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Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

“You don’t know what it is like always to hear that giant marching along behind me,” Brahms wrote to the conductor Hermann Levi, in reference to Beethoven. As a classically-oriented composer who revered Beethoven, Brahms found writing a symphony a daunting proposition. It took fame, respectability, middle age and numerous false starts before he finally finished his First Symphony at age 43, after at least 14 years’ gestation. An earlier attempt at a symphony, in 1854, ended up, after numerous transformations, as part of the D-minor Piano Concerto and the German Requiem. 

Despite Brahms’s reputation and the positive anticipation of the public, the Symphony, premiered in 1876, was at first coolly received. The rigorous classical form baffled the public and critics, who expected something more romantic and innovative. Wagner, Liszt and programmatic music were all the rage, and most critics considered the classical form backward looking and reactionary. But it was not long before the Symphony’s riveting power was recognized, along with its own contribution to symphonic innovation.

If, indeed, the First Symphony cannot strictly be considered program music, it nevertheless unfolds with great drama – even, one might say, a musical plot. While the typical classical symphony gives the greatest weight to the first movement, ending with a faster rousing finale, often a dance, Mozart, in his last three symphonies, and Beethoven in the Third, Fifth and especially the Ninth Symphonies, recast the pattern. In these works, the finale provides the culmination to the entire symphony. When listening to Brahms’s First, one can easily imagine the composer’s reticence at treading in the great man’s shadow. Nevertheless, his combined sense for musical drama and structure prevailed as he launched what conductor Hans von Bülow called “The Tenth.” Only Mendelssohn in his Symphony No. 3, “The Scottish,” had trod that path. 

The ominous pounding of the timpani under slow ascending and descending chromatic scales, fragmentary motives and the ambiguous tonality of the Introduction poses a musical question – actually more of a demand – that remains unresolved until the final movement. It is one of the most spine-chilling introductions in all of classical music. The following Allegro fleshes out motives from the Introduction into full-fledged themes, first by combining them contrapuntally, then developing them with an almost savage energy. 

The middle two movements are a respite from the drive of the first. The second movement, a classic ABA form, although with a highly modified repeat, is reminiscent of Beethoven's variations in the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony. The movement also contains allusions to thematic material from the first and hints at the main theme of the third movement to come. 

The third movement, a modified scherzo, is more of an intermezzo that opens with a lilting clarinet theme, already foreshadowed in the preceding movement. The contrapuntal accompaniment to the repeat of the clarinet theme, after the Trio section, foreshadows the principal theme from the Finale.

Rumbling timpani now reassert the serious mood of the first movement, reminding the listener of unresolved issues. Suddenly, as if from behind a cloud, an alpenhorn calls out, answered by the flute, turning the turgid C minor into a resounding C major chorale melody. Brahms clearly modeled the effect on Beethoven’s Ninth.

The alpenhorn solo has its own little history. In 1868, eight years before the Symphony was premiered, Brahms had quarreled with his friend, and probably secret love, Clara Schumann, about whether she should cut back on her concretizing to spend more time at home with her eight children. That September, he sent her a mollifying postcard with the alpenhorn theme scrawled on it to the words, ”High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousand-fold.”

Unlike Beethoven, whose choral Finale was a set of variations, Brahms’s chorale tune does battle with the music from the stormy introduction to emerge triumphant in an exultant coda.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

“You don’t know what it is like always to hear that giant marching along behind me,” Brahms wrote to the conductor Hermann Levi, in reference to Beethoven. As a classically-oriented composer who revered Beethoven, Brahms found writing a symphony a daunting proposition. It took fame, respectability, middle age and numerous false starts before he finally finished his First Symphony at age 43, after at least 14 years’ gestation. An earlier attempt at a symphony, in 1854, ended up, after numerous transformations, as part of the D-minor Piano Concerto and the German Requiem. 

Despite Brahms’s reputation and the positive anticipation of the public, the Symphony, premiered in 1876, was at first coolly received. The rigorous classical form baffled the public and critics, who expected something more romantic and innovative. Wagner, Liszt and programmatic music were all the rage, and most critics considered the classical form backward looking and reactionary. But it was not long before the Symphony’s riveting power was recognized, along with its own contribution to symphonic innovation.

If, indeed, the First Symphony cannot strictly be considered program music, it nevertheless unfolds with great drama – even, one might say, a musical plot. While the typical classical symphony gives the greatest weight to the first movement, ending with a faster rousing finale, often a dance, Mozart, in his last three symphonies, and Beethoven in the Third, Fifth and especially the Ninth Symphonies, recast the pattern. In these works, the finale provides the culmination to the entire symphony. When listening to Brahms’s First, one can easily imagine the composer’s reticence at treading in the great man’s shadow. Nevertheless, his combined sense for musical drama and structure prevailed as he launched what conductor Hans von Bülow called “The Tenth.” Only Mendelssohn in his Symphony No. 3, “The Scottish,” had trod that path. 

The ominous pounding of the timpani under slow ascending and descending chromatic scales, fragmentary motives and the ambiguous tonality of the Introduction poses a musical question – actually more of a demand – that remains unresolved until the final movement. It is one of the most spine-chilling introductions in all of classical music. The following Allegro fleshes out motives from the Introduction into full-fledged themes, first by combining them contrapuntally, then developing them with an almost savage energy. 

The middle two movements are a respite from the drive of the first. The second movement, a classic ABA form, although with a highly modified repeat, is reminiscent of Beethoven's variations in the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony. The movement also contains allusions to thematic material from the first and hints at the main theme of the third movement to come. 

The third movement, a modified scherzo, is more of an intermezzo that opens with a lilting clarinet theme, already foreshadowed in the preceding movement. The contrapuntal accompaniment to the repeat of the clarinet theme, after the Trio section, foreshadows the principal theme from the Finale.

Rumbling timpani now reassert the serious mood of the first movement, reminding the listener of unresolved issues. Suddenly, as if from behind a cloud, an alpenhorn calls out, answered by the flute, turning the turgid C minor into a resounding C major chorale melody. Brahms clearly modeled the effect on Beethoven’s Ninth.

The alpenhorn solo has its own little history. In 1868, eight years before the Symphony was premiered, Brahms had quarreled with his friend, and probably secret love, Clara Schumann, about whether she should cut back on her concretizing to spend more time at home with her eight children. That September, he sent her a mollifying postcard with the alpenhorn theme scrawled on it to the words, ”High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousand-fold.”

Unlike Beethoven, whose choral Finale was a set of variations, Brahms’s chorale tune does battle with the music from the stormy introduction to emerge triumphant in an exultant coda.