Brahms cleared !
The Guardian.
Brahms cleared of serial cat slaying.
Author's research reveals calumny that for 100 years defamed German composer was the malicious gossip of 'notoriously bitchy' Wagner.
Johannes Brahms, bewhiskered composer of four symphonies, has been cleared of one of the most serious charges ever levelled at a musical genius - the accusation that he was a cat slayer.
For more than a century, cat lovers have accepted as true the allegation that Brahms slaughtered felines, transcribed the sounds of their dying moments and callously incorporated then into his works.
But research proves that the foul calumny was almost certainly the work of Richard Wagner, a notoriously bitchy composer whose operas go on longer that one of the nine lives of an average mog.
Writing in the May issue of the BBC Music Magazine, Calum MacDonald, who is the author of a study of Brahms, dismisses the charge on empirical grounds. "In my own limited but miserable experience, dying cats don't tend to make such noise," he says.
In his review of the evidence, he notes that stories of Brahms killing cats surface mainly in books about cats rather that in books about music "which is suspicious in itself".
He finds oe of the most recent accounts in Desmond Morris's Cat World, published in 1996, which claims that Brahms began cat bagging after the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak gave him a "Bohemian sparrow slaying bow".
Brahms used to take aim from his apartment window in Vienna, alleges Morris, who then quotes Wagner: "After spearing the poor brutes, he reeled then in to his room after the manner of a trout-fisher. Then he eagerly listened to the expiring groans of his victims and carefully jotted down in his notebook their ante mortem remarks".
Morris adds: "According to Wagner, who disliked Brahms, he worked these sounds into his chamber music".
MacDonald dismisses every detail of this account as suspect and reports that Morris cannot now find the source for Wagner's comments. He also explains that Wagner never visited Brahms's flat, so at best could only have been retailing gossip. Dvorak and Brahms met in 1880, only three years before Wagner died, leaving a very limited time for Brahms to become expert with the Bohemian bow and for Wagner to get wind of the story, had it been true.
MacDonald adds: "Dvorak would presumably have to have given Brahms the bow in person but their collected correspondence contains no letter saying, 'Please, Honoured Master, accept this amusing artefact from my native land'.
He then asks: "Is there really such a thing as a 'Bohemian sparrow slaying bow?"
Brahms's apartment is presumably is flat in the Karlgasse, which was several floors up, so he'd need a long line to haul up any speard moggies. Did sparrow slaying bows have lines attached?. It surely wouldn't be strong enough to haul in dying cats, especially if they were struggling".
After consulting Styra Avins, editor of Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, MacDonald learned that in 1893 - when Brahms was still alive - a music critic for the New York Times, James Huneker, had cited the story of the composer's hatred of cats as an example of how biography could be contaminated by deliberate fiction. Huneker named Wagner as the guilty man.
"Brahms's supposed sadism is a malicious fabrication" MacDonald concludes. Which means the rest of us can listen to the clarinet quintet without fearing that some of its finest moments were inspired by a cat yowling its way to oblivion.
In later life Brahms was know for his rudeness. Once, as he left a party in Vienna, he said: "If there is someone here whom I have not insulted, I apologize."
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~ Courage, so it be righteous, will gain all things ~
Brahms cleared of serial cat slaying.
Author's research reveals calumny that for 100 years defamed German composer was the malicious gossip of 'notoriously bitchy' Wagner.
Johannes Brahms, bewhiskered composer of four symphonies, has been cleared of one of the most serious charges ever levelled at a musical genius - the accusation that he was a cat slayer.
For more than a century, cat lovers have accepted as true the allegation that Brahms slaughtered felines, transcribed the sounds of their dying moments and callously incorporated then into his works.
But research proves that the foul calumny was almost certainly the work of Richard Wagner, a notoriously bitchy composer whose operas go on longer that one of the nine lives of an average mog.
Writing in the May issue of the BBC Music Magazine, Calum MacDonald, who is the author of a study of Brahms, dismisses the charge on empirical grounds. "In my own limited but miserable experience, dying cats don't tend to make such noise," he says.
In his review of the evidence, he notes that stories of Brahms killing cats surface mainly in books about cats rather that in books about music "which is suspicious in itself".
He finds oe of the most recent accounts in Desmond Morris's Cat World, published in 1996, which claims that Brahms began cat bagging after the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak gave him a "Bohemian sparrow slaying bow".
Brahms used to take aim from his apartment window in Vienna, alleges Morris, who then quotes Wagner: "After spearing the poor brutes, he reeled then in to his room after the manner of a trout-fisher. Then he eagerly listened to the expiring groans of his victims and carefully jotted down in his notebook their ante mortem remarks".
Morris adds: "According to Wagner, who disliked Brahms, he worked these sounds into his chamber music".
MacDonald dismisses every detail of this account as suspect and reports that Morris cannot now find the source for Wagner's comments. He also explains that Wagner never visited Brahms's flat, so at best could only have been retailing gossip. Dvorak and Brahms met in 1880, only three years before Wagner died, leaving a very limited time for Brahms to become expert with the Bohemian bow and for Wagner to get wind of the story, had it been true.
MacDonald adds: "Dvorak would presumably have to have given Brahms the bow in person but their collected correspondence contains no letter saying, 'Please, Honoured Master, accept this amusing artefact from my native land'.
He then asks: "Is there really such a thing as a 'Bohemian sparrow slaying bow?"
Brahms's apartment is presumably is flat in the Karlgasse, which was several floors up, so he'd need a long line to haul up any speard moggies. Did sparrow slaying bows have lines attached?. It surely wouldn't be strong enough to haul in dying cats, especially if they were struggling".
After consulting Styra Avins, editor of Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, MacDonald learned that in 1893 - when Brahms was still alive - a music critic for the New York Times, James Huneker, had cited the story of the composer's hatred of cats as an example of how biography could be contaminated by deliberate fiction. Huneker named Wagner as the guilty man.
"Brahms's supposed sadism is a malicious fabrication" MacDonald concludes. Which means the rest of us can listen to the clarinet quintet without fearing that some of its finest moments were inspired by a cat yowling its way to oblivion.
In later life Brahms was know for his rudeness. Once, as he left a party in Vienna, he said: "If there is someone here whom I have not insulted, I apologize."
------------------
~ Courage, so it be righteous, will gain all things ~
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