Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Johannes Brahms
(b. May 7, 1833 in Hamburg; d. April 3, 1897 in Vienna)
By 1884 Brahms had little left to prove. In demand as a pianist and conductor, selling his published music briskly, he was financially secure, the more so as he lived simply and dressed cheaply. His third symphony was first played at the end of 1883 and was being received everywhere with raucous acclaim. At one concert it was programmed as both the second and fourth selections.
Quixotic, Brahms would give generously, but skewer those trying to compliment him, unwilling to believe their sincerity, but his inner life was unaffected by adulation. He was entirely about doing things his way and better. He studied past masters to suck the marrow from their bones, putting his own stamp on old forms. Significantly the Bach Cantata No. 150 was finally published in 1884 from a manuscript set down by one of Bach's last students. Brahms took the seven notes of the cantata's final chaconne, added a semitone before the top note, and had his material for the last movement of his Symphony No. 4 that he began working on that year. It is speculation, but Brahms was probably drawn to the chaconne by its chorus text beginning, “My days of suffering / Nevertheless God ends in joy.” We know Brahms used the biblical text, “They who sow in tears, shall reap in joy.” in his German Requiem and took comfort in the words even as the death of his mother haunted him the rest of his life.
The first movement begins with a sighing downward third, answered with its inverse, an upward sixth. Brahms works from there to make everything that follows in the whole symphony relate back to what has come before. Minor tonality dominates the movement. The scene is serious but not bleak and the overall thrust is from reserve to forceful expression.
The slow second movement starts with thirds outlined, up and down, that persist through the movement and milk the implications of the first movement motif. Brahms uses a truncated sonata form without any real development. A special moment is the appearance of the theme in the major, expansively Romantic. It is not repeated in the recap; almost reflexively Brahms damped his emotions before anyone might think them unseemly.
Despite the “wrong” time signature, 2/4, the third movement is clearly a scherzo. Jolly and outgoing, it lurches along briskly. The scherzo section has two contrasting themes and the trio is just a short suggestion.
The last movement is a symphonic tour de force, an avatar looking backward and forward. The form is a passacaglia, repetitive in a way not much different from a chaconne. Brahms uses the eight-note line, one note per bar, through 30 strict repetitions. Sometimes as at the beginning the notes are fiery melody heard above all else. Other times he obscures it as embedded elements of shifting harmonies. The overall sense is of variations where some ideas span multiple instances of his eight notes. In the 30th repetition he hammers descending thirds as he finally breaks his metric bond at measure 241. The coda races home with several references back to the first movement.