they return without hesitation or sense of inconsistency
to their favourite modes of gambling; having revelled
in the most lovely music in the world, they proceed
to listen nightly to the ugliest and silliest music
in the world. Their appreciation of Bayreuth
is a sham; they would cheerfully go elsewhere—say
to Homburg—if Bayreuth were shut up; and
before long they will go to Homburg or elsewhere,
whether Bayreuth is shut up or not.
It is not an exaggeration to say that probably there
are not a dozen musicians in Europe who have formed
any precise and final opinion as to where Brahms should
be placed. One gets to know him very slowly.
His appearance and manner (so to speak), so extremely
dignified, are very much in his favour; but when one
tries to get to terms of intimacy with him he has
a fatal trick of repelling one by that “austerity”
or chilliness of which we have heard so much.
And the worst of it is that too frequently a sharp
suspicion strikes one that there is little behind
that austere manner—that his reticence does
not so much imply matter held in reserve as an absence
of matter. I do not mean by this that Brahms
was a paradoxical fool who was clever enough to hold
his tongue lest he was found out, nor even that he
purposely veiled his lack of meaning. On the contrary,
a composer who wished more devoutly to be sincere
never put pen to paper. But he had not the intellect
of an antelope; and he took up in all honesty a role
for which he had only the slightest qualification.
The true Brahms, the Brahms who does not deceive himself,
is the Brahms you find in many of the songs, in some
of the piano and chamber music, in the smaller movements
of his symphonies, and in certain passages of his
overtures; and I have no hesitation whatever in asserting
(though the opinion is subject to revision) that his
songs are much the most satisfactory things he did.
Here, unweighted by a heavy sense of a mission, he
either revels in making beautiful—though
never supremely beautiful—tunes for their
own sake, or he actually expresses with beauty and
considerable fidelity certain definite emotions.
Had he written nothing but such small things—songs,
piano pieces, Allegrettos like that in the D symphony—his
position might be a degree lower in the estimation
of dull Academics who don’t count, but he would
be accepted at something like his true value by the
whole world, and the whole world would be the better
for oftener hearing many lovely things. But merely
to be a singer of wonderful songs was not sufficient
for Brahms: he wanted to be a great poet, a new
Beethoven. It was a legitimate ambition.
The kind of music Brahms really loved was the kind
of which Beethoven’s is the most splendid example;
and he wanted to create more of the same kind.
He doubtless thought he could; in his early days Robert
Schumann predicted that he would; and in his later
days his intimate friend Hanslick and a small herd
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