This chapter provides a summary of the increasingly independent careers of Johann Strauss (Son) and Eduard up to the death of the former. While Johann focussed on the composition of operettas and one comic opera, with occasional appearances as the director of dance music, Eduard was fully committed to the Strauss Orchestra, in Vienna and internationally (including the United States, Russia and Britain). Johann Strauss became an increasingly celebrated figure in Vienna, notably in 1894 (the fiftieth anniversary of his debut). Eduard, on the other hand, became disillusioned with the city, aggravated by the secret embezzlement of his savings by members of his family.

The epilogue draws together the book’s main aims: to define and explore the formal tendencies of Schubert’s lyric teleology; to revive analytical engagement with the composer’s pre-1816 string quartets, and to reflect on analytical methodology. It also considers paths not taken and questions not asked in an attempt both to rationalise the contribution made by the book and to contextualise its findings. Finally, it addresses the lingering question of how impactful Schubert’s instrumental lyricism was, and whether it can be perceived in the music of later nineteenth-century composers. To this end, the chapter considers the music of Brahms (whose debt to Schubert is well documented), Bruckner (who knew Schubert’s music intimately and whose compositions were the subject of similar criticisms of formal redundancy and seemingly disjunctive and self-contained themes), and Chopin (in whose early work we see formal strategies akin to those of Schubert’s lyric form). These correspondences suggest that Schubert’s lyric teleology can be understood as prescient of a distinct turn to Romantic form, and provide recommendations for further study.

In this chapter, pianos made by firms such as Broadwood, Érard, Graf, Pleyel, Stein, Streicher, and others owned or used by composers and virtuosi such as Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Schumann, and others are discussed and technically described. Histories of the piano making firms are provided.

The introduction provides the literary, musical, and critical contexts for the book. It opens with Forster’s contribution to Humphrey Jennings’s documentary A Diary for Timothy, using it to illustrate the intersection of music and politics. It reviews the formalist approaches that have until now dominated the interpretation of music’s influence on Forster. Alluding to the shifting perception of music from a non-referential art to a political discourse in musicology, the introduction demonstrates that inattention to contemporary ideas of and debates about music leads to inadequate, implicitly Eurocentric readings. The Introduction argues that it is necessary to draw attention to the political – political in its broadest sense, be it racial, national, sexual, or social – resonances of Forster’s engagement with and representations of musics. The Introduction proposes Forster’s notion of ‘not listening’ as a way to examine his representations of music and uses Tibby Schlegel’s listening to Brahms in Howards End to illustrate the many extramusical associations that a single reference to music can generate. The Introduction finishes with an outline of the ensuing chapters.

Notwithstanding their remarkable peculiarities and profoundly individual nature, Mahler’s symphonies were part of a tradition begun by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; extended by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Berlioz; and renewed during his lifetime by composers including Bruckner, Brahms, Bruch, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Elgar, Strauss, Sibelius, Nielsen, and Glazunov. This context is surveyed here in two periods: composers who flourished during Mahler’s youth roughly (1870–89) and those active from 1889 until the outbreak of World War I. The former period reveals that even within this relatively conservative choice of genre (vis-à-vis the symphonic poem) a remarkable of approach obtained, from the motivic integration of Brahms and the fragmented grandeur of Bruckner to the lyricism and user-friendly national influences of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. In the later group, a trend toward amalgamation of programmatic and traditionally symphonic impulses becomes more pronounced, such as one finds in Mahler’s own works.

The recorded legacy of any composer reckoned to be canonical presents an interesting and revealing set of historical tensions. It has its own narrative, which unfolds in a complicated counterpoint with the story of the performing tradition(s) revealed in live performance. This double narrative is inflected by the changing view of the composer within academe, particularly in matters of performance practice, but not only that. Complicating the picture still further is the stubborn material persistence of the recorded medium itself. Live performances vanish the moment they are over, but LPs and CDs hang around for decades on music-lovers’ shelves, enforcing a loyalty to older ways of thinking and feeling, in critics as much as in ordinary listeners. This means that journals which offer critical reviews of recordings, particularly those aimed at musically sophisticated enthusiasts, are peculiarly revealing.

Throughout his lifetime, Brahms accompanied dozens of singers in a variety of settings, ranging from huge public halls to his friends’ homes, and conducted many others in choirs. Some of those working relationships were one-offs, arising from the widespread practice of including a set of piano-accompanied songs within most concerts and the expediency and cost-effectiveness of using local talent. Others were deep, enduring partnerships; the timbres and interpretative approaches of those singers are surely ingrained in his vocal music. Overall, Brahms’s singers were generally not part of the international operatic elite associated with Verdi, Bizet and Massenet. Figures like Julius Stockhausen (1826–1906) and Raimund von Zur-Mühlen (1854–1931)were almost exclusively concert singers and, later on, teachers. Most hailed from German-speaking territories, reflecting Brahms’s own concert career.

During his lifetime, Brahms witnessed a veritable explosion in biographical writing and related publications of letters, memoirs and diaries. The monumental Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1875–1912) was edited by Rochus von Liliencron (1820–1912), a personal acquaintance of his; a comparable project in Great Britain was the Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900). Significant biographies of famous Austro-German composers also appeared in those years, often written by Brahms’s friends: Otto Jahn’s Mozart (1856–9), Friedrich Chrysander’s Handel (1858–67), Philipp Spitta’s Bach (1873–80) and Carl Ferdinand Pohl’s Haydn (1875–82). But one might also think of the biography of Beethoven (1866–79) by the American Alexander Wheelock Thayer, a project which was taken up in German by Hermann Deiters, Jahn’s pupil and Brahms’s colleague and contemporary. It was Deiters who in 1880 wrote the first book-length biography of Brahms, when the composer still had seventeen years to live.

Brahms arrived in Vienna as an ambitious young musician, settled there in his early thirties and remained for the rest of his life. His flourishing career mirrored the dramatic transformation of the Habsburg Empire and its vibrant capital city during this period. Recent studies about creativity illuminate the historical, geographic and demographic circumstances that converged in late nineteenth-century Vienna to forge its special character. This chapter will explore the city where Brahms spent his most productive and influential decades, highlighting the unique opportunities the city and its intellectual elite provided to stimulate his greatest creative accomplishments.

Long an important crossroads of Europe, Vienna in the last half of the nineteenth century evolved rapidly as an urban metropolis and musical capital. Its population swelled nearly fourfold between 1857 and 1900, largely due to in-migration from farther reaches of the Habsburg Empire.

In the nineteenth century, letters functioned as bridges between people. Brahms as a correspondent was part of many interconnected social webs; thus, his letters offer a view into this world. The vicissitudes of lifelong friendships, such as that with Joseph Joachim, can be traced seismographically through his greetings: from the romantic, rapturous letters of the twenty-year-old (‘Dear Friend of my heart!’, ‘Beloved Friend!’) to the ‘Dearest’ he used until 1863, the reserved ‘Dear Joachim’ after the crisis in the Joachims’ marriage (1883) or ‘Most honoured one’ (1886), until the restored intimacy of ‘Dear Friend’ (1894). Many of the composer’s letters, beyond the lifelong, established correspondents like Joachim or Clara Schumann, also trace the Brahms network. They are interwoven into a synchronous toing and froing of letters, for example in the early correspondence between all the Schumann friends: Brahms, Joachim, Grimm, Dietrich and so forth, which can be read in parallel.

Like many other nineteenth-century composers, Brahms was often approached to edit other composers’ works. Publishers strove to attract famous musicians such as Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt and Julius Rietz for editing work, alongside music scholars, not least because their names attracted buyers. Brahms’s own preference as editor was to remain anonymous, and we also do not know exactly why he undertook this work. The demands on time (studying the sources, comparing texts, revising, corresponding with the publisher, etc.) were considerable, especially alongside his own daily work of composition and concert duties. Furthermore, the pecuniary rewards were limited [see Ch. 8 ‘Finances’]. Thus, in relation to Brahms’s edition of Mozart’s Requiem, he was told on 12 February 1876 that he, like all the other editors, would have to be content with a ‘modest compensation of 1.50 Marks per score plate’.

A symbiosis in music between performance and composition prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. It was particularly evident among conductors. Conducting did not emerge as a distinct profession until the last quarter of the century. But even then, those who sought to make conducting a career either dabbled in composition or harboured lifelong hopes to succeed with their own music. The instincts of a fellow composer dominated the approach to interpretation from the podium.

In Johannes Brahms’s circle of close friends and colleagues, there was perhaps no better example of this link between composing and conducting than Otto Dessoff (1835–92). Dessoff is remembered only as a conductor, despite many fine works to his name. It was to Dessoff that Brahms entrusted the first performance, in 1876, of his First Symphony Op. 68Dessoff was born in Leipzig to Jewish parents; he met Brahms in 1853 but became a close friend in the 1860s, after they both settled in Vienna.

During his lifetime, Brahms accumulated a sizeable fortune. Although the early days were not without difficulties, his finances then accumulated steadily and virtually uninterruptedly. When he died in 1897, he left behind not only manuscripts of his own works, but also an extensive collection of other composers’ autograph manuscripts (including of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) as well as bonds worth over 181,000 Gulden.The size of the sum is evident when one compares the rent that he paid his landlady Coelestine Truxa between 1887 and 1897 for his three-room apartment in Vienna’s Karlsgasse, which amounted half-yearly to 347 Gulden and 25 Kreuzer.

Brahms grew up in the Hamburg‘Gängeviertel’, an area of workers, small-scale artisans and tradesmen in modest circumstances [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. Later on, when he could determine his own lifestyle, luxury still held no appeal.

Within a decade of Brahms’s compositions first appearing in print, supporters and proponents began subjecting his music to analysis. From that time onward, commentators across the centuries have continued to scrutinise his compositions, exploring both structural elements (motifs, harmonies, counterpoint, rhythm and form) and the relationship between structure and meaning. Over time, the theoretical frameworks behind these analyses have changed, as have the broader aesthetic and scholarly environments [see Ch. 16 ‘Genre’]. Nevertheless, the origins of some of the more influential analytical approaches can be traced back to Brahms’s contemporaries. This essay will focus on the work emanating from three of the most influential theoretical schools, those inspired by Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) and Hugo Riemann (1849–1919).

We know a great deal about Brahms’s professional activities, thoughts about music and musicians, and general views on politics and culture, from his voluminous surviving correspondence. These letters and the reminiscences of his friends also trace his personal habits – what his daily routine was like, his enjoyment of food, drink, and tobacco, his delight in pranks and walking in the outdoors, his peculiar attire and occasional curmudgeonliness.

While there is an extensive body of literature on the German reception of Brahms up to World War I, until recently, few scholars have shown an interest in the ways in which National Socialists dealt with this composer. In German publications, there seems to be little acknowledgement of the possible complexities in Brahms reception caused by political influences; most post-war German literature on the composer has simply skirted the issue. Some writers have even suggested that Brahms was not much used for political purposes by the Nazis. Such suggestions are typically supported through direct comparisons with the long-acknowledged appropriations of other composers, notably Wagner.

Indeed, statistics such as those of the Berlin Philharmonic show no change in the frequency of performances of Brahms’s works during Hitler’s rule, even despite the straitened circumstances towards the end of the war. It seems that with concert-goers the composer’s popularity was never in question.

The reception of Brahms’s music beyond his home city of Hamburg began in 1853, when the young composer made his first extended journey and presented his compositions to some of the leading figures of German contemporary music: Robert Schumann, Robert Franz and Franz Liszt. Each reacted to these unpublished works in distinctive ways.

Robert Schumann, with whom Brahms spent the whole month of October in Düsseldorf,was instantly enthralled.

Brahms as a point of reference for contemporary music is somewhat overshadowed by other composers. While, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music is a constant subject of adaptation as well as an inspiration on different compositional levels, contemporary composers seem to be less inclined to approach Brahms’s music in this way. Whereas a composer like Helmut Lachenmann published a third voice to one of Bach’s two-part inventions and grappled with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto K622 in his own Accanto (1975–6), he left Brahms’s music almost untouched. Even where the instrumentation suggests Brahmsian models, as in his Allegro sostenuto for clarinet, cello and piano (1986–8), a specific relationship cannot be identified. And while Brian Ferneyhough refers to Elizabethan consort music in some of his string quartets, he apparently does not consider Brahms’s contributions to this genre, such as his String Quartets Op. 51 and Op. 67.

‘Today, my dear wife, née Nissen, successfully delivered a healthy boy. 7th May 1833. J. J. Brahms.’ Thus, on 8 May 1833Johann Jakob Brahms announced the birth of his first son Johannes in the local paper, the Privileged Weekly General News of and for Hamburg (Privilegirte wöchentliche gemeinnützige Nachrichten von und für Hamburg). At a time when such announcements were the exception, this was a clear sign of pride. Johann Jakob Brahms or Brahmst, as he also spelled it, was born on 1 June 1806 in Heide in Holstein, the second son of the innkeeper and trader Johann Brahms, who had moved to Heide from Brunsbüttel via Meldorf. His ancestors were from Lower Saxony. Johann Jakob completed a five-year apprenticeship as a city wait in Heide and Wesselburen, during which he learned the flugelhorn, flute, violin, viola and cello, then standard instruments. In early 1826, the young journeyman began his travels with his certificate of apprenticeship, received in December 1825.