By far the biggest Brahms event in America during the 1870s was the arrival on these shores of the controversial First Symphony. Expectation had long been building in Europe over whether Schumann’s “Messiah” of 1853 could fulfill his mentor’s prophecy and write a worthy successor to Beethoven’s Ninth—or as Schumann put it after hearing Brahms’s expansive early piano sonatas, “when he will lower his magic wand to where the massed forces of chorus and orchestra will lend him their powers, then even more wondrous glimpses into the spirit world will be forthcoming.”1 In one sense Brahms had already fulfilled this prophecy: with the German Requiem of 1867-69 and the other vocal-orchestral works that followed, he had united chorus and orchestra in a manner that transcended the earthly realm. But none of those compositions was a symphony.
“I shall never compose a symphony!” Brahms declared out of frustration to his friend Hermann Levi in the early 1870s. “You have no idea how it feels to our kind when one always hears such a giant [as Beethoven] marching along behind.”2 Nevertheless, in the autumn of 1876, after working on it for at least fourteen years, Brahms finally unveiled his First Symphony—in the same year that Wagner mounted his full Ring cycle. Premiered in Karlsruhe on November 4 with Otto Dessoff conducting, the piece was soon heard in Breslau, Cambridge, Leipzig, London, Mannheim, Munich, and Vienna.
In New York, two of America’s foremost conductors, Theodore Thomas and Leopold Damrosch, vied with each other for the American premiere, with the Damrosch Orchestra winning the race on December 15, 1877, beating its rival, the Thomas Orchestra, by just a week.3 After hearing both performances, the critic for the New York World set the tone for the American reception of the work over much of the next half-decade, acknowledging the demands it places on listeners and raising an issue that remains a topic of critical discussion today—the role of quotation and allusion in the piece. (This and all of the reviews that follow originally appeared uncredited; only in this first instance have we been unable to identify the author.)
NEW YORK WORLD
23 December 1877
The real interest of the evening centered upon the Brahms Symphony, which stood at the head of the programme. There is no living musician about whose compositions there is a greater variety of opinions, or these opinions more changeable, than the same Johannes Brahms. People whose patience is limited, and whose ears itch for taking melodies—well or ill elaborated—may find enchantment at a first hearing of such limpid works as Raff’s “Leonore” Symphony. But let a Brahms “Requiem,” or wonderfully complex and original variations, or symphony, for the first time sound forth, and they will compare the work to muddy water and perhaps sigh for the clearness of a Mozart or a Gluck. But if such a work as the “Leonore” Symphony be performed side by side with a work of like character by Brahms, after a few hearings of both the relations will be reverse. The former work, notwithstanding the almost universal delight it at first arouses, soon becomes comparatively wearisome, while the latter seems to grow more and more beautiful, and adverse judgments of its originality and merits are gradually fused into enthusiastic approval. Almost every one (even of his admirers) is at first disappointed in a new work by Brahms. There is one striking peculiarity about [Brahms’s] works—they at first seem filled from beginning to end with resemblances to familiar themes; and, what is for the time more exasperating, these resemblances seem purposely to have been modified into attempted originality by the concealment of slight changes in form, or color or the like. Many hearers express the hasty judgment that the elaboration and harmonization may be remarkably good, but there is not an original theme to be found. But, with few exceptions, the very passages which at first appear least original will by-and-by thrill these rash judges with feeling and power, not only in themselves, but especially as they are served with all their surroundings. The resemblance will for the most part be seen to consist in turns of phrase, and in combinations of these with coloring familiar in connection with them. But when the coloring changes, and Brahms covers them with the syncopated iridescence of which he is such a master, the resemblances vanish and presently new beauties drive them from the memory. A striking instance is to be found in the introduction (più andante) to the last movement of the symphony, where, over the rippling surface of the pianissimo string orchestra, the ethereal tones of the horns breathe forth with mysterious power. The second and last phrases of the horn passage [mm. 32-33 and 37-38, in C major], in form and color both, irresistibly recall the introduction to Schubert’s C Major Symphony [mm. 6-8, the horn solo]; and the shading of the passage recalls that part of Schubert’s Andante, in the same symphony [mm. 148-160], so particularly admired by Schumann. But when the flute succeeds the horn with the same notes, the resemblance is gone, and we are constrained to acknowledge that there is no want of originality in essence to complain of. Brahms is not a mere copyist of the old masters whom he studies and admires so much…. He thoroughly assimilates what he learns, so that it becomes fused into new truth and beauty, and on reappearing, it is never clumsily managed, and must be acknowledged to be Brahms’s own….
As a general opinion of this symphony, it must be acknowledged to be a great work. If Brahms has more talent than genius, then that talent is nearer to genius than anything we have had since Schumann. While listening to [this] symphony, you get glimpses, but they are mere railroad glimpses, of the great masters, from time to time. Should Brahms be blamed for thus occasionally showing what beautiful landscapes surround his own domain? Not when that to which he has a clear title is so extraordinarily beautiful in itself. The work on this symphony is simply wonderful, and by it Brahms shows himself to be an artist of the highest rank in the use of materials at his command. The colors may often seem thickly crowded together, but study and the choice of proper points of observation will bring out the lines and the perspective with beautiful effect.4
The following month, Brahms’s symphony was played three times in Boston—two well meaning attempts, on January 3 and 31, by the Harvard Musical Association Orchestra under the direction of Carl Zehrahn (a conductor said to have had “a convincing beat with no mannerisms” and to be “a conservative in interpretation”);5 and one performance, on January 16, by the highly trained Theodore Thomas Orchestra, which had taken the piece on tour.6 Several of Boston’s newspapers responded with perceptive reviews. Although the work seemed extremely modern to all ears—William Foster Apthorp later recalled that “Brahms’s C minor symphony made us stare …! I doubt if anything in all music ever sounded more positively terrific [i.e., terrifying] than that slow introduction to the first movement did to us then”—most of Boston’s critics made a sincere effort to grasp its import.7
John Sullivan Dwight (1813-93), the founding father of music criticism in Boston and president of the Harvard Musical Association’s board of directors, had been covering the symphony’s progress for a year on the pages of his influential Dwight’s Journal of Music. He now wrote a perceptive review after each of its three Boston performances.
JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT
Dwight’s Journal of Music
19 January 1878
FIFTH HARVARD SYMPHONY CONCERT. The experiment in the last concert (Jan. 3) of an essentially “modern” programme, in which new works had the lion’s share—in deference for once to the continual complaint of critics and fault finders—afforded small encouragement for following up the “new departure.” There was no increase of (paying) audience; indeed the sale of tickets has been larger in several of the preceding concerts, which offered no such stimulus to curiosity. The season tickets of course are a fixed quantity and count alike in every concert. The holders thereof may have turned out more generally than they had done of late, piqued by the same love of novelty which made professional musicians, and all of the numerous class who are wont to expect “complimentary” admission upon such occasions, eager to hear (themselves and wives) a notable new Symphony. This is all there was in the appearance of a “better house” that afternoon. And when the fact is stated that, of those eager crowds, a large proportion coolly left the hall before the Symphony was half over—(unhandsome conduct, surely, if they were among the clamorers for novelty)—it may well be doubted whether it would be politic, or not rather suicidal, for the management, to play much longer on that string. The truth is, the new music is not popular, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that the demand for it (we mean as publicly expressed in newspapers) is either frivolous or not sincere.—But our business here is with the music of the concert, with the following programme and performance:—
Overture to “Euryanthe”………………………………………Weber
Pianoforte Concerto in A minor, Op. 16……………Edward Grieg
Allegro molto moderato.—Adagio.—Allegro moderato.
William H. Sherwood.
Allegretto, from Third Symphony, Op. 15…………………Gade
Pianoforte Solos:—
Fugue in E minor…………………………………………Handel
Nocturne in F sharp, Op. 15, No. 2…………………Chopin
Scherzo, from Suite, Op. 31………………………………Bargiel
William H. Sherwood.
Symphony, in C minor, Op. 68………………Johannes Brahms
(First time in Boston.)
Un poco sostenuto; Allegro (C minor).
Andante sostenuto (E major).
Poco Allegretto a grazioso (A-flat major).
Adagio (C minor); più Andante; Allegro con brio (C major).
The programme and the concert have been called “splendid” in some quarters where we have long ceased to look for any praise; and the term is not entirely inappropriate. It was at least a brilliant programme, and for the most part brilliantly performed. If any complained of dullness, it was not until they had listened to the middle of the first movement of the long anticipated new Symphony; and that was partly perhaps the fault of Brahms, but quite as much their own fault, or, rather, owing to their own want of preparation and of more familiarity with a work not luminous upon a single hearing….
And now we come to the main feature of the programme, the Brahms Symphony, about which there has been so much discussion, and such sweeping judgments have been uttered both in praise and condemnation, some wildly shouting: “The Tenth Symphony!” [and] others pronouncing it dry, pedantic, depressing and intolerable, a thing which one can hardly sit through with patience.
We must confess that it has grown upon us as we have become more familiar with it through several rehearsals and some study of the score and the four-hand arrangement. It is at least an earnest work. There is matter in it; themes and motives which are pregnant, pertinaciously adhered to and consistently developed. It has a pervading unity of plan and spirit, and grows to a great climax. The musical texture is ingenious, complex and masterly: nothing seems loose or vague. The instrumentation, too, is masterly, although we have not noticed in it any exquisite surprises, any fresh bite of original effect or contrast, such as we get in Gade, or in Liszt, or Raff or Wagner; it is all rather of a uniformly rich, subdued and sombre hue; depth and fulness being the distinctive characteristic, although no extra instruments are employed, with the exception of a Contra-Fagotto, whose place had to be supplied here by the Tuba.
We are sure those who will hear it several times will find the first movement much more interesting than they did on the first hearing, though probably not less depressing. It is difficult to understand at once. The principal theme is hardly like a theme at all, and it is some time before one seizes it and holds it in his mind; the short accessory motives, on the contrary, are positive and pregnant, and continually recur with passionate significance and point. The slow introduction, beginning grandly with chromatic thirds ascending in the strings, descending in the reeds and flutes, while the tympani and basses continually sound the same deep C, in six-eight strong and regular pulsation, foreshadows the coming themes and phrases of the Allegro. It seems indeed as if some august sacrificial ceremony were preparing. This short introduction is, to our mind, one of the finest portions of the Symphony; this and the Finale are the best. But the Allegro is depressing; like most of the new compositions on a large, ambitious scale, it seems to us sick music; it certainly is not music which a sick man may listen to and feel better. It is wearisomely full of chromatics and of restless modulation. Nor do we find in it a positive originality. It is not much akin to Wagner, we were pleased to find; but it suggests older things continually. Schumann’s “Manfred” music was in our mind more hauntingly than any other through the whole first movement; but there were also positive resemblances for a few bars now to the Coriolan and now the Leonora Overture, and frequent floating reminiscences of the Ninth Symphony. And here we may mention, in other parts of the work, a wearisome excess of a certain Schumannish trait: namely those catch-breath rhythms, where the expected accent at the beginning of a measure falls on nothing,—accented silence; a fine effect when sparingly used, but exasperating when it occurs too often.
The Andante (E major) opens in a clearer mood, much as any old master (Haydn, Mozart) might have written, and gives a short-lived promise of an interval of peace and comfort. Only for a few measures! when the sickness and the restlessness return, and still the heart is full of heaviness. Yet many a beautiful detail will reward a closer study; near the beginning, for instance, a peculiar long melodic passage by the oboe continued by the clarinet.—The Allegretto, in its pastoral simplicity,—a quiet Intermezzo in the usual place of the Scherzo—is perhaps the most readily appreciated and most fascinating piece of all. The fond duplication of a measure in each half of the first melodic period, and the blithe answering theme in thirds, have an air of unaffected genuineness. In this simpler music at least you feel that there is heart. But this too grows uneasy ere ’tis done.
It was a pity that so many left the hall before the arrival of the last movement; for it is this that makes the great effect, and leaves the impression that all that went before, however seen as in a glass darkly, was tending steadily to an almost sublime conclusion. The introductory Adagio is a stately preparation of the popular “Joy” theme, so palpably and closely imitated from Beethoven, filling the mind with expectation of relief and the dispersion of the clouds before a brilliant sun. There is a passage in it quite Beethoven-like, where the strings, pizzicato, seem to be groping as on tiptoe in the dark and feeling for a door of exit. And when the time quickens to the più Andante (mark the correct use here of the word Andante, which means going, and not slow) a fascinating phrase rings out from the horn, amid the rustling pianissimo of strings, which is at once echoed by the flute as from the sky above, and thrills one like the sudden omen of a clear day in the East. This is worked out with great power, and then begins the joy theme (Allegro non troppo, but con brio), which, however, we do not find so joyous, nor of so popular a stamp as that in the Ninth Symphony. The development is exceedingly rich, broad and splendid, the horn phrase heard ever and anon in the midst of it, besides many reminiscences of earlier movements. It is comparatively cheerful and exciting, the master movement of the work; and yet we cannot say it seemed to us inspired, inspiring and uplifting, glorious, transporting in the same sense, or the same degree, as the Finale of the Ninth or of the Fifth Beethoven Symphony. And after all, allowing all praise to this last movement, we cannot escape a total impression of the Symphony as something depressing and unedifying, a work coldly elaborated, artificial; earnest to be sure, in some sense great, and far more satisfactory than any Symphony by Raff, or any others of the day, which we have heard; but not to be mentioned in the same day with any Symphony by Schumann, Mendelssohn, or the great one by Schubert, not to speak of Beethoven.
Such is our impression so far; we shall doubtless find more in the work on further hearing; our interest in it will increase, but we foresee the limit; and certainly it cannot become popular; it will not be loved, like the dear masterworks of genius.—A word of hearty praise is certainly due to the Conductor and the Orchestra, for giving us upon the whole so clear and strong a rendering of so wholly new and difficult a work upon such short rehearsal. The musicians took it up with zeal and energy, and generously gave an extra rehearsal in their desire to bring it out as well as possible.8
JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT
Dwight’s Journal of Music
2 February 1878
The Fifth Subscription Concert of Theodore Thomas, took place in the Music Hall on Wednesday evening, Jan. 16. The attendance was but middling and, like all concerts of the kind this season, this one also was apparently unremunerative. The admirable orchestra gave us some of its very best work,—mind, we do not say works: these were good, bad and indifferent, to-wit:
Selected Movements………………………Handel
Hornpipe, Larghetto, Allegro molto.
Masonic Funeral Music………………………Mozart
Symphony, C minor, Op. 68…………Johannes Brahms
Serenade, No. 3, (String Orchestra)…………Volkmann
Violoncello Obligate by Mr. Charles Hemman.
Overture—“Struensée”…………………Meyerbeer
[…]
The Brahms symphony was certainly about as finely rendered as it would be possible to have it in this country, perhaps anywhere. It had been most thoroughly and critically studied and rehearsed; every detail, every phrase in the complex contrapuntal web coming out clear and unmistakable, and the sound of all the reeds and brass was beautifully true and musical; the great Contrafagotto, also, gave new depth and grandeur to some passages. With all the praise for faultless playing, we take it the general audience were not much wiser as to the intrinsic merits of the composition than they were before,—those, we mean, who had heard it played for the first time by our own musicians. It is all cant, a fore-gone conclusion to say that it required this orchestra to give us any right conception of the Symphony. Hearing it repeatedly helps the understanding, and the better orchestra will sound the best whatever work it plays; but no appreciative, intelligently musical person need wait for a perfect orchestra to tell him what the work is in itself, and whether he ought to go into ecstacies about it. We did not find that we admired it any more or any less upon this second public hearing. Interest us it did surely, but uplift and inspire us it did not, not even the last movement. It was still depressing, over-labored, unspontaneous, with more of will than genius in it, more of enterprise and calculation than of the creative spark.
JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT
Dwight’s Journal of Music
16 February 1878
HARVARD MUSICAL ASSOCIATION. The sixth Symphony Concert, after the double pause in the middle of the series often, drew a somewhat larger audience than usual. Whether it indicated the beginning of a revival of the concert appetite here generally, or whether it was the curiosity to hear the Brahms Symphony again, we cannot undertake to say. We think, however, that the whole programme proved enjoyable. It was as follows:
Overture to “The Water-Carrier”………………Cherubini
Aria:—“Il mio tesoro” from “Don Giovanni”…………Mozart
Alfred Wilkie.
Overture—“The Naiads”………………Sterndale Bennett
Songs, with Piano-forte:—
The Garland ………………………Mendelssohn
The Hidalgo ………………………Schumann
Alfred Wilkie.
Symphony, in C minor, Op. 68 ………Johannes Brahms
(Second time.)
After a third hearing, the Brahms Symphony left essentially the same impression on us as before. We do not think we need to go into any further criticism or description of the work. That we found more in detail to interest the mind we freely grant; and we may even say that in a certain sense its power and beauty,—its intensity above all—and the thoughtful ingenuity, the constructive skill shown in it, grow upon us. This has been the case particularly with the first and the last movement,—most of all the expectant prelude to the popular theme, or Joy tune, together with the tune itself, so brilliantly worked up to a final climax. And still the total influence of the work is depressing. It does not seem inspired; it did not spring from the clear heaven of invention; it shows more of painstaking calculation than of the imaginative faculty or quality. Its author was in earnest, and had a good outfit of experience and means to work with; and that is what saves it. But will it save it long? Whether it is to take a place among the immortal Symphonies at all,—not to speak of “the immortal Nine”? We see that Mr. Thomas, after some feeling of the public pulse, has abandoned his intention of giving it here again this week, and has come to the conclusion that Beethoven is better bait.—As for the performance, people seemed surprised at the smoothness, the clearness, the intelligent accent and the spirit with which the whole work was rendered by our orchestra after only one rehearsal since the preceding concert. It was most creditable to the musicians and above all to their Conductor, CARL ZEHRAHN.
The unsigned review of the Thomas Orchestra’s performance in Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette was penned by the conservative and caustic Benjamin Edward Wolff (1836-1901). A professional musician of English-Jewish birth, his father and grandfather had been directors of orchestras and he himself had conducted theater orchestras in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Boston before becoming editor of the Gazette, where he remained until 1894.9 As Louis C. Elson recalled, Wolff, who was “one of the fiercest opponents of the Wagnerian music,” was often “sublimely savage in his reviews”; “his bitter sarcasm and invective made him feared by many who held different opinions. “10 But Elson granted that Wolff was “by education and attainments thoroughly fitted to exercise the critical faculty,” and his writing could be “witty, keen, and analytical.”11
BENJAMIN EDWARD WOLFF
Saturday Evening Gazette
24 January 1878
The entertainment was especially interesting for the opportunity it afforded for a second hearing of the Brahms Symphony, this time by an orchestra that had given it long and careful study, and had played it several times in public. Upon listening to the work again under these more favorable circumstances, we find nothing to change in the general tenor of the judgment we have pronounced upon it. Certain passages were ordered more clear, and there were broader effects of light and shade produced, but the work, as a whole, seemed to us as hard and as uninspired as upon its former hearing. It is mathematical music evolved with difficulty from an unimaginative brain. How it ever came to be honored with the title of “The Tenth Symphony,” is a mystery to us. Can it be that the Boucicaulting system of puffery has crept into German musical art?12 The Tenth Symphony! This noisy, ungraceful, confusing and unattractive example of dry pedantry before the masterpieces of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gade—or even of the reckless and over-fluent Raff! Absurd! In all that Brahms has written he has shown himself to be a composer without a heart. We cannot call to mind a single work of his that impressed us save for the learning shown in it. All that we have heard and seen from his pen abounds in head-work without a glimmer of soul. In fact, we will even venture so far as to whether Brahms possesses true musical genius in the sense that the recognized masters of the art possessed it. As for this symphony, we believe that it would have fallen flat upon the world had it been left to its way upon its own merits; but it was enthusiastically lauded from the outset, Schumann’s praise of the composer was unearthed and noisily shouted as an avant courier, and the sensationalism of the day was brought to bear in stimulating curiosity. The warmth was all in the praises of the composer’s friends, for there is none in the symphony. The last movement is a brilliant piece undoubtedly, and had the preceding movements been as fine, the composition might have easily taken rank among the great symphonies that have followed the Choral [Symphony of Beethoven], but even then it would scarcely have deserved the overwhelming praises bestowed upon it. A symphony that demands in its hearer a profound technical knowledge to understand, that appeals only to the wonder of the student, may show the composer’s industry and his learning, but this is artistic egotism and not genius, save of that kind shown in the manufacture of the intricate Chinese carvings in ivory. But even in these the workmen are skilled in the art of concealing art, while Brahms, on the other hand, delights only in obtruding his art. It is possible that as we grow more familiar with this symphony it may become clearer to us, but we might pore over a difficult problem in mathematics until the same result was reached without arriving at the conclusion that it is a poetic inspiration. While there is much that is lovely and inspired in art that will better repay the study, and while life is too short to exhaust the beautiful, we feel that it is a wanton waste of time to devote it to long contemplation in order to discover whether or not this Brahms symphony is the most stupendous musical triumph of our day.
Another unsigned review of the symphony’s Boston performances was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser, one of that city’s premier newspapers. Its author was Henry Austin Clapp (1841-1904), a Shakespeare scholar and student of drama history who was educated at Harvard and joined the staff of the Advertiser in 1868 in the dual role of drama and music critic. As a theater critic, Clapp was viewed as “erudite, incorruptible, and fair”;13 his writing style has been characterized as reflecting “the leisurely, elongated construction of his era, but…marked by genuine erudition, peppery wit, and a determined fairness. “14 After hearing the first two performances of Brahms’s symphony, he could write the following:
HENRY AUSTIN CLAPP
Boston Daily Advertiser
17 January 1878
The work certainly grows upon the listener, and one is so conscious of the progress made in enjoyment and comprehension of the symphony after a second hearing that he hesitates to predict what favor the work might win from him after many repetitions. We venture, however, at this stage of our acquaintance with the symphony to express a doubt—amounting with ourselves, we think, to a personal conviction of the contrary—that this work demonstrates its author’s right to a place beside or near Beethoven, or that it entities his admirers to disregard the claims of Mendelssohn and Schumann in ranking this composition as the greatest since the Ninth Symphony. Johannes Brahms—though the slow development of his fame indicated in him a late ripening of a sort very usual with musical geniuses, who as a class have been marvelously unconscious—has had the immense advantage of Schumann’s trumpet-tongued announcement of his worth. Schumann’s reputation as a composer is fortunately much better grounded than his repute as a prophet, but his unquestioned skill as a critic made his statement of the power and promise of Johannes Brahms extremely influential.
Brahms has avoided the dangers which attend upon rapid and careless composition, has written slowly and carefully, and has known how to make prudent use of popular expectation. But may it not be fairly questioned whether this mode of composing, as well as the chief works by which Brahms has added to his reputation, do not indicate the patience and laboriousness of the student rather than the affluence and self-derived fruitfulness of a true musical genius? And are there not hints of such a truth even in this admirable symphony? But despite the saucy doubts and fears which refuse to be dispelled when we try to look at Brahms as the leading composer of the century, we find his new symphony a noble and an imposing work. The closing movement is certainly its most impressive part, but we agree with the accomplished critic of the Tribune in profoundly admiring the originality of the sombre opening allegro, in which mental and spiritual gloom and conflict are shown with wonderful dramatic and picturesque skill, and in which the forms, both by their number, their novelty and their intrinsic beauty, suggest a depth and richness of resource which would belong only to a composer of the first rank. The two following movements, though pleasing, are so much lighter, and we think we must say thinner, that by contrast they seem a little inadequate, and the themes of the third movement, though graceful,—the first one being especially so,—in their original statement we find to be rather dryly worked out. The last movement may well be designated as magnificent. It shows a strong grasp, great learning, a large mind in the author. Of the last hundred measures Beethoven himself might surely have been proud at any stage of his career. One expression made in a former article upon this symphony we find, however, that we must qualify. The last movement is not, we find, exactly joyful; it is rather very intense; it lacks the spontaneous and simple quality, the outwardness, we might say, of joy; and in this respect it strongly and interestingly differs from its prototype of the Ninth Symphony. And in this difference we find the keynote of one of Johannes Brahms’s chief peculiarities as a composer. He is a modern of the moderns, and this symphony is a remarkable expression of the inner life of this anxious, introverted, over-earnest age, which cannot even be glad in a frank and self-forgetful spirit.
We close with many thanks to Mr. Thomas for his brilliant and well-nigh faultless interpretation of this very difficult work, and for the new and clear light which his orchestral performance has thrown upon it. Such a re-introduction to such a work of art is indeed a true and lofty delight.
After the first performance of the symphony by the Harvard Musical Association Orchestra on January 3, Edward Henry Clement (1843-1920), the progressive music, drama, and art critic for the preeminent Boston Evening Transcript, found it to contain “a large quantity of mere surplusage, a strenuous iteration and reiteration,” and to be lacking “sustained strength…unity, and balance, and reserved power,” in spite of “passages of great splendor and effectiveness, and beauties and fancies with the stamp of true musical fire upon them.”15 As evidence of how much difference the quality of the interpretation could make, Clement’s censure turned to unqualified praise after hearing the Thomas Orchestra’s performance some days later.
EDWARD HENRY CLEMENT
Boston Evening Transcript
17 January 1878
Mr. Theodore Thomas achieved last evening his crowning triumph in Boston, demonstrating that it is for his revealing and illuminating touch that we must wait before worthily comprehending or enjoying even one of the greatest works of art. This acknowledgment was unreservedly made to him in the prolonged and hearty applause with which a grateful public recalled him after the new Brahms Symphony had been unfolded to them,—as all felt, notwithstanding the previous hearing, for the first time…. The new symphony lay in the minds of those who heard it at the Harvard symphony concert “a mighty maze but not without a plan.” Mr. Thomas last night held it up so that its masterly design and unity as a whole were felt at once, and then passed along through individual beauties and elegances of the tapestry, displaying its lovely figures… and arabesques each by itself and in its relations, and even exhibiting the ingenuity and skill of the weaving and needlework. Besides the delight in the new-found beauty of design and proportion in the work, there was an unforgettable lesson received—that intelligent, refined and sensitive conducting toward the adequate interpretation of the wider and deeper significance and connection of musical phrases and sentences is a sine qua non, independently of the question of technical drill of the orchestra. The coupling of this symphony with Beethoven’s can now be understood. The masterful grasp and repose of the composer, able to conceive in the mightiest strain of musical invention and sustain and express his ideas in musician-like work worthy of the conception, are unquestionable. In whatever phase of the noble creation, whether the bold, original, intense allegro, after the richly chaste and fittingly elegant introduction; the simple, sweet, romance-like melody sustained with all the riches of symphonic writing throughout the slow movement; the lighter charm of the lovely flowing passages of the poco allegretto e grazioso or the grandly Beethovenish finale with the splendors of a thorough symphonic development interwoven with immense and unflagging and unerring strength amid pæans of triumph—all shows the strongly vital, fertile genius, in healthy and manly culture and self-control, and employing with masterful ease and the finest unconscious artistic sense and feeling all the resources of the divine art. To have such a work, after a first bleared view, spread forth with all the brilliant light and clear shadow, delicate, sensitive turns of expression, and modulation of color, force and tempo, which Mr. Thomas brings to the perfecting of his tone-pictures in “values” and perspective, was luxury indeed.16
Reviewing the Thomas Orchestra concert for the Boston Courier was William Foster Apthorp (1848-1913), a graduate of Harvard College, where he had studied piano, harmony, and counterpoint with that institution’s first professor of music, the composer John Knowles Paine. As a child, Apthorp had been taken by his parents to study art in Dresden, Berlin, and Rome, and he developed into an accomplished linguist who could speak all the major languages of Europe. Apthorp began his career as a critic writing for the Atlantic Monthly (1872-77), Dwight’s Journal of Music, the Boston Courier (1876-80), and the Daily Evening Traveller (1878). He went on to help shape Boston’s musical tastes as reviewer for the Boston Evening Transcript (1881-1903) and program essayist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
WILLIAM FOSTER APTHORP
Boston Courier
20 January 1878
The Brahms symphony was once more the central point of interest. It was indeed superbly played; the orchestra has never given more convincing evidence of that thorough and conscientious rehearsing for which Mr. Thomas has become noted. Every phrase in the whole wonderfully complex work was well-considered and clearly rendered: every smallest detail was made the most of. In how far Mr. Thomas’s conception of the composition is in sympathy with the composer’s intention it were impossible to say. It certainly seems at first sight as if no composer could have intended such an unbroken chain of slow movements without the faintest hint at anything approaching to a nimbly running phrase, as Mr. Thomas gave us, counting from the end of the first movement up to the entrance of the la[st] Allegro. To be sure there is nothing in the tempo marks in the score to contravene Mr. Thomas’s conception, and it is pretty well known that Brahms is somewhat prone to forget that the element of tediousness is worth a moment’s consideration from an earnest artist. And yet it is hard to believe that Brahms should have so miscalculated the perviousness to boredom which makes most mortals tire of even the most luscious linked sweetness when it is too long drawn out. The effect of the second and third movements and the first part of the fourth was certainly unfortunate. As Grétry exclaimed after listening for some time to an opera of Méhul’s, in which the composer had composed his string-orchestra of violas, ’celli and basses, without violins: “I would give a hundred francs for an E-string!” one feels like crying out long before the last movement of Brahms’s symphony: “A hundred francs for an allegro.” Upon the whole, the symphony is disappointing. One cannot surely help recognizing it as an exceedingly earnest work throughout. The composer has in no instance allowed himself to substitute mere gorgeousness of orchestral coloring for an idea: he has worked hard and faithfully towards very high ends, but the symphony sounds for the most part morbid, strained and unnatural; much of it even ugly. The composer seems to have been forced to hold his inspiration by the very hair of the head that it should not escape him. He is often involved and obscure, rather than profound. One meets now and then with passages of great beauty, but they are so exceptional as to seem almost out of place; the rays of gracious light are so few and far between that they do little more than to make darkness visible. What of deep feeling, sentiment and passion there is in the music is no doubt as genuine as it is intense. The symphony is no cooked-up sham, but sentiment and passion do not of themselves constitute a work of art; they must be embodied in a perspicuous and artistic form. In the matter of melody some will call Brahms deficient, and others will call him strong. Melody has become, by this time, a pretty vague term. Berlioz once said in reference to his own works: “My melodies are often of very large dimensions, and shortsighted, infantile minds do not clearly distinguish their outlines.” Brahms may possibly say the same. Yet we must say that in a composition in which certain melodies are not the be-all and end-all, but the texts which are to be treated musically—in other words, the themes—the rational dimensions of a thematic phrase find their natural limits very soon, and a theme which is too long, or too vague in character to be readily grasped by the ear, and easily remembered, is unfit for clear contrapuntal development. Nothing is more charming than the old and yet ever young effect of different instruments calling to and answering each other across the orchestra, but when it comes to an oboe and a clarinet making absolute speeches at each other (vide for instance, a passage in Brahms’s andante), the listener’s mind is at so great trouble to remember what the first has said, that it is impossible to appreciate whether the reply of the second is pertinent or not. If the theme of a movement is too vague to appeal directly and by itself to a listener’s imagination as a firmly grasped idea, its further development will be incomprehensible to him. The orchestra may discuss the theme with admirable wisdom and in perfect counterpoint, but the listener will get no satisfaction, simply because he does not know what the talk is all about. But I must not leave this symphony without a word of heartiest admiration for the theme of the last movement. That is really superb. Strong, pithy and concise. It does, to be sure, remind one of the Ninth Symphony. But it only reminds one of it; it is no plagiarism. Pity only that one is so tired out by what has gone before that even this glorious outburst fails to awaken a lasting enthusiasm.
After a third hearing, Apthorp, who had advocated the performance of more modern music to his fellow board members at the Harvard Musical Association, still had strong reservations about Brahms’s symphony.
WILLIAM FOSTER APTHORP
Boston Courier
3 February 1878
The Brahms symphony again! One can, by this time, form something approaching a definite notion of the merits of this extraordinary work. Sooth to say, it does not improve upon acquaintance. The best that can be said of it is that it is genuinely intense music. Whether it tears its passion to tatters or not may be a matter of opinion, but the passion is really there. Some persons will undoubtedly call it learned. Well, judged by the standard of musical learning that most contemporary composers can boast of, it may certainly be called so. But to call it learned is to admit that musical science, as such, is at a rather low ebb today. A composer may show considerable ingenuity in working out his themes in an unprecedented way, and in producing striking effects by such working out, but if the general effect is horribly dissonant, if the parts “mutually rub their skins off,” as Berlioz says, by grating one against another, it cannot be called good counterpoint, and poor counterpoint is no very good earnest of musical learning. No, Brahms seems to lose sight of the fact that the human ear does not willingly bear more than a certain degree of harsh treatment. The ear that can stand such a violent and sustained assault as this symphony without flinching, must—one would think—have been rendered so callous by ill-usage as to be almost senseless to the less strident appeals of pure musical beauty. Yet the symphony is highly ingenious, at times strangely powerful, and if the power is not well sustained, the ingenuity is beyond all doubt. It is interesting to see how a man can unite so many and heterogeneous elements to form a whole that is not absolutely chaotic. He has rarely succeeded in making that whole harmonious and finely organized, and that is just where his “learning” is at fault. Remember, this is not a question of that preponderance of the brain over the heart, of which we hear so much nowadays. A man may have a very strong brain, and yet have very little learning. In Brahms’s symphony there seems to be no lack either of brain or heart, but the brain shows a lack of training: it plunges and struggles to express what the heart dictates, so that the intellectual effort is more prominent than anything else.
It would take a long time, additional performances as taut as Thomas’s, and much honest struggling in his public columns before Apthorp would be able to discern the disciplined relationship of heart and mind in Brahms’s First Symphony and admit to his readers that the “work is getting interesting. It is the serpent, and we are the poor little fluttering bird that is spellbound by its glance.”17 Only in December 1883 would he acknowledge that “Brahms’s great symphony—we now write great without any misgivings—at last produces the impression upon us that we have been waiting for through so many years. “18
1. Robert Schumann, “Neue Bahnen,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 39 (28 October 1853): 186; repr. in Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, rev. ed. (Berlin, 1912-21; repr. Tutzing, 1976), 1:127.
2. Quoted, from communication with Levi, in Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 1:165.
3. On the intense competition between Thomas and Damrosch over this symphony, see Walter Damrosch, My Musical Life (New York, 1930), 24-26.
4. This review proceeds to chronicle the interpretative differences between the performances by Damrosch and Thomas.
5. Henry M. Dunham, The Life of a Musician Woven into a Strand of History of the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston, 1931), 43.
6. Thomas was scheduled to perform the symphony a second time, on February 13, but instead he programmed Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. John Sullivan Dwight reported that he made this change “after [gaining] some feeling of the public pulse” (Dwight’s Journal of Music, 16 February 1878).
7. William Foster Apthorp, “Musical Reminiscences of Boston Thirty Years Ago,” in By the Way (Boston, 1898), 2:80-81.
8. Apthorp reported that there had been three rehearsals (Boston Courier, 6 January 1878). The orchestra’s second performance of the work was presented after the usual single rehearsal (Dwight’s Journal of Music, 19 January 1878).
9. William Brooks, “Wolff, Benjamin Edward,” in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (London, 1986), 4:561; obituary from the Boston Herald, 7 February 1901.
10. Louis C. Elson, The History of American Music (New York and London, 1904), 323.
11. Elson, “Musical Boston: Its Orchestras, Clubs and Musical Institutions,” supplement to Music and Drama (New York), 3 June 1882.
12. A reference to the Irish melodramatic actor Dion Boucicault (ca. 1820-1890).
13. Tice L. Miller and Don B. Wilmeth, eds., Cambridge Guide to American Theatre (Cambridge, 1993), 116.
14. Gerald Bordman, in The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 2nd ed. (Oxford and New York, 1992), 147.
15. Boston Evening Transcript, 4 January 1878.
16. Clement’s second review, also praising the symphony, appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, 1 February 1878.
17. Ibid., 26 December 1882.
18. Ibid., 31 December 1883.