1833

Johannes Brahms is born on May 7* in Hamburg**. He is the second child of the multi-talented musician Johann Jacob Brahms and his wife Christiana Nissen; his sister Elise is three years old at the time. The family lives in modest circumstances in the house of Johannes’ maternal grandmother, in the so-called Gängeviertel, a section of Hamburg that has a rather bad reputation. The father does not, at the time, have a fixed position and plays the double bass at dances whenever the occasion arises, as also the violin, the viola, the violoncello, the flute and the horn. JB’s mother is already 44 years of age at his birth, seventeen years older than the father; she adds a little to the family’s income as a seamstress.

* This is the date of birth mentioned in nearly all biographies of JB, although Brahms himself gives March 7, 1834 in a letter to Hermann Deiters, the publisher of the “Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung”, dated August 8, 1880.

** The cities marked in color are pointed out on the contemporary map on the right.

1835

JB’s little brother Fritz is born.

1840

Johannes goes to the second grade and is given piano lessons on a regular basis by Otto Friedrich Cossel, a pianist whom Brahms’ father holds in high regard. The little boy shows an exceptional talent for music. Johannes likes in particular the popular music played by the father and his colleagues. He is said to accompany the band of musicians from one nightspot to the next already at this tender age and the time spent in the shady milieu of Hamburg supposedly explains his lifelong awkward relation to the female gender.

1843

Johannes Brahms is considered a wunderkind and gives now, at the age of ten, his first public performance. His teacher believes he should aspire to a career as a creative musician and not only perform the works of others; on his recommendation, the parents decline an invitation for a concert tour through North America.

Cossel recommends the young student to his own well-known teacher Eduard Marxsen who does not want to accept him at first: there is nothing he could teach him. He finally relents and instructs JB in music theory and in composition without charging a fee. JB will write much later that he envied Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy for the lessons he had with Carl Friedrich Zelter (who is known for having composed the music to some of Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe’s poems), and he regretted not to have made further progress with Marxsen.

1847

Johannes Brahms gives the first piano recital with his own works, among them Fantasies on a Popular Walz (now lost) and variations on a folk song.

1849

JB attends a recital given by Joseph Joachim, a young Hungarian violin virtuoso and master student of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s. He is much impressed with Joachim’s interpretation of the Beethoven violin concerto. This same year, he makes the acquaintance of Eduard Hoffmann, another young violinist from the Austria-Hungary Empire who was banned from his homeland for having taken part in the uprising of the Hungarian people in 1848 and now passes through Hamburg on the way into American exile. As a Magyar patriot, he now goes under the name of Eduard Reményi.

1851

The first of Brahms’ surviving compositions dates from this year: Scherzo op. 4.

1853

Eduard Reményi returns to Germany from a successful series of recitals in the United States and invites Johannes Brahms to accompany him on a concert tour of Europe. On this trip, he introduces Brahms to his former fellow student Joseph Joachim, the celebrated violinist, who is concert master in the court orchestra of King Ernst August of Hannover. This encounter will prove of great importance for Brahms: it is the beginning of a lasting friendship and of a most productive collaboration. Of particular significance is a letter by Joachim to the great composer Robert Schumann in Düsseldorf in which he praises the young Johannes Brahms as a musical genius.

In Weimar, JB meets the eccentric, extroverted, theatrical piano virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt. The two men are complete opposites both in their demeanour and their thinking; Brahms, twenty years younger than Liszt, is shy and reserved, still has doubts as to his calling as an artist and harbors, as he’ll soon show in his compositions, a totally different perception of the nature of music. But Liszt is impressed with him and his work and helps him with recommendations.

Brahms and Reményi part company in Weimar. Johannes hikes along the Rhein river and, toward the end of summer, travels to Düsseldorf to see Robert Schumann where he has been announced by Joseph Joachim. In about a month following his arrival, he writes the 3rd movement of a sonata for violin and piano, to be dedicated to Joachim as suggested by his host. The 1st movement is created by the then well-known composer Albert Dietrich, the 2nd and 4th movements by Robert Schumann himself. Joachim’s own romantic motto Frei aber einsam (free but alone) appears in all movements as the motif in the sequence of notes f...a...e.... The product of the friends’ collaborative effort remains unpublished during their lifetimes; Brahms’ 3rd movement is printed as Scherzo, WoO 2, only in 1906. The catalogue of Schumann’s works lists it as Violin Sonata No. 3, in A minor, WoO 2 (first publication in 1956).

Brahms and Schumann are kindred souls and admire each other. Brahms’ emotions find their expression in the Piano Sonata No. 5 that he composes in its entirety during this visit. He writes his friend Joachim starry-eyed about Schumann’s genius; Robert on his part writes, already in October, an article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (of which he is the publisher) praising Brahm’ talents lavishly.

All of a sudden, the twenty-year old composer is known everywhere, and this although his works have not yet attained the beauty of the creations of his later years. His works are printed and distributed by the respected publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, a house that has existed at the time already for more than 100 years. Johannes Brahms appears to succeed in everything he does, he, the over-critical composer who often burns the work he has written the day before. However, the following year shall bring a tragic turn of events for the friends.

1854

On March 4, Robert Schumann throws his wedding band from a bridge over the Rhein river and jumps after it. Two fishermen save him from drowning; the following day he is admitted to a private clinic for the insane in Endenich near Bonn (about 40 km south of Köln = Cologne); he shall remain there until his death two years later. There exists no satisfactory explanation for this suicide attempt beyond the vague and overused term of melancholy that has been replaced in recent times by the diagnosis of chronic depression. At this point, Schumann’s biographers mention that the composer had contracted syphilis in his student days and that a progressive mental decay came as the inevitable sequel.

Immediately after receiving the news, Brahms travels to Düsseldorf and takes up lodgings there to lend support and solace to Clara Wieck-Schumann, Robert’s wife, in her predicament. She is close to the expected date of birth of her seventh child and is desperate. Some of Schumann’s biographers reproach her for not having stood by her man and mention that she did not inform her husband of the birth of his son Felix some months later, in June, that she sent him a first letter only five months after his hospitalization (i.e. in August), that she paid for Robert’s hospital care the hefty amount of 600 Taler annually rather than insist that he be brought home. On the other hand, Clara does not go to see her husband in Endenich on the advice of his physicians who fear the excitement might prove too much for him. Also, she must take up her interrupted carreer as a concert pianist under the most difficult of circumstances imagineable in order to provide for her family because she has hardly any savings, no financial reserves.

JB is romantically interested in Clara, fourteen years older than he, since he first visited the Schumanns. She is a beautiful woman, a gifted and celebrated concert pianist who earns storms of applause all over Europe, wherever she performs. He greatly values her opinion of his newly composed works and in the few letters of theirs that are still in existence, they address each other very openly in tender loving terms. There is not a single hint that the love they feel for one another ever became more than romantic.

Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms are nearly the only friends of Robert Schumann that come to visit him in the Endenich institution.

1855

Clara Wieck-Schumann, Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour to Danzig. JB has works by Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn on the program, but also some smaller compositions of his own. He is very much in demand as a pianist and makes a rather comfortable living as a performing artist. It appears that he is only halfheartedly looking for steady employment.

1856

Brahms does not write much in these trying times except outlines and sketches of compositions to be worked out later.

Towards the end of July, a telegram calls Clara to Endenich: her husband is not doing well. She sees him every single day but he is alone when he dies in the afternoon of July 29. The autopsy reveals an atrophy of the brain, thereby confirming an encephalomalacia symptomatic for the final stage of a syphilis, as has been suspected by some physicians already then.

Having witnessed Clara’s deep sadness at the demise of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms takes a bit of a distance to her; they remain true and close friends, however.

1857

JB accepts a part-time job as director of the choir and music teacher of the princesses in the small sovereign principality of Lippe-Detmold (about 120 km southwest of Hannover), more or less in the center of Germany. Here he collects much practical experience in song writing, his preferred field of music. Only the winter is spent in Detmold, the rest of the year in Hamburg where, industrious and productive, he elaborates on the ideas of the previous tumultuous year. A sonata for two pianos, re-worked and modified time and again, becomes the Piano Concerto No. 1, in D minor, op. 15, on the advice of his friend Joseph Joachim.

1858

Through mutual friends, JB makes the acquaintance of Agathe von Siebold, the daughter of a professor at the University of Göttingen, falls in love and proposes to her. Clara comments, a bit jealously “but you have found consolation fast”. Brahms must have been very much in love with Agathe (although he dissolves the engagement a few months later) as he takes the letters of her given name as the theme of the 11th Song in his op. 44 (1859), and then again in the Sextet for Strings, in G major, op. 36 (1864-1865). His nature, his decisions and his music show the romantic person he is, full of expectations, hopes and longing that cannot be fulfilled, and must not be, as he has to be free, unfettered, as he writes himself. He has several close friends nevertheless, and the relations with these last long years, overcome disappointments and controversies.

The first of the Hungarian Dances (WoO 1) are written; Clara Wieck-Schumann presents them to the public in October.

1859

Brahms composes many new pieces in these months but does not enjoy much applause: for example, he plays the Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 15, first in Hannover, then in Leipzig but gets only harsh reviews. Besides his work in Detmold in the fall and winter seasons, he sets up a women’s choir in Hamburg which shows his fondness for simple Lieder and gives him much pleasure. He accompanies the well-known baritone Julius Stockhausen in performances of songs by Schubert and Beethoven; he himself starts writing songs which soon enough form voluminous cycles.

Brahms’ publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel has become overly cautious following the bad reception of his 1st Piano Concerto. He gets to know the publisher Fritz Simrock who, little by little, prints ever more of his compositions; through him, Brahms becomes a wealthy man in a few short years although he receives only an initial honorarium, no royalties.

1860

Following an essay in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in which the sinfonic poem, the musical drama, the opera and so-called programme music are touted to be the future of music altogether, a nasty exchange of letters ensues between Liszt, Wagner and others representing a Neudeutsche Schule on the one hand, and Brahms, Joachim, the conductor Hans von Bülow and the influential critic Eduard Hanslick on the side of a (conservative) absolute music which is to prevail by itself in perpetuity and not be the subject of trends and fashions. Brahms and his friends publish a manifesto on their views to which the Neudeutschen send a sneering reply filled with personal invective. This is the infamous music dispute which, of course, cannot be ended by a compromise. Small, nervous Hans von Bülow was a devoted follower of Wagner although the master of the opera had, for years, entertained an amourous relationship with Bülow’s wife Cosima (daughter of Franz Liszt), and even had children with her. Von Bülow now steps out from under the influence of Wagner and explains that after having studied Wagner’s music for years he finds nothing more behind it than dimwitted emotions. There are possibly further grounds for resentment and the attacks by the Neudeutschen: Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a rich German-American textile merchant, ceases to lavish money on Richard Wagner after a dispute with his wife Minna and turns her attention and admiration on Johannes Brahms. She’ll offer him later, in 1868, her drama Gudrun as a libretto for an opera.

1861

Brahms lives with his parents in Hamm near Hamburg and writes the Händel-Variationen (op. 24) that are much liked by Franz Liszt.

Clara Wieck-Schumann gives the premiere performance of JB’s Piano Quartet No. 1, in G minor, op.25, in Hamburg.

1862

This shall prove to be a decisive year for Johannes Brahms. He takes a trip to Wien (=Vienna), the city of his idol Ludwig van Beethoven, and immediately finds a warm, at times enthusiastic reception. He presents some of his own works in a series of recitals and writes his parents with joy about the applause he gets and the Vienna public’s feeling for music. He is right at home here, with many new friends, new stimuli and challenges, but he hopes nevertheless for the news from his beloved home town that he is appointed director of the Hamburg Philharmonic Concerts. When his friend Julius Stockhausen, now a famous singer, gets the position, Brahms is distraught, even angered. It is fortunate that he has gained some self-assurance and is convinced of the value of his music. He returns to Hamburg and begins working on a cantata, Rinaldo, to become his op. 50.

Back in Hamburg, Johannes Brahms attends a rehearsal of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde and “shivers with delight” as is told by Max Kalbeck, his biographer or rather hagiographer.

1863

The offer to lead the Wiener Singakademie reaches Brahms in Hamburg. He hesitates at first because he has trouble, as always, making decisions and committing himself, but he finally relents. He sets out in August, stops on the way in Baden-Baden (about 170 km south of Frankfurt) to pay a visit to Clara Wieck-Schumann.

In the beginning, work as choirmaster goes nicely but the Vienna singers don’t take the rehearsals seriously and, in their rather joyful Viennese attitude, they don’t much like the melancholy of their conductor nor the choice of works they are to perform.

1864

Brahms relinquishes the position of Director of the Singakademie again although he has been re-elected. He is now financially independent. Publisher Simrock pleads with him to write more compositions as they are selling quite well. His collection Lieder und Gesänge (op.32) comes out. He also is much in demand, as always, as a performing artist.

1865

When his mother dies, JB finally completes a funereal cantata on which he had been working for a long time: this is the German Requiem (op. 45), with German lyrics taken directly from the Luther Bible.

Unencumbered by the restraints a permanent position would impose, Brahms travels all through Europe in the following years, giving recitals in nearly all major cities and with more and more of his own works on the program. In the summer, he resides for months in Switzerland (Thun, south of Bern, or Rüschlikon near Zürich), in Austria (Pörtschach and Mürzzuschlag, both south of Wien, or in Bad Ischl, 60 km to the east of Salzburg), or in Germany (Baden-Baden, close to Clara Wieck). In spite of all the travelling, these are very productive years for him as a composer. In Vienna, he lives with his great many books in a modest but adequate apartment for rent.

Brahms is much concerned with the preservation of the music of Franz Schubert (1787-1828); he collects manuscripts by Schubert of which some can still be found at a reasonable price and a great many of which are as yet unpublished.

1866

The Piano Quintet in F minor (op. 34) shows a close affinity to Schubert’s Quintet for Strings, in C major.

1868

A concert tour of longer duration through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Holland and Switzerland with the baritone Julius Stockhausen and with Joseph Joachim.

Brahms completes the first ten of his Hungarian Dances (WoO1) for Piano, four hands. He has been fascinated with Hungarian melodies since his tour with Eduard Reményi; the friend’s later charge that he had “stolen” the melodies from him cannot be sustained since most of the dances originate in the popular gypsy music or can be shown to have been written definitely by Brahms himself.

Joseph Joachim, the other Hungarian friend, holds Brahms no ill will; he shall record, in 1903, the first of the Hungarian Dances on a so-called Edison cylinder (listen to this recording on www.youtube.com/watch).

The German Requiem (op. 45), a flop at a performance in Wien in 1867, is given in the Cathedral in Bremen to great applause.

1869

The year passes in quiet work. Nearly all of Brahms’ compositions of this time are Lieder, for example parts of the cycles op. 47, 48 and 49, then the Liebeslieder (Walzer), op. 52.

1870

Johannes Brahms attends a performance of Wagner’s Rheingold in München. He is delighted with the music, just as he was with Die Meistersinger which had its premiere performance two years earlier under Hans von Bülow. Wagner attacks him fiercely in his treatise Über das Dirigieren (“On Conducting”).

1872

Johannes Brahms is by now a famous and celebrated composer. Eduard Hanslick, music critic, professor for the history of music at the University of Vienna and a firm friend of Brahms’, is said to have vitally contributed to the decision of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (i.e. the Society of the Friends of Music) to appoint him Director and Conductor.

The last connection to Hamburg is severed when Johannes Brahms’ father dies.

1873

Brahms composes the Haydn-Variationen (the orchestral version, op. 56a) in Tutzing on Lake Starnberg (close to München) and enjoys their great success at the premiere performance in Wien in November. He dedicates the Quartet for Strings, op. 51, to his new friend Theodor Billroth who is a world-famous surgeon.

1874

The Bachverein (i.e. Bach Society) is founded in Leipzig; its principal administrators are the composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg, who is also the Society’s choirmaster, and his wife Elisabeth. The lady is a talented pianist, one of the pillars of Leipzig’s cultured society, and she cultivates the friendship of many artists, among them Clara Wieck-Schumann. She is devoted to Brahms and spends a good deal of her energy on his behalf. JB sends her manuscripts of his newly written works for evaluation and promptly falls in love with her, her mind and intellect, with the way she sings and plays the piano, but also with her culinary skills.

Brahms meets Max Kalbeck who shall later write a multi-volume biography of the composer.

1875

Brahms quits the position of Director of the Wiener Singverein.

The composer is often surly and gruff except when he speaks of his work; he hates to be disturbed. He is totally absorbed in his music and this shows at the piano, on the conductor’s stand and even when he takes a walk: he is always humming a tune. Only his music friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg has the heart to admonish him for his boorish behavior at times, also because he finds nothing good to say about her husband’s music.

1876

It is now about 16 years since Brahms has started writing sketches for a symphony, discarding them time and again or using them in some other composition. Some of his preliminary works he sends to friends such as Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim or Fritz Simrock. He is unassertive and shy, still under the spell of the mighty Ninth Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. At last he completes his First Symphony (op. 68, in C minor) during a summer vacation in Sassnitz on the Isle of Ruegen (in the Baltic Sea). Its premiere performance is in Karlsruhe, in November of that same year, and it is given again a few days later in Mannheim (60 km north of Karlsruhe), conducted by Brahms himself. The symphony is received enthusiastically by both the public and the critics. Strangely enough, the work gets biting reviews a year later in Boston: boring, loud, poor on ideas, badly worked out themes. In Europe, however, Brahms is glorified as Beethoven’s worthy successor, and his symphony is even called “The Tenth”.

1877

Brahms works on his 2nd Symphony (op. 77, in D major) during a longer stay in Pörtschach on the Wörthersee (about 200 km south of Salzburg). It is fast completed and performed in Wien already in December.

1878

A rather joyous and successful time begins for Johannes Brahms. He is traveling a lot; he comes to Italy for the first time, accompanied by his friend, the physician Theodor Billroth. Slowly the wonderful 2nd Piano Concerto takes shape but is put aside, for the time being, in favor of work on the Violin Concerto in D major (op. 77).

1879

Brahms receives an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy of Breslau University (Breslau is at the time a province of Prussia). About a year later, he presents his thanks for the honor in the form of the Akademische Festouvertüre (“The Academic Festival Overture” op.80) that ends with the well-known student song Gaudeamus igitur.

The Violin Concerto in D major (op. 77) is played for the first time in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig; the soloist is Joseph Joachim, Brahms conducts the orchestra.

1881

A productive stay in Bad Ischl (about 60 km to the east of Salzburg), the same little town where he stayed in the preceding year. Brahms puts the finishing touches on the 2nd Piano Concerto, in B flat major (op. 83). The composer presents it himself in Budapest; it shall become one of his most successful works. The Meiningen Orchestra under Hans von Bülow (in Meiningen, a city south of Göttingen) performs it in many cities throughout Germany.

Second voyage to Italy, again with friend Billroth.

1883

This is the period in which Brahms creates his great orchestral works. The 3rd Symphony (in F major, op.90) is completed and performed in Wien.

1884

Joseph Joachim suspects that his wife Amalia has an affair with the publisher Fritz Simrock; he insists on a divorce. Brahms takes Amalia’s side rather vehemently and this terminates the close friendship that existed between Joachim and the composer.

1885

Johannes Brahms brings the 4th Symphony (in C minor, op.98) to completion. The new work is first performed in Meiningen with Hans von Bülow as the conductor. Its reviews range from accolades to scathing critiques. The composer Hugo Wolf (who adores Richard Wagner) calls the symphony poor on ideas and boring; he condemns simply all and everything coming from Brahms in the harshest words. Unfortunately, several persons who enjoy the public’s esteem do not hesitate either to express their aversion for this type of music, such as George Bernard Shaw and Friedrich Nietzsche, but also influential critics like John F. Runciman in London and above all (and violently) Peter Tchaikovsky.

Johann Strauss junior, the “Waltz King”, comes to visit with Brahms. He is a young man but already widely known and loved. He admires the composer who is thirty years his senior but sees no future in his “absolute” music.

1886

Brahms writes pieces for the violoncello, the Sonata in F major (op. 99) and the Concerto for Violin and Violoncello in A minor, op.102.

1887

Once again a summer trip to Italy, the fifth one, this time accompanied by the composer Theodor Kirchner and the publisher Fritz Simrock.

1888

Brahms is in Leipzig to rehearse his Trio in C minor, op.101, for Piano,Violin and Violoncello with the Russian violinist Adolphe Brodsky. He is invited to a Christmas dinner at Brodsky’s house and is astonished when Grieg and Tchaikovsky come join them. The evening turns out to be fun for Grieg and Tchaikovsky who become friends but Brahms is gruff and sullen.

While staying in Thun (close to Bern/Switzerland) in the years 1886 to 1888, Brahms composes near exclusively Lieder (op. 103, 104, 105, 106, 107).

1889

The City of Hamburg makes Johannes Brahms an honorary citizen; this is one of the few distinctions about which he is truly happy. In April, he travels to Cadenabbia on Lake Como; this is his seventh trip to Italy but he is alone this time. He lives in the villa of the Duke of Meiningen, amidst a sea of flowers.

On December 2, Brahms records the Hungarian Dance No. 2 on an Edison cylinder. One can listen to the recording at www.youtube.com/watch.

1891

Brahms is thrilled by the mastery of the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld who is a regular member of the Meiningen orchestra and he writes, under this impression, the Trio for Piano, Clarinet (or Viola), and Violoncello (in A minor, op.114) as also the Quintet for Clarinet (or Viola), two Violins, Viola and Violoncello, in B minor, op. 115.

His preferred summer vacation spot is now, and will be to the end of his life, Bad Ischl (near Salzburg).

1892

Brahms’ beloved sister Elisa dies.

1893

His ninth, and last, voyage to Italy brings him and three old friends as far south as Sicily. The trip does not go smoothly: first he loses his wallet, then his friend Joseph Widmann who is a poet and a literary critic suffers a painful accident when they cross from Messina to Naples.

The gifted alto Hermine Spies dies at the young age of 33. She was a close friend of Brahms and widely known for the renderings of his Lieder.

1894

The friends Theodor Billroth, the surgeon, and Hans von Bülow, the conductor, both die at the age of 64.

1895

Clara Wieck-Schumann and Johannes Brahms see each other for the last time, in Frankfurt where she ekes out a living as a piano teacher after having resigned her position as a teacher at the Frankfurt Academy of Music. With a heavy heart, she accepts his financial support.

1896

The Duke and the City of Meiningen arrange the First Brahms Festival.

Clara Wieck-Schumann dies on May 20 at age seventy-five of an apoplectic stroke after having suffered from some undetermined affliction that has left her emaciated. Brahms gets the sad news in Bad Ischl, departs immediately for Frankfurt but finds out on arrival that Clara will be buried in Bonn, next to her husband Robert Schumann in the Old Cemetery. He arrives late at the funeral. He is in tears while playing his Four Solemn Songs (op. 121) at the ceremony.

1897

Johannes Brahms dies in Wien on April 3 after a severe illness that has lasted about a year, following Clara after hardly a year. He is buried in Vienna’s Central Cemetery, in the vicinity of the last resting-place of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert.

An autopsy is not performed; the cause of death is presumably a cirrhosis of the liver, or possibly a carcinoma of the pancreas.

Recommended Literature

Hans A. Neunzig: Johannes Brahms. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg: 2006 (21. Auflage) (in German)

Hans Gal : Johannes Brahms, Werk und Persönlichkeit. Fischer Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main: 1961 (in German)

Max Kalbeck: Johannes Brahms. Berlin: 1921 (4. Auflage, 4 Bände) or www.zeno.org/Musik/M/Kalbeck,+Max (in German)

Alfred von Ehrmann: Johannes Brahms. Weg, Werk und Welt. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig: 1933 (in German)

Christiane Jacobsen (Hrsg.): Johannes Brahms. Leben und Werk. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden: 1983 (in German)