Previously we were invited into Johannes Brahms’s Vienna flat along with visitors Charles Stanford and Hans Richter, both significant musicians in their own right. After the ice was broken over cigars, it became apparent that Brahms was friendly and engaging in spite of his reputation as a thirty-something, confirmed bachelor and somewhat of a recluse. One might even say he was a “regular Joe” piano player who, for a while, eked out a living by playing in sailor’s taverns and dancing saloons. He had published a few compositions, but his significant body of work lay ahead of him.
In 1876 George Henschel, then a young baritone, (later composer, author and first conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) visited Brahms and spent a holiday with him on the Baltic island of Rügen. The composer, still unbearded, was then forty-three, the singer twenty-six.
Exhibit A: “Sunday, July 9 -- Early yesterday morning Brahms came up to go bathing with me. There was a fine surf on, and the temperature of the water being rather high, we stayed in it for nearly half an hour, enjoying ourselves hugely. I greatly admired Brahms’s burly, well-knit muscular body, which is rather too much inclined to stoutness, I fear.
In the water he drew my attention to the possibility of keeping one’s eyes open wide while diving. It is not only possible, he said, but also very agreeable and strengthening for the eyes. I at once followed his advice to try, succeeding immediately, and we greatly amused ourselves by throwing little copper coins in the water and diving for them.
Brahms is looking splendid. His solid frame, the healthy dark-brown color of his face, the full hair, just a little sprinkled with grey, all make him appear the very image of strength and vigor. He walks about here just as he pleases, generally with his waist coat unbuttoned and his hat in his hand, always with clean linen, but without collar or tie. These he dons at table d’hôte only. [Actually table d’hôtel, a restaurant with a fixed menu as opposed to a la Carte] His whole appearance vividly recalls some of the portraits of Beethoven. His appetite is excellent. He eats with great gusto and, in the evening, drinks his three glasses of beer, never omitting, however to finish off with his beloved Kaffee.”
Exhibit B: “July 11 — We stretched ourselves out in the low grass – it was a very warm evening – lit cigarettes and lay listening in deepest silence, not a breath of wind stirring, for fully half an hour. Then we leaned over the pond, caught tiny little baby frogs and let them jump into the water again from a stone, which greatly amused Brahms, especially when the sweet little creatures, happy to be in their element once more, hurriedly swam away, using their nimble little legs most gracefully and according to all the rules of the natatory art. When they thought themselves quite safe, Brahms would tenderly catch one up again in his hand, and heartily laugh with pleasure on giving it back its freedom…”
Exhibit C: “July 15 – Today I read out, from a Berlin paper, the news of the death, at Bayreuth, where The Ring was being performed for the first time, of a member of the Wagner orchestra. ‘The first corpse’ said Brahms, dryly…”
Exhibit D: “July 17 – ‘I sometimes regret,’ he said to me after some moments of silence ‘that I did not marry.’ [Brahms became a close friend of the family of Robert Schumann who prophesied his genius. Schumann’s attempted suicide in 1854 by throwing himself into the Rhine, and his subsequent madness which led to his admission to an asylum where he died two years later, deeply disturbed Brahms. His sadness is said to be heard in his D minor piano concerto and other works he was sketching around that time. His mental turmoil was increased by his (largely suppressed) love for Clara Schumann, who took great professional interest with him, though neither of them was prepared to let their relationship blossom into marriage after Schuman’s death] I ought to have a boy of ten now; that would be nice. But when I was of the right age for marrying, I lacked the position to do so, and now it is too late…”
To be continued…
