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Brahms had begun his first symphony in the early 1860s. His long-time friend Clara Wieck recalled seeing some sketches of it and a nearly-completed first movement, yet it wasn't until September of 1876 that Brahms finished the piece. It premiered November 4 of that year in Karlsruhe. Many observers were surprised that the first symphony of such an important composer was not premiered in Vienna where Brahms lived, but the composer had good reasons for his choice. Leery of Vienna's notorious music critics and its equally opinionated audiences, who worshipped Beethoven, he felt that the work would have a better chance outside of Vienna. This same logic leads Broadway producers to open new productions somewhere other than Broadway itself; if there are bugs to be worked out, you don't want to do it in front of a big city audience or big city critics! Perhaps critics of Brahms' day bore some resemblance to those of our day!
The Karlsruhe premiere went rather well, with the only discouraging words coming from Brahms himself, who described the new symphony as "long and not especially amiable." Brahms then arranged for a Vienna performance, and it was on this occasion, in Beethoven's backyard, that the Beethoven parallels at last emerged. Critic Eduard Hanslick compared the styles of the two masters, suggesting that Brahms had relied rather heavily on the serious side of Beethoven at the expense of what he called "heart-warming sunshine." Furthermore, he insisted that the regal string melody of the fourth movement was strikingly similar to the Ode to Joy. Conductor/pianist Hans von B�low agreed with Hanslick's assessment, and memorably tagged the piece "Beethoven's Tenth". Such comparative remarks could not have pleased Brahms, who had fought to be considered on his own merits, but if he read further in the reviews, he would have found high praise for the piece. Hanslick, for all his reservations, lauded it as "one of the most individual and magnificent works of the symphonic literature." He closed his review with these enthusiastic words: "The new symphony of Brahms is a possession of which the nation may be proud, an inexhaustible fountain of sincere pleasure and fruitful study."
Today, Brahms' First Symphony stands, as the composer would have wished, on its own reputation. It is seen as one of his finest creations, indeed, as one of the finest symphonies by any composer of any time. It also serves as evidence of its creator's essential conservatism, for as Hanslick and the others realized, it was a work closely related to those of eighty years earlier. Chronologically, Brahms lived in the late 1800s, but stylistically, he clung to the days of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, virtually immune to the artistic developments of his own day. Here was Brahms, in the summer of 1876, completing a symphony in the classical mold at the very same time that Wagner was staging for the first time his earth-shattering masterpiece, The Ring Cycle. The two compositions, perhaps the finest by their respective creators, have nothing whatsoever in common, other than dates of origin, and ever since that time, scholars have puzzled over the incongruity. The problem isn't Wagner; he was closer to the style of the day than was Brahms, whose retrospective nature has been the object of much study. One of the most interesting commentaries on the subject came from a man who was learned in the fields of music and psychology. Here are excerpts from remarks made in Vienna in 1982 by Leonard Bernstein:
"Here stands a master composer producing one classical symphony after another, a confirmed and determined classicist in an era when classicism had long since been swept away by the tides of Romanticism that flooded Europe in the nineteenth century. And through it all, Johannes Brahms stands firm in his old well-worn coat, insisting to the very end on perpetuating the classical tradition of Mozart and Beethoven....... What was he avoiding? Was he simply a classicist who had outlived his period, a has-been, a left-over, as his detractors would have it? On the contrary, it is precisely the other way around: Brahms was a true Romantic containing his passions in classical garb. It was clearly a case of self-limitation. The only question that remains is --- why?... Whence the rage and whence the containment? What did this celebrated, comfortable king of Vienna have to rage about? So much. He raged against his native city of Hamburg, which time and again had passed him by when selecting a new conductor for their Philharmonic Orchestra, a position Brahms deeply coveted. He raged against the fates that had destroyed his adored Schumann, idol of his youth, after an all-too-brief relationship. He cried out against the forces that had conditioned him to be incapable of happiness with a woman, of domestic bliss, of having children--- and how he loved children! So much to rage about, and so much more we don't even know, at which we can only guess. Thus, I believe, arose in his inner being the absolute necessity for containment. Brahms was genius enough to be his own psychiatrist, unconsciously of course. He set himself up as the Guardian of Music Order in an age of Romantic disorder, but what he was really guarding were his own passions, those conflicts that threatened to tear him apart. And so he invented that persona --- beard, belly, and all --- so familiar to his society and ours. This amazing display of self-control, self-discipline, and self-containment probably saved his life, his sanity, and hi! s God-given powers to fashion the music with which he enriched and ennobled the world.'