Brahms: The Street Musician
1868 AD
1868 1868
16.30E48.15N
MUS

VIENNA, AUSTRIA
	No one in the poverty-stricken districts of Hamburg would have believed that little "Hannes" would grow up to be a famous composer.
	The youngster, whose father was an itinerant musician and whose mother took in boarders to make ends meet, earned his keep by playing German folksongs on the piano in waterfront dives and dance halls.
	But despite a childhood in sordid surroundings, Johannes Brahms became one of Europe's most celebrated musicians and one of the best-known composers of the Romantic movement.
	Brahms wrote for piano, chamber orchestra and chorale, contributing to every branch of music except opera. His four symphonies place him beside Ludwig van Beethoven in importance, and his two piano concertos and one violin concerto are among the greatest of their kind.
	Though he had written 67 pieces of music by the time he was 43, Brahms was so in awe of Beethoven's great Ninth Symphony that he had to muster up the courage to pen his first symphony, fearing it would never live up to the work of his idol. By the time he wrote his fourth and last symphony -- which has been called equal to what Beethoven's 10th Symphony might have been had he survived another 20 or 30 years -- Brahms was dying of liver cancer and lived only long enough to hear it performed in Vienna on March 7, 1897. His audience, seeing the beloved composer had only a few weeks to live, gave him a standing ovation between each movement. He died three weeks later.
	Although Brahms always felt inferior to Beethoven, he actually excelled Beethoven in writing music for voices. His lifelong love of German folksongs, acquired during his early exposure to them in Hamburg's beer gardens, is evident in his smaller choral works.
	He wrote songs throughout his life, beginning with "Liebestreu," True Love, which he wrote at age 21. He also wrote 14 folksongs for children and six books of German folksongs.
	Brahms first learned music from his father, who soon realized the talented boy needed a professional instructor. Brahms' first piano teacher, Otto Cossel, found Hannes gifted and lovable, but lamented that his bright young pupil wasted so much time with his "everlasting composing."
	In 1857, Brahms took a post at the Court of Lippe-Detmold, where he gave piano lessons to the royal children, directed the court choir and performed at concerts. He also composed the "Concerto No. 1 in D Minor for Piano, Op. 15" there and played it for the first time at Hanover in 1859. "It was a brilliant and decided failure," Brahms commented after the debut.
	Though born in Germany, Brahms spent most of his adult life in Vienna, Austria. He remained a bachelor all his life and though he had a large circle of friends, he had a reputation for being disagreeable, gruff and ill-tempered at times.
	One of his most famous works, "A German Requiem, Op. 45" (1868), was written in memory of his friend and fellow musician Robert Alexander Schumann. It was based on Biblical excerpts through which Brahms presented the ideas of sorrow consoled, doubt overcome and death vanquished.