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Brahms with famous beard

Introduction

Library of Congress Subheadings

Following Ludwig van Beethoven's death in 1827, Germany searched for a master composer to continue the tradition of great music in that country. Johannes Brahms, born in 1833 in Hamburg , became that master and was ranked with Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven as one of the three best European composers since the medieval era. He became famous for his works for solo piano, chamber works, choral pieces, and symphonies. A strong believer in absolute music (music that exists for its own purpose, not as accompaniment to or descriptive of an external event), he led the campaign to keep music pure against the supporters of Richard Wagner and program music in the 1860s.

While much of Europe knew Brahms through his beautiful melodies, poignant harmonies, and sumptuous orchestrations, he kept his personal life from all but a closer circle of friends. This circle, which included such great musicians as Robert Schumann and his wife Clara, Josef Joachim, and Julius Otto Grimm, knew Brahms as a brilliant, sometimes crude, generous, passionate, and often melancholy, man. Deeply concerned about the way his personal life might be interpreted by others, he destroyed letters and other records of his private thoughts before he died. The story of the private Brahms, from his modest beginnings in Hamburg to his first introduction to composer and pianist Robert Schumann to his infatuation with Clara would have remained untold had it not been for several friends who kept records of their correspondence and wrote accounts of him.

Much work has been done in the century or so since Brahms's death to determine who the man behind the music really was. Contained in this work are references to resources that seek to portray Brahms the way his close friends knew him. Often based largely on personal accounts and correspondence saved by others, these resources can provide a window through which we can see what motivated and inspired the last of the great German Romantic composers.