Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians — Johannes Brahms, Part 1

JOHANNES BRAHMS

What is music?

This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep.

The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous.

Its domain is between thought and phenomena.

Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter, related to both, yet differing from each.

It is spirit, but spirit subject to the measurement of time; it is matter, but matter that can dispense with space.

--_Heine_ JOHANNES BRAHMS

Emerson has said that, next to the man who first voices a great truth, is the one who quotes it.

Truth is in the air; it belongs to all who can appreciate it; and the difference between the man who gives a truth expression and the listener who at once comprehends and repeats it, is very slight.

If you understand what I say, it is because you have thought the same thoughts yourself--I merely express for you that which you already know.

And so you approve and applaud, not stopping to think that you are applauding your own thought; and your heart beats fast and you say, "Yes, yes, why didn't I say that myself!"

All conversation is a sort of communion--an echoing back and forth of thoughts, feelings and emotions.

We clarify our thoughts by expressing them--no idea is quite your own until you tell it to another.

Music is simply one form of expression.

Its province is to impart a sublime emotion.

To give himself is the controlling impulse in the heart of every artist--to impart to others the joy he feels--this is the dominant motive in his life.

Hence the poet writes, the artist paints, the sculptor models, the singer sings, the musician plays--all is expression--a giving voice to the Silence.

But it is all done for others.

In ministering to others the artist ministers to himself.

In helping others we help ourselves.

We grow strong through exercise, and only the faculties that are exercised--that is to say, expressed--become strong.

Those not in use atrophy and fall victims to arrested development.

Man is the instrument of Deity--through man does Deity create.

And the artist is one who expresses for others their best thoughts and feelings.

He may arouse in men emotions that were dormant, and so were unguessed;

but under the spell of the artist-spirit, these dormant faculties are awakened from lethargy--they are exercised, and once the thrill of life is felt through them, they will probably be exercised again and again.

All art is collaboration between the performer and the partaker--music is especially a collaboration.

It is a oneness of feeling: action and reaction, an intermittent current of emotion that plays backward and forward between the player and his audience.

The player is the positive pole, or masculine principle; and the audience the negative pole, or feminine principle.

In great oratory the same transposition takes place.

Almost every one can recall occasions when there was an absolute fusion of thought, feeling and emotion between the speaker and the audience--when one mind dominated all, and every heart beat in unison with his.

The great musician is the one who feels intensely, and is able to express vividly, and thus impart his emotion to others.

Robert Schumann was such a man.

In his youth, when he played at parlor gatherings he could fuse the listeners into an absolute oneness of spirit.

You can not make others feel unless you yourself feel; you can not make others see unless you yourself see.

Robert Schumann saw.

He beheld the moving pictures, and as they passed before him he expressed what he saw in harmonious sounds.

His many admirers say he gave "portraits" on the piano, and by sounds would describe certain persons, so others who knew these persons would recognize them and call their names.

Sterndale Bennett has told of Schumann's playing Weber's "Invitation to the Dance," and accompanying it with little verbal explanations of what he saw, thus: "There," said the player as he struck the opening chords, "there, he bows, and so does she--he speaks--she speaks, and oh!

what a voice--how liquid!

listen--hear the rustle of her gown--he speaks, a little deeper, you notice--you can not hear the words, only their voices blending in with the music--now they speak together--they are lovers, surely--see, they understand--oh!

the waltz--see them take those first steps--they are swaying into time--away!

--there they go--look!

--you can not hear their voices now--only see them!"

Schumann studied law, and had he followed that profession he would have made a master before a jury.

He saw so clearly and felt so deeply, and was so full of generosity and bubbling good-cheer, that he was irresistible.

As we know, he proved so to Clara Wieck, who left father and mother and home to cleave to this unknown composer.

This splendid young woman was nine years younger than Robert, but she had already made a name and fortune for herself before they were married.

In passing it is well enough to call attention to the fact that this is one of the great loves of history.

It ranks with the mating of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.

How strange that such things are so exceptional that the world takes note of them!

Yet for quite a number of years after their marriage, Madame Schumann was at times asked this question: "Is your husband musical?"

But Robert Schumann, like Robert Browning, was too big a man to be jealous of his wife.

Jealousy is an acknowledgment of weakness and insecurity.

"Robert and Clara," their many dear friends always called them.

They worked together--composed, sang, played, and grew great together.

And as if to refute the carping critics who cry that domesticity and genius are incompatible, Clara Schumann became the happy mother of eight children, and not a year passed but she appeared upon the concert stage, while a nurse held the baby in the wings.

Schumann was very proud of his wife.

He was grateful to her for interpreting his songs in a way he could not.

His lavish heart went out to every one who expressed the happiness and harmony which he felt singing in his soul.

And so he welcomed all players and all singers, and all who felt the influence of an upward gravitation.

Especially was he a friend of the young and the unknown.

His home at Dusseldorf was a Mecca for the aspiring--worthy and unworthy--and to these he gave his time, money and influence.

"Genius must have recognition--we will discover and bring forth these beautiful souls; we will liberate and give them to the world," he used to say.

Not only did he himself express great things, but he quoted others.

Among those who had reverenced the Schumanns from afar, came a young man of twenty, small and fair-haired, from Hamburg.

He was received at the regular "Thursday Night" with various other strangers.

These meetings were quite informal, and everybody was asked to play or sing.

On being invited to play, our young man declined.

But on a second visit he sat down at the piano and played.

It was several minutes before the company ceased the little buzz of conversation and listened--the fledglings were never taken seriously except by the host and hostess.

The youth leaned over the keyboard, and seemed to gather confidence from the sympathetic attitude of the listeners, and especially Clara Schumann, who had come forward and stood at his elbow.

He played from Schumann's "Carnival," and as he played, freedom came to him.

He surprised himself.

When he ceased playing, Robert kissed his cheek, and the company were vehement in their applause.

Next day Schumann met Albert Dietrich, another disciple who had come from a distance to bask in the Schumann sunshine, and said with an air of mystery: "One has come of whom we shall yet hear great things.

His name is Johannes Brahms."

* * * * * We have at least four separate accounts of Brahms' first appearance and behavior when he arrived at the city of Dusseldorf.

These descriptions are by Robert and Clara Schumann, Doctor Dieters and Albert Dietrich.

All agree that Johannes Brahms was a most fascinating personality.

Dieters and Dietrich were about the age of Brahms, and were lesser satellites swinging just outside the Schumann orbit.

Very naturally when a new devotee appeared, they gazed at him askance.

Many visitors were coming and going, and from most of them there was nothing to fear, but when this short, deep-chested boy with flaxen hair appeared, Dietrich felt there was danger of losing his place at the right hand of the Master.

Brahms carried his chin in, and the crown of his head high.

He was infinitely good-natured, met everybody on an equality, without abasement or condescension.

He was modest, never pushed himself to the front, and was always ready to listen.

A talented performer who can listen well, is sure to be loved.

And yet when Brahms went forward to play, there was just a suggestion of indifference to his hearers in his manner, and a half-haughty self-confidence that won before he had sounded a note.

We always believe in people who believe in themselves.

Young Brahms brought a letter of introduction from Joachim.

But that was nothing--Joachim was always giving letters to everybody.

He was like the men who sign every petition that is presented; or those other good men who give certificates of character to people they do not know, and recommendation letters to those for whom they have no use.

So the letter went for little with Robert Schumann--it was the way Brahms approached the piano, and settled his hands and great shock-head over the keyboard, that won.

"He is no beginner," whispered Clara to Robert before Johannes had touched a key.

It didn't take Brahms long to get acquainted--he mixed well.

In a few days he dropped into that half-affectionate way of calling his host and hostess by their first names, and they in turn called him "Johannes."

And to me this is very beautiful, for, at the last, souls are all of one age.

More and more we are realizing that getting old is only a bad habit.

The only man who is old is the one who thinks he is.

Of course these remarks about age do not exactly apply just here, for no member of the trinity we are discussing was advanced in years.

Robert was forty-three, Clara was thirty-four, and Johannes was twenty.

Johannes Brahms was thrice well blest in being well born.

His parents were middle-class people, fairly well-to-do.

They proved themselves certainly more than middle-class in intellect, when they adopted the plan of being the companions and comrades of their children.

Johannes grew up with no slavish fear of "old folks."

He had worked with his father, studied with him; learned lessons from books with his mother, and played "four hands" with her at the piano, by the hour, just for fun.

Then when Remenyi came that way with his violin, and wanted a pianist, he took young Brahms.

When their lines crossed the line of Liszt, they played for him at his inn; and then Liszt played for them.

This Remenyi was our own "Ol' Man Remenyi," who passed over only a year or so ago.

I wonder if he was Ol' Man Remenyi then!

He never really was an old man, and that appellation was more a mark of esteem than anything else--a sort of diminutive of good-will.

I met Remenyi at Chautauqua, where he spent a month or more in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three.

He gave me my first introduction to the music of Brahms, of whom he never tired of talking.

He considered Brahms without a rival--the culminating flower of modern music; and if the Ol' Man slightly exaggerated his own influence in bringing Brahms out and presenting him to the world, I am not the one to charge it up against his memory.

In explaining Brahms and his music, Remenyi used to grow animated, and when words failed he would say, "Here, it was just like this"--and then he would seize his violin, the bow would wave through the air, and the notes would tell you how Brahms transposed Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" from A to B flat--a feat he never could have performed if Remenyi had not told him how.

It was Remenyi who introduced Brahms to Joachim, and it was Joachim who introduced Brahms to Schumann, and it was Schumann's article, "New Paths," in the "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik," that placed Brahms on a pedestal before the world.

Brahms was not the great man that Schumann painted, Remenyi thought, but the idealization caused him to put forth a heroic effort to be what Clara and Robert considered him.

So it was really these two who compelled him to push on: otherwise he might have relaxed into a mere concert performer or a leader of some subsidized band.

Remenyi always seemed to me like a choice antique mosaic, a trifle weather-worn, set into the present.

He used to quote Liszt as if he lived around the corner, and would criticize Wagner, and tell of Moescheles, Haertel, the Mendelssohns and the Schumanns, as if they might all gather tomorrow and play for us at the Hall in the Grove.

Recently I met dear old Herr Kappes, eighty years young, who knew the Mendelssohns, and admired Brahms, loved Clara Schumann, and liked Remenyi--sometimes.

They were too much alike, I fear, to like each other all the time.

But the harmony is still in the heart of Herr Kappes.

He gives music-lessons, and lectures, and will explain to you just how and where Brahms differs from Schumann, and where Schubert separates from both.

Herr Kappes can speak five languages, but even with them all he finds difficulty in making his meaning clear, and at times adopts the Remenyi plan, and will just turn to the piano and cry, "It's like this, see!

Schumann wrote it in this way"--and then the strong hands will chase the keys down and back and over and up.

"But Brahms took the motif and set it like this"--and Herr Kappes will strike the bass a thunderous stroke--pause, look at you, glide back and down, up and over, and you are carried away in a swirl of sweet sounds, and see a pink face framed in its beautiful aureole of white hair.

You listen but you do not "see" the fine distinctions, because you do not care--Herr Kappes is all there is of it, so animated, so gentle, so true, so lovable--because he used to pay court to Fanny Mendelssohn and then transferred his affections to Clara Schumann, and now just loves his art, and everybody.