Living up to expectations—both those of his supporters and those he placed on himself—was an issue Johannes Brahms dealt with for his entire career, especially when it came to writing symphonies. Brahms avoided the genre for years, composing several proto-symphonic works before finally producing his First Symphony at the ripe old age of 43. It was worth the wait. As the critic Eduard Hanslick proclaimed, “What symphony of the last thirty or forty years is even remotely comparable with those of Brahms?”  

Brahms wrote his next three symphonies at a more rapid rate, and he composed his third during the summer of 1883, shortly after falling in love with Hermine Spiess.  Like Brahms’s other relationships, the liaison went nowhere—as he often declared, one of the guiding principles of his life was “never to attempt an opera or a marriage.” He did, however, spend the summer of 1883 in Wiesbaden, where Spiess lived, completing the Third Symphony before returning to Vienna in October.

The symphony opens with three rising chords that spell out F–A-flat–F. Thirty years prior, Brahms and his close friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, created musical mottos commemorating their bachelorhood. Joachim’s was F-A-E: “Frei aber einsam,” or “Free but lonely.” Brahms’s was F–A–F, or “Frei aber froh” (“Free but glad”). In the Third Symphony, Brahms takes this motive and lowers the A to an A-flat, transforming the motto from major to a more sorrowful minor. Is the composer subtly suggesting that he was not so glad to be free after all? Following a folk-like Andante, a third movement unfolds, filled with rich lyricism that evokes the rapturous longing of young love. The drama comes to a head in the concluding movement, in which the F–A–F motto, now in the major mode, emerges triumphantly from the rhythmically charged musical landscape.