrenpreis compares such images with more avant-garde, sensual representations of
women of the same age in ‘The Figure of the Backfisch: Representing Puberty in Wilhelmine
Germany’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 67/4 (2004), pp. 479–508.
54 Karen M. Bottge’s examination of Schumann and Wolf’s settings of Mörike’s ‘Das verlassene
Mägdlein’ likewise recognises the influence of cultural changes on the depiction of women in
lieder. ‘“Das verlassene Mägdlein”: Grief Partaken’, 19th-Century Music 33/2 (Fall 2009), pp.
173–92.
11 Music inside the home and outside the box:
Brahms’s vocal quartets in context
katy hamilton
Between 1859 and 1891, Brahms composed and published seven opuses for
piano-accompanied four-part vocal ensemble – that is, for soprano, alto,
tenor, bass and either one or two pianists.
It is clear from Brahms’s discussion of these pieces with various corre-
spondents that he saw the vocal quartet as being ideally suited to domestic
performance. ‘I would like to believe’, he wrote to Max Abraham in 1891,
‘that (particularly domestic) quartet singing has been taken up again to
a not inconsiderable degree through my work in the medium.’1 Certainly
the success of the Liebeslieder Op. 52 in particular prompted much wider
interest in performing and composing for these forces, and this is particu-
larly striking given the scarcity of such piano-accompanied quartets prior
to Brahms’s own publications.2
However, despite Brahms’s advocacy, and a rise in popularity in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century, the vocal quartet was not a genre that was
to be sustained much beyond the early 1900s. Much of this music has since
become unfamiliar, because its primary performance space – the home – is
no longer the central hub of music-making that it once was. Consequently,
the vocal quartet occupies a rather curious position in modern performance
and scholarship. The ensemble required is conceptually familiar, but a rare
sight on the concert platform. Countless pieces have been composed for a
four-part mixed vocal group with accompaniment, but performances are
1 Letter of 2 October 1891 from Brahms to Max Abraham, Briefe XIV, p. 396. All translations in
this chapter are by the author. It was with this letter that Brahms enclosed the manuscript of the
final book of Quartette Op. 112, which was printed the following month.
2 The most important predecessors working in this medium were Franz Schubert (who
composed eleven piano-accompanied quartets: D168, D168a, D232, D439, D609, D642, D763,
D815, D826, D985 and D986) and Robert Schumann, whose three opuses Spanisches Liederspiel
Op. 74, Minnespiel Op. 101 and Spanische Liebeslieder Op. 138 all contain solo, duet and quartet
numbers. There are also nine quartets by Haydn (Hob XXVc) and three by Carl Loewe (Liebe
rauscht der Silberbach (1817), Der Abschied (1817), and Gesang der Geister über den Wassern Op.
88 (1840)). It does not appear that any other composers wrote secular domestic compositions
for this ensemble; most preferred to work with an unaccompanied vocal group or a smaller
number of singers with piano. For a more detailed discussion of Brahms’s predecessors in this
genre, see K. Hamilton, ‘The Vocal Quartets of Johannes Brahms: A Contextual Study’,
unpublished PhD thesis, Royal College of Music, London (2011), 2 vols. 279
280 katy hamilton
seldom given with four solo singers and piano. There are almost no pro-
fessional ensembles dedicated to perpetuating the repertoire, and to hire
performers for a one-off concert is expensive because of the number of
musicians required in comparison with the more usual solo or duet recital
(not to mention the additional rehearsal time required to master now unfa-
miliar repertoire). Meanwhile, biographers and other scholars seeking to
categorise Brahms’s oeuvre usually divide his vocal music into solo songs
and choral works – thus the quartets (and sometimes even the duets) tend
to slip between the cracks of established generic divisions.3
Finally, there is a further complication within the vocal quartet legacy.
Since the repertoire seems to have resided predominantly within the domes-
tic sphere, aimed primarily at a Hausmusik audience (participants and
auditors),4 there is evidence of a particularly broad range of different per-
formance approaches within Brahms’s lifetime. In the case of the Liebeslieder
Op. 52 – by far his most popular quartets – this includes not only ‘legiti-
mate’ arrangements by the composer himself, but also a range of ‘unofficial’
versions published for all manner of other vocal and instrumental combina-
tions, as well as alternative modes of performance that were never codified in
print.5 Thus, at the most fundamental level, determining the boundaries –
or, indeed, the possibilities – of what exactly a vocal quartet is, or could be, is
far from straightforward. This chapter involves a consideration of Brahms’s
3 Biographies of Brahms by John Fuller-Maitland, Hans Gál, Florence May and Siegfried
Kross – as well as essay collections such as M. Musgrave (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Brahms (Cambridge University Press, 1999) – either use the term ‘song’ to encapsulate solo lied,
duet and vocal quartets (usually with the effect that the quartets and duets are dealt with only
superficially for reasons of space), or attempt to merge the quartets into a consideration of
choral music, alongside such works as Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45 and Rinaldo Op. 50.
Notable exceptions to this rule are Malcolm MacDonald’s excellent biography (New York:
Schirmer, 1990); L. Botstein (ed.), The Compleat Brahms (London: W.W. Norton, 1999) which,
although not greatly detailed, does devote several pages to the quartets; and Lucien Stark’s
Brahms’s Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano: A Guide with Full Texts and Translations
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), which is specifically focused
on Brahms’s duets and quartets.
4 The fact that these pieces were written in a domestic idiom did not necessarily mean that they
were straightforward to perform: the first of the Zigeunerlieder has a particularly fiendish piano
accompaniment, and singers face particular challenges in ‘Warum?’ Op. 92 no. 4 and ‘Nächtens’
Op. 112 no. 2. However, in most of his quartet compositions, Brahms sought to provide
cues, doubling, accompanimental aids and other devices to help his performers with less
straightforward passages.
5 Unlike the majority of arrangements undertaken by Robert Keller, Theodor Kirchner and Paul
Klengel (as discussed in Chapter 8), there seems to be no surviving correspondence to suggest
that any of the versions made by arrangers other than Brahms himself were made with his
blessing, or at his suggestion.
Music inside the home and outside the box 281
Liebeslieder Op. 52 and Zigeunerlieder Op. 103, for which evidence of pub-
lication details, concert programmes and correspondence is used to trace
the multiple instantiations of these pieces, and how they were received by
contemporary composers, performers and audiences. Crucially, this might
provide an answer to the deceptively simple question: how, at the most
basic level, can the piano-accompanied vocal quartet be defined generically?
And what specific characteristics can we attribute to compositions of this
type?
Of course, there is a whole range of particulars to which a given musi-
cal genre might adhere: a pre-determined instrumentarium (e.g. the string
quartet); a privileged performance space (e.g. a sacred anthem); a musical
form (sonata form, perhaps); even social function (from processionals to
harvesting songs).6 But these particulars are neither universal nor eternal:
a work does not have to include every single characteristic within a pos-
sible list of defining features, and the conditions determining that a piece
belongs to a given genre are inevitably historically conditioned and evolve
over time. For musical genres that have been in operation for several cen-
turies (the symphony, string quartet, sonata etc.) this is self-evident: the
very longevity of such genres has also allowed some sense of a norm to
emerge in each case, which is then challenged and may be subtly altered
by proceeding generations. By contrast, the vocal quartet, with its rather
shorter lifespan (its history begins with the advent of the pianoforte, and
it was already waning in popularity by the second decade of the twentieth
century), lacks this sense of definition because the body of repertoire is far
smaller, and no such sense of a norm ever emerged. Its pedigree is one of
nineteenth-century domestic music-making, and, although more popular
compositions were also included in public concerts, the repertoire never
became sufficiently broad to establish the ensemble as a standard musi-
cal grouping (there were almost no professional vocal quartets to mirror
the existence of professional string quartets).7 Even within those piano-
accompanied vocal quartet opuses composed by Brahms, there is consid-
erable variation regarding the designation of the ensemble in print, and it
6 For a general overview of approaches to genre, see J. Samson, ‘Genre’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell
(eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 29 vols. (London: Macmillan, 2001),
vol. IX, p. 657.
7 The Swiss composer Hans Huber (1852–1921) ran his own vocal quartet in Basel, for which he
composed a significant amount of music, but this seems to be an extremely rare example. See
E. Isler, Hans Huber: Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft in Zürich. Neujahrsblatt 1923 (Zurich and
Leipzig: Hug, 1923), p. 21, and W. Labhart, ‘Hans Huber (1852–1921)’, in Hans Huber:
Chorwerke (Acanthus ACM 001). Booklet, pp. 3–6.
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is clear from his correspondence that the composer was more than aware
of the tendency of performers to scale the performance forces for the vocal
quartets up or down to suit the assembled company, as discussed below.
Finally, there is the question of arrangement. An opus like the Liebeslieder
Op. 52 was subject to numerous arrangements, and not only by Brahms.
Furthermore, it is clear from Brahms’s correspondence and editorial deci-
sions that he considered his own arrangements to exist in a particularly close
relationship to their original – even to the point of insisting upon a player’s
engagement with the primary version of a piece in order to gain access to an
arranged alternative, as we shall see below. How, then, can a distinct ‘autho-
rised version’ be separated from these closely related instantiations? And
how might such a strong family likeness be accounted for within a generic
definition?
To capture the multivalent nature of the vocal quartet as a musical genre,
a much more fluid approach is needed. Jeffrey Kallberg’s ‘generic con-
tract’ provides a persuasive model here – an approach intended to put
‘“communication” rather than “classification”’8 at the centre of under-
standing what a given genre actually is. Kallberg summarises his contract as
follows:
the composer agrees to use some of the conventions, patterns, and gestures of a
genre, and the listener consents to interpret some aspects of the piece in a way
conditioned by this genre. The contract may be signaled to the listener in a number
of ways: title, meter, tempo, and characteristic opening gestures are some of the
common means. The contract may include notions of what cannot appear in a
genre as well; such constraints can tell us a great deal about what is permissible in a
genre.9
We might usefully replace the word ‘listener’ here with the more general
‘audience’ – which in this case must include performers as well as auditors.
Given the popularity of a set such as the Liebeslieder, the audience in question
included not only those who had the opportunity to hear the works in
concert, but the numerous music-lovers who purchased the score to sing
and play for their own pleasure in private, or in the company of friends and
family. And this in turn calls for a consideration of closely related alternative
instantiations, whether printed or simply improvised in performance. Thus
an application of Kallberg’s contract provides a means of acknowledging
the reception history of a piece (including multiple instantiations) within
8 J. Kallberg, ‘The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin’s Nocturne in G Minor’, 19th-Century Music 11/3
(Spring 1988), p. 239.
9 Ibid., p. 243.
a consideration of generic identification. By way of example, let us now

consider the Liebeslieder Op. 52 in more detail.
Liebeslieder Op. 52
In the summer of 1869, whilst Brahms was in Baden Baden, he completed

a group of short compositions for four voices and piano duet.10 At least
nineteen such pieces were written between June and August, and four
months later a set of eighteen appeared in print. Taking Robert Schumann’s
Spanische Liebeslieder Op. 138 as their model, Brahms’s Liebeslieder Op. 52
consist of eighteen short numbers for solo, duet and quartet with piano
duet accompaniment. The poetic texts are drawn from Georg Friedrich
Daumer’s collection Polydora, ein Weltpoetisches Liederbuch (1855), which
includes German translations of folk poetry from Russia, Poland,
Hungary and many other countries besides. These predominantly sim-
ple, often rather light-hearted poems are set by Brahms as a succession of
waltzes, and it is clear from the brevity of individual numbers and the overall
tonal progression of the collection that they were intended for performance
as a complete (or partial) set.
Brahms’s enthusiasm for these new creations is evident in the extraordi-
narily short turnaround between composition and publication – a rare and
unusual thing for a man so deeply concerned with perfecting works before
making them publicly available. The volume appeared in print in October
1869, and on 5 October Brahms wrote to his publisher, Fritz Simrock, ‘I
would like to admit that for the first time I smiled at the sight of a printed
work – by me! I’d like to risk being called an ass, by the way, if our Liebeslieder
don’t make a few friends.’11
The title page of this new opus can be seen in Figure 11.1. It is made
abundantly clear through the hierarchy of information given here that the
vocal parts are the least important facet of Brahms’s music – it is the pianists
who dominate the page. Furthermore, not only are the voices apparently
secondary and optional; they also appear to be without number, and there
is no attempt to specify soloists or chorus. Indeed, one might be forgiven
for thinking that the Liebeslieder are not in fact vocal quartets at all.
Brahms’s correspondence with Simrock sheds some light on this rather
odd performative designation, and on many other practical issues to do
10 See Werkverzeichnis, pp. 215–17.

11 Letter of [5 October 1869] to Fritz Simrock, Briefe IX, p. 85.
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Figure 11.1. Title page of Liebeslieder Op. 52, first edition (1869). Brahms-Institut,
Lübeck.
with the publication of the opus. The ordering of individual numbers is

discussed on several occasions, as is the possibility of breaking the set into
two or three volumes; clear score formatting and even the question of page
turns are also raised in these letters.12 But it is the dilemma of the title
12 Brahms’s letter to Simrock of 28 August 1869 (Briefe IX, pp. 76–7) discusses the division of the
Liebeslieder into two or three volumes. In this same letter, Brahms wrote that ‘The score should
be printed as it is written [in the manuscript]: the vocal parts small, so that the two [piano]
page that evidently occupied Brahms the most. On 28 August 1869, the day
that he sent the Stichvorlage (‘engraver’s copy’) to Simrock, he wrote to his
publisher:
Would you rather have ‘Waltzes’ for pianoforte four hands and in parentheses (with
voices) or (and voices ad lib.)?
Or do you think that it would suffice if, when you place the advertisements, you say
that they could also be enjoyed without the voices?13
Three days later, he wrote quite categorically that:
The Walzes must appear just as they are. I thought portrait format, the piano under
the voices as in my score – but above all, only the score. Anyone who wants to play
without the voices must first of all play from the score.
Under no circumstances should they be printed in the first instance without vocal
parts. People must see them just so. And hopefully this is a Hausmusik piece and
will be sung a great deal very quickly. If 2 or 1 years is too long for you, we could
publish the piece without voices, just for four-hand piano, over the course of the
winter.14
It seems, then, that the piece as it first appeared in print – title page and
all – was designed to push forward two apparently conflicting agendas.
On the one hand, Brahms wanted to acknowledge a performative flexibil-
ity within the Liebeslieder: that they might be performed with or without
singers. On the other, his determination only to issue the full score, with
vocal parts, on the work’s first appearance, makes it clear that despite the
implication of the title designation, he wanted to ensure that all musicians
performing the Liebeslieder realised that the singers were a fundamental part
of his conception of the work.
This slightly clumsy approach to designation was to cause Brahms some
difficulty in the next few years. Among the early publication reviews, there is
a clear division between those who interpreted the title page as an indication
of Brahms’s predominantly instrumental approach to writing the set, and
those who felt a piano-only rendition to be less successful. The reviewer of
Signale für die musikalische Welt observed that ‘the fact that the voices should
be “ad libitum” seems questionable. Without voices, the waltzes may, when
players are able to find their parts easily.’ See Briefe IX, pp. 77–84, for further discussion of this
subject in reference to Op. 52. In his letter to Simrock of [31 August 1869], Brahms remarked
how the size of the score printing would affect the number of page turns, and clearly wished to
ensure that these were not too numerous (p. 81).
13 Letter of 28 August 1869 to Simrock, Briefe IX, p. 76.
14 Letter of [31 August 1869] to Simrock, Briefe IX, pp. 80–1.
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considered as piano pieces, be less effective.’15 But Hermann Deiters, in his

lengthy appraisal of the opus for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, came
to the opposite conclusion:
This looseness of the connections between song and musical content, which is,
in itself, already a complete entity in its instrumental form, has been indicated
by Brahms by marking the addition of the voice part ad libitum . . . In that he
has composed pieces for instrument and voices together, but with the latter, as
independently and expressively as he has handled them, still only being regarded
as ad libitum: he has said clearly enough that to him, as an articulation of his
artistic intention, the instrument completely suffices to evoke the form and excite
the emotions; that to him, it wholly says everything that he wishes to say; that for a
complete materialisation of the artistic idea, the addition of the voices throughout
is not essential.16
In addition to the dilemma of whether or not there should be singers at

all, is the question of how many should be involved if a vocal rendition
were to be given. In publishing his first opus of vocal quartets, Op. 31
in 1864, Brahms had defined the required forces quite specifically: ‘vier
Solostimmen (Sopran, Alt, Tenor und Bass)’ (‘four solo voices (soprano,
alto, tenor and bass)’) (Table 11.1). But for the Liebeslieder, he simply
referred to ‘Gesang’ – a term that could embrace four singers or forty.
Evidently Brahms vacillated between being in favour of, and categorically
against, choral renditions of the set. At the time of organising publication, he
had remarked to Simrock that ‘some [numbers] would also be well-suited for
performance by small choir and orchestra as graceful concert numbers’. For
the time being though, it should not be ‘Chor-Gesang’ (choral voices), but
rather just ‘Gesang’ (voices).17 Five years later, as he went about preparing
his next set of Quartette Op. 64 to be published by Peters, he mentioned to
Max Abraham how suitable these new pieces might be for performance by a
small choir; but on being sent a title page in proof with the joint designation
‘für vier Solostimmen oder kleinen Chor’ (‘for four solo voices or small
choir’), Brahms replied:
15 Publication review by ‘A. H.’, ‘Liebeslieder: Walzer für das Pianoforte zu vier Händen und
Gesang ad libitum componirt von Johannes Brahms op. 52’, Signale für die musikalische Welt
28/16 (10 March 1870), p. 243. The reviewer goes on to say that ‘when considered as piano
pieces’, the Liebeslieder may ‘be less effective, although they are also just fine for playing on
their own terms’. This suggests that they must be understood to be incomplete pieces if
rendered for piano alone, although in spite of this handicap, they are still satisfying to play
(the pianists can at least imagine the vocal parts from the score in front of them).
16 H. D[eiters], ‘Anzeigen und Beurtheilungen’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 5/21 (25 May
1870), pp. 163–4.
17 Letter of [31 August 1869] to Simrock, Briefe IX, p. 81.
Table 11.1. Brahms’s compositions for vocal quartet, 1859–91.
Date of
Title (number of pieces)a Date of compositionb publication
Drei Quartette für vier Solostimmen (Sopran, Alt, November 1859 and July 1864
Tenor und Bass) mit Pianoforte, Op. 31 (3) December 1863
Liebeslieder: Walzer für das Pianoforte zu vier June–August 1869 October 1869
Händen (und Gesang ad libitum), Op. 52 (18)
Quartette für vier Solostimmen mit Pianoforte, Summer 1864?, 18 July November 1874
Op. 64 (3) 1874, early 1874?
Neue Liebeslieder: Walzer für vier Singstimmen 1869 and 1874 September 1875
und Pianoforte zu vier Händen, Op. 65 (15)
Quartette für Sopran, Alt, Tenor und Bass mit Summer? 1877–July 1884 December 1884
Pianoforte, Op. 92 (4)
Zigeunerlieder für vier Singstimmen (Sopran, Alt, December 1887?–February? October 1888
Tenor und Bass) mit Begleitung des Pianoforte, 1888
Op. 103 (11)
Sechs Quartette für Sopran, Alt, Tenor, Bass mit May–June 1891? November 1891
Pianoforte, Op. 112 (6)
a
The titles given here are given as they appeared in the first editions of each quartet opus. See Werkver-
zeichnis, pp. 103, 218, 275, 279, 379, 420 and 450, and K. Hofmann, Die Erstdrucke der Werke von
Johannes Brahms (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1975), pp. 64, 108, 136, 138, 194, 218 and 236.
b
Precise dates of composition are often uncertain; for further discussion, see Werkverzeichnis,
pp. 102, 215, 273, 278, 378, 418 and 449; and the ‘Einleitung’ to JBG, Series VI, vol. 2: Mehrstim-
mige Gesangswerke mit Klavier oder Orgel: Chorwerke und Vokalquartette Band II, ed. B. Wiechert
(Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2008).
The revisions of the Lieder arrived back here today, and I would now like to make
the urgent plea, that you take away the mention of ‘small choir’ from the title of the
Quartette!
When I wrote that, what I meant was: that we might – silently – like to take into
consideration the current bad habit that all people, with a greater or lesser lack of
taste, would rather play music in ways other than that which the composer wrote.
Thus they require no encouragement to sing ‘Der Abend’ [Op. 64 no. 2] and
‘3 Fragenden’ [‘Fragen’ Op. 64 no. 3] and finally ‘Heimat’ [Op. 64 no. 1] with a
small choir. As, for example, my Liebeslieder have been performed with a choir and
even with orchestra!
I mean, then, that we may be obliging enough to such a hobby if we issue the
quartets individually and provide the parts a little afterwards.18
18 Letter of [15] October 1874 to Max Abraham, Briefe XIV, p. 234. In the event, the parts were
issued at the same time as the full score, in November 1874.
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This comically long-suffering summary of the blithe disregard performers

displayed for carefully calculated performance designations is telling in two
ways. Firstly, it makes quite clear the fact that all composers writing for the
amateur market had to accept that a printed score would quite probably be
treated simply as a loose suggestion for performance. By ensuring that no
mention was made of choral performance on the title page of the Quartette
Op. 64, Brahms was not able to prevent such interpretations occurring
(indeed, it sounds as if he might have welcomed a sensitive performance by
a relatively small group of singers), but he did at least distance himself by
not condoning them in black and white.
Secondly, this outburst dates from 1874 – the same year in which he made
his next move to clarify the nature of the Liebeslieder, by issuing a second
version of the piece. In December 1874, the Liebeslieder Op. 52a for four-
hand piano appeared in print (rather later than he had promised Simrock
back in 1869). This new score included some small alterations to the piano
writing of the original, in order to put back melodies that are lacking when
voices are not involved, and, in one case, a highly ornamented version of a
missing vocal melody is provided for the primo player – an adjustment that
is idiomatic for the keyboard but entirely unsuitable for a singer.19 At last,
those who wished simply to play the duet parts could do so without having
to purchase the vocal score. Yet Brahms still wanted pianists to be aware of
the original manifestation of the opus, and he therefore insisted that the text
of each song be printed above the duet score at the head of each number.
The title page in this instance read:
Walzer
für das
Pianoforte zu vier Händen
nach den Liebesliedern op. 5220
Thus Brahms succeeded in both providing an alternative version, and

yet spelling out, on the front page and at the start of each piece, the
vocal origins of the work. The fallout from the initial ‘Gesang ad libitum’
19 This appears in the second half of the seventh number, ‘Wohl schön bewandt’. See J. Brahms,
Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 52a: Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 65a, ed. M. Musgrave (London and
New York: Edition Peters, 1988).
20 See Werkverzeichnis, p. 219, and K. Hofmann, Die Erstdrucke der Werke von Johannes Brahms
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1975), p. 110.
marking in 1869 had evidently made him rather more cautious about how
to present his music, and this might explain why he was so dismissive of
Abraham’s suggested alternative performance designation for Op. 64. He
had seen the critical and performative misunderstandings and (as far as
he was concerned) wholly inappropriate interpretations created by pro-
viding too much room for manoeuvre. He now sought to draw a clear
division between the piece as a finalised, printed product and testament to
his intentions, and the treatment of this printed product as a template for
performances by ‘all people, with a greater or lesser lack of taste’. It is no
doubt for this reason that, upon issuing the Neue Liebeslieder Op. 65 for
the same forces in 1875, the title page announced, rather more straightfor-
wardly, that the pieces were ‘Walzer für vier Singstimmen und Pianoforte
zu vier Händen’ (‘Waltzes for four voices and piano duet’).
Despite the frustrations of bringing the Liebeslieder to the public,
Brahms’s wish that the set might be taken up as a popular piece of Haus-
musik was more than fulfilled, and the set proved extremely popular both
in the domestic arena and in public concerts. Performances were given all
over Germany (in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hanover, Leipzig, Düsseldorf and
a number of other towns and cities) as well as in Vienna, Basel and Lon-
don, and reviews were almost universally positive. Many significant musi-
cians were to participate in these performances, with Brahms himself, Clara
Schumann (1819–96), Hermann Levi (1839–1900), Hans Richter (1843–
1916) and Carl Reinecke (1824–1910) among the pianists, and singers such
as Amalie Joachim (1839–99), Gustav Walter (1834–1910), Julius Stock-
hausen (1826–1906) and Louise Dustmann (1831–99).21 Such popular-
ity as a concert item was a new phenomenon for this kind of repertoire,
which required a rather rare grouping of solo singers and instrumentalists.
Brahms’s biographer Max Kalbeck remarked that the ensemble – and the
device of sung waltzes – was sufficiently unusual that these concert rendi-
tions provided a valuable means of promoting the work and helping it to gain
popularity with would-be amateur performers.22 And it seems that Brahms
was never again to have such an extraordinary success with his subsequent
vocal quartets in terms of the sheer number of public performances.
21 A complete list of these performances (which took place between 1869 and 1893), including
information regarding performers, venues and reviews, can be found in Hamilton, ‘The Vocal
Quartets’, vol. II, pp. 1–10.
22 ‘The public had to be educated’, Kalbeck reported (evidently taking a rather dim view of the
musical awareness of Brahms’s audiences!), ‘even for these comprehensible, fiery-footed lyrics,
floating on the rhythm of the waltz. Their way into the home led first through the concert hall.’
See Briefe IX, p. 80, n. 2.
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Table 11.2. Arrangements of the Liebeslieder Op. 52, 1875–89.
Date of
Forces Arranger publication
For piano, flute and violin (or piano and Friedrich Hermann 1875
two flutes)
For piano and violin Friedrich Hermann 1875
For piano and flute [published in two Friedrich Hermann 1875
volumes]
For piano duet with violin and cello Friedrich Hermann 1875
For six hands [published in two volumes] Robert Keller 1877
For two violins Friedrich Hermann 1878
For piano solo Theodor Kirchner 1881
For string quintet or string orchestra Friedrich Hermann 1889
If the quantity and success of performances is an indication of the triumph

of the Liebeslieder as a concert work, we can judge its popularity with
amateur musicians by the number of arrangements, for various vocal and
instrumental forces, which began to appear from 1875. These are listed in
Table 11.2.
Since these arrangements – all issued by Simrock, the publisher of the
initial opus – did not begin to appear until after the publication of Op.
52a in late 1874, it seems likely that Brahms only gave permission for such
alternative versions to be issued now that his own second score was in print,
and a sufficient amount of time had elapsed since Op. 52 had appeared
in its original form. This time-lapse also applied to another version that
he produced himself, for voices and piano solo, which appeared without
a separate opus number in the spring of 1875.23 Finally, there remained
one further arrangement by Brahms which was not published until long
after his death: namely, a version for voices and chamber orchestra. This
arrangement, produced in 1869 at the request of Ernst Rudorff (1840–
1916), a piano professor and conductor working at the Berliner Hochschule,
consisted of a suite of nine Liebeslieder, one of which was not to appear
in its voice and piano manifestation until the publication of Op. 65.24
The suite received its first – and probably only – performance during the
23 See Werkverzeichnis, p. 219.

24 This was ‘Nagen am Herzen’, later Op. 65 no. 9, which appeared as the sixth item. The
complete ordering of the suite is as follows: Op. 52 nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 5, Op. 65 no. 9, Op. 52 nos.
11, 8 and 9. The accompaniment was arranged for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, two
violins, viola, cello and double-bass.
composer’s lifetime on 19 March 1870 in Berlin.25 The concert featured

four soloists with chamber orchestra; it seems that Brahms changed his
mind regarding the vocal forces that should be used in performance for the
suite, and decided that solo voices, rather than a small choir, would be most
effective.26 The performance seems to have been well received, but, despite
Rudorff’s enthusiasm for the arrangement (and his suggestion that Brahms
go a step further and produce a version of these pieces for orchestra only),
Brahms refused to have it published, and would not even consider a purely
instrumental arrangement.27
Once again, there is a clear sense here that Brahms was seeking to retain
some kind of control over his music. All subsidiary arrangements by others
were postponed until he deemed it appropriate to have them published,
and there were clearly some versions of the Liebeslieder – in this case, a
larger-scale version that took the opus beyond the confines of the domestic
sphere – that he simply was not prepared to authorise as suitable for pub-
lication. Within the limitations of his ability to manage the multiple man-
ifestations of the work, he evidently decided, after the initial confusion of
1869, to regulate further means of dissemination as far as possible.
The Liebeslieder Op. 52 were Brahms’s most successful set of piano-
accompanied vocal quartets, and in addition to their numerous printed
versions they quickly became a firm favourite of singers working in small
and large ensembles – as we can infer from several concert programmes
featuring choral renditions, as well as Brahms’s rather grumpy remark to
Abraham regarding performances by choirs. What seems curious, however,
is that at least two such choral performances involved close friends of Brahms
himself: a concert of the Hamburger Cäcilienverein on 15 May 1893, in
which Brahms’s composition pupil Gustav Jenner was involved, and on
10 October 1875, a Düsseldorf performance for which Clara Schumann
played, given by a ‘vierfaches Quartett’ (‘quadruple quartet’) in which it
seems that four singers were assigned to each part.28
25 This performance featured Anna von Asten, Amalie Joachim, Herr Borchardt and Herr Putsch
with players of the Berliner Hochschule, conducted by Ernst Rudorff. The concert was given
in the Singakademie in Berlin, and was reviewed in Signale für die musikalische Welt 28/21
(28 March 1870), p. 324. It seems that the extent of Brahms’s involvement in this project was
not altogether clear to the reviewer, who remarked: ‘Whether Brahms himself undertook the
orchestration is not known to us.’
26 Brahms specifies solo singers in his letter to Rudorff, postmarked 2 February 1870. See Briefe
III, pp. 159–60.
27 See letter of 20 March 1870 from Rudorff to Brahms, Briefe III, pp. 161–3, for his suggestion
that an orchestral version might be desirable. For further details, see Werkzeichnis, p. 215. The
score was finally published by Peters in 1938.
28 A choral performance of eight numbers from Op. 52 was given by the Hamburger
Cäcilienverein on 15 May 1893 as part of a private concert at the Conventgarden, Hamburg
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Meanwhile, the popularity of Op. 52 also prompted many of Brahms’s

friends and contemporaries to try their hands at writing similar sets, no
doubt prompted by the musical (and financial) potential that the accom-
panied quartet evidently possessed. Thus we find similar compositions in
the worklists of numerous members of the Brahms circle – such as Hein-
rich von Herzogenberg (1843–1900) and Georg Henschel (1850–1934) –
as well as lesser-known figures such as Hans Huber (1852–1921), Rudolf
Weinwurm (1835–1911), Thomas Koschat (1845–1914) and Albert Quinche
(1867–1944). In many cases, these composers were much more willing than
Brahms explicitly to endorse varied versions of their compositions in print,
often issuing multiple scores for female, male and mixed voice ensembles,
or for small or large vocal groups. For example, the choral director and
singing pedagogue Rudolph Weinwurm published his Toscanische Lieder
Op. 23 in versions for male chorus and piano, male chorus and piano duet,
and mixed chorus and piano; the solo and duet numbers were also extracted
for individual publication.29 And one of the most extreme cases is surely
the Drau-Walzer Op. 15b by the singer Thomas Koschat, which appeared in
at least nine different arrangements between 1874 and 1900 (Table 11.3).30
Such examples of pieces for which multiple arrangements were issued
can of course be interpreted either as a wish on the part of the composer
to be democratic in making works available, or simply as a canny business
move to maximise profit from a single opus. Since the arranger’s name is not
always given, it is particularly difficult to determine just how many versions
were created by the composer himself, and how many commissioned by
the publishing house with permission – grudging or otherwise – from the
creator of the original piece. However, we are able, in the case of Brahms’s
Liebeslieder, to distinguish clearly which versions he created himself, and
thus also to trace his thoughts and reactions to various ‘unauthorised’
arrangements via his correspondence. It seems quite clear that he took
(original programme held by the Brahms-Institut, Lübeck). The ‘vierfaches Quartett’ offered a
selection of numbers from the opus on 10 October 1875 in the Städtliche Tonhalle, Düsseldorf,
by members of the Bach-Verein (original programme held by the Robert-Schumann-Haus,
Zwickau, 10463, 1100-C3).
29 These versions are listed in the Hofmeister Monatsberichte in December 1873 and March
1878. For more information regarding the composer, see C. Fastl, ‘Weinwurm, Rudolph’, in
L. Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 2, revised edn, 27 vols. (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1994–2008), Personenteil vol. XVII, col. 706.
30 The information listed here is taken from Hofmeister’s Monatsberichte. For more information
regarding Koschat, see O. Schmid, Thomas Koschat, der Sänger des Kärntner Volkslieds: Eine
Biographie (Leipzig: M. Hesse, 1887). The Drau-Walzer was neither his most popular nor most
frequently arranged composition!
Table 11.3. Arrangements of Thomas Koschat’s Drau-Walzer Op. 15b,

1874–1900.
Date of
Forces publication
Four male voices and piano 1874

Violin and piano 1879
Piano duet 1879
Piano ‘mit Gesang ad lib.’ 1879
Zither and voices ad lib. 1880
Mixed chorus and piano 1883
Solo voice and piano 1885
Two voices and piano 1889
Three-part female chorus or three solo female voices with piano 1900
a particularly strict approach to this Hausmusik composition, resolving

to keep the Liebeslieder firmly within the boundaries of chamber music
(Hermann’s string orchestra version – itself originally for quintet – is the
only printed alternative which might not fit in a domestic space). But more
than this, he also continually reminded his performing audience, in the
arrangements he created himself, of the first-published version of the piece;
either through the inclusion of identical material for identical instruments,
or by printing the text of the songs above his only entirely instrumental
arrangement. Thus the Liebeslieder teeter on the brink between infinite
performative flexibility and a sense of Werktreue (‘faithfulness to the work’)
that seems particularly unusual for a piece aimed at a Hausmusik audience.31
The skill with which Brahms has written the opus puts it in the position of
being ‘high-art’ entertainment music, and his attitude to its dissemination
mirrors this apparent contradiction.
Zigeunerlieder Op. 103
Almost twenty years after the appearance of Op. 52 in print, Brahms pub-
lished a collection of eleven Zigeunerlieder for four voices and solo piano
31 For a detailed investigation of the notion of Werktreue, see L. Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of
Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 277–8.
Goehr also goes into some depth about the standard practice of conflating the notion of being
true to music and the distinct notion of being true to the work – she maintains that these are
separate things. Ibid., pp. 282–5.
294 katy hamilton
Figure 11.2. Title page of the Zigeunerlieder Op. 103, first edition (1888).
accompaniment, in October 1888.32 This time the title page is rather less
ambiguous (Figure 11.2).
Now the singers are clearly the focus of the piece, with piano explicitly
providing ‘Begleitung’ (‘accompaniment’), and each piece features all four
vocalists with a single pianist. Yet many of the fundamental principles of the
32 See Werkverzeichnis, pp. 418–20.

work’s construction are reminiscent of the Liebeslieder: a single text source,

in this case Hugo Conrat’s Ungarische Liebeslieder (1887); a stylistic conceit
to unite the musical settings, this time in a zigeunerisch (‘gypsy’) idiom
reminiscent of the Ungarische Tänze WoO 1; and a sense of tonal continuity
across many of the constituent pieces.33 And, with typical irony, Brahms
remarked to Simrock in June 1888 that ‘The Zigeunerlieder are exactly like
the Liebeslieder – only much worse!’34
There is no piano-only arrangement of the Zigeunerlieder by Brahms,
but rather a version of eight of the eleven quartets for solo voice with
piano.35 As with the Liebeslieder duet versions, Brahms requested a delay
between the publication of the original and the solo-voice version, this
time arguing that the simultaneous appearance of both ‘would be to the
detriment of the quartets: they look so pitiful that no one would want the
original’.36 Accordingly, the solo songs were published in April 1889, six
months after the appearance of the quartets – but with no distinguishing
opus number, unlike the Liebeslieder duet arrangement. It is significant
that Brahms did not decide to arrange all of the Zigeunerlieder for a single
singer, and the pieces that are omitted from his arrangement are those
in which he clearly considered the alternation of soloist and ensemble, or
particular contrapuntal effects within the four-part vocal texture, to be too
fundamental to the piece to render them effective as solos. There is thus
a gap in the running order of the solo book (the eighth, ninth and tenth
quartets are omitted), which inevitably alters the impact of the opus in
complete performance.
It would seem that Brahms’s concerns regarding the relative success of
each version were justified; indeed, the solo songs remain a popular concert
item to this day, whilst the quartets are far less familiar.37 There was no
obvious attempt made by Brahms’s contemporaries to imitate the Zig-
eunerlieder as they had the Liebeslieder.38 And whilst there were a number
33 For a detailed explanation of the tonal trajectories and internal references of the Liebeslieder
Op. 52 and Zigeunerlieder Op. 103, see Hamilton, ‘The Vocal Quartets’, vol. I, pp. 196–7 and
221–9.
34 Letter of [13 June 1888] to Fritz Simrock, Briefe XI, p. 190.
35 For details of the publication of this solo vocal version, see Werkverzeichnis, pp. 419–20.
36 Letter of [5 June 1888] to Simrock, Briefe XI, pp. 185–6.
37 Even a brief examination of the performances at a single venue enforce this differentiation:
within the first decade of opening, the Wigmore Hall’s schedule included ten performances of
the solo-voice Zigeunerlieder (mostly complete) and only two quartet performances.
38 Hofmeister’s Monatsberichte lists just two pieces for SATB and piano which include the word
‘Zigeuner’ in their title between 1888 and 1900. By contrast, there were at least twenty pieces
drawing on the title, waltz designation and duet accompaniment models of the Liebeslieder
within an equivalent time period, and many, many more up to the end of the century.
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Table 11.4. Brahms’s versions of the Liebeslieder Op. 52 and the

Zigeunerlieder Op. 103.
Liebeslieder Op. 52 Zigeunerlieder Op. 103
Piano duet (‘und Gesang ad libitum’) Four voices and piano Op. 103
Op. 52 Solo voice and piano [no opus number]
Piano duet Op. 52a
Four voices and piano solo [no opus
number]
Suite for four voices and chamber
orchestra [no opus number; not
published during Brahms’s lifetime]
of performances of the Zigeunerlieder in the late 1880s, they are nowhere

near as numerous as the Liebeslieder performances had been.39 The only
two subsequent arrangements of the set to be issued were piano duet and
piano solo versions by Theodor Kirchner, in 1888.40
To put the Liebeslieder Op. 52 and the Zigeunerlieder side by side, not
only in their first-published formats but in Brahms’s subsequent arrange-
ments of each, produces a rather extraordinary variety of instantiations
(Table 11.4).
Between the two pieces, there are printed versions for four voices with
piano duet, four voices with solo piano, four voices and chamber orchestra,
solo voice and solo piano, and piano duet only. The printed designation
for the Liebeslieder hints at the potential for choral performance; there are
also reports of renditions including a choir, with piano or with orchestra.
And this does not even include any of the other printed manifestations in
arrangements by Brahms’s contemporaries.
How, then, might these instantiations be meaningfully captured within
the sense of what, generically speaking, a vocal quartet is and can be? To
return to Kallberg’s generic contract, the notion of ‘“communication” rather
than “classification”’ seems crucial in this instance. In general terms, the
contract might outline a piece with four singers and piano accompaniment;
39 Between March 1888 and January 1889, there were at least nine performances of the
Zigeunerlieder in Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin. Four of these were given within private homes.
These are the only performances of the Zigeunerlieder known to have taken place during
Brahms’s lifetime, in comparison with at least twenty-five complete or partial performances of
the Liebeslieder. See Hamilton, ‘The Vocal Quartets’, vol. II, pp. 1–10.
40 These are listed in the Hofmeister Monatsberichte in November 1888. See also Werkverzeichnis,
p. 420.
and the majority of accompanied vocal quartets by Brahms, his contem-

poraries and predecessors seem designed at some level for performance by
amateur musicians in the domestic sphere. Beyond these particulars lie a
series of possible options: how many pianists, what kinds of poetry, and
so on, which vary from piece to piece. In terms of ‘what is permissible’ (as
Kallberg puts it) within the confines of the genre, Brahms himself shifted
the goalposts between scaled-up choral performances being appropriate
or not; nevertheless, generally speaking it seems as if the potential for any
instantiation to be domestic remained important to him, even if the pieces
were also given in public concerts.
In terms of the printed medium, it seems that in Brahms’s own arrange-
ments of his quartets the ‘original’ is always present in a way that makes
it far harder to distance the new instantiation from its source. This might
be due to only a small element of the instrumentarium changing, or to the
inclusion of song texts, or a straightforward reference on the title page to
the first-published version. There was, in other words, a sense of determi-
nation on Brahms’s part that his first thoughts on the piece must not be
forgotten, even if he also sought to acknowledge and indeed advocate the
rearrangement of his works in the name of Hausmusik and the enjoyment
of participatory music-making. His nod in the direction of Werktreue was
tempered by his experience as a pragmatic musician, and a highly skilled
craftsman of idiomatic material for singers and pianists. These arrange-
ments thus inform our understanding of that ‘original’ version, and the
extent to which the contract may be stretched or manipulated before it
breaks.
Regarding the arrangements of others: Brahms would probably not have
been powerless to maintain some kind of control over what was issued
and for which forces; however, there is no doubt that the versions by
Hermann, Keller and Kirchner listed in Table 11.2 push the Liebeslieder
into new musical contexts. And there is no sign of the poetic texts at the
heading of the solo piano score, or the first violin part of the Hermann
quintet arrangement (this is also true of the piano-only versions of the Zig-
eunerlieder). These versions are thus further removed from the publication
of the initial piece, and are thus tangential to, rather than an element of,
its generic make-up. The question of multiple variant versions has been
addressed in some detail by Thomas Christensen in his work on piano duet
arrangements of symphonic and chamber repertoire.41 Christensen
41 See T. Christensen, ‘Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century

Musical Reception’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 52/2 (Summer 1999),
pp. 255–98.
298 katy hamilton
observes that an arrangement, through changing the primary performance

location and by extension the cultural and social context of the repertoire,
destabilises the generic contract.42 New audiences – playing and listening –
are able to participate in the music, and thus new paths of communica-
tion are forged back to the composer. If Brahms really did have a hand in
controlling what other arrangements of his quartets were issued, it might
explain why there is no similarly seismic shift in the location or context of
the Liebeslieder as there might be in the duet arrangement of a Beethoven
symphony. In fact, the greatest de-stabiliser of the vocal quartets is not the
printed arrangements, but the one approach to the repertoire that was never
codified in print: choral rendition. It is through choral performance that
the music could be brought to different audiences in Brahms’s own time;
following the decline of Hausmusik in the twentieth century, it is through
choral performance that this repertoire has, for the most part, survived. It
is a testament to the enduring popularity and success of the Liebeslieder Op.
52 that it is one of the very few vocal quartets that is still relatively frequently
performed with just four singers, but for every recording of the opus with
a quartet there is at least one featuring a choir.43
It seems that Brahms’s understanding of the power of classification – in
this case through performance designations – grew as he matured. Following
the insistence on solo voices in the publication of the Quartette Opp. 31 and
64, and the mixed messages of ‘Gesang ad libitum’ for Op. 52, his later vocal
quartets were all given designations that hint at, rather than demand, four
solo singers only (see Table 11.1, above). This seems to mark a growing
acceptance of amateur performance practice and the extraordinary ease
with which vocal repertoire, above all kinds of music, could be varied
to incorporate as many singers as were present on a given occasion. This
perhaps explains those two choral performances of the Liebeslieder involving
his close colleagues; it seems rather unlikely that either Jenner or Clara
Schumann would have performed the pieces in such a way if they knew that
Brahms himself would consider it inappropriate.
The piano-accompanied vocal quartet can thus be understood not as a
neatly packaged set of generic instructions, but rather in terms of a web of
communication between the composer and a host of different performers
and performance spaces – a reflection, in other words, of the composer’s wish
to balance artistic aspirations with practical and commercial considerations.
Were it not for the innate flexibility of the repertoire, and its suitability for
choral as well as solo-voice performance, modern audiences would probably
42 Ibid., pp. 281–2. 43 See Hamilton, ‘The Vocal Quartets’, vol. II, pp. 146–53.
be far less familiar with it, despite the status of its composer. For that reason,
auditors and participants may be quite grateful that during Brahms’s own
lifetime, and right up to the present day, musicians continue to perform
his pieces, now and again, ‘in ways other than that which the composer
wrote’.
12 The limits of the lied: Brahms’s
Magelone-Romanzen Op. 33
natasha loges
Singing in private circles
What does the praise of crowds mean to me? I enjoy it more when I sing
within my own four walls, and two or three dear friends take pleasure in
it.1
(Letter from Amalie Joachim to Bernhard Scholz, 20 April 1863)
Within Brahms’s circle, there are many accounts of performances of

instrumental chamber works in private homes, and such memories were
often captured because they involved exceptionally able, often professional,
performers.2 The banker and amateur pianist Rudolf von der Leyen (1851–
1910) recalled with pride that when Brahms visited him in Krefeld during
the 1880s, the players were of such a high standard that ‘the first time Brahms
played in our home (I think he played his A-major Quartet), after the first
movement, he said in astonishment: “Heavens, one really has to concentrate
and play well here.”’3 Many such performances were also significant events
in the hosts’ social calendars. In contrast, the private performance of song
presented a more diverse picture and is less frequently accorded comparable
significance. Singing was far less consistently professionalised and embraced
an enormous variety of styles, technical demands and aesthetic meanings,
within forms ranging from a single unaccompanied line to many pages. For
a song composer as prolific as Brahms, this raises a number of questions:
how did he negotiate this range? What technical and aesthetic expectations
might he have held, both inside and outside his circle? And how might he
1 B. Scholz, Verklungene Weisen (Mainz: J. Scholz, 1911), p. 175. All quotations have been
translated by the author unless otherwise indicated.
2 See for example E. Schumann, Memoirs of Eugenie Schumann (New York: Dial Press, 1927),
pp. 104–5, in which she lists the people who made music in her mother’s home in Baden Baden,
including the Florentine Quartet, Rubinstein, Joachim, Stockhausen, Brahms, Levi and Pauline
Viardot-Garcia.
3 R. von der Leyen, Johannes Brahms als Mensch und Freund: Nach persönlichen Erinnerungen
(Düsseldorf: Langewiesche, 1905), p. 24. Von der Leyen’s memoirs contain numerous accounts,
particularly of Brahms’s visits to Krefeld in the 1880s, mentioning private performances of
300 chamber works with Alwin von Beckerath on viola.
The limits of the lied 301
have attempted to reconcile those considerations with the transition of the

lied from home to concert hall, as exemplified by the career of his friend and
colleague, the baritone Julius Stockhausen?4 In this chapter, these issues are
explored firstly in general terms, and then through the specific case of the
Magelone-Romanzen Op. 33.5
It is well known that Brahms’s circle included some impressively able
amateurs, most notably Elisabeth von Herzogenberg. Her pianistic skill is
well documented, but Clara Schumann’s diary entry from May 1877 also
testifies to her vocal capabilities:
This month brought us much beauty, first on 3rd–8th, the visit from the Herzo-
genbergs . . . It was a great pleasure for me to make music with this woman, what a
gift, and what ability! . . . And how charmingly she sings too; how soulful her voice
is, without exactly being beautiful; how she grasps everything!6
Another able amateur was Maria Fellinger (1849–1925).7 According to the

recollections of her son Richard Fellinger, in 1885 she regularly met the
pianist Anna Franz (née Wittgenstein) in order to go through Brahms
songs. Franz is described as an ‘excellent pianist’ who ‘effortlessly mastered
the difficult accompaniments of Brahms’s songs, soon leading to regu-
lar music-making between the two women’.8 Richard Fellinger’s account
dating from spring 1886 includes many vocally demanding songs, such
as ‘Das Mädchen’ Op. 95 no. 1 and ‘Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht’
Op. 96 no. 1.9 As a final example, Doris Groth (1830–78), wife of Brahms’s
4 Stockhausen (1826–1906) was regarded as one of the finest lieder singers and teachers of his
generation. The standard biography remains the one by his daughter Julia Wirth, Julius
Stockhausen, der Sänger des deutschen Liedes: Nach Dokumenten seiner Zeit dargestellt
(Frankfurt: Englert & Schlosser, 1927).
5 These fifteen songs are sometimes referred to as the Romanzen: Magelone-Lieder and the
Romanzen aus L. Tieck’s Magelone. Here, they are called the Magelone-Romanzen for concision.
3 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1908), vol. III, p. 354.
7 Maria Fellinger was the wife of the industrialist Dr Richard Fellinger (1848–1903). Brahms
met this musical and sociable family in the 1880s and they became close friends; some of the
best-loved photographs of Brahms were taken by Maria.
Johannes Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1997), p. 18. Anna Franz’s background is discussed in more
depth in Chapter 9.
9 Fellinger, Klänge, p. 50. Within the same account, Fellinger also specifically mentioned the
following songs by their first lines in the following order: ‘Es schauen die Blumen’ Op. 96 no. 3,
‘Auf dem Schiffe’ Op. 97 no. 2, ‘Vorschneller Schwur’ Op. 95 no. 5, ‘Mädchenlied’ Op. 95 no. 6,
‘Beim Abschied’ Op. 95 no. 3, ‘Bei Dir sind meine Gedanken’ Op. 95 no. 2, and ‘Dort in den
Weiden’ (presumably Op. 97 no. 4, although possibly a reference to one of Brahms’s
arrangements of this folk-song).
302 natasha loges
friend the poet Klaus Groth (1819–99), recounted in a letter to Brahms

of 2 April 1872 how she went through the two sets of Acht Lieder und
Gesänge Op. 57 and Op. 58 at home accompanied by the lawyer and ama-
teur musician Theodor Thomsen (1840–1927). Her letter expresses only
admiration, mentioning neither the fearsome pianistic difficulties of songs
like ‘Von waldbekränzter Höhe’ Op. 57 no. 1 and ‘Blinde Kuh’ Op. 58
no. 1, nor the demands made on the voice by ‘Unbewegte laue Luft’
Op. 57 no. 8.10
Without mention of specific songs, however, it is difficult to gauge what
was ‘normally’ sung in middle-class homes. Recollections such as Richard
Fellinger’s, which name specific songs, are exceptional. Most accounts of
singing, whether public or private, professional or amateur, mention no spe-
cific repertoire. Accounts might name composers: Clara Schumann recalled
a private soirée on 22 February 1871 in England at the home of Victor
Benecke, Mendelssohn’s son-in-law, during which Jenny Lind sang songs by
Mendelssohn and Schumann.11 And Bernhard Scholz (1835–1916) recalled
the informal visits of Amalie Joachim (1839–99; then Schneeweiss), at his
family home in Hammermühle in 1862:
During our trips in the area, wherever a piano was to be found, she was always ready
to sing to the old man [Scholz’s father] Orpheus’s aria ‘Che farò senza Euridice’, the
‘Lindenbaum’ or other beautiful Schubert songs.12
It has been pointed out by Beatrix Borchard that in public concerts,

which often took the form of a miscellaneous programme, information
was given according to the following priorities: that something would be
sung (usually indicated through the word Gesang); next, who the singer
was; and finally, which items would be sung.13 A typical instance of this
is Rudolf von der Leyen’s programme of a concert which took place in
Krefeld on 26 January 1881. The items are described as follows: B Sextet;
10 See her letter to Brahms in D. Lohmeier (ed.), Johannes Brahms – Klaus Groth: Briefe der
Freundschaft, new edn (Heide: Boyens, 1997), p. 56. In a lengthy letter of 21 March 1872, Doris
Groth implied that Thomsen was an excellent sight-reader. Of her own ability, Doris Groth
wrote: ‘What we can do is very little, Dr Brahms, but we cannot live without music.’ Ibid., p. 55.
11 Litzmann, Ein Künstlerleben, vol. III, p. 254. 12 Scholz, Verklungene Weisen, p. 158.
13 For a discussion of this, see B. Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim und die gesungene Geschichte des
deutschen Liedes’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 58/4 (2001), p. 269. Borchard argues that this
situation changed towards the end of the century, although information that we would today
consider essential such as opus number or the correct song title often remained scanty (one
might find the first line of the song instead).
Schumann Fantasie (Brahms); Lieder (Jenny Hahn); and the Piano Quintet
Op. 34.14
Some accounts imply that song was there to provide variety and diversion
between more serious numbers, as in the letter below from Theodor Billroth
to Ottilie Ebner regarding a house concert on 4 November 1877:
It would give us great pleasure if you would delight us with a few Brahms songs
tomorrow evening . . . ‘Blinde Kuh’, ‘Während des Regens’, which I came to know
through you, I have not yet forgotten. Or whatever else you want, if your mood
permits, which I hope it does, – in major; we will hear wonderful works; a new piano
quartet and a piano quintet by Brahms . . . but even the Scherzos in both superb
works are far from cheerful; hence, between C minor and F minor, there should be
major-key songs, or at least songs in a major-key mood!15
Given the absence of a consistent public or professional forum for lieder-

singing during much of the century, it is unsurprising that an extremely
wide range of conceptually as well as technically difficult songs is men-
tioned in connection with private performance. The Schubert songs which
were performed at the home of Josef von Spaun (1788–1865), many of
which crop up in other memoirs, included formally transparent, immedi-
ately appealing and perennially popular pieces like ‘An Sylvia’ D891 and
‘An die Musik’ D547. However, they also include ‘Dithyrambe’ D801, ‘Das
Zügenglöcklein’ D871, ‘Das Lied im Grünen’ D917, ‘Fragment aus dem
Aeschylus’ D450 and ‘Der entsühnte Orest’ D699.16 Eduard von Bauern-
feld’s (1802–90) memoirs of performances by Vogl and Schubert include
the following songs: ‘Memnon’ D541, ‘Philoktet’ D540, ‘Der zürndenden
Diana’ D707, ‘Der Wanderer’,17 ‘Ganymed’ D544, ‘An Schwager Kronos’
D369 and the Müllerlieder.18 But how representative are such accounts?
Are the specific songs listed by the memoirists precisely because they are
14 Von der Leyen, Brahms, p. 22. The Krefeld programme of 19 January 1883 exceptionally lists
the lieder as ‘“Aufträge” von Schumann’, ‘“Aus den östlichen Rosen” von Schumann’ and
‘“Liebestreu” von Brahms’. See von der Leyen, Brahms, p. 26.
15 Letter of 3 November 1877, in O. von Balassa, Die Brahmsfreundin Ottilie Ebner und ihr Kreis
(Vienna: Franz Bondy, 1933), p. 92. The works to which Billroth is referring are two of the
three August Kopisch settings from Op. 58, the Piano Quartet in C minor Op. 60 and the Piano
Quintet in F minor Op. 34.
16 O. E. Deutsch (ed.), Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, trans. R. Ley and J. Nowell (London:
A. & C. Black, 1958), p. 139.
17 Bauernfeld did not stipulate which song of this title he meant, although it is most likely to be
the Schmidt von Lübeck setting (‘Ich komme vom Gebirge her’) D489, which was already
extremely popular in Schubert’s lifetime.
18 Ibid., p. 226. Again, Bauernfeld did not define the Müllerlieder more closely, mentioning only
that they suited the baritone Johann Michael Vogl (1768–1840) very well, so this might refer to
either or both Die schöne Müllerin D795 or Winterreise D911.
304 natasha loges
exceptional and impressive? At the other end of the spectrum, many accounts
testify to the enormous popularity of Brahms’s folk-song arrangements and
lieder im Volkston. Richard Fellinger’s recollections suggest that such music
evoked the profoundest and most personal response:
And to the same unforgettable memories belong the hours of communal music-
making of the Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn and ‘Grandmother-songs’, which
all resounded in our ears from our earliest youth and filled our young hearts. From
Brahms, only ‘Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht’, ‘Sandmännchen’, and ‘So hab ich doch die
ganze Woche’ and later, ‘In stiller Nacht’ were among them.19
The only named Brahms lieder in this account are two folk-song arrange-
ments and two lieder im Volkston. In a letter to Brahms of 7 Oct 1871, Ottilie
Ebner mentioned that she had sung to the philologist and folk-song collec-
tor Georg Scherer, who was staying nearby: ‘I sang to him “Das Veilchen”, a
few folk-songs and a few other favourites of mine, – even he was completely
converted, he was completely enraptured, particularly by the folk-songs.’20
An account by Eugenie Schumann (1851–1938) recalled that on an occa-
sion when Antonia von Kufferath (1857–1939) sang at their home, she sang
several of the Volkslieder, accompanied by Brahms, including ‘our favourite,
“In stiller Nacht”.’21
There is some evidence to suggest a growing preference for folk-song
models in solo song as the century progressed, but such inferences must be
made with caution. Alice Hanson has commented that during the Bieder-
meier era, ‘salon recitals or Hauskonzerte often required the participation of
all the guests, regardless of age or expertise’.22 After 1848, while ever more
complex and demanding manifestations of the lied emerged, the practice of
singing at home continued as a hangover of Biedermeier mentality. Hence
technical accessibility remained an issue. In a footnote to an otherwise
extremely positive review of Brahms’s Magelone-Romanzen, concern was
expressed about the impact that the dense and exceptionally difficult accom-
paniments would have on the fate of these otherwise outstanding songs. In
19 Fellinger, Klänge, p. 15. The songs to which he is referring are the ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4,
‘Sandmännchen’ WoO 31 no. 4, ‘Sonntag’ Op. 47 no. 3 and ‘In stiller Nacht’ WoO 34 no. 8.
The ‘Grandmother-songs’ refer to those of his own grandmother Josefine Lang (1815–80),
who was a fine song composer. An excellent short biography and work catalogue are online at
Musik und Gender im Internet: http://mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/A lexartikel/lexartikel.php?
id=lang1815 (accessed on 5 March 2014).
20 Balassa, Ottilie Ebner, p. 65. It is not clear from her account which of the various settings of
Goethe’s text ‘Das Veilchen’ is meant here.
21 Schumann, Memoirs of Eugenie Schumann, p. 172.
22 A. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 109.
a footnote to the review, the editor Selmar Bagge wrote: ‘How many friends
of beautiful and expressive songs will be put off closer acquaintance with
these songs by this?’23 The question implies that amateur pianists would
be trying the songs out, and we know that they did. Thus Doris Groth, a
practised amateur, commented in a letter of 31 December 1873: ‘On Boxing
Day, a few friends listened to several Magelone songs, and straight away were
particularly struck by “Wie froh und frisch” [Op. 33 no. 14].’24 The techni-
cal difficulty of the songs was also a reason why Breitkopf & Härtel initially
rejected them, causing Brahms to turn to Rieter-Biedermann instead.25
Outside Brahms’s circle of professionals and highly gifted amateurs, folk-
song models dominated the market. The collector and arranger Friedrich
Silcher rhapsodised about the ‘enthusiasm with which these songs have
been received by the most educated people as well as those from the lower
classes, each time I have had them sung’.26 Silcher’s claim is borne out by
the enduring popularity of anthologies such as the Musikalischer Hauss-
chatz der Deutschen (The Musical Home-Treasure for Germans) which was
reissued throughout the century in eleven editions between 1843 and 1901,
by which time it contained 1,100 songs.27 Such anthologies were published
in their hundreds. A typical sample of their contents, a song by Christian
Gottlob Neefe (1748–98) from the 1878 reprint of the Musikalischer Haus-
schatz, is reproduced in Example 12.1.28
Although Brahms’s works may seem distant from this world, it is telling
that the pianist Rudolf von der Leyen described Brahms’s folk-songs with
the same language: ‘a real treasure for the German home’ (‘ein wahrer
deutscher Hausschatz’).29 Several of Brahms’s original songs also share this
style, notably ‘Die Trauernde’ Op. 7 no. 5, which is discussed in Chapter 10;
23 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 3/35 (30 August 1865), col. 577.

24 Letter from Doris Groth to Brahms in Lohmeier, Johannes Brahms – Klaus Groth, p. 71. In a
letter of 10 December 1874 to Brahms, Groth also mentioned Betty Leo (b. 1823, no death date
identified), Carl Reinecke’s sister and an excellent sightreader, accompanying Magelone songs
in his home. Ibid., p. 79.
25 See also the letter of October 1864 from Brahms to Clara Schumann. Litzmann, Ein
Künstlerleben, vol. III, p. 168; also Briefe XIV pp. 107–11.
26 Letter of 18 August 1825 from Silcher to the Metzler Buchhandlung, Tübingen. Quoted in
A. Hartmann, Klavierlieder nach Gedichten von Ludwig Uhland und Justinus Kerner: Ein Beitrag
zum musikalischen Biedermeier am Beispiel von fünf schwäbischen Komponisten (Frankfurt:
Peter Lang, 1991), p. 57.
27 The first edition was edited by G. W. Fink (Leipzig: Mayer und Wigand, 1843).
28 The song was published as no. 2 of Musikalischer Hausschatz der Deutschen: eine Sammlung von
über 1000 Liedern und Gesängen mit Singweisen und Klavierbegleitung, ed. H. Langer, 9th edn
(Hamburg: Haendcke und Lehmkuhl, 1878).
29 Von der Leyen, Brahms, p. 30.
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Mäßig.
1.Was frag' ich viel nach Geld und Gut, wenn ich zu - frie - den bin! Gibt Gott mir nur ge - sun - des Blut, so hab' ich fro- hen
Sinn, und sing' mit dank - ba - rem Ge- müth mein Mor - gen und mein A - bend - lied.
Example 12.1. Neefe, ‘Was frag’ ich viel nach Geld und Gut’.
Andante p
Soll sich der Mond nicht hel - ler schei - nen,

Andante
Example 12.2. Brahms, ‘Vor dem Fenster’ Op. 14 no. 1, bars 1–6.
or they echo folk-like gestures such as the use of sixths and thirds in the
accompaniment, as in ‘Vor dem Fenster’ Op. 14 no. 1 (subtitled ‘Volkslied’;
Example 12.2).
If songs like Neefe’s setting or Brahms’s own ‘Die Trauernde’ can be
considered a representation of what was expected from music aimed at
amateurs, then the limitations placed on composers targeting the domestic
market were clearly enormous. Given the contribution that song sales could
make to a composer’s income, they could also not be ignored. Furthermore,
composers might not expect much more competence from professionals.
In a letter of 16 July 1878, Clara Schumann pointed out a place in the
song ‘Todessehnen’ Op. 86 no. 6, in which a singer would have difficulty in
placing the note correctly, and ‘since most singers are not that musical, it
might be better to change it . . . Livia Frege sang it many times and managed
it only with great effort, and she can actually sight-sing well.’30
30 Litzmann, Ein Künstlerleben, vol. III, p. 380. Frege (1818–91) was a highly regarded soprano
soloist. Both Schumann and Mendelssohn composed works for her.
Ideological limitations were no less challenging; Laura von Beckerath’s

description of her father’s reaction to Brahms’s Op. 6 Sechs Gesänge typifies
the resistance that compositional innovation might encounter:
My father got hold of the Brahms songs Op. 6 as soon as they appeared, but it was
indeed unsurprising that these songs, as somewhat outlandish Romantic ‘music of
the future’, remained unappreciated in the music shelf of a home, which, in musical
terms, only slowly and cautiously dared to transcend the borders set by works like
Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Figaro and Weber’s Euryanthe.31
In short, composers who hoped to make an income from song composition

often had to work within considerable restrictions.
Amalie Joachim, Julius Stockhausen and the role

of the concert hall
Private and professional music-making had a complex reciprocal relation-

ship which strengthened during the century following the expansion of
the publishing industry. Professional singers played a significant role in the
popularising of repertoire for the educated music-loving public to perform
at home, thus the public’s tastes impacted upon what was sung on the stage.
This was a development of practices from earlier in the century. Josef von
Spaun, in his recollections of Schubert, captured the importance of Johann
Michael Vogl’s private performances for the popularising of Schubert’s
songs amongst ‘first-rate’ amateurs.32 Richard Fellinger articulated Gustav
Walter’s similar popularising effect in the Brahms circle with the Lieder
Op. 96, Op. 97 and Op. 106, which included four settings of texts by
Fellinger’s grandfather Christian Reinhold.33 A comment in a letter from
Simrock to Brahms from 1869 emphasises the need for frequent public per-
formances to ensure the commercial success of a song, naturally of central
importance to the publisher:
I would so appreciate it if Stockhausen would sing a great number of my songs –
there is no other way to bring the things to the public than to sing them again and
again.34
31 W. Hübbe, Brahms in Hamburg (Hamburg: Lütcke & Wulff, 1902), p. 6.

32 Deutsch, Memoirs, p. 22. 33 Fellinger, Klänge, p. 32.
34 Letter of 16 March 1869, Berlin. K. Stephenson (ed.), Johannes Brahms und Fritz Simrock: Weg
einer Freundschaft. Briefe des Verlegers an den Komponisten (Hamburg: J. J. Augustin, 1961),
p. 50.
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If the singer was to function as the locus between publishing house, concert
hall and home, then his or her repertoire choices would necessarily be
contingent upon the demands of the publisher as well as the market.
Beatrix Borchard has shown that the large number of lieder im Volk-
ston sung in concert by Amalie Joachim reflected not only her personal
preferences but the interests of publishers, particularly Simrock.35 Joachim
played a central role in the dissemination of Brahms’s songs, introduc-
ing the audience to tempting new works not just for listening, but to try
out themselves. She enjoyed excellent relationships with many contempo-
rary composers; as such, half of her programmes (as far as can be traced)
consisted of new works, most of which she sang only once or twice.36
Nevertheless, she enjoyed particular success with certain Brahms songs; out
of a total of 139 songs, she sang ‘Feldeinsamkeit’ Op. 86 no. 2, ‘Wiegenlied’
Op. 49 no. 4, ‘Vergebliches Ständchen’ Op. 84 no. 4 and the Zigeunerlieder
Op. 103 most often in public.37 Notably, she also sang some of the arrange-
ments of the Volks-Kinderlieder WoO 31 (‘Dornröschen’ no. 1, which has
many affinities with some of his early minor-key lieder im Volkston, and,
more unusually, ‘Der Mann’ no. 5, which is hardly a typical concert item)
as well as some of the Deutsche Volkslieder WoO 33. Lieder im Volkston
also feature in her didactically conceived historische Liederabende (histori-
cal song-recitals) of the 1880s, including ‘Trennung’ Op. 97 no. 6 and the
‘Wiegenlied’ again.38 The balance was a difficult one, since not all reviewers
felt that the folk-song had any place in the concert hall at all, despite popular
tastes. A review of a concert of Amalie Joachim’s in the Vossische Zeitung of
1894 declared that ‘after all, the folk-song is made out of very fragile material;
it resists transplantation into the concert hall with all its might’.39 A letter of
24 January 1874 from Klaus Groth to Brahms also suggests that not all listen-
ers appreciated folk-song in the concert hall; he told Brahms that in a concert
in Hamburg early that year, Amalie Joachim had ‘once again sung some of
35 Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim und die gesungene Geschichte des deutschen Liedes’, p. 281.
36 B. Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph Joachim: Biographie und
Interpretationsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), p. 417.
37 Beatrix Borchard has compiled as comprehensive as possible a list from 1869
onwards of Joachim’s repertoire of Brahms songs, given the incompleteness of the sources.
See Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim und die gesungene Geschichte des deutschen Liedes’,
pp. 272–7.
38 This concert also included the third Magelone-Romanze, ‘Sind es Schmerzen, sind es Freuden’.
Ibid., p. 283.
39 Vossische Zeitung, 27 October 1894. Quoted in Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim und die gesungene
Geschichte des deutschen Liedes’, p. 282.
his little songs in folk style’, much to the annoyance of his (amateur) musical
friend Theodor Thomsen.40
Amalie Joachim cultivated a particular type of artistic profile. Her finan-
cial worries following her separation from Joseph Joachim in 1884 meant
that she could not afford to alienate her audience. Her approach might be
described as gently pedagogical. The baritone, conductor and pedagogue
Julius Stockhausen presents a rather different picture. A formidable musi-
cian in his own right, he is comparable to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in
terms of his influence on the conception and performance of the lied. It
is hard to overestimate his impact on the performance and reception of
Brahms’s songs. Many accounts testify to his superb interpretative skills;
nevertheless, his vocal technique seems to have been not without flaws. As
early as 1854, a review of Eduard Hanslick’s, while praising Stockhausen’s
Italian and French coloratura as well as his lieder-singing, noted that
his voice, although beautiful, showed natural technical limitations and
lacked power.41 In a letter to Simrock of 1869, Brahms complained that
Stockhausen was vocally off form the entire winter, and had been unable
to sing a single concert ‘con amore’.42 Bernhard Scholz also recalled that
‘Stockhausen’s voice was pleasant, but in no way large or compelling through
its charm; but how he knew how to use it!’43 A review in the Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung of a concert Stockhausen gave on 7 December 1867
declared that ‘Mr Stockhausen’s voice is no longer in full bloom in regard
to its melting quality or power; but he understands how to make us entirely
forget this through prudent moderation, proper economy, and brilliant
interpretation.’44
Stockhausen was also fiercely ambitious, and it is possible that promoting
and developing the art of recital-singing afforded him a route to success not
available through opera, where a reliable, powerful sound was indispensible.
Thus he sought to professionalise the lied, most obviously through his
performances of the complete song cycles of Schubert and Schumann, and
notably through the first complete performance of Die schöne Müllerin D795
40 See letter of 24 January 1874, Kiel, in Lohmeier, Johannes Brahms – Klaus Groth, pp. 73–4. In
that concert, Amalie Joachim sang ‘Muss es eine Trennung geben’ Op. 33 no. 12 as well as the
folk-song arrangement ‘Sandmännchen’ WoO 31 no. 4. See ibid., p. 233.
41 See review dating from 1854, in E. Hanslick, Aus dem Concert-Saal: Kritiken und Schilderungen
aus 20 Jahren d. Wiener Musiklebens 1848–1868 (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1897), p. 72. He
expressed a similar opinion in 1856 (see p. 108).
42 Letter of 2 April 1869, in Briefe IX, p. 70. 43 Scholz, Verklungene Weisen, pp. 125–6.
44 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 2/51 (18 December 1867), p. 410.
310 natasha loges
in 1856 at the Musikverein, Vienna.45 It was also Stockhausen who requested

Brahms’s orchestral arrangements of seven, possibly eight, Schubert songs
in 1862, which remained unpublished during Brahms’s lifetime.46 We can
contrast the composer’s attitude from a letter to Rudolf von der Leyen of
2 March 1890, Vienna, in which he declared that ‘a concert is a tedious thing,
but the rehearsals for it, when good friends are present, are most delightful’.47
Elsewhere, concerning Alice Barbi, Brahms stated that ‘the concert hall is
always a dubious pleasure . . . If Barbi and her singing appeal to you, you
would have still more pleasure from it in a room alone with her.’48
Furthermore, six years after the first Müllerin, neither the public nor
critics accepted performances of complete cycles as the norm; in a review of
a complete Müllerin by Stockhausen on 25 March 1862 in Leipzig, Eduard
Bernsdorf commented that ‘only an artist like this can dare to attempt the
experiment of singing twenty-three songs one after another’.49 In other
words, such practices were not to be recommended to lesser singers, who
would not have the artistry to sustain interest. Borchard also draws atten-
tion to an 1878 review of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42 in
which the critic writes that ‘one may compose series and sequences, but not
present them in concert’.50 It was also not a practice of which Brahms always
approved, particularly when the cycle was artificially held together, such
as in the case of Schwanengesang D957.51 Stockhausen’s vocal career and
45 He was accompanied by Benedikt Randhartinger. See Wiener Zeitung no. 104, 6 May 1856,
pp. 413–14. With thanks to Katy Hamilton for this reference.
46 For a discussion of these arrangements, see P. Jost, ‘Brahms’ Bearbeitungen von Schubert-
Liedern’, Neues musikwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 7 (1998), 185–96.
47 Von der Leyen, Brahms, p. 81.
48 K. Huschke, Frauen um Brahms (Karlsruhe: Friedrich Gutsch, 1936), p. 224.
49 Bernsdorf was quoted in Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst, 8/27 (1 April 1862), p. 108.
Bernsdorf most probably refers to twenty-three songs because the three Müller texts that
Schubert did not set were also declaimed as part of the concert by a member of the Leipzig
Stadttheater. He continued that even Stockhausen could not dispel the tedium that must
necessarily arise from such a uniformity of sound and form. This opinion was shared by
Hanslick when he reviewed Stockhausen’s 1860 performance of Die schöne Müllerin; having
been very positive about Stockhausen’s earlier performances of Schubert cycles, he argued that
attempting such an experiment too often was ‘hardly advisable’. See Hanslick, Aus dem
Concert-Saal, p. 237.
50 The concert took place in Hamburg on 6 January 1878. See Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
13/2 (9 January 1878), col. 29. The review is quoted in Borchard, Stimme und Geige, p. 333.
51 For Brahms’s disapproval of the singing of Schwanengesang as a cycle, see R. Heuberger,
Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms: Tagebuchnotizen aus den Jahren 1875 bis 1897, ed.
K. Hofmann, 2nd edn (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976), p. 115. According to Heuberger,
Brahms was irritated with the pianist Julius Roentgen because he had performed a number of
songs from Schwanengesang, and his justification was that Stockhausen had done the same.
conception of lieder-singing was therefore highly unusual and evoked

divided responses; although he sang folk-song arrangements like all other
singers, he was hardly associated with them.52 This exceptional nature is
reflected in the music which Brahms wrote with him in mind, and func-
tions as a counterbalance to the more typical considerations which a song
composer had to consider.
The conception and performance of the Magelone-Romanzen:

Brahms’s attempt to retain domestic values in a concert work
The Magelone-Romanzen, composed in the 1860s and dedicated to Julius

Stockhausen, reflect the complexity of the nineteenth-century lied genre,
in terms of both conception and potential performance practices. This is a
rare instance of Brahms publishing fifteen settings of a single poet almost
all of one type, in a single opus – large, multi-sectional and linked by many
musical connections, as well as by the underlying narrative alluded to in the
title – albeit in five volumes and in two blocks separated by four years.53
Brahms’s treatment of his songs offers conflicting ways to understand his
lied conception, and exemplifies the difficulty of reconciling the demands
of the lied simultaneously as an unprofessionalised, domestic genre and an
art form fit for the stage. The songs are listed in Table 12.1.54
The texts for these songs were drawn from a novella by the Romantic poet,
dramatist and translator Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853) called Die wundersame
Liebesgeschichte der schönen Magelone und des Grafen Peters aus der Provence
(‘The Wondrous Tale of the Beautiful Magelone and Count Peter from
Provence’). The tale initially appeared in 1797 and was reissued in 1812 as
part of a longer collection of stories, drama and poetry called Phantasus. It
recounts the story of Count Peter and Magelone, who fall in love at a jousting
tournament and flee together but then are separated by various fantasy-
like twists of fate before, through a series of equally unlikely coincidences,
they are finally united. A substantial proportion of the novella is taken up
Brahms remarked: ‘Well, I had little influence on Stockhausen and I was always against that
sort of thing [derlei]. But if you know better, then that’s fine!’
52 See Hübbe, Brahms in Hamburg, pp. 14–15. On pp. 48–9 Hübbe also gives details of a concert
on 11 March 1868 with Brahms at which Stockhausen sang folk-songs as encore items.
53 The songs were published by Rieter-Biedermann; the first six songs appeared in two volumes
published in 1865, the remaining nine in 1869.
54 For a discussion of the dating of Brahms’s songs around this time, see G. Bozarth, ‘The Lieder
of Johannes Brahms, 1868–1871: Studies in Chronology and Compositional Process’,
unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton University (1978).
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Table 12.1. Titles and date of composition of the Magelone-Romanzen

Op. 33.
No. 1 ‘Keinen hat es noch gereut’ July 1861

No. 2 ‘Traun! Bogen und Pfeil’ July 1861
No. 3 ‘Sind es Schmerzen’ July 1861
No. 4 ‘Liebe kam aus fernen Landen’ July 1861
No. 5 ‘So willst du des armen’ May 1862
No. 6 ‘Wie soll ich die Freude’ May 1862
No. 7 ‘War es dir’ By March 1864, rev. by May 1869
No. 8 ‘Wir müssen uns trennen’ Between July 1861 and September 1865
No. 9 ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ July 1868
No. 10 ‘Verzweiflung’ By 20 December 1866
No. 11 ‘Wie schnell verschwindet’ ? after 1859/60, publ. December 1869
No. 12 ‘Muss es eine Trennung geben?’ ? May 1862
No. 13 ‘Sulima’ May 1862
No. 14 ‘Wie froh und frisch’ By May 1869
No. 15 ‘Treue Liebe dauert lange’ By May 1869
by the interspersed verses, which comment on each unfolding of the plot,

mainly from the perspective of the hero, Peter, but also on occasion by the
minstrel who opens the story, Sulima (the Oriental beauty who is infatuated
with Peter), and Magelone herself.
The literary genre of the novella interspersed with verses, from which the
Romances were drawn, had largely vanished in Brahms’s day, although it
had enjoyed popularity earlier in the century.55 Examples include Eichen-
dorff’s Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (1826) and Viel Lärmen um Nichts
(1833); another was Heyse’s 1850 collection of fairy tales, Der Jung-
brunnen. Brahms knew and set texts from all these sources.56 Although
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels and Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen
(which were inspired by Tieck) can hardly be described as novellas, they
employ the same device. Such works were often printed with undemanding
55 There are also examples in some early novellas by other writers whom Brahms admired such as
Gottfried Keller and Theodor Storm (e.g. the latter writer’s Immensee from 1849). The number
of lyrics tends to be very small, and they disappear completely from the later works. For a
detailed discussion of the generic questions raised by Tieck’s novella, see J. Daverio, ‘Brahms’s
Magelone Romanzen and the “Romantic Imperative”’, The Journal of Musicology 7/3 (Summer
1989), pp. 343–65.
56 Brahms’s text ‘Lied’ (‘Lindes Rauschen in den Wipfeln’) Op. 3 no. 6 appears in Viel Lärmen um
Nichts, for example. He set no fewer than eight texts from Heyse’s Jungbrunnen, four in the 12
Lieder und Romanzen für vierstimmigen Frauenchor a cappella oder mit Klavier ad libitum
Op. 44, and four in his Sieben Lieder für gemischten Chor Op. 62.
settings of the verses or Musikbeilagen, suggesting that the reader, while

reading aloud, would go to the piano to sing the poems. The idealised
location for such works is, therefore, a domestic one; the ideal context
for the poems is the narrative into which they are set. However, in prac-
tice the poems frequently became independently famous, for example the
songs of Mignon and the Harper from Wilhelm Meister and the two poems
‘Der Gärtner’ and ‘Wer in die Fremde will wandern’ from Eichendorff’s
Taugenichts.57
Various authors including Eric Sams and John Daverio have interpreted
Brahms’s ambitious multifaceted forms in Op. 33 as a reflection of Tieck’s
own ambitious cross-genre work:
Just as Tieck’s Märchen lies midway between the lyric cycle and the Roman, or
novel, so Brahms’s musical setting combines elements of the traditional song cycle
(a group of musical lyrics), and the Romantische Oper (the musical equivalent of
the Roman).58
In a letter of 6 October 1875 to his publisher Jakob Melchior Rieter-

Biedermann, Brahms wrote that the ‘eleventh song’ (‘Wie schnell ver-
schwindet’) might ‘naturally be transposed up for soprano’ while all the
other songs would be in the low key.59 John Daverio, among others, has
interpreted this statement as Brahms retaining the link to the original tale,
since this text is ostensibly sung by Magelone.60 However, in an unpub-
lished correspondence card which Brahms sent about a month later to the
publishers in Leipzig, it is clear that the wish for a high transposition of
the song stemmed from Rieter, not from Brahms himself, and concerned
the transposed edition of the whole opus.61
57 ‘Der Gärtner’ was set most famously by Mendelssohn, but a fine setting by Hans Pfitzner also
exists (Op. 9 no. 1) as does a setting by Brahms for women’s chorus, horns and harp (Op. 17
no. 3) and various others. ‘Wer in die Fremde will wandern’ remains a popular poem in
Germany today; Hugo Wolf set the text under the title ‘Heimweh’ (Eichendorff-Lieder no. 12).
58 Daverio, ‘Brahms and Romantic Imperative’, p. 345. See also E. Sams, The Songs of Johannes
Brahms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 91.
59 See Briefe XIV, p. 253, where the sentence ends with a full stop; in the autograph
correspondence it looks like a question mark.
60 Daverio, ‘Brahms and Romantic Imperative’, p. 345.
61 ‘Herr Rieter would like No. 11 in the Complete Edition for high voice. In this case, it is better
to print it in G minor.’ Unpublished correspondence card, date-stamped 13 November 1875.
Winterthurer Bibliotheken, Sondersammlungen, Ms Sch 156/2–13. The original song is in F
minor. The existence of a copyist’s manuscript as engraver’s model in A minor in the Staats-
und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg suggests that Brahms at least temporarily agreed to
Rieter’s desire for a higher transposition (see Werkverzeichnis, p. 119); it is possible that Rieter
himself wished to retain a link to the original characterisation. This copy, however, contains a
pencilled comment from Brahms that it should be in G minor for the ‘Gesamt-Ausgabe’.
314 natasha loges
Given that the songs are by no means unambiguously dramatic, as well as

the performance issues they raise (discussed further below), there are nei-
ther any directly comparable musical models for the Magelone-Romanzen
nor any obvious successors. Contemporary musical works cast in a similar
mould usually involve larger forces, and tend to be described explicitly as
cycles, such as Franz Abt’s (1819–85) Rothkäppchen, ein Cyclus von neun
durch Declamation verbundenen Gesängen Op. 526, published shortly after
the Magelone-Romanzen in 1876. This version of the tale of Little Red
Riding Hood is for SSA solo, choir and piano, incorporates musical alter-
nation between Rothkäppchen and the choir, solo numbers for the Wolf
and Rothkäppchen’s mother, duets for a Nightingale and a Rose, as well
as linking passages of declaimed verse. Also of this type is Carl Bohm’s
(1844–1920) Hänsel und Gretel: Ein Cyclus von Gesängen nebst Declamation
als verbindendem Text Op. 295 for soprano and alto solo, with SSA choir,
piano and declaimed text, published in 1883. Another potential comparison
is Edvard Grieg’s Das Kind der Berge, Liedcyclus aus ‘Haugtussa’ Erzählung
Op. 67, published in 1898, which also loosely sketches a narrative.62 There
is nevertheless a significant structural difference. The Haugtussa poems are
drawn from an epic cycle of seventy-one poems, of which Grieg selected
just eight. Hence there is no question of interspersing Grieg’s songs with
any version of the tale. Brahms, on the other hand, set fifteen out of seven-
teen poems within a relatively compact story. In short, although there are
other works which share individual features, the Magelone-Romanzen have
neither direct precursors nor successors.
Complete performance or individual songs?
Within the critical tradition, the Magelone-Romanzen are usually regarded

as a single unit because of the explicitly unifying title Brahms gave the
opus, the single source of its texts, and the formal and thematic gestures
which bind the songs together.63 But, as Dahlhaus has argued, ‘it is harder
to demonstrate heterogeneity than to discover connections’.64 Certainly in
Ultimately, the song was printed in F minor for both the original and the low-voice versions.
My thanks to Katrin Eich for her generous assistance with this.
62 The poems selected by Grieg form a loose narrative in which the mountain maid Gislaug (she
is not named in the song cycle) falls in love with a boy who then forsakes her.
63 See for example I. van Rij, Brahms’s Song Collections (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 66.
64 C. Dahlhaus (ed.), Studien zur Trivialmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Bosse, 1967),
p. 24.
Brahms’s day, Tieck’s Magelone poems were not treated as a unity but were
quickly detached from the original narrative and set dozens of times between
1830 and 1900. The verses of ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ (Brahms’s Op. 33 no. 9)
were set at least thirty times in that period for forces ranging from voice and
piano/zither/cello ad lib. to twelve-part male chorus, by figures as diverse as
Franz Lachner (Op. 35, 1833) and A. B. Marx (Op. 15, 1846, for SATB and
piano ad lib.).
Brahms’s own views, difficult though they are to glean, also suggest
a preference for detachment rather than unification. A letter from 1894
to Simrock suggests that Brahms did not appreciate singers (even Amalie
Joachim) performing more than two or three of his songs in a single recital.65
According to his biographer Max Kalbeck, the composer explicitly objected
to clarifying the relationship between the Magelone narrative and the songs,
thus making a complete performance somewhat impenetrable to an audi-
ence who was not intimately familiar with the tale.66 Brahms was adamant
that the Magelone-Romanzen not be published with a connecting narrative,
declaring that it had ‘nothing to do with my songs’, and that the publisher
Rieter-Biedermann should certainly not print the opus thus.67 But perhaps
the inclusion of the narrative would not have been necessary because it was
familiar to the public. The original reviewer from the Allgemeine musika-
lische Zeitung preceded his brief discussion of the narrative with the phrase
‘as is generally known’ (‘bekanntlich’), although given the decline in Tieck’s
popularity during the century, this may be just a turn of phrase.68 Nor had
the tale been set as an opera (which might be one way of popularising it, as
had happened with Tieck’s Melusine and Genoveva, which had been drawn
on respectively by Mendelssohn in the 1830s and Schumann in the 1840s).69
In any case, Brahms’s wishes were respected insofar as the songs were
rarely performed all together. The baritone Georg Henschel (1850–1934)
had a particularly strong affinity with two of the most demanding songs,
no. 5 ‘So willst du des Armen’ and no. 6 ‘Wie soll ich die Freude’ – but as
65 ‘That Frau Joachim is even singing 20 of the songs and choral songs nowadays goes without
saying. But I look forward to a time when once again, finally, a distinguished singer comes,
who finds it more artistic and tasteful (and practical) to sing just two or three.’ See letter dated
[28 August 1894] from Brahms to Simrock, in Briefe XII, p. 149. Hermine Spies was one such
singer, who usually included just a small number of Brahms songs in her recitals.
66 See Kalbeck I, p. 428.
67 See the letter of [14 September 1875] to Melchior Rieter-Biedermann in Briefe XIV,
pp. 249–50, 256. The connecting poem was by Otto Schlotke and was published by Rieter
after Brahms’s death in 1899.
68 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 3/35 (30 August 1865), cols. 572–80.
69 Kalbeck mentioned the popularity of the tales of Melusine and Genoveva. See Kalbeck I, p. 427.
316 natasha loges
far as has been established, he did not attempt to sing them in conjunction
with the remaining thirteen. In a letter of 9 February 1875, Henschel wrote
to Brahms from Berlin regarding a concert taking place two days later, in
which ‘I am also singing “So wollst [sic] du des Armen” [Op. 33 no. 5] . . . I
sang it last in Hamburg, unfortunately to the accompaniment levied upon
me by Herr von Bernuth.’70 Henschel’s diary entry of 28 February 1876
also recalled a private matinée musicale, albeit of a professional standard, at
the home of the Princess of Hesse-Barchfeld, at which the Frankfurt String
Quartet was present in order to play the Piano Quartet Op. 60:
Brahms . . . then accompanied me in the longest, and to me the finest, of his

romances from Tieck’s beautiful Magelone, ‘Wie soll ich die Freude, die Wonne
denn tragen,’ Op. 33 no. 6.71
They gave the song its public premiere nearly a year later on 18 January
1877 at the Gewandhaus, together with five other Brahms lieder (including
further Magelone songs). Furthermore Henschel’s concert records from 1880
while in the USA tell us that he quite often performed this difficult song and
‘two other songs from the Magelone Romanzen’, accompanying himself.72
Hermine Spies (1857–93) was already an established concert singer when
she first met Brahms in 1883.73 Within her repertoire of Brahms songs there
are two isolated numbers from Op. 33: ‘Sind es Schmerzen, sind es Freuden’
no. 3 and, like Henschel, Op. 33 no. 6.74 She performed the former at a
soirée with Joseph Joachim on 19 July 1883, at which she also sang ‘Dein
blaues Auge’ Op. 59 no. 8, ‘Minnelied’ Op. 71 no. 5 and ‘Feldeinsamkeit’
Op. 86 no. 2.75 Op. 33 no. 6 was also performed by her on 26 March 1887 as
part of a public concert given at the Bösendorfer Saal, accompanied by the
pianist Eduard Schütt.76
Helene Magnus (1840–1914), in a concert in Vienna organised by Julius
Epstein in 1874, sang just three numbers from Op. 33.77 On 17 March 1887 in
Leipzig, Amalie Joachim also sang three of the Magelone-Romanzen together
with a number of other songs, in a concert which included the A major
70 G. Bozarth, Johannes Brahms & George Henschel: An Enduring Friendship (Sterling Heights,
MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2008), p. 115. He is referring to Julius von Bernuth (1830–1902),
director of the Hamburg Philharmonic and Singakademie from 1867 to 1894.
71 Bozarth, Johannes Brahms & George Henschel, p. 28.
72 Ibid., p. 71. 73 Kalbeck III, p. 375.
74 W. Ebert, ‘Die von Hermine Spies gesungenen Brahms-Lieder’, in M. Meyer (ed.), Brahms
Studien 11 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1997), pp. 74–5.
75 M. Spies, Hermine Spies: Ein Gedenkbuch für ihre Freunde von ihrer Schwester, 3rd edn (Leipzig:
Göschen, 1905), p. 92.
76 See Ebert, ‘Hermine Spies’, p. 76. 77 Kalbeck III, p. 22.
Violin Sonata Op. 100, the C minor Piano Trio Op. 101 and the Rhapsodies
Op. 79. She repeated the programme on 14 April 1887 in the Singakademie.78
Other singers less closely associated with Brahms also performed individual
Magelone songs: the tenor Heinrich Vogl (1845–1900), in a concert of 1874,
sang ‘Das Lied vom Herrn von Falkenstein’ Op. 43 no. 4; ‘Die Kränze’ Op. 46
no. 1; the ninth Magelone song, ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’; and ‘Auf dem See’
Op. 59 no. 2.79 Brahms himself accompanied the baritone Max Stägemann
(1843–1905) in Op. 33 no. 5 in 1880.80
Finally, the dedicatee of the set, Stockhausen himself, frequently sang
the songs separately; just two instances are mentioned below. In Leipzig
1867, he sang nos. 3 and 4 accompanied by Clara Schumann.81 In Hamburg
1868 Stockhausen ‘sang “Die Mainacht” and “Von ewiger Liebe” . . . from
the manuscript, in Berlin and Lübeck some Romances from Magelone,
and, accompanied by Brahms, alternated performances of a Schumann
Liederkreis and Dichterliebe [Op. 48]’.82 The catalogue of arrangements of
Brahms’s works shows that Theodor Kirchner also arranged only numbers
3, 5, 9, 12 and 14 for solo piano.83 More recently, a small number of singers
have extracted individual songs from Op. 33: for instance, Elly Ameling
and Rudolf Jansen recorded no. 12 ‘Muss es eine Trennung geben’ and
no. 9 ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ on a mixed Brahms CD (their own song bouquet,
or Liederstrauß, effectively).84 Håkan Hagegård and Thomas Schuback per-
formed ‘So willst du des Armen’ Op. 33 no. 5 between ‘An den Mond’ Op.
71 no. 2 and ‘Wie bist du meine Königin’ Op. 32 no. 9 at London’s Wigmore
Hall on 17 Oct 1978. Donald Miller sang five songs, Nos. 2, 3, 9, 11 and 14
on 23 May 1976, again at the Wigmore Hall.85
The public premieres of the Magelone-Romanzen, as far as has been estab-
lished, took place separately between 1862 and 1877.86 While it is easy to
dismiss this as a typical nineteenth-century miscellaneous approach to pro-
gramming, the somewhat arbitrary approach taken by most singers was
78 Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim’, p. 283. 79 Kalbeck III, p. 22.

80 Ibid., p. 240. Stägemann was the nephew of the singer and actor Eduard Devrient (1801–77).
81 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 2/51 (18 December 1867), p. 410. 82 Kalbeck II, p. 217.
83 [n.a.], Verzeichnis der Kompositionen von Johannes Brahms und ihrer Bearbeitungen aus dem
Verlage von J. Rieter-Biedermann in Leipzig (Leipzig: Rieter-Biedermann, 1909), p. 9.
84 Songs by Brahms, Soprano: Elly Ameling, piano: Rudolf Janssen (London: Hyperion, 1991,
CDA66444).
85 See concert programmes Wigmore Hall 23 May 1976 and 17 Oct 1978, GB-Lcm.
86 See Werkverzeichnis, pp. 112–13. There is no record of the first performances of Nos. 7, 8, 10,
11 and 15. According to Max Friedlaender, Brahms told him of a complete performance with
connecting text in Berlin in winter 1886, but this has not been verified. See M. Friedlaender,
Brahms’ Lieder: Einführung in seine Gesänge für eine und zwei Stimmen (Berlin and Leipzig:
Simrock, 1922), p. 31.
318 natasha loges
advantageous to the fate of the Op. 33 songs, because a flexible approach

increased the likelihood of them being performed. This stands in contrast
to current practice, in which it takes musicians with unusual stamina and
concentration to perform the whole work. Also, as has been shown, both
male and female singers sang songs from the Magelone-Romanzen – a reflec-
tion of a century in which Julius Stockhausen sang Frauenliebe und -leben
without raising eyebrows (unlike Matthias Goerne, who was largely vilified
for his 2006/7 performances of this cycle).87
Ultimately, it seems as though Brahms were trying to achieve two con-
flicting goals in this opus group at once: to create songs suitable for a superb
lieder singer on the stage – but to make their performance as unrestricted
as possible. The individual songs are not insurmountable in their difficulty,
and their relationship to other technically simpler songs in his oeuvre also
becomes more apparent when they are separated: for example, the tex-
tual relationship between ‘An den Mond’ Op. 71 no. 2 and ‘Muss es eine
Trennung geben’ Op. 33 no. 12.
Technical demands of individual songs
Within Brahms’s lifetime, commentators were not overtly concerned by

the questions relating to genre which are raised by the ambitious scale and
technical difficulty of the songs. In the review of the first two volumes of
Op. 33 in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 30 August 1865, the emo-
tional vicissitudes of the story were seen to provide sufficient justification
for the choice of the multi-sectional song forms. The reviewer described the
third song thus:
The entire song offers, in terms of melody and expression, substantial and significant
wealth, and upon first hearing one will possibly be distracted by this and remain
unsatisfied; but he who misses unity too much should remember that this poem is
not concerned with a unified enduring sentiment, but rather with a story of a heart
in turmoil, which constantly enters new phases.88
Nevertheless, Brahms’s intellectually (and physically) demanding settings

are almost shocking compared with other settings from the century. The
87 ‘When a singer of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s standing has denounced the project as

“ridiculous, stupid and wrong”, you have to take note . . . Schumann was not just writing songs
from a woman’s point of view; he must have had a woman’s vocal quality and temperament in
mind as well.’ G. Norris, ‘Crossing the Border between the Sexes’, The Telegraph 26 April 2006.
Similar views were expressed in other leading papers.
88 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 3/35 (30 August 1865), col. 575.
verses of ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ provoked in most composers a rather generic

response to the lullaby text. The 1837 setting by Friedrich Curschmann
(1805–41) is typically charming – and well within the boundary of an
amateur’s capabilities (Example 12.3).
By contrast, Brahms’s setting presents not a straightforward lullaby, but
a distillation of the idea of rocking. This is expressed through different tex-
tures, harmonies and tempi, tied together by the 68 rhythm, reflecting the
changing fantasies of the protagonist Peter as he lulls the beloved Magelone
to sleep. It opens with a hypnotic off-beat rhythm and an oscillating V7 –
Ic harmony over a dominant pedal. When it cadences in bar 10, it does
so on the dominant (Example 12.4). Overall, the song has an ABA CA
form, in which the sections are progressively more technically demanding,
culminating in the C section’s turbulent, forte semiquaver accompaniment
(Example 12.5). This arpeggiated accompaniment gradually thins out into
the opening texture before the song ends, creating an impression of a con-
siderable mental journey rather than a simple lullaby.
Bringing the Magelone-Romanzen nearer to home
A letter of 1866 – when only the first six Magelone songs had been pub-
lished – from Hermann Levi to Clara Schumann shows how differently the
individual Magelone-Romanzen could be perceived. He wrote:
have you played the Cello Sonata [Op. 38] in public already? I think it must find
approval – but I think this of every new work by Brahms and yet the Philistines
will have none of it! Advise him instead to publish a volume of songs (‘Wiegenlied’,
‘Dunkel wie dunkel’, ‘Wann der silberne Mond’, ‘Verzweiflung’ and so forth). I play
the latter (in C minor) to myself daily and bellow the text to it.89
Presumably the idea was that Brahms would be able to woo his audience
with some charming and accessible songs – but the last of these is the highly
virtuosic Magelone-Romanze ‘Verzweiflung’ Op. 33 no. 10, an extraordi-
nary song to mention in this context, although seemingly not to Levi. It is
only when the opus is approached as a group that it makes extraordinary
demands. Brahms, with one eye on the market, was clearly aware of this.
According to Kalbeck, Brahms expressed concern about this to the singer
Ottilie Ebner:
89 Letter of 20 December 1866, Karlsruhe. Litzmann, Ein Künstlerleben, vol. III, p. 198. The works
to which he referred were the Cello Sonata in E minor Op. 38, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, ‘Von
ewiger Liebe’ Op. 43 no. 1, ‘Die Mainacht’ Op. 43 no. 2, and ‘Verzweiflung’ Op. 33 no. 10.
320 natasha loges
Example 12.3. Curschmann, ‘Aus der schönen Magelone: Ruhe, Süßliebchen’,

bars 1–19.
Example 12.4. Brahms, ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’ Op. 33 no. 9, bars 5–10.
Example 12.5. Brahms, ‘Ruhe, Süßliebchen’, bars 93–100.
He brought . . . manuscripts of songs, which he went through with me. ‘Don’t you
find’, he asked me once very anxiously, ‘that these songs are uncomfortable to sing?’
They were the Magelone songs, which he was composing at the time.90
Once the demands on stamina are alleviated, the songs become much more
accessible to a wider range of singers and the folk-song-rooted concep-
tion of their multi-sectioned forms becomes more evident. There is not
one consistently dramatic, recitative-based, declamatory or even genuinely
through-composed song in the opus. Taken individually, the suitability of at
least some of the songs (in particular Nos. 4, 8, 11 and 12) for performance
by a wider range of singers is evident, and this perhaps provides the reason
why Brahms so adamantly protested against complete performances of the
set. At the time of writing, research being carried out by Laura Tunbridge
90 Quoted in Kalbeck II, p. 107.

322 natasha loges
suggests that the practice of singing complete cycles (especially outside of

Germany and Austria) did not become the norm until well into the twentieth
century.91
Even Julius Stockhausen’s view of the status of the lied seems to have
altered. In 1871, he wrote to Ferdinand Hiller that he no longer wished to
sing lieder at the Lower Rhine Music Festival because ‘these dear little party
pieces [Cabinettstücke]’ had no place at a large music festival.92 Dichterliebe,
which he sang many times in the 1860s, was thereafter only performed by
him in 1871 and then again in 1888 to celebrate his fortieth anniversary
as a singer.93 Attitudes to the lied changed only very gradually; as late as
1902, the critic Paul Marsop declared that it was ‘barbarous’ to sing songs
in concerts, since they were ‘in the noblest sense of the word, Hausmusik’.94
Brahms the composer was a stickler for detail – but as a practical musician
he recognised the value of flexibility and compassion in the face of the
considerable technical demands in many of his works. Henschel recounted
an occasion at the Cäcilien-Fest in Münster in 1876, where he was to sing
the solo from the Triumphlied. He was, however, very hoarse from a cold.
He recalled that Brahms did not mind him altering ‘some of the highest
notes into more convenient ones on account of my cold’. Brahms said: ‘As
far as I am concerned, a thinking, sensible singer may, without hesitation,
change a note which for some reason or other is for the time being out of
his compass, into one which he can reach with comfort, provided always
the declamation remains correct and the accentuation does not suffer.’95
Furthermore, Brahms needed to work actively against a reputation for
excessive complexity in comparison with Schubert and Schumann. Con-
cerning Amalie Joachim’s ‘historical song-recitals’ mentioned above, at least
one reviewer felt that Brahms could not achieve the simplicity of the earlier
masters. This review is worth quoting at length:
[Brahms] could basically never reach the height of a Schubert or a Schu-
mann because, in the realm of the lied, he does not possess the authentic-
ity (Ursprünglichkeit) and naturalness through which Schubert and Schumann
91 With thanks to Laura Tunbridge for this information.

92 R. Sietz (ed.), Aus Ferdinand Hillers Briefwechsel: Beiträge zu einer Biographie Ferdinand Hillers,
vol. III: 1870–1875 (Cologne: Volk, 1964), p. 140, quoted in Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim’, p. 281.
93 See R. Hofmann, ‘Julius Stockhausen als Interpret der Liederzyklen Robert Schumanns’, in
M. Wendt (ed.), Schumann Forschungen 9 (Düsseldorf: Robert-Schumann-Gesellschaft, 2005),
p. 40.
94 P. Marsop, ‘Der Musiksaal der Zukunft’, Die Musik V, 1902, pp. 3–4. Quoted in E. Kravitt, ‘The
Lied in 19th-Century Concert Life’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (Summer
1965), p. 216.
95 Bozarth, Johannes Brahms & George Henschel, p. 24. Diary entry of 3 February 1876, Münster.
ascended to such heights. Brahms’s lieder demand – with a few exceptions – not
only a much more serious commitment from the listener than those of Schubert
and Schumann in order at all to connect with the emotions, but worse still, they
do not even offer sufficient reward. The sombre, bitter and rough, the introverted,
the pessimistic, often overwhelm to such an extent that only those who perceive the
highest artistic ideals in the expression of such moods (Stimmungen), can regard
him in this genre as an equal to the great masters of the past.96
The Magelone-Romanzen remain too technically demanding to be brought

literally into the home except by the most accomplished of amateurs; if
the home is, however, thought of as a space where flexibility reigns over
correctness, where a high note can be changed, where numbers that are less
well-loved can simply be omitted or rearranged, then the evidence suggests
that Brahms did indeed wish to keep his songs in the home as far as possible.
Subsequent conceptions of what makes a good song and a good recital have
narrowed, resulting in comments such as those made by the music critic
A. H. Fox Strangways in 1940: ‘Brahms’s first and last settings exceed, it is
true, the natural limits of a song, which is two minutes of eternity.’97 As Carl
Dahlhaus has argued, flexible approaches came to be seen as increasingly
wrong:
The breaking-out of pieces from their context – a paradigmatic example is the
transformation of Schubert’s ‘Lindenbaum’ into a folk-song [volkstümliches Lied],
interference with the musical text, and changes of instrumentation become suspect
under the rule of aesthetics.98
For many of Brahms’s companions, music-making was an exalted activity.

Thus Clara Schumann admonished Brahms: ‘that which pleases the public
immediately is not the yardstick for you and your musical friends!’99 How-
ever true this was, and however professionalised lieder-singing grew, solo
vocal music largely retained intimate associations for Brahms, bound up
with music-loving friends, amateurs, cosy evenings in people’s homes, his
own love of folk-song, and his middle-class values; a reminder of his belief,
expressed as early as 1858, that the world of art was ultimately a republic,
not an aristocracy.100
96 Vossische Zeitung, 4 February 1888, quoted in Borchard, ‘Amalie Joachim’, p. 278.

97 A. H. Fox Strangways, ‘Brahms and Tieck’s Magelone’, Music & Letters 21/3 (July 1940), p. 211.
98 Dahlhaus, Trivialmusik, p. 16.
99 In a letter of 16 July 1878 from Wildbad-Gastein. See Litzmann, Ein Künstlerleben, vol. III,
p. 381.
100 Ibid., p. 40.
13 Being (like) Brahms: Emulation and ideology in
late nineteenth-century Hausmusik
markus b öggemann
Brahms’s presence in domestic music-making is truly multifaceted. But

while his role as a composer of widely known and highly regarded songs,
piano pieces and chamber music is quite obvious, there is also a more
obscure side to his reception in the realm of Hausmusik. Here, Brahms’s
music was increasingly seen as incorporating certain moral values, as a ref-
erence point for an essentially anti-modernist and anti-Wagnerian ideology.
This eventually led to the adaptation or even outright imitation of typically
Brahmsian musical features by those composers who sympathised with this
ideology. But it also led to a form of criticism that found the reason for
those imitations in some characteristic shortcomings of Brahms’s music
itself. This chapter explores how this view of Brahms was articulated by
critics and composers, and some of the ideological implications it bore.
Identifying Brahms
When the first edition of Felix von Weingartner’s study of The Symphony
since Beethoven appeared in 1898, the division of the Austro-German musi-
cal world into the conflicting camps of Liszt/Wagner and Brahms had widely
lost its significance.1 The compositional efforts of a younger generation like
Reger, Strauss and Weingartner himself had blurred these boundaries and
rendered the old aesthetic dualism almost obsolete. Chamber music, for
instance, was no longer regarded as the exclusive business of musical reac-
tionaries, as Weingartner himself proved with his first two String Quartets
Op. 24 and Op. 26 from 1898 and 1899 respectively.2
Nevertheless, Weingartner attacks Brahms surprisingly harshly in his
book: he criticises his famous colleague, who had just recently passed away,
as a composer of great craft but of little inventiveness and imagination,
whose success was based not on his undeniable artistic mastery, but to a
1 F. Weingartner, Die Symphonie nach Beethoven: Ein Vortrag (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1898).
2 See the author’s ‘Anmerkungen zur Streicherkammermusik Felix Weingartners’, in S. Obert and
M. Schmidt (eds.), Im Mass der Moderne: Felix Weingartner – Dirigent, Komponist, Autor,
324 Reisender (Basel: Schwabe, 2009) pp. 265–78.
Being (like) Brahms 325
large extent on propaganda and the personal endorsements of his strongest

advocates.3 According to Weingartner, Brahms felt obliged to fulfil the
expectations and claims as the true inheritor of Beethoven which dogged
him from his earliest public appearances onwards – and in which he himself
presumably believed. As a result, Weingartner claims that the composer
rejects a natural and instinctive style in favour of an appearance of profun-
dity and intellectualism:
But it was never permitted him to attain to Beethoven’s profoundness . . . Brahms

could only assume the mask. Thus in his works, in spite of the outward similarity,
we find only abstract idea, while in Beethoven’s is revealed the real essence of music.
Brahms’s music as a whole – if I may be allowed the expression – is scientific music,
a playing with tone forms and phrases, but not that most expressive and compre-
hensible world-language which our great masters could and had to speak . . . Their
music is artistic. Brahms’s is artificial.4
Here Weingartner once again rehashes the platitudes of New German crit-
icism of Brahms.5 Nevertheless, he surpasses it in one significant point,
in that he attributes Brahms’s putative musical artificiality and affectation
to its compositional principles. His objections are based not only on aes-
thetic reasoning but on a thorough knowledge of the scores, which makes
them all the more substantial. Weingartner specifically identifies a ‘special
mannerism’,6 in other words a consciously and methodically applied com-
plexity for effect’s sake. In Weingartner’s opinion, Brahms, in his desire
to be like Beethoven, seeks for his music to sound profound, erudite and
brooding. In order to achieve this, he stereotypically employs a set of com-
positional tricks, which Weingartner identifies in detail:
By this special mannerism of Brahms, I understand certain means which occur

again and again in the construction of his compositions. A favorite device with
Brahms is syncopation . . . Furthermore, Brahms loved to combine a rhythm of two
beats with one of three beats, thus producing a form which, if used on a long stretch
or often, causes a feeling of disagreeable vacillation. Another of his mannerisms is
3 F. Weingartner, The Symphony since Beethoven, trans. M. Barrows Dutton (Boston, MA: Oliver
Ditson, 1904), pp. 36–7. This first translation of Weingartner’s book was based on the second,
completely revised edition (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1901). At the time the translation was
published, Weingartner no longer agreed with his own earlier critique of Brahms, as he states in
a footnote on p. 37. The third edition (1909), once again completely revised, presents his new
and emphatically positive view of the composer.
4 Ibid., p. 44.
5 See also U. Tadday, ‘Tendenzen der Brahms-Kritik im 19. Jahrhundert’, in W. Sandberger (ed.),
Brahms-Handbuch (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2009), pp. 112–27.
6 Weingartner, The Symphony since Beethoven, p. 39.
326 markus b öggemann
to let the upper voice, or oftener the middle parts or the bass, be accompanied by
thirds, or still oftener by sixths, and then again to mix up the parts with artificial
syncopation. Entire sections of his works are built up in this way.7
Taken together with the construction of themes from the thirds and fifths
of a chord and the avoidance of its root – Weingartner calls it the ‘Brahms
leit-motif ’8 – these processes generate a music which, to its own detriment,
is lacking in naturalness:
Indeed, I believe that the complicated character of the harmony, rhythm, and melody
(which, by the way, is called by his partisans ‘depth of meaning’) resulting from
these mannerisms, and which destroys the clearness of the musical impression, is
the reason why so many of Brahms’s works leave the impression of being artificial
and unnatural, and fail to please in spite of all the masterly technical construction.9
Weingartner offers a two-pronged criticism: through his identification of

aesthetic falsity and pretension (in other words, Brahms attempts through
his music to represent both more and something other than his true com-
positional nature), as well as through the exposure of the deficient means by
which Brahms intends to achieve this goal. And on top of that, the ostenta-
tious recurrence of these stylistic features makes the music of Brahms easily
imitable and therefore testifies to its dryness and its general lack of original-
ity. They serve Weingartner as an argument against the artistic qualities of
the man and his music: ‘It is a bad sign when a composer can be convicted
of a mannerism.’10 For Weingartner, these objections hold especially true
when Brahms is compared to a composer as inimitable as Richard Wagner.
Whether Wagner’s compositional style is easy to copy or not may well be
open to discussion, but apart from that, Weingartner certainly has a point
with his observations about a specific Brahmsian manner, as biased as his
conclusions may be.
Four years previously the young Max Reger, while revealing himself to be
a much more sympathetic critic of Brahms than Weingartner, nevertheless
likewise conceded in a letter to Adalbert Lindner that Brahms relied on
certain recurring features:
Brahms himself is now the greatest since Beethoven; but even he shows certain
mannerisms! Phrygian thirds, Dorian sixths, and [here follows a graphical sketch
roughly depicting the superposition of duple and triple metre], etc. he stands unique
in his handling of piano; his piano texture has a thoroughly orchestral colouring.11
7 Ibid., pp. 39–40. 8 Ibid., p. 40. 9 Ibid., pp. 40–1. 10 Ibid., p. 42.
11 S. Popp (ed.), Der junge Reger: Briefe und Dokumente vor 1900 (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel,
2000), pp. 183–5, here p. 184.
These and other characteristic traits of Brahms’s music were in fact con-
sciously employed by other composers, including by Reger himself in two
compositions which explicitly refer to Brahms: the Rhapsodie Op. 24 no. 6,
with the dedication ‘Den Manen J. Brahms’ (‘To the memory of J. Brahms’)
and Resignation Op. 26 no. 5, with the subtitle ‘– 3. April 1897 – J. Brahms †’.
Both piano pieces were composed in 1898 and obviously serve as a kind
of tombeau, a sounding memory for the deceased; and both rely heavily
on the above-cited peculiarities in harmony, melody and rhythm as well as
on the typical forms of Brahms’s piano style. Walter Frisch in his study of
Brahms’s influence on the younger generation of composers has analysed
in detail the ‘intentionally exaggerated “Brahmsian” spirit’ of Resignation,
distinguishing three different ‘levels of response to Brahms, which might be
called quotation, allusion, and absorption’.12 As we shall see, there are good
reasons to add ‘mimesis’ to this list, especially in the context of musical
homages like Reger’s.
Conjuring up Brahms
The focus of Frisch’s study is the appropriation of Brahms’s compositional

processes by composers like Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander
Zemlinsky. In some early works by these composers, Frisch identifies a kind
of Brahms reception which formed a part of their compositional train-
ing. This kind of reception involves the thorough assimilation of Brahms’s
artistry as a step on the way to independent compositional mastery. Thus,
the more convincingly the appropriated style is incorporated into the com-
poser’s own musical language, the more successful it is.13
However, Reger’s Resignation also constitutes an exception to this prac-
tice of assimilation, with its explicit references to its model through its sub-
title as well as the direct quotation from the Andante of Brahms’s Fourth
Symphony in which it culminates. Hence it is also a clear example of a
work of homage. In such works, the subject being remembered – in this
case the artist Brahms – is to be musically conjured up. Furthermore, the
subject needs to be identifiable and stand out as clearly as possible from his
12 W. Frisch, ‘The “Brahms Fog”: On Analyzing Brahmsian Influences at the Fin de Siècle’ in W.
Frisch (ed.), Brahms and his World (Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 93–5.
13 Even though none of these composers was directly taught by Brahms, one may speak of traces
of a pupil–teacher relationship in a broader sense. In any case, the significance of the term
‘composition teacher’ with regard to Brahms should be more broadly conceived, as research on
this topic by Johannes Behr suggests. See J. Behr, Johannes Brahms: Vom Ratgeber zum
Kompositionslehrer. Eine Untersuchung in Fallstudien (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2007).
Example 13.1. Reinecke, Cello Sonata No. 3 Op. 238, first movement: Adagio – Allegro
moderato, bars 34–49.
background. Brahms’s compositional characteristics and stereotypes are in

this case not constantly absorbed, but rather remain conspicuously appar-
ent: they reveal their origin, and thus constitute the musical mask ‘Brahms’,
which Reger dons in his Resignation. Walter Frisch’s observation that Res-
ignation ‘can hardly be taken as typical of Reger’s music’14 testifies to the
success of Reger’s disguise.
Of course, Reger is by no means the only figure who reacted musically
to Brahms’s death; gestures of mimesis and quotation were the methods
of choice to commemorate the great colleague for other composers too. A
good example is Carl Reinecke’s Cello Sonata No. 3 Op. 238, which not
only bears the same dedication as Reger’s Rhapsodie Op. 24 no. 6 – ‘Den
Manen Johannes Brahms’ – but likewise adopts a Brahmsian tone, even if
less exaggerated (Example 13.1).
14 Frisch, ‘The “Brahms Fog”’, p. 93.

Example 13.2. Reinecke, Cello Sonata No. 3, Op. 238, first movement: Adagio – Allegro
moderato, bars 88–96.
Not only do the principal notes of the theme (B–d–b within G major)
adhere to the third–fifth contour mentioned by Weingartner, but the ‘arti-
ficial syncopation’ that he criticised is also evident in the writing of the
cello voice against the piano in bars 34–5. The piano figurations in bars
42–4 temporarily establish a metrical conflict between two- and three-beat
bars and through their placement and wide spacing clearly recall Brahms’s
characteristic piano texture. Furthermore, the entire passage shows a stark
tendency towards the subdominant tonal area, together with a conscious
avoidance of the tonic. The second theme from bar 89 perhaps even more
starkly emulates a Brahmsian sound: its melodic and harmonic simplicity
are belied by its consistent rhythmic displacement (Example 13.2).
Reinecke’s sonata was published in 1898. The composer, nine years senior
to Brahms, can hardly have intended to assimilate the style of his dead
colleague in this work as part of his compositional training. Instead he
directed his abilities towards musical mimesis in order to prove that without
resorting to direct quotations or hidden allusions, but with a set of typical
compositional devices, he could evoke a specifically Brahmsian tone, and,
through that, the memory of the composer himself.
Another (significantly more humble) example is No. 11 from Studien:
50 Übungs- und Vortragsstücke für Harmonium Op. 74 by August Reinhard
(1831–1912). Reinhard, a strong advocate of the harmonium and a pro-
lific composer for this instrument, published these exercises in 1897. One
little character piece is entitled ‘Erinnerung (J. B. † 3. April 1897)’. Unlike
Reinecke, Reinhard does allude to a specific work here: namely, the slow
movement of Brahms’s Violin Sonata Op. 78 (Example 13.3).
Judging by the extent of his musical mimesis, the pianist and composer
Walter Niemann’s (1876–1953) commitment to Brahms widely surpasses
that of all other composers named here.15 This is true of his piano music
15 Niemann is still known for his biography of Brahms (1920) as well as numerous other
publications including Die Musik der Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Grüninger 1922).
Example 13.3. Reinhard, ‘Erinnerung’ Op. 74 no. 11.
overall, which is clearly pedagogical in its accessibility and, excepting some

pieces in which he engages in exoticism, is marked by a heavily nostalgia-
driven tone and gesture. In the 1926 work Hamburg: Ein Zyklus von 13
Charakterstücken Op. 107, such fundamental characteristics are particularly
evident. Alongside various noteworthy places from his native city, the house
in which Brahms was born is musically evoked (Example 13.4).16
16 In fact it is Brahms himself who is conjured up in this piece. The typographically accentuated
main title reads ‘Brahms’, whereas ‘Geburtshaus’ is given as a subtitle. The English translation
expresses it more precisely as ‘Brahms: The House where he was born’. The house acts as a
memorial site for the composer, as does the piece of music for both the house and the man.
Example. 13.4. Niemann, ‘Brahms: Geburtshaus’ Op. 107 no. 7, bars 1–18.
The resonant piano texture which plumbs the depths of the instrument’s
range, the harmonic language which avoids the tonic and continuously
tends towards the subdominant area, and the syncopated displacement of
the upper voice against the bass: all of the characteristics which Weingart-
ner, Reger and other figures identified in Brahms’s music are assembled here
within the smallest framework. As if that were not enough, these introduc-
tory bars are followed by a paraphrase of the theme of the second movement
of the Piano Sonata in F minor Op. 5, before the opening passage returns in a
variation. The movement ends with a quotation from Ein deutsches Requiem
Op. 45. Together with the overwhelming prominence of the references, this
final turn towards the metaphysical realm transforms the composition and
its very execution into a gesture of quasi-religious commemoration; Brahms
generates a religion, and the home of his birth becomes a place of pilgrim-
age, and Niemann’s piano piece a private devotional exercise. Apart from
that, this excessive artistic-religious elevation of the composer corresponds
to the topoi of nationalism and cultural critique which Niemann repeatedly
foregrounds, and to his conviction that German culture risked degeneration
if it did not recall those representatives of a particularly ‘German art’ such
as Brahms.17
17 For more on this topic, see M. von der Linn, ‘Themes of Nostalgia and Critique in Weimar-Era
Brahms Reception’, in D. Brodbeck (ed.), Brahms Studies 3 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2001), pp. 231–48, especially pp. 231ff.
Niemann’s continuing obsession with categories of race and tribe

as an explanatory model for matters of art is in keeping with these
opinions.18 In a 1912 article ‘Johannes Brahms und die neuere Klavier-
musik’, for instance, Niemann raises the question of a Brahmsian school in
contemporary piano music.19 His answer tries to downplay the role of imi-
tation and adaptation in favour of tribal considerations. What sounds like
Brahms should in fact only be the musical imprint of the northern German
character, both within the general musical style as well as within its pianism.
This seems to be a rather obvious attempt to protect himself from criticism,
since the Hamburg-born Niemann clung tenaciously to nineteenth-century
models which rendered his music increasingly outdated.
Revering Brahms
With the possible exception of Reger’s technically demanding and more

ambitiously scaled Rhapsodie, all the works mentioned above belong more
to the realm of private music-making than to the public concert arena.20
They express a reverence for Brahms that posthumously evokes the figure of
the composer and at the same time transfers him into the private sphere. The
presence of Brahms in the realm of domestic music therefore can be ensured
through subtle gestural, textural and sonic references; it is not limited to the
literal presence of the composer’s oeuvre.
The example of Walter Niemann clearly showed how Brahms could be
ideologically elevated and, together with his music, could become a quasi-
religious representative of particular values. Similarly, Brahms acquired
a corresponding symbolic boost through the various pictures, busts and
silhouettes through which he was immortalised in middle-class homes:21
standing on the piano or hanging on the wall, his image takes on the role of
a patron saint. Above all, however, the stereotypical compositional features
criticised by Weingartner lend themselves to incorporation and use in other
contexts. The fact that the sounds and gestures of Brahms’s music are
18 This tendency had already been observed with disconcertment by some of his contemporaries.
See P. Bekker, ‘Wohin treiben wir?’, in Kritische Zeitbilder (Berlin: Schuster & Löffler), 1921, pp.
247–59.
19 W. Niemann, ‘Johannes Brahms und die neuere Klaviermusik’, Die Musik 12 (1912/13),
pp. 38–45.
20 Reinecke’s Sonata Op. 238 may of course be performed in public but it is clearly limited to a
moderate technical level, which makes the piece accessible for experienced amateurs.
21 For example the popular silhouettes by Otto Böhler: see [n.a.], Dr. Otto Böhler’s Schattenbilder
(Vienna: Rudolf Lechner, 1914).
imitated in this way is not least an advantage in situations where the artistic,
technical or financial means are not great enough to access the original.
Hence ‘Brahms’ can also mean a set of musical features that were origi-
nally taken from his works but are no longer restricted to it. What should
be examined in the following, then, is the existence of such a set of com-
positional features as a cultural dispositif, to use the Foucauldian term,
the conscious application of which bears significance. A certain typically
Brahmsian sound, a harmonic or rhythmic detail, or even the tactile quali-
ties of the piano style can function as an exemplification. Their application
in other musical contexts charges them with meaning in that they now
emblematically represent ‘Brahms’ and infuse their musical environment
with this notion. What this ‘Brahms’ stands for when it is conjured up in
even the most modest Hausmusik becomes clear when we look at the critical
debates concerning musical culture in general and the condition of private
music-making at the end of the nineteenth century. These debates were
firmly rooted in nationalistic, anti-liberal and essentially anti-modernist
convictions, and from this point of view they attack a supposedly ongoing
degeneration of German culture and especially music. Public concert-life
in general and virtuosity in particular are the main targets of a critique
that strives for a more inward musical ideal. The public sphere is regarded
as culturally and morally impoverishing, and is suspected of superficiality;
thus it has a detrimental effect on both music and listeners, as Ernst Rabich
stated in 1897 in the first editorial of the newly founded Blätter für Haus-
und Kirchenmusik:
The musical life of the present day is dominated by virtuosity. However, virtuosity
means poverty . . . the influence of this one-sided music-making upon the concert-
going public is highly regrettable. Since the public always has to listen to the same
works, it has grown used to not paying attention to what is played or sung, but
rather who is playing or singing. But the beneficial influence of music is suffering
from this; instead of rendering people more profound, such music makes them
superficial; instead of enriching them, it leads to a poverty of the spirit.22
In essence this is the same anti-modernist polemic from the mid-nineteenth

century which was expressed, for example, by Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl in his
Hausmusik (1855).23 Around the turn of the twentieth century this polemic
found its refuge in magazines such as the above-cited Blätter für Haus- und
22 E. Rabich, ‘Zum Eingang’, Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik 1 (1897), pp. 1ff. (original
emphasis retained).
23 W. H. Riehl, Hausmusik: Fünfzig Lieder deutscher Dichter (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1855). On
Riehl see S. Pederson, ‘An Early Crusader for Music as Culture: Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl’, in Z.
Kirchenmusik (1897–1914) or the Neue Musik-Zeitung (founded 1880). As

with the long-established Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and other music jour-
nals, such publications contained ‘music supplements’ (Musikbeilagen) with
piano pieces, songs or, less frequently, chamber music. These supplements
provided the readers with fresh musical material while the journals simulta-
neously pursued a clear pedagogical mission in propagating the ideology of
true Hausmusik as a remedy against cultural atrophy, as seen in the shallow
musical products of opera and salon music.
What the actual features of this Hausmusik should be was identified for
example, by Ernst Linde, who, in his essay Über Begriff und Wesen der Haus-
musik, excludes all music which is conceived for public performance from
the outset.24 The opera, the concert hall, the dance-hall and the salon are
places which, together with their music, are diametrically opposed to the
‘home’ – which itself is understood both as a location and as a way of life.
The salon functioned as a particularly strong contrast; its music, person-
ified as an ‘overpolished, coquettish society dame’, was thus defamed as
immoral:
She is shallow, dishonest, affectedly sentimental, heartless and eager to please; she
is designed for society, which is always content with appearances, which is happy
when appearances are preserved. It is impossible for such music to be Hausmusik,
since it does not correspond with the nature of the home, the fundamental features
of which are truth and nature, lack of gaudiness, and inwardness.25
According to Ernst Linde, true Hausmusik cultivates qualities which deter-

mine the family life of the German household. Truth, nature, inwardness
and profundity are its characteristics, in which all that is morally and aes-
thetically excellent aligns with the supposedly unique characteristics of the
German; thus the ideology of Hausmusik also bears a political dimension –
not coincidentally, the antithesis to good Hausmusik, namely the salon,
bears French features.
However, simplicity and inwardness are not only the markers of an
ideal German Hausmusik: they are precisely the characteristics which were
attributed to Brahms’s music by both those who admired it and those who
despised it. Hugo Riemann, in the obituary which appeared in the Blätter
Blažeković and B. D. Mackenzie (eds.), Music’s Intellectual History (New York: Répertoire
International de Littérature Musicale, 2009), pp. 195–201.
24 E. Linde, ‘Über Begriff und Wesen der Hausmusik’, Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik 3
(1899), pp. 1–3.
25 Ibid., p. 2.
für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, endorsed this characterisation in that he con-

verts reproach into praise: ‘Brahms’s music is too chaste, too German in
the good old sense for [its opponents].’26 Furthermore, he saw Brahms’s
music as strongly imprinted with ‘genuine German folk quality [das echt
Deutsch-Volkstümliche], or even genuine folk identity [das Volksmäßige],
naı̈veté, simplicity, soulfulness’.27
Nevertheless, the close affinities between Brahms’s music and the realm
of Hausmusik are as problematic as they are evident. In 1898, the music
critic Wilibald Nagel remarked in an article entitled ‘Brahms’ Klaviermusik
fürs Haus’:
Hence it is precisely that which we require from Hausmusik, namely that the more it
is cultivated, the more completely it captures its listeners, which we see magnificently
fulfilled in Brahms’s piano works. Furthermore, a great deal of his music does not
suit the concert hall, or sacrifices the effect which is guaranteed in small, intimate
spaces.28
On the other hand, Nagel observes that Brahms’s music, especially his piano
oeuvre, is by no means an integral part of most private musical libraries and
that this music in any case went against the prevailing Zeitgeist:
Indeed, one does not often encounter his piano works in small family libraries; this
can be explained by the fact that they are considerably more expensive; furthermore
the public is intimidated by the constant reproaches levelled at Brahms’s music; and
finally, this completely corresponds to the fidgety, hasty, neurasthenic fussiness of
our age, which is only affected by the strongest of means.29
This is in the first instance a collation of current themes within contempo-

rary anti-modernist criticism: haste, anxiety and overstimulation therefore
appear as symptoms of a general cultural degeneration of the day, the ris-
ing level of which was manifested not least in a demand for ever-stronger
stimuli.30 Brahms’s music, in contrast, denied its listeners such stimuli so
consistently that it was only partially suitable for the large public space of
26 H. Riemann, ‘Johannes Brahms’, Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, vol. I (Langensalza:
Beyer, 1897), pp. 73–7, here p. 74.
27 Ibid., p. 77.
28 W. Nagel, ‘Brahms’ Klaviermusik fürs Haus’, Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, vol. II (1898),
pp. 86–8, 101–5, here p. 86.
29 Ibid.
30 The use of physiological and psychological arguments is a common strategy in the critique of
modernism. See for its musical variety W. Frisch, German Modernism: Music and the Arts
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 139–44; and for its general outline in
Germany, see J. Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität. Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler
(Munich: Hanser, 1998).
the concert hall. But in the eyes of critics like Nagel, its uncompromising or
even ‘chaste’ character made it even more valuable.
Still, all of this cannot overcome, even for Nagel, the fact that the limited
prevalence of Brahms’s piano music in the home is a result of its technical
difficulty: ‘Brahms has never written anything which is genuinely easy in the
sense of being technically undemanding.’31 With this, the above-mentioned
dilemma is spelled out: that the music, which in many ways corresponds to
the conception of a perfect music for the home, must nevertheless, due to its
substantial technical and musical demands, remain largely excluded from
it. The resolution lies exactly in the focus of Felix Weingartner’s criticism:
namely, in the possibility of musical mimesis, of the potential for imitation
of the Brahmsian style through the utilisation of some of its distinguish-
ing features, as far as these could be isolated and transplanted into other
contexts. They constitute what has been described above as the ‘Brahms
dispositif ’ – a set of reproducible compositional devices considered typical
for the composer of the same name – and which can be found abundantly
in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Hausmusik. Via these fea-
tures, Brahms gains a sign-like presence in the realm of domestic music even
where his music is absent, as the following analytical observations suggest.
Mimicking Brahms
Konrad Heubner’s song ‘Juli’ Op. 12 no. 3 (c. 1901), a setting of a text by
Theodor Storm, may serve as an initial example of a composer adopting a
specific Brahmsian manner in the context of Hausmusik (Example 13.5).32
Heubner (1860–1905) studied in Leipzig, Vienna and Dresden, and later
worked as a composer and conductor in Coblenz.33
Apart from the clear references to Brahms in the piano part, especially
in the use of the lowest register and the spacing of chords, the song is also
interesting from a formal perspective. The short poem, consisting of three
sets of two lines, is divided up into 2 + 3 + 1 lines, and although it is
composed as a conventional three-part form, the thematic and harmonic
reprise of the opening is delayed until the postlude. The final one-line
strophe (bars 30–5), which presents the poetic turning-point through the
31 Nagel, ‘Brahms’ Klaviermusik fürs Haus’, p. 87.

32 In Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, vol. V (1901), without pp.
33 See H. Riemann, ‘Heubner, Konrad’, in Musiklexikon, 5th edn (Leipzig: Max Hesse’s Verlag,
1900), p. 488.
Example 13.5. Heubner, ‘Juli’ Op. 12 no. 3.
sudden change of perspective from nature description to a direct address

to the subject, is captured in the setting as an extensively composed-out
transitional passage, which draws on the motive of the preceding bars. Not
only from the perspective of language (through the posing of a question),
but also in musical terms, this strophe transcends itself, finding its answer
in a wordless, yet eloquent repetition of the first line of the song, which is
indicated to be a ‘lullaby’ (‘Wiegenlied’).
Even if the particular formal plan of Heubner’s song stems from the text,
indications such as these, which arise as a result of superimposing different
formal functions, are decidedly also characteristic for Brahms’s composi-
tional thinking, and are frequently found in his orchestral, chamber, piano

and vocal works. Particularly at turning-points within a form, such as the

recapitulation, Brahms regularly resorts to unusual compositional tactics
in order to conceal the joins and cause the musical edges to dissolve into
one another. One could take, for example, the Intermezzo Op. 76 no. 4, the
reprise of which retrospectively coincides with the most distant harmonic
point of the central section in bar 31. This and other similar passages in
Brahms’s works often constitute, in the words of Reinhold Brinkmann, an
‘incisive point’ (‘prägnanter Punkt’), out of which the meaning of a move-
ment and its formal process can be derived.34 One would not want to go
that far in the case of Heubner’s song, because of its brevity; nevertheless,
the typical Brahmsian process of conflating a transition with its intended
goal can be observed clearly enough here.
The song ‘Im Volkston’ by Otto Klauwell (1851–1917), the composer
and writer on music, also a setting of a text by Theodor Storm, by contrast
aspires to humbler goals (Example 13.6).35 Klauwell studied in Leipzig with
Carl Reinecke and had a lengthy career as a professor of piano, music theory
and music history at the Cologne Konservatorium.36 Today he is probably
best remembered for his musicological writings, such as his Geschichte der
Programmusik (1910).37
Klauwell’s education could hardly have resulted in anything other than
an affinity with the academic Mendelssohn–Schumann lineage; indeed,
the song under discussion here smacks less of Brahms than it does of
‘Leipzig’ in general. Its modesty, which is intentional and corresponds to
its aspirations towards a folk style, is particularly evident in the piano
accompaniment, the figuration of which randomly changes. Together with
the largely directionless interlude (bars 10–13), this creates an impression of
episodic, disconnected sequences. This may be more positively interpreted
as an expression of its ‘genuine folk identity, naı̈veté, simplicity, soulfulness’,
which Hugo Riemann described as characteristic of Brahms’s music in
the same year’s issue of the magazine, his article separated by just a few
pages from the song in question.38 Thus already, through the context of
its publication, Klauwell’s song is drawn into a stylistic and ideological
34 R. Brinkmann, ‘Anhand von Reprisen’, in F. Krummacher and W. Steinbeck (eds.),

Brahms-Analysen: Referate der Kieler Tagung 1983 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), pp. 107–20, here
p. 107.
35 Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, vol. I (1897), without pp.
36 See ‘Klauwell, Otto Adolf ’, W. Gurlitt (ed.), in Riemann Musiklexikon: Zwölfte, völlig neu
bearbeitete Ausgabe in drei Bänden, 3 vols. (Mainz: Schott, 1958), Personenteil A–K, p. 929.
37 O. Klauwell, Geschichte der Programmusik (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1910).
38 Riemann, Johannes Brahms, p. 77.
Example 13.6. Klauwell, ‘Im Volkston’, published in Blätter für Haus- und
Kirchenmusik 1 (1897).
proximity to the image of Brahms that was then propagated: since Brahms
is the composer who strives to a greater extent than anyone else towards a
folk style, any composition which similarly attempts this style is inevitably
associated with him. Still, there are some musical details in Klauwell’s piece
which clearly recall Brahms’s Volkslieder, for example the close of the strophe
on the third degree in bar 9, which is noticeable because it is so unusual. This
device is also used at a similar point in Brahms’s ‘Gang zur Liebsten’ Op. 14
no. 6. Other irregularities in Klauwell’s composition, like the compression
of the phrase into three bars in bars 14–16 and its completion to a four-
bar phrase by a motivic echo in the piano part, may serve to depict the

seemingly naı̈ve and unpolished nature of the song. Such touches are also
found in Brahms’s music, for example the irregular phrase structure in
Op. 7 no. 4 ‘Die Schwälble ziehet fort’ or the composed-out ritardando
through a change of metre at the end of ‘Sehnsucht’ Op. 14 no. 8.
But it was not only as a composer that Otto Klauwell showed affinities to
Hausmusik, with its politically and morally laden ideology of simplicity and
naı̈veté; he also propagated this ideology directly in his own writings. One
composer whom he particularly sought to draw into this context is Theodor
Kirchner (1823–1903). Klauwell wrote a monograph on Kirchner which,
not coincidentally, was published by the same house which produced the
Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik. His ideological thrust is thus in perfect
sympathy with the magazine in that he praises Kirchner not just as a ‘great
master of small art’ (‘Kleinkunst’) but also as a ‘genuine German master’:
For is it not the case that precisely this simplicity, this dispensing with all devices
bearing only superficial appeal, the naturalness and intimate tone of his musical
inspiration, the fidelity with which he scrupulously managed the humble basic
motivic material of his individual works, and the way in which he attempted thor-
oughly to draw out its expressive content – are these not precisely the characteristics
of the true German being and German art?39
However, Kirchner’s music is of such quality that it deserves to be pro-

tected from such ‘admiration’: a glimpse into his scores, which are almost
entirely devoted to piano music, shows that he operated on a different artis-
tic level from figures like Heubner and Klauwell. The common perception
of Kirchner is that he is a follower of Schumann, but in fact traces of Brahms
may be found in the six waltzes Reflexe Op. 76. The first waltz in A major,
the first sixteen bars of which are reproduced in Example 13.7, may serve as
an example.
Again, as in the songs in a folk style by Klauwell and Brahms, we find
a rather uncommon and therefore characteristic step towards the mediant,
this time as an intermediate cadence at the end of the third four-bar phrase.
Both the figuration in the right hand in bars 11, 14 and 15 and the metrical
disorder of the subsequent 34 versus 68 metre strongly resemble Brahmsian
piano writing. Most characteristically Brahmsian, though, is how these pas-
sages may feel to the pianist: the physical experience of music, in particular
piano music, matters, and Brahms’s music has quite literally a highly recog-
nisable touch even if it is more difficult to describe than to reproduce. The
39 O. Klauwell, Theodor Kirchner: Ein Großmeister musikalischer Kleinkunst (Langensalza:

Hermann Beyer & Söhne, 1909), p. 35.
Example 13.7. Kirchner, Reflexe Op. 76 No. 1, bars 1–16.
chordal figuration in the melody in bars 5–6 for instance, with its typical
parallels of an octave plus sixth, the varying directions of spreading and con-
tracting the hands and the distribution of melodic lines and accompanying
figurations within them (bars 13ff.) point to similar features in Brahms’s
music.
Kirchner, a good friend of Brahms’s, arranged many of his works, almost
always for piano.40 Robert Keller, as discussed in Chapter 8, did the same.
As a copy-editor for Brahms’s principal publishing house Simrock, he had
an intimate professional relationship with Brahms’s music. Brahms himself
acknowledged this, if in a characteristically back-handed way, in a letter to
Fritz Simrock:
K. is a splendid man and does everything so diligently and neatly that one cannot
find fault. But do I need to tell you that a two-hand arrangement by him shows the
Philistine and cannot be of interest to any player who is the least bit gifted? Similar
things by [Hans von] Bülow or [Theodor] Kirchner (cf arrangements by Liszt) have
a different appearance.41
40 Two exceptions are the String Sextets Op. 18 and Op. 36, which he arranged for piano trio. On
Kirchner and his occupation with Brahms’s work, see R. Sietz, Theodor Kirchner: Ein
Klaviermeister der deutschen Romantik (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1971), pp. 150ff.
This is also discussed in Chapters 5 and 8 of this volume.
41 See letter of [19] September 1881 from Brahms to Fritz Simrock, Briefe X, p. 187.
(a)
(b)
Example. 13.8. Brahms, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, arranged by Keller (a) Bars 1–12.
(b) Bars 31–6.
Brahms’s unsparing judgement points to the decidedly pragmatic func-

tionality of Keller‘s piano arrangements, which were not conceived for
public performance, but were tailored towards the requirements of domes-
tic performance.42 Both the familiarity with the composer’s work and the
demands of the market may have motivated Keller to produce a paraphrase
on the ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, in which he somewhat exaggeratedly relies
on Brahmsian compositional features.
The piece opens with a lengthy working-out of the original two intro-
ductory bars: in employing the deepest piano register and a very ostenta-
tious subdominant minor, Keller even manages to add two elements of the
Brahms dispositif which the composer himself did not use in the original
song (Example 13.8a). This practice is retained in the transition to the sec-
ond strophe with its excessive crossing of the hands (Example 13.8b) and
also in the transition to the third strophe, bars 54–68, where the increased
42 On this topic, see M. Struck, ‘Vom Einfall zum Werk: Produktionsprozesse, Notate,
Werkgestalt(en)’ in Sandberger (ed.), Brahms-Handbuch, pp. 171–98, in particular pp. 183–5.
use of chromaticism, in particular the progression of three different dimin-

ished seventh chords in bars 60–4, pushes the harmonic radius well beyond
the range of the original song.
Keller’s paraphrase sums up what all the examples presented here demon-
strate: that Brahms is present in the sphere of domestic music not only as
the composer or arranger of works bearing his name, or as the shadow
behind the ambitious works of an upcoming younger generation. Brahms,
as suggested here, also gains a sign-like presence within a set of ready-to-
use musical elements. This Brahms dispositif pervades the products of late
nineteenth-century Hausmusik to a remarkable degree. In doing so, it acts
as vehicle for an ideology of domestic music that combines musical fea-
tures with moral and political positions. Journals like the Blätter für Haus-
und Kirchenmusik propagate Brahms and his music as an exemplification
of what ideal Hausmusik should be and as a perfect embodiment of their
rather coarse ideology. And as far as late nineteenth-century Hausmusik
follows the Brahms dispositif, it participates in those cultural values that
were assigned both to Brahms’s music and to ‘true’ Hausmusik – namely, as
Ernst Linde put it: truth and nature, lack of gaudiness, and inwardness.
14 The cultural dialectics of chamber music: Adorno
and the visual-acoustic imaginary of Bildung
richard leppert
Bildung and Adorno’s lament
Theodor Adorno was born in 1903, six years after the death of Brahms. Like
Brahms, he was a pianist and a composer – in the opinion of his teacher
Alban Berg, he had considerable talent, as Berg conveyed to Schoenberg; like
Brahms, he wrote chamber music and vocal music, though by no stretch
very much of it (Berg admired his String Quartet).1 But of course he is better
known as a philosopher and aesthetician, a musicologist and literary critic,
a notable cultural theorist, and among the most important sociologists of
music in the last century. And like Brahms, he was duly steeped in the
German cultural traditions of the nineteenth century, and was himself very
much a product of cultural Bildung; at the same time he was appropriately
dialectically critical of the bourgeois ideological foundation upon which
it rested. More to the point, he was all too keenly aware that he entered
the world at a moment of enormous transformational change, too much
of it dystopian, and especially, if hardly exclusively, for the country of his
birth, whose once-liberal political traditions both defined and perpetuated
cultural Bildung.
There is no better place to consider Adorno’s thinking about Bildung
than a brief, aphoristic essay that he wrote in 1933, when he had just turned
thirty: a look back at what he had experienced – a happiness, now lost –
during his upper-middle-class childhood spent in Frankfurt am Main, not
coincidentally Germany’s most politically progressive city in the early twen-
tieth century. This happiness was largely defined by music: music at home,
piano music, and in particular four-hand arrangements. He called the little
essay ‘Vierhändig, noch einmal’ (‘Four Hands, Once Again’), by which he
meant once more, but then no more.2 Vierhändig nowadays conjures up
something a bit quaint – or, better, archaic, which is Adorno’s point precisely,
1 A. Berg and A. Schoenberg, The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters, ed. J. Brand,
C. Hailey and D. Harris, trans. J. Brand and C. Hailey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 355.
2 T. Adorno, ‘Four Hands, Once Again’, trans. J. Wipplinger, Cultural Critique 60 (Spring 2005),
pp. 1–4; the German original appears in T. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. R. Tiedemann,
346 20 vols. in 23 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), vol. XVII, pp. 303–6. See also R. Leppert,
The cultural dialectics of chamber music 347
Figure 14.1. Harry Bedford Lemere (1864–1944), Interior View of the Music Room,
black and white photograph. Holmstead, Liverpool, UK.
exclaimed in sadness.3 He was writing about music played at home, when

the word ‘home’ – and indeed ‘homeland’ – was rapidly being transformed:
politically instrumentalised, redefined into something grotesque in service
to the National Socialist new order.
Domestic piano music was the sonoric analogue to Victorian bric-a-brac.
It acoustically adorned the highly decorated parlour, or in more elaborate
settings the music room, of (upper-)bourgeois domiciles (Figure 14.1),
‘“Four Hands, Three Hearts”: A Commentary’, Cultural Critique 60 (Spring 2005), pp. 5–22,
from which much of this essay was adapted.
3 There is a degree of terminological ambiguity in the history of the keyboard duet, since duet,
while invariably referring to two performers, could designate either one or two instruments.
The question of one piano or two defined distinctly different markets. A duet for two pianos
(four hands, and sometimes eight) most often meant a piece intended for concert performance,
for the simple and obvious reason that very few people had either the domestic space or
money to afford two such large instruments. Accordingly, there was not much of a market for
two-piano music. Adoption of the term vierhändig in the course of the nineteenth century
erased any ambiguity concerning performance requirements, and did so as an advertising
device intended to appeal to a very considerable niche market, that of the bourgeois amateur.
In short, four-hand music, for the most part, was music for the home.
348 richard leppert
Figure 14.2. Etienne Azambre (fl. 1883–1901), Chamber Music (1890), oil on canvas.
spaces demarcating the difference between private life and its public ana-
logue, a distinction fundamental to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century Western cultural imaginary. The parlour was a space for displaying
oneself to the self, and commonly by means of what one had (identity
traced through material goods). It was an important locus within which to
structure modern identity – identity incorporating in particular irrecon-
cilable differences and attendant injustices associated with the increasingly
sharp distinctions organising class as well as gender. In sum, the parlour
was a principal site within which to define and help authorise some of the
most fundamental social contradictions shaping modern consciousness. It
is no surprise that this particular domestic space inhabited by the European
bourgeoisie was very often the subject of nineteenth-century art, whether
in the guise of some fictional typical family (Figure 14.2) or as the conse-
crated shrine of celebrated individuals, among which musician-artists were
prominent (Figures 14.3 and 14.4).
Unlike any other single instrument apart from the organ (far more expen-
sive and uncommon to most homes), the piano was capable of realising
music originally intended for ensembles, ranging from the string quartet
Figure 14.3. Johann Baptist Hoechle (1790–1835), Beethoven’s Study in the

Schwarzspanierhaus (drawing).
to the orchestra, by means of transcriptions. Music publishers rose to the

challenge, producing vast quantities of transcriptions, including dozens of
symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms; orchestral tone
poems; and even opera – from Fidelio to Tristan and even the complete
Ring cycle.4 And many composers wrote original compositions for piano
4 The best recent account of this music is by T. Christensen, ‘Four-Hand Piano Transcription and
Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception’, Journal of the American Musicological
Society 52/2 (Summer 1999), pp. 255–98.
350 richard leppert
Figure 14.4. The Apartment of Johannes Brahms in Vienna (nineteenth-century, artist

unknown), watercolour.
vierhändig, notably Schubert. All this was in addition to the vast amounts
of music published for solo piano. In short, if it was music, the piano could
(re)produce it.
Four-hand piano transcriptions were pitched at the bourgeoisie as a
domesticated, and indeed privatised, version of what was originally intended
for the public concert. This was music for pedagogy as well as fantasy;
pedagogy to the extent that, even into the first decade of the gramophone,
self-performance was the only means by which to experience orchestral
music outside the concert hall; fantasy in that piano transcriptions permitted
amateurs to amass under their own control not only an imaginary orchestra
but also the conductor’s baton. Further to the matter of fantasy, four-hand
music rose in popularity precisely alongside the rise of the solo virtuoso in
the nineteenth century, with all the associations of demonic mastery: hun-
dreds of notes at breakneck speed. It is no coincidence that myriad piano
transcriptions, including operatic arias and entire symphonies, by Franz
Liszt – the virtuoso against whom all others were conventionally measured –
were in many instances precisely the same works made available for four-
hand performance, though now requiring twenty digits to Liszt’s ten.5
5 Four-hand music was performed alike by men and women. For women, however, transcriptions
of (commonly heroic) symphonic music in particular (Beethoven, for example) would have
Yet whatever the potential of four-hand music for evoking fantasies of

virtuosity and control, Adorno connected with none of it. Indeed, he ignored
it utterly; it was not part of his experience with the music. His memoir moves
in a distinctly contrary direction, brushing the history of vierhändig firmly
against the grain of its conventional history. To him, the piano provided
more than mere acoustic decoration aestheticising the dystopian social
realities associated with privilege. For Adorno, music in the parlour could
permit one to hear, and indeed literally to perform, however momentarily,
a sonic alternative to the way things were.
Vierhändig signals one organism, a unity of substance and intent. In this
respect, four-hand is analogous to the operatic duet evoking the harmony
of love – all those unisons and octaves, parallel thirds and sixths, and,
not least, voice-crossings that together exceed in expressiveness what either
voice can render on its own. The piano duet was long associated with
something of the same sort, very much – if hardly always – a boy–girl affair.
Four-hand duets were long a standard of piano pedagogy, exactly what
young Teddie Wiesengrund experienced in his parents’ Frankfurt home.
They were also an apt occasion for libidinal exercise and, as such, produced
endless parental anxieties – the instructors were usually youngish men
and the pupils young(er) women. (The piano lesson-qua-seduction was
already much discussed in literature regarding courtesy and conduct by the
eighteenth century, and became a literary trope so common as to be virtually
a running joke for many decades; it was also a common source of laughter in
the theatre as well as in visual art.6 ) Indeed, composers understood how to
maximise the advantage presented by the occasion; hand-crossing between
the two players was conventional.7 Bodies necessarily pressed against each
other, repeatedly. And as the players’ eyes moved from score to keyboard,
there was plentiful opportunity for eyes to meet, however furtively.8 But,
again, none of this is Adorno’s concern, and that is precisely the point.
resonated quite differently from the music deemed at the time ‘feminine’ – Mendelssohn and
Chopin, for example – hence, specifically appropriate for females. See J. Kallberg, Chopin at the
Boundaries: Sex, History and Musical Genre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
6 R. Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in
Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 61–7.
7 E. Lubin, The Piano Duet: A Guide for Pianists (New York: Da Capo, 1976), p. 3: ‘Perhaps it is
no more than a mere accident that so much piano duet music involves a crossing of the hands
between the partners, even where it may not be absolutely required by the music itself.’
8 Christensen, ‘Four-Hand Piano Transcription’, p. 293: ‘Piano duet performances are arguably a
doubly eroticized activity, for not only are there twenty fingers touching the keys, two bodies are
coming into contact with each other – hands crossing over and interlocking; legs, hips, elbows,
and shoulders rubbing and bumping into each other. Four-hand performances have the
capacity to generate a sexual synergy whose potency has been recognized since the eighteenth
century when piano tutors prescribed the proper etiquette and attire for playing duets.’
352 richard leppert
‘Vierhändig, noch einmal’ was published in the Vossische Zeitung on

19 December 1933, the conclusion of a momentous year in German his-
tory. Adorno read this unhappy present, very much his own, against the
treasured memories of a very different time, that of his childhood, spent
in an upper-bourgeois house filled with music, piano music especially, and
in the presence of two women, sisters, each of whom he called ‘mother’,
one biological and the other honorary, both musical.9 Maria (his biological
mother) sang; his aunt Agathe played the piano extremely well. Adorno’s
early experiences with music vierhändig led him to connect the very prin-
ciple of music to belonging – as it were, to being home. In December 1933,
home unquestionably felt distant; as would become increasingly apparent,
the very principle of home, both broadly and narrowly conceived, seemed
irretrievable – the realisation of which virtually haunted Adorno throughout
the rest of his life.
In ‘Vierhändig, noch einmal’ Adorno’s memory is as much social as
personal seen through the lens of modern experience, and anchored to the
profoundly mundane, the parlour piano – the only piece of furniture that
he ever spoke of with reverence – and, presumably, a bench long enough for
two: the child and his mother.
The Wiesengrund-Adornos had a separate Musikzimmer. The piano was
positioned in the centre of this room,10 just as music, both figuratively and
literally, defined the centre for Adorno of the utopian longing invoked in
the conjunction of childhood and belonging that under ideal circumstances
appends to ‘home’, that most heavily weighted of words.
It was not lost on Adorno that the parlour, clichéd sign of bourgeois self-
sanction, economic well-being and cultural achievement, real or imagined,
was defined by the still-more-clichéd piano gracing its space – what he
called ‘a piece of furniture’, in reference to the plain fact that in the bourgeois
catalogue of signs of the self, it was rather more essential to have a piano than
actually to play it. Not for nothing does he sarcastically refer to the ‘fortress
of the piano’ (‘die Festung des Klaviers’), in unveiled allusion to the absolute
privacy of the private sphere, the home as inner sanctum, the holy of holies,
wherein is celebrated the self-conscious arrivisme measured by money and
its endless domestic trappings. To be clear, the piano signalled a cultural
sublime available for purchase and in a staggering multiplicity of models –
materials, size, workmanship and decoration – to fit virtually every purse
across a surprisingly wide swathe of the social spectrum. Despite particular
9 Concerning the sisters’ musical talents, and in particular Agathe’s on the piano, see S. Müller-
Doohm, Adorno: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 32, 39–40.
10 Ibid., p. 47.
association with the middle class, the piano came in models appropriate
to the European and American populations at large. For the well-off, it
was commonly encased in the visual splendour – often excessive – of the
finest cabinetry; at the same time, affordable stripped-down models were
very successfully marketed to the working classes. As Adorno recognised,
there were stark social truths standing in the shadows behind the very
real beauty of the rare woods and ivory and the elaborately carved and
inlaid cases of pianos built especially for the bourgeoisie.11 Indeed, no other
musical instrument so effectively aestheticised the histories of imperialism,
proto-globalisation, alienated labour, class warfare and, not least, the radical
domestication of women.12 But in 1933 Adorno clung forcefully to the
positive part of the piano’s dialectical social equation.
Music for Adorno served to bridge a chasm separating the private world of
relative privilege and the public world upon which privilege was constructed
but commonly excluded. Music for Adorno was a sonoric simulacrum of
reconciliation between subject and object, nature and culture. Music did not
make the world right, but it did give access to what that world might sound
like. Adorno experienced, indeed learned, all this as a child, making music
with the women who first taught him to listen, and then to play – lessons he
never forgot.13 The symphony especially, the music of the concert hall, was
domesticated, ‘moved into home life’, transcribed and published in ‘those
oblong (Querformat) volumes’ –specially bound in matching green covers.
Nicely bound, but not for show.14 ‘They appeared as if made to have their
pages turned’, and turn them he did, receiving permission long before he had
the notes in his fingers.15 Adorno’s remembrance of his childhood playing
accesses and valorises the world of difference – the outside-of-oneself – of
music that he realised with his own hands and those of his mother(s). The
four-hand duet for the child Adorno was like a sonic embrace: part him,
part another, one whole.
Adorno acknowledged that he could no longer hear the music he
first played as a child except through (and weighed against) those early
11 R. Leppert, ‘Material Culture and Decentered Selfhood (Socio-Visual Typologies of Musical

Excess)’, in S. Hawkins (ed.), Critical Musicological Reflections: Essays in Honour of Derek B.
Scott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 101–6.
12 R. Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), pp. 134–87.
13 Concerning music in the Wiesengrund-Adorno home, see Müller-Doohm, Adorno, pp. 47–8.
14 W. Benjamin, ‘Unpacking My Library’, in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations: Essays and Reflections,
trans. H. Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 60, citing Anatole France: ‘The only
exact knowledge there is is the knowledge of the date of publication and the format of books.’
15 Quotations drawn from Adorno, ‘Four Hands, Once Again’, p. 1.
354 richard leppert
experiences. Even the full orchestra measured up poorly against the tension
produced by the introductory quavers that set the pace for what follows in
the Mozart G minor Symphony when played on the piano; and not least
because it was the second player – little Teddie – who was responsible. That
is, when the transcribed symphony opens, sans conductor, it is the child,
sitting in front of the keyboard’s lower half, who determines the tempo
and has to keep it going steadily, evenly, through all the chord changes,
with even a little chromaticism. The child establishes the foundation for
the opening theme in the treble handled by his mother. Even though his
touch is ‘questionable’, even though there will be ‘faltering and false notes’,
what matters is ‘an active relation to the works’, something that is lost to
the passive auditors in the concert hall who ‘listened in an intoxicated state’
to the flawless playing of the professionals – what he would elsewhere and
later refer to the ‘barbarism of perfection’, a form of fetishistic technocratic
discipline and musical purity commonly under the reign of a conductor’s
steely, Führer-like (his word) control.16
Young Teddie experienced the terror of doing, but also the excitement.
Making music, not in subservience to familial authority as a rehearsal for
life after childhood, but in equal partnership with his elders. What higher
indication of mutual respect, indeed love, could a child imagine, and how
better to understand the responsibilities that he enjoys? He knows full well
the tightrope he is walking, given his musical fallibility, his small hands,
short fingers, and uncertain technique. He plays on the brink of failure in
order to give to what he loves: music, mothers. Making music, whatever the
mistakes, sanctioned belonging; it was ‘the gift . . . placed at my cradle’. (The
earliest sounds Adorno recalled, even before those on the parlour piano,
were tunes sung to him by his mothers, songs for sleep – Brahms, of course,
the lullaby, and some others.)17
The music Adorno played, most of it arranged from orchestral scores
and some of it originally composed for four hands, was the quintessential
music of the bourgeois period, in all of its dialectical splendour. On the one
hand, this was the music that all too nicely served to make the bourgeois
auditor comfortable in the concert hall, to the extent that it seemed to repeat
in sound, indeed to make pretty, the successful striving of modernity and
its adherents: the sonoric German version of all those Dickens heroes. But
16 T. Adorno, ‘On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening’, in T. Adorno,
Essays on Music, ed. R. Leppert, trans. W. Blomster (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002), p. 301. See also ‘The Mastery of the Maestro’, in Sound Figures, trans. R. Livingstone
(Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 40–53.
17 Müller-Doohm, Adorno, p. 33.
on the other hand, and put less crassly, some of it was the music in which
Adorno heard the highest ideals of the Enlightenment demand for eman-
cipatory social change, for individual interests realised reciprocally with
others – more desired than achieved, to be sure, but not poorer for the aspira-
tion. Not accidentally in this context, Adorno, in the act of remembering his
musical childhood in the dark circumstances of 1933, invokes Paul Bekker’s
‘theory of the community-forming force of the symphonic’,18 insisting
that community and individuality can each ultimately survive only as
a unit.
The reduction of four-hand music from the orchestral mass of perhaps
eighty players to just two drives home the point. That is, Adorno hears a
socially revealing relation between two forms of performance of the same
music. The ‘community’ of the orchestra submerges the individual voice in
order to make possible the whole; the performance of the same music for
four hands brings to the surface the voice of the individual, while at the
same time preserving allusion to the communal circumstances upon which
the music depends. There is just one piano, one keyboard; but there are
two players sharing it. Admitted ‘into the family’, the symphony reaffirms
‘every individual’ in its ‘great whole’ – and, critically important, ‘without
surrendering any of the latter’s binding quality’. For any of this to happen,
the domestic-scene player has to ‘earn’ (‘erwerben’) the music, and that
comes from playing it again and again (‘noch einmal, immer noch einmal’)
so as to learn it from the inside. Here is how he put it:
Four-hand playing was the gift the geniuses of the bourgeois nineteenth century
placed at my cradle at the beginning of the twentieth. Music for four hands: that
was music with which one could still interact and live, before musical compulsion
itself commanded solitariness and secretive craft. Something is said by this not
merely about performance practice, but also about what is played. For the music
that was available here as classical is that of an era of less than a hundred years: itself
predestined for four-hand playing. This period begins with Haydn and ends with
Brahms . . . If one plays four-hand selections from the symphonies of Schumann
and Brahms, one will be amazed at how well this form seems to suit them: all
too well; even a piece as compositionally rich as the first movement of Brahms’
Fourth feels so self-evident to four hands that I cannot escape the feeling that
18 P. Bekker, The Story of the Orchestra (New York: W. W. Norton, 1936), p. 116, writing about the
Beethoven symphonies and overtures, as well as the Missa Solemnis and Fidelio: ‘[The music’s]
spiritual attitude, linked with the ideology of liberty, fraternity, and the demand for individual
responsibility, perfectly reflected the ideal of liberation of individuality through development
of independence, the final goal being unification of all individualities into a free community.’
356 richard leppert
only retrospectively was it elevated from the realm of the monochrome, tragically
intimate duet to instrumental multiplicity.19
The musical community evoked by four-hand music is ultimately located

in the specifics of performance practice. Adorno’s point is not simply about
playing, but about how one plays. The (musical) child in training for a
life in the (musical) community is given his freedom to extend the rubato
over the solo piece by Grieg on the music stand; after all, with Grieg,
rubato is sanctioned. But he is not permitted to play around with the
tempo and dynamics of the four-hand transcriptions of symphonies. He
owed his partner more, and he owed the music better. Connections to both
needed to be maintained; this in effect is ‘the secret’ of four-hand music: it
demands much of the self in relation to the otherness of the partner, but
also to the otherness of the music. The rubato, characteristic of self-willed
expressiveness, would wrest from the symphony its insistence on its distinct
difference from the child who brings it to life. Expressed otherwise, if there
is to be a rubato, it has to be agreed upon with one’s partner, and result from
what the music requires.
The reward for any such self-sacrifice is considerable, and the reward
exceeds matters of taste and stylishness: the aesthetics Adorno cared about
are at once intimate and social at heart. Edward Cone suggested that the aim
of four-hand music is to evoke oneness, an almost spiritual ‘harmony’ at
the unison. ‘Such a performance’, he suggests, ‘is thus a peculiarly intimate
affair, and when it is undertaken in public, the auditor may feel at best
an intruder, at worst a voyeur.’ The performers perceive one another as
extensions of themselves, ‘each participating fully and equally in the life of
the persona they jointly symbolize’.20
December, 1933. Four-hand playing has already ‘fallen silent’, traceable
only in the recollections of lost childhood: ‘playing four-hand has become a
gesture of memory’. Adorno hears the now distant echo of whatever remains
of the music’s trace of humaneness, in spite of the barbarism in which it too
commonly participates as the price to be paid for its existence. Modernity,
marked by the dark sublime of the eternal light (‘ew’ge Licht’) extinguished,
requires relief from itself, its capacity for so doing in doubt. In this we
19 Adorno, ‘Four Hands, Once Again’, pp. 1–2.

20 E. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 135. See
P. Brett, ‘Piano Four-Hands: Schubert and the Performance of Gay Male Desire’, 19th-Century
Music 21/2 (Autumn 1997), pp. 149–76, who considers this issue at length and with regard to
personal experience playing the Andante from Schubert’s Grand Duo in C Major with a male
partner. The essay, as insightful as it is principled, was written in the larger context of recent
debates concerning Schubert’s sexuality.
Figure 14.5. Albert Einstein Making Music during a Chamber Music Hour on board the
liner ‘Deutschland’ on the way to America (1933), black and white photograph.
may recognise the urgency of Adorno’s insistent noch einmal, ironically

captured, also in 1933, in a photograph of Albert Einstein making music
during a chamber music hour on board the steamship Deutschland on the
trip to America to begin what would become for him a self-imposed exile
(Figure 14.5).
The late-modern subject sitting at the piano with a partner, tackling
Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms, might find in this music – realised by this
hybridised, and now mostly out of fashion, means – a bridge to the severed
connections that severely limit late-modern intersubjectivity. (Adorno, in
any event, kept trying; an older friend of mine relates that as a young man, in
the 1960s, he played four-hand music with Adorno.) In a musical situation
where the partners, musically intimate, must account for one another, they
might discover in the process, however briefly, a semblance of a harmony
that words – even Adorno’s – fail to measure. And there might even be
something more, and wholly unexpected: ‘a child might be found to turn
the pages for them’.
The closing line of Adorno’s magisterial last book, Aesthetic Theory
(1970), not quite complete at the time of his death, asks rhetorically, ‘What
would art be, as the writing of history, if it shook off the memory of
358 richard leppert
accumulated suffering?’21 Adorno’s 1933 aphoristic memory-piece turns

back a page of history to find a place for its better future. That, after all,
defines the hope at the heart of having a child, and of being one. Those
oddly-shaped green volumes, printed oblong, one page for me and the
other for you, which we will read together with sympathetic touch, con-
nect Adorno to the loving touch of the history of his small self, the acute
memory of the immeasurable happiness that fortunate children experience
when unconditionally loved. Those music books on the piano stand in
the Wiesengrund-Adorno music room, which on account of their format
intrude on the good order of the library (where to put them, since they
jut out unreasonably from any shelf?), cannot be ignored. The green covers
and Querformat, a duet of visual provocation, invite allegiance to the sounds
they encode, for Adorno the cipher of an acoustic utopia. They wait for large
hands and small hands; they wait to be touched, their contents sounded,
given life ‘noch einmal’.
In a brief memoir of Adorno, Peter von Haselberg recalled having played
four-hand music with his friend two years after ‘Vierhändig, noch einmal’
was published. Adorno had returned to Frankfurt in 1935, staying on for sev-
eral months, though he found the possibilities of seeing old friends severely
reduced. Von Haselberg recalls the two men taking their pleasure instead in
four-hand playing, including a piano reduction of Mahler’s Seventh Sym-
phony, which they worked through repeatedly. Much to von Haselberg’s
surprise, his landlady recognised it as Mahler. Adorno in turn wanted to
invite her over to hear the piece the next time they played it, an idea that von
Haselberg rejected. The would-be invitation, von Haselberg relates, grew
from Adorno’s conviction, misplaced in his friend’s sense of the histori-
cal moment, that Mahler’s music exercised a kind of moral imperative –
something the times very much demanded.22
Adorno, in his Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962), suggested that
chamber music’s ‘inner character’ is determined by its distribution among
several musicians, and that the act of its performance seems as much dedi-
cated to the musicians themselves as to the audience.23 Chamber musicians,
such as quartet players with one player to a part, in effect are exposed;
with no place to hide, they cannot shrink back. Each stands out, solely
21 T. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, ed. G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 261.
22 P. von Haselberg, ‘Wiesengrund-Adorno’, in W. Schütte (ed.), Adorno in Frankfurt: Ein
Kaleidoskop mit Texten und Bildern (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 133–4.
23 T. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum,
1988), pp. 85–103.
responsible for the voice assigned to his or her instrument. This fact projects
the demand for and claim to expertise. It marks individual accomplishment.
Yet, he argued, individuality as such, the defining characteristic of the great
solo concerto literature of the nineteenth century, is detrimental to chamber
music discourse. The individual’s role must be subordinated to that of the
whole: each voice must be heard and must, in effect, hear its others. Adorno
heard chamber music as the sonoric embodiment of a sociality otherwise
disappearing from modern society. Chamber music (he had the string quar-
tet in the forefront of his mind) represented for him a kind of utopian social
balance between the promulgation of individuality, on the one hand, and
the relation of individuality to the enactment of community, on the other.24
For Adorno chamber music, both as sound and as a social phenomenon,
was a site of momentary refuge, a place of promise, imagination, and per-
haps memory, where another kind of individuality might be thought, seen
and indeed heard. In chamber music he located a space for a lost sociability,
where each musical voice was heard by mutual consent, and where being
heard was not defined by the competitive survival of the fittest, the loudest,
the most clever. In chamber music, as a principle of musical organisation,
Adorno heard musical conversation, musical give and take, musical sharing,
musical support of intertwining voices: in short, an enactment of mutual
respect and friendship. In chamber music Adorno could imagine the pos-
sibility of what otherwise seemed unavailable: a society that was actually
social (or sociable).25 He commented that ‘the first step in playing chamber
music well is to learn not to thrust oneself forward but to step back. What
makes a whole is not boastful self-assertion on the several parts – that would
produce a barbarian chaos – but self-limiting reflection.’ Chamber music
in essence ‘practises courtesy’.26
James Brown, in ‘The Amateur String Quartet’, a serialised ‘how-to’ essay
published in 1927 and intended as a practical guide for training teenaged
string players, here and there anticipates Adorno.27 Specifically, he identified
24 Adorno saw individuality as the foundation of history, as the defining principle of the Western
subject. He viewed it dialectically, as something both paradoxical and contradictory, at once
liberating and enslaving. Individuality constituted the basis of social organisation, yet
individuality in its competitive, appetitive, ultimately solipsistic drive was ironically anti-
social, anti-communal and fundamentally self-privatising.
25 Adorno clearly understood that the audience for chamber music was characteristically
privileged as regards education, economic circumstance and social standing. Paradoxically, in
other words, whereas the audience constituted an embodied reminder of social inequality,
chamber music, in his experience, offered the sonic trace of a more democratic alternative.
26 Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, p. 87.
27 J. Brown, ‘The Amateur String Quartet’, Musical Times 68 (1927), pp. 508–9, 600–2, 714–16,
798–800, 907–9, 1078–81; all quotations are from p. 908. See also B. Hanning, ‘Conversation
360 richard leppert
what characterises the uniqueness of the string quartet as an ensemble. He

botched it just a bit, for the word he chose is ‘aristocratic’. But Brown
redeemed himself, and at considerable verbal length, by getting at exactly
what Adorno later better stated: ‘String quartet playing is perhaps the most
perfect expression, in terms of music, of that precious human quality which
we call courtesy’; and he goes on to link quartet playing to the sonorics of
sociality itself. ‘Perhaps instead of “music,”’ he said, ‘I should say “social
music”; that is to say music performed by several people together’, the point
of which he specified brilliantly: ‘It is impossible to extricate the “social” joy
from the “musical” joy [of string quartet playing], because they are actually
the same thing.’ In sum, the social courtesy of the string quartet – the music,
the making of the music – is musical doing with others. It is a simulacrum
of happiness. Virtually the same holds for music in the home, the music to
which Brahms devoted himself.
The visualisation of musical Bildung
Musical intimacy
In the European and American nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
various forms of visual representation (but especially paintings and formal
photographs) of domestic music-making served as a common trope for the
domestic intimacy of the family, as well as a sign of the path to and accom-
plishment of Bildung. That said, the historical roots of Bildung long antedate
Romantic ideologies of the protective cocoon of the private sphere, though
in earlier periods the matter was more localised around the harmony of the
marriage union.28 Either way, the conceptual complex of what eventually
was defined as Bildung was structured around the concept of harmony, for
which music – as both an idea and a practice – was provided a significant
role, and especially so when the private life of the family was invoked. Look-
ing back to the prehistory of Bildung helps make clear the ideological worth
of music that manifests itself later in rather more benign ways, more or less
and Musical Style in the Late Eighteenth-Century Parisian Salon’, Eighteenth-Century Studies
22/3 (Summer 1989), pp. 512–28, which considers the development of dialogue in
instrumental chamber music, which mirrors salon etiquette. Works by Haydn, as well as by
lesser composers, are discussed.
28 See, for example, P. J. J. van Thiel, ‘Marriage Symbolism in a Musical Party by Jan Miense
Molenaar’, Simiolus 2/2 (1967–8), pp. 90–9, concerning a seventeenth-century Dutch portrait
commemorating a marriage.
fully naturalised within the general frame of nineteenth-century bourgeois

culture.
So too as regards the representational schemes of nineteenth-century
musical Bildung. Characteristic of the new visual vocabulary is a virtually
universal emphasis on the domestic interior, the explicitly private spaces of
the home, the parlour and music room, the place for family gatherings and
in appropriate circumstances trusted extra-familial intimates.
Several complementary inclusions and formal arrangements overdeter-
mine the impact – and cultural pedagogy – of Étienne Azambre’s Chamber
Music (1890; Figure 14.2, above). Every object included is a reinforcement
of bourgeois comfort, security and accomplishment, but also modesty:
nice but not fancy furniture in a smallish room; books, but soft-cover not
cloth; fresh flowers of an ordinary sort in a slightly upscale if obviously
mass-produced sort of vase; a small oriental carpet draped on the table, a
Dutch-style decoration, but no carpets on the floor (a more costly matter);
art on the wall, but a print not a painting; the sitters wearing off-the-shelf
clothes, perfectly decent but plain and in dull colours; a piano, upright not
grand.
The music is made with performers’ backs to us; what they play or, for
that matter, just who they are, is not relevant. What matters instead is their
music’s impact on the sitter in the foreground. The painting is not a portrait;
instead, it is a genre piece about the nature of family, protective intimacy
and Bildung. The young woman, slightly slouched in the chair, arms weakly
folded, head back, eyes dreamily half closed, lips barely parted, is a then-
conventional cipher for the sign and value of emotion and accompanying
decentredness, a kind of giving oneself over, in this instance to music, an
experience perfectly acceptable, even admired, in women, just as decen-
tredness was commonly satirised, often with bitter sarcasm, when music
unhinged adult males (Figure 14.6). To be sure, representations of this sort
edge towards the erotic: no portrait of a bourgeois woman would ever pose
her in the quasi-slouch apparent here.29 Overriding the potential for eroti-
cism is the worth and worthiness of displaying sensitivity to music, an apt
sign of cultivation or, stated differently, an explicitly significant manifesta-
tion of cultural arrivisme – the sitters, after all, are pretty ordinary bourgeois
types, hardly the social upper crust.
29 For an example of a painting where the slouch is made patently erotic, see Girl Resting at a
Piano by Frank Huddlestone Potter (1845–87), reproduced in Leppert, The Sight of Sound,
p. 184.
362 richard leppert
Figure 14.6. Gustave Doré (1832–83) Overcome, from Grotesques (1849).
In the company of friends

The cultural ideal of friendship and courtesy, part and parcel of the social
outreach attached to the ideology of Bildung, likewise employs music as
a means by which to represent the ideal, one that closely approximates
Adorno’s sense of it in his reminiscence of the ending of an era. A nineteenth-
century French lithograph of the Joachim String Quartet, The String Quartet
(Figure 14.7), is a case in point. Firstly, the image is a print, a mass-produced
image that can be cheaply bought. Possessing pedagogical value, it replicates
a cultural ideal already well in place, without which there would not be an
established market for the argument it advances. The setting is an upscale
home to judge from the furniture; the piano in the parlour at the back is
an upright but one with an elaborate case. Four middle-aged men set up to
play. The first violinist and cellist are ready to begin; the violist tunes; the
second violinist prepares to seat himself. The men are relaxed (especially
the cross-legged first violinist); they are equally intent on the task they have
set themselves. In short, each is a perfect exemplar of what is necessary for
a society of friends: a structure of feeling grounded in shared values.
More or less the same semiotic correlatives are apparent in a painting
by the Russian artist Vladimir Egorovic Makovsky, Musical Evening (1906)
(Figure 14.8). The setting incorporates a servant woman at the back carrying
a tray of drinks, and two men at the back, one holding a wine glass, perhaps
part of an intimate audience. Music and Gemütlichkeit. The violinists centre
front and right front tune; the former also smokes. Instrument cases lie
Figure 14.7. French School (nineteenth-century) The String Quartet, lithograph.
Figure 14.8. Vladimir Egorovic Makovsky (1846–1920), Musical Evening (1906), oil
on canvas.
364 richard leppert
Figure 14.9. Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), Murdoch Piano Quartet (1918),
black and white photograph.
Figure 14.10. Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), Murdoch Piano Quartet (1918),
black and white photograph.
about. Music is about to get under way. The men are obviously friends,
but at the moment each is isolated within his specific task, all of it in the
lead-up to producing the acoustic harmony that marks the entire point of
the representation. The image encodes the anticipation of what chamber
music means for the promulgation of Bildung.
In 1918 the Murdoch Piano Quartet was photographed by Alvin Langdon
Coburn (Figures 14.9 and 14.10) in slightly varied poses that replicate the
values apparent in the images previously discussed, constituting a kind
of brotherhood defined by familiarity, conviviality and friendship (smiles,
smoking), relaxed formality (performance attire but non-matching outfits;
the violinist leaning on the piano), and, to be expected, seriousness about
music (the intent stare of the cellist and pianist in the first photograph, and
the violist in the second). The cellist focuses on the score in one photograph;
in the other he looks out to us, as if to inquire: ‘Have you noticed what
matters here? Do you know what this is about?’ Unlike the other men he is
unsmiling, as if in unwitting anticipation of the regret and sorrow inhabiting
Adorno’s elegy. The panel at his back has the form of the window in a place
of worship, a mute sign of Bildung as a kind of cultural spirituality, by 1918
already a shadow reminder of an absent presence: in a word, a spectre.
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Index
Arrangements of works are listed under the names of their arrangers. The table of arrangements in
Chapter 8 is not included in this index.
Abraham, Max (1831–1900), 273, 279, 286, Bargiel, Woldemar (1828–97), 25, 165, 169
287, 289, 291 Barth, Richard (1850–1923), 4
Abt, Franz (1819–85), 314 Basel, 281, 289
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903–69), 21, Baudius, Auguste (1843–1937), 235
346–60, 365 Bauernfeld, Eduard von (1802–90), 9, 303
Ahna, Heinrich de (1835–92), 24, 41 Baumann, Alexander (1804–57), ix, xxvi
Alberti, Friedrich, 9 Baumayer, Marie (1851–1931), 227, 228, 233,
Allgemeine Deutsche Musik-Zeitung, 98 234, 243, 244, 252, 254
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 2, 286, 305, Bayer, Josef (1827–1910), 235, 243, 244, 247,
309, 310, 315, 317, 318 252
Allgemeine Musikzeitung, 98 Bayreuth, 22, 25
Allgeyer, Julius (1829–1900), 239, 240 Becker, Carl Ferdinand (1804–77), 6
Alma-Tadema, Lawrence (1836–1912), 36 Beckerath, Alwin von (1849–1930), 4, 300
Altaussee, 37 Beckerath, Laura von (1840–1921), 1, 21, 105,
Altmann, Wilhelm (1862–1951), 80, 81 307
Ameling, Elly (b. 1933), 317 Beckerath, Rudolf von (1833–88), 21, 105,
Anschütz, Johann Andreas (1772–1855?), 170
262 Beckerath, Willy von (1868–1938), 4
Arnim, Bettina von (1785–1859), 27, 28, 32, Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770–1827), xxiii, 4,
33, 34, 35, 40 7, 9, 11, 12, 25, 40, 41, 42, 62, 63, 94,
Arnim, Gisela von (1827–89), 167 118, 143, 147, 160, 167, 168, 169, 226,
Arnold, Carl Johann (1829–1919), 33, 34 247, 252, 257, 298, 324, 325, 326, 349,
Asten, Anna von (1848–1903), 291 350, 355, 357
Asten, Julie von (1841–1923), 222 Bekker, Paul (1882–1937), 332, 355
Asztalos, Bertha von (1855–1921), 236 Benecke, Victor (1831–1908), 302
Auer, Leopold (1845–1930), 35 Berchtesgaden, 231, 276
Augener (publisher), 198 Berg, Alban (1885–1935), 346
Avé-Lallement, Theodor (1806–90), 20, 21 Berlin, 8, 17, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 35, 41,
Azambre, Etienne (fl. 1883–1901), 348, 361 100, 101, 135, 158, 191, 197, 228, 245,
250, 291, 296, 307, 316, 317
Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685–1750), 4, 9, 12, Königliche Hochschule für Musik, 17, 23,
20, 36, 40, 77, 138, 171. See also 24, 25, 29, 31, 39, 42, 158, 168, 228,
Brahms, Johannes 250, 290, 291, 378
Bad Ischl, 101, 183, 198, 204, 241 Singakademie, 4, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 33,
Baden Baden, 96, 169, 180, 283, 300 39, 41, 42, 94, 291
Bagge, Selmar (1823–96), 305 University, 31
Balassa, Ottilie von, 11 Berlioz, Hector (1803–69), 12, 166
Barbi, Alice (1862–1948), 310 Bern, 201
Barcewicz, Stanislaw (1858–1928), 248 Bernsdorf, Eduard (1825–1901), 310
Bardua, Caroline (1781–1864) and Wilhelmine Bernuth, Julius von (1830–1902), 316
384 (1798–1865), 32 Bigelow, John (1797–1872), 93
Index 385
Billroth, Theodor (1829–94), 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 17, Op. 17 Vier Gesänge für Frauenchor, 14–15,
42, 43, 44, 89, 92, 99, 121, 138, 140, 16, 313
146, 239, 261, 276, 303, 371 Op. 18 String Sextet, 13, 16, 25, 43–5, 46,
Bismarck, Otto von (1815–98), 40 47–8, 55, 64, 69, 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 89,
Bittner, Edi, 244 93, 94, 100–8, 111, 138, 139, 190, 302.
Bizet, Georges (1838–75), 250, 251 See also Keller, Robert and Kirchner,
Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, 333, 334, Theodor
335, 342, 345 Op. 19 Fünf Gedichte, 13, 259, 275
Blätter für Hausmusik, 12 Op. 20 Drei Duette, 13, 21
Böhler, Otto (1847–1913), 332 Op. 21 no. 1 Variations on an Original
Bohm, Carl (1844–1920), 314 Theme, 18, 73, 105, 176
Bonn, 40 Op. 21 no. 2 Variations on a Hungarian
Boston, 92, 93 Song, 73, 105
Bourdeilles de Brantôme, Marie-Rosalie de, Op. 22 Marienlieder, 276
49 Op. 23 Variations on a Theme of Schumann,
Brahms, Fritz (1835–86), 9 73, 105, 106, 138
Brahms, Johannes (1833–97) Op. 24 Variations and Fugue on a Theme of
Anh. IIa no. 16 Ungarische Weisen, 97 Handel, 73, 106, 180–1, 182, 183. See
Arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Chaconne from also Kirchner, Theodor
Partita BWV 1004, 171 Op. 25 Piano Quartet, 9, 11, 47, 81, 82, 111,
Arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Presto in 120, 138, 169
G minor BWV 1001, 20, 171 Op. 26 Piano Quartet, 47, 111, 138, 300
Arrangement of Litolff’s Robespierre Op. 28 Vier Duette, 20
Overture Op. 55, 159 Op. 31 Drei Quartette, 7, 15, 286, 287, 298
Arrangement of Schumann’s Piano Quartet Op. 32 Lieder und Gesänge, 260, 275–6, 317
Op. 47, 119 Op. 33 Magelone-Romanzen, 300–5, 309,
Arrangement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet 311, 312, 313, 314–18, 319, 321, 322.
Op. 44, 171 See also Kirchner, Theodor
Arrangements of Joachim’s overtures. See Op. 34 Piano Quintet, 43, 47, 81, 82, 106,
Joachim, Joseph 119, 160, 178–84, 205, 303. See also
Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein, 35 Kirchner, Theodor
G. W. Marks (pseudonym), 73, 137 Op. 34bis Sonata for Two Pianos, 106, 119,
Lost Sonata for two pianos in D minor, 138, 137, 138, 140, 183
140, 168 Op. 35 Variations on a Theme of Paganini,
Op. 1 Piano Sonata, 103, 104, 165 4, 73, 106
Op. 2 Piano Sonata, 103, 104, 165 Op. 36 String Sextet, 13, 25, 43–82, 83, 85,
Op. 3 Sechs Gesänge, 165, 256, 257, 258, 303, 92, 93, 94, 111, 120, 138, 169. See also
312 Kirchner, Theodor
Op. 4 Scherzo, 18, 103, 104, 105, 165 Op. 37 Drei geistliche Chöre, 13
Op. 5 Piano Sonata, 103, 104, 331 Op. 38 Cello Sonata, 17, 178–95, 205, 223,
Op. 6 Sechs Gesänge, 300–7 319. See also Keller, Robert
Op. 7 Sechs Gesänge, 259–61, 263, 264, 265, Op. 39 Waltzes, ix, xxv, 18–20, 21, 47, 96–8,
266, 270, 274, 305, 306, 342 99, 106, 109, 138
Op. 8 Piano Trio, 16 Op. 40 Horn Trio, 119
Op. 10 Ballades, 13, 103, 104 Op. 41 Fünf Lieder, 15
Op. 11 Serenade, 13, 17, 47, 138 Op. 43 Vier Gesänge, 15, 257, 258, 272, 317,
Op. 12 Ave Maria, 13, 139 319
Op. 13 Begräbnisgesang, 139 Op. 44 Zwölf Lieder und Romanzen, 11, 312
Op. 14 Lieder und Romanzen, 13, 256–75, Op. 45 Ein deutsches Requiem, 97, 110–17,
306, 340, 342 118, 119, 124, 125, 126, 128, 139, 159,
Op. 15 Piano Concerto, 111, 116, 119, 138, 257, 280, 331
168, 170 Op. 46 Vier Lieder, 317
Op. 16 Serenade, 108, 138 Op. 47 Fünf Lieder, 270, 274, 304
386 Index
Brahms, Johannes (1833–97) (cont.) Op. 79 Zwei Rhapsodien, 99, 100, 317
Op. 48 Sieben Lieder, 15, 264 Op. 80 Academic Festival Overture, 117
Op. 49 Fünf Lieder, ix, xxv–xxvi, 178, 304, Op. 81 Tragic Overture, 117
308, 319, 324–45, 354. See also Keller, Op. 82 Nänie, 240
Robert Op. 83 Piano Concerto, 99
Op. 50 Rinaldo, 139, 280. See also Keller, Op. 84 Fünf Romanzen und Lieder, 308
Robert Op. 85 Sechs Lieder, 262, 263, 264, 266
Op. 51 no. 1 String Quartet, 25, 111, 138, Op. 86 Sechs Lieder, 276, 306, 308, 316
178–203, 204. See also Kirchner, Op. 87 Piano Trio, 5, 37
Theodor and Klengel, Paul Op. 88 String Quintet, 25, 37, 55
Op. 51 no. 2 String Quartet, 25, 111, 138 Op. 90 Symphony no. 3, 110–15, 128–36,
Op. 52 Liebeslieder-Walzer, 7, 10, 16, 47, 96, 137, 140–1, 143, 146, 149, 150–3,
119, 138, 178–88, 279–81, 282, 283, 178–92
284, 285, 286, 287, 290, 291, 293, 295, Op. 92 Vier Quartette, 280, 287, 298
296, 297, 298. See also Kirchner, Op. 94 Fünf Lieder, 260, 262
Theodor Op. 95 Sieben Lieder, 262, 263, 266, 270, 273,
Op. 52a Liebeslieder-Walzer for piano duet, 301
96, 119, 178–88, 285, 288, 290, 295, Op. 96 Vier Lieder, 273, 301, 307
296 Op. 97 Sechs Lieder, 16, 267, 273, 301, 307,
Op. 53 Alto Rhapsody, 12, 139 308
Op. 54 Schicksalslied, 112. See also Levi, Op. 98 Symphony no. 4, 110, 114, 117, 120,
Hermann 121, 137–43, 148, 150, 155, 157,
Op. 55 Triumphlied, 111, 139, 159, 322 178–94, 251, 327, 346–56. See also
Op. 56a and 56b Variations on a Theme of Keller, Robert
Haydn, 73, 106, 119, 138, 140, 207 Op. 100 Violin Sonata, 20, 317
Op. 57 Acht Lieder und Gesänge, 302 Op. 101 Piano Trio, 317
Op. 58 Acht Lieder und Gesänge, 302, 303 Op. 102 Double Concerto, 111
Op. 59 Acht Lieder und Gesänge, 240, 316, Op. 103 Zigeunerlieder, 279–96, 297, 298,
317 308. See also Kirchner, Theodor
Op. 60 Piano Quartet, 303, 316 Op. 105 Fünf Lieder, 258, 260, 262, 266
Op. 62 Sieben Lieder, 312 Op. 106 Fünf Lieder, 16, 307
Op. 63 Neun Lieder und Gesänge, 270 Op. 107 Fünf Lieder, 257, 262
Op. 64 Drei Quartette, 7, 286–9, 298 Op. 111 String Quintet, 25, 116, 117, 118,
Op. 65 Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer, 7, 47, 119, 120
138, 287, 289, 290, 298 Op. 112 Sechs Quartette, 279, 280, 287,
Op. 65a Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer for piano 298
duet, 119 Op. 113 Dreizehn Kanons, 15, 236, 273
Op. 67 String Quartet, 5, 24, 25, 111, 139, Op. 114 Clarinet Trio, 17, 25, 119, 198, 199,
170 231. See also Klengel, Paul
Op. 68 Symphony no. 1, xxiv, 110, 138, 139, Op. 115 Clarinet Quintet, 17, 25, 119,
140, 143, 144, 149, 178–97. See also 198–202, 226, 227, 228, 252. See also
Keller, Robert Klengel, Paul
Op. 69 Neun Gesänge, 262, 263, 264, 270, Op. 116 Sieben Fantasien, 100, 102
275, 276 Op. 117 Drei Intermezzi, 100, 102, 203–5.
Op. 70 Vier Gesänge, 12 See also Klengel, Paul
Op. 71 Fünf Gesänge, 262, 316, 317, 318 Op. 118 Sechs Klavierstücke, 100–2
Op. 73 Symphony no. 2, ix, xxv, 110–15, Op. 119 Vier Klavierstücke, 100–2
118, 121, 137–40, 144, 145, 149, 150, Op. 120 Clarinet Sonatas, 119, 202
178–97. See also Keller, Robert Op. 121 Vier ernste Gesänge, 240, 245
Op. 76 Acht Klavierstücke, 100, 101, 102, 339 WoO 1 Hungarian Dances, 17, 36, 96–9,
Op. 77 Violin Concerto, 4, 17, 111, 120, 169, 100, 106, 109, 138, 195–6, 295. See also
228, 245. See also Keller, Robert Joachim, Joseph and Keller, Robert and
Op. 78 Violin Sonata, 7, 21, 329 Kirchner, Theodor
Index 387
WoO 3–5 Keyboard suite movements, D’Albert, Eugen (1864–1932), 25, 253
106–8 Danhauser, Josef (1805–45), 248
WoO 31 Volks-Kinderlieder, 304, 308, 309 Danzig [Gdansk], 107
WoO 32 28 Deutsche Volkslieder, 13 Darwin, Charles (1809–82), 36
WoO 33 49 Deutsche Volkslieder, 259, 266, Daumer, Georg Friedrich (1800–75), 271, 283
267, 308 David, Ferdinand (1810–73), 46, 80, 81, 166
WoO 34 14 Deutsche Volkslieder, 304 Davidoff, Carl (1838–89), 46
WoO 35 12 Deutsche Volkslieder, 11, 267 Davies, Fanny (1861–1934), 101, 205
WoO 36 8 Deutsche Volkslieder, 11 Defregger, Franz von (1835–1921), 271, 272
WoO 37 16 Deutsche Volkslieder, 11, 267 Deierberg, Wilhelm Victor (1819–96), 170
WoO 38 20 Deutsche Volkslieder, 268 Deiters, Hermann (1833–1907), xxvi, 286
Brandes, Emma. See Engelmann, Emma Dessoff, Otto (1835–92), 170
Brandt, Auguste (1822–87), 58 Detmold, 6, 47, 55, 58, 97
Brandt-Forster, Ellen (1866–1921), 250 Devrient, Eduard (1801–77), 317
Breitenfurth, 244 Dickens, Charles (1812–70), 36, 354
Breitkopf & Härtel (publisher), 14, 48, 80, 103, Dietrich, Albert (1829–1908), 2, 5, 158, 166
106, 139, 165, 166, 171, 181, 198, 305 Dietz, Friedrich (1833–97), 46
Brendel, Franz (1811–68), 25 Dohnányi, Ernö (1877–1960), 25
Breuer, Josef (1842–1925), 252, 253 Dömpke, Gustav (1853–1923), 146
Brockhaus Conversations-Lexicon, 268, 270 Door, Anton (1833–1919), 238
Brown, James, 359, 360 Doré, Gustave (1832–83), 362
Browning, Robert (1812–89), 36 Dresden, 180, 232, 236, 242, 245, 252, 336
Bruch, Max (1838–1920), 248 Dressler, Friedrich, 41
Brücke, Dorette von, 243, 247, 251 Dussek, Jan Ladislav (1760–1812), 49
Brücke, Emilie von. See Wittgenstein, Emilie Düsseldorf, 4, 16, 103, 107, 138, 145, 165, 166,
Brücke, Ernst von, 251 170, 176, 180, 289, 291, 292
Brücke, Theodor von (1853–1918), 224, 243, Dustmann, Louise (1831–99), 289
247, 249, 252 Dvořák, Antonı́n (1841–1904), 46, 180, 272
Bruckner, Anton (1824–96), 244, 253
Brüll, Ignaz (1846–1907), 114, 121, 133, 140, Ebers, Georg (1837–98), 240
141, 146, 147, 198, 231, 238, 254 Ebner, Ottilie (1836–1920), 2, 5, 11, 16, 303,
Brussels, 4 304, 319
Budapest, 37, 221 Eckhart, Meister (c. 1260–c. 1327), 29
Bülow, Hans von (1830–94), 158, 163, 189, Ehlert, Louis (1825–84), 12
198, 343 Eibenschütz, Ilona (1873–1967), 101
Bunsen, Francis (1791–1876), 39 Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von (1788–1857),
Bussine, Romain (1830–99), 240 312, 313
Buths, Julius (1851–1920), 138 Einstein, Albert (1879–1955), 357
Eliot, George (1819–80), 36
Campbell, Lucy (1873–1944), 250, 252, 253 Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–82), 30, 40
Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881), 30 Endenich, 62, 168
Carus, Carl Gustav (1789–1869), 32 Engelmann, Emma (1853–1940), 138, 170
Chamisso, Adelbert von (1781–1838), 272 Engelmann, Theodor (1843–1909), 170
Chopin, Frédéric (1810–49), 248, 351 Epstein, Julius (1832–1926), 238, 316
Chrobak, Nelly. See Lumpe, Nelly Esterházy, 6, 233
Coblenz, 336 Eylert, Theodor and Karl, 11
Coburn, Alvin Langdon (1882–1966), 364, 365
Cologne, 96, 168, 339 Faber, Arthur (1839–1900), 2, 17, 230
Conrat, Hugo (1845–1906), 231, 295 Faber, Bertha (1841–1910), xxvi, 2, 17, 58, 230,
Cornelius, Peter (1824–74), 272 236
Cramer, Johann Baptist (1771–1858), 49 Falkenstein, Johann Paul von (1801–82), 34
Curschmann, Friedrich (1805–41), 319, 320 Fellinger, Maria (1849–1925), 5, 16–18, 100,
Cuxhaven, 268 101, 137, 138, 223, 233, 301
388 Index
Fellinger, Richard Jnr (1872–1952), 16–18, 100, Gmunden, 143

101, 137, 223, 233, 301, 302, 304, 307 Goerne, Matthias (b. 1967), 318
Fellinger, Richard Snr (1848–1903), 16–18, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832),
100, 101, 137, 138, 223, 233, 242, 248, 30, 33, 37, 40, 272, 275, 304, 312, 313
301 Goldmark, Carl (1830–1915), 223, 226, 238,
Feuerbach, Anselm (1829–80), 39, 237, 239, 254
240 Görz, 16
Feuerbach, Henriette (1812–92), 39, 240 Göttingen, 103, 107, 166, 169, 228, 232, 273,
Figdor, Fanny. See Wittgenstein, Fanny 275, 277
Fillunger, Marie Snr, 11, 16 Grabbe, Christian Dietrich (1801–36), 269
Fillunger, Mimi (Marie, 1850–1930) and Tessy, Grädener, Karl (1812–83), 14
11, 16 Graz, 236
Fink, Gottfried Wilhelm (1783–1846), 2, 305 Grieg, Edvard (1843–1907), 198, 314, 356
Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich (1925–2012), 309, Grimm, Herman (1828–1901), 28, 40, 160,
318 167, 168
Florentine Quartet, 300 Grimm, Julius Otto (1827–1903), 5, 158, 166,
Franck, Alfred, Ritter von (1808–84), 39 169, 275
Franck, Eduard (1817–93), 46 Grimm, Philippine [Gur], 275
Frank, Ernst (1847–89), 96 Grob, Therese (1798–1875), 9
Frankfurt, 39, 138, 142, 201, 289, 296, 346, Groth, Doris (1830–78), 8, 275, 301, 302, 305
351, 358 Groth, Klaus (1819–99), 275, 302, 308
Frankfurt String Quartet, 316 Grove, George (1820–1900), xxiii, 36
Franz, Anna (1840–96), 17, 222, 226, 230, 231, Gutzwiller, Sebastian (1798–1892), 43
243, 245, 301
Franz, Clärchen, 243 Hagegård, Håkan (b. 1945), 317
Franz, Emil (1839–84), 230 Hahn, Jenny, 303
Franz, Helene. See Heldburg, Freifrau Helene Halle, 103
von Hamburg, 9, 14, 17, 21, 47, 81, 103, 115, 167,
Franz, Robert (1815–92), 12, 263, 264 169, 180, 222, 268, 273, 274, 275, 289,
Frege, Livia (1818–91), 12, 28, 306 291, 308, 310, 316, 317, 330, 332
Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 252 Cäcilienverein, 291
Friedlaender, Max (1852–1934), 317 Großer Wörmerscher Saal, 14
Friedländer, Friedrich (1825–1901), 237, 238 Kleiner Wörmerscher Saal, 11
Fritzsch, Emil, 262 Petrikirche, 13
Fritzsch, Ernst Wilhelm (publisher), 12 Philharmonic and Singakademie, 316
Fuchs, Robert (1847–1927), 11, 137, 138, 238 Hamburg Ladies’ Choir, 13–16, 47, 55, 222,
267, 268, 273–5, 276, 277
Gabrilovitch, Ossip (1878–1936), 247, 253 Hammermühle, 302
Gade, Niels (1817–90), 45, 46, 80, 198 Handel, Georg Friedrich (1685–1759), 307
Ganghofer, Ludwig (1855–1920), 240 Hanover, 6, 11, 80, 96, 103, 164, 166, 167, 169,
Gänsbacher, Josef (1829–1911), 223 170, 251, 289
Garbe, Laura, 13 Hanslick, Eduard (1825–1904), 7, 17, 25, 47,
Gartenlaube, Die, 256, 257, 261, 271, 277 81, 92, 102, 113, 115, 139, 146, 198,
Gasteiger, Bertha von (1860–1940), 231, 251, 201, 276, 309, 310
252, 253 Härtel, Hermann (1803–75), 80, 103
Geiringer, Karl (1899–1989), 257 Härtel, Raymund (1810–88), 80, 103
Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen Haselberg, Peter von (1908–94), 358
(1826–1914), 143 Hausmann, Robert (1852–1909), 5, 17, 41,
Georg V, King of Hanover (1819–78), 6, 7, 15 250
Gernsheim, Friedrich (1839–1916), 25 Haydn, Joseph (1732–1809), 4, 25, 40, 62, 63,
Girzick, Rosa (?1850–1915), 20 93, 139, 279, 349, 355, 360
Gladstone, William (1809–98), 36 Hegar, Friedrich (1841–1927), 8
Glass, Louis (1864–1936), 46 Hegel, Friedrich (1770–1831), 24
Gluck, Christoph Wilibald (1714–87), 302 Heine, Heinrich (1797–1856), 41
Index 389
Heinrich XXIV, Prince Reuss of Greiz Joachim, Amalie (1839–99), 3, 4, 8, 21, 41, 169,
(1855–1910), 46 262, 273, 289, 291, 300–9, 315, 316, 322
Heldburg, Freifrau Helene von (1839–1923), Joachim, Heinrich (1825–97), 164
143 Joachim, Joseph (1831–1907), 3, 4, 5, 6–7, 11,
Hellmesberger Quartet, 5, 7, 81 15, 16, 17, 21, 22–37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 80,
Hellmesberger, Joseph (1828–93), 81 81, 93, 94, 98, 103, 104, 105, 107, 138,
Helm, Clementine (1825–96), 266, 278 145, 158, 161–70, 172–7, 198, 202, 221,
Helmholtz, Hermann von (1821–94), 41–2 222, 223, 224, 226, 228, 232, 234, 235,
Henschel, Georg (1850–1934), 256, 277, 292, 245, 300, 309, 316
300–16, 322 Arrangement for violin and piano of
Hensel, Fanny. See Mendelssohn, Fanny Brahms’s Hungarian Dances WoO 1, 98
Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803), 30, Op. 4 Hamlet, 7, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163,
258, 259 164, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172–4, 176
Hermann, Friedrich (1828–1907), 178, 290, Op. 6 Demetrius, 7, 140, 158, 160, 161, 163,
293, 297 167, 169, 170, 171, 175, 176
Herz, Henriette (1764–1847), 32 Op. 7 Ouvertüre zu Heinrich IV., 7, 140,
Herzogenberg, Elisabeth von (1847–92), 2, 8, 158, 160, 161, 168, 169, 170, 171, 175,
20, 137, 256, 301 176
Herzogenberg, Heinrich von (1843–1900), 20, Variations on an Irish Elfsong, 176
25, 198, 292, 301 Joachim, Regina (c. 1827–62), 3
Hesse-Barchfeld, Princess of (1818–88), 316 Jowett, Percy Hague (1882–1955), 36
Heuberger, Richard (1850–1914), 238, 310
Heubner, Konrad (1860–1905), 324–39, 342 Kahle, Richard (1842–1916), 41
Heyse, Paul (1830–1914), 12, 312 Kaiserfeld, Antonie von (1847–1933), 37, 39
Hiller, Ferdinand (1811–85), 322 Kaiserfeld, Moritz von (1811–85), 39
Himmel, Friedrich Heinrich (1765–1814), Kalbeck, Max (1850–1921), 7, 17, 102, 142,
263 146–7, 247–55, 276, 289, 315, 319
Hoechle, Johann Baptist (1790–1835), 349 Kalksburg, 233, 238, 243, 245, 246, 254
Hofmann, Heinrich (1842–1902), 46 Kapper, Siegfried (1821–77), 263
Hofmeister, Friedrich (publisher), 48 Karlsbad, 243
Hofmeister–Whistling catalogues, 45, 46, 77, Karlsruhe, 201, 240, 319
159, 206, 292, 293, 295 Kassel, 49
Holbein-Holbeinsberg, Franz von Keller, Gottfried (1819–90), 312
(1832–1910), 20 Keller, Robert (1828–91), 112, 116, 133, 141,
Hornbostel, Erich von, Jnr (1877–1935), 236 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 152, 160,
Hornbostel, Erich von, Snr (1846–1910), 236, 178–9, 183, 198, 200, 205, 280, 290,
251 297, 343–5
Hornbostel, Helene von. See Magnus, Helene Paraphrase on Brahms’s ‘Wiegenlied’
Hornstein, Robert von (1833–90), 2 Op. 49 no. 4, 324–45
Horsley, Elizabeth (1809–72), 36 Piano arrangement of Brahms’s Symphony
Howells, Herbert (1892–1983), xxiii no. 2 Op. 73, 144, 178–97
Hübbe, Walter, 10, 11 Piano arrangements of Brahms’s Symphony
Huber, Hans (1852–1921), 281, 292 no. 1 Op. 68, 143, 144, 178–97
Hughes, Arthur (1832–1915), 43 Piano duet arrangement of Brahms’s Cello
Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835), 31–2 Sonata Op. 38, 178–95
Hummel, Johann Nepomuk (1778–1837), 254 Piano duet arrangement of Brahms’s
Huymann, Anna von, 275 Symphony no. 3 Op. 90. See Brahms,
Johannes
Interlaken, 202, 242 Piano duet arrangement of Brahms’s Violin
Concerto Op. 77, 160
Jansen, Rudolf (b. 1940), 317 Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s
Jenner, Gustav (1865–1920), 229, 251, 291, 298 Hungarian Dances WoO 1, 195–6
Joachim Quartet, 4, 7, 11, 17, 22–4, 25, 33, 39, Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s
40, 41, 42, 80, 93, 362, 363 Rinaldo Op. 50, 190
390 Index
Keller, Robert (1828–91) (cont.) Köstlin, Christian Reinhold (1813–56), 16, 307
Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s Sextet Krefeld, 4, 300, 302, 303
Op. 18, 190 Kretzschmar, Hermann (1848–1924), 257, 258,
Two-piano arrangement of Brahms’s 261, 277
Symphony no. 4 Op. 98, 178–94 Kretzschmer–Zuccalmaglio Deutsche
Keudell, Robert von (1824–1903), 38 Volkslieder mit ihren Original-Weisen,
Kiel, 309 265, 274
Kiel, Friedrich (1821–85), 12, 40 Kreutzer, Conradin (1780–1849), 262
Kirchner, Theodor (1823–1903), 2, 8, 9, 12, 99, Krug, Arnold (1849–1904), 46
141, 160, 178–9, 183, 188, 196, 197, Kufferath, Antonia von (1857–1939), 4, 304
198, 199, 202, 205, 280, 290, 297, 317, Kufferath, Ferdinand (1818–96), 4
342–3 Kuhn, Heinrich (1904–94), 231, 232
Op. 76 Reflexe, 343 Kuhn-Oser, Marie [Mariele] (1909–2008), 221,
Piano duet and solo piano arrangement of 222, 224, 225, 227, 229, 231, 232, 233,
Brahms’s Zigeunerlieder Op. 103, 296 234, 235, 242
Piano duet arrangement of Brahms’s Handel Kupelwieser, Bertha. See Wittgenstein, Bertha
Variations Op. 24, 180–1, 182 Kupelwieser, Ida, 226, 247
Piano duet arrangement of Brahms’s Piano Kupelwieser, Karl (1841–1925), 226
Quintet Op. 34, 160, 178–84 Kupelwieser, Leopold (1796–1862), 248
Piano trio arrangement of Brahms’s Sextets Kupelwieser, Paula, 247
Op. 18 and Op. 36, 343 Kupfer, Wilhelm (1840–1914), 170
Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s
Hungarian Dances WoO 1 nos. 11–21, L’vov, Alexei (1799–1870), 73
99, 195–6 Labor, Josef (1842–1924), 249, 250, 251
Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s Lachner, Franz (1803–90), 315
Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52, 178–88 Landseer, Edwin Henry (1802–73), 36
Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s Lang, Josefine (1815–80), 5, 16, 304
Magelone-Romanzen Op. 33 (partial), Laxenburg, 233, 234, 241, 242, 254
317 Leighton, Frederick (1830–96), 36
Solo piano arrangement of second Leipzig, 1, 2, 12, 20, 27, 28, 31, 34, 46, 80, 103,
movement of Brahms’s String Quartet 112, 180, 221, 222, 256, 289, 310, 313,
Op. 51 no. 1, 178–203, 204 316, 317, 336, 339
Kistner (publisher), 45 Conservatory, 26, 31, 81, 108, 198, 204
Kitsee, 221 Gewandhaus, 28, 34, 103, 165, 198, 316
Klauwell, Otto (1851–1917), 324–42 Stadttheater, 310
Klemm, Carl August, 1 Lemere, Harry Bedford (1864–1944), 347
Klengel, Julius (1859–1933), 198 Lentz, Anna, 268
Klengel, Paul (1854–1935), 178, 199, 205, Leo, Betty (b. 1823), 305
280 Leopold III, Prince of Lippe (1821–75), 47
Arrangement for orchestra of Brahms’s Leschetizky, Theodor (1830–1915), 247
Intermezzo Op. 117 no. 1, 203–5 Levi, Hermann (1839–1900), xxiv, 137, 232,
Arrangement for piano duet of Brahms’s 289, 300, 319
Clarinet Trio Op. 114, 199 Vocal score of Brahms’s Schicksalslied
Arrangements of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet Op. 54, 112
Op. 115, 137, 198–202 Levy, Sarah (1761–1854), 32
Solo piano arrangement of Brahms’s String Lewald, Fanny (1811–89), 27
Quartet Op. 51 no. 1, 178–203 Leyen, Rudolf von der (1851–1910), 4, 143,
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb (1724–1803), 300, 302, 305, 310
263 Lichtenthal bei Baden Baden, 118
Klughardt, August (1847–1902), 25 Liesing, 238, 239, 244
Köhler, Bernhard, 46 Lind, Jenny (1820–87), 302
Kopisch, August (1799–1852), 303 Linde, Ernst, 324–34, 345
Koschat, Thomas (1845–1914), 292, 293 Lindemann, Frederick (1886–1957), 232
Index 391
Lindner, Adalbert (1860–1946), 326 Miesenbach, 224, 247, 248

Lindner, August (1820–78), 11 Milder-Hauptmann, Anna (1785–1838), 9
Liszt, Franz (1811–86), xxiii, 25, 27, 33, 36, Mill, John Stuart (1806–73), 31, 32
118, 143, 160, 161, 164, 165, 167, 168, Millais, John Everett (1829–96), 36
189, 272, 324, 343, 350 Miller, Donald, 317
Litolff, Henry (1818–91) Miller zu Aichholz, Olga von (1853–1931), 17,
Arrangements by Brahms. See Brahms, 18, 20, 101, 143, 231, 249
Johannes Miller zu Aichholz, Viktor von (1845–1910),
Loder, Kate (1825–1904), 123, 124, 125, 126, 17, 20, 101, 138, 143, 231, 247, 249
127 Molbe, Heinrich (1835–1915), 46
Loewe, Carl (1796–1869), 279 Moltke, Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard
London, xxiii, 4, 36, 93, 94, 112, 122, 124, 127, Graf von (1800–91), 40–1
128, 168, 245, 289, 295, 317 Mörike, Eduard (1804–75), 263, 278
Lower Rhine Music Festival, 16, 145, 180, 322 Moser, Andreas (1859–1925), 3, 24, 39, 249
Lübeck, 317 Moser, Hans Joachim (1889–1967), 22
Lübke, Wilhelm (1826–93), 99 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91), 4, 7,
Ludwig Viktor, Archduke of Austria 11, 25, 40, 94, 167, 249, 304, 307, 349,
[Lutzi-Wutzi] (1842–1919), 240, 250 354
Lumpe, Nelly (née Chrobak) (1847–1900), Müchler, Karl Friedrich (1763–1857), 263
231 Mühlfeld, Richard (1856–1907), 17, 201, 202,
252
Macfarren, George Alexander (1813–87), 122, Müller, Leopold Carl (1834–92), 237
123 Müller, Wilhelm (1834–97), 24
Madrid, 253 Müller, Wilhelm, poet (1794–1827), 310
Magnus, Helene (1840–1914), 227, 228, 229, Munich, 12, 236, 237
231, 236, 251, 253, 316 Münster, 322
Mahler, Gustav (1860–1911), 358 Murdoch Piano Quartet, 364, 365
Majer, Alois (1835–96), 37 Mürzzuschlag, 17, 99, 190, 247
Makovsky, Vladimir Egorovic (1846–1920), Musikalischer Hausschatz der Deutschen, 305
362, 363
Mandyczewski, Eusebius (1857–1929), 176, Nagel, Wilibald (1863–1929), 335, 336
229, 236, 237, 238 Neefe, Christian Gottlob (1748–98), 305,
Marie, Princess of Hanover (1849–1904), 251 306
Marlitt, Eugenie (1825–87), 256, 258, 266, 272, Neue Musik-Zeitung, 334
275, 278 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 6, 25, 26, 46, 165,
Marx, Adolf Bernhard (1795–1866), 315 180, 334
Marxsen, Eduard (1806–87), 165 Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 254
May, Florence (1845–1923), 9, 122, 280 New York, 222, 226
Meier, Camilla, 268, 269 Niemann, Walter (1876–1953), 324–32
Meier, Franziska, 268, 269, 271, 274, 276 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900), 30, 251
Meiningen, 114, 141, 142, 147, 180, 235, 245 Nohl, Hermann (1879–1960), 233
Mendelssohn family, 26, 28, 32 Novalis (1772–1801), 24, 312
Mendelssohn, Fanny (1805–47), 26, 27, 28, 32, Nowak, Anton (1865–1932), 237, 238
40, 263
Mendelssohn, Felix (1809–47), 10, 25, 26–9, Oberländer, Adolf (1845–1923), 235, 236
31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 43, 80, 160, Onslow, Edward (1758–1829), 48
161, 180, 302, 304, 306, 313, 315, 339, Onslow, George (1784–1853), 48–52, 53, 58,
351 62, 63, 68
Menzel, Adolph (1815–1905), 42, 237 Ophüls, Gustav (1866–1926), 276
Messchaert, Johannes (1857–1922), 245, 246 Oser, Bertha (1878–1936), 221–52, 254, 255
Meyer, Joseph, Konversations-Lexicon, 268 Oser, Betty (1837–1922), 232, 243, 244, 247,
Meyer, Therese (1815–68), 137 250, 252, 253, 254
Meyerbeer, Giacomo (1791–1864), 36 Oser, Franz (1874–93), 230, 235, 241
392 Index
Oser, Hedwig (1873–1945), 221–42, 244, 245, Reuter, Marie, 13, 16

246, 247, 249, 253 Rheinberger, Josef (1839–1901), 12
Oser, Johann Nepomuk (1833–1912), 224, 225, Richter, Adrian Ludwig (1803–84), 268, 271,
230, 234, 235, 238, 239, 241, 243, 246, 278
247, 249, 252 Richter, Hans (1843–1916), 114, 133, 140, 146,
Oser, Josefine. See Wittgenstein, Josefine 289
Oser, Lydia (1882–1965), 221–54 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich (1823–97), 28, 271,
Otten, Georg Dietrich (1806–90), 169 333
Riemann, Hugo (1849–1919), 12, 159, 334–5,
Paganini, Nicolò (1782–1840), 81 339
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi di (c. 1525–94), Rieter-Biedermann (publisher), 2, 18, 198,
236 305, 311, 313, 315
Paris, 49, 93, 237 Rieter-Biedermann, Jakob Melchior
Parry, Hubert (1848–1918), 36 (1811–76), 8, 19, 97, 98, 116, 117, 119,
Pazzani, Axel, 246, 247 123, 168, 180, 183, 276, 313, 315
Peters, C. F. (publisher), 48, 273, 286, 291 Rietschel, Ernst Friedrich August (1804–61),
Pfitzner, Hans (1869–1949), 313 240
Polko, Elise (1823–99), 266, 267, 278 Ritchie, Lady (1837–1919), 36
Pörtschach, 181, 228, 231 Rockstro, William (1823–95), 80
Porubsky, Bertha. See Faber, Bertha Rodaun, 233, 238
Possart, Felix (1837–1928), 23 Roentgen, Julius (1855–1932), 245, 246, 310
Potsdam, 26 Rokitansky, Hans Freiherr von (1835–1909),
Pott, Marie. See Wittgenstein, Marie 240, 241
Potter, Cipriani (1792–1871), 123, 128 Rossini, Giacomo (1792–1868), 2
Potter, Frank Huddlestone (1845–87), 361 Rottenberg, Ludwig (1864–1932), 238
Prasch-Passy, Anna (1857–1939), 236 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), 259
Pressburg, 250 Rubinstein, Anton (1829–94), 300
Providence, Rhode Island, 93 Rudorff, Ernst (1840–1916), 46, 228, 290, 291
Quinche, Albert (1867–1944), 292 Sachs, Kurt (1881–1959), 236

Salomon, Hedwig (1819–97), 166
Rabich, Ernst (1856–1933), 333 Salzer, Hermine (1875–1935), 238, 239
Rabl, Walter (1873–1940), 252 Salzer, Johannes Heinrich [Hans]
Radzivill, Princes, 27 (1871–1944), 238, 239
Raff, Joachim (1822–82), 46, 248 Salzer, Marie [Mitzi] (1873–1936), 238, 239
Randhartinger, Benedikt (1802–93), 310 Sarasate, Pablo de (1844–1908), 247, 248, 249
Ranken, Marion Bruce, 22 Scarlatti, Domenico (1685–1757), 254
Rappoldi, Eduard (1831–1903), 24 Scherer, Georg (1824–1909), 274, 304
Rauch, Christian David (1777–1857), 240 Schiever, Ernst (1844–1915), 24
Raumer, Friedrich von (1781–1873), 27 Schiller, Friedrich (1759–1805), 168, 262,
Regan, Anna (1841–1902), 123 272
Reger, Max (1873–1960), 180, 324–8, 331, Schinkel, Karl Friedrich (1781–1841), 22
332 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1767–1845),
Reicha, Anton (1770–1836), 49 161, 166, 262, 272
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich (1752–1814), 259, Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834), 24
262–3 Schlotke, Otto (1869–1927), 315
Reinecke, Carl (1824–1910), 138, 198, 289, Schmaltz, Susanne, 274
305, 328–9, 332, 339 Schmutzer, Ferdinand (1870–1928), 38
Reinhard, August (1831–1912), 329, 330 Schneider, Eduard (1827–90), 11
Reinhold, Christian. See Köstlin, Christian Schoenberg, Arnold (1874–1951), 94, 278, 327,
Reinhold 346
Renard, Marie (1864–1939), 250 Scholz, Bernhard (1835–1916), 2, 4, 6, 11, 15,
Reuss, Eduard (1851–1911), 25 198, 300, 302, 309
Index 393
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), 2, 262 Simrock, Clara (1838–1928), 8, 100

Schuback, Thomas (b. 1943), 317 Simrock, Fritz (1837–1901), 8, 14, 96, 98, 100,
Schubert, Franz (1797–1828), 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 103, 115, 118, 119, 120, 141, 144, 160,
14, 25, 40, 43, 58, 62, 68, 94, 236, 240, 176, 178–91, 195, 197, 198–9, 201, 204,
247, 248, 249, 250, 263, 271, 279, 238, 252, 262, 283, 284, 285, 286, 288,
300–23, 350, 356, 357 295, 307, 309, 315, 343
Instrumental works, 11, 248, 249, 250, 356 Simrock, Hans (1861–1910), 262
Vocal works, 6, 11, 263, 271, 279, 302, 303, Simrock, Peter Joseph (1792–1868), 14, 179
307, 309–10, 323 Singer, Wilhelm (1847–1917), 254
Schubertiad, 3, 43 Smetana, Bedřich (1824–84), 272
Schulz, J. A. P. (1747–1800), 259 Smyth, Ethel (1858–1944), 256
Schumann, Clara (1819–96), 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, Soldat[-Roeger], Marie (1863–1955), 17, 137,
11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 47, 62, 78, 97, 227, 228, 243, 245, 246, 247, 250, 252,
101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 115, 253, 254
118, 120, 137, 138, 144, 158, 165, 166, Soldat-Roeger Quartet, 229, 249, 250, 251
167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 180, 190, 201, Sommerhoff, Elise. See Schumann, Elise
202, 222, 232, 234, 240, 241, 244, 256, Sonnleithner, Ignaz von (1770–1831), 5
276, 289, 291, 298, 301, 302, 305, 306, Spaun, Josef von (1788–1865), 3, 303, 307
317, 319, 323 Specht, Richard (1870–1932), 137
Schumann, Elise (1843–1928), 115 Speyer, Edward (1839–1934), 36
Schumann, Eugenie (1851–1938), 13, 304 Spies, Hermine (1857–93), 231, 273, 315, 316
Schumann, Felix (1854–79), 270 Spitta, Philipp (1841–94), 101–2, 198, 205, 276
Schumann, Julie (1845–72), 242 Spohr, Louis (1784–1859), 6, 45, 46, 47–50,
Schumann, Marie (1841–1929), 201, 229, 232, 55–8, 59, 62, 63, 68, 78, 80, 168
241, 242, 250, 251 Stägemann, Max (1843–1905), 317
Schumann, Robert (1810–56), 2, 5, 10, 12, 17, Stanford, Charles Villiers (1852–1924), xxiii,
25, 36, 40, 43, 46, 47, 62, 80, 89, 102, 25, 36, 168
103, 105, 138, 158, 161, 164, 165, 166, Stargardt-Wolff, Edith (1880–1961), 23, 24,
168, 169, 176, 180, 240, 241, 263, 268, 42
272, 278, 279, 300–23, 339, 342, 355 Staub, Victor (1872–1953), 246
Arrangements by Brahms. See Brahms, Steffens, Henrik (1773–1845), 27
Johannes Stockhausen, Bodo Albrecht von (1810–85),
Instrumental works, 8, 43 80, 81
‘Neue Bahnen’, 46, 165, 180 Stockhausen, Julius (1826–1906), 16, 18, 20,
Piano works, 11, 13, 41, 42, 89, 104, 138, 104, 123, 126, 127, 180, 223, 236, 240,
254, 268, 303 245, 257, 262, 289, 300, 301, 307,
Vocal works, 257, 272, 279, 283, 302, 303, 309–10, 311, 317, 318, 322
309, 310, 317, 318, 322 Storm, Theodor (1817–88), 312, 336, 339
Schütt, Eduard (1856–1933), 316 Strauss II, Johann (1825–99), 198, 250
Schwarz Wolff, Louise (1855–1935), 24 Strauß, Ludwig (1836–99), 37, 39
Schwind, Moritz von (1804–71), 9, 43, 248 Strauss, Richard (1864–1949), 251, 278, 324
Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), 166, 167, Switzerland, 8, 97, 180
169, 245
Shakespeare, William, singer (1849–1931), 245 Taubert, Wilhelm (1811–91), 25
Siebert, Franziska von, 243, 250 Tausig, Carl (1841–71), 106, 137
Siebert, Josef Norbert von, 224, 243, 250 Tausig, Seraphine. See Vrabély, Seraphine
Siebert, Lydia. See Wittgenstein, Lydia Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’yich (1840–93), 248
Siebold, Agathe von (1835–1909), 13, 256–76 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord (1809–92), 36–7
Signale für die musikalische Welt, 98, 101, 108, Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811–63), 36
285, 286, 291 Thalberg, Sigismond (1812–71), 137
Silcher, Friedrich (1789–1860), 265, 305 Thompson, Lady. See Loder, Kate
Simrock (publisher), 98, 135, 148, 178, 198, Thomsen, Theodor (1840–1927), 302, 309
200, 201, 202, 262, 290, 308, 343 Thumann, Paul (1834–1908), 267
394 Index
Tieck, Ludwig (1773–1853), 24, 26, 27, 32, 33, Watts, George Frederic (1817–1904), 36
40, 166, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316 Weber, Carl Maria von (1786–1826), 9, 26,
Tilgner, Viktor (1844–96), 231 251, 252, 307
Truxa, Celestine (1858–1935), 253 Weimar, 31, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166
Tschampa, Fanny, Marie and Amalie, 236 Weingartner, Felix von (1863–1942), 324–6,
Twain, Mark (1835–1910), 247 329, 331, 332, 336
Weinwurm, Rudolf (1835–1911), 292
Uhland, Ludwig (1787–1862), 258, 259, Weisz, Josef, 101
276 Wendt, Gustav (1827–1912), 201
Utrecht, 170 Werner, Elisabeth, 4
Uzielli, Lazzaro (1861–1943), 138 Wesendonck, Mathilde (1828–1902), 180
Westmorland, Earl of (1784–1859), 27
Varnhagen, Rahel (1771–1833), 32 Widmann, Josef Viktor (1842–1911), 201, 234,
Veit, Václav (1806–64), 48 249, 277
Viardot-Garcia, Pauline (1821–1910), 7, 300 Wieck, Friedrich (1785–1873), 3, 222
Victoria, Queen of England (1819–1901), 37 Wiesbaden, 105, 115, 170
Vienna, xxiii, 2, 5, 6, 7, 11, 17, 44, 47, 80, 81, Wilbrandt, Adolf von (1837–1911), 6, 235
82, 89, 93, 99, 104, 107, 114, 118, 123, Wildbad-Gastein, 323
137, 170, 183, 190, 198, 199, 201, 202, Wilm, Nicolai (1834–1911), 46
221, 222, 223, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717–68),
233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 30
242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, Winterthur, 8, 179
251, 253, 255, 275, 289, 296, 310, 316, Wittgenstein family, 2, 7, 11, 17, 221, 222, 223,
336, 350 224, 225, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 243,
Bösendorfer Saal, 240, 246, 253, 316 255
Conservatory, 3, 241 Wittgenstein, Anna. See Franz, Anna
Ehrbar’s Klaviersalon, 140, 141 Wittgenstein, Bertha (1848–1908), 222, 226,
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 3, 93, 106, 229, 231
133, 176, 222, 236, 275 Wittgenstein, Clara (1850–1935), 222, 223,
Musikverein, 246, 310 229, 233, 234, 241, 242, 243, 250, 254
Philharmonic, 147 Wittgenstein, Emilie [Millie] (1853–1939),
Secession, 228, 237, 238 224, 229, 243, 244
Singakademie, 81, 317 Wittgenstein, Fanny (1814–90), 221, 222, 225,
Singverein, 237, 275 226, 232
Tonkünstlerverein, 101, 252, 277 Wittgenstein, Hermann (1802–78), 221, 222,
University, 42 225, 226, 232, 233
Vogel, Bernhard [Adolf] (1847–98), 273 Wittgenstein, Josefine (1844–1933), 221–54
Vogl, Heinrich (1845–1900), 317 Wittgenstein, Karl (1847–1913), 222, 224, 226,
Vogl, Johann Michael (1768–1840), 9, 43, 303, 227, 228–9, 230, 232, 237, 243, 249,
307 251
Voigt, Henriette (1808–39), 28 Wittgenstein, Leopoldine (1850–1926), 226,
Völckers, Betty and Marie, 13, 274 230, 243, 247, 251, 252
Vossische Zeitung, 308, 323, 352 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Jnr, philosopher
Vrabély, Seraphine (1841–1931), 98 (1889–1951), 223, 226
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Snr (1845–1925), 223,
Wagner, Bertha (1838–76), 13 224, 226, 228, 230, 231
Wagner, Friedchen (1831–1917), 8, 9, 13, Wittgenstein, Lydia [Lydie] (1851–1920), 224,
273 243, 250
Wagner, Olga and Thusnelda, 13 Wittgenstein, Marie (1841–1931), 229, 231,
Wagner, Richard (1813–84), xxiii, 25, 26, 252
36, 41, 166, 168, 180, 245, 324, 326, Wittgenstein, Paul (1842–1928), 226, 227, 230,
349 233, 234, 254
Walter, Gustav (1834–1910), 262, 289, 307 Wolf, Hugo (1860–1903), 276, 278, 313
Index 395
Wolff, Hermann (1845–1902), 24, 250 Zelter, Carl Friedrich (1758–1832), 26

Wüllner, Franz (1832–1902), 180, 245 Zemlinsky, Alexander von (1871–1942), 327
Wüllner, Ludwig (1858–1938), 245 Zuccalmaglio, Anton Wilhelm von (1803–69),
Würzburg, 180 259
Zur-Mühlen, Raimund von (1854–1931), 240
Ysaÿe, Eugène (1858–1931), 22, 25 Zurich, 9, 44, 92, 179

Brahms in The Home and The Concert Hall - Between Private and Public Performance (PDFDrive)

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Johannes Brahms was a consummate professional musician, a suc-

katy hamilton holds the post of Junior Research Fellow in Perfor-

Edited by katy hamilton and natasha loges

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 2014

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

ISBN 978-1-107-04270-4 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

List of illustrations [page vii]

1 Brahms in the home: An introduction [1]

2 The Joachim Quartet concerts at the Berlin Singakademie:

3 Domesticity in Brahms’s String Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36 [43]

4 Where was the home of Brahms’s piano works? [95]

5 Main and shadowy existence(s): Works and arrangements

6 Brahms arranges his symphonies [137]

7 At the piano with Joseph and Johannes: Joachim’s

8 Brahms and his arrangers [178]

9 Brahms in the Wittgenstein homes: A memoir and letters [221]

10 The construction of gender and mores in Brahms’s

12 The limits of the lied: Brahms’s Magelone-Romanzen

13 Being (like) Brahms: Emulation and ideology in late

14 The cultural dialectics of chamber music: Adorno and the

2.1 Felix Possart, Das Joachim-Quartett in der Singakademie zu

Reproduced with the permission of the Sophia Smith Collection,

0.1 Brahms, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, bars 1–11. [page xxi]

7.3 Joachim, Ouvertüre zu Shakespeares Hamlet Op. 4, bars 166–8,

8.13 Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90. Arrangement by

12.3 Curschmann, ‘Aus der schönen Magelone: Ruhe, Süßliebchen’,

styra avins, cellist and musicologist, is past Adjunct Professor of Music

markus b öggemann is Professor for Historical Musicology at the Uni-

robert whitehouse eshbach is Associate Professor of Music at the

valerie woodring goertzen is Associate Professor of Music History at

Songs (Yale University Press, 2014). She is a contributor of several prefaces

richard leppert is Regents Professor in the Department of Cultural

natasha loges is Assistant Head of Programmes at the Royal College of

heather platt is Professor of Music History at Ball State University,

michael struck, born in Hanover, Germany, in 1952, is a member of

leading specialists. His editorial work is focused on the Brahms Complete

marie sumner lott is Assistant Professor of Music History at Geor-

It is very appropriate that the presentation of a fresh perspective on Brahms’s

Symphony has become a compass point in symphonic history, through the

4 Author’s translation. Kalbeck I, p. 165.

Example 0.1. Brahms, ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4, bars 1–11.

and large is especially apparent in Brahms’s output and can be illustrated by

Example 0.2. Brahms, Waltz Op. 39 no. 15, bars 1–9.

Examples such as these do not merely illustrate craft, however. They

The editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Royal College of

Briefe I Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel vol. I: Johannes Brahms im

ed. H. Müller and R. Hofmann (Tutzing: Hans Schneider,

Abbreviations for volumes of the Johannes Brahms

JBG, Arrangements Symphonie Nr. 4 e-Moll opus 98, Arrangements für

A-Wgm Vienna, Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde

Any exploration of domestic music-making is confronted with heavy over-

The catalogue of Brahms’s compositions and their arrangements produced

ambiguous, drawing on terms now more usually associated with public

Furthermore, the differentiation between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ was

The orchestral society (Orchesterverein) of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was

Despite the difficulties in tracing its details, the importance of encountering

9 Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik, p. 33.