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Johannes Brahms: Music
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Johannes Brahms was a master of the compositional craft. He often used established techniques, such as counterpoint, especially in his sets of variations, but in such novel and refreshing ways that the listener first perceives the beauty and strength of the music and only later becomes aware of the composer's technical mastery.
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Johannes Brahms stands midway between the conservative purveyors of the classic tradition, that is, the imitators of Felix Mendelssohn, and the so-called musicians of the future such as Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Brahms infused the traditional forms with romantic melody and harmony, respecting the inheritance of the past but making it relevant to his own age. His position of moderation effected a necessary balance in the creative output of the romantic century and led to high critical esteem by his contemporaries.
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Often nicknamed "Mr. Establishment," Johannes Brahms opposed the new cutting edge composers of the Romantic Era. He was a very civilized, normal man, very different from the childish attitudes of Mozart, and the stormy personality of Beethoven. Considered the "conservative" of the Romantic Era, some of Brahms' works are so individual that they are considered "impossible" to play, to match what he was trying to say with his music.
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Johannes Brahms felt that Schubert was the last composer to be born at a truly propitious time. Brahms' artistic credo was expressed by his famous statement that, "If we can not compose as beautifully as Mozart and Haydn, let us at least try to compose as purely." It is perhaps the conviction that he had come too late to be truly on on a level with those he most admired and understood that gave his music its deep, reflective melancholy. Autumnal is the adjective often given to Brahms' output and it applies even to much of the music of his youth.
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With Wagner and Beethoven, Johannes Brahms dominated the music of the 19th century. He retained the formal lines of the sonata and the symphony, as developed by the classicists, yet reflected the Romantic spirit too, infusing his work with deep feeling.
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Perhaps it is the balance that Johannes Brahms bridged between Classical and Romantic forms that has made him a significant figure of the 19th-century music. Detractors and some critics may disagree, Brahms has been dubbed the third of the three B's - JS Bach, Beethoven, Brahms.
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