The Life & Legacy of Johannes Brahms. Florence May

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      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, СКАЧАТЬ