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JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–97)
Rhapsody in E- at major, op.
, no.
Six Piano Pieces, op.
When Robert Schumann wrote his
article
“New Paths” in the
Neue Zeitschri für Musik
, he
proclaimed the young Johannes Brahms the new
genius of German music. “Following the paths
of these chosen ones with the utmost interest, it
has seemed to me that, a er such a preparation,
there would and must suddenly appear someday
one man who would be singled out to make ar-
ticulate in an ideal way the highest expression
of our time, one man who would bring us mas-
tery, not as the result of a gradual development,
but as Minerva, springing fully armed from the
head of Cronus. And he is come, a young crea-
ture over whose cradle graces and heroes stood
guard. His name is
Johannes Brahms
.”
At the time of the article, Brahms was attract-
ing attention as a pianist in recitals throughout
Europe with the Hungarian violinist Eduard
Ho mann (known as Ede Reményi). e depth
of expression in Brahms’s playing particularly
a ected Schumann: “Even outwardly, he bore in
his person all the marks that announce to us a
chosen man. Seated at the piano, he at once dis-
covered to us wondrous regions. We were drawn
into a circle whose magic grew on us more and
more. To this was added an altogether inspired
style of playing which made of the piano an or-
chestra of lamenting and exultant voices.”
Many of Brahms’s compositions for the piano
come from these years of growing renown. Not
only did he compose three sonatas and numer-
ous sets of variations, ballades, and dances for
the solo piano, he also wrote for chamber com-
binations that included the piano. When Brahms
le his native Hamburg for Vienna in
, his
interest in solo piano composition shi ed from
the variation and dance forms to freer, more
improvisatory pieces. Nearly all of the later solo
piano works were titled capriccios, intermezzos,
rhapsodies, or fantasies. ese works come from
widely separated dates during his years in Vi-
enna: there were two sets of piano pieces from
– and four sets from
– .
Among Brahms’s last group of solo piano com-
positions were the Six Piano Pieces, op.
, and
Four Piano Pieces, op.
, completed in
at
his summer residence at Ischl, although some
may have been sketched earlier. e penultimate
collection was published later that year by Sim-
rock. Four pieces were entitled intermezzos—a
slower, lyrical type. e third piece is a narrative
ballade, and the h is a lyrical romance.
e valedictory op.
included three inter-
mezzos and a spirited rhapsody. In May
,
Brahms promised to send at least one unidenti-
ed intermezzo from op.
to Clara Schumann:
“It teems with discords.
ese may be all right
and quite explicable, but you may not perhaps
like them, in which case I might wish that they
were less right but more pleasing and more to
your taste. It is exceptionally melancholy, and
to say ‘to be played very slowly’ is not su cient.
Every bar and every note must be played as if
ritardando
were indicated, and one wished to
draw the melancholy out of each one of them,
and voluptuous joy and comfort out of the dis-
cords. My God, how this description will whet
your appetite!”
ALEXANDER SCRIABIN (1872–1915)
Fantasy in B minor, op.
Scriabin entered the class of Nicolai Zverev,
a noted piano teacher and former student of
Tchaikovsky, at the age of twelve.
e register
of Zverev’s pupils included another promising
young pianist, Serge Rachmanino . Scriabin,
older by a year, and Rachmanino pursued par-
allel paths in their musical training: both contin-
ued their studies at the Moscow Conservatory
with Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky, and, at
the time of their graduation in
, Rachmani-
no was awarded the rst gold medal in piano
and Scriabin the second gold medal.
However, the classmates progressed along two
dramatically divergent lines as composers, de-
spite the fact that both displayed a decided pref-
erence for piano composition. Rachmanino
was the traditionalist, the late-blooming Ro-
mantic, who combined technical virtuosity
with sweeping lyricism. Scriabin, on the other
hand, developed an unconventional style in
which radical, coloristic chord formations and
his mystical, theosophic beliefs were united. His
early compositions are indebted to the works of
Chopin, Wagner, and Liszt. Scriabin later broke
from tradition and explored new scale forma-
tions, harmonies, and the association of colors
and music.
Scriabin composed the Fantasy in B minor,
op.
, while serving on the faculty of the Mos-
cow Conservatory. His interest in the philoso-
phy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the theosophy of
Mme. Blavatsky had not yet emerged and would
not a ect his compositions until a er he le
the conservatory in
. A transitional phase
in Scriabin’s writing, leading from the lyricism
and ballade-like textures of Chopin to the highly
chromatic writing of Liszt and Wagner, may be
observed in this fantasy.
Poème
in F-sharp major, op. , no.
Resigning from the Moscow Conservatory in
May
liberated Scriabin from a demanding
set of duties that had severely diminished his
creative output. Income from teaching a large
class of composition students, though, had
helped support his own expanding family. His
wife Vera gave birth to four children between
July
and August
. A year later, during
his summer vacation in Obolenskoye, Scriabin
began an a air with Tatiana de Schloezer. When
Scriabin and his family le Russia to vacation in
Vézenaz, Switzerland, Tatiana took up residence
in a nearby village.
is professional independence and personal
turmoil coincided with a fruitful compositional
period. A er three fallow years, Scriabin once
again wrote freely for the piano in
, an
outpouring that began with the Sonata No. ,
op.
, and continued through a dozen more
opus numbers. Tatiana may have been the inspi-
ration behind his sudden productivity, but it was
Scriabin’s publisher, Mitrofan Belaiev, who was
the ultimate bene ciary.
In the fever of composition, Scriabin held Be-
laiev at arm’s length by reporting: “Among the
masses of music ( pieces, as I told you), there
are some very
big
things. … ey are complicat-
ed and need to be gone over especially carefully.
I have had much trouble with them.” A er the
sonata, small collections of preludes (opp. , ,
, , and ) alternated with
poèmes
(opp.
,
,
, and
), a waltz (op.
), mazurkas
(op.
), and etudes (op.
). Scriabin deliv-
ered this miraculous body of new works—what
scholar A.V. Kashperov called “pearls for the pi-
ano”—to Belaiev in St. Petersburg on his name
day (November ).
The last known photograph of Johannes Brahms
Alexander Scriabin
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