Fighting in the Napoleonic Wars was in the continuity of the eighteenth century and even the two preceding ones. Major changes in weapons on a large scale would not occur before the years 1850. Generals and officers were still nurtured by the military writers of the eighteenth century, but among these writers some had envisioned what war could become if large-scale ‘operations’ were conducted and if armies grew in size. With the Revolution and the dictatorial power Napoleon inherited from it, France set the tone for waging war with more intensity, in the movement of armies as well as in tactics on the field of battle. Other powers simply had to follow, but interior conditions and social imperatives resulted in partly adaptations and half-measures.

Throughout his lifetime, Brahms accompanied dozens of singers in a variety of settings, ranging from huge public halls to his friends’ homes, and conducted many others in choirs. Some of those working relationships were one-offs, arising from the widespread practice of including a set of piano-accompanied songs within most concerts and the expediency and cost-effectiveness of using local talent. Others were deep, enduring partnerships; the timbres and interpretative approaches of those singers are surely ingrained in his vocal music. Overall, Brahms’s singers were generally not part of the international operatic elite associated with Verdi, Bizet and Massenet. Figures like Julius Stockhausen (1826–1906) and Raimund von Zur-Mühlen (1854–1931)were almost exclusively concert singers and, later on, teachers. Most hailed from German-speaking territories, reflecting Brahms’s own concert career.

Although Brahms was a fine pianist and the composer of major repertory for the instrument, he is not normally regarded as having established a ‘school’ of performance as such; certainly not like his pianist-composer contemporaries Liszt and Anton Rubinstein whose numerous students promoted their teaching through technical features of performance. Although Brahms wrote an extensive set of exercises – the 51 Exercises WoO 6 (published in 1893, but apparently dating from the 1850s and 1860s) – which clearly address the technical requirements of his own works, he often showed little interest in public performance and did not especially promote his piano works apart from the concertos (at least on the inconsistent evidence of documented first performances). By comparison, he premiered virtually all his piano chamber music: only one work, the First Piano Quartet Op. 25 was definitely not given by him [see Ch. 9 ‘As Pianist’].