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Johannes Brahms - Symphony No.3, Op.90

Key: F Major
Dedication:
Orch: 2 Fl., 2 Ob., 2 Cl., 2 Bsn., 1 Cbsn. / 4 Hrn., 2 Tpt., 3 Tbn. / Timp. / Str.
Approx.: 32 Min.
Composed: 1883
Autograph:

Further Information

Mozart composed his Symphony no. 1 at the age of eight. Brahms did not finish his first symphony until he was forty-three. The delay is not due to a lesser degree of talent. Rather, Brahms put off the task because he was intimidated by the example of a previous composer, a musical marvel with whom Mozart did not have to contend. By the late 1800s, Beethoven had come to represent the epitome of symphonists, the standard against whom everyone would be compared. Brahms delayed writing symphonies because he knew he would face that comparison, and he was right. When his First Symphony at last appeared, it was hailed as "Beethoven's Tenth." His Second Symphony was seen as analogous to Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony, and his Third Symphony was dubbed by "Brahms' Eroica," by renowned conductor Hans Richter. Such epithets might have annoyed Brahms, but at least they were intended as compliments. They were admissions that Brahms' works shared the mastery and genius of those by Beethoven.
Brahms' Third Symphony was written in the summer of 1883. The fifty-year-old composer was spending that summer in Wiesbaden, where his friend, the contralto Hermine Spies, lived. As usual, it turned into a working vacation. Brahms set to revising some pieces he had originally written as music for Goethe's Faust. Gradually, they evolved into the central movements of a four-movement Symphony in F major, his Third Symphony, which had its premiere December 2, 1883 as Hans Richter conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. Beginning with that first appearance, the piece was highly acclaimed. The famed critic, Eduard Hanslick, viewed it as the most perfect of Brahms' symphonies, "the most compact in form, the clearest in the details," and orchestral directors apparently agreed. The symphony quickly reached the stages of Berlin, Leipzig, Meiningen, and Wiesbaden. Its popularity was such that, before long, the composer took to calling his Third Symphony "the unfortunately over-famous symphony." Performances may have been too frequent for Brahms' own tastes, but it was, indeed, a masterpiece, worthy of such adulation. Even the great English master, Sir Edward Elgar once remarked, "I look at the Third Symphony of Brahms and I feel like a tinker."

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