Max Kalbeck (1850 Breslau – 1921 Vienna)

Summary

‘Nachtwandler’ Op. 86 no. 3 (comp. probably 1877 or earlier, publ. July 1882)

Unaccompanied mixed choir:

Op. 104 no. 3 ‘Letztes Glück’ (comp. probably 1877, publ. Oct. 1888)

ON 22 October 1879, Clara Schumann wrote to Brahms:

Now to another thing, namely Robert's collected letters. There is a young man, Max Kalbeck, in Breslau, you surely know him too. He has been highly recommended to me by friends for this work, and since he is friends with Heyse, I asked him … and he thinks he is the perfect man for the work; one can trust him implicitly. Maybe you know him better than I realise, and can tell me something about him.

Brahms did indeed know the young man, who eventually became his most significant biographer, editor of his correspondence, and ‘apostle’. Kalbeck named his son, the actor and director Paul Johannes Kalbeck, after Heyse and of course Brahms himself, who was the child's godfather. Kalbeck's wife Julie seems to have appealed to Brahms as much as her husband; Brahms gave her manuscripts of popular songs such as his Schmidt setting ‘Sapphische Ode’ and the Heyse setting ‘Mädchenlied’ Op. 95 no. 6, the latter nicely capturing the three-way friendship between Brahms, the Heyses and the Kalbecks.

Kalbeck's friendship with Brahms had begun five years earlier through their mutual friend Bernhard Scholz on the composer's trips to Breslau. Scholz, who was two years younger than Brahms, had met him in 1862 in Hanover with Joachim. He moved to Breslau in 1871 as conductor of the city music society and became a great champion of Brahms's music in that city. Following Scholz's initial invitation to Breslau in 1874, Brahms visited regularly for concerts and private music-making in the company of Scholz's sociable and musical wife Luise (née Seyler). He met Kalbeck in Scholz's home in late 1874, and expressed interest in his poetry. Kalbeck copied out a ‘half dozen’ poems, including ‘Nachtwandler’ and ‘Letztes Glück’, which Brahms received in January 1875 and copied into his poetry notebook.

Kalbeck then recalled:

During a visit I made to Vienna in spring 1877, he confessed ashamedly that he had composed ‘various’ poems of mine, but could not be persuaded to show me anything; the things were not yet tidied up; he had to look at them once more with his glasses on.