Is there a myth of Brahms?

[Enrique]

Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets. How many sonatas and quartets did Brahms write? The tenth part? Of course, Beethoven wrote only nine symphonies and Haydn, a hundred and four. Mozart, half way between the two of them, forty one. Let's be honest once and for all. Two consecutive Haydn symphonies are very much alike. While the difference from symphony to symphony in Beethoven is enormous. So nobody would lie telling "less quantity, more selection or selectivity". In the 20th century, composers even used to set new compositional rules for a new work. Compare Firebird to Petrushka or see Schoenberg's trip from tonality to atonality. These works are worlds in themselves. So the trend has long been towards less quantity, more elaboration.

Now Brahms was immensely selective, critical about his own work. Does this suffice to explain the difference in output with Beethoven? It's true, his music is heard more than ever and if we consider he only wrote four symphonies, then his are are more frecuently heard than his predecesor's. Is Brahms to Beethoven what this one to Haydn? Is there a myth of Brahms?

[Peter]

I think the unique characteristic of Beethoven is his ability to constantly reinvent - it is a miracle that each of his sonatas, quartets and symphonies are so different.

I don't think Brahms was more of a perfectionist than Beethoven - you only have to look at the sketchbooks to see what pains Beethoven went through. So no this doesn't explain differences in output and I don't think less is necessarily more - there are plenty of just one symphony composers, Wagner, Bizet and Franck amongst them.

[Chaszz]

Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets. How many sonatas and quartets did Brahms write? The tenth part? Of course, Beethoven wrote only nine symphonies and Haydn, a hundred and four. Mozart, half way between the two of them, forty one. Let's be honest once and for all. Two consecutive Haydn symphonies are very much alike. While the difference from symphony to symphony in Beethoven is enormous. So nobody would lie telling "less quantity, more selection or selectivity". In the 20th century, composers even used to set new compositional rules for a new work. Compare Firebird to Petrushka or see Schoenberg's trip from tonality to atonality. These works are worlds in themselves. So the trend has long been towards less quantity, more elaboration.

Now Brahms was immensely selective, critical about his own work. Does this suffice to explain the difference in output with Beethoven? It's true, his music is heard more than ever and if we consider he only wrote four symphonies, then his are are more frecuently heard than his predecesor's. Is Brahms to Beethoven what this one to Haydn? Is there a myth of Brahms?

I'm not quite sure what is being said or questioned here. Is Brahms' output of chamber music really that much less than Beethoven's? Only a TENTH of the amount? Or are we only talking about piano sonatas and string quartets? I haven't looked at any totals, I don't find them easy to track down, but it seems to me Brahms wrote quite a lot of chamber music, especially with the piano in many differing combinations of strings and other instruments. Piano trios, quartets, a quintet; then two string sextets, chamber music for clarinet and horn, a good deal of solo piano music, and so on. Two hundred lieder. 122 opuses and many Woo's. I think that this man has nothing to be ashamed of as to output.

He did burn an awful lot of work also. I've heard of Beethoven abandoning a work here or there, but I haven't heard that he out-and-out destroyed a good amount of work as Brahms is said to have done.

Finally, quantity has little relation to quality. The leading composer as to quantity is Telemann, with over 3,000 works. Telemann is a great composer, but I doubt anyone would put him near either Beethoven or Brahms in greatness. And to make the comparison with art that I don't seem able to avoid when talking about music, Vermeer has only 35 or so extant works compared with, say, Rembrandt's 600. But Vermeer ranks very near the top, along with Rembrandt, in the panoply of great artists.

[Enrique]

First, I'll tell you Brahms is dear to me. The first great work of his I heard was the Fourth Symphony, then followed by the First. The four symphonies are one of the things I admire most in music. Therefor let it be clear I have no interest in ranking Brahms below other composers. I'll attend to your last point first now.

I was careful in picking the word 'selectivity', which is not the same as 'quality'. If Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, he could NOT have been as careful in planning and executing them as Brahms, who wrote only four. I think this is plain, exceptions excepted. Therefor an increase in quantity, going backwards, does mean something. And exactly the same can be said, logic says, going forwards: a decrease in quantity means, in general, taking the mean over the composers of a given time, an increase in selectivity. More clearly: people in the time of Vivaldi wrote their works using recipes. Schoenberg, instead, wrote a recipe.

The second point I want to clarify is this: I understand there are three paradigms of last half of XVIII and XIX musical forms: the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet. It is because of that I limited comparison to these genres. In any of them, Beethoven greatly outnumbers Brahms. My doubt is in the position of Brahms as regards fame. For certain, had he written only a symphony, and this the Fourth, of the First if you prefer, he would be considered one of the giants. But, in a certain time, Brahms was popular in German speaking countries only, in others, people speaking of Brahms as music for musicians.

So, what is this all embracing fame he enjoys now. Did he became known overnight? I think the true reason is for a great many people Brahms must be liked, they like it because they were told he is a great composer. Of course, the more people who knows him, the more likely a given person will like him from his heart.

[Peter]

Then what of Bach and Handel?

[Enrique]

Exactly. I think Bach's overrated. With Haendel I wound not mess around for I know he has an ardent admirer here. I do not want to make this an easy answer and will add that the past has enormous prestige precisely for having passed. And when conductors and musicologists unbury a musician it will not be long before he gets universal fame. Vivaldi is the most eloquent example I find. Which is not to negate their great significance independently of appreciation.

To be quite honest, I would have to be familiar with the tendencies of music immediately predating Bach, as the French clavecinists, the contrapuntists of northern Germany and the Italian School, whose compositions he studied and in which I am not, to be able to find to what degree works that marvel us are due to the originality of his pen and what to what has been lent. Though I know there is more craftmanshiip in Bach than originality, as was the style in Bach's youth days.

[Roehre]

Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets. How many sonatas and quartets did Brahms write? The tenth part? (....)
Now Brahms was immensely selective, critical about his own work. Does this suffice to explain the difference in output with Beethoven? It's true, his music is heard more than ever and if we consider he only wrote four symphonies, then his are are more frecuently heard than his predecesor's. Is Brahms to Beethoven what this one to Haydn? Is there a myth of Brahms?

Brahms wrote an estimated 20 string quartets, but destroyed all but 3 of these. All works before his official opus 1 (with one small exception) had been destroyed, a feat the trio opus 8 in its 1853 shape only escaped as it had been published when Brahms effectively recomposed the outer movement in 1892 or so.
At least three, likely more, piano sonatas were destroyed, as was a Symphony in b, a piano trio in c-sharp and a string quintet in f.

Apart from two or three sheets all Brahms' sketches were destroyed by the composer (propably because he was aware what might happen after his death: people looking into his workshop as started to become a fashion during his lifetime with the Beethoven sketches).

We know he sometimes extensively changed works after their first performances, the original versions -with one exception- lost forever. The 1st Piano concerto was originally in four movements. The 3rd movement of the 1st symphony was originally a rondeau-form (and is the one example of a surviving older version).
The violin concerto was original 4 mvt too, a 2nd violin concerto was destroyed completely, as was the draft for the 5th symphony (the latter more or less surviving in parts of the quintet opus 111)

In terms of published works Brahms' output is considerably smaller than Beethoven's. In terms of the total output including the destroyed works and sketches, I am not so sure.

[Enrique]

Good to know all these things. I myself pointed in this direction by saying "Now Brahms was immensely selective, critical about his own work". I think he was a son of his time, though perhaps to an extreme, in that he left us less and selected more. The writing of a symphony was considered, from the time of Haydn, a serious endeavour. It's interesting to note the dates of Mozart first symphonies, Beethoven's first and Brahms's first. Each time the task seemed more of a commitment. And the trend is the same with all major musical forms, as time went by.

[Peter]

Good to know all these things. I myself pointed in this direction by saying "Now Brahms was immensely selective, critical about his own work". I think he was a son of his time, though perhaps to an extreme, in that he left us less and selected more. The writing of a symphony was considered, from the time of Haydn, a serious endeavour. It's interesting to note the dates of Mozart first symphonies, Beethoven's first and Brahms's first. Each time the task seemed more of a commitment. And the trend is the same with all major musical forms, as time went by.

And what of Schubert's 9th written at the same age as Beethoven's 1st!!

[Enrique]

Typical of Schubert's naivete, though his first attempt at the symphonic genre is marked by genius.

[Peter]

Typical of Schubert's naivete, though his first attempt at the symphonic genre is marked by genius.

Can't let you get off with that one Enrique! The 9th is a truly great work and individuality. You talked about one consecutive Haydn symphony sounding much like another - where in the whole symphonic output does a work sound like this? It is Schubert with his own sublime voice expressed with great maturity at the unbelievable age of 28.

[Chaszz]

Bach overrated?

I will admit that Bach's pedantry and pressing need to supply new works to several churches sometimes led him to write mediocre work. I think particularly of the numerous cantata and mass solo or duet arias which in my opinion are often uninspired and formulaic, and bring to mind one of his sons' description of him as "the old wig." However, his music was just as likely to be richly inspired. Offhand and with pretty wide experience, I cannot think of one chorus from his religious works that is not inspired, and many of them are among the supreme works of Western music. Examples from among many, many could include The Magnificat in D (where even the arias are all first rate), Cantata No. 50, a one-movement masterpiece of a chorus that literally knocks one's socks off, or just about any chorus from the B Minor Mass. Cum Sancto Spiritu from the Mass I would place up against just about any single movement in Western music for sheer shivering greatness. The combination of Gloria In Excelsis immediately followed by Et In Terra Pax is enough to being one to one's knees. The series of choruses Et incarnatus Est, Crucifixus, Et Resurrexit and Et In Spiritum Sanctum has to be one of the most profound and moving meditations in all of music. Then of course there are the great Passions, with the St.Matthew probably foremost among them, all full of marvelous music.

Likewise the orchestral works, such as the early ones from Cothen or the later Zimmerman's Coffeehouse concertos, are very richly inspired almost without exception. The Orchestral Suites, those paragons of joyousness? Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Minor with its thundering first movement? The Violin Concerto in E Major with its classical sweetness that brings to mind the beautiful grace of ancient Greek art? The Double Violin Concerto? Please, sir, you must be joking.

To my mind the keyboard suites tend to be a little formulaic, but the other instrumental works for solo or small group are of very high quality. The Goldberg Variations. The Fifth Brandenburg with its monumental cadenza. Has the sheer cozy woody beauty of stringed instruments playing with and against each other ever been more fully realized than in the Sixth Brandenburg? The Chaconne from the Violin Partita No. 2 all by itself is a high monument of Western culture. Outside of Bach you can find works which equal these (you tend to think of Beethoven) but not really surpass them. I think perhaps your Bach experience is limited, or possibly you just do not get him. Back in the Pleistocene Age we had another such on this site.

I should mention his supreme craftsmanship, and his perfection of the most complicated counterpoint, for instance in The Musical Offering where the high technical achievement is surpassed by the serene spiritual emotions repeatedly evoked by the music. In hundreds of his works, the bass line alone, which is never routine, is more worth listening to than most other composers' main melodic lines.

All this is to not even speak of his influence on Western music as one of the prime explorers of the furthest reaches of harmony, whose pioneering experiments in this dimension were hardly even appreciated until the Romantic era. And the influence of only the Well-Tempered Clavier on possibly every important successive composer is incalculable. But I did not even mention these pedagogical factors before, because I was speaking of Bach purely as a creator.

Forgive my intensity, but you have touched my heart.

[Enrique]

Can't let you get off with that one Enrique! The 9th is a truly great work and individuality. You talked about one consecutive Haydn symphony sounding much like another - where in the whole symphonic output does a work sound like this? It is Schubert with his own sublime voice expressed with great maturity at the unbelievable age of 28.

I though you were speaking about the 1st. My mistake. About the 9th, Schumann himself spoke of the "celestial lengths". If we omit the modifier 'celestial', we are just left with "the lengths". Above all, the interminable last movement. I suppose the conductors play through all the repetitions. Curiously enough, the 1st has some places where he seems to anticipate something of the 9th, if you carefully listen to it.

[Enrique]

@Chaszz:

That's a good concert guide for a Bachian concert goer, I admit. I was only in a high spirited mode when I wrote that. I think I have met a person who likes Bach even more than I do, which is something. Two things I would like to say though:

• Bach is a unique example of pedagogy turned into art. The Well Tempered Clavier, the suites for violoncello and many other works written for a didactical reason, are now considered the dominion of professional players and conductors.
  
  
• Bach was an exponent of the Baroque era, which was to be followed by Classicism. This, by definition, is that point in the history of literature, and by extension of art and music, where the productions reached the highest point of perfection. To this period, that had long forgotten the contrapuntistic school and was a more vertical style of writing, belong Mozart and Beethoven who, for this reason, and for their individual achievments, should be justly considered to be the summit of (western) music.

[Quijote]

[...] The Well Tempered Clavier, the suites for violoncello and many other works written for a didactical reasons [...]

It may well be that the WTC was intended for didactical reasons, Enrique, but not the unaccompanied 'cello suites !
OK, they can be used 'pedagogically', but I seriously doubt that was their original compositional intention. The 'cello suites rock!