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.

During his lifetime, Brahms accumulated a sizeable fortune. Although the early days were not without difficulties, his finances then accumulated steadily and virtually uninterruptedly. When he died in 1897, he left behind not only manuscripts of his own works, but also an extensive collection of other composers’ autograph manuscripts (including of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) as well as bonds worth over 181,000 Gulden.The size of the sum is evident when one compares the rent that he paid his landlady Coelestine Truxa between 1887 and 1897 for his three-room apartment in Vienna’s Karlsgasse, which amounted half-yearly to 347 Gulden and 25 Kreuzer.

Brahms grew up in the Hamburg‘Gängeviertel’, an area of workers, small-scale artisans and tradesmen in modest circumstances [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. Later on, when he could determine his own lifestyle, luxury still held no appeal.

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.

‘Today, my dear wife, née Nissen, successfully delivered a healthy boy. 7th May 1833. J. J. Brahms.’ Thus, on 8 May 1833Johann Jakob Brahms announced the birth of his first son Johannes in the local paper, the Privileged Weekly General News of and for Hamburg (Privilegirte wöchentliche gemeinnützige Nachrichten von und für Hamburg). At a time when such announcements were the exception, this was a clear sign of pride. Johann Jakob Brahms or Brahmst, as he also spelled it, was born on 1 June 1806 in Heide in Holstein, the second son of the innkeeper and trader Johann Brahms, who had moved to Heide from Brunsbüttel via Meldorf. His ancestors were from Lower Saxony. Johann Jakob completed a five-year apprenticeship as a city wait in Heide and Wesselburen, during which he learned the flugelhorn, flute, violin, viola and cello, then standard instruments. In early 1826, the young journeyman began his travels with his certificate of apprenticeship, received in December 1825.

Robert Schumann’s 1853 essay ‘New Paths’ is famous for its prophetic introduction of the young Johannes Brahms to the wider German musical community. In this, his last piece of published criticism, Schumann presented Brahms, then a virtually unknown young composer, as a Messiah-like figure for a nascent musical era, one who would be called to ‘give the highest expression to the times in an ideal manner’ The final sentence of Schumann’s essay has often been overlooked, but it is significant for the glimpse that it offers of the place that he envisioned for Brahms in the future: ‘In every era there presides a secret league of kindred spirits. Draw the circle tighter, you who belong together, that the truth of art may shine ever more clearly, spreading joy and blessings everywhere!’ [see Ch. 31 ‘Germany’].

When Brahms’s Violin Concerto Op. 77 received its British premiere at the Crystal Palace on 22 February 1879, George Grove began his programme note to the piece: ‘Mr Brahms is no stranger to the Crystal Palace audience; in fact he is very well known here, for his name appears more frequently in the Saturday Programmes than that of almost any other contemporary composer.’

It is certainly true that Brahms’s popularity with British audiences increased significantly from the 1870s onwards as initial suspicion of his complex writing was replaced by growing admiration, particularly for his chamber and orchestral works. However, Brahms himself never visited the country – in fact, he turned down at least six separate invitations to do so, from potential festival commissions to performance opportunities, and two attempts to coax him to Cambridge University to receive an honorary doctorate.

The reception of Brahms’s music beyond his home city of Hamburg began in 1853, when the young composer made his first extended journey and presented his compositions to some of the leading figures of German contemporary music: Robert Schumann, Robert Franz and Franz Liszt. Each reacted to these unpublished works in distinctive ways.

Robert Schumann, with whom Brahms spent the whole month of October in Düsseldorf,was instantly enthralled.

Typically for many musicians of his day, Brahms was artistically active in multiple ways, not only as a composer but also as a performer, mainly as a pianist and conductor, piano teacher and director of musical societies. He never perceived himself as primarily a pianist; however, playing the piano – in private and public – was inseparable from his artistic and compositional identity. Schumann remarked on this as early as 9 November 1853 in a letter to the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, to whom he had recommended the young man: ‘his playing is truly a part of his music; I cannot recall hearing such unique sound effects’. Brahms received his initial piano training in Hamburg from Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel and then from Cossel’s teacher Eduard Marxsen, who had trained in Vienna and who also advised Brahms in composition (Brahms never attended a conservatory) [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’].

Throughout his career, Brahms forged significant professional and personal relationships with a variety of instrumentalists, ranging from talented amateurs to highly accomplished professionals. The violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), cellist Robert Hausmann (1852–1909) and clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld (1856–1907) numbered among Brahms’s closest friends. Through their performances and interactions, these men inspired the composer and gave him concrete advice about writing idiomatically for their respective instruments. Because many of their exchanges took place while making music at the homes of friends, we will never know the full extent of the impact that they had on Brahms. Nevertheless, letters, diaries, personal recollections of friends and the few remaining manuscripts revealing Brahms’s creative process, all provide us with a window into the multifaceted nature of their influence.