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TO
THE MANY KIND FRIENDS
WHOSE SYMPATHY
HAS HELPED ME DURING THE WRITING OF THESE VOLUMES,
THEY ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

PREFACE

The biographical materials from which I have written the following Life of Brahms have, excepting in the few instances indicated in [footnotes], been gathered by me, at first hand, chiefly in the course of several Continental journeys, the first of which was undertaken in the summer of 1902. Dates of concerts throughout the volumes have been authenticated by reference to original programmes or contemporary journals.

My aim in giving some account of Brahms' compositions has not been a technical one. So far as I have exceeded purely biographical limits my object has been to assist the general music-lover in his enjoyment of the noble achievements of a beautiful life.

I feel it impossible to ignore numerous requests made to me to include in my book some particulars of my own acquaintance with Brahms—begun when I was a young student of the pianoforte. I have not wished, however, to interrupt the main narrative of the Life by the introduction of slight personal details, and therefore place together in an introductory chapter some of my recollections and impressions, published a few years ago in the Musical Magazine. These were verified by reference to letters to my mother in which I recorded events as they occurred. Written before the commencement of the Biography, they are in no way essential to its completeness, which will not suffer should they remain unread.

I am indebted for valuable assistance and sympathy to:

H.R.H. Alexander Frederick, Landgraf of Hesse.
Herr Carl Bade.
Fräulein Berninger.
Mrs. Jellings Blow (b. Finke).
Fräulein Theodore Blume.
Frau Professor Böie.
Herr Professor Dr. Heinrich Bulthaupt.
Herr Professor Julius Buths.
The late Gerard F. Cobb, Esq.
Frederic R. Comec, Esq.
Herr Hugo Conrat.
Fräulein Ilse Conrat.
Fräulein Johanna Cossel.
Frau Elise Denninghoff-Giesemann.
Herr Geheimrath Dr. Hermann Deiters.
Herr Hofcapellmeister Albert Dietrich.
Herr k. k. Hofclavierfabrikant Friedrich Ehrbar.
Herr Geheimrath Dr. Engelmann.
Herr Professor Julius Epstein.
Fräulein Anna Ettlinger.
Frau Dr. Maria Fellinger.
Herr Professor Dr. Josef Gänsbacher.
Otto Goldschmidt, Esq., Hon. R.A.M., Member of Swedish A.M., etc.
Dr. Josef Ritter Griez von Ronse.
Herr Carl Graf.
Fräulein Marie Grimm.
Frau Grüber.
Herr Professor Robert Hausmann.
Fräulein Heyden.
Herr Professor Walter Hübbe.
Herr Dr. Gustav Jansen.
Frau Dr. Marie Janssen.
Herr Professor Dr. Joseph Joachim.
Frau Dr. Louise Langhans-Japha.
Mrs. Johann Kruse.
Herr Carl Lüstner.
J. A. Fuller Maitland, Esq., F.S.A.
Herr Dr. Eusebius Mandyczewski, Archivar to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.
Carl Freiherr von Meysenbug.
Hermann Freiherr von Meysenbug.
Herr Richard Mühlfeld, Hofkammermusiker.
Herr Professor Dr. Ernst Naumann.
Herr Professor Dr. Carl Neumann.
Herr Christian Otterer.
Fräulein Henriette Reinthaler.
Herr Capellmeister Dr. Rottenberg.
Herr Kammermusiker Julius Schmidt.
Herr Fritz Schnack.
Herr Professor Dr. Bernhard Scholz.
Herr Heinrich Schröder.
Fräulein Marie Schumann.
Frau Simons (b. Kyllmann).
Herr Professor Josef Sittard.
Herr Dr. Julius Spengel.
Mrs. Edward Speyer.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Mus. Doc.
Mrs. Edward Stone.
Frau Celestine Truxa.
Herr Superintendent Vogelsang.
Herr Dr. Josef Victor Widmann.

And others who prefer that their names should not be expressly mentioned.

F. M.

South Kensington,
September, 1905.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE
LIFE OF JOHANNES BRAHMS

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

Baden-Baden.

It was to the kindness of Frau Schumann that I owed my introduction to Brahms, which took place the very day of my arrival on my first visit to Germany. I had had lessons from the great pianist during her visit to London early in the year 1871, and on her departure from England she allowed my father to arrange that I should follow her, as soon as I could possibly get ready, to her home in Lichtenthal, a suburb of Baden-Baden, in order to continue my studies under her guidance.

I can vividly recall the bright morning in the beginning of May on which I arrived at Baden-Baden, rather home-sick and dreadfully tired, for owing to a railway breakdown en route my journey had occupied fourteen hours longer than it ought to have done, and my father's arrangements for my comfort had been completely upset. It was too early to go at once to Frau Schumann's house, and I remember to have dreamily watched, whilst waiting at the station, a passing procession of young girl communicants in their white wreaths and veils, as I tried to realize that I was, for the first time in my life, far away from home and from England. When the morning was sufficiently advanced, I took an open Droschke, and driving under the great trees of the Lichtenthaler Allée to the door of Frau Schumann's house, I obtained the address of the lodgings that had been taken for me in the village. Without alighting, I proceeded at once to my rooms, where I was almost immediately joined by Frau Schumann herself, who came round, as soon as she had finished breakfast, to bid me welcome.

My delight at seeing the great artist again, combined with her irresistible charm and kindness, at once made me feel less strange in my new surroundings, and I joyfully accepted the invitation she gave me at the close of a few minutes' visit, to go to her house the same afternoon at four o'clock and take coffee with her in her family circle.

On presenting myself at the appointed hour, I was at once shown into a pleasant balcony at the back of the house, overlooking garden and river. In it was seated Frau Schumann with her daughters, and with a gentleman whom she presently introduced to me as Herr Brahms. The name awakened in my mind no special feeling of interest, nor did I look at its owner with any particular curiosity. Brahms' name was at that time almost unknown in England, and I had heard of him only through his arrangement of two books of Hungarian dances for four hands on the pianoforte. As, however, from that day onwards I was accustomed, during a period of months, to meet him almost daily, it may be convenient to say at once a few words about his appearance and manner as they seemed to me after I had had time to become familiar with them.

Brahms, then, when I first knew him, was in the very prime of life, being thirty-eight years of age. Below middle height, his figure was somewhat square and solidly built, though without any of the tendency to corpulency which developed itself at a later period. He was of the blonde type of German, with fair, straight hair, which he wore rather long and brushed back from the temples. His face was clean-shaven. His most striking physical characteristic was the grand head with its magnificent intellectual forehead, but the blue eyes were also remarkable from their expression of intense mental concentration. This was accentuated by a constant habit he had of thrusting the rather thick under-lip over the upper, and keeping it compressed there, reminding one of the mouth in some of the portraits of Beethoven. His nose was finely formed. Feet and hands were small, the fingers without 'cushions.'

'I have none,' he said one day, when I was speaking to him about pianists' hands; and he spread out his fingers, at my request, to show me the tips. 'Frau Schumann has them, and Rubinstein also; Rubinstein's are immense.'

His dress, though plain, was always perfectly neat in those days. He usually wore a short, loose, black alpaca coat, chosen, no doubt, with regard to his ideas of comfort. He was near-sighted, and made frequent use of a double eyeglass that he wore hanging on a thin black cord round his neck. When walking out, it was his custom to go bare-headed, and to carry his soft felt hat in his hand, swinging the arm energetically to and fro. The disengaged hand he often held behind him.

In Brahms' demeanour there was a mixture of sociability and reserve which gave me the impression of his being a kindly-natured man, but one whom it would be difficult really to know. Though always pleasant and friendly, yet there was a something about him—perhaps it may have been his extraordinary dislike to speaking about himself—which suggested that his life had not been free from disappointment, and that he had reckoned with the latter and taken his course. His manner was absolutely simple and unaffected. To his own compositions he alluded only on the very rarest occasions, nor could he be induced to play them before even a small party. His great satisfaction and pleasure were evidently found in the society of Frau Schumann, for whom he displayed the most devoted admiration, an admiration that seemed to combine the affection and reverence of an elder son with the sympathetic camaraderie of a colleague in art. He had established himself for the spring and summer months at Lichtenthal, in order to be near her, and was always a welcome guest at her house, coming and going as he liked. I met him there continually at the hour of afternoon coffee, as on the day of my arrival; and very often, when the coffee-cups were done with, it was my good fortune to listen to the two great artists playing duets; Brahms, the favoured, being always allowed to retain the beloved cigar or cigarette between his lips during the performance, and taking his turn in playing the treble part.

It was Frau Schumann's kind habit to invite me to her mid-day dinner on Sundays, and frequently to supper during the week. Brahms was rarely absent, and was sometimes accompanied by one or two of his friends. The talk on these occasions was more or less general, but naturally my chief interest was in listening to Frau Schumann and Brahms, who used to discuss all sorts of topics with great animation. Brahms' interest in politics was keen, and although he had been settled in Vienna for some years, and had become much attached to that city and to his friends and surroundings there, yet it was evident that he remained an ardent German patriot.

He was a great walker, and had a passionate love of nature. It was his habit during the spring and summer to rise at four or five o'clock, and, after making himself a cup of coffee, to go into the woods to enjoy the delicious freshness of early morning and to listen to the singing of the birds. In adverse weather he could still find something to admire and enjoy.

'I never feel it dull,' he said one day, in answer to some remark about the depressing effect of the long-continued rain, 'my view is so fine. Even when it rains, I have only another kind of beauty.'

He was considerate for others, even in trifles. I remember that one evening, before we had quitted the supper-table, someone produced a copy of 'Kladderadatsch,' and, pointing out to Brahms a set of sarcastic verses dedicated to John Bull, begged him to read them aloud for the entertainment of the assembled party. Brahms, after glancing down the column, playfully declined to do as he was asked, indicating, with a wave of the hand, his English vis-à-vis as his reason for objecting; and it was not until I had laughingly and repeatedly expressed my earnest wish to hear whatever might be in store for me as Mr. Bull's representative, that he at length, and still reluctantly, complied with the request.

Frau Schumann often spoke to me of his extraordinary genius and acquirements both as composer and executant, as well as of his general intellectual qualities, and especially of his knowledge and love of books. She wished me to hear him play, but said it was no easy matter to do so, as he was extremely dependent on his mood, and not only disliked to be pressed to perform, but was unable to do justice either to himself or his composer when not in the right humour. The first time, indeed, that I heard him, at a small afternoon gathering at Frau Schumann's house, I was utterly disappointed. After a good deal of pressing, he crossed over to the piano and gave the first movement of the G major Fantasia-Sonata and the first movement of the A minor Sonata, Op. 42, both of Schubert, but his playing was ineffective. It appeared to me to be forced and self-conscious, and he himself seemed to remain, as it were, outside the music. I missed the living throb and impulse of feeling by which I had been accustomed to be carried away when listening to Frau Schumann, and he left one of his audience, at all events, cold and unmoved. When I told this to Frau Schumann afterwards, she answered that I had not yet really heard him; that he had not wished to play, but had yielded to over-persuasion, and that I must wait for a better opportunity of judging before forming an opinion.

The opportunity came the very next evening, when the same friends were assembled and Brahms played again. The next day I wrote home as follows:

'... Then Brahms played. It was an entirely different thing from the day before. Two pieces were by some composer whose name I can't remember, and then he played a wild piece by Scarlatti as I never heard anyone play before. He really did give it as though he were inspired; it was so mad and wild and so beautiful. Afterwards he did a little thing of Gluck's. I hope I shall hear him often if he plays as he did last night. The Scarlatti was like nothing I ever heard before, and I never thought the piano capable of it.'

Such were the general impressions I formed of Brahms during the first seven or eight weeks of my stay at Lichtenthal. To say the truth, I thought but little about him at the time, my whole attention being absorbed in my studies and in the charm of my new experiences of life. To me he seemed a very unaffected, kind-hearted, rather shy man, who appeared quietly happy and content when under the influence of Frau Schumann's society. As yet I had had scant opportunity of testing my own capacity for appreciating his musical genius, and next to none of individual personal intercourse with him. Frequently, when my landlady's servant came to attend me to my lodgings after an evening spent at Frau Schumann's house, and Brahms and I took our leave at the same moment, he would say, 'I am coming, too,' and, our ways lying partly in the same direction, would walk the short distance by my side; but these occasions did not add much to my knowledge of him. He would make a few casual remarks, often playful, always kindly, on any topics of the hour, but did not touch on musical subjects. One evening, however, I asked him if he intended to visit England. 'I think not,' he immediately replied, as though his mind were definitely made up on this point. I ventured to pursue the subject, telling him he ought to come, in order to make his compositions known. 'It is for that they are printed,' he said rather decidedly, and with these words he certainly gave me some real insight into his character. The composer of a long series of works which included such masterpieces as the second serenade, the two string sextets, the first and second pianoforte quartets, the inspired German Requiem, and a host of others already before the world (but of which I then knew nothing), could, of course, do no otherwise than allow his compositions to rest quietly on their merits; and doubtless the intense pride which is equally inherent with intense modesty in the higher order of genius had its share in causing Brahms' reticence about all things concerning himself.

From his determination not to visit England I do not believe he ever seriously wavered. Only on one occasion—a few years before his death—did I ever hear him speak doubtfully on the subject, and I then felt sure that he was only playing with the idea of coming. Of when or why he formed his resolution I cannot speak with absolute certainty; it had become fixed before I made his acquaintance. His want of familiarity with our language may have had something to do with it; he could read English a little, but I never heard him attempt to speak it. He had a horror of being lionized and of involving himself in an entanglement of engagements; perhaps, also, he was possessed with an exaggerated notion of the inflexibility of English social laws, especially as to the wearing of dress-clothes and the restrictions with regard to smoking. Before and behind all such superficial considerations, however, I suspect that early in his career the idea had taken root in him, right or wrong as it may have been, that to visit England would not further his artistic development. Brahms had certainly formed the clearest conception not only of his purpose in life, but of the means by which he felt he could best pursue and achieve it, and from first to last he inflexibly adhered to the conclusions he had come to on these points. If his aim was to give the most complete possible expression in his musical creations to the very best that was in him, his method, while it satisfied an inner craving of his being, was yet, as I believe, deliberately adopted; and it was to lay himself open to every kind of influence which could healthily foster the ideal side of his nature, and more or less completely to eschew all others. It would be ridiculous, at the present time, to touch upon the completeness of his technical musical equipment, to dilate on his easy grasp of all the resources of counterpoint, on his mastery of form, of harmonic and rhythmic combinations, and the like. These things are matter of course. But Brahms knew that not alone his intellect, but his mind and spirit and fancy, must be constantly nurtured if they were to bring forth the highest of which they were capable, and he so arranged his life that they should be fed ever and always by poetry and literature and art, by solitary musing, by participation in so much of life as seemed to him to be real and true, and, above all and in the highest degree, by the companionship of Nature.

'How can I most quickly improve?' I asked him one day later on. 'You must walk constantly in the forest,' he answered; and he meant what he said to be taken literally. It was his own favourite prescription that he advised for my application. For such a man, with a name practically unknown in England, life in London, and especially during a concert season, would have been not only uncongenial, but impossible. It would only have been a hindrance to him for the time being. It was not his business to push his works before either conductors or the public, and, after early successes and failures in this direction, he had almost entirely given up planning for the future of his compositions, and had yielded himself wholly to his destiny, which was to create.

In adopting this attitude, there was nothing whatever of outward posing. He simply did faithfully what he found lying before him to do, and did not look beyond.

Life at Lichtenthal passed quickly onwards, and the time approached when Frau Schumann would pay her annual visit to Switzerland. At the close of one of my lessons she said to me:

'I have been thinking that perhaps you might like to have some lessons from Herr Brahms whilst I am away. It would be a very great advantage for you in every way, and he would be able to help you immensely with your technique. He has made a special study of it, and can do anything he likes with his fingers on the piano. He does not usually give lessons, but if you like I will ask him, and I think he would do it as a favour to me.'

I must here explain that my visit to Germany had been undertaken with the special object of correcting certain deficiencies in my mechanism which Frau Schumann had pointed out, she having advised me to study for a year with this aim particularly in view.

It need hardly be said that I now eagerly accepted her proffered kindness, and it was decided that she should sound Herr Brahms on the question of his willingness to give me lessons. If he should show himself favourable to the project, the arrangement was to be considered as decided, subject only to the approval of my father, who was on the point of starting from London to join me at Lichtenthal. The next morning Frau Schumann informed me that Brahms had consented to the plan, and a few days later, on my receiving my father's ready assent to my request, all preliminaries were settled, and it was arranged that I should have two lessons every week from Brahms.

'You must ask him to play to you,' Frau Schumann said; 'and if he will do it, it will give you a real opportunity to hear him. And now, now you will begin to know Brahms.'

Brahms as Teacher of the Pianoforte.

Brahms united in himself each and every quality that might be supposed to exist in an absolutely ideal teacher of the pianoforte, without having a single modifying drawback. I do not wish to rhapsodize; he would have been the first to object to this. Such lessons could only have come from such a man. I have never to this day got over the wonder of his giving them, or the wonder and the joy of its having fallen to my lot to receive them.

He was strict and absolute; he was gentle and patient and encouraging; he was not only clear, he was light itself; he knew exhaustively, and could teach, and did teach, by the shortest possible methods, every detail of technical study; he was unwearied in his efforts to make his pupil grasp the full musical meaning of whatever work might be in hand; he was even punctual.

I cannot hope in what I may say to convey more than a faint impression of what his lessons were to me. From the very first hour of coming under his immediate musical influence I felt that it was a power which would continue to act upon and develop within me to the end of life. Perhaps, however, I may succeed in helping lovers of his music to add to their conception of his character and his gifts, by writing of him as he was in a capacity in which, so far as I know, he has not hitherto been described. Such personal details as I may introduce will be given with the object of illustrating that side of Brahms' character which I once knew so well; of exhibiting him as the all-capable, single-hearted, encouraging, inspired and inspiring teacher and friend.

Remembering what Frau Schumann had said of his ability to assist me with my technique, I told him, before beginning my first lesson, of my mechanical difficulties, and asked him to help me. He answered, 'Yes, that must come first,' and, after hearing me play through a study from Clementi's 'Gradus ad Parnassum,' he immediately set to work to loosen and equalize my fingers. Beginning that very day, he gradually put me through an entire course of technical training, showing me how I should best work, for the attainment of my end, at scales, arpeggii, trills, double notes, and octaves.

He not only showed me how to practise: he made me, at first, practise to him during a good part of my lessons, whilst he sat watching my fingers; telling me what was wrong in my way of moving them, indicating, by a movement of his own hand, a better position for mine, absorbing himself entirely, for the time being, in the object of helping me.

He did not believe in the utility for me of the daily practice of the ordinary five-finger exercises, preferring to form exercises from any piece or study upon which I might be engaged. He had a great habit of turning a difficult passage round and making me practise it, not as written, but with other accents and in various figures, with the result that when I again tried it as it stood the difficulties had always considerably diminished, and often entirely disappeared. 'How must I practise this?' I would ask him, with confidence, which was never disappointed, that some short-cut would be found for me by which my way would be effectually smoothed.

His method of loosening the wrist was, I should say, original. I have, at all events, never seen it or heard of it excepting from him, but it loosened my wrist in a fortnight, and with comparatively little labour on my part.

How he laughed one day, when I triumphantly showed him that one of my knuckles, which were then rather stiff and prominent, had quite gone in, and said to him: 'You have done that!'

It may seem incredible, but it is none the less true, that after a very few weeks of work with him the appearance of my hands had completely changed. My father says, writing to my mother:

'Her hand has an entirely different conformation from what it used to have; it has lost all its angular appearance, and it really is the case, as she says, that her knuckles are disappearing. I have given up all idea of inducing her to go anywhere with me; she will allow nothing to interfere with her practising. She is enthusiastic in her admiration of Brahms, and says his patience is wonderful. He keeps her strictly to finger-work.'

He was never irritable, never indifferent, but always helped, stimulated, and encouraged. One day, when I lamented to him the deficiencies of my former mechanical training and my present resultant finger difficulty, 'It will come all right,' he said; 'it does not come in a week nor in four weeks.'

Perceiving at once the extraordinary value of my technical studies with him, I was desirous of not being hampered by feeling obliged, at first, to get up many pieces to play through. That, he said, was quite right; I must practise a great deal in little bits for a time. Here is an extract from one of my letters. I copy it exactly as it stands, without altering the careless wording of a girl's letter hastily penned for home perusal in an interval between practice times:

'My lessons with Brahms are too delightful; not only the lessons themselves, but he makes me feel I must practise all day and all night. I have begun to eat a great deal for the mere purpose of being able to practise! He is so patient, and takes such pains, and I ask all sorts of questions, and the lessons are too delightful. I can't understand his giving lessons, and yet he is never angry at any sort of foolishness, only says, "Ah! that is so difficult." As for an hour's lesson, that is nothing. He systematically arranges for an hour and a half. I absolutely revel in my lessons. He makes the saraband sound on the piano just as on a violin. Then he never expects too much, and does not give much to learn, but is always satisfied with little if one is really trying.'

He was extremely particular about my fingering, making me rely on all my fingers as equally as possible. One day whilst watching my hands as I played him a study from the 'Gradus,' he objected to some of my fingering, and asked me to change it. I immediately did so, but said, knowing there was no danger of his being offended by the remark, that I had used the one marked by Clementi. Brahms, not having had his eyes on the book at the moment, had not perceived this to be the case. He at once said I must, of course, not change it, and would not allow me to adopt his own, as I begged him, saying: 'No, no; he knew.'

I had with me at Lichtenthal my own copies of Bach, which I had brought from England, but the edition was unfingered, and Brahms desired me to get copies with Czerny's fingering, and always to use it. The other indications in the edition I was not to adopt.

A good part of each lesson was generally devoted to Bach, to the 'Well-tempered Clavier,' or the English Suites; and as my mechanism improved Brahms gradually increased the amount and scope of my work, and gave more and more time to the spirit of the music I studied. His phrasing, as he taught it me, was, it need hardly be said, of the broadest, whilst he was rigorous in exacting attention to the smallest details. These he sometimes treated as a delicate embroidery that filled up and decorated the broad outline of the phrase, with the large sweep of which nothing was ever allowed to interfere. Light and shade, also, were so managed as to help to bring out its continuity. Be it, however, most emphatically declared that he never theorized on these points; he merely tried his utmost to make me understand and play my pieces as he himself understood and felt them.

He would make me repeat over and over again, ten or twelve times if necessary, part of a movement of Bach, till he had satisfied himself that I was beginning to realize his wish for particular effects of tone or phrasing or feeling. When I could not immediately do what he wanted, he would merely say, 'But it is so difficult,' or 'It will come,' tell me to do it again till he found that his effect was on its way into being, and then leave me to complete it. On the two or three days that intervened between my lessons, I would, after practising at the pianoforte, sometimes take my music into the forest to try to think myself more completely into his mind, and if, when he next came, I had partially succeeded, he took delight in showing his satisfaction. His face would light up all over, and he would be unstinting in his praise. 'Very good, quite right; Frau Schumann would be very surprised to hear you play like that,' or, 'That will make a great effect with Frau Schumann.'

In spite of his extraordinary conscientiousness about detail, Brahms was entirely free from pedantry and from the tendency to worry or fidget his pupil. His great pleasure was to commend, and if I played anything to him for the first time, in the way he liked, nothing would induce him to suggest, with one word, any change at all. 'That is quite right; there is nothing to say about it,' he would say; and though I have felt disappointed not to get any remark from him, and have entreated him to make some suggestions, he would remain firm. 'No, it must be like that; we will go on,' and there was an end of the matter.

One morning my father, coming into the room at the close of my lesson, asked Brahms: 'Has she been a good girl to-day?' 'Sehr fein,'[1] answered he, and suddenly turning to me added imperatively: 'Tell your father that.' I was equal to the occasion, however, and promptly translated: 'Herr Brahms says he is not very satisfied to-day, papa.' My father's face fell a little. Brahms looked straight before him, displeased and impassive. 'I have told him,' said I. 'No, you have not told him.' 'But you don't know that; you don't understand English.' 'I understand enough to know that'—stonily. 'Herr Brahms says I have done pretty well,' I reassured my father; then to Brahms: 'Now I have.' 'Yes, now,' he admitted, with relenting countenance.

Another day, in the middle of my lesson, the door of my sitting-room opened, and my landlady begged to speak to me. 'No, Frau Falk,' I said; 'I am engaged and can see no one: you must please go away.' 'One moment, gnädiges Fräulein,' she said, and persisted, to my displeasure, in coming in. I then perceived she had with her a pretty little girl of about five years old, who held some beautiful yellow roses in her hand. Frau Falk led the child straight up to the piano and made her little speech. The small maiden was the daughter of the gentleman living in the neighbouring villa, and, being with her father in his beautiful rose-garden, had begged him to let her carry some of his roses to the Fräulein to whose playing they had been listening. The little one, seeing I was not alone, became suddenly shy as she handed me the lovely flowers, and, turning away her face, looked downwards with very red cheeks as she stood quietly at Brahms' knee. But this was not the kind of interruption to displease him. 'Na,' he said, coaxing her, 'you must look at the Fräulein, and let her thank you. Look at her; she wants to thank you.' Between us we reassured the little one, who held up her face to me to be kissed, and sedately allowed Frau Falk to lead her away.

Soon after beginning my work with Brahms, I asked him at the end of my lesson if he would play to me, telling him I did so by Frau Schumann's desire. There was an instant's hesitation; then he sat down to the piano. Just as he was about to begin, he turned his head round, and said almost shyly: 'You must learn by the faults also.' That was the beginning. From that day it became his regular habit to play to me for about half an hour at the close of the hour's lesson, which he never shortened. Oftenest he chose Bach for his performance. He would play by heart one or two of the preludes and fugues from the 'Well-tempered Clavier,' then take up the music and continue from book as the humour took him. When he reached the end of a composition, I would say little or nothing beyond 'Some more,' for fear of stopping him, and he would turn over the leaves to find another favourite. I do not remember his ever making a remark to me either between-whiles or after he had finished playing, beyond, perhaps, telling me to get him another book. Once, and once only, he resisted. I had made my usual request at the end of the lesson, when he quaintly and unexpectedly replied: 'Not every time; it is silly. Frau Schumann would say it is silly to play every time'. 'It is so disappointing,' I wished to say, but was uncertain of the right German word. He, as was his wont on similar occasions, made me show it him in the dictionary. There was some little argument between us, and he returned to the piano and took his place there. It was of no use, however. He could not play that day, and almost seemed to take pleasure in doing as badly as possible. Every time he was conspicuously faulty he turned round to me with a sardonic smile, as though he would say: 'There! you have got what you wanted; how do you like it?' 'Very unkind,' I murmured, and he soon rose. 'I will not play next time,' he angrily declared as he took leave. 'I will never ask you again,' I rejoined. A shrug of the shoulders was his only answer, and, with the usual 'good-day,' he left the room.

After two days came my next lesson. It passed off delightfully, as usual, and at the close Brahms departed, without a word about his playing being said on either side; but I was left with a feeling of something having been very much wanting. In the middle of the following lesson, giving way to a sudden impulse which I could not have explained, but which, perhaps, arose from the fear of renewed disappointment, I abruptly ceased playing in the middle of my piece, saying, 'I cannot play any more to-day.' Brahms glanced at me with rather an inquiring expression, and asked, 'Why?' 'I don't know; I cannot,' I replied. There was an instant of dead silence, during which I did not look round. Then Brahms spoke. 'I will play to you,' he said quietly, 'in order that you may have something.' We immediately changed places, and he never refused me again.

My father, writing to my mother, says:

'Brahms is recognised in Germany as the greatest musician living. It is said to be most difficult to get him to play; however, after every lesson he plays piece after piece. He is a delightful man—so simple, so kind and quiet. He lives in a beautiful situation amongst the hills, and cares only for seclusion, and time to devote himself to composition. He was pleased the other day by F.'s asking him about a passage in Goethe that she could not comprehend, and went into it in a way which delighted her. With all his genius he is thoroughly practical. Punctual to a minute in his lessons, and of extreme delicacy.'

It was my happiness to hear, amongst other things, his readings of many of the forty-eight preludes and fugues, and his playing of them, and especially of the preludes, impressed me with such force and vividness that I can hear it in memory still. His interpretation of Bach was always unconventional and quite unfettered by traditional theory, and he certainly did not share the opinion, which has had many distinguished adherents, that Bach's music should be performed in a simply flowing style. In the movements of the suites he liked variety of tone and touch, as well as a certain elasticity of tempo. His playing of many of the preludes and some of the fugues was a revelation of exquisite poems, and he performed them, not only with graduated shading, but with marked contrasts of tone effect. Each note of Bach's passages and figures contributed, in the hands of Brahms, to form melody which was instinct with feeling of some kind or other. It might be deep pathos, or light-hearted playfulness and jollity; impulsive energy, or soft and tender grace; but sentiment (as distinct from sentimentality) was always there; monotony never. 'Quite tender and quite soft,' was his frequent admonition to me, whilst in another place he would require the utmost impetuosity.

He loved Bach's suspensions. 'It is here that it must sound,' he would say, pointing to the tied note, and insisting, whilst not allowing me to force the preparation, that the latter should be so struck as to give the fullest possible effect to the dissonance. 'How am I to make this sound?' I asked him of a few bars of subject lying for the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of the left hand, which he wished brought out clearly, but in a very soft tone. 'You must think particularly of the fingers with which you play it, and by-and-by it will come out,' he answered.

The same kind of remarks may be applied to his conception of Mozart. He taught me that the music of this great master should not be performed with mere grace and lightness, but that these effects should be contrasted with the expression of sustained feeling and with the use of the deep legato touch. Part of one of my lessons was devoted to the Sonata in F major—

etc.
[Listen]

Brahms let me play nearly a page of the first movement without making any remark. Then he stopped me. 'But you are playing without expression,' said he, and imitated me, playing the same portion, in the same style, on the upper part of the piano, touching the keys neatly, lightly, and unmeaningly. By the time he left off we were both smiling at the absurd performance.

'Now,' he said, 'with expression,' and he repeated the first few bars of the subject, giving to each note its place as an essential portion of a fine melody. We spent a long time over the movement that day, and it was not until the next lesson, after I had had two, or perhaps three, days to think myself into his conception, that I was able to play it broadly enough to satisfy him. At the close of the first of these two Mozart lessons I said to him: 'All that you have told me to-day is quite new to me.' 'It is all there,' he replied, pointing to the book.

Brahms, in fact, recognised no such thing as what is sometimes called 'neat playing' of the compositions either of Bach, Scarlatti, or Mozart. Neatness and equality of finger were imperatively demanded by him, and in their utmost nicety and perfection, but as a preparation, not as an end. Varying and sensitive expression was to him as the breath of life, necessary to the true interpretation of any work of genius, and he did not hesitate to avail himself of such resources of the modern pianoforte as he felt helped to impart it; no matter in what particular century his composer may have lived, or what may have been the peculiar excellencies and limitations of the instruments of his day.

Whatever the music I might be studying, however, he would never allow any kind of 'expression made easy.' He particularly disliked chords to be spread unless marked so by the composer for the sake of a special effect. 'No arpége,' he used invariably to say if I unconsciously gave way to the habit, or yielded to the temptation of softening a chord by its means. He made very much of the well-known effect of two notes slurred together, whether in a loud or soft tone, and I know from his insistence to me on this point that the mark has a special significance in his music.

Aware of his reluctance to perform his compositions, I let some weeks pass before I asked him to play me something of his own. When I at length ventured to do so, he objected: 'Not mine; something by another composer.' But I had resolved to carry my point. 'No, no,' I insisted; 'a composition played by the composer himself is what I wish to hear,' and my importunity gained the day. He gave me a splendid performance of a splendid theme with variations, which, as I found out some months afterwards, was from the now familiar string Sextet in B flat. It was the first time I had heard anything of Brahms' composition with the exception of one or two songs, and it raised in me a tumult of delight. Probably I said to him little beyond thanks, but the power of the music and the performance must have worked itself in me to some manifest effect, for on my taking my seat directly after the lesson at the table d'hôte of the Hôtel Bär, the village inn where my father and I used to dine, a lady of our acquaintance exclaimed: 'What is the matter with you to-day that you look so excited?' I remember answering her: 'Brahms has just played me something quite magnificent—something of his own—and it keeps going in my head.'

Since then I have heard the movement times innumerable in England and on the Continent, performed by various combinations of artists, but I never listen to it without being carried back in thought to the gardener's house on the slope of the Cäcilienberg where, in my blue-papered, carpetless little room, Brahms sat at the piano and played it to me. The scent of flowers was borne in through the open lattice-windows, of which the green outside sun shutters were closed on one side of the room to keep out the blazing August sun, and open on another to views of the beautiful scenery.

The merits of our respective views had been the subject of some friendly argument soon after my arrival at Lichtenthal. Brahms had declared that no prospect from any windows in the village could possibly be as fine as his, whilst I was equally sure that mine must be quite unrivalled. Two of my windows looked right across the valley of the Oos as far as the plain of Strassburg, and showed, in fine weather, the distant peaks of the Vosges glimmering in the sunlight. Two others commanded a prospect of the pine-covered ranges of Black Forest hills. The first time Brahms came to my rooms, in order to give me a lesson, the variety and loveliness of my view drew from him an exclamation of delight. 'But yours is really grander and sterner, is it not?' I magnanimously asked. 'This is more suitable for a girl,' he prettily replied.

On the next occasion after the day when he had performed his own work, I reminded Brahms that he had promised he would allow my father, who was anxious to hear him play to better advantage than from the room overhead, to share with me this great pleasure some time. 'But he is not here,' he said, and taking this as a token of assent, I quickly called my father, who was writing letters above, to come down. When we were all three seated, I told Brahms I wished to have the piece he had played to me two or three days before, but he said he would not play anything of his own—'something else.' 'No,' I said, 'something of yours, and the same; my father wishes to hear the same.' 'Ah, I forget what it was; I have composed a great many things. I will play something else.' 'But no, no, no!' I urged. 'I know what it was. I must have the same. Play the first two or three chords.' 'Well, then, I think it was this,' said he, giving way; and he repeated the movement from beginning to end, carrying us both completely away.

Brahms' playing at this period of his life was, indeed, stimulating to an extraordinary degree, and so apart as to be quite unforgettable. It was not the playing of a virtuoso, though he had a large amount of virtuosity (to put it moderately) at his command. He never aimed at mere effect, but seemed to plunge into the innermost meaning of whatever music he happened to be interpreting, exhibiting all its details and expressing its very depths. Not being in regular practice, he would sometimes strike wrong notes—and there was already a hardness, arising from the same cause, in his playing of chords; but he was fully aware of his failings, and warned me not to imitate them.

He was acutely, though silently, sensitive to the susceptibility or non-susceptibility of his audience. As I have already mentioned, but few words passed between him and myself during the momentary intervals between his playing of one piece and another, but he would now and then suddenly turn his head round towards where I sat and give me a swift, searching glance, as though to satisfy himself that I understood and followed him. Once only he refused to go on. It was soon after his performance before my father. I had begged for another of his compositions, and he had begun to play one. I was sitting rather behind him, listening intently and trying to follow, but I knew I did not understand. Very soon he turned to give his usual scrutinizing look, and immediately ceased playing, saying: 'No, really I can't play that.' I did not attempt to make him think I had entered into the meaning of the music, but only entreated him to begin it again and give me one more chance, as it was difficult to follow. Nothing would induce him, however, to play another note of it, and he went on to something by another composer, much to my disappointment and mortification.

Brahms disliked to hear anything said which could possibly be interpreted as depreciation of either of the great masters. Once, when two or three people were present, a remark was made on the growing indifference of the younger musicians to Mendelssohn, and particularly on the neglect with which his once popular 'Songs without Words' had for some time been treated. 'If it is the case, it is a great pity,' observed Brahms, 'for they are quite full of beauty.'

He especially loved Schubert, and I have heard him declare that the longest works of this composer, with all their repetitions, were never too long for him.

He greatly admired my copy, which was of the original edition and in good preservation, of Clementi's 'Gradus,' and asked me to lend it him for a day or two to compare with his own. I did not at that time attach much value to original editions; and, fancying he merely wished to prevent me from overworking, against which he often cautioned me, I said I could not spare it. 'You won't lend it me!' he exclaimed, very much astonished indeed. I answered that if he did take it away it would make no difference, as I could practise as well without it. Finding, however, that he really wished to examine the copy, I said it was too hot for him to carry so large a book in the middle of the day, and that I would send it in the evening. 'I am not so weak!' he replied, but consented to the proposal. He sent it back after a few days, strongly scented with the odour of his tobacco, which it retained through many a long year, and which rather enhanced its value to me.

Rather curiously, he liked the scent of eau-de-Cologne. My father brought me a case from Cöln, and if, on my lesson day, I had an open bottle near at hand, and offered some to Brahms, he would place his hands together, palm upwards, for me to pour into, and, dipping his head, would rub the scent over his forehead, protesting as he did so, 'But it really does not become a man.' Seeing that he liked it, I used it sometimes to wash the keys of the piano when he was coming, but I do not think he ever found me out.

He delighted in the music of Strauss' band, which was engaged to play daily at Baden-Baden through some weeks of the season. It was then conducted by the great Johann Strauss, Brahms' particular friend, and he used to walk over every evening to hear it. 'Are you so engrossed?' said a voice behind me one evening as I was standing in the Lichtenthal village street with a friend, looking at the performances of a dancing bear. On turning round I found Brahms, hat in hand, smiling with amusement at our preoccupation, himself on his way, as usual at that hour, to listen to the delicious music of the Vienna waltz-king.

Brahms disliked mere compliment, but he had a warm appreciation of the genuine expression of friendly feeling towards himself, and did not try to hide the pleasure it gave him. His countenance would change, and he would answer in a simple, modest way that was almost touching. One day when I told him how I valued his teaching, and felt it was something for my whole life, 'You ought to tell Frau Schumann,' replied the composer of the German Requiem, as though he were asking me to give a good report of him. On my assuring him that I had already done so by letter, he added hastily: 'But not too much; never praise too highly; always keep within bounds.'

Shortly before Frau Schumann's return I said to him that I hoped he would not lose all interest in my music at the termination of my lessons with him, and that I should like, if it were possible, to make some additional arrangement by which it might be maintained. He did not give me any definite reply at the moment one way or the other, but on my saying the same thing to him another day he replied: 'It is very nice and very kind of you, but I don't think it can be done. You must, however, play to me very often. Everything you learn with Frau Schumann you must play to me.'

About this time, however, my father, who was about to start on his homeward journey, persuaded me to go away with him for a week's holiday before his departure for England, and on my return to Lichtenthal Frau Schumann arranged that I should continue my studies under Brahms for the remainder of my stay, saying I had become more his pupil than hers. There were, indeed, but few more lessons to look forward to. Autumn had set in, and everyone was thinking of departure. Brahms had to go sometimes to Carlsruhe, where he was occupied with rehearsals, but he punctually kept his remaining appointments with me. His concluding lessons were as magnificent as the earlier ones, and when I went back to England my ground was clear. I do not mean to assert that my hand was already completely developed from a pianist's point of view, or my technique as yet fully in my possession. These things were physically impossible; but Brahms had shown me the path which led straight to my goal, and had himself brought me a considerable distance on the way. A cast of one of my hands taken on my return to England, when compared with one that had been done shortly before I left, could not have been recognised as being from the same person.

Those were, indeed, golden days, when Brahms sat by my side and taught me; memorable to me no less for their revelation of an exquisite nature than for the musical advantages they brought. I have often been told that there was another side to his character, and that he could, even at that time, be bitter and rough and satirical. I dare say he was not faultless, but I do not think that he can at any period of his life have been bitter in the sense of being soured. He no doubt had a strong feeling about the indifference and downright antagonism against which his works long had to struggle; but if it had ever been a feeling even of disappointment, I am sure this had mellowed, before I knew him, into a firm though silent belief in the future of his compositions, and had only served to intensify, if possible, his determination to put into them of his very best.

Rough he may have been sometimes, and in later years I had occasional opportunity of perceiving that he was not always gentle, though he was never otherwise with me. His roughness was, in certain instances, no doubt caused by his resolution in protecting his time from celebrity-hunters, and even from friends. It may have been partly traceable, also, to the circumstances of his youth, when he must often have been placed amid surroundings where rough-and-ready frankness of speech was more cultivated than conventional polish of manner. It is, however, certain that during the latter part of his life he sometimes availed himself of the privilege of the enfant gâté to yield to the caprice of the moment, and that he now and again said things which could not but wound the feelings of others. This was to be regretted, and it hardly excused him that his pungent words came from the lips only, and not from the heart. I am, however, quite certain that many of his acerbities were assumed to cover his naturally acute sensibility of temperament, of which he stood a little in dread, and which he liked to conceal even from himself. He was a firm believer, for himself and for others, in the salutary process of bracing both mental and physical energies.

A year or two before Brahms' death I revisited Lichtenthal, staying a night at the Hôtel Bär, where I used to dine in the old days. I looked up old acquaintances, and amongst them the former mistress of the dear old inn, whom I found retired and living in a charming villa close by, her brother being still the proprietor of the hotel. She, of course, had known Brahms well, and during the hour or two that I spent with her we talked chiefly about him. She repeated the verdict given by everyone really acquainted with him: 'So simple and natural, so kind and cheerful, able to take pleasure in trifles. He was such a simple-hearted man.' A tease, certainly, but his teasing was never unkind, never more than mere raillery. He would often bring a friend to dine at the Bär in the old days, and she always had the cloth laid for him in a private room or in the back part of the garden, so that he should not be worried by the visitors. 'He never minded what he did. He would sometimes drop in, if he were passing, to say good-morning to us, and if we were very busy he would make a joke of sitting down and amusing himself by helping us cut up the vegetables for dinner. Only he could not bear to go into formal society, or to have to wear his dress-clothes. I have not seen him now for several years. The last time was in September, 1889, when he paid a flying visit to the Bär. He was very angry to find that three pine-trees had been cut down near the house where he used to lodge, thinking the poetry of the view had been impaired, and he said he would never stay in the place again. What a warm heart he had! He liked to know all the country people of the neighbourhood, and took a pride in feeling that every man, woman, and child whom he met in his early morning walks interchanged greetings with him. I begged for his autograph the last time he was here. You will like to see what he wrote;' and my old friend sent for the album in which the master had written:

Berlin.

Years were destined to elapse before my next meeting with Brahms. After my return to England I worked unremittingly on the lines he had indicated, and found that by the observation and practice of his principles I was guided straight onwards in the path of progress. His teaching had been of such a kind that its development did not cease with the actual lessons. As the weeks and months went by I found myself growing continually into a clearer perception of the aims and results it had had in view. It caused me no surprise to find, on becoming acquainted with his pianoforte compositions, that I must postpone for a time the delightful task of getting them up. Brahms himself had prepared me for this. He had always been extremely careful, when selecting music for me to work at, to choose what would develop my technical power without straining my hands, and when I had wished to study something of his had answered that his compositions were unfit for me for the present, as they required too much physical strength and grasp. He fancied, indeed, at that time that nearly all of them were beyond a woman's strength. When I asked why it was that he composed only such enormously difficult things for the pianoforte, he said they came to him naturally, and he could not compose otherwise ('Ich kann nicht anders').

In the winter of 1881-82 I found myself in Berlin. It is difficult to describe the feelings with which I one day read the announcement that von Bülow, in the course of a tournée with the Meiningen Orchestra, of which he was conductor, would shortly visit the city to give a three days' series of concerts in the hall of the Singakademie; that Brahms' compositions would figure conspicuously in the programmes; that Brahms himself would be present, and that he would probably take part in one or more of the performances. The life at Lichtenthal had come to seem to me a sort of far-away fairy-tale impossible of any sort of renewal, and I could hardly realize that I should soon see Brahms again. Finding, however, from subsequent announcements, that the concerts were really to take place, I lost no time in securing a subscription ticket for the series.

Feeling sure that every moment of Brahms' short stay in Berlin would be occupied, I decided that my only chance of getting a word or two with him would be to gain admission to one of the rehearsals, and to watch for a favourable moment in which to make myself known to him. As ill luck would have it, I was claimed on the first day by engagements that could not be postponed. I was, however, the less inconsolable since Brahms was to take an active part only in the second and third concerts. Their respective programmes included a new pianoforte concerto still in MS. (No. 2 in B flat), to be played by the composer, with von Bülow as conductor; and the first pianoforte concerto, with Bülow as pianist and Brahms at the conductor's desk.

Betaking myself to the Singakademie in good time for the rehearsal on the second morning of the series, I explained, to the friendly custodian at the entrance-door, my claims to admission. He allowed me to enter the hall and to take my place amongst the small audience of persons privileged to attend.

The members of the orchestra were already assembled, and after some moments of waiting von Bülow came in with several gentlemen. Lusty applause broke forth from platform and stalls, and a small stir of greetings took place. But where was Brahms? I could perceive him nowhere at first, and it was only as the rehearsal proceeded, and he took his place on the platform, that I felt certain he was really present. I had prepared myself to find him looking changed and older, but not beyond recognition. It is, however, no exaggeration to say that as I gazed at him, knowing him to be Brahms, I was utterly unable to recognise the man I had known ten years previously. There, indeed, was the great head with the hair brushed back as of old, though less tidily than in former days; but his figure had become much heavier, and both mouth and chin were hidden by a thick moustache and shaggy, grizzled beard that had completely transformed his appearance. When I first knew him at the time of his early middle age, one might fancy that his countenance and expression had retained more than a trace of his youthful period of Sturm und Drang, but this had now quite vanished. I felt, with a shock, that my foreboding that I should never see my old friend again had been realized, though in a way different from that anticipated by me.

Brahms received an ovation when he had finished his performance of the new concerto, and as he was retiring from the platform Bülow, unable to restrain his excitement, darted forward and gave him a kiss. It seemed to take him rather aback, but he submitted passively.

At length the rehearsal came to an end, and Brahms was immediately surrounded by friends eager to offer their congratulations and to receive a word of greeting from him. 'Now or never,' I thought, and, taking my courage in my hand, I managed to get near, though a little behind him. 'I, also, should like to say a word of thanks to you, Herr Brahms,' I said. Brahms turned his head. 'Are you here in Berlin, then?' he rejoined instantly, answering as he might have done if we had met the previous week. Someone else pressed forward to claim his attention as I was replying, and I fell behind again. I did not like to wait for a second opportunity, feeling there was no chance of his being free, so I straightway departed and went back to my lodgings.

Thinking things over on my road, I came to the conclusion that Brahms had not recognised me, but that when my words caught his ear he had uttered the first casual reply that rose to his lips, and which might be appropriate to any acquaintance whom he did not at the moment remember. However exceptional his memory for faces might be, it appeared to me incredible that, after the lapse of so many years, he should have known me without the hesitation of a second at a moment when his attention was preoccupied by the concert business of the day and by the claims of his Berlin friends.

It was in this frame of mind that I took my seat in the evening to hear the concert. Having got over the first excitement of seeing Brahms again, and knowing what I had to expect in regard to his personal appearance, I was able to listen to the music in a more composed mood than had been possible to me in the morning. My pleasure in the performance of the concerto was, of course, in some measure impaired by the circumstance that the long, intricate work was quite new. I think, however, that I should have enjoyed it more if Brahms had conducted and Bülow performed the solo. I did not think Brahms' playing what it had been. His touch in forte passages had become hard, and though he might, perhaps, be said to have mastered the difficulties of his part, he had not sufficiently surmounted them to execute them with ease. It could not, in fact, have been otherwise. No composer having attained to the height of Brahms' greatness could have kept his technical command of the pianoforte unimpaired; life is too short for this. I knew, however, that I had listened to a magnificent work of immense proportions, and longed for opportunity to hear it again that I might assimilate it.

There was a scene of tumultuous enthusiasm at the close of the work. The public applauded wildly, and shouted itself hoarse; the band joined in with its fanfare of trumpet and drum; Brahms and von Bülow were recalled again and again, separately and together; and in the moment of the great composer's triumph I saw the earlier Brahms once more standing before me, for, whilst his eyes shone and his face beamed with pleasure, I recognised in his bearing and expression the old familiar look of almost diffident, shy modesty which had been one of his characteristics in former days.

I did not, of course, seek for a further opportunity of speaking to Brahms on the evening of which I am writing, but I laid my plans for the next morning, and at the proper hour again made my way to the Singakademie and successfully begged for admission to the rehearsal.

During the first part Brahms sat as one of the audience in the front row of stalls, and in a convenient break between the pieces I sent my English visiting-card to him, having written on it a few lines recalling myself to his remembrance. He read it and looked round. 'I know that already,' he said coldly, but rising and coming towards me. 'I saw you yesterday.' 'But you did not know who I was?' I returned, still sceptical. 'Yes, I knew.' 'It seemed to me quite impossible you could have recognised me!' I ejaculated. 'Oh yes, yes—oh yes!' said Brahms in quite a different tone, and for a couple of seconds I forgot to look up or say anything.

'Are you taking notes?' he asked by way of recalling me to myself, touching my pencil. But the rehearsal had to proceed, and Brahms presently took his place on the platform with Bülow for the performance of the Concerto in D minor. When the rehearsal was over, I did not leave the hall so quickly as on the previous day, but waited in the hope of getting another word with Brahms, and was rewarded by having a good many.

In the evening, as he faced the audience before the commencement of the concerto, catching sight of me in the third row of stalls, he was at the pains to bestow upon me a kind bow and smile of recognition. He glanced slightly at me again once or twice during the evening, and I knew, though his appearance still seemed a little strange to me, that Brahms was in the world after all.

The execution of the D minor Concerto was one of those rare performances that remain in the memory as unforgettable events. Brahms, when conducting, indulged in no antics, and was sparing of his gestures, often keeping his left hand in his pocket, or letting it hang quietly at his side; but he cast the spell of his genius over orchestra and pianist alike. The performance was remarkable for its power and grandeur, but not chiefly so, for these qualities were to be expected. It was made supremely memorable by the subtle imagination that touched and modified even the rather hard intellectuality of von Bülow's usual style. Good performances of Brahms' orchestral works may not seldom be heard, and great ones occasionally; but the particular quality of his poetic fancy, by which, when conducting an orchestra, he made the music sound from time to time as though it were floating in some rarefied atmosphere, vibrating now with fairy-like beauty and grace, now with ethereal mystery, was, I should say, peculiar to himself, and is hardly to be reproduced or imitated.

As soon as Brahms had finished his share in the evening's programme I quitted the hall, for I was thoroughly exhausted by the excitement of the past two days, and felt I could bear nothing more. Early the next morning he left Berlin to fulfil engagements in another town.

Vienna.

During the next four years much of my time was passed in Berlin. I delighted in the concerts and general musical atmosphere of the German capital, and did not allow my plans to be disturbed by a vague invitation to visit Vienna which Brahms had given me in the course of our short interview in the hall of the Singakademie. I felt that however kind and friendly his recollection of me might have remained, yet I could not hope to derive direct musical benefit from one absorbed in the intense thought and brooding to which the life of a really great composer must be largely devoted.

It was not until December, 1888, that I paid my first visit to Vienna. I arrived there towards the end of the month, armed with letters of introduction which met with a kind response and obtained for me immediate admission into those English and Austrian circles to members of which they were addressed. I waited for a week before letting Brahms know of my arrival, as I wished not only to be settled before calling on him, but also to be in such a position in regard to my acquaintance as would make it impossible for him to suspect that I could want anything whatever of him beyond the delight and honour of seeing him again, and of recalling myself to his remembrance.

Meanwhile I gathered, from all I heard, that his dislike of anything approaching to general society had steadily grown upon him. Some, even, of his old friends spoke of the increasing rarity of his visits. A lady at whose house he had been intimate for many years told me it had once been his custom to announce himself for the evening from time to time at a few hours' notice, with the proviso that he should find her and her husband alone in their family circle, or at most with one or two chosen friends. On these occasions he had been used to play to them one after another of his newest compositions. This habit, however, he had almost entirely given up.

I heard but one opinion, both from friends and outsiders, as to his essentially high character and sterling qualities of nature; but his manners were described with unanimity, by those not within his immediate circle, as difficult, sarcastic, and arrogant. I was, indeed, so repeatedly assured that I should do no good by trying to see him that I almost began to fear I should find he had become rude and impossible, if not hopelessly inaccessible. To all that was said to me on the subject I answered merely that I had once known him well, and had never found him otherwise than kind and simple, but that I had prepared myself to find him changed and rough in his behaviour to me.

At length, on a dark afternoon of one of the closing days of the year, I made my way to the Wieden, the quarter of Vienna inhabited by Brahms, and, turning in at the doorway of No. 4, Carlsgasse, I ascended the worn stone staircase as far as the third étage. Here I pulled the shining brass handle of the old-fashioned door-bell, and the feeling of doubt which had possessed me changed to one of positive alarm as I listened to the prolonged peal I had awakened. I thought it must sound to Brahms like the announcement of a most daring and determined intruder, and that it would inevitably prove the death-knell of any chance of my admission.

The door was soon opened by a friendly maid-servant, who told me, indeed, that the Herr Doctor was not at home, but satisfied me that I was not being put off with a mere phrase by adding that she thought he would probably be back by six o'clock, and that she advised me to return about that hour if I particularly wished to see him, as he was to start on a journey early the next morning. I thanked the girl, said I would follow her suggestion, and, without leaving my name, returned to my rooms to wait for the evening.

The second visit was again unsuccessful, but on trying a third time, at seven o'clock, I found that Brahms had returned. 'Please to walk in,' said the landlady, who this time opened the door. But this unexpected facility of access to the master was even more embarrassing than would have been the conflict of argument I had anticipated. 'Please take my card,' said I, 'to the Herr Doctor, and ask if he will see me.' 'Oh, it is not necessary,' she said; but took it in, returning immediately and asking me to enter. As I advanced, the formidable and overbearing Brahms hastened to meet me. 'Why did you not leave your address? I should have come to find you out,' he said, giving me his hand. And returning with me to the sitting-room, he bade me take a seat on the sofa, whilst he placed himself on a chair opposite.

He did not try to hide that he was pleased to see his old pupil. He evidently wished me to understand that our acquaintanceship was to be taken up from the exact point at which it had been last left, and reminded me, when I alluded to his lessons at Baden-Baden, that he had seen me since those early days. 'Oh, for a moment at the rehearsals at Berlin,' I answered. 'But since then,' he insisted. 'Only at the concert,' said I, rather surprised. 'Yes, at the concert,' he agreed, 'and you sat downstairs, I remember.'

I told him I had lately been getting up the same B flat Concerto which he had played at the time, and had performed it in London before a private audience. He was interested in hearing the particulars of the occasion, and when I said, laughingly, that the fatigue entailed by the practice of its enormous difficulties had given me all sorts of aches and pains, and made it necessary for me to go into the country for change of air after the performance was over, he replied in the same vein: 'But that is very dangerous; one must not compose such things. It is too dangerous!'

He informed me rather slyly, 'I am the most unamiable of all the musicians here,' as though he would like to know if I had heard of his reputation for cross-grained perversity, and was frankly gratified when I answered: 'That I will never believe, Herr Brahms—never!' He was to be absent at the longest for ten days only, and when I took leave of him it was with the pleasant consciousness that he would be glad to find me still in Vienna on his return.

In appearance, Brahms had again greatly altered since our meeting in Berlin. Though not fifty-six, he looked an old man. His hair was nearly white, and he had grown very stout. I had a good opportunity of observing him, myself unnoticed, soon after his return from his journey. The first public performance in Vienna was given of his newly-published Gipsy Songs, at the concert of a resident singer, one of his friends. Brahms had not been announced to take part in the performance, but when the evening came, he walked quietly on to the platform as the singers were arranging themselves in their places and took his seat at the pianoforte as accompanist. Of course his appearance was the signal for an outburst of enthusiastic welcome from the crowded audience, some hopes, but no certainty, having been entertained that he would show himself.

As I sat in my corner and watched, I was aware that not only his general aspect, but his expression also, had undergone another and a curious change during the last years. He now wore the happy, sunshiny look of one who had realized his purpose, and was content with his share in life; of one to whom the complete measure of success had come, and not too late to be valued. If in Baden-Baden he had made upon me the impression of a man awaiting full recognition, who had already waited long for it; if in Berlin, the impression of one who, having attained a glorious pinnacle of fame whilst still in the plenitude of his powers, was untiringly pressing onward towards higher summits of fulfilment—I had the feeling, when I looked at him in Vienna, that the second phase, too, was more or less belonging to the past, and that he had entered upon a period of reward, and perhaps of less strenuous exertion.

One of the very few opportunities I ever had of seeing Brahms avail himself of a great man's license to follow his whims regardless of convention, and, perhaps, of due respect to others, was afforded me at a meeting of the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein, the musicians' club, of which he was honorary president. It was one of the special social evenings of the society, when the members supped together. Brahms was late in coming, and when he arrived supper was proceeding. He allowed himself to be conducted to the place, at the top of a long table, which had been reserved for him as president, but did not sit down. Leisurely scanning the assembled company, he picked out the position he preferred, which happened to be at the side near the bottom. A slight space was certainly there, but not enough for a seat. 'There,' he said, pointing to it, and he sauntered down the room, apparently quite unconcerned at the disturbance and inconvenience which he caused, a bench having to be moved and several people being obliged to shift their places to make room for him. When once in occupation of the seat he fancied, he contributed his share to the cordiality of the evening, and was in no hurry to leave.

Another occasion was very similar. He was again dissatisfied with a place that had been assigned him at a supper-party. This time it was at a private house, and, as he could not have declined the seat without making himself unbearably rude, he submitted, with a kind of half-protest, to occupy it. During the greater part of the entertainment, however, he was not only in a wayward mood, but in a thoroughly bad temper, which he could not control. There was, when all is said, certainly no ill-natured intention in what he did on either occasion, but at the worst a mere childish petulance and over-excitability under slight disappointment.

I discovered, though Brahms had no fixed hour, that the right time to call upon him was about eleven o'clock. Always an early riser, he had then completed his morning's work, and if at home, as was generally the case, was ready to receive a visitor. He was sometimes to be found seated at the piano with an open volume (often Bach) on the music-stand, which was placed on the closed top lid of the instrument, playing softly, or silently studying the work in front of him. I have never felt that I was disturbing him when I called. It is true that I only went occasionally, and when provided with a legitimate excuse. Still, I do not altogether understand how he acquired such a reputation for incivility. He was, in his own way, of a sociable disposition.

One day when I was with him, some terrible pianoforte strumming was going on in the flat above him. I commented on the strange constitution of people who could deliberately plant themselves in his immediate neighbourhood—for he had occupied the same rooms for years—and then worry him with such noise. He said there was sometimes bad singing and violin-playing, both of which he found even harder to bear than the piano, but added: 'They have their rights, and I know how to help myself;' and he held out his hands in keyboard position, to indicate that when too much disturbed to do anything else, he shut out the sounds and employed his time by playing.

Brahms generally went out at about a quarter to twelve at latest, and would arrive before one o'clock at his favourite restaurant, Zum Rothen Igel. After his early dinner he walked, finding his way to a café in another part of the town, where he would read the papers over a cup of black coffee. After this was his best time for paying visits, and about six o'clock he often returned to his rooms to write letters or do other work. Later on he would go out again to fulfil his evening engagements. Sometimes it happened that he did not go home, after leaving in the morning, until after supper. These details I learnt incidentally in the course of my stay in Vienna.

Brahms made a great point of being polite to ladies on the question of smoking, and was very particular in asking permission before lighting his cigar. Of course, if I found him alone, he never smoked. One day, however, when I had been with him only a very few minutes, the door-bell rang, and two gentlemen appeared, one a friend of Brahms', the other a youth whom he had brought to introduce to the master. Brahms wished me to remain, and I therefore kept my seat. Very soon he produced his box of cigars, according to Continental custom, and handed it to his visitors, saying, however: 'But I do it unwillingly, as a lady is present.' The elder of the two gentlemen put his cigar into his breast-pocket, the younger lighted his and vigorously puffed away alone, from sheer confusion, I think, at finding himself in the presence of the master. Brahms returned to his seat without taking one. 'But won't you smoke, Herr Brahms?' I said, after a few seconds. 'If you allow it,' he answered, making as much as possible of the few words, and taking a cigar.

Though Brahms was not, during the latter part of his life, a frequenter of concert-rooms, he nearly always attended the concerts of the Philharmonic Society and of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, sitting, usually, in the 'artists' box' in the gallery. In the intervals between the pieces he would lean forward, both arms on the front, with his opera-glasses to his eyes, spying out his acquaintances in different parts of the hall.

When I called to say good-bye to him at the close of my first visit to Vienna, I happened to mention that I had made a small collection of works written for the keyed instruments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and had picked up one or two rather valuable first editions. He was greatly interested, and saying, 'We have done the same thing,' took down from the bookcase one or two of his own old music-books to show me. I especially remember an original edition of Scarlatti's Sonatas, in first-rate preservation, but without the title-page, of which he was particularly fond and proud. He asked if I would bring one or two of mine to show him on my next visit, and I told him that I happened to have one with me—an original Rameau—and that if he had not got a copy I would send it him at once.

'No,' he answered; 'it is too late now—you are going away to-morrow—but next year when you come again.' 'But I mean,' I rejoined, 'that I will give it you.' Brahms did not immediately answer, and I added: 'Would you rather not? If so, I will not do it.' 'No, I would not "rather not," but you must not immediately give your things away,' he replied. 'Then I will do it,' I declared, delighted that I possessed something he would like to have, and to accept from me. Later in the day I sent him the book, with a few lines telling him how much pleasure it would give me if I might leave it with him as a remembrance. Early the next morning I left Vienna. I was not to arrive in London for another week, having engagements en route, and this Brahms knew. On the evening of my return home, as soon as my mother's first greetings were over, she said: 'There is a letter for you from Brahms; it arrived this morning.' 'From Brahms! How do you know?' I answered. 'From his having written his name on the outside,' she returned, handing me the precious missive.

On the outside of the envelope, above the adhesive, he had written 'J. Brahms, Vienna, Austria,' and, opening the envelope, I read as follows:

'Very esteemed and dear Fräulein,

'It was too late the other evening for me to be able to do as I wished, and come and express my thanks to you in person.

'Let me, therefore, send them very heartily after you, for your so kind and valuable gift.

'It was indeed much too kind of you to part with the pretty treasure in order to give me pleasure, and it shall still be at your disposal next year!

'In the hope of seeing you here again next year, and of being able to repeat my hearty thanks,

'Yours very sincerely,

'J. Brahms.'[2]

On my first visit to Brahms in the following winter, he led the way to his bookcase and showed me the Rameau, saying: 'I shall die in ten years, and you will get it back again.' I told him that should I outlive him I should prefer not to have it back, but to let it go with his collection, and thus the matter remained.

The success of my first visit to Vienna induced me to pay several subsequent ones, the last of which took place rather more than a year before Brahms' death. A minute account of each would be wearisome, and I will only allude, therefore, to the opportunity that I had, in the course of two separate winters, of hearing the concerts of the Joachim Quartet in Vienna, and of seeing Brahms as one of the audience. On one of these enchanting evenings the Clarinet Quintet was given, with Mühlfeld as clarinettist. Brahms had his seat downstairs, at the end of the room reserved for resident and other musicians, and separated from the general audience by the performers' platform. My place was only two or three away from his, and so situated that I could see him all the time the work was being played. His face wore an unconscious smile, and his expression was one of absorbed felicity from beginning to end of the performance. When the last movement was finished, he was not to be persuaded to come forward and take his part in acknowledging the deafening clamour of applause, but, as it were, disclaimed all right in it himself by vigorously applauding the executants. At the last moment, however, as the noise was beginning to subside, up he got, and stepping on to the platform, in his loose, short, shabby morning-coat, made his bow to the audience. Another item in the programme was the Clarinet Trio, played by himself, Mühlfeld, and Hausmann. Joachim, sitting on the right-hand side of the piano, turned over for him. I changed my seat during the performance of this work, taking the place that Brahms had vacated, which was close to the piano and gave me a full view of the keyboard. In spite of my several experiences of the master's tenacious memory for small things, I confess that I felt a thrill of surprise at the end of the first movement, and again at the end of the second, when he turned his head suddenly round and glanced straight at me in the very same quick, searching way to which I had been accustomed in the old Lichtenthal days, as though to satisfy himself as to whether or not I had understood.

Ischl.

I spent several weeks at Ischl during the summers of 1894 and 1895, and was much interested in observing the life of my old friend in surroundings that were new to me. His habits, during these closing years of his life, were in all essential respects the same as when I had first known him in Baden-Baden. Rising soon after four o'clock, his days were passed in the same simple, natural routine of walking, studying, and composing, in the enjoyment of the society of his friends and of the cordial relations which he maintained with the people of the country, between whom and himself a perfect understanding existed.

His love of children has often been recorded. I have seen him sitting reading on the bench of the little garden of his lodgings, apparently quite undisturbed by his landlady's boys, who romped round and about him, jumping on and off the bench, playing hide-and-seek behind his back, and the like. Now and then he would interrupt his studies to caress a couple of kittens that were taking part in the frolics.

'I know this man,' said a droll, tiny boy of about five or six, in a funny red suit, who, taking a stroll along the promenade one afternoon with some companions, came upon Brahms sitting under the trees before Walter's coffee-house, the centre of a large group of musicians and friends. The great composer was quite ready to acknowledge the acquaintanceship, and called his small friend to his table to receive a spoonful of half-melted sugar from his coffee-cup.

'My Katie knows Brahms,' said a village dressmaker to me, alluding to her pretty little fair-haired daughter of eight. 'We have met him out walking very early in the morning, but Katie was frightened the other day and cried because he ran round her and pretended he wanted her piece of bread.'

'The Herr Doctor has already seen him,' a young peasant mother observed to me as she showed me her three-months-old son, 'and says he is a strapping boy.'

One morning when I called on Brahms to say good-bye, I found him in the midst of preparations for his own departure. An open portmanteau, in process of being packed, was in the sitting-room, and there was a litter of small things about. Brahms invited me to take a seat on the sofa. A book which he had been reading lay open, face downwards. I ventured, with an apologetic glance at him, to take it up and look at it. This he did not at all mind. He had been amusing himself with an essay on Bismarck. After we had chatted a little while, as I rose to say farewell, my eye was caught by a table on which were a number of cheap German playthings—small boxes of puzzles, toy knives and forks, etc., evidently destined for parting or returning gifts to quite poor children.

'What is this?' I involuntarily exclaimed, taking up, before I knew what I was doing, a toy fork of most ungainly make, broad, squat, and almost without handle. An inquisitiveness, however, which seemed to hint at the soft side of Brahms' nature could not be allowed. 'What does that matter to you?' he cried. Then, instantly, as though afraid he had been rough, he added: 'It is for small things—fruit, fish, or the like.' Only I, having seen the clumsy toy, can quite appreciate the comicality of the answer, which of course simply meant: 'No allusion, if you please.' Brahms, however, had saved appearances, and without being hard on me, had drawn a thin veil over his kind intentions to his little friends. I held the fork another instant, and then replaced it on the table, saying with gravity: 'I thought it was a plaything, Herr Brahms.'

A young lady, an inhabitant of Ischl, who taught singing, and gave an annual concert there, and who, during the season, presided over a milliner's business on the Promenade, was a great ally of Brahms', and never omitted to stand outside the door of her atelier as the hour approached for him to pass to his café, in order to get a greeting from him. The little ceremony was duly honoured by the great composer, who was always ready with, at the least, his genial 'Good-day.'

Fräulein L. talked of him to me in just the same way as all others did who were content to be natural and unostentatious in their manner towards him. He was so good-natured and bright, she remarked, and though he loved to tease, his teasing was so kindly. He made a point of calling on her formally once every season. Taking advantage of this ceremony, she one day placed before him a cabinet photograph of himself, and asked if he could do her the honour of writing his name underneath.

'Yes, I can do that,' he answered in his cheerful tone, 'I learned that at school. But why do you keep this ugly old face? Why not have a handsome, curly-haired one? Ah, what have we here?'—catching sight of a little saucer containing cigar-ash. 'You smoke!'

Fräulein L. laughingly assured him that neither she nor her assistant had been guilty of the cigar. 'So much the worse!' he retorted. 'Who was it? Is he dark or fair?'

By such genial intercourse and harmless banter, Brahms endeared himself to all the towns-people with whom he came in contact, and his preference for Ischl was a source of pride and gratification to them. His sociability had in it no suggestion of patronage; it was that of a friend with friends, and was valued accordingly.

A few words spoken to me by his landlady at Ischl are not without their value, coming, as they do, from one who had the opportunity of knowing him in small things. The occasion was as follows. My lodging was opposite to Brahms' on the other side of the valley, but on a much higher mountain slope. I could see his house from my balcony and windows, but was too far away to have the least apprehension that he could be disturbed by hearing anything of my piano. Someone suggesting to me, however, that, with the wind in a certain direction, the sound might possibly reach his windows, I went across one afternoon, when I knew he would be out, to interview his landlady on the subject. She assured me nothing had ever been heard, and added: 'You can play quite without fear, gnädiges Fräulein; nothing is heard here—the water makes too much noise. And even if a tone were to be heard now and then—it could not be more—the master is not so particular: it would not disturb him. He is not capricious: no one can say that of him.'

That Brahms had his little prejudices and limitations, however, cannot be denied, and these grew more pronounced as he advanced in years and became less pliable. The mere circumstance of his having inflexibly adhered to the particular method of life adopted by him as a young man, by which he shut himself away as much as possible from whatever was at all distasteful to him in ordinary social intercourse, contributed, as time went on, to increase his sensitiveness and make him impatient of contradiction. He became rather too prone to suspect people to whom he did not take a fancy, of conceit and affectation; and, without knowing it, he acquired a habit, which sometimes made conversation with him difficult, of dissenting forcibly from trifling remarks made more with the object of saying something than for the sake of asserting a principle. He had his own particular code of polite manners, and was rigorous in expecting others to adhere to it, yet he was apt, in his latter years, to be intolerant of those whose ideas of what was due to the amenities of life were more extended than his own, or somewhat differed from them.

What, however, were his prepossessions, his little sarcasms, and occasional roughnesses, but as the tiniest flecks on the sun? We may well be thankful, we musicians and music-lovers of this generation, to have passed some part of our lives with Brahms in our midst—Brahms the composer and Brahms the man. As his music may be searched through and through in vain for a single bar that is not noble and pure, so also in his mind dwelt no thought which was otherwise than good and true. We may even be glad that he was not perfect, but human, the dear, great, tenderhearted master, whose lofty message, vibrating with the pulsations of the nature he so loved, was of such rare beauty and consolation.

The few lines with which I conclude these slight personal reminiscences were the last I ever received from Brahms. They were written on his card and sent, enclosed in an envelope, when I was at Ischl. I had been expecting him to come to see me, and he had not appeared.

'Esteemed Fräulein,

'Prevented by many things, I venture to ask if it is not possible for you to call on

'Your most sincerely

'Johannes Brahms.'[3]

CHAPTER I
1760-1845

The Brahms family—Johann Jakob Brahms: his youth and marriage—Birth and childhood of Johannes—The Alster Pavilion—Otto F. W. Cossel—Johannes' private subscription concert.

Johannes Brahms came of a race belonging to Lower Saxony. This is sufficiently indicated by the family name, which appears in extant church records variously as Brahms, Brams, and Brahmst. The word Bram belongs to the old Platt-Deutsch, the near kin to the Anglo-Saxon and English languages. It is still the common name in the Baltic districts of Germany, the Hanoverian provinces, and, with a modified vowel, in England, for the straight-growing Planta genista, the yellow-flowering broom, and is preserved in its original form in the English word 'bramble.'

The letter s at the end of a name has the same meaning in German as in English, and just as 'Brooks' is a contraction of the words 'son of Brook,' so 'Brahms' signifies, literally, 'son of Bram,' or 'Broom.'

Peter Brahms, the great-grandfather of the composer, and the first of his family of whom there is authentic record, was a child of the people. He trekked across the mouth of the Elbe from Hanover into Holstein, and settled down to ply his trade of joiner at Brunsbüttel, a hamlet or small township situated in the fertile fen-country which lies along the shore of the Baltic between the mouths of the Elbe and the Eider. This district is remembered as the land of the Ditmarsh Peasants, who were distinguished, some centuries ago, by their fierce and obstinate struggles for the maintenance of their independence, but who finally settled down about the year 1560 under the dominion of the Princes of Holstein. They are said to have been pre-eminent amongst neighbouring peoples, not only in courage, but in a simple untaught genius for the arts of poetry and music. They loved to turn their various adventures into verse, which they afterwards sang to the most expressive and appropriate melodies of their own invention, and their war-songs and ballads, though now forgotten, were long a cherished possession of their children's children. The little country has in recent times proved not unworthy of its former reputation. Niebuhr the traveller, and his son, the celebrated historian, both belonged to Meldorf. Claus Groth, the Low-German poet, was a native of Heide, where his grandfather and father were millers living on their own land in patriarchal fashion. Groth has drawn, notably in his volume 'Quickborn,' pathetically naïve pictures of his beloved Ditmarsh; of its homely scenery, its changing cloud-effects, its sudden bursts of storm, its simple, hard-working, honourable peasant life; and it is a striking circumstance that he should have been in a position to describe, as old family friends and neighbours, living amongst the memories of his childhood, the great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and uncle of Johannes Brahms.[4]

Old Peter the trekker was respected as a thoroughly well-mannered, orderly citizen. He was short and robust, and lived to a ripe old age. He passed the closing years of his life at Heide, where he spent most of his time sitting on a bench in front of his house, smoking a long pipe, and was wont to startle the dreamy Claus Groth, as he passed by every morning on his way to school, with a loud, jocular greeting.

Johann his son, who was tall and handsome, with straight, yellow hair and fair complexion, combined the callings of innkeeper and retail dealer first at Wöhrden and afterwards at Heide. He married Christiana Asmus, a daughter of the country, and who knows what strain of latent poetic instinct, inherited from some old minstrel and patriot ancestor, may have been transmitted, through her veins, into the sturdy Brahms family? There is some presumption in favour of such a conjecture.

Two sons were born of her marriage with Johann, each of whom had a marked individuality. Peter Hinrich, the eldest, married at the age of twenty, and settled down as his father's assistant and future successor. Groth has described his adventure in the fields one memorable Sunday afternoon. Accompanied by his little son, he carried a huge kite, taller than himself, with a correspondingly long, thick string, which he successfully started. A strong north-west wind carried it along, and, to the delight of a crowd of small spectators, he tied to it a little cart of his own manufacture, in which he placed his boy. The cart began to move, drawn by the kite, slowly at first, then more quickly. Faster and higher flew the monster, quicker and quicker rolled the wheels, the child in the carriage, the father by its side. Then a scream, a crash! The terrified Claus knew no more till next day, when he heard that the little carriage had been dragged over a wall and upset, that the child had fallen out unhurt, and the kite been found on a high post a mile or two distant.

This Peter Hinrich added to the vocations of his father that of pawnbroker, and gradually acquired a large business as a dealer in antiquities. In the end, however, his delight in his possessions gained decided predominance over his business instincts. Becoming partially crippled in old age, he would sit in a large arm-chair for which there was barely space, surrounded by his beloved pots and pitchers, weapons and armour, and point out desired objects to would-be purchasers with a long stick. Often, however, he could not persuade himself to part with his curiosities, and would send his customers away empty-handed, satisfied with the mere pleasure of showing the treasures with which he packed his house quite full. His children and grandchildren remained and spread in the Ditmarsh, where some of them prosper to this day.

Johann Jakob, the second son of Johann and Christiana, destined to become the father of our composer, was his brother's junior by fourteen years, and was born on June 1, 1806. From his early boyhood he seems to have had no doubt as to his choice of a vocation. He could by no means be persuaded to settle down to the routine of school-work, to be followed in due course by the humdrum existence of a small country innkeeper or tradesman, such as had sufficed for his father and grandfather, and was contentedly accepted by his elder brother. He was upright, good-natured, and possessed of a certain vein of drollery, which made him throughout life a favourite with his associates; he was born, also, with a quietly stubborn will. He had an overmastering love of music—music of the kind he was accustomed to hear at neighbours' weddings, at harvest merry-makings, in the dancing-rooms of village inns. A musician he was resolved to be, and a musician, in spite of the determined opposition of parents and family, he became.

There existed, not far from his home, a representative of the old 'Stadt Pfeifereien,' establishments descended directly from the musicians' guilds of the Middle Ages, whose traditions lingered on in the rural districts of Germany for some time after the original institutions had become extinct. The 'Stadt Pfeiferei' was recognised as the official musical establishment of its neighbourhood, and was presided over by the town-musician, who retained certain ancient privileges. He held a monopoly for providing the music for all open-air festivities in the villages, hamlets, and small townships within his district, and formed his band or bands from apprenticed pupils, who paid a trifling sum of money, often helped with their manual labour in the work of his house and the cultivation of his garden or farm, and, in return, lived with him as part of his family and received musical instruction from himself and his assistants. At the termination of their apprenticeship he provided his scholars with indentures of character and efficiency, according to desert, and dismissed them to follow their fortunes. Country lads with ambition, who desired to see something of the world, or to attain a better position than that of a peasant or journeyman, would persuade their parents to place them in one of these establishments. They were expected to acquire a practical knowledge of several instruments, so as to be able to take part upon either as occasion might demand, and the bands thus formed were available for all local functions. Johann Jakob would readily have applied himself to learn, from the nearest town-musician, all that that official was able to teach him, but his father could not be brought to consent to his exchanging the solid prospects of a settled life in the Ditmarsh for the visionary future of an itinerant performer. The boy's inclination was, however, unconquerable, and he settled the matter in his own fashion. He ran away from home several times and made his own bargain with his musical hero. Twice he was recalled and forgiven, and after the third escapade was allowed to have his own way, and bound over to serve his time in the usual manner. 'I cannot give such proofs of my devotion to music,' wrote his son Johannes to Claus Groth many years afterwards. Five years of apprenticeship were spent, the last three at the more distant town of Weslingbüren, in the study of the violin, viola, 'cello, flute, and horn, and, in the beginning of the year 1826, the quondam musical apprentice obtained his indentures, which testified to his faithfulness, desire to learn, industry, and obedience,[5] and quitted the old home country to try his luck at Hamburg.

It is not easy to imagine the feelings of this youth of nineteen or twenty on his arrival, fresh from the simple life of the Ditmarsh peasants, in the great commercial fortress-city, still the old Hamburg of the day, with its harbour and shipping and busy river scenes; its walls and city gates, locked at sunset; its water-ways and bridges; its churches and exchange; its tall, gabled houses; its dim, tortuous alleys. Refined ease and sordid revelry were well represented there; the one might be contemplated on the pleasant, shady Jungfernstieg, the fashionable promenade where rich merchants and fine ladies and gay officers sat and sipped punch or coffee, wine or lemonade, served to them by the nimble waiters of the Alster Pavilion, the high-class refreshment-house on the lake hard by; the other, in the so-called Hamburger Berg, the sailors' quarter, abounding in booths and shows, small public-houses, and noisy dancing-saloons, in which scenes of low-life gaiety were regularly enacted. Johann Jakob Brahms was destined to appear, in the course of his career as a musician, in both localities. He made his début in the latter.

Thrown entirely on his own resources, with a mere pittance in his pocket for immediate needs, he had to pick up a bare existence, as best he could, in the courtyards and dancing-saloons of the Hamburg Wapping. He seems to have preserved his easy imperturbability of temper throughout his early struggles, and to have kept his eyes open for any chance opportunity that might occur. Helped by his natural gift for making himself a favourite, he managed, by-and-by, to get appointed as one of the hornists of the Bürger-Militair, the body of citizen-soldiers, or town-guard, in which, with a few exceptions, every burgher or inhabitant between the ages of twenty and forty-five was bound to serve. Each battalion of the force had its own band, and each band its own uniform, the musicians of the Jäger corps, to which Johann Jakob was attached, wearing a green coat with white embroidered collar, headgear decorated with a white pompon, and a short weapon called a Hirschfänger. This was a distinct rise in the fortunes of the wanderer. He won for himself a recognised place in the world, obscure though it might be, when he acquired the right to wear a uniform of the city of Hamburg, and in due time he enrolled himself as one of its burghers. The document of his citizenship has been preserved, and will be mentioned again near the close of our narrative.[6] It cannot be said that his further advancement was rapid. His partiality for the music he knew of is suggestive rather of a struggling instinct than an actual talent. His professional acquirements were slender, and of general education he had none; but he was not without shrewdness, was upright and diligent, and he made gradual progress. He and his colleagues used to form themselves into small brass bands, and to play wherever they saw opportunity, sometimes getting trifling engagements in dancing-rooms, sometimes dependent on the goodwill of a chance audience in a beer-garden or small house of entertainment. He did not earn much, but was no longer entirely dependent on the very meanest exercise of his industry, and may be said to have obtained a footing on the lowest rung of fortune's ladder.

On June 9, 1830, a few days after completing his twenty-fourth year, Jakob committed himself to the second great adventure of his life. He married, choosing for his wife Johanna Henrika Christiana Nissen, who was forty-one years of age and in very humble circumstances. She was small and plain, and limped badly; was sickly in health, and somewhat complaining; of a very affectionate if rather oversensitive disposition, and had a sweet expression in her light-blue eyes that testified to the goodness of her heart. She was an exquisite needlewoman, possessed many good housewifely virtues which she exercised as far as her very limited opportunities allowed, and is said to have been endowed with great refinement of feeling and superior natural parts. One of her husband's colleagues has described her as having faded, later on, into a 'little withered mother who busied herself unobtrusively with her own affairs, and was not known outside her dwelling.'

The strangely-matched couple began their life together on the smallest possible scale, and in February of the following year a daughter was born to them, who was christened Elisabeth Wilhelmine Louise. The young father's material resources seem to have remained much as they were, but before this time his dogged perseverance had added yet another instrument to the list of those he had already practised. He contrived to learn the double-bass, and as his friends increased, and he became more known, he began to get occasional engagements as double-bass substitute in the orchestras of small theatres. Meanwhile he did not neglect his other instruments, but performed on either as occasion presented itself.

On May 7, 1833, the angel of life again visited the poor little home, and Johanna Henrika Christiana presented her husband with a son, who was baptized on the 26th of the same month at St. Michael's Church, Hamburg. The child, being emphatically the 'son of Johann,' was called by the single name Johannes, after his father, mother, and paternal grandfather, and the grandfather was one of the sponsors.

The house in which Johannes Brahms was born still stands as it was seventy years ago, and is now known as 60, Speckstrasse. The street itself, which has since been changed and widened, was then Speck-lane, and formed part of the Gänge-Viertel, the 'Lane-quarter' of the old Hamburg. Want of space within the city walls had led to the construction of rows of houses along a number of lanes adjacent to one another, which had once been public thoroughfares through gardens. A neighbourhood of very dark and narrow streets was thus formed, for the houses were tall and gabled, and arranged to hold several families. They were generally built of brick, loam, and wood, and were thrown up with the object of packing as many human beings as possible into a given area. The Lane-quarter exists no longer, but many of the old houses remain, and some are well kept and picturesque to the eye of the passer-by. Not so 60, Speckstrasse. This house does not form part of the main street, but stands as it did in 1833, in a small dismal court behind, which is entered through a close passage, and was formerly called Schlüter's-court. It would be impossible for the most imaginative person, on arriving at this spot, to indulge in any of the picturesque fancies supposed to be appropriate to a poet's birthplace; the house and its surroundings testify only to the commonplace reality of a bare and repulsive poverty. A steep wooden staircase in the centre, closed in at night by gates, leads right and left, directly from the court, to the various stories of the building. Each of its habitations is planned exactly as every other, excepting that those near the top are contracted by the sloping roof. Jakob and Johanna lived in the first-floor dwelling to the left on facing the house. On entering it, it is difficult to repress a shiver of bewilderment and dismay. The staircase door opens on to a diminutive space, half kitchen, half lobby, where some cooking may be done and a child's bed made up, and which has a second door leading to the living-room. This communicates with the sleeping-closet, which has its own window, but is so tiny it can scarcely be called a room. There is nothing else, neither corner nor cupboard. Where Jakob kept his instruments and how he managed to practise are mysteries which the ordinary mind cannot satisfactorily penetrate, but it is probable that his easy-going temperament helped him over these and other difficulties, and that he was fairly content with his lot. If Johanna took life a little more hardly, it is certain that husband and wife resembled each other in their affection for the children, and that the strong tie of love which bound the renowned composer of after-years to father and mother alike, had its earliest beginning in the fondness and pride which attended his cradle in the obscure abode in Schlüter's-court.

The family moved several times during the infancy of Johannes, and their various homes are partly to be traced in back numbers of the Hamburg address-book, which may be consulted in the library of the Johanneum. These early changes, however, have but little interest for the reader, and it will suffice to record that when the hero of our narrative was four or five years old, and the proud senior by two years of a little brother Friederich, known as Fritz, they moved into quarters less confined than those they had yet occupied, at 38, Ulricus-strasse. Here the anxious wife and mother was able to add a trifle to Jakob's scanty earnings, by engaging on her own account in a tiny business for the sale of needles, cottons, tapes, etc., which had been carried on for many years previously at No. 91 of the same street by the 'sisters Nissen,' and by taking as boarder an acquaintance of her husband's, who, though not a musician, remained a life-long family friend. The intimacy descended to the next generation, and his son, Herr Carl Bade, has many a droll anecdote to relate of Jakob, whom he remembers with affectionate regard.

From such particulars as can be gathered, it is evident that the childhood of 'Hannes' gave early promise of the striking characteristics of his maturity, and that some of the most powerful sentiments of his after-life are to be traced to influences acting on him from his birth. Indications of his possession of the musical faculty were apparent at a very tender age. He received his first actual instruction from his father, but his sensitive organization, aided by the music of one sort and another that he was constantly hearing, seems almost to have anticipated this earliest teaching. In his clinging affection for his parents the child was father to the man, and one of his constant petitions was to be allowed to 'help.' It is easy to imagine the little tasks he learned to perform for the mother whom he worshipped, and the feeling of pride with which he watched his tall father on the exercise-days of the Jäger corps may have had something to do with his partiality for his beloved lead soldiers, the favourite toys which he kept locked in his writing-table long after he was grown up. He was sent, when quite a young child, to a little private school on the Dammthorwall, close to his parents' house, where the teaching was probably neither better nor worse than that of the very small English day-schools of the period. Until he was nearly eight his musical education was carried on at home, and did not include the study of the piano. It seems to have been taken for granted that he would, in due course, follow his father's calling, which was gradually ripening into that of a reliable performer in the humbler orchestras of the city. It is hardly surprising that Jakob, who knew nothing about genius, and was not troubled by notions about art for its own sake, should have looked forward contentedly to the career of an orchestral player for his boy. He himself, after more than twelve laborious years, was only struggling into a position of acceptance by musicians of this class. That Johannes should begin life by taking his place amongst them as a fiddler or 'cellist, who might work his way to some distinction, must necessarily have appeared to him a sufficiently ambitious object, the attainment of which would enable his son to support himself and help the family. The orchestral players of the Hamburg of that time carried on their work under peculiar circumstances. They were bound together in a kind of musical trade-union, the Hamburger Musikverein, founded in 1831, which protected them from competition, no member being allowed to play in any band that included an outsider. They met constantly at their 'Börse,' or club, through which most of their engagements were made. It was open every morning for a couple of hours for the transaction of business, and there was a Lokal in the same building available for a chat over a glass of beer and a smoke. The establishment was, for some time, presided over by the father of Carl Rosa (originally Rose), who lived on the premises, and Johann Jakob Brahms was one of the original members of the society. His copy of the rules is still in existence, and bears, underneath his signature the date May 1, 1831. The system of working by deputy was extensively practised in the arrangements of the union. If a member engaged for a certain performance happened to get a more lucrative offer for the same day and hour, he would give notice to the 'Börse' to furnish a substitute for the first appointment. The substitute might repeat the process in his turn, and it sometimes happened that a single engagement passed through several hands in succession before the date of its fulfilment. Under these conditions music was very much a mere business, but, on the other hand, orchestral players were expected to be fairly good all-round musicians, capable of performing passably on several instruments, and able to fill a gap at short notice. Many of these men, who made the musical atmosphere with which Johannes Brahms was familiar in his childhood, lived in the Lane-quarter, partly because it was cheap, partly in order to be near their 'Börse,' which was situated in the Kohlhöfen. They were, as a rule, shrewd, hard-working, honourable members of their profession, happy in their calling and in their mutual friendly intercourse, and striving to bring up their children to improved circumstances. Those among them who were not able to obtain better employment were glad to acquire experience, and to earn something, by playing in dancing-saloons and Lokals of various degrees of repute, hoping for a rise of fortune in days to come.

Proofs of continual advancement in Jakob's career are to be found in the fact that, from about the year 1837 onwards, his services were requisitioned from time to time as substitute in the small band which played from six till eleven, every evening throughout the year, in a room of the Alster Pavilion, and especially in the circumstance that he by-and-by became one of its regular members, succeeding to the duties of double-bass player. The orchestra was composed of two violins, viola, two flutes, and double-bass, and performed 'evening entertainment-music,' consisting of overtures, airs, operatic selections, and pot-pourris. The public, which was a good one, was served with light refreshments outside, or crowded into the house to listen, according to inclination and the season, and the musicians were paid by contributions collected during intervals between the pieces. Count Woronzow from St. Petersburg, who was present with his son in the audience one fine summer evening, was so delighted with the music, and so gratified at hearing the Russian national air played con amore in his honour, that he not only put a gold piece on the plate, but wanted to carry off the six performers to Russia, guaranteeing that they would make their fortunes there, and would not take a refusal till they had had a week or two to consider the matter.

There lived at this time at No. 7, Steindamm a young pianist of Hamburg, Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel, who was well known to the set of men belonging to the musicians' union, and in great and just repute with them as a teacher of his instrument. He was a pupil of the eminent teacher and theorist Marxsen of Altona, and had cherished dreams of fame as a pianoforte virtuoso. Adverse circumstances, delicate health, and want of self-confidence, may have been the causes of his failure to realize his aspirations; but whether or not this be the case, he has left behind him the reputation of having been a good player, an excellent instructor, and a thoroughly high-minded man. He was devoted to his art, and had a large number of pupils; but they were chiefly recruited from the classes who could not afford to pay much, and it was not in Cossel's nature to be difficult on the question of remuneration. He was fain to content himself with the consciousness of hard work well done as a great part of his reward.

To Cossel came, one day in the winter of 1840-41, Jakob Brahms with the little seven-year-old Hannes, a pale, delicate-looking child with fair complexion, blue eyes, and a mane of flaxen hair falling to his shoulders. He was as neat and trim as a new pin—a little 'Patent-Junge'—and wore over his home-knitted socks pretty wooden shoes such as are seen to this day in the shops of Hamburg, an effective protection against the wet climate of the city. Too pale and serious to be called pretty, there was a something most attractive in his appearance, and when his face lighted up on hearing the conclusion of his father's business Cossel's heart was won.

'I wish my son to become your pupil, Herr Cossel,' said Jakob, speaking in his native Low-German tongue. 'He wants so much to learn the piano. When he can play as well as you do, it will be enough!'

The short interview brought about important results to Hannes, whilst for Cossel it insured the future enduring respect of the musical world. He soon perceived that in his new scholar he had no ordinary pupil, and his affection went out more and more to the docile, eager, easily-taught child. He got into the habit of keeping the little fellow after his lesson that he might practise on his piano, and be spared some of the fatigue entailed by constant walks between home, school, and the somewhat distantly-situated Steindamm. Hannes, on his part, grew passionately fond of his teacher, and the special relation in which he stood to him was soon recognised and accepted by Cossel's other pupils. The two were brought still closer together at the end of about a year, for Jakob and his wife, on the impending marriage of their boarder, moved again into smaller quarters close by—at No. 29, Dammthorwall—whilst Cossel took over their rooms in Ulricus-strasse. Well for Hannes that an admirable method of instruction enabled him to get through the necessary drudgery of acquiring a good position of the hand and free movement of the fingers at a very early age, and that he was prepared by wise guidance easily to encounter successive steps of his master's system, which included the practice of the best masters of études—Czerny, Cramer, Clementi—of the great classical masters, and of pieces of the bravura school in fashion at the time.

In the course of the year 1843 Cossel added to the many proofs he had already given of his affection for his pupil, an admirable instance of generosity and sacrifice of personal considerations. It became evident to him that, notwithstanding—or perhaps in consequence of—the rapid progress made by Hannes, influence was being brought to bear on Jakob to induce him to transfer the boy to the care of some other teacher, and he at once determined that in spite of the keen pangs of disappointment any change would cause him, his darling should, if possible, be placed under Marxsen. Various causes may have led him to this resolution—anxiety to protect the boy from the chance of being thrown too early on the world as a regular bread-winner, to the detriment of the quiet course of his development; unselfish desire that he should grow up with the prestige of association with a man of established musical authority; above all, a profound sense of his own responsibility in regard to the genius of which he found himself guardian, and of the duty incumbent on him to submit its possibilities to the direction of the widest experience and best skill attainable.

La Mara[7] has related, on Marxsen's authority, the steps taken for the fulfilment of the plan, and their immediate issue. Cossel brought the ten-year-old Johannes to Altona, with the request that his master would examine the boy, and, if satisfied of his possession of the necessary gifts, undertake his further musical instruction. Marxsen, however, did not prove ready to accept this charge. After hearing Johannes play 'very capitally' some studies from Cramer's first book, he pronounced him in the best hands, saying nothing could be more desirable for the present than that he should remain, as heretofore, under Cossel's guidance.

The friends of the family, however, continued to press Jakob, pointing out that Cossel had been too retiring in his own case, prophesying that the history of his career would be repeated in that of Johannes if some change were not made, and insisting that the teacher was too cautious and pedantic in his methods with the boy, who now required to be brought forward. The upshot of these things was that, a few months after the interview with Marxsen, a private subscription concert was arranged 'for the benefit of the further musical education' of Johannes, which took place in the assembly-room of the Zum Alten Rabe, a first-class refreshment-house, long since pulled down, that stood in its own pleasure-garden near the Dammthor. The programme included a Mozart quartet for pianoforte and strings, Beethoven's quintet for pianoforte and wind, and some pianoforte solos, amongst them a bravura piece by Herz, the execution of which, by the youthful concert-giver, seems to have caused immense sensation in the circle of his admiring friends. Hannes, who was the only pianist of the occasion, was assisted in the quintet by Jakob and three of his friends, and in the quartet by Birgfeld and Christian Otterer, two well-known musicians of Hamburg, and Louis Goltermann of the same city, afterwards professor at Prague (not to be confounded with the 'cellist-composer C. E. Goltermann, native of Hanover). The concert was a great success both from an artistic and a financial point of view, and as its result Jakob himself visited Marxsen to prefer, in his own name and that of Cossel, a second request that the distinguished musician would accept Johannes as a pupil. This time Marxsen consented, saying he would receive him once a week provided that the lessons from Cossel were continued without interruption side by side with his own. The mandate was carried into effect, and the arrangement worked smoothly for a time without let or hindrance; but the successful concert had brought danger as well as advantage in its train. An impresario, who had obtained admission on the occasion to the 'Old Raven,' conceived the idea of taking Johannes on a tour and exhibiting him as a prodigy, and presently made proposals to this effect to Jakob, who, not unnaturally, was transported to the seventh heaven by the dazzling prospects which the wily stranger presented to his imagination. The first step to be taken, for which he prepared, probably, with some perturbation of mind, was to break the news to Cossel.

'Well, Cossel,' he said, finding the young musician at home, 'we are going to make a pile of money.'

'What?' shouted Cossel.

'We are going to make a pile of money. A man has been who wants to travel with the boy.'

Poor Cossel! all his worst fears seemed about to be realized; his heart leapt to his mouth.

'Then you are a word-breaker!' he thundered.

It was now Jakob's turn to look aghast, for Cossel, as described by all who knew him personally, was no stickler for ceremony, and could show his wrath right royally when he felt he had righteous cause for indignation. 'You are a word-breaker!' he cried, and, adopting a sudden idea, went on: 'You said to me, "You shall keep the boy till he knows as much as you do." He can only learn that from Marxsen!'

A heated argument followed, which ended in a compromise. The affair was to be allowed to stand over for a time, and, in fact, several succeeding months passed as quietly as heretofore. But the impresario renewed his proposal, and the struggle recommenced. Cossel perceived the only means of securing a permanent victory for the benefit of Hannes, and he determined to use it, cost him what it might. It lay in his own complete self-renunciation. He went again to Altona, and besought Marxsen to take entire charge of the boy's musical career, only to be once more refused. Marxsen did not yet feel convinced that the great progress made by Johannes during the past year had been due to other qualities than those of assiduous industry and eager wish to learn. Cossel, however, was not to be beaten. He returned to the attack, actually declaring to his bewildered master that the boy made such rapid strides he felt he could teach him nothing more. The kind Marxsen at length gave way, and consented to take the musical education of Johannes into his own hands henceforth, and to teach him without remuneration, saying he did so the more willingly since the parents were not able to pay for the training they wished to secure for their child, and because he had become fond of the little pupil for his own sake.

'How could you let yourself be put off from such business?' said Aunt Detmering after the impresario had been finally dismissed. She had been partner with Johanna in the little shop of the 'sisters Nissen,' and had married into somewhat better circumstances than Jakob's wife. 'I can't interfere in it,' answered Johanna simply, for her boy's good was more precious to her than silver and gold, in spite of her hard, struggling existence. 'Min soote Hannes!' she would say, throwing her arms round him, when he came up sometimes to give her a kiss.

Thus was the rich, budding faculty of Johannes guided to the safe shelter of Marxsen's fostering care, and it is not too much to say that Cossel, by his noble action, secured the future of the genius the significance of which he was the first to recognise. It would be idle to speculate about the unrealities of a non-existent might-have-been, and to contemplate a fancied picture of Brahms' career based upon circumstances and events other than those actual to his childhood. It is, however, certain that no mere natural musical endowment, however splendid, can attain to its perfect growth without having been put in the right way, and those who have entered into the heritage of Brahms' songs and symphonies, his choral works and chamber music, may well cherish Cossel's name in grateful remembrance. Although he will not again occupy a prominent place in our account of Brahms' life, his private relations with his pupil did not cease. His piano and his sympathy were still at the service of Hannes, who was grateful for one and the other, and who, remembering his early teacher and friend to the end of his life with admiring affection, strove, as opportunity served in later years, to obtain for him the more widely-known professional position to which his qualities so justly entitled him. Cossel died in 1865 at the age of fifty-two.

CHAPTER II
1845-1848

Edward Marxsen—Johannes' first instruction in theory—Herr Adolph Giesemann—Winsen-an-der-Luhe—Lischen—Choral society of school-teachers—'ABC' Part-song by Johannes—The Amtsvogt Blume—First public appearance—First visit to the opera.

Edward Marxsen was born on July 23, 1806, at Nieustädten, a village close to Altona, where his father combined the callings of schoolmaster and organist. His musical talent showed itself in early childhood, and was cultivated by his father to such good purpose that, whilst still a lad, he became competent to take the organist's duty from time to time when a substitute was needed. He was not, however, destined for the musical profession, and was on the verge of manhood when he was at length allowed to follow his unconquerable desire to apply himself with all his energies to the serious study of art. At eighteen he became the pupil of Johann Heinrich Clasing, a musician well qualified to bring up his students in the traditions of the classical school in which he had himself been trained.[8] His warm interest was soon aroused by the enthusiasm and unremitting application of his new pupil. Marxsen allowed nothing to interfere with the regularity of his lessons, and walked the two miles separating Nieustädten from Hamburg and back again, on dark winter evenings, by the light of his hand-lantern, no matter how stormy the weather. He continued to live at home, studying, teaching, and helping more and more frequently with the organ, till he reached the age of twenty-four, when his father's death left him free from ties. He soon resolved to go to Vienna, with the especial purpose of perfecting his theoretical knowledge under Ignaz von Seyfried, a prolific composer now chiefly remembered as editor of the theoretical works of his master, the renowned Albrechtsberger. Seyfried received the new-comer cordially, and, probably finding Marxsen's musicianship to be but little inferior to his own, treated him, during his lengthened sojourn at Vienna, more as a friend than a pupil. He did not give him formal instruction, but admitted him to frequent musical intercourse, which was chiefly devoted to the discussion of artistic questions and to the free interchange of opinion, and which brought to the younger musician, amongst other benefits, the special gain of thorough familiarity with the great forms of Beethoven. Seyfried's society was interesting and stimulating. He had had pianoforte lessons, as a child, from Mozart, and had been on terms of personal acquaintance with Haydn and with Beethoven, who was his hero. He was of a kind disposition, moreover, and the many opportunities he was able to offer for forming friendships, for hearing music, and for living in musical society, were placed unreservedly at the disposal of his protégé. Marxsen at the same time pursued his study of the pianoforte under Carl Maria von Bocklet, a pianist and musician of eminence, and a very successful teacher, who had enjoyed the favour of Beethoven and been the close intimate of Schubert. Bocklet was one of the earliest to appreciate the genius of the younger master, and, with his colleagues Schuppanzigh and Klincke, gave the first performances, early in 1828, of Schubert's two pianoforte trios, written a few months previously.

Marxsen returned to Altona, after an absence of between two and three years, with the matured confidence of the travelled musician who has associated with the authorities of his art, his previous enthusiasm for the works of the great Vienna masters and for the then known instrumental works of the mighty Sebastian Bach fanned into ardent worship. That his mind was sufficiently powerful to rise entirely above the musical artificiality and bad taste of his time cannot be said. To us, who belong to a generation that has been educated on the purist principles first made widely acceptable by Mendelssohn's influence and since popularized by the genius of a few famous executants, with Clara Schumann, Rubinstein, and Joachim at their head, it is difficult to realize the revolution that has taken place in the general condition of musical art since the days when Marxsen, three years Mendelssohn's senior, was young. Many things were then accepted and admired in Vienna, in Berlin, in Leipzig, in London, which would now be regarded as impossible atrocities. Marxsen was capable of setting the Kreutzer Sonata for full orchestra, but this is hardly so surprising as that the Leipzig authorities should have produced the arrangement at one of the Gewandhaus concerts, or that Schumann should have mentioned it indulgently, on whatever grounds, in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.

Marxsen came for the first time before the public of Hamburg on November 19, 1833, at the age of twenty-seven, in a concert of his own compositions. Such a programme was a novelty in the northern city, and excited attention. The occasion was successful, and established the reputation of the concert-giver as a sound and earnestly striving musician, and from this time his position as a teacher and theorist continuously rose. He was a man of catholic tastes and liberal culture, and his influence over his pupils was not merely that of the instructor of a given subject, but was touched with the power of the philosopher who has a wide outlook on life. The central aims of his theoretical teaching were to guide his pupils to a mastery of the principles illustrated in the works of the great composers, and to encourage each student to develop his own creative individuality on the firm basis thus afforded. He produced a very large number of works, which include examples of the most complex as well as of the simpler forms of composition, and many of them were brought to a hearing. That few show the attempt to appeal to a higher tribunal than the musical taste of the day may, perhaps, be a sign that Marxsen was conscious of not being endowed with original creative power, and did not try to go beyond his natural limitations. He had a genial, encouraging manner which invited his pupils' confidence, and his lively interest in all questions concerning literature, philosophy, and art gave constant impulse to the minds of the really gifted amongst them, which was not the least of the benefits they derived from association with him.

We shall not be far wrong if we fix the age of Johannes, at the time he became entirely Marxsen's pupil, as about twelve; and from this date his time, always well employed, must have been very fully occupied. He had to go to Altona for his pianoforte lessons (the question of his learning composition had not yet arisen), to practise at Cossel's or at the business house of some pianoforte firm—for there were too many interruptions at home—and to go regularly to school. Not to the one on the Dammthorwall mentioned above. He now attended F. C. Hoffmann's school in ABC-strasse, an establishment several grades higher than that of which he had formerly been a pupil, and one of good repute in its degree. Hoffmann was a conscientious as well as a humane man, and won the liking and respect of his scholars. He gave them sound elementary instruction, and even had them taught French and English. Brahms retained some knowledge of both languages, as the present writer can testify from her personal acquaintance with him, begun when he had entered middle age. He could read English to some extent, though he could not speak it, and was able to help himself out, when necessary, with a phrase or two of French, though his accent was hopeless. He preserved a pleasant remembrance of Hoffmann in after-life, recommended his school on one or two suitable occasions, and sent him a present on the celebration of his jubilee in the middle of the seventies.

Marxsen's interest and pleasure in Johannes' progress increased every week as he became more convinced of his exceptional capacity. 'One day I gave him a composition of Weber's,' he says,[9] 'going carefully through it with him. At the following lesson he played it to me so blamelessly and so exactly as I wished that I praised him. "I have also practised it in another way," he said, and played me the right-hand part with the left hand.' (No doubt Weber's moto perpetuum, published by Brahms, without opus number, as a left-hand study.)

Part of Marxsen's discipline was to accustom Johannes to transpose long pieces at sight, a practice he had probably learnt from Seyfried, who relates as a tour de force of Albrechtsberger that on some public occasion, when he had to play on a low-pitched organ, he transposed an entire Mass from G to G sharp at sight, and without error. Brahms, it may be parenthetically remarked, continued to find diversion in this pastime, and would play fugues of Bach and other works for his own edification in various transposed keys when at the height of his mastership.

The boy had, almost from infancy, shown signs of the tendency to creative activity. Widmann[10] speaks of a conversation held with Brahms within the last decade of his life, during which the master, recalling early memories, described the bliss experienced by him as a very young child on making the discovery, unaided, that a melody could be represented on paper by placing large round dots in higher or lower positions on lines. 'I made a system for myself before I knew of the existence of such a thing.' When a few years older, he was fond of writing the separate parts of concerted works one under the other—of copying them into score, in fact. Nor was he to be kept from trying his hand at original composition. Louise Japha, an eminent pianist of Hamburg, whose more intimate acquaintance the reader will make later on, speaks of having heard him play a sonata of his own when he was about eleven, at the pianoforte house of Baumgarten and Heins, where she one day found him practising. Cossel, responsible for his advance in playing, is said to have been anxious at his spending too much of his time in these childish attempts; but the instinct was unconquerable, and Marxsen no doubt discovered this when he had Johannes constantly with him. After a time he began to teach him theory. Referring to the commencement of the new study, he writes to La Mara:

'I was captivated by his keen and penetrating intellect, and yet, when he came later on to original composition, it was at first difficult to him, and required a good deal of encouragement from me. Still, though his first attempts produced nothing of consequence, I perceived in them a mind in which, as I was convinced, an exceptional and deeply original talent lay dormant.... I therefore spared myself neither pains nor trouble to awaken and cultivate it, in order to prepare a future priest of art, who should proclaim in a new idiom through his works, its high, true, and lasting principles.'

At what age precisely Johannes began to earn regular money by playing in the dancing-rooms and Lokals of Hamburg cannot now be ascertained. It is possible that he occasionally performed on the violin from early childhood, in cases of emergency, as substitute for his father or one of his father's colleagues, though the conjecture is not borne out by reliable record. There is no doubt, however, that loosely repeated anecdotes have given rise to considerable false impression on the point. The notion which has been partially prevalent, that Jakob made systematic use of his boy from a tender age, employing his gifts for the family benefit, is warmly repudiated by those who have the best means of knowing the circumstances. 'With the best will,' says Christian Otterer, who, about twelve years Johannes' senior, has till lately led an active professional life, and retains a bright and unclouded remembrance of old days, 'I cannot recollect that Johannes played, as a young child, in Lokals. I was daily with his father at the time, and must have known if it had been the case. Jakob was a quiet and respectable man, and kept Hannes closely to his studies, and as much as possible withdrawn from notice.'

'It cannot be true,' said Mrs. Cossel repeatedly, referring to such tales; 'my husband never mentioned such a thing to me when speaking of Johannes' childhood; and even if it had been proposed, I am sure he would never have allowed it.' Two authentic sources of information, however, establish the fact that from the age of about thirteen the boy regularly fulfilled engagements of the kind. The earnings derived from them were eagerly contributed to the general family fund.

A glimpse of him at this period is furnished by Christian Miller,[11] then a young musical student, who has related that he used to play for a small payment on Sunday afternoons during the summer of 1846, at a restaurant in Bergedorf, near Hamburg. Miller heard him there, and, fascinated by his performance, begged to be allowed to play duets with him. After this the two lads met frequently until Miller left Hamburg to become a pupil of the Leipzig Conservatoire. The companionship would seem to have been tolerated rather than actively desired by Johannes, who rarely spoke when out walking with Miller, but was accustomed to march along hat in hand, humming!

The reader will not have forgotten the band of six members which had, during the late thirties, delighted the fashionable loungers of the Jungfernstieg, patrons of the Alster Pavilion. Its activity had been continuous up to the year 1842, when the disastrous fire which broke out in Hamburg during the night of May 4-5, and was not extinguished till the morning of the 8th, destroying the churches of St. Nicholas and St. Peter, St. Gertrude's Chapel, the Guildhall, the old Exchange, the Bank, and over 1,200 dwelling-houses and warehouses, had interrupted the pleasant labours of the musicians. The Alster Pavilion had miraculously been left untouched by the flames, whilst the Alster Halle, a similar establishment close by, had been razed to the ground; and the demolition of the row of shops and houses on the Jungfernstieg had changed the agreeable promenade into a scene of ruin. Little could be thought of in the city for a time save how to meet and repair the ravages inflicted by the calamity, which had stricken the grave citizens of Hamburg with dismay, and made an impression of mixed bewilderment and awe upon the sensitive soul of our little Hannes that was never completely effaced. Gradually, however, public edifices and private houses were rebuilt, Hamburg was restored and beautified, and long before the year 1847, at which our story has arrived, the little orchestra had again become used to assemble, though with a somewhat changed personnel, in the familiar room of the Pavilion, to discourse in lively strains before the ever-shifting guests of the establishment. Jakob retained his position as bass player, and, from his long association with the house, had come to be regarded as an important support to its artistic attractions.

Amongst the most faithful patrons of the Pavilion concerts of this period was a certain Herr Adolph Giesemann, owner of a paper-mill and a small farm in the not very distant country townlet of Winsen-an-der-Luhe. He was in the habit of paying frequent business visits to Hamburg, and, being very fond of music, a performer on the guitar, and the possessor of a good voice, liked nothing better than to spend a leisure hour on the Jungfernstieg listening to a movement of Haydn or Mozart. A familiar acquaintance had grown up between him and Brahms. Giesemann willingly listened to Jakob's eager talk about the achievements of Johannes and the promise of his younger brother Fritz. He had a little daughter of his own at home in Winsen, and hoped she might some day be able to take her part in the private musical doings there—at any rate, learn to play the piano well enough to accompany his guitar. One evening in spring Jakob approached him with a request. His Hannes had found constant employment during the past winter in playing the piano until well into the night in the dancing-rooms of various Hamburg Lokals, and the something under two shillings earned by each engagement had amounted to a valuable addition to the scanty family means. But the late hours had told sadly upon his health. Now the work had ceased for a time, and the little toiler could be spared from home. Would Giesemann give him a few weeks' holiday at Winsen? The boy's musical services would be at his command in return. He could accompany him, play to him, and give pianoforte lessons to the little Lischen, a year younger than himself.

Giesemann's kind heart was instantly touched. He had no need to think twice about his own reply, and could answer for that of his wife. Johannes was to be made ready to accompany him back to Winsen after his next visit to Hamburg, which would take place very soon.

And so, in the bright springing month of May, when the buds were bursting and the birds singing, and the gray skies of Hamburg beginning to show a little blue, our dear Hannes took his departure from his big, busy native city to taste for the first time the delights of a free country life, with a kind little sister as companion. He never for a moment felt like a visitor on his arrival, but forgot his constitutional shyness, becoming a child of the house to be petted and brought back to health by fresh air and good food and Frau Giesemann's motherly care. Lischen was at school all the morning, but this was quite a good thing. Hannes had his tasks to attend to also, and could not afford to lose time, for Jakob had made such arrangements as were at his limited command to ensure that his boy's general progress should not suffer by the holiday.

Fresh air, however, was all-important, so he had come provided with a small dumb keyboard for the mechanical exercise of his fingers, and every day after breakfast, after he had got through such practice as had to be done in the house, Frau Giesemann used to turn him into the fields with a bag slung over his shoulder, containing his books and lunch, the clavier under his arm, the notebook, without which he never stirred anywhere, peeping from his pocket, and orders not to show himself again till dinner-time. Johannes had already been enjoying himself out of doors long before this hour. He used to rise at four o'clock, and begin his day by bathing in the river. Joined not long afterwards by Lischen, the two would spend a couple of delightful hours rambling about, discovering birds' nests and picking flowers. Johannes was quite a simple child in spite of his fourteen years and hard experience, and revelled in the happy days passed amidst sunshine, wild blossoms, and fragrant air. He was very pale and thin, and had little strength on his arrival, but soon gained flesh and colour, to which the glass of fresh milk put by for him every day no doubt contributed. The animals about the place—the cows and pigs, the big dog, the doe—gave him great delight, and he was charmed when the crane spread its wings and flew high overhead as he and Lischen approached it, clapping their hands. He liked to join in the games with which the children of Winsen amused themselves by the river-side on cool summer evenings, but could not be persuaded to take part in the boys' rough sport, and would only play with the girls. The lads, of course, despised him for this, telling him he was no better than a girl himself; but he did not seem to mind, and continued quietly to follow his inclination. One evening, however, soon after his arrival, before he had picked up much strength, as he was returning with several children from wading in the river, Lischen well on in front, one or two rough boys set on him, emptied his pockets, and robbed him of all his possessions, even of the precious pocket-book. He could not help crying at this, but Lischen, seeing him standing on the bank rubbing his knuckles into his eyes, soon found out what was the matter, and, dashing back into the water, forced the molesters to restore everything to her. To the pocket-book Johannes confided his inspirations on every subject. Sometimes it was a melody, sometimes a line or two of verse, that occurred to him. Then, whether he were walking, or climbing trees, or practising, or doing his lessons, out came the book that the idea might be fixed on the spot.

It was not long before his musical talents awakened the admiration of the neighbourhood. There was a pleasantly situated Lokal at Hoopte, a village about two miles from Winsen, which contained a large apartment suitable for dancing and music. This and one or two adjoining rooms were annually taken by the Giesemann circle for the Sunday afternoons of the summer season, and after morning church and mid-day dinner as many of the subscribers as felt inclined would meet there to pass a few sociable hours. Johannes soon became the central figure of these occasions. It was found that he could play, not only the most inspiriting music for the dancers, but a variety of solos also, including some lovely waltzes to which it was delightful to listen quietly; and on being asked, one day, to conduct the men's choral society that was to contribute to the afternoon's programme, he showed himself so astonishingly competent for the rôle he consented to assume, and inspired such confidence and sympathy, as he stood before his forces in short jacket and large white turn-down collar, his fair girlish face, with its regular features and shock of long, light hair, adding to the impression made by his childlike manner, that he was unanimously elected conductor of the society for so long as he should remain at Winsen; a period which was, as now decided, to be prolonged until he should be recalled to the recommencement of his autumn duties.

The men's choral society of Winsen consisted of about twelve members, the majority of whom were school-teachers of the neighbouring villages. The teachers Backhaus of Winsen, Albers of Handorf, Schröder of Hoopte, belonged to it; other prominent members were the goldsmith Meyer and the big master-baker Rieckmann, who had a splendid bass voice. The practices were held on Saturdays from six to eight o'clock, generally in Rector Köhler's schoolroom, because it contained a piano, but when this was not available, in the billiard-room of the Deutsches Haus, Winsen's best Lokal. The singers used to stand round the billiard-table, and Johannes would take his place at the top. Lischen was privileged to attend all meetings of the society during the period that her friend officiated as its conductor.

The boy found a most valuable ally in teacher Schröder, who had great talent and love for music, had worked hard at thorough-bass and counterpoint, and been a composer since his fourteenth year. When Johannes came upon a knotty point in his theoretical studies that required discussion, he would walk over to Hoopte and consult Schröder, who was always ready with sympathy and counsel. He had not returned late one evening from an expedition of the kind, and Giesemann, becoming uneasy, was about to start in search of his young guest, when up drove Mr. Carriage-overseer Löwe from Pattenzen, a few miles away. 'Here is your Johannes,' he cried as the boy jumped from the gig; he went out by the wrong gate this morning and missed his way. I found him asleep by the side of a ditch some distance out on the Lüneburg Heath, the clavier by his side and the notebook fallen from his pocket; lucky they had not all rolled in together!'

The theoretical exercises and the little compositions for voices on which Marxsen encouraged his pupil to try his hand were regularly carried to Altona, for, with Marxsen's concurrence and the advice of the schoolmaster Hoffmann, it had been arranged that Johannes should go every week by steamboat to Hamburg and remain there two nights, which allowed him a clear day for his music-lessons and for general private instruction. Now and then Lischen was invited to accompany him, and to share sister Elise's tiny chamber in the Brahms' little dwelling on the Dammthorwall. The journeys were easily managed, for 'Uncle' Adolph Giesemann's brother, manager of the restaurant at the Winsen railway-station, was also contractor for the refreshment department of the steamboat service to and from Hamburg, and nothing could be simpler than for one or both of the children to go and return as his friends. Frau Giesemann used to see that they started with a liberal supply of 'belegtes Brödchen,' a crusty roll cut through, buttered, and put together again, with slices of cold meat, sausage, cheese, or what not, between the two halves. Their friend the restaurateur provided each of them, at the proper time, with a large mug of thin coffee, and Lischen and Hannes, sitting together in the bottom of the boat, thoroughly enjoyed these picnic dinners.

Johannes always began the day after his arrival at Hamburg by exercising his fingers on the upright piano that stood against the parlour wall, on the music-desk of which a book invariably stood open, into which he poked his head—for he was very near-sighted—reading as he worked. Lischen saw little of him afterwards, for his time was occupied by his various lessons, but she did not mind this. She soon became very fond of his dear, kind old mother, and liked to watch her at her duties, sometimes able to help her by fetching water from the pump at the bottom of the steps outside the house, a task which Johanna's lameness prevented her from performing herself. Lischen much admired the portrait of Frau Brahms that hung above the piano, and thought, as she looked at the youthful figure arrayed in a pink dress made Empire fashion, with flowing skirt, short waist, and low neck, the hair dressed with little curls in front and a high comb behind, that Hannes' mother must have been very pretty in her youth. The parlour was rather bare, containing little beyond the piano, table, chairs, a few shelves filled with books, and one or two small prints; but Lischen did not think this mattered, as everything was so neat and shining. She felt sorry, however, that it was so dark, and that its one small window had no other prospect than a close, dreary courtyard—for Johanna still had her little shop in front—and proposed to Hannes that they should bring some scarlet-runners from Winsen, which could be planted in the courtyard and trained up sticks. There would soon be something bright in front of the parlour window. Johannes greatly approved of the plan, which worked well up to the planting of the beans and the placing of some immensely high sticks in readiness for the training. After this stage it disappointed expectations, as the plants failed to do their part and firmly abstained from growing.

It would have been impossible for Johannes to pass with entire enjoyment through the months of his visit to Winsen if he had been without the means of gratifying a taste hardly less strong in him than his passion for music. From the very early age at which he was first able to read, he had been devoted to books, and, whilst showing the child's natural preference for the romantic and wonderful, had displayed strange discrimination in the choice of his favourite tales. He had always contrived by some means or other to provide himself with reading material, preferring books for his little birthday and Christmas gifts, buying them from time to time from pedlars' wheelbarrows with his collection of halfpennies, or begging the loan of a volume from a friend. Brahms' exceptional knowledge of the Bible grew from the time when, as a young child, he was accustomed to eat his dinner with the book lying open beside his plate, absorbed in the Old Testament stories which were then his prime favourites, misty speculations forming in his brain which laid the foundation of his future attitude towards many of life's problems. He had not been long at Winsen before he had exhausted the mental nourishment afforded by Uncle Giesemann's collection of volumes. Fortunately, another resource was at hand. There was a lending library in the neighbourhood belonging to a certain Frau Löwenherz, a Jewess, who had a son called Aaron. With Aaron the two children made friends, and of him, in the absence of sufficient funds to pay the full price of a constant supply of literature, they sought counsel. He proved an able adviser, and, whilst promising to obtain for them access to the coveted books, showed that he was not wanting in the capacity of turning opportunity to profit on his own account. He promised that he would, on his private responsibility, bring one volume at a time for the perusal of Hannes and Lischen, to be put back when done with and replaced by another; the price demanded and agreed to for this secret service being one groschen (about a penny) for each supply.

By this expedient Hannes and Lischen—the latter having probably been the active partner in striking the bargain, for Johannes had few spare pennies—found themselves provided with as many books as they could desire. Their best time for reading was when they sat together by the river-bank, or fished in the pond during the afternoon. Forgetting their rods, they used to pore silently over the open book supported between them, devouring one tale after another of knights and tournaments, outlaws and bandits. Aaron received very particular instruction as to the kind of selections he was to make, and took pains to suit the taste of his patrons. He appeared one afternoon with a volume containing the history of 'The Beautiful Magelone and the Knight Peter with the Silver Keys.' That was a red-letter day in the history of the young subscribers to the lending library which neither Hannes nor Lischen ever forgot. The romance made an indelible impression on both of them. As for bandits, what better could Johannes desire than a work bearing the stimulating title of 'The Robbers,' which Aaron offered another day, insisting with justifiable pride on the success of his researches? The book was written by one Schiller, and proved so satisfactory that Hannes begged Aaron to be on the look-out for other volumes bearing this name on the title-page.

It might be expected that the young conductor of the Winsen Choral Society and the pupil of the distinguished musician of Altona would turn his studies to account by writing something for the use of his choir, and so it was. Johannes composed an 'ABC' four-part song for his school-teachers, consisting of thirty-two bars in two-four time, preceded by three bars of introduction and followed by a kind of signature. The introduction and first three of the four eight-bar phrases had for their text the letters of the alphabet arranged, first in order, and then in syllables of two letters as in a first spelling lesson; the fourth phrase was set to a few words introduced at random. The composition closed with the words 'Winsen, eighteen hundred seven and forty,' sung in full chorus, lento and fortissimo, on the reiterated tonic chord. The little composition, tuneful and spirited, showing a feeling for independent part-writing, and conceived in a vein of boyish fun that was fully appreciated by the teachers, was soon succeeded by a second, 'The Postilion's Morning Song,' composed to the well-known words 'Vivat! und in's Horn ich stosse.' The young musician was also requested by a deputation from the school-children of Winsen to assist them in the performance of a serenade with which they were desirous of greeting their Rector Köhler on his birthday. He accordingly looked out one suitable to the occasion, arranged it in two parts, practised the boys and girls until they were perfect with it, and conducted the performance outside the Rector's house on the eve of the birthday celebration. He was very strict and serious when engaged in these professional duties, beat time with great verve, and insisted on careful observance of the pianos and fortes, as well as on the proper graduation of the rallentandos. The singing of the Ständchen was declared brilliantly successful by the quite considerable audience that assembled near the Rector's house to enjoy it.

Rumours of the increased musical activity of Winsen could not fail to reach the ears of the Amtsvogt, Herr Blume, an official of good social standing residing there, whose duties, as administrator of some of the rural districts of northern Hanover, brought him into touch with the life of such parts of the country as were included in his circuit. Herr Blume was not far short of seventy when Johannes paid his first visit to the Giesemanns, but his interest in music and love for Beethoven's art were as strong as ever, and Johannes, before leaving Winsen, was invited to his house, and pressed to use his piano for practice. The boy delighted the Amtsvogt by playing with him some four-hand pianoforte arrangements of Beethoven's works, and won the heart of Frau Blume, in spite of his shy, awkward manner, by his simple, childlike nature. If, as was hoped, he should be able to repeat his visit to Uncle Giesemann next year, he was to come often to the Blumes' house, and use the piano as long as he liked. Great regret was felt throughout the circle of Winsen friends at the news of the young musician's impending departure, but the arrival of autumn brought with it the necessity for the resumption of duties in Hamburg, and nothing remained save to hope for a renewal of the pleasures his long visit had brought to many beside himself.

Johannes returned to his home in such a satisfactory condition of health and spirits that he was able, with Marxsen's approval, to take a decided step forward in his career. He played in the Apollo Concert-room on November 20, at a benefit concert given by Birgfeld, already known to our readers as the violinist of the subscription concert at the 'Old Raven,' performing Thalberg's Fantasia on airs from 'Norma.' Marxsen's affection for his pupil and appreciation of his gifts are clearly to be read in the summary of concerts which appeared a week later in the Freischütz, a widely-read Hamburg paper to which he was one of the chief contributors:

'Birgfeld's concert is said to have been interesting and enjoyable as regards both the vocal and instrumental portions of the programme. A very special impression was made by the performance of one of Thalberg's fantasias by a little virtuoso called J. Brahms, who not only showed great facility, precision, clearness, power, and certainty, but occasioned general surprise and obtained unanimous applause by the intelligence of his interpretation.'

On the 27th of the same month, Johannes appeared in the small room of the Tonhalle at a concert of the pianist Frau Meyer-David, whom he assisted in the performance of a duet for two pianofortes, also by Thalberg, whose fame was at this time at its height. Marxsen's influence is again apparent in the special mention of Johannes in the Freischütz review, though it is evident, from the misspelling of the name, that he was not the writer of the notice:

'The duet performed by the concert-giver and the young pianist Bruns, who lately appeared for the first time in public with such marked success, gave satisfaction, and was played with laudable unity and facility.'

With the exception of a mere record of the same performance in the Hamburger Nachrichten, no further mention of Johannes is to be found in the newspapers of the winter 1847-48. It was passed by the young musician in much the same routine of severe study by day and fatiguing labour by night as the previous one had witnessed. He was, however, spared in the spring for another visit to the Giesemanns' house, to which he returned as to a second home. The members of the choral society were delighted to welcome their conductor, who, in the course of the season, added to their répertoire by arranging two folk-songs for use at the practices. These must be accepted as the earliest recorded illustrations of the partiality for national songs and melodies which remained one of the great composer's most characteristic traits, and which culminated, less than three years before his death, in the publication, in seven books, of his well-known collection of German Volkslieder.

Johannes was frequently at the Blumes' this year, and often played duets with the Amtsvogt. Lischen's pianoforte lessons were not resumed, as they had not been attended by any great result. It was difficult to confine her to the house to practise on bright summer afternoons, when she longed to be enjoying herself out of doors. She never entirely forgot what Johannes had taught her on his first visit, however, and continued to be very fond of music. It was hoped that by-and-by it might be possible to have her voice thoroughly trained. Johannes felt sure it would develop into a fine one.

Meanwhile she succeeded in procuring for her companion the greatest pleasure he had as yet experienced. He wanted very much to hear an opera, and Lischen thought she would like it, too, so one day, when they were going together to Hamburg, she persuaded her father to stand treat for two places in the gallery. It was to be a great night. Formes, then of Vienna, had been secured for a few weeks by the managers of the Stadt Theater (the opera-house of Hamburg), and was making a great sensation. Lischen and Hannes were to hear him in 'Figaro's Hochzeit,' the title-rôle of which was one of his great parts. They started early from the house on the Dammthorwall, supplied by Frau Brahms with some buttered rolls, and waited for two hours in the street before the door opened, which was part of the pleasure. They got capital places, and enjoyed sitting in the gallery before the performance, looking at the house and seeing the people come in. But when the music began Johannes was almost beside himself with excitement, and Lischen has never to this day forgotten his joy. 'Lischen, Lischen, listen to the music! there never was anything like it!' Uncle Adolph was made so happy when he heard all about the evening and perceived the delight he had given, that he said the visit to the opera must be repeated, and accordingly the pair of friends went a little later on, to hear Kreutzer's 'Das Nachtlager von Granada,' which both of them enjoyed very, very much.

Johannes was not able to stay so long at Winsen this year as last, and still greater sadness was felt as the day drew near on which his visit would terminate, as it was the last of the kind he would pay. It was his confirmation year. He was past fifteen now, his general school education was finished, and he was to take his position in the world as a musician who had his way to make and would be expected to contribute regularly to the support of his family and the education of his brother Fritz, destined for a pianist and teacher. He copied out the four-part songs, dedicated to the Winsen Choral Society, beautifully, as a parting present to Lischen, putting headings to each in splendid caligraphy, and adding her name with a special inscription. Lischen treasured the manuscripts long after she had become a wife and mother, in memory of a happy episode of her youth.

There was a solemn farewell ceremony at the last meeting of the choral society, which took place at the Deutsches Haus. After the conclusion of the practice, the conductor addressed his singers in a poem written by himself for the occasion, which began with the line: 'Lebt wohl, lebt wohl, ihr Freunde schlicht und bieder' (Farewell, farewell, ye friends upright and simple). An instant's sorrowful silence followed; then there was a tremendous stamping and clapping and shouting, and the big master-baker Rieckmann, calling out, 'Here, young one!' hoisted Johannes over his shoulder pickapack, and marched several times round the table, followed by Lischen and the other members of the society singing a last chorus.

It was the concluding scene of Johannes' childhood, which had been unusually protracted, in spite of its drawbacks; but, as everybody said, he was to come often again to Winsen, and whenever he should be able to take a short relaxation from the serious duties of life awaiting him, he would know where to find a number of friends ready to greet his arrival amongst them with heartiest welcome.

CHAPTER III
1848-1853

Johannes' first public concert—Years of struggle—Hamburg Lokals—Louise Japha—Edward Reményi—Sonata in F sharp minor—First concert-tour as Reményi's accompanist—Concerts at Winsen, Celle, Lüneburg, and Hildesheim—Musical parties in 1853—Leipzig and Weimar—Robert Schumann—Joseph Joachim.

It was on September 21 that Johannes made his fresh start in life by giving a concert of his own, thus presenting himself to his circle as a musician who was now to stand on an independent footing. It took place in the familiar room of the 'Old Raven,' 'Herr Honnef's Hall,' with the assistance of Marxsen's friends, Madame and Fräulein Cornet, and some instrumentalists of Hamburg. The price of tickets was one mark (about a shilling), and the programme, as printed in the Hamburger Nachrichten of the 20th, was as follows:

Unattractive as it now seems, this selection of pieces was no doubt made with a view to the taste of the day, and the inclusion of a single Bach fugue was probably a rather daring concession to that of the concert-giver and his teacher. The two vocal numbers from 'Figaro' may be accepted as echoes of the boy's delight on the evening of his recent first visit to the opera. No record remains of the result of the concert, but its success may fairly be inferred from the fact that it was followed, in the spring of 1849, by a second, for which the price of the tickets was increased to two marks. This was announced twice in the Nachrichten as follows:

'The undersigned will have the honour of giving a musical soirée on April 14 in the concert-room of the Jenisch'schen Haus (Katharine Street, 17), for which he ventures herewith to issue his invitation. Several of the first resident artists have kindly promised their assistance to the programme, which will be published in this journal.

'J. Brahms, Pianist.'

The programme was appended to the third and last advertisement of April 10:

The performance of Beethoven's 'Waldstein' sonata, Op. 53, was regarded long after the close of the forties, as a great technical feat, and, taken together with the execution of the 'Don Juan' fantasia, would represent something near the height of the pianistic virtuosity of the time, whilst with the Fantasia on a favourite waltz the concert-giver made his first public entrée as a composer. This work must be identified with the variations on a favourite waltz mentioned by La Mara as having been played at his concert by the young Brahms, of which one variation took the form of a 'very good canon.' Marxsen's notice of the concert in the Freischütz of April 17 was the only one that appeared:

'In the concert given by J. Brahms, the youthful virtuoso gave most satisfactory proofs of advancement in his artistic career. His performance of Beethoven's sonata showed that he is already able to devote himself successfully to the study of the classics, and redounded in every respect to his honour. The example of his own composition also indicated unusual talent.'

Although the report adds that the room was so full as to oblige many listeners to be content with seats in the ante-room, it is probable that the young musician found concert-giving more vexatious and expensive than useful or profitable. Though he appeared from time to time at the benefit-concerts of other artists, and repeated his own fantasia at one given on December 6 by Rudolph Lohfeldt, his third soirée in Hamburg, given under conditions of which he could not at this time have dared to dream, did not take place till after the lapse of another decade. The four or five years immediately succeeding his formal entry into life were, perhaps, the darkest of Brahms' career. Money had to be earned, and the young Bach-Mozart-Beethoven enthusiast earned it by giving wretchedly-paid lessons to pupils who lacked both talent and wish to learn, and by his night drudgery amid the sordid surroundings of the Hamburg dancing-saloons.

It was an amelioration in his life and a step forward in his career, when he was engaged by the publisher, August Cranz, as one of several contributors to a series of popular arrangements of light music, published under the name 'G. W. Marks.' We have read in Widmann's pages of the spirit in which the great composer, a few years before his death, recalled these passages of his struggling youth:

'He could not, he said, wish that it had been less rough and austere. He had certainly earned his first money by arranging marches and dances for garden orchestras, or orchestral music for the piano, but it gave him pleasure even now, when he came across one of these anonymously circulating pieces, to think that he had devoted faithful labour and all the knowledge at his command, to such hireling's work. He did not even regard as useless experience that he had often had to accompany wretched singers or to play dance music in Lokals, whilst he was longing for the quiet morning hours during which he should be able to write down his own thoughts. "The prettiest songs came to me as I blacked my boots before daybreak."'

And if the master could so speak and think of his early trials, must not we, who are, perhaps, the richer through them, treasure the remembrance of the nights of uncongenial toil through which he passed to become, even on the threshold of life, its conqueror and true possessor? The iron entered his soul, however, and the impression derived from his night work remained with him till death. He was accustomed to read steadily through the hours of his slavery. Placing a volume of history, poetry, or romance on the music-desk before him, his thoughts were away in a world of imagination, whilst his fingers were mechanically busy with the tinkling keys. He did not lift his eyes to the scene before him after his first entrance, though there were times when he felt it with shuddering dismay. It is, however, right to repeat that, as we have hinted in a previous chapter, this kind of industry was a more or less recognised means by which struggling musicians of the class to which Jakob Brahms belonged, were enabled to help their needy circumstances, and it would not be difficult to name more than one executant afterwards well known who fulfilled similar engagements in youth. The position of Johannes was not in itself exceptional, though the contemplation of it is now startling from its contrast with his tender nature, his sensitive genius, and the great place which he ultimately won.

An engagement of which Kalbeck speaks, to act as accompanist behind the scenes and on the stage of the Stadt Theater, may have been less irksome to the young musician than his other hack work, and it is possible to believe that the experience drawn from it may have been of some appreciable value to him in after-life, even though his artistic development did not result in dramatic composition. Evidence is not wanting, however, to show that he kept his thoughts steadily fixed upon the higher practical possibilities of his profession, and that, though his position continued very obscure, it did not remain at a standstill. His terms to pupils increased to about a shilling a lesson, and occasionally he was able to get more. Every now and then he obtained a small concert-engagement, or officiated at a private party, and on one occasion he appeared with Otto Goldschmidt, the then leading pianist of Hamburg, who was about four years his senior, in a performance of Thalberg's duet for two pianofortes on airs from 'Norma.'

Conditions at home remained unfavourable for practice, and Johannes now worked regularly at the establishment of Messrs. Baumgarten and Heinz, where an instrument was always at his service. Here, one day, he met Fräulein Louise Japha, who remembered the circumstance, already recorded in these pages, of having heard him play five or six years previously as a child of eleven. A talk ensued, a sympathetic note was struck, and a comradeship quickly grew up between the two young musicians. Louise, born in 1826, and therefore some seven years the senior of Johannes, was possessed of high musical endowment. At the time of which we write, she was the pupil of Fritz Wahrendorf for pianoforte, and of William Grund for theory and composition. She achieved eminence later on, becoming well known in Germany and a great favourite with the public of Paris. Frau Dr. Langhans-Japha is now not far from eighty, but there is still a peculiar charm in her playing, which is especially distinguished by beauty of tone and phrasing. Her competent sympathy was a valuable addition to young Brahms' pleasures in life, in the days when he knew little of congenial artistic companionship. They met constantly to play duets and compare notes as to their compositions, for Louise was a song-writer of ability. Johannes used to discuss with her both his favourite authors and his manuscripts. One day it was a long exercise in double counterpoint that he brought to show her, another day a pianoforte solo. On a third occasion he produced a pianoforte duet in several movements, which he begged her to try with him, and, acknowledging its authorship at the close of the performance, asked her opinion of the work. This proving generally favourable, the composer, going more into detail, took exception to one of his themes, which he feared was rather 'ordinary'; but when Louise was half inclined to agree with him, he cried angrily: 'Why did you not say so yourself? Why was I obliged to ask you?'

He was always composing, and as time went on, was ably guided by Marxsen to the practice of the large musical forms, over which he soon acquired conspicuous mastery, showing extraordinary facility in applying to them the skill he had gradually attained in free contrapuntal writing, whilst allowing to his fancy the stimulus of the classical-romantic literature that appealed with special force to his imagination. 'It came into my head after reading so-and-so,' he would say. The whole of his small amount of spare cash was devoted to the purchase of second-hand volumes from the stalls to be found in the Jews' quarter of Hamburg, and what he bought he read. Sophocles and Cicero, Dante and Tasso, Klopstock and Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, Eichendorff, Chamisso, Pope, Young, and many other poets, were represented in the library collected by him between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one.[12] His favourite romances were those of Jean Paul and E. T. A. Hoffmann, whose influence over his mind is easily recognisable in the published compositions of his first period. No other work on which he might be engaged, however, prevented him from the composition of many songs. He threw one off after another. 'I generally read a poem through very slowly,' he said to Louise, 'and then, as a rule, the melody is there.'

Fräulein Japha was before her time in conceiving an enthusiasm for Schumann's art, and tried hard to win over Johannes to an appreciation of its beauties, but he was too entirely under the influence of Marxsen, who, in training him as a composer rightly proceeded on strictly orthodox lines, to become a present convert. He, on his part, made efforts to induce Louise to change her teachers and put herself under his master. She had quite other views, however. Schumann and his wife paid a visit to Hamburg in 1850, appearing several times in public, and Louise resolved that if it could be made possible, she would enter on a fresh course of study of composition and the piano under the two great artists respectively. She only waited for a convenient opportunity to carry out her plan. Johannes approached Schumann in another fashion, by sending a packet of manuscripts to his hotel and begging for his opinion. It is no wonder that the master, who was besieged on all sides during his week's stay, found no time to look at them, and returned the parcel unopened.

It must not be supposed that the young Brahms was always so companionable as we have shown him when in the society of his chosen friends. He had his moods. Christian Miller's early experiences of his persistent taciturnity had not been exceptional. He spent a few evenings at the Japhas' house, but Louise's family, her sister Minna only excepted, by no means took a fancy to her favourite. One evening, when he was about eighteen, a gentleman of the Japha circle, who had been interested in hearing him play the scherzo now known as Op. 4, the earliest written of his published instrumental works, accompanied him on the way home, and made repeated but quite hopeless efforts after sociability. Not one word would Johannes say. Perhaps he felt subsequent secret prickings of conscience, for he made confession to Louise, though not in any apparently repentant spirit. 'One is not always inclined to talk,' he said; 'often one would rather not, and then it is best to be silent. You understand that, don't you?' 'No, you were very naughty,' she told him, but forgave him nevertheless. She could overlook his occasional whims. She perceived his genius, admired his candid nature, and felt her heart warm to him when he talked to her of the old mother to whom he was devoted, and of Marxsen, whom he revered with all the enthusiastic loyalty of his true heart. Soon after his walk with the Japhas' friend he had a chance opportunity of playing his scherzo to Henry Litolff, who bestowed high praise on the composition.

Meanwhile the friends at Winsen faithfully remembered their young musician. Uncle Adolph and friend Schröder seldom missed going to see him when occasion brought either of them to Hamburg, and Lischen came over to be introduced to Madame Cornet and Marxsen. Johannes persevered in his desire that her voice should be trained for the musical profession, and wished her to obtain a good opinion on the subject. The verdict of the authorities proved, however, unfavourable to the project.

Of the general invitation to visit the Giesemanns Brahms gladly availed himself, staying sometimes for a few days, sometimes in the summer for a week or two, as his occupations allowed. He was never again able to undertake the choral society, but there was always a great deal of music at the Amtsvogt's house when he was at Winsen, as well as at the Giesemanns' and Schröders'. Town-musician Koch was a good violinist, and but too happy to have the chance of playing the duet sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with such a colleague, and every now and again compositions were looked out in which Uncle Giesemann could take part with his guitar. Pretty Sophie Koch, the younger of the town-musician's two daughters, took great interest in these artistic doings, and it was rumoured, as time went on, that her fondness for music was not untinged by a personal element connected with the Giesemanns' popular guest. If this were so, Johannes himself was probably the last person to become observant of it. He was wholly absorbed in his profession, and several quite independent informants have concurred in describing him to the author as being, at this time of his life, something less than indifferent to the society of ladies, and especially of young ones. For his early playmate, Lischen, his affection continued unchanged, and with her he remained on the old terms of frank and cordial friendship.

It happened as a natural consequence of the political revolution which took place early in the year 1848 in Germany and Austria, that, during the year or two following its speedy termination, there was an influx into Hamburg and its neighbourhood of refugees on their way to America. Conspicuous among them were a number of Hungarians of various sorts and degrees, who found such sympathetic welcome in the rich, free merchant-city that they were in no hurry to leave it. Some of them remained there for many months on one pretext or another, and amongst these was the violinist Edward Reményi, a German-Hungarian Jew whose real name was Hoffmann.

Reményi, born in 1830, had been during three years of his boyhood a pupil of the Vienna Conservatoire, studying under Joseph Böhm, now remembered as the teacher of Joachim. He had real artistic endowment, and played the works of the classical masters well, if somewhat extravagantly; but something more than talent was displayed in his rendering of the airs and dances of his native country, which he gave with a fire and abandon that excited his hearers to wild enthusiasm. Eccentric and boastful, he knew how to profit to the utmost by his successes in Hamburg, where he created a furore. Johannes, engaged one evening to act as accompanist at the house of a rich merchant, made his personal acquaintance, and Reményi, quickly perceiving the advantage he derived from having such a coadjutor, made overtures of friendship in his swaggering, patronizing way, which were not repulsed by the young pianist. Brahms had, in fact, been fascinated by Reményi's spirited rendering of his national Friskas and Czardas; he was willing that the chance acquaintance should be improved into an alliance, and, on his next visit to the Giesemanns' house, was accompanied by his new friend.

The violinist had connections of his own in the neighbourhood. Begas, a Hungarian magnate, had settled down into a large villa at Dehensen, on the Lüneburg Heath, that had been placed at his disposal for as long a time as he should find it possible to elude or cajole the police authorities, and kept open house for his compatriots and their friends. To his circle Brahms was introduced, and much visiting ensued between Dehensen and Winsen, for one or two musicians staying with Begas were pleased to come and make music with Reményi and Johannes, and to partake of the Giesemanns' hospitality. It was a feather in Brahms' cap, in the eyes of many of his friends, that he had been able to capture for Winsen such a celebrity as Reményi, though they were not all quite of one mind. Lischen, for example, did not care for him at all, but much preferred the tall, handsome fiddler Janovitch, with his flashing black eyes and his velvet jacket, who wrote a splendid characteristic waltz expressly that he might dedicate it to her. The jolly party broke up suddenly at last, running off to take speedy ship for America, for they had heard that the police were on their heels. Johannes, who happened to be at Winsen when this crisis occurred, accompanied them as far as Hamburg, where he remained to pursue his ordinary avocations. Meanwhile the Friskas and Czardas continued to revolve in his brain.

Time went on, the Hungarians were no longer vividly regretted, and somewhere about the autumn of 1852, Brahms was left more lonely than ever by the departure of Louise Japha, who found opportunity to carry out her cherished wish to stay at Düsseldorf, where the Schumanns had now been settled for about two years. Her sister Minna was to accompany her, to carry on the cultivation of her own special gift under Professor Sohn, of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. The thought of losing his friend caused Johannes great sorrow. 'Do not go,' he entreated; 'you are the only person here that takes any interest in me!' His prospects do not seem to have been improving at this time, and his best encouragement must have been derived from his own sense of his artistic progress. This was advancing by enormous strides, the exact measure of which is furnished by the manuscript of the Sonata in F sharp minor now in the possession of Hofcapellmeister Albert Dietrich. It bears the signature 'Kreisler jun.,' a pseudonym adopted by Brahms out of love for the capellmeister Johannes Kreisler, hero of one of Hoffmann's tales, and the date November, 1852.

This work, which, though published later on as Op. 2, was written earlier than the companion sonata known as Op. 1, is, in many of its fundamental characteristics, immediately prophetic of the future master. In it the mastery of form and skill in contrapuntal writing, the facility in the art of thematic development, the strikingly contrasted imaginative qualities—here subtly poetic, there large and powerful—bring us face to face with the artist nature which united in itself high purpose, resolute will, sure capacity, sensitive romanticism, boundless daring. The fancy, however, has not yet crystallized; the young musician has still to pass out of the stage of mental ferment natural to his age before he will be able to mould his thoughts into the concentrated shape which alone can convince the world. The sonata, not perhaps destined ever to become widely familiar, must always remain a treasure to the sympathetic student of Brahms' art, not only by reason of the beauties in which it abounds, but also because it is absolutely representative of its composer as he was at nineteen. We may read his favourite authors in some of its movements without the need of an interpreter, and we know, from his own communication to Dietrich, that the melody of the second movement was inspired by the words of the German folk-song, 'Mir ist leide, Das der Winter Beide, Wald und auch die Haide, hat gemachet kahl.'

It would be difficult, and is fortunately unnecessary, to trace the exact steps of Reményi's career after his flight from Germany. For the purpose of our narrative the facts suffice that he reappeared in Hamburg at the close of 1852, giving a concert in the Hôtel de l'Europe, which does not seem to have created any great sensation, and that he found himself in the same city in the spring of 1853. Brahms, depressed by the hopeless monotony of his daily grind, was no doubt glad enough to see him, and, as his slack time was at hand, it was proposed, perhaps by Reményi, perhaps by Uncle Giesemann, possibly by Johannes himself, that the two musicians should give a concert to their friends in Winsen, who would, no doubt, hail the prospect of such an event, and assist it to the utmost of their power. Communications were opened, and the proposal was not only entertained, but developed, as such ideas are apt to do. If at Winsen, why not also at Lüneburg and Celle? Amtsvogt Blume had influence in both towns, which he would be too happy to exert. In the end, the project expanded into the plan of a concert-tour. Johannes and Reményi would give performances in the three localities named, and from Celle it would be no distance to go on to Hanover, where the twenty-one-year-old Joachim, already a European celebrity, had a post at Court. Reményi had known him for a short time when they had both been boys at the Vienna Conservatoire; they would go and see him. He was bound to welcome his compatriot and former fellow-pupil. Who could tell what might happen?

No doubt Brahms' heart beat fast when he left home on this his first quest of adventure, and probably not the least ardent of his anticipations was that of making the personal acquaintance of the celebrated violinist whose first appearance in Hamburg at the Philharmonic concert of March 11, 1848, with Beethoven's Concerto, remained vividly in his remembrance as one of the few great musical events of his own life. Before starting, he exacted a promise from his mother that she would write to him regularly once a week—not a mere greeting, but a real letter of several pages. It was a serious undertaking for Johanna, who was not practised in penmanship, but she gave her word to Hannes, and found means to keep it. The travellers took but little luggage with them. Such as Johannes carried was made the heavier by his packet of manuscripts, which contained his pianoforte sonata-movements and scherzo, a sonata for pianoforte and violin, a pianoforte trio, a string quartet, a number of songs, and possibly other works. One programme was to suffice for the concert tournée, and this the two artists had in their heads.

The exact date of the Winsen concert is forgotten, apparently beyond chance of recall, but the event may be fixed with certainty as having taken place in the last week of April. Both musicians were the guests of the Giesemanns for several days beforehand, and spent the greater part of their mornings practising together, beginning before breakfast. They gave a great deal of time to the Hungarian melodies, and it would seem as though Johannes had been preparing a pianoforte accompaniment; for they repeated the periods over and over again, Reményi becoming very irritable during the process. The season was a warm one; they worked energetically in their shirt-sleeves, and the violinist more than once drew a scream of pain from his colleague, by bringing the violin bow suddenly down on his shoulder to emphasize the capricious tempo he required. One morning Johannes, very angry, jumped up from the piano, and declared he would no longer bear with Reményi; but the concert came off nevertheless, and turned out a brilliant success. It took place in the large room of the Rusteberg club-house; the entrance fee was about eight-pence, and the profits to be divided came to rather over nine pounds. Beethoven's C minor Sonata for pianoforte and violin headed the programme, and was followed by violin solos; Vieuxtemps' Concerto in E major, Ernst's 'Elégie,' and several Hungarian melodies, all accompanied by Brahms, who, it must be remembered, was but the junior partner in the enterprise. Only one thing was to be regretted. Schröder had been ill, and could not come to Winsen for the concert. He managed, however, to attend a repetition of the programme, which the two artists gave the next day in his schoolroom at Hoopte, expressly in order that he might get some amount of pleasure out of the great doings of the neighbourhood.

The next concert took place on May 2 at Celle. It had been arranged for with the assistance of Dr. Köhler, a well-known inhabitant of the town, probably a relation of the Rector of Winsen, and a friend of Amtsvogt Blume, who, besides seeing through the business arrangements, had neglected no opportunity of arousing general interest in the event. The single public announcement appeared in the Celles'sche Anzeigen of Saturday, April 30:

'Next Monday evening at seven o'clock the concert of the Herren Reményi and Brahms will take place in the Wierss'schen room. The subscription price is 12 g.gr.[13] Tickets may also be obtained of Herr Wierss jun. at Herr Duncker's hotel, and on the evening at the room for 16 g.gr.'

At Celle there was a sensation. The two artists, going, on the morning of May 2, to try their pieces in the concert-room, were dismayed to find that the only pianoforte of which it boasted was in such an advanced state of old age as to be unusable for their purpose. Classical concerts were rare events in Celle, and it had occurred to no one to doubt the excellence of the instrument; a piano was a piano. It was arranged that every effort should be made, during the few hours that remained, to procure a better one, and a better one was actually discovered and sent in just as the hour had arrived for the concert to begin. But a fresh difficulty arose. The second instrument proved to be nearly a semitone below pitch, and Reményi refused to make so considerable a change in the tuning of his violin. What was to be done? The practised and intrepid Johannes made short work of the difficulty. If Reményi would tune his fiddle slightly up, so as to bring it to a true semitone above the piano, he himself would transpose his part of the Beethoven sonata a semitone higher than written, and play it in C sharp instead of C minor. No sooner said than done. The young musician performed the feat without turning a hair, though his colleague allowed him no quarter, and the performance was applauded to the echo. Reményi behaved well on this occasion. Addressing the audience, he related the circumstances in which he and his companion had found themselves placed, and said that all approval belonged by right to Brahms, whose musicianship had saved the situation for everyone concerned. History does not relate whether the young hero transposed his parts throughout the evening, or whether the old instrument was sufficiently serviceable for the accompaniments of the violin solos, and the question does not appear to have suggested itself until the present time, when it cannot be solved. Johannes himself seems to have thought but little of his achievement. Writing presently to let Marxsen know how he was getting on, he mentioned the incident, not as worthy of comment, but as one amongst others.

The day after these events Reményi and Brahms retraced their steps as far as Lüneburg, where they were to remain for a week as the guests of Herr Calculator Blume, son of the Amtsvogt. At his hospitable house they were presented to the musical circle of the town, so far as it included members of the sterner sex. At the earnest persuasion of Brahms, no ladies were invited to the party arranged by Frau Blume in the interests of the forthcoming concert. 'It is so much nicer without them,' he said, and was so serious about the matter that his hostess regretfully gave way to him. He played part of the C major Sonata, on the composition of which he had lately been engaged, on this private occasion, making but little impression with it. Perhaps the double consciousness, which cannot but have been secretly present with him, of his great artistic superiority to Reményi, and of the quite secondary place to which he found himself relegated whenever they appeared together, may have increased the awkward shyness which placed him at such a disadvantage by the side of his colleague. He was incapable of making any effort to assert himself in general society, and attracted little notice from ordinary strangers who had no particular reason for observing him closely. However, everyone behaved very kindly to him throughout the journey. He was certainly a good pianist, and accompanied Reményi delightfully.

The concert was advertised in the Lüneburger Anzeiger of May 7, the twentieth birthday anniversary of our Johannes:

'The undersigned propose to give a concert on Monday evening, the 9th inst., at 7.30, in Herr Balcke's Hall, and have the honour to invite the attendance of the music-loving public. Amongst other things, the concert-givers will perform Beethoven's Sonata for Pianoforte and Violin in C minor, Op. 30, and Vieuxtemps' grand Violin Concerto in E major.

'Tickets to be had,' etc.

'Edward Reményi.
'Johannes Brahms.'

Again a great success was scored, and the next day a second concert 'by general desire' was announced, with the same programme and special mention of the 'Hungarian Melodies,' for Wednesday, May 11. It brought the visit to Lüneburg to a brilliant conclusion, and the performances were again repeated on the 12th at a second concert in Celle, advertised in the Celle journal of the 11th.

With the account of these five soirées, exact record of the public concerts of the journey is exhausted. Neither advertisement nor local recollection of any other can be traced, though Heuberger speaks, on the authority of Brahms' personal recollection, of two given at Hildesheim.[14] The first was very sparsely attended, and the artists, after supping at a restaurant where they seem to have made merry with some companions, paraded the streets with a queue of followers until they arrived underneath the windows of a lady of position who had been their principal patron. Reményi greeted her with some violin solos, the assembled party followed suit with a chorus, and the ingenious advertisement proved so successful that a second concert-venture on the following evening drew a crowded audience. The circumstances thus related point to the conclusion that the first concert at Hildesheim was hastily arranged, and the explanation may be that some unexpected introduction caused the musicians to visit the town. This would fit in with the fact that there is no reference in any Hildesheim journal of the date to Brahms and Reményi, and with the absence of all knowledge, on the part of several persons still living who have personal associations with the journey, of any other concerts than those in Winsen, Lüneburg, and Celle, and of one other of a different kind in Hanover, to which we shall return.