But Brahms’ pianoforte music is still none the less romantic music. By far the great part of his works for pianoforte are short pieces, expressive of a mood. Few have the intensity of Schumann’s; there are but one or two descriptive titles, no bindings together in a round of fantastic thought. The enthusiasm of the younger romantics has cooled. Reason has come with calm step. Yet the quality of these short pieces is intensely romantic, suggestive of the north, of northern legends, of moorlands and the sea. There is not a whirr of many persons from strange lands, of sad and gay personalities, of Pierrot and Harlequin; the music is of lonely and wide places. It is, moreover, essentially masculine music. If it seems to wander into the life of towns, it seeks out groups of men. There is little feminine tenderness. There is little of sentiment in the pianoforte music, such as we associate with the romance of love. It has more of the heroic quality. It all demands profound thought and study; partly because of its intellectual complexity, partly because of its lack of superficial charm. One must make oneself familiar with it; one must learn its peculiar idiom; one must go far beneath the surface.
But Brahms’ pianoforte music is still none the less romantic music. By far the great part of his works for pianoforte are short pieces, expressive of a mood. Few have the intensity of Schumann’s; there are but one or two descriptive titles, no bindings together in a round of fantastic thought. The enthusiasm of the younger romantics has cooled. Reason has come with calm step. Yet the quality of these short pieces is intensely romantic, suggestive of the north, of northern legends, of moorlands and the sea. There is not a whirr of many persons from strange lands, of sad and gay personalities, of Pierrot and Harlequin; the music is of lonely and wide places. It is, moreover, essentially masculine music. If it seems to wander into the life of towns, it seeks out groups of men. There is little feminine tenderness. There is little of sentiment in the pianoforte music, such as we associate with the romance of love. It has more of the heroic quality. It all demands profound thought and study; partly because of its intellectual complexity, partly because of its lack of superficial charm. One must make oneself familiar with it; one must learn its peculiar idiom; one must go far beneath the surface.
There is little to be said of it in words. The moods it expresses and the moods which it conveys are not of the kind that seek a quick and enraptured utterance. It is impersonal; it suggests the nature of sea and space, not human nature. Thus, though we can throw ourselves with delight into the music of Schumann and come forth from it with a thousand picturesand fancies in our minds, from the music of Brahms we more often come away thoughtful and silent.
Brahms’ style is very distinct. His pianoforte music calls for a special technique, quite outside the ordinary. Nothing of the style of Chopin or Liszt is evident, even in a work like the Paganini variations, which is essentially virtuoso music. These peculiarities are already evident in the first two sonatas, the works in which Schumann saw such great promise. The sonatas are worth study, not only from the historical point of view, but as unusual and beautiful music.
There are three sonatas, the first in C major, opus 1; the second in F-sharp minor, opus 2; the third in F minor, opus 5. The Scherzo in E-flat minor, opus 4, belongs to the same period. In the very first Brahms reveals himself; by the bare statement of the first part of the second theme; by the double thirds of the second part which conceal the sixths of which he was so fond; by the strangely hollow effect of the chromatic scale, not long before the end of the first section, with the sustained A below and the thin spacing of the whole; by the wide accompaniment figures at the end of the first movement. The octaves and sixths at the beginning of the Scherzo, the hollowness later on in the movement, the extraordinary distance between the hands in the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh measures of the second part, these are characteristic of Brahms’ way of writing for the pianoforte. The trio of this Scherzo, by the way, might alone have accounted for Schumann’s enthusiasm. The broad sweep of its melody, the intense harmonies, the magnificent climax, have the unmistakable ring of great genius. At the end of it may be noted a procedure Brahms often employed: the gradual cessation of the movement of the music by changing the value of the notes, more than by retard. The last movement is splendidly vigorous. The chief theme may have been taken from the theme of thefirst movement. It gallops on over mountain and hill, full of exultation and sheer physical spirits. The coda is a very whirlwind. Brahms told Albert Dietrich that he had the Scotch song ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’ in his head while he was writing this finale; and the spirit of the song is there.
The second sonata is as a whole less interesting than the first. The first theme is not particularly well suited to the sonata form; there is a great deal of conventionality about the passages which follow it. Yet the transitional passage is interesting, and the deep, bass phrases, so isolated from their high counterpoint, are very typical. One theme serves for andante and Scherzo. In the latter movement the trio is especially beautiful. It might easily be mistaken for Schubert.
The third sonata shows a great advance over the first and second. The passage beginning in the eighth measure of the first movement is in a favorite rhythmical style of Brahms. The right hand is playing in 3/4 time, the left hand seems to be rather in 2/4. This is because the figure of which it consists proceeds independently of the measure beat. So later on one finds groups of six notes in 3/4 time arranged very frequently in figures of three notes. In fact, the mixture of double and triple rhythm is a favorite device of Brahms throughout all his work. Two of the Paganini Variations are distinctly studies in this rhythmical complexity—the fifth in the first set, the seventh in the second set, in both cases the complexity being made all the more confusing by odd phrasing.
TheAndante, especially the last part of it, and theScherzoof the third sonata are among the most beautiful of Brahms’ compositions. What the sonatas chiefly lack is not ideas nor skill to handle them, but success in many parts in the treatment of the instrument. The scoring is often far too thin. No relaxation is offered by passages of any sensuous charm. One follows withthe mind an ingenious contrapuntal working-out that sounds itself empty, or leads to hollow spaces.
Except in the last movement of the second concerto, Brahms showed himself unwilling to make use of those subtle and delicate figures which succeed in giving to pianoforte music a certain warmth and blending of color. There is little or no passage work in his music. The Alberti bass which Schumann and Chopin varied and expanded, he intellectualized more and more, till it lost all semblance to the serviceable original and took on almost a polyphonic significance. There is an attendant sacrifice of delicacy for which only the nobility and strength of his ideas offer some recompense.
The Ballades, opus 10, for example, tread heavily on the keyboard. The first B major section of the second, with its appoggiaturas, its widely separated outer parts now in contrary motion, now moving together, and the mysterious single long notes between them, is marred by the low, thick registration of the whole. There is a similar thickness in the second section of the last ballade; an opposite thinness in the middle section of the little intermezzo. Yet it would be hard to find more romantic music than these Ballades, anything more grim and awful than the first, more legendary in character than the second, more gloomily sad than the last. There is a touch of sun in the first melody of the second. Elsewhere we are in a gray twilight.
‘The sedge has withered from the lakeAnd no birds sing.’
‘The sedge has withered from the lakeAnd no birds sing.’
‘The sedge has withered from the lakeAnd no birds sing.’
After all, a delicate warmth, a subtle grace of movement are not in place in such music. The style is fitting to the thought.
The variations on a theme of Paganini are, on the other hand, remarkably brilliant as a whole. They show the uttermost limits of the Brahms pianoforte technique and style, and are, of course, extremely difficult.The first two are studies in thirds and sixths, and in the second especially the upper registers of the piano are used with striking effect. In the fourth there are brilliant trills over wide figures in violin style. The eighth in the second set is in imitation of the passages in harmonies in the PaganiniCapricefrom which the theme is taken. Particularly effective on the pianoforte are the eleventh and thirteenth in the first set, the former with its shadowy overtonesin the right hand, the latter with the sparklingglissandooctaves. The twelfth in this set is like others that have been mentioned, a study in complex rhythms, but is remarkably clear and bell-like in sound as well. The sixth, ninth, and tenth are less effective and less interesting. The second, fourth, and twelfth in the second set are conspicuous for a less scintillating but more expressive beauty. The sets as a whole are more in the style of Paganini than the études of Schumann and Liszt, which owe their being to the same source. There is more of wizardry in them, more variety and more that is wholly unusual. They give proof of enormous thought and ingenuity applied to the task of producing effects from the piano that have the quality of eeriness, which, in the playing of Paganini, suggested to the superstitious the coöperation of infernal powers.
In the ‘Variations on a Theme of Handel,’ opus 24, the same powerful intellect may be seen at work in more orthodox efforts. The results are often of more scientific than musical interest. The set is extremely long in performance, and the cumbersome fugue at the end is hardly welcome. Some of the movements are heavily or thickly scored, like the mournful thirteenth and the twentieth. Others are intellectual or uninspired, like the sixth and the ninth. But others, like the second, the fifth, the eleventh, and the nineteenth, are truly beautiful, and many are brilliant or vivacious.
There are three earlier sets of variations, opus 9,opus 21, Nos. 1 and 2, which are small beside the two later sets just discussed. As far as pianoforte music is concerned, the variations on a theme of Handel, and the subsequent variations on a theme of Paganini, represent the culmination of Brahms’ conscious technical development, the one in the direction of intellectual mastery, the other in the direction of keyboard effects. Behind them lie the sonatas, the scherzo, and the ballades, all in a measure inspired, yet all likewise tentative. After them come numerous sets of short pieces which constitute one of the most beautiful and one of the perfect contributions to pianoforte music.
These sets are opus 76, Nos. 1 and 2; the two Rhapsodies, opus 79, and the last works for the instrument, opus 117, opus 118, and opus 119. There are few pieces among them which are unworthy of the highest genius matched with consummate mastery of the science of music. The two earlier collections, opus 76 and 79, differ from the later in something the same way that Beethoven’s opus 57 differs from his opus 110. They are impassioned, fully scored, dramatic, and warm. The two Capriccios, Nos. 1 and 5 in opus 76, are distinguished from his other pieces by a fiery agitation. The keys of F-sharp minor and C-sharp minor on the pianoforte lend themselves to intense and restless expression. In the former of these two pieces more is suggested than fully revealed.
The introduction, beginning in deep and ominous gloom, mounts up like waves tossed high in a storm. But the rush of the great C-sharps up from the depths is broken, as it were, upon the sharpest dissonance; the storm dies away suddenly, and over the wild confusion, now suppressed, a voice sings out a sad yet impassioned melody. This melody dominates the piece. The wild introduction returns in the middle part, but only to be suppressed once more.
The second of these Capriccios, No. 5, is more varied,more agitated, yet perhaps less intense. There is an almost constant complexity of rhythm, uniquely typical of Brahms, the combination of two with three beats; and at the end most complicated syncopations, the left hand, by reason of definite phrasing, seeming to play nearly four measures in 5/8 time. The Capriccio No. 8 and the Intermezzo No. 6 are similarly involved. The scoring of both is rich and full; and, though neither is agitated in mood, both have a quality of intensity. The Capriccio in B minor in the first set is justly a favorite with pianist and concert-goer alike. The two intermezzi which follow it are rather in the later style, and the former is conspicuous in Brahms’ music by a light grace. Even here, however, the composer cannot give himself over utterly to airy fancy. There are measures of involved workmanship and profound meaning.
The two ‘Rhapsodies,’ opus 79, are among the best known of Brahms’ pianoforte works. Both are involved and difficult; but the form and the ideas are broad and consequently more easily grasped than in the shorter pieces. Moreover, they are frankly vigorous and passionate; and the B major section of the former, with its bell-like effects, and the broad middle section of the latter, like the gallop of a regiment across the steppes, are relatively conventional.
In most of the pieces of the three last sets there is a touch of mysticism, often of asceticism. The style is transparent; the accompaniments, if one may speak of accompaniment in music that is so polyphonic, are lightly touched upon, barely sketched. They have no fixed line, but seem like flowing draperies about a figure in free, calm movement. Witness particularly the second piece in opus 117 and the sixth in opus 118. The latter is surely one of the most romantic of all Brahms’ pieces. Does it speak of some ancient ruin in the northern twilight? Is it some vision in a bleak,windswept place? Is not the opening phrase like the voice of the spirit of Time and Mortality? How the winds sweep it up, how it echoes and reëchoes through the night. And there comes a strain of martial music. The splendors that were rise like mist out of the ground. The shades of strong heroes pass by. Through the vision still rings the inexorable cry, till the spirits have vanished and the wind once more blows over a deserted place. It is all a strange, wailing invocation to the past.
All are unusual music, all masterpieces. There is the utmost skill, as in the canonic figures in the first intermezzo of opus 117, in the middle section of opus 118, No. 2, and all through opus 118, No. 4. There is a legendary quality in both opus 117, No. 1, and opus 117, No. 3. In the latter the A major section is extraordinarily beautiful and without a parallel in music. The last set is perhaps as a whole the most remarkable. There are three intermezzos and one rhapsody. In many measures of the first intermezzo the harmonies seem to unfold from a single note, to be shed downward like light from a star. The music drifts to a melody full of human yearning, rises again in floating harmonies, drifts slowly downward, too heavy with sadness. In the second and third the mood is happier, cool in the second, smiling in the third. The final rhapsody is without a trace of sentiment, healthy, sane, and enormously vigorous. Something stands in the way of its effectiveness, however. It is coldly triumphant. If there is any phase in human feeling which is wholly strange to music, it is the sense of perfect physical condition, entailing an unruffled mind and the flawless working of the muscles, without excess, with only the enthusiasm of physical well-being, and this entirely equable. The rhapsody in E-flat, opus 119, No. 4, is thus normal.
The features of Brahms’ style are clearly marked.There are the wide spacing of accompaniment figures demanding a large hand and the free movement of the arm, the complicated rhythms, the frequent use of octaves with the sixth included, the generally deliberate treatment of material, the employment of low and high registers at once with little or nothing between, the lack of passage work to relieve the usual sombre coloring. The enthusiast will have little difficulty in imitating him. Yet it is doubtful if Brahms will have a successor in pianoforte music. What makes his work tolerable is the greatness of his ideas, and this greatness makes them sublime. His procedures in the employment of another will be cold and dull. It is safer to imitate the virtuoso style of Liszt, for that has an intrinsic charm.
There are two concertos, one in D minor, opus 15, and one in B-flat major, opus 83. Brahms performed the first himself in Leipzig and was actually hissed from the stage. Yet it is a very great work, one of the few great concertos written for the pianoforte. A certain gloomy seriousness in the character of the themes stands in the way of its popular acceptance, and there are passages, notably in the middle movement, the ungainliness of which not even the most impassioned fancy or the deepest seriousness can disguise. The second concerto is longer and more brilliant. This, too, must be ranked with the earlier one, as one of the few great concertos, but chiefly by reason of the noble quality of the ideas, the mastery of art and form. Brahms’ treatment of the piano is nowhere conventionally pianistic. This second concerto is more than exceedingly difficult; but those qualities in the instrument which add a variety of color and light to the ensemble are for the most part not revealed in it. There is consequently a monotony that in so long a work is likely to prove tedious. A few figures and a few effects are peculiar to the pianoforte. These should rightfullybe brought into prominence in a concerto. Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann were able to do this, not in the least subtracting from the genuine value of their work, but rather adding to it. Brahms was less able to combine beauty and conventionality. Yet such a passage as the return to the first theme in the first movement of the second concerto shows a great appreciation of color; and there is a grandeur and dignity in both concertos, a wealth of romance in the first and of vitality in the second, as well, in the presence of which criticism may well be silent.
It is a long way in music from the simpleMoments musicalsof Schubert to the B minor and E-flat minorIntermezziof Brahms. One sings of the dawn of the new era of enthusiasm, one is of the twilight at the end. Midway, in the full flush of noonday, stands Schumann. Yet all are manifestations of the same growth. In the department of pianoforte music Brahms is of the romantic. It is not only that his best work was in short pieces; it is the nature of these pieces themselves. They are the sound in music of moods, they are fantastical and lyrical. Furthermore, more than the music of Schubert or Schumann, Brahms is national; not so much German as northern. Strains of Hungarian melodies and echoes of Schubert are not sufficient to dispel the gloom which is characteristic of his race. He speaks a profound language that will claim universal attention, but it is unmistakably colored and thoroughly permeated with the ideals and the imaginings of a northern, seacoast people. It has not the perennial warmth of Schubert and Schumann. There are no quick-changing moods, no interchanges of smiles and tears, no flashes of merriment and wit. It is cold, it is still and serious. And who will say that it is not the more romantic for being so? Deep underneath there is mysterious fervor and passion.
To one of two ends the Romantic movement wasbound to come from its confident stage of self-conscious emotionalism: on the one hand, to the glorification of the senses, on the other, to the distrust of them. In the music of Liszt the one goal is reached; unmistakably in this music of Brahms the other. The sober coloring of his pianoforte music, its intellectual complexity, its moderation, all speak of that development which in the world of philosophy and society was year by year intensifying the struggle between individualism and its arch-enemy, the natural sciences. In the music of Brahms the power of Reason has asserted itself. His music conforms first and always to law. And it is one of the paradoxes in the history of music that this composer, who, more than any other in modern times, acquired an objective mastery of his art, remained the slave of his intense personality.