Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period who wrote symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works, choral compositions and more than 200 songs. Brahms was the great master of symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the nineteenth century. He can be viewed as the protagonist of the Classical tradition of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven in a period when the standards of this tradition were being questioned or overturned by the Romantics.