# The musical legacy of Brahms



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

This thread is to discuss the influence Brahms had on later composers of note.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"It may have been that July when Gustav Mahler, recently through Brahms's influence appointed to the Vienna Hofoper, made a visit to Ischl that lives in legend-because of a quip, but one that said much about the divide between Brahms's generation and the next. As they walked along the River Traun, Brahms was singing his familiar refrain: music was going to the devil, after he was dead it would be finished once and for all. Suddenly Mahler took Brahms's arm and gestured excitedly toward the river, exclaiming, "Look, Doktor, just look!"

"What is it?" Brahms said, taking the bait.

"Don't you see?" said Mahler. "There goes the last wave!"

Maybe that got a cheerless chuckle from Brahms. He said only, "That's all very fine, but maybe what matters is whether the wave goes into the sea or into a swamp." By then, with his usual meticulous care he had studied the score of Mahler's Second Symphony. That work, with its glowing instrumentation and grandiose Brahmsian close, perhaps intrigued him at the same time as it made him shudder. Yet the second movement, the scherzo with its juxtaposition of the ecstatic and grotesque, Brahms declared a work of genius-a term he did not use lightly. But he also said, "I used to think Richard Strauss was the Chief of the Insurrectionists, but now I see it's Mahler."

As Mahler left from that last visit to Ischl, he glanced through the window to have one more look at Brahms. He saw the old man wearily taking a sausage and a slice of bread from the stove for his lunch. It all comes to this, Mahler thought."

Johannes Brahms A BIOGRAPHY By JAN SWAFFORD


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I think the only composer whom reached the status of Brahms is Schönberg. While Reger might be closer in sound and aesthetic he never the less never made it to top tier. Elgar and Schönberg were both influenced also by Strauss but Schönberg eventually discarted most of that.

What Brahms seems to have gifted musical generations with was his remarkable rhythmic language, sense of motivic development-variation and traditional form; which were eventually thought of being so pernicious by the high modernist generation searching for a new language of their own.


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

Erno Dohnanyi is probably the closest to a direct stylistic successor. A shame he's so underrated when he's produced masterpieces like the piano quintets.











Other notable influences:
Dvorak
Nielsen (the 1st symphony is very Brahmsian)
Zemlinsky


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I thought I read in an interview that John Williams stated how Brahms influenced his music.

Maybe someone can find this interview.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I think Reger is the closest to Brahms's "true successor".


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I think Brahms had at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century a similar status to Mendelssohn in the mid-century. More conservative/classicist minded young composers very often started by modelling their first works on them. Besides Dohnanyi, early Zemlinsky is an example (e.g. his clarinet trio or the unfinished quintet) and there are probably many more among composers mostly forgotten today. Reger is maybe the greatest example and also some of early Schoenberg (the unnumbered quartet and the first quartet). Also the more conservative Russians like Glasunov, Medtner or Taneyev are indebted to Brahms. As Brahms (except maybe in rather technical matters highlighted by Schoenberg in his declaring him "progressive") was rather conservative in most of his maturity, the ones of the next generation very often emancipated from that style or skipped it altogether. That's why one might get the impression he had no influence on posterity.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

arpeggio said:


> I thought I read in an interview that John Williams stated how Brahms influenced his music.
> 
> Maybe someone can find this interview.


Williams said that:
1) Brahms was one of the 5 greatest composers to ever live, together with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn
2) Brahms has given the world 'many wonderful melodies'
3) When asked about Wagner, replied that in the War of the Romantics he would have stood on Brahms' side

I would say that great perfectionism, focus on craftsmanship, and conservatism in the sense of not losing the glories of the past while writing one's own music are the things that make Williams and Brahms similar relative to their own time.

Talent researcher Dean Keith Simonton said once that had he been born a century earlier without the medium of film, Williams (b.1932) would have likely become a pianist and a moderately conservative concert composer like Brahms (b. 1833).


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

...just for you Fabulin.....


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> ...just for you Fabulin.....
> 
> View attachment 155466


I'm suddenly reminded of this




for some reason


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

mikeh375 said:


> ...just for you Fabulin.....


Ahh, I see another similarity! Both can be described as bearded white males, which is super important! :devil:



hammeredklavier said:


> I'm suddenly reminded of this
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This video would do great in the "bringing classical music to the average Joe" thread :lol:


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I think Brahms has influenced a lot of composers, because his works are so often studied at conservatories. Elliott Carter seems to me a composer that has some Brahms in his sound. There is this quote from Carter:

"_That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are_."

In this talk with Carter the interviewer agrees with me and asks Carter directly about the influence of Brahms. Carter doesn't deny any influence, but also states he hopes his music sounds more joyful than Brahms!

https://www.boosey.com/podcast/12505


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> I think Brahms has influenced a lot of composers, because his works are so often studied at conservatories. Elliott Carter seems to me a composer that has some Brahms in his sound. There is this quote from Carter:


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Franz Schmidt for one. Brahms was essentially a classicist wrapped up in romantic clothing and without the excess. So was Schmidt - his forms are always clear cut like Brahms. One of the Schmidt biographies is subtitled "A Master After Bruckner and Brahms". Elgar respected Brahms (he loved the 3rd symphony) but Elgar is no classicist - his symphonies are far more rhapsodic.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> Franz Schmidt for one. Brahms was essentially a classicist wrapped up in romantic clothing and *without the excess. So was Schmidt*....


Schmidt's 45-minute 4th Symphony would beg to disagree.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I once forgot about a fish in the back of my refrigerator, until you could smell it with the door closed.

_That._


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> "_That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are_."


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> I once forgot about a fish in the back of my refrigerator, until you could smell it with the door closed.
> _That._


Which one Rotts faster?:

Raisin Brahms
Wagner Pizza


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The term legacy is an interesting one because it seems to concern composers who followed some aspects of an earlier composer's methods and styles. But often those who follow often choose not to follow but to find contrasts. Often it has been this seeking of a contrast that has been important in the development of music. 

Who followed Brahms? I suppose the next big step was that of Mahler. But Mahler was too different to allow the word follow to be used. So we jump a generation and go the Schoenberg (after all, Elgar and Reger may have learned a few things from Brahms but they were hardly of his calibre). But the whole question is surely muddied by the contemporaneous work of other composers who had very distinct personalities (Schumann, Schubert etc) including some anti-Brahmsians (Wagner etc). So what is it about Brahms that we might look for to identify who followed him?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> The term legacy is an interesting one because it seems to concern composers who followed some aspects of an earlier composer's methods and styles. But often those who follow often choose not to follow but to find contrasts. Often it has been this seeking of a contrast that has been important in the development of music.
> 
> Who followed Brahms? I suppose the next big step was that of Mahler. But Mahler was too different to allow the word follow to be used. So we jump a generation and go the Schoenberg (after all, Elgar and Reger may have learned a few things from Brahms but they were hardly of his calibre). But the whole question is surely muddied by the contemporaneous work of other composers who had very distinct personalities (Schumann, Schubert etc) including some anti-Brahmsians (Wagner etc). So what is it about Brahms that we might look for to identify who followed him?


The answer is simple, it's what you can hear for yourself in Reger op 109 and op 121. Brahms's sense of cantabile, a step into the next phase of music with chromaticism.

Early Busoni worth thinking about too, Busoni op 17 variations seems very Brahmsian to me.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Listen to this piano prelude by Rodrigo:






And compare with the first movement of Brahms op. 119:


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Who is the true successor of J.S. Bach? Or Mozart? What about Beethoven?

I suggest that none of the great composers have successors, but their influence spreads in many directions like seeds on the wind.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> Who is the true successor of J.S. Bach? Or Mozart? What about Beethoven?
> I suggest that none of the great composers have successors, but their influence spreads in many directions like seeds on the wind.


It's also interesting to note that they themselves were also influenced in many directions;
Buxtehude has something to do with Bach, but not Mozart, Beethoven,
Eberlin has something to do with Mozart, but not Bach, Beethoven,
Knecht has something to do with Beethoven, but not Bach, Mozart.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

Kreisler jr said:


> I think Brahms had at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century a similar status to Mendelssohn in the mid-century. More conservative/classicist minded young composers very often started by modelling their first works on them. Besides Dohnanyi, early Zemlinsky is an example (e.g. his clarinet trio or the unfinished quintet) and there are probably many more among composers mostly forgotten today. Reger is maybe the greatest example and also some of early Schoenberg (the unnumbered quartet and the first quartet). Also the more conservative Russians like Glasunov, Medtner or Taneyev are indebted to Brahms. As Brahms (except maybe in rather technical matters highlighted by Schoenberg in his declaring him "progressive") was rather conservative in most of his maturity, the ones of the next generation very often emancipated from that style or skipped it altogether. That's why one might get the impression he had no influence on posterity.


Not only the so-called conservatives but also some composers from the revolutionary front such as Strauss or Mahler did tread on Brahms` gigantic footprints in their youth. Both of them and a vast majority of the other next-gen composers emancipated themselves from the ways of Brahms sooner or later as you said. However, I think this situation is not necessarily connected to his "conservatism". I think with Brahms, the younger generations felt the _Anxiety of Influence_ the most. Brahms, with his stout figure, stern face, impressive beard and merciless criticisms, was an assertive father figure. As far as I recall, Bloom argued that one cannot wholly deny the influence but can reshape it into something original in order to overcome the anxiety thus survive. In this regard, all the names you mentioned overcame the anxiety as they all composed original music otherwise they would be unbeknownst to us after many decades.

IMO, amongst the candidates, Reger is the closest one to be considered Brahms` successor because the Brahmsian influences are apparent in his music yet his language is highly individualistic even unique. His relation to Brahms is similar to Brahms` own relation to his predecessors as they both use _Askesis_ which is the most respectful manner to overcome the anxiety and to find an individualistic voice.


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