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The last of his symphonies was begun in the summer of 1884 while the composer was vacationing in the Styrian town of M�rzzuschlag. It was a productive period for Brahms, who had completed his Third Symphony only one year earlier, and several dozen songs in the intervening months. Although Brahms often spent years slaving over the manuscripts of his larger works, this new symphony progressed rather quickly, and was completed during the following summer's holiday. Brahms himself conducted the work's premiere October 25, 1885, in Meiningen, home of one of Germany's finest orchestras. At that time, the work was well received, but its Viennese reception was more mixed. On hearing Brahms and a friend perform a two-piano reduction of the score, the famed critic Eduard Hanslick remarked, "I had the feeling that two enormously clever people were cudgeling one another." Later he softened the blow by saying, 'it is like a dark well; the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back."
Like Hanslick, the Viennese people gradually came to appreciate the work, which would ultimately serve as their farewell to the master composer. The Fourth Symphony was included on a concert given May 7, 1897: Brahms' sixty-fourth birthday. The composer was in attendance, by did not conduct, for he was already fatally ill with liver cancer. But he witnessed the magnificent ovation at the concert's conclusion, and managed to emerge from his theatre box long enough to acknowledge the audience's appreciation. Within a month, Brahms had died. His own Fourth Symphony was the last symphony he ever heard.