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Updated: May 25, 2025
And in any case, how shall we explain the influence of music in the life of Wagner's rival for supremacy, Johannes Brahms, a confirmed bachelor; or his other contemporary, Tschaikovski, who, after a normal love affair with a singer, Desirée Artôt, who jilted him, eventually married a girl by whom he seemed to have been deeply loved, without feeling any return?
"Not at all," replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold. "If you would give me your address " "Oh, not at all, not at all;" and he wrapped his greatcoat over his knees. Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret's ears. Brahms, for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella.
If the opening of the D symphony is thin, unreal, an attempt at pastoral gaiety which has resulted merely in lack of character, at anyrate the second theme is delightful; if the opening of the slow movement is also twaddle, there are pleasant passages later on; the dainty allegretto is as fresh and fragrant as a wild rose; and the finale, though void of significance, is full of an energy rare in Brahms.
Much of Brahms' music is bad and ugly music, dead music; it is a counterfeit and not the true and perfect image of life indeed; and it should be buried or cremated at the earliest opportunity. But much of it is wonderfully beautiful almost but never quite as beautiful as the great men at their best. There are passages in the Tragic overture that any composer might be proud to have written.
He had written several essays, on classical subjects, that were privately circulated in sumptuous bindings. He played Brahms with unusual talent. But certain colors and perfumes set his nerves on edge, while the sight of blood, if more than a drop or two, made him feel faint.
Wagner had for him the contempt of the original thinker for the man of second-hand ideas, and of the strenuously dramatic musician for mere brute musical faculty; but though his contempt was perhaps deserved by the Triumphlieds, and Schicksalslieds, and Elegies and Requiems in which Brahms took his brains so seriously, nobody can listen to Brahms' natural utterance of the richest absolute music, especially in his chamber compositions, without rejoicing in his amazing gift.
The ladies and the other officers of your regiment are Philistines. Ragtime is more in their line than Grieg or Brahms. And the other day Captain Ross asked me if Tschaikowsky wasn't the Russian dancer at the Coliseum in town." Wargrave laughed. "I know. I became very unpopular when I was Band President and made our band play Wagner all one night during Mess.
It is astonishing to see how little children learn in this way to care for music by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Dvorák, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven. The music is of course selected with skill, and care is taken that the "expression" shall not make the children foolishly self-conscious. Emphasis is always placed on listening, and the children's appreciation is apparent.
The famous feud of Brahms and Wagner partisans marked the alignment of the classical and radical traditions. Throughout the second half of the century the banner of a true musical process was upheld; the personal meeting of the youthful Brahms with the declining Schumann is wonderfully significant, viewed as a symbol of this passing of the classic mantle.
His works make one keenly aware of the rhythmical, the formalistic limitations of Chopin's piano pieces, of the steeliness of much of Brahms', of the shallow brilliancy, the theatricality, of Liszt's. They even make us feel at moments as though in them had been realized the definitive pianistic style, that the hour of transition to the new keyboard of quarter tones was nigh.
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