Bramhs secret admirer of Wagner's?

[Enrique]

Listening to Brahms' third symphony, second movement, the passage beginning at bar 116 (rehearsal letter G), is quite remarkable, and is heard here for the third and last time. Does somebody find a reminiscense of the opening bars of the Tristan here? I do. There even is an F# going to G in the flutes, in a fashion that remembers the E#, F# heard in the clarinet, oboe and flute there, and then repeats itself in full orchestra leading to the fortissimo next bar. I wonder what was the degree of familiarity with Wagner's music Brahms had.

[Peter]

I think Brahms and Wagner did actually admire each other from a distance - they recognised they represented different approaches but were caught up in a feud fuelled by others.

Wagner in 1875 rewarded Brahms (for his reluctantly returning a manuscript of the “Venusberg” music mistakenly presented as a gift) with a score of Das Rheingold with the inscription “it might not be uninteresting to perceive . . . how I managed to construct all kinds of musical thematic material upon the stage set which is here established. In that sense, it could be that perhaps Rheingold might be accorded your kind attention.”

Proclaiming himself the “best of Wagnerians,” Brahms defended Wagner against hasty criticism. Chiding his biographer Richard Specht in this regard, he asked, “Do you take me to be too dull to have been enchanted as anyone else by the joyousness and sublimity of Die Meistersinger? Or dishonest enough to conceal my view that I consider a few bars of this work more valuable than all the operas written since?” He was publicly less favourable about Tristan but it undoubtedly influenced him as in the 1872 song “Mein wundes Herz,” op. 59, no. 7.

[Enrique]

It fills me with pleasure to know the things you relate, that two such giants had a feeling, one of the grandeur of the other. Unfortunately, Wagner could never have heard the fourth symphony for he had died a year before the premiere. However, that he presented the master with a score of Das Rheingold, such an enormous work if only by size, speaks highly of Wagner's opinion of our Brahms.

[Peter]

Wagner's 'antipathy' towards Brahms had more to do with his dislike of the (Jewish) critic Hanslick who was a friend of Brahms. In 1854 Hanslick published his book 'On the Musically Beautiful' which was enormously influential and attacked the musical theories of Wagner. Brahms through his contact with Robert and Clara Schumann came under the influence of musicians and academics who sided with Hanslick and this culminated in his signing the ill-fated Manifesto of 1862 which sort to condemn the ideas of the New music of Wagner and Liszt. Therein lies the supposed hostility between the two, but in reality both admired to some extent the work of the other.

[Enrique]

By the way, for composers of the tallness of Brahms or of Wagner, is there a big difference to them between just reading a score and listening to it played by the orchestra? Assume we are speaking of the orchestra of a symphony by Brahms.

More precisely: by reading a score, perhaps his own just written, he will get an auditive image. How close can this image be to the one got in the theater/concert hall?

[Chaszz]

Wagner's 'antipathy' towards Brahms had more to do with his dislike of the (Jewish) critic Hanslick who was a friend of Brahms. In 1854 Hanslick published his book 'On the Musically Beautiful' which was enormously influential and attacked the musical theories of Wagner. Brahms through his contact with Robert and Clara Schumann came under the influence of musicians and academics who sided with Hanslick and this culminated in his signing the ill-fated Manifesto of 1862 which sort to condemn the ideas of the New music of Wagner and Liszt. Therein lies the supposed hostility between the two, but in reality both admired to some extent the work of the other.

Brahms wanted to attend the premiere of The Ring at Bayreuth but decided not to go, fearing he would be booed or disparaged by Wagner's ardent supporters.

The score of Rheingold was sent to him by Wagner when Wagner did not have a spare copy of Tristan which Brahms had originally requested.

Brahms once said, "If I get up in the morning and open the score and read a few bars of Tristan, the rest of my day is ruined." I could be wrong, but personally, I interpret this as not being a disparaging comment, but a lament over the issues that the startling expansion of harmony in Tristan raised for Brahms vis-a-vis his own work.

Wagner's theory of musical history held that purely instrumental music had ended with Beethoven's Ninth, and that all music henceforth would have to include the vocal. Therefore opera was the modern natural form of music and he wrote only operas. Boxed in by this intellectualization, he could not admit that any of the purely instrumental works other composers stubbornly continued to produce had any real validity as modern music. Once when he heard a chamber piece by Brahms, he damned with faint praise by saying, "Gentlemen, you see what can still be done with the old forms by someone who knows how to use them."

His prejudice against non-vocal music began to break down when he promised Bruckner he would program one or more of his symphonies at Bayreuth (however, he never did). Also shortly before his death he said he was planning to write six short symphonies.

Brahms was rehearsing a chorus when word of Wagner's death reached him. He dismissed the singers, saying "Today we will rehearse no more. A master has died."

[Peter]

I think another factor in this is Clara Schumann who detested the music of Wagner and Liszt. Brahms admired, respected and even loved her at one time and I think he would not have wanted to offend her or their mutual friends by openly admiring Wagner.