87 Facts About Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms's music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied yet expressive contrapuntal textures.

Johannes Brahms adapted the traditional structures and techniques of a wide historical range of earlier composers.

Johannes Brahms's includes four symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, and hundreds of folk-song arrangements and, among other works for symphony orchestra, piano, organ, and choir.

Johannes Brahms toured Central Europe as a pianist in his adulthood, premiering many of his own works and meeting Franz Liszt in Weimar.

Johannes Brahms worked with Ede Remenyi and Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's approval through the latter.

Johannes Brahms gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's strong support and guidance.

Johannes Brahms stayed with Clara in Dusseldorf, becoming devoted to her amid Robert's insanity and institutionalization.

Johannes Brahms never married, perhaps in an effort to focus on his work as a musician and scholar.

Johannes Brahms's compositions were largely successful, attracting a growing circle of supporters, friends, and musicians.

Johannes Brahms considered retiring from composition late in life but continued to write chamber music, especially for Richard Muhlfeld.

Johannes Brahms saw his music become internationally important in his own lifetime.

Johannes Brahms married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen the same year.

Johannes Brahms's sister Elisabeth had been born in 1831 and a younger brother Fritz Friedrich was born in 1835.

Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training; Johannes Brahms learnt to play the violin and the basics of playing the cello.

At the age of 10, Johannes Brahms made his debut as a performer in a private concert including Beethoven's quintet for piano and winds Op.

Johannes Brahms played as a solo work an etude of Henri Herz.

Johannes Brahms's parents disapproved of his early efforts as a composer, feeling that he had better career prospects as a performer.

From 1845 to 1848 Johannes Brahms studied with Cossel's teacher, the pianist and composer Eduard Marxsen.

In 1847 Johannes Brahms made his first public appearance as a solo pianist in Hamburg, playing a fantasy by Sigismund Thalberg.

Persistent stories of the impoverished adolescent Johannes Brahms playing in bars and brothels have only anecdotal provenance, and many modern scholars dismiss them; the Johannes Brahms family was relatively prosperous, and Hamburg legislation very strictly forbade music in, or the admittance of minors to, brothels.

Johannes Brahms's juvenilia comprised piano music, chamber music and works for male voice choir.

However, Johannes Brahms was later assiduous in eliminating all his juvenilia.

In 1850 Johannes Brahms met the Hungarian violinist Ede Remenyi and accompanied him in a number of recitals over the next few years.

In 1853 Johannes Brahms went on a concert tour with Remenyi, visiting the violinist and composer Joseph Joachim at Hanover in May Johannes Brahms had earlier heard Joachim playing the solo part in Beethoven's violin concerto and been deeply impressed.

Johannes Brahms played some of his own solo piano pieces for Joachim, who remembered fifty years later: "Never in the course of my artist's life have I been more completely overwhelmed".

Johannes Brahms admired Joachim as a composer, and in 1856 they were to embark on a mutual training exercise to improve their skills in "double counterpoint, canons, fugues, preludes or whatever".

Remenyi claimed that Johannes Brahms then slept during Liszt's performance of his own Sonata in B minor; this and other disagreements led Remenyi and Johannes Brahms to part company.

Johannes Brahms visited Dusseldorf in October 1853, and, with a letter of introduction from Joachim, was welcomed by the Schumanns.

Johannes Brahms wrote to Schumann in November 1853 that his praise "will arouse such extraordinary expectations by the public that I don't know how I can begin to fulfil them".

Clara was not allowed to visit Robert until two days before his death, but Johannes Brahms was able to visit him and acted as a go-between.

Johannes Brahms began to feel deeply for Clara, who to him represented an ideal of womanhood.

Johannes Brahms consequently established a relationship with other publishers, including Simrock, who eventually became his major publishing partner.

Johannes Brahms further made an intervention in 1860 in the debate on the future of German music which seriously misfired.

Johannes Brahms had hoped to be given the conductorship of the Hamburg Philharmonic, but in 1862 this post was given to baritone Julius Stockhausen.

Johannes Brahms wrote works for the choir, including his Motet, Op.

In Vienna Johannes Brahms became an associate of two close members of Wagner's circle, his earlier friend Peter Cornelius and Karl Tausig, and of Joseph Hellmesberger Sr.

Johannes Brahms's circle grew to include the notable critic Eduard Hanslick, the conductor Hermann Levi and the surgeon Theodor Billroth, who were to become among his greatest advocates.

In January 1863 Johannes Brahms met Richard Wagner for the first time, for whom he played his Handel Variations Op.

In February 1865 Johannes Brahms's mother died, and he began to compose his large choral work A German Requiem, Op.

Johannes Brahms experienced at this period popular success with works such as his first set of Hungarian Dances, the Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op.

From 1872 to 1875, Johannes Brahms was director of the concerts of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, where he ensured that the orchestra was staffed only by professionals.

Johannes Brahms conducted a repertoire noted and criticized for its emphasis on early and often "serious" music, running from Isaac, Bach, Handel, and Cherubini to the nineteenth century composers who were not of the New German School.

Johannes Brahms "acknowledged the invitation" by giving the manuscript score and parts of his First Symphony to Joachim, who led the performance at Cambridge 8 March 1877.

Johannes Brahms was now recognised as a major figure in the world of music.

Johannes Brahms had been on the jury which awarded the Vienna State Prize to the composer Antonin Dvorak three times, first in February 1875, and later in 1876 and 1877, and had successfully recommended Dvorak to his publisher, Simrock.

Johannes Brahms began to be the recipient of a variety of honours: Ludwig II of Bavaria awarded him the Maximilian Order for Science and Art in 1874, and the music-loving Duke George of Meiningen awarded him the Commander's Cross of the Order of the House of Meiningen in 1881.

In 1882 Johannes Brahms completed his Piano Concerto No 2, Op.

Johannes Brahms was invited by Hans von Bulow to undertake a premiere of the work with the Meiningen Court Orchestra.

Richard Strauss, who had been appointed assistant to von Bulow at Meiningen, and had been uncertain about Johannes Brahms's music, found himself converted by the Third Symphony and was enthusiastic about the Fourth: "a giant work, great in concept and invention".

Johannes Brahms considered Brahms a conservative master who was more turned toward the past than the future.

Johannes Brahms rated Brahms as technically superior to Anton Bruckner, but more earth-bound than Wagner and Beethoven.

Johannes Brahms played an abbreviated version of his first Hungarian Dance and of Josef Strauss's Die Libelle on the piano.

In that same year, Johannes Brahms was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg.

Johannes Brahms admired much of Strauss's music and encouraged the composer to sign with his publisher Simrock.

Johannes Brahms made the effort, three weeks before his death, to attend the premiere of Johann Strauss's operetta Die Gottin der Vernunft in March 1897.

Johannes Brahms wrote at this time his final cycles of piano pieces, Opp.

Many of these works were written in his house in Bad Ischl, where Johannes Brahms had first visited in 1882 and where he spent every summer from 1889 onwards.

Johannes Brahms's last public appearance was on 7 March 1897, when he saw Hans Richter conduct his Symphony No 4; there was an ovation after each of the four movements.

Johannes Brahms is buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery in Vienna, under a monument designed by Victor Horta with sculpture by Ilse von Twardowski.

Johannes Brahms added the fifth movement after the 1868 premiere, and in 1869 the final work was published.

Johannes Brahms composed several instrumental sonatas with piano, including three for violin, two for cello, and two for clarinet.

Johannes Brahms was an extreme perfectionist, which Schumann's early enthusiasm only exacerbated.

In terms of technique, Johannes Brahms's use of developing variation, Carl Dahlhaus argued, was an expository procedure analogous to that of Liszt's and Wagner's modulating sequences.

Johannes Brahms considered giving up composition when it seemed that other composers' innovations in extended tonality resulted in the rule of tonality being broken altogether.

Johannes Brahms venerated Beethoven; in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style.

The main theme of the finale of the First Symphony is reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, and when this resemblance was pointed out to Johannes Brahms he replied that any dunce could see that.

Johannes Brahms especially admired Mozart, so much so that in his final years he reportedly declared Mozart as the greatest composer.

On 10 January 1896, Johannes Brahms conducted the Academic Festival Overture and both piano concertos in Berlin, and during the following celebration Johannes Brahms interrupted Joachim's toast with "Ganz recht; auf Mozart's Wohl".

Any influence of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Johannes Brahms is less obvious.

Johannes Brahms perhaps alludes to Chopin's Scherzo in B-flat minor in the Scherzo, Op.

Johannes Brahms looked to older music, with its counterpoint, for inspiration.

Johannes Brahms studied the music of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schutz, Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Johannes Brahms co-edited an edition of the works of Francois Couperin with Friedrich Chrysander.

Peter Phillips heard affinities between Johannes Brahms's rhythmically charged, contrapuntal textures and those of Renaissance masters such as Giovanni Gabrieli and William Byrd.

Johannes Brahms once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann".

Johannes Brahms used a Bechstein in several of his concerts: 1872 in Wurzburg, 1872 in Cologne and 1881 in Amsterdam.

Johannes Brahms's output was often bold in its exploration of harmony and textural elements, especially rhythm.

Johannes Brahms' symphonies are prominent in the standard repertoire of symphony orchestras; only Beethoven's are more frequently performed.

Johannes Brahms often sent manuscripts to friends Billroth, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Joachim, and Clara Schumann for review.

Arnold Schoenberg would later defend Johannes Brahms: "It is not the heart alone which creates all that is beautiful [or] emotional".

Johannes Brahms highlighted Brahms's fondness for motivic saturation and irregularities of rhythm and phrase, terming Brahms's compositional principles "developing variation".

Antonin Dvorak, who received substantial assistance from Johannes Brahms, deeply admired his music and was influenced by it in several works, such as the Symphony No 7 in D minor and the F minor Piano Trio.

Towards the end of his life, Johannes Brahms offered substantial encouragement to Ernst von Dohnanyi and to Alexander von Zemlinsky.

Zemlinsky in turn taught Schoenberg, and Johannes Brahms was apparently impressed when in 1897 Zemlinsky showed him drafts of two movements of Schoenberg's early D-major quartet.

Ann Scott argued Johannes Brahms anticipated the procedures of the serialists by redistributing melodic fragments between instruments, as in the first movement of the Clarinet Sonata, Op.

On 14 September 2000, Johannes Brahms was honoured in the Walhalla, a German hall of fame.

Johannes Brahms was introduced there as the 126th "" [honorably distinguished German] and 13th composer among them, with a bust by sculptor Milan Knobloch.