Written by Anna Vorhes

Born
May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany

Died
April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria

Instrumentation
two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, one contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, strings

Duration
39 minutes

Composed
Summer of 1883, while in Wiesbaden on the Rhine

World Premiere
December 2, 1883, by the Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Richter conducting

Program Notes

Success as a musician in any era has meant both satisfying public taste and being innovative enough to do something recognizable and unique.  Brahms walked a fine line.  Musicians respect his pristine construction and his meticulous attention to detail.  Audiences loved his ability to use the Romantic tone palate in satisfying ways.  The most influential conductor of the Romantic era, Hans von Bulow compared Brahms to Beethoven and the rediscovered Bach.  Brahms' publisher picked that up.  The "three Bs" became a byword for fine composition.  For a composer so self-critical, this was a difficult slogan to fulfill.

Feeling like you might have been born in the wrong era is not unusual in creative personalities.  While Brahms didn't write or talk about that concept, his  music certainly retained sensibilities of the previous eras.  He did not like the bombastic innovations of Liszt, Wagner, and their peers.  He did admire the Waltz King Johann Strauss II, admitting he would have been proud to claim "The Blue Danube" as his own.  In general, he distrusted purely Romantic era genres and sensibilities.  His construction held firmly to the tools used by Mozart, Haydn, and especially Beethoven.  The length of compositions was expanded and the orchestra was larger to fit the times, but the genre retained the exacting construction of the previous era.

In a career that included work with Joaquim, one of the top violinists of the time, and Clara Schumann, the most highly respected piano virtuoso, Brahms surrounded himself with examples of excellence.  He would not allow himself anything any less.  Brahms was his own strongest critic.  Those works that did not meet his exacting personal standards, he destroyed.

Brahms composed only four symphonies.  The first one was completed in 1876, when Brahms was 43 years old.  This third symphony was written in 1882-1883.  Brahms was reaching his fiftieth birthday.  He was aware of his own abilities, and proud of his work.  At the same time he was meticulous about composition techniques.  In his own words: "It is not hard to compose, but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table."  He thought hard about what he created, and worked to make it reflect the glories of the past in the language of his own times.  Yet he remained unwilling to trust the Romantic sensibilities, and unwilling to write the programmatic pieces so in vogue.

The first movement of this symphony begins with the kinds of cryptically meaningful motives Brahms had discussed and admired with his friend Schumann.  It does not give us an extramusical picture as so many of the composers of the era did.  Instead of the first motive, F - A flat - F leads us to believe this may be a minor key symphony.  The chosen notes reflect Brahms' motto frei aber froh, free but happy.  We do explore the expected major key as the second theme appears in A major to negate the A flat that produced the F minor chord.  The second and third movements are quiet and emotional.  Finally, the fourth movement revisits previous ideas interspersed with new ones as a rondo.  It coalesces into a strong and hope filled climax as only Brahms can.