Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth

Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth

Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna
Author(s): Margaret Notley
Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 107-123
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746329
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Brahms
Genre,
Late
as
Liberal:
in
and
Politics
Style,
Vienna
Nineteenth-Century
MARGARETNOTLEY
In an account of Brahms's dissatisfactions with
the city of Vienna, Max Kalbeck recalled that
after Wagner's death "music got mixed up with
politics, and obscurantists from various parties
had their hands in the matter." Kalbeck was
writing here of Brahms's anger in the 1880s at
the "anti-German" policies of the Czech-Clerical-Polish coalition then in power in the central government-the
composer believed that
machinations
were
behind the unsatispriestly
state
of
affairs-and
added that "the
factory
musical situation in the imperial city also did
not please him." Using the religious theme of
Parsifal as a tenuous connective to the previ-
19th-Century Music XVII/2 (Fall 1993). ? by The Regents
of the University of California.
A shorter version of this paper was given at the annual
meeting of the American Musicological Society in 1992. I
would like to thank Professors Leon Plantinga, David
Brodbeck, and Virginia Hancock for their comments on
drafts of that version. I am also grateful to James Webster
for having read and commented on a more recent draft.
ous topic of suspected Catholic intrigues, the
biographer seized the opportunity to rail further on his own account at those "sanctimonious demagogues" who found Wagner's music
useful because it "suppressed the intellect and
unleashed the senses."' In this remarkable ac-
1"Was hier seinen Unmut erregte, war nicht die
deutschfeindliche Politik der Regierung allein, mit der,
wie bei allen Gelegenheiten, wo im Trtiben gefischt wird,
Urtriebe der Pfaffen Hand in Hand gingen; auch die
musikalischen Zustande der Kaiserstadt behagten ihm
nicht. Die Musik wurde mit der Politik vermengt, und
Dunkelmanner aus verschiedenen Parteilagern hatten die
Hande dabei im Spiele. Seit Wagners 'Parsifal' galt der
Autor des 'Biihnen-Weihfestspieles' vielen als eine Art von
bekehrtem 'Tannhdiuser,' der vielleicht zuletzt noch reuig
aus dem Venusberge in den Schof der alleinseligmachenden
Kirche zurtickgekehrt ware. ... Jedenfalls Ubte, nach der
Meinung scheinheiliger
Demagogen, seine den Geist
die Sinne entfesselnde
Kunst einen
knebelnde,
zweckdienlicheren Einflutf auf glAubige Gemtiter aus als
die Musik des Freidenkers und Haretikers" (Johannes
Brahms, 4 vols. in 8 [rev. edn. Berlin, 1912-21], vol. III
[1912], pp. 402-03). The "free-thinker and heretic" is, of
course, Brahms.
107
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
count, Kalbeck-and, of course, by implication
Brahms himself-was
displaying a complex of
attitudes that students of nineteenth-century
Austrian cultural history readily recognize as
characteristically Liberal: a pro-German stance,
an antagonism toward the Catholic church, and
a profound distrust of anti-intellectual trends.
Kalbeck's treatment of the opposition-the Brahms biograAnton Bruckner-within
phy is no less telling. According to Kalbeck,
part of Bruckner's appeal after Wagner's death
lay in a politically motivated reaction against
Brahms: "The troops called up to arms against
Brahms received fortification from extremists
of various reactionary religious, political, and
social congregations."2 Kalbeck judiciously
omitted any discussion of the Brahmsians' harsh
ripostes: the vicious critical assaults on
Bruckner in the 1880s, later judged by Carl
Dahlhaus to be "one of the sorriest chapters in
the history of music criticism."" There is certainly much evidence to support Dahlhaus's
view. The attacks on Bruckner by such critics
as Eduard Hanslick and Gustav D6mpke-as
well as by Kalbeck, who wrote for Die Presse-were both brutal and personal: in one wellknown, scurrilous review D6mpke called the
composer an "Untermensch" and said that he
composed "like a drunk."4 But Dahlhaus's further claim that such attacks "struck a man
who, unlike Wagner, was largely unable to defend himself"5 is too strong. Bruckner received
ardent support in the debate from an unexpected journalistic source: the press of the PanGermans and of the Christian Socials, the most
important of the anti-Liberal parties on the far
right formed during that decade.6
2"Die gegen Brahms zum Heerbann aufgebotenen Truppen
erhielten Verstiirkung von den Ultras verschiedener
und gesellreligi6ser, politischer
rfickschrittlicher,
schaftlicher
Wagners mythologisch
Kongregationen.
beglaubigtes Germanentum hatte auf den R6mling und
dessen Symphonien abgeffirbt" (ibid., III, 404).
3Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century
Music, trans. J.
Bradford Robinson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), p.
271.
4In the same review (Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 March
1886), D6mpke wrote that "explanations for abnormalities must be sought" (quoted in Manfred Wagner, Bruckner
[Munich, 1983], p. 174).
5Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 271.
6See Manfred Wagner, "Bruckner in Wien: Ein Beitrag zur
Apperzeption und Rezeption des ober6sterreichischen
108
What ostensibly lay at the center of the dispute was an aesthetic disagreement concerning
the relative merits of "inspired invention" versus "rational elaboration," and these two poles
were often linked to the contrasting connotations embedded in the genres of symphonic
and chamber music.7 The argument, though,
was not solely aesthetic. In fact, as Kalbeck
claimed, it acquired political overtones and is
perhaps best understood within the broader context of the Vienna of the late nineteenth century.8
Both composers lived permanently in Vienna
from the late 1860s until their deaths in 1896
(Bruckner) and 1897 (Brahms). Their residence
corresponds closely with what many have recognized as the era of Liberalism in that city:
1867-97. Austrian Liberals resembled other
nineteenth-century European Liberals in their
general belief in progress and the individual
and their espousal of scientific methods and
laissez-faire economics. But perhaps the most
important point about this resolutely anticlerical liberalism is its sociological constituency.
The Austrian Liberal party drew its members
from a circumscribed, intellectually
select
group: the educated German and Jewish-German middle and upper-middle classes.' In 1867
Austria had ratified a constitution that implemented Liberal ideas of religious freedom and
equality before the law. Viennese Jews felt an
especially strong allegiance to the Liberal party
Komponisten in der Hauptstadt der k. k. Monarchie"; and
Johannes-Leopold Mayer, "Musik als Gesellschaftliches
Anton Bruckner, der Anti-Biirger: Das
Argernis-oder:
Phanomen Bruckner als historisches Problem." Both essays are in Anton Bruckner in Wien: Eine Kritische Studie
zu seiner Pers6nlichkeit, ed. Franz Grasberger, vol. II, Anton
Bruckner: Dokumente und Studien (Graz, 1980).
issue
calls
aesthetic
Floros
the
7Constantin
"Einfallsapologetik gegen Verherrlichung der Ausarbeitung"
in Brahms und Bruckner: Studien zur musikalischen
Exegetik (Wiesbaden, 1980), pp. 30-34. See, as well, Bryan
Gilliam, "The Two Versions of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony," this journal 16 (1992), 60-61.
"Compare Leon Botstein, "Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting," this journal 14 (1990), 159.
9For two commentaries on the nature of Austrian Liberal
culture, see Carl E. Schorske, "Politics and the Psyche:
Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal," in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna:
Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), pp. 5-10; and Albert
Fuchs, Geistige Stromungen in Osterreich: 1867-1918
(Vienna, 1949), pp. 10-12.
(called the Verfassungspartei in the 1860s), for
the "1867 Constitution was from the standpoint of Austrian Jewry the culmination of the
long struggle for emancipation."'1 Still, the Liberals remained the majority party in the central
government only until 1879, and they were
increasingly under attack in Vienna thereafter.
In brief, the 1880s witnessed a growing cleft in
Viennese society with the ascendency of political leaders representing different constituenlower-middle and working classes,
cies-the
Slavic nationalists, Pan-German extremists, and
discontented Catholics from various social
eventustrata including the aristocracy-who
the
of
the
Liberals
on
the
hold
broke
city.
ally
The most successful of these figures was the
Christian Social Karl Lueger, who received
much of his initial support from the lower
Catholic clergy and the newly enfranchised
lower-middle class." When Lueger took office
as mayor of Vienna in 1897, after having been
elected on an anti-Semitic platform, it marked
the end of the Liberal era.12
The Bruckner-Brahms conflict was played
out against the backdrop of this sociopolitical
upheaval. Like the political situation, the musical controversy grew more heated in the late
1880s, as political issues spilled over with
greater frequency into the musical life of the
city. Articles in the Christian-Social newspapers and books about Bruckner written soon
after his death drew an analogy between antiLiberal political activity and the struggle to
gain a hearing for Bruckner's compositions, adding that the two causes shared the same enemy: the Liberal establishment and, in particular, the Liberal press. One article, for example,
protested a suggestion in an obituary by Richard Heuberger, which had appeared in both the
Neue freie Presse and the Wiener Tagblatt, that
the advocacy of Bruckner's music was politi-
"'Robert S. Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of
Franz Joseph (New York, 1989), p. 145.
"Lower-middle-class men received the vote on the national level in 1882, on the local level in 1885. Workingclass men did not receive the vote until 1907. See John W.
Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1848-1897 (Chicago, 1981), pp. 64, 211, and 324.
12Individual Liberals, however, did continue to occupy key
positions. See Fuchs, Geistige Stromungen, pp. 8-10.
cally motivated: "It is not the veneration of
Bruckner, but rather the opposition to him,
that was-and is-a factional matter. In fact, it
emanates from the party that means the same
thing in the field of music that the old Liberal
does in the field of politics. It uses the same
press organs-indeed is often made up of the
same people-but is at last in the process of
dying out.'"'3
Thus, each side accused the other of factionalism; extramusical motives were at work on
both sides. Liberal critics of Bruckner belittled
his close ties to the Catholic church and his
manifest Unbildung-Brahms himself described
his rival as "a poor crazy person whom the
priests of St. Florian have on their consciences."'4 On the other hand, critics in sympathy with the anti-Liberal movement saw
Brahms as not merely an insider to the Viennese
establishment but also a quintessential Liberal. And in fact there is a good deal of truth in
this assessment: Brahms's Liberal identity went
far beyond the conventional prejudice against
Catholicism that he frequently expressed. Indeed, the values he held in common with the
besieged Viennese Bildungsbiirgertum (educated, culturally formed middle class) were also
fundamental to his artistic character. As we
shall see, criticism of Brahms in the 1880s culminated in overt anti-Liberal critiques toward
the end of the decade, which focused either on
his connections to the elite cultural institutions or on traits considered specifically Liberal-or Jewish.
sondern die Bekiimpfung
'3"Nicht die Verehrung,
Bruckner's war und ist Parteisache, und zwar geht sie von
jener Partei aus, die auf musikalischem Gebiet dasselbe
bedeutet, wie auf politischem Gebiete die altliberale, und
sich derselben Presseorgane bedient, ja vielfach aus
denselben Personen besteht, endlich aber gleich dieser im
Absterben begriffen ist" (this article, written by Heinrich
Schuster, appeared in the Deutsche Zeitung, 5 Nov. 1896).
Most of Schuster's article is reprinted in Wagner, Bruckner,
pp. 221-23. See, as well, Carl Hruby, Meine Erinnerungen
an Anton Bruckner (Vienna, 1901), p. 27; and Rudolf Louis,
Anton Bruckner (Munich, 1905), p. 96.
4""Erist ein armer verrtickter Mensch, den die Pfaffen von
St. Florian auf dem Gewissen haben" (Bruckner had been a
student at the monastery of St. Florian) (Kalbeck, Johannes
Brahms, III, p. 408, n. 1). Kalbeck had previously suppressed this passage from a letter (12 January 1885) to
Elisabeth von Herzogenberg when he published the
Brahms-von Herzogenberg correspondence.
109
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
II
To what extent is it possible to reconstruct
Brahms's "political" personality? The question
is by no means an easy one. According to Christian Martin Schmidt, in the second half of the
nineteenth century the Austrian and German
middle classes were basically indifferent to political and social questions, leaving decisions
on these matters to professional politicians.is
However defensible such a judgement might be
for the earlier part of this period, it does not
hold up well for the latter part of it. The growing threat of political anti-Semitism seems to
have stimulated many middle-class Viennese
into opinions and even action. The Verein zur
Abwehr des Antisemitismus was formed in June
1891; by 1895 the society had 4,520 members.16
The founders included Brahms's friend Theodor
Billroth; another prominent friend, Viktor
Miller zu Aichholz, joined in 1897.17
Brahms's attitude toward all of this is at
least partially recoverable. Like many of his
fellow Liberals, he was guilty of occasional remarks that we would now consider to be antiSemitic. For example, the composer Karl
Goldmark related an incident in which Brahms
remarked loudly of him at a dinner party, "Don't
you think it strange that a Jew should set a text
of Martin Luther's to music? " (Brahms had origi-
'"Das Buirgertum verhielt sich in der zweiten Hiilfte des
19. Jahrhunderts indifferent hinsichtlich des politischgesellschaftlichen Geschehens. Die Politik uberlietf man
den *von oben bestallten Fachleuten und die sozialen
Spannungen und Probleme wurden entweder nicht gesehen
oder ignoriert" (Christian Martin Schmidt, Johannes
Brahms und seine Zeit [Regensburg, 1983], p. 47). The
figure of the "unpolitical German" appears frequently in
commentaries on this period.
16Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 186-87. In the March
1891 elections, the Liberal party had not condemned antiSemitism in its platform, as it had done in the past. See Peter
Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany
and Austria (rev. edn. Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 151.
17In 1876 Billroth had written an influential anti-Semitic
book (Uhber das Lehren und Lernen der medizinischen
Wissenschaften an den Universitiiten der deutschen Nation) about the influx of Jewish medical students into
Vienna, which he later repudiated. See Boyer, Political
Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 455-56, n. 245; Wistrich, Jews
of Vienna, pp. 64, 216, 551-52. Bericht der Dritten
des Vereines zur Abwehr des
Generalversammlung
Antisemitismus (Vienna, 1897), p. 14, lists Aichholz as an
"Ehrenmitglied." It seems likely that other friends, and
possibly Brahms himself, may have become members, but
I have not yet seen the complete reports of this society.
110
nally refused to believe that the work was by
Luther, but had then discovered that Goldmark
was right.) For his part, Goldmark attributed
the other composer's rage to his having overlooked the "exquisite" text for his own use,
and he suggested that Brahms may have felt
guilty afterward for having lost his temper. From
our present perspective, the most surprising
aspect of the story may be Goldmark's refusal
to take offense at the way in which Brahms
expressed his anger: for Goldmark, the point
seems to have been the intensity of the other
composer's wrath. He prefaced his account by
remarking that Brahms "was as great a man as
he was an artist," adding that "there was not a
blot on his superb character," but that "he was
never accustomed to restraining himself nor to
holding his tongue."'"
It is certainly clear that Brahms vehemently
rejected most of the political or official policies
and attitudes of anti-Semitism. Another close
associate, Richard Heuberger, quoted Brahms
in 1890 on the Jew-baiting by then rampant in
Vienna: "I can scarcely speak of it, it seems so
despicable to me. If the endless reinforcement
of Galician Jews in Vienna were hindered, I
would be in favor of it; but the rest is vileness."'1
(Many Liberal Jews in Vienna shared the
composer's prejudice against the Galician Jews,
who were seen as mired in "orthodox
Heuberger also described
obscurantism."20)
Brahms's later fury at Lueger's mayoral victory:
The master was completely horrified about the fact
that the anti-Semites had gotten the upper hand in
"'Karl Goldmark, Notes from the Life of a Viennese Composer, trans. Alice Goldmark Brandeis (New York, 1927),
pp. 154-55. Goldmark published the setting of Luther's
"Wer sich der Musik erkiest" for four voices and piano as
his op. 42. He does not state in his memoir when he
composed the piece. Furthermore, it was published with
no indication of the year: see the entry under his name in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.
Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), vol. 7, p. 502.
9""Uberdie gegenwartige Judenhetze in Wien sagte Brahms:
'Daruber mag ich gar nicht reden, so erbdirmlich kommt
mir das vor! Daf man den immerwdihrenden Nachschub
galizischer Juden nach Wien hindert, dafur ware ich, aber
alles andere ist eine Gemeinheit'!" (Richard Heuberger,
Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms: Tagebuchnotizen aus
den Jahren 1875 bis 1897, ed. Kurt Hofmann [rev. edn.
Tutzing, 1976], p. 45; the entry is from 4 November 1890).
20See Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 82-83.
the official positions of the city of Vienna and that
Lueger had become vice-mayor and would soon be
mayor: "Didn't I tell you already years ago that it
would happen?You and all the others, too, laughed
at me then. Now it's come to pass and with it the
clerical economic system. If there were an 'AntiClerical Party'-that would make sense! But antiSemitism is insanity!'"21
The immediately
entry in
preceding
reveals
Brahms's
Heuberger's diary (2 May 1895)
for
the
of
admiration
Chancellor
continuing
Bismarck.22
BisOtto
von
Although
Germany,
marck was decidedly "illiberal," high regard
for him was not incompatible with Austrian
Liberalism, which had "traditionally combined
constitutionalism with German nationalism."23
21"Der Meister war ganz entsetzt uiber die Tatsache, daf
bei den offiziellen Stellen der Stadt Wien die Antisemiten
hatten und Lueger Vizedie Oberhand bekommen
burgermeister geworden und wohl bald Burgermeister sein
wird: 'Habe ich Ihnen nicht schon vor Jahren gesagt, daf
es so kommen wird? Sie haben mich damals ausgelacht
und alle anderen auch. Jetzt ist es da und damit auch die
Pfaffenwirtschaft. Gabe es eine 'Antipfaffenpartei'-das
hatte noch Sinn! Aber Antisemitismus ist Wahnsinn'!"
(Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 82). Lueger first
won the mayoral election in 1895, but the Emperor refused to ratify him as Mayor. It was only after Lueger had
won four consecutive mayoral elections by increasingly
large margins that the Emperor, in 1897, allowed him to
take office.
Despite the support that he received from the antiSemites, Bruckner insisted that he was not anti-Semitic.
See August G611erich, Anton Bruckner: Ein Lebens- und
Schaffens-bild, ed. Max Auer, vol. IV (Regensburg, 1936),
pp. 228-29. Hruby reports, however, "as a curiosity," that
Bruckner long considered asking Georg von Sch6nerer, a
virulently anti-Semitic member of Parliament, to intervene on his behalf (in Parliament!). Hruby, Erinnerungen
an Bruckner, p. 39. For more on Sch6nerer, see below.
22'"Wihrendwir gingen, sprach er uber die Bismarck-Reden,
die gerade in einer neuen Buch-Ausgabe erschienen waren.
Er war sehr begeistert dariiber: 'Und es ist doch wohl das
meiste aus dem Stegreif! Vielleicht da und dort eine Sentenz
etwas zugefeilt, aber im Ganzen doch Improvisation. Ein
ungeheurer Geist! Und achtzig Jahre'!" (Heuberger,
Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 82; the entry is from 2 May
1895).
23Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism, p. 20. Many
Liberals in Germany also admired certain of Bismarck's
achievements, especially that of the unification of Germany. For Bismarck's complicated relations with the German Liberals, see James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in
the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978).
Lorenz Mikoletzky cites Hanslick (from archival material) in 1888 about Brahms's status as a German-born resident of Vienna: "'Obwohl in Hamburg geboren und noch
nicht in Oesterreich naturalisiert, ist Brahms durch seinen
stetigen Wohnsitz in Wien (seit 22 oder 23 Jahren)
A number of anecdotes attest to Brahms's nationalistic fervor. For instance, Kalbeck ascribed
Brahms's decision to spend the summers of
1886-88 in Switzerland to his love of the
Oberland climate and landscape and, perhaps,
an inclination to be near his friend, the journalist and poet Josef Viktor Widmann, but also to
his previously mentioned sense of outrage about
the Conservative coalition that, in 1879, had
replaced the German Liberals in the Austrian
government: "In view of the offensive public
affairs, it pleased him to play the lover's role of
the political refugee-that is to say, of a Liberal
German man depressed in his feelings who
turned his back, for the time being, on Minister
Taaffe and his Czech-Polish-Clerical
majority."24 Brahms's pride in being a German verged
at times on jingoism, and in the third of these
summers it caused a temporary rupture of his
relations with Widmann. In August 1888, the
latter wrote an article critical of the new Kaiser, the young Wilhelm II, to which Brahms
reacted with predictable indignation, offering a
defense not only of the Kaiser but also, gratuitously, of Wagner and Bayreuth.25 Yet Brahms
possessed a pamphlet from that same year (1888)
that viewed the dangerous new anti-Semitism
in Austria as being "the natural result of exaggerated ideas of nationalism," especially the
Liberals' German nationalism.26 There is no
eigentlich ganz Oesterreicher geworden'." Mikoletzky,
"Johannes Brahms und die Politik seiner Zeit," in Brahmsed. Susanne
Kongress Wien 1983: Kongressbericht,
Antonicek
and Otto Biba (Tutzing, 1988), p. 390.
Mikoletsky himself views Brahms as a patriotic German
who was uncommonly well read in politics and history
but who, nevertheless, deferred to the "experts" on contemporary political issues.
24"Auch gefiel er sich, angesichts der ihm widerwartigen
6ffentlichen Zustinde in Osterreich, in der Liebhaberrolle
des 'politischen Flichtlings,' d. h. eines in seinen Gefiihlen
liberalen deutschen
Mannes, der dem
gedruckten
Ministerium
Taafe und seiner tschechisch-polnischklerikalen Majoritit zeitweilig
den Riicken drehte"
(Kalbeck, Brahms IV, 1).
25See Kalbeck, Brahms IV, 151-53. Widmann,
like
Goldmark, forgave his friend's shortcomings. See his letter of 27 August 1888 in Gottfried Keller und J. V.
Widmann: Briefwechsel, ed. Max Widmann (Basel, 1922),
pp. 125-27.
26Anonymous, Gibt es eine gro/fe Conservative Partei in
Osterreich? (Vienna, 1888). The author asserted that the
Liberal party had become "conservative in the worst sense
of the word" (p. 51) and so unpopular that in certain circles
"the word 'Liberal' is used only as a reprove, even as an
111
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
reason to believe that Brahms accepted the argument, but the fact that he owned the pamphlet does suggest at least the possibility of
some thoughtfulness about the issue of nationalism hidden behind the chauvinistic spouting.
To be sure, Liberalism was not just a political and economic philosophy; as Rudolf Louis,
one of its sharpest critics in the music world,
noted, it was an entire Weltanschauungskomplex.27A number of writers have pointed
out that the restricted group of people who
provided the social base for the Liberalparty in
Vienna were also the most active participants
within the city's cultural institutions.28 Various friends of Brahms-for instance, the industrialist Richard Fellinger, along with the aforementioned Miller zu Aichholz, also an industrialist, and Billroth, a noted surgeon-formed
part of the Liberalelite, as did several powerful
advocates for his compositions-Kalbeck,
D6mpke, Hanslick, and Heuberger-all of
whom, as the partisans for Bruckner's music
noted frequently, wrote reviews for Liberal
newspapers.
Both Liberalism's supporters and its critics
acknowledged the paradoxical conservatism of
the Liberals'cultural practices: Brahms'sreverence for the Classical past in instrumental music was thus by no means unusual-rather, it
was the norm-and it was certainly a feature
that endearedhim to his like-minded audience.
The paradox was noted by many commenta-
insult" (p. 53). The pamphlet proposed a restructured Conservative Party, which would be in agreement with most
of the tenets of mid-century Liberalism, except in its espousal of a federalist solution to the nationalities problem.
This pamphlet was in Brahms's library at the time of his
death: see Kurt Hofmann, Die Bibliothek von Johannes
Brahms: Biicher-und Musikalienverzeichnis
(Hamburg,
1974), p. 3.
The anti-Semitic parties were reactionary, that is, to
the right of most within the Conservative Party. And between 1893 and 1895, the Conservatives and Liberals, "disturbed by lower middle-class radicalism in their ranks,"
formed a coalition in the central government. By the second decade of the twentieth century, though, the Christian-Social Party had become "what it had been tending to
become for many years-the Conservative Party of Austria." See Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism, pp.
173 and 198.
27See n. 29 below.
28See, for instance, Botstein, "Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting," pp. 157-59.
112
tors. For example, in the course of his 1905
book on Bruckner, Louis wrote of his own longstanding critical stance toward the artistic preferences of the now-dethroned Liberal establishment:
In peculiar contrast to its name and the political and
economic views it advocated, Liberalismconstantly
declared its allegiance in aesthetic matters to an
ungenerous, patronizing conservatism. The artistic
expression of the "Liberal"spirit was the academicepigonous classicism that today appears to us so
thoroughly done away with.29
Looking back on the period from the perspective of 1933, the musicologist Arnold Schering,
more tolerant of the Liberals and their predilection for Classical and classicizing art, wrote of
Brahms's importance in the musical life of the
educated upper-middle classes in Germany and
Austria, "whose members belonged to the
higher, intellectual professions," and added
significantly for our argument here-that "the
center of their musical world was chamber
music," a genre especially associated with this
composer.30
Brahms's tradition-oriented compositional
style and his cultivation of the chamber genres
certainly suited the tastes of many within the
lag uberhaupt im innersten Wesen des damaligen
'Liberalismus' begrundet-sofern es erlaubt ist, darunter
nicht blotg eine politische Partei, sondern in erweitertem
zu
Sinne einen ganzen Weltanschauungskomplex
verstehen-datg er, in seltsamem Gegensatz zu seinem
Namen und den von ihm vertretenen politischen und
wirtschaftlichen Anschauungen, auf Asthetischem Gebiete
bevormundenden
sich stets zu einem engherzig
Konservativismus bekannt hat. Der kiinstlerische Ausdruck
des 'liberalen' Geistes war der akademisch-epigonenhafte
Klassizismus, der uns heute so griindlich abgetan erscheint"
(Louis, Anton Bruckner, pp. 97-98).
Berufen
Glieder den h6heren, geistigen
30"Deren
angeh6rten. Hier... herrschte-bei allem Liberalismus in
politischer Beziehung-ein
gut konservativer Geist, ein
gesunder Sinn filr Erhaltung und Weitergabe uiberkommener
alles
Kulturgiiter. . . . Diese Kreise sind treue
Hutter ihrer
Klassischen
. . . Der Mittelpunkt
gewesen.
Musikpflege war die Kammermusik" (Arnold Schering,
"Johannes Brahms und seine Stellung in der Musikdes 19. Jahrhunderts," in Jahrbuch der
geschichte
Musikbibliothek Peters ffir 1932 39 [Leipzig, 1933], p. 10).
Schering had grown up in the sort of family that he was
describing. This is a valuable essay despite the 1933 publication date. I am grateful to Pamela Potter for clarifying
Schering's activities during the Nazi era.
29"Es
prevailing Liberal culture; but beyond that, a
case may be made that the substance of his
music actually projected values that his own
culture was tacitly encouraged to perceive as
"Liberal." Commentators have often noted, for
example, that Brahms emphasized the artistic
and "logical" working-out of a musical idea,
and several have connected this to middle-class
attitudes. Schering asserted that the composer's
audience responded to his music because it
gave evidence of "self-restraint and rigor."'31
More recently, Schmidt has written that "hard
work and willed accomplishment do not merely
characterize Brahms's personal conduct; on the
contrary, the category of accomplishment ...
also stamps his conception of the compositional
process."32 According to George Henschel, the
composer stated explicitly that invention "is
simply an inspiration from above . . . which I
ought even to despise until I have made it my
own by right of hard work." Tibor Kneif has
connected this to the specific techniques of
broken (durchbrochene) and thematic-motivic
work that are so prominent a part of Brahms's
compositional style.33
What has perhaps been insufficiently underscored is the great value that Brahms placed on
the role of the intellect and the broader significance of this. The Liberals' guiding principle
was their faith in the individual rational mind.
A high regard for the intellect has, of course,
distinguished Western civilization throughout
most of its history. An increasingly widespread
emphasis on reason, though-what might even
be considered a politicized ideology of reason-is a particular hallmark of the period from the
seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries,
31"Das Herz flog Brahms zu . . . weil seine ganze Art des
Musizierens auch eine Selbstzucht und Strenge verriet"
(Schering, "Brahms und seine Stellung," p. 12).
sind jedoch nicht allein
32"Fleitg und Leistungswille
charakteristisch
fotr Brahms' pers6nliches Verhalten,
sondern die Kategorie Leistung-und
das ist von
auch seine Auffassung vom
besonderem Gewicht-pragte
Kompositionsproze{" (Schmidt, Brahms und seine Zeit,
p. 59).
33George Henschel, Personal Recollections of Johannes
Brahms: Some of His Letters to and Pages from a Journal
Kept by George Henschel (Boston, 1907), pp. 22-23; Tibor
Kneif, "Brahms-ein biirgerlicher Kiinstler," in Johannes
Brahms: Leben und Werk, ed. Christiane Jacobsen
(Wiesbaden, 1983), p. 12.
the era of the ascendancy of the middle classes.
Nineteenth-century Liberalism can be seen as
one of the first culminations of rationalistic
tendencies in Western culture: "The liberal
credo in the broadest sense demanded of its
devotees the commitment of heart, mind, and
will to a world ordered by rational, regulative
principles."34 As has been widely noted, this
period was also marked by the rise of a supposedly "autonomous" instrumental music, whose
existence came to be justified by the tonal system and by appeals to the techniques of "musical logic." The full flowering of tonal and thematic-motivic logic in Classical music surely
offers at least a partial explanation for the Liberals' preference for that repertory over the Romantic music of the more recent past.
Reason is clearly being privileged in the notion of "musical logic"; moreover, an elaborate
analogy is being made between music and language. The young Heinrich Schenker wrote in
1895 that "musicians gradually started to believe that the art of music possessed an intrinsic logic similar to that of language" because
instrumental music had been obliged "to learn
to convey convincingly the impression of selfcontained thought."33 Among recent writers,
no one has explored the topic more extensively
than Dahlhaus. He wrote about the history of
"musical logic," which dates back to the eighteenth century, and how the changing
conceptualization of language subtly affected
its meaning: music "can be designated as a
language in an almost unmetaphorical sense"
within the framework of certain nineteenthcentury linguistic theories.36 He also noted that,
while in the eighteenth century the term referred only to harmony, in the nineteenth cen-
3"Schorske, "Austrian Aesthetic Culture in the Liberal Era:
A Historian's Reflections'," in Pre-Modern Art of Vienna
ed. Leon Botstein and Linda Weintraub
1848-1898,
(Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1987), p. 18.
35According to Schenker, though, music only feigns "necessity and logic." See Heinrich Schenker, "The Spirit of
Musical Technique," trans. William A. Pastille, Theoria 3
(1988), 87-88. The original article appeared in the
Musikalisches Wochenblatt 26 (1895). See, as well, Pastille, "Heinrich Schenker, Anti-Organicist," this journal 8
(1984), 29-36.
36See Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger
Lustig (Chicago, 1989), p. 113.
113
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
tury it came to encompass thematic techniques
as well.37 In his work on Brahms, Dahlhaus
focused on the aspect of "musical logic" that
Adorno deemed to be "the vital element of
chamber music, the work with themes and
motifs or its echo, that which Schoenberg called
'developing variation"':38according to Dahlhaus,
"music appears with Brahms as the development of [motivic] ideas, as sounding discourse."39 Elsewhere, he declared that this idea
that the motivic-thematic and harmonic development of a movement could be compared with discourse, in which every detail forms a consequence
to what has been presented previously and a premise
for what follows, does not appear altogether selfevident, but since the late nineteenth century has
become one of the firmly rooted aesthetic principles.40
And Schenker wrote that many listeners began
to connect the sense of inevitability and coherence created in tonal masterworks with the
"sort of necessity possessed by natural organisms."41
37Ibid., pp. 105-08; Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music,
p. 368.
38Theodor W. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of
Music, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York, 1976), p. 89. Compare Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 257: "Developing variation is a compositional hallmark of chamber
music." This is, of course, a complicated matter with many
implications that cannot be dealt with at length here.
Dahlhaus and Adorno have treated the nuances of this
issue as a central feature of their work.
39Dahlhaus, "Brahms und die Idee der Kammermusik," in
Brahms-Studien, ed. Constantin Floros, vol. I (Hamburg,
1974), p. 46. See, as well, Dahlhaus's essay "Issues in Composition" in Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four
Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century,
trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980).
und
40"Dag3 man . . . die motivisch-thematische
eines Satzes mit einer
harmonische
Entwicklung
Abhandlung vergleichen k6nne, in der jede Einzelheit eine
Konsequenz des Vorausgegangenen und eine Voraussetzung
des Folgenden bildet, ist eine Vorstellung, die durchaus
nicht selbstverstindlich
erscheint, seit dem spAten 19.
asthetischen
Jahrhundert aber zu den eingewurzelten
Prinzipien gehdrt" (Dahlhaus, "Musikkritik als Sprachkritik. Musikalische Logik," in Klassische und romantische
Musikiisthetik [Laaber, 1988], p. 283).
41""Andso the appearance of intellectual logic glimmered
above all the expanded shapes resulting from fanciful, arbitrary artifice. Soon it was even believed that artificial
constructs had the same sort of necessity possessed by
natural organisms" (Schenker, "Spirit of Musical Technique," p. 98).
114
When Brahms himself and certain of his colleagues spoke about "logic" in music, as they
frequently did, the stress is often not so much
on the "inherent" or fully "evolved" logic of
tonality and techniques of motivic development
as on the intellect of the individual artist-subject: it is the "logical" artist who makes an
"organic" composition.42 Evidence of Brahms's
compositional creed comes especially from his
students Gustav Jenner and Prince Heinrich
Reuf?. Jenner began to study with Brahms in
the late 1880s and wrote an account of those
lessons in 1905. Jenner's report of Brahms's
reaction to a piano trio that he had brought to
the first lesson implies the organic model: "The
whole ... lacked that broad and full undercurrent of feeling that produces the unity of effect
in a work of art, by expressing itself in an
equally lively manner throughout the various
parts and giving all the details, even if disparate
and at a distance from each other, its particular
stamp."43 In his own daily work at composition, according to Reutf, Brahms never lost sight
of "his 'arch' [seine 'Bogen'], the rounding-off
of the whole." 44As preparation for their own
composing, he requested that his students analyze the relationship between part and whole
(the "organic" structure) in works by the Classical masters. Jenner's account, in particular,
demonstrated how strongly the older composer
felt about the need for proper musical Bildung.45
42This notion of organicism, of course, sharply contrasted
with that in which a piece is seen as taking on a life of its
own. See Ruth A. Solie, "The Living Work: Organicism
and Musical Analysis," this journal 4 (1980), 147-56.
43"Dem Ganzen aber fehlte jene breite und volle
Unterstr6mung der Empfindung, welche die Einheitlichkeit
der Wirkung eines Kunstwerkes hervorruft, indem sie in
allen Teilen gleich lebendig sich iussert und allen noch so
mannigfaltigen und noch so entfernten Einzelheiten ihr
bestimmtes
Geprage gibt" (Gustav Jenner, Johannes
Brahms als Mensch, Lehrer und Kiinstler: Studien und
Erlebnisse [Marburg, 1905], p. 7).
44"Verlire er beim taglichen Absolvieren des Pensums
seinen 'Bogen,' d. h. die Abrundung des Ganzen, nie aus
den Augen" (Kalbeck, Brahms IV, pp. 88-89).
45"Wie oft habe ich Brahms im Zorn ironisch ausrufen
hiren: 'Dass man in allen anderen Dingen zu lernen hat,
weiss jeder, nur in der Musik ist es nicht n6tig; das kann
man, oder man kann es nicht'!" (Jenner, Brahms als
Mensch, p. 58). See, as well, the entry for 19 January 1885
in Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, pp. 151-52: "Auf
Bruckner kam die Sprache, und er dufierte sich wieder so
wie einst: Er begreife nicht, was die Leute da finden wollen.
Composing sets of variations was particularly
appropriate for Brahms's pedagogical purposes
because "no [other] form is so well suited to
teach the beginner to distinguish the essential
from the unessential, to educate him in artistic, strictly logical thinking."46 When Jenner
first showed Brahms his compositions, the older
composer pointed out its "illogical" features:
"In this manner Brahms directed my view from
the surface of a dreamy sentiment downwards
into the depths, where I could but sense that in
addition to feeling another factor must be active, which because of lack of ability and knowledge assisted me only very imperfectly: the
intellect.'"47 Jenner recalled the composer's subsequent recommendation that he study and imitate the sonata-form procedures of the Classical masters: "He intended that through this
composition of pieces after models ... I would
learn to think logically in music."48 Implicit in
Jenner's repeated use of derivatives of the word
"logic" are, again, the high status of reason and
the parallel between music and language: "logical thinking in music" is analogous to "logical
thinking." What Brahms was teaching could
have been alternatively described as, perhaps,
"artistic discrimination."
Brahms's conception of the artist as intellectual agent is fully consonant with Liberal values, and his compositions can be understood to
have projected those values through the marked
discursive quality that Dahlhaus noted, through
the strong "impression" of coherent and "selfcontained thought" in his works. Brahms's
Da sei ja Draseke (ich hatte ihm eben Einiges von diesem
geliehen) ein wahrer Klassiker, und der sie doch auch
ziemlich konfus. 'Gemeinsam ist den zwei Herren, dafs
beide wenig gelernt haben'." Brahms himself was in large
part self-taught, having had a formal general education
that was somewhat limited and having reeducated himself
in music in the 1850s.
46""Keine Form ist so geeignet, den Anfanger zu lehren, das
Wesentliche vom Unwesentlichen zu unterscheiden, ihn
zu kiinstlerischem, streng logischem Denken zu erziehen"
(Jenner, Brahms als Mensch, p. 48).
47"So lenkte Brahms meinen Blick von der Oberfliche einer
traumseligen Empfindung hinunter in Tiefen, wo ich nur
ahnen konnte, dass neben der Empfindung auch ein anderer
Faktor tatig sein misse, der aus Mangel an K6nnen und
Wissen bei mir nur sehr unvollkommen mitarbeitete: der
Verstand" (ibid., p. 8).
4""Erwollte, dass durch diese Arbeit des Nachschaffens ...
ich sollte musikalisch logisch denken lernen" (ibid., p. 57).
quasi-rationalistic aesthetic credo, joined with
his close association with the chamber genres
that were so important in the musical life of
the Liberal upper-middle class, became charged
with political connotation in the late 1880s.
III
In reaction to what one historian has called
the "dreary rationalism" of the Austrian Liberals,49 many Viennese began to participate in
what amounted to a nonrational cult of emotion and instinct, which began to develop with
particular strength in the 1880s. The issue, admittedly, is a complex, multilayered one, but
in a well-known treatment of it Carl Schorske
described the "sharper key," the new emphasis
on emotion as it manifested itself in Viennese
politics, as "a mode of political behavior at
once more abrasive, more creative, and more
satisfying to the life of feeling than the deliberative style of the liberals."'o Because of the
close ties between the Viennese Liberals and
Jews, the calculated arousal of anti-Semitic feelings became the most potent tool in the fight
to dislodge the Liberals from power in the city.
An effective anti-Liberal movement began to
coalesce shortly after lower middle-class men
finally gained the vote on the local level in
1885.51 The historian John Boyer attributed the
changed style of politics to this new class of
voters:
Much of the irrationalbehavior which has been imputed to [Luegerand the other Christian Social leaders] on the basis of their wild rhetoric was actually a
commonly understood and accepted system of public discourse current among the particular strata to
which the Christian Socials appealed.Such language
was the expected verbal response to situations of
tension and conflict.52
49Robert A. Kann, The Multinational Empire, 2 vols. (New
York, 1950), I, 101.
,oSchorske, "Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio," in
Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, p. 119. For a treatment of related
trends in Germany, see Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961).
"For the events that followed the widening of the franchise in 1885 and eventually led to the formation of the
Christian Social party in 1889, see Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 213-35.
52Ibid., p. 206.
115
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
But this does not fully explain the origins of
the new political style. Lueger, often portrayed
as the ultimate pragmatist, habitually resorted
to the "sharper key" to exploit a volatile political situation. Still, it was a group of young
idealists who earlier had conceived the "sharper
key" and given it its name.53 They based their
program for a politics of emotion on Richard
Wagner's writings and his accomplishments in
the music drama, and they put the new political style in the service of radical German nationalism. Some of the most prominent members of the group were Jewish and
the intensity of the polarization in the city. A
review of the first full public performance of
Bruckner's String Quintet in 1885 by the Liberal critic D6mpke became a denunciation of
the emotionalism that he perceived in all "futurist" (zukunftlerische) music. D6mpke wrote
that because of its nature, "chamber music, by
and large, had remained protected the longest
from the futurist excesses,""7 and that it was
possible to discriminate "organic" musical quality more clearly in the contemporary concert
hall or chamber-music salon than in the opera
had long accepted a form of cultural anti-Semitism
as part of their v6lkisch reaction against the bourgeois liberalism of their parents. .... Since they saw
themselves as members of the German Volk, even
the Jewish members . . felt it essential to reject
what they regarded as Semitic cultural traits. As
[George]Mosse observes, the Jew was seen in stereotype as being intellectual and artificial, rootless and
alienated from nature.54
Here it is possible to be candid and distinguish the
logical from the merely "gifted" artists, those who
create organic works of art from those who gush
subjectively .... The true basis of the new musical
religion is at least as much to be sought in an unmistakable coarsening and blase overstimulation of direct musical sensation as in the theory of the unified
work of art.58
These young men supported Georg von
Sch6nerer, a Member of Parliament and PanGerman extremist, and broke with him only
when the racial cast of his anti-Semitism became obvious."5 Sch6nerer's Pan-German movement continued to attract many university
students, but the blend of anti-Semitism and
revitalized Catholicism offered by the group
around Lueger proved to have wider appeal.
After 1889 the Pan-Germans put their support
behind Lueger and the newly formed Christian
Social party to bring about the collapse of Liberalism in Vienna.56
By the mid-1880s, the anti-Liberal cult of
emotion was as apparent in the musical life of
Vienna as it was in its politics. The simplistic
polemics that issued from both sides suggest
house:
In a straightforward affirmation of the Liberal
aesthetic creed, D6mpke placed the composer
as maker and thinker, the "logical artist" who
creates "organic works of art," on a higher level
than the composer as priest of the "new musical religion" or medium, the "merely 'gifted'
artist" who "gushes subjectively" in his work.
To the partisans of the opposing aesthetic side,
though, what D6mpke described pejoratively
as a "blas6 overstimulation of direct musical
sensation" was a positive attribute: that of expressive immediacy, power, and vividness.
Lueger's manipulation of the language of feeling made for effective politics in the Vienna of
the 1880s. Although somewhat different motives may have underpinned the new emphasis
57""Imganzen und grossen war natuirlich die Kammermusik
53See William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist
Politics in Austria (New Haven, 1974).
54Ibid., pp. 196-97.
"Ibid., p. 198.
56In 1888 Sch6nerer lost his political rights for five years
after he and his cohorts raided the editorial offices of the
Liberal newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt. See Wistrich,
The Jews of Vienna, pp. 219-20. The Christian Social party
was formed shortly thereafter under Lueger's leadership.
See Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 224-25.
116
noch am
von den zukunftlerischen
Ausschweifungen
verschont
(Wiener
Allgemeine
Zeitung,
geblieben"
liingsten
17 Jan. 1885; rpt. in Louis, Anton Bruckner [2nd edn.
Munich, 1918], p. 314).
58"Hier gilt es, Farbe zu bekennen und den subjektiv
von dem organisch gestaltenden, den
schwirmenden
Kuinstler zu
logischen von dem bloss 'geistreichen'
. . . Der wahre Grund der neuen
unterscheiden.
musikalischen Religion mindestens ebenso sehr in einer
unverkennbaren Vergr6berung und blasierten Ueberreiztheit des unmittelbar musikalischen Empfindens zu
suchen ist, als in der dramatischen Theorie der Allkunst"
(ibid., p. 315).
on direct, unleashed emotion in music, part of
the purpose there, too, was to appeal to a broader
audience. Many musicians and critics, again
influenced
by Wagner as well as by
Schopenhauer, believed that the greatest music
has a powerful emotional impact without the
mediation of the intellect, and that this was its
salutary democratizing feature. And they saw
Brahms as virtually incapable of having this
kind of effect on his audience. One critic, the
eminent Wagnerian Hans Paumgartner, wrote
in 1890 that Brahms's symphonies
do not inspire and delight the human heart and will
therefore never become popular. But anything that
would be lasting must be popular. This is the case
with all art, perhapswith all human action. Art, but
especially music, that wins the admiration of experts but not the beating heart of humanity will
endure only with difficulty.59
Brahms's perceived failure along these lines
was acute precisely in his symphonies, for the
symphony was the instrumental genre expected
to have the most general appeal. In 1909 Louis
summed up a view of Brahms's symphonies
that appears to have been widespread:60
In construction, the greatest possible concentration
and conciseness; in content and its expression, a
tender intimacy that brings the symphony closer to
9""Siebegeistern und erfreuen eben keines Menschen Herz
und werden darum niemals popular werden. Alles aber,
was Dauer haben soll, muf popular sein. Dies ist bei aller
Kunst, vielleicht bei allem Menschenwerke fiberhaupt der
Fall. Was sich in der Kunst, speciell aber in der Musik nur
die bewundernde Kritik der Fachmanner und nicht das
schlagende Herz der Menschheit
gewinnt, das wird
schwerlich lange fortleben" (Wiener Abendpost, 14 March
1890). Paumgartner was the husband of the noted singer
Rosa Papier, from whom he was separated in the 1890s (he
died in 1896). The musicologist, composer, and conductor
Bernhard Paumgartner was their son. See Bernhard
Paumgartner, Erinnerungen (Salzburg, 1969), p. 16.
60Ludwig Speidel asserted in an obituary in the FremdenBlatt, 6 April 1897, that "gegen die symphonischen
Weltideen
Beethoven's
gehalten,
aussern Brahms'
Symphonien nur die Privatgedanken und Privatmeinungen
eines geistvollen Mannes." In the next generation, Paul
Bekker still echoed this assessment. He wrote of the narrowing of the horizon "from the feeling for humanity of
the heroic Beethoven era" and of an "unsymphonic intimacy" in Brahms's symphonies, grouping him with
Mendelssohn and Schumann as "btirgerliche" composers.
See Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (rpt. Tutzing, 1969), p. 11.
chamber music; abandonment of that-in the highest sense of the word-popular, indeed democratic
trait that distinguishes the Beethoven symphony in
such an unparalleled way, and in its place, cultivation of an elegant aristocracy of taste that flatters
the connoisseur and carries "Odi profanum vulgus"
clearly legible on its forehead.61
Criticism of Brahms tended to focus on an
ostensible weakness in melodic invention,
which was seen as particularly problematic in
his symphonies.62 A year after the publication
of Brahms's Second Symphony in 1878, Wagner
wrote in the Bayreuther Bliitter of certain unnamed contemporary composers who transplanted to their symphonies a style of unpliant
and fragmented melodic writing ("paltry melodies like chopped straw") more suitable for "socalled 'chamber music'." After noting that the
latter music was in any case no longer performed in the appropriate small rooms, Wagner
asserted that when Beethoven composed symphonies "he believed he had to speak in large,
vivid strokes to the people, to all of mankind,
in the spacious hall."63
61"In der Formgebung m6glischste Konzentration und
Knappheit, im Inhalt und seiner Mitteilung eine zarte
die das Wesen der Symphonie
dem der
Intimitat,
Kammermusik annahert, Preisgabe jenes im h6chsten Sinne
Wortes volkstiimlichen, ja demokratischen Zuges, der die
Beethovensche
Symphonie in so einzigartiger Weise
auszeichnnet, und an seiner Stelle Pflege eines vornehmen
Geschmacksaristokratismus, der dem Kenner schmeichelt
und das: Odi profanum vulgus deutlich lesbar an der Stirne
trAgt" (Louis, Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart (Munich,
1909), p. 159).
62See, for example, Angelika Horstmann, Untersuchungen
zur Brahms-Rezeption der Jahre 1860-1880 (Hamburg,
1986), p. 255, on the reception of the finale of the First
Symphony.
6311Die gewisse zahe Melodik, welche ihnen [symphonic
we say-Romanticcompositions of our "newest-shall
Classical school"] aus der von ihren Sch6pfern bisher still
gepflegten, sogenannten 'Kammermusik' zugefuhrt wird.
In die 'Kammer' hatte man sich nimlich zuriickgezogen;
leider aber nicht in das traute Stibchen, in welchem
Beethoven athemlos lauschenden wenigen Freunden alles
das Unsagliche mittheilte, was er hier nur verstanden
wissen durfte, nicht aber dort in der weiten Saalhalle, wo
er in grofgen plastischen Zilgen zum Volke, zur ganzen
Menschheit sprechen zu muissen glaubte. . . . Was vorher
zu Quintetten und dergleichen hergerichtet gewesen war,
wurde nun als Symphonie servirt: kleinliches MelodienHacksel" ("Ober die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama"
[1879], rpt. in vol. X, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen [3rd edn. Leipzig, 1897], p. 183). See, as well this
passage in Adorno, Sociology of Music, p. 94: "In prin-
117
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
At one point even Kalbeck confided to
Heuberger that he himself had misgivings about
Brahms's symphonic style. Heuberger wrote this
into his diary after a Viennese performance of
the Fourth Symphony in January 1887:
I had a strangeconversation with Max Kalbeckabout
Brahms. K. said finally that B., despite his significance, is no master of the foremost rank, since execution prevails over power of invention [in his symphonies]. There is a lack of the great, noble popularity, the appealing to the common people, which, for
example, distinguished Beethoven. "Symphonies
must reallybe understandableto the common people.
Brahms'ssymphonies will never become that."'64
The Liberal Kalbeck, too, invokes "Beethoven
the democrat" and stresses the primacy of melodic invention and the "common touch," both
apparently crucial to the meaning of the symphony as a genre.
Thus, it seems that the more rarefied chamber genres rather than the symphony were
widely held to be Brahms's real domain.65 According to Louis, the close association of Brahms
with chamber music only intensified the aversion that progressive musicians already felt toward this kind of composition. Their antipathy
toward chamber music was related to their egalitarian politics:
"Chambermusic ruins the character"-thus was said
among us at the time. And the grounds for this
strange saying were these: we observed that because
higher chambermusic makes itself accessible to laymen only with difficulty, an appearance of being
ciple, Beethoven's symphonies are simpler than chamber
music despite their substantially more lavish apparatus,
and this very simplicity showed what effects the many
listeners had in the interior of the formal edifice. It was
not a matter of adjusting to the market, of course; at most,
perhaps, it had to do with Beethoven's intent to 'strike fire
in a man's soul'."
641"Mit Max Kalbeck merkwtirdig fiber Brahms gesprochen.
K. sagte endlich einmal, dag B. trotz seiner Bedeutung
kein Meister allerersten Ranges sei, da die Mache doch die
Gewalt der EinfAlle tiberwiege. Es mangele die groge, edle
PopularitAt, das Demagogische, welches z.B. Beethoven
auszeichnet. 'Symphonien mtissen doch eigentlich dem
Volke verstAndlich sein. Das werden Brahms' Symphonien
nie'" (Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 156; the
entry is from 3 January 1887).
6 This was certainly the conclusion in a number of obituaries.
118
intimately familiar with it bestows an aura of an
exceptional musicality and thus fosters affectation,
snobbery, and hypocrisy.66
Theodor Helm, who came to admire
Bruckner's music in the 1880s, remained one
of the fairest of the reviewers on either side of
the musical struggle. Both the Clarinet Quintet of Brahms and the Eighth Symphony of
Bruckner received their first performances in
1892. In his review of the symphony, Helm
referred to the Clarinet Quintet as "masterly,"
but added this:
What does even the most beautiful "chamberpiece"
signify-a genre that is effective only in a small
space and therefore addresses itself to narrow
circles-in comparison with a symphony like the
latest by Bruckner, whose thrillingly all-powerful
tonal language-we experienced it joyfully in the
Philharmonic concert-is capable of inspiring thousands upon thousands who have ears to hear and a
heart to feel what is heard!67
Toward the end of the 1880s and later, some
chamber groups instituted series of chambermusic concerts with inexpensive tickets in big
halls as a way of making this music, otherwise
preserved for the enjoyment of a select, affluent group, available to a wider audience.68 But
661"'Kammermusikverdirbt den Charakter,'-so ging damals
unter uns die Rede, und die Beobachtung, wie der Anschein
einer innigen Vertrautheit mit der dem Laien nur schwer
sich erschliessenden h6heren Kammermusik den Nimbus
einer exzeptionellen
Musikalitat verleiht und so die
Affektation, den Snobismus und die Heuchelei gerade auf
diesem Gebiete besonders tippig wachsen lisst, mochte
diesem seltsamen Diktum einigen Grund geben" (Louis,
Die deutsche Music der Gegenwart, pp. 273-74).
67"Aber was bedeutet auch die sch6nste derartige
Genre, das nur in kleinem
'Kammercomposition'-ein
Raume wirksam ist und sich daher auch nur an engere
eine Symphonie, wie die letzte
Krise wendet-gegen
Bruckner'sche, deren hinreigend allgewaltige Tonsprachewir haben es im philharmonischen Concert freudig erlebtTausende und Abertausende zu begeistern vermag, die da
Ohren haben, zu h6ren, und ein Herz, das Geh6rte zu
empfinden!" (Deutsche Zeitung, 28 Dec. 1892). Adorno
wrote of the inherent elitism of chamber music: "People
who think they are musical take it for granted that chamber music is the highest musical species. This convention
certainly serves largely for elitist self-affirmation; the limited circle of persons permits the inference that matters
reserved for those must be better than what the misera
plebs enjoys" (Sociology of Music, p. 95).
68For instance, in the 1889-90 season the Hellmesberger
Quartet turned their performances in the large hall of the
as he noted in his review, Helm (like both
Wagner and Brahms) believed that chamber
music was "effective only in a small space."'69
Many years later, in his memoirs, Helm recalled the two premieres in 1892 and used a
metaphor to contrast the genres of chamber
music and symphony: "Even the finest, most
successful pastel-drawing-with which a chamber-music piece by Brahms may perhaps be compared-can never compete in immediate striking effect with a musical fresco in the boldest
style."70
IV
The view of Brahms as essentially a composer of chamber music-and hence an intellectual elitist-did not change in his lifetime.
In a few works from the mid-1880s, however-especially the Third Symphony, op. 90, which
received its first performances in the 1883-84
season, and the A-Major Violin Sonata, op. 100,
and C-Minor Piano Trio, op. 101, which had
their premieres in the 1886-87 season-he was
Musikverein building into "popular" concerts. Speidel
wrote approvingly of these concerts at the end of the season in the Fremden-Blatt, 2 April 1890: "In diesen Tagen
hat das Quartett Hellmesberger den gegliickten Versuch
gemacht, Auffuhrungen im Grogfen Saale der Musikfreunde
mit populiren Preisen zu veranstalten. Gute Musik fuir
billiges Geld, ist in Wien ein Wunsch vieler. Es war ein
grofges Zustr6men von Publikum an den beiden Abenden,
und nach VerstAndnifg und Begeisterung war die beste
musikalische Gesellschaft versammelt."
Although the symphony was widely considered to be a
more democratic genre, in reality the masses could no
more easily attend symphonic than chamber-music performances. "Popular" symphonic concerts began to be a
feature of Viennese musical life at approximately the same
time as the lower-priced chamber music concerts. Speidel
wrote a disgruntled review of one early concert of this sort
in the Fremden-Blatt, 7 March 1889. William Weber places
the city's first popular orchestral series a decade later, in
1899. See Weber, "Wagner, Wagnerism, and Musical Idealism," in Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed.
David C. Large and William Weber (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), p.
67.
69SeeHelm, "Finfzig Jahre Wiener Musikleben (1866-1916):
Erinnerungen eines Musikkritikers," Der Merker 8 (1917),
Die
194; Heuberger, "Brahms als Kammermusiker,"
redenden Kiinste: Zeitschrift fuir Musik und Litteratur 3
(1896-97), 894.
70"Einmusikalisches Freskogem~ilde im kuhnsten Stil, mit
welchem sich doch selbst die feinste, gelungenste Pastellzeichnung-der sich allenfalls ein Kammermusikstiick von
Brahms vergleichen liift-an unmittelbar einschlagender
Wirkung niemals messen kann" (Helm, "Ftinfzig Jahre
Wiener Musikleben," Der Merker 8 [1917], 498).
briefly seen as composing in a new and simpler, more "popular" style.71 The following
anonymous review of the C-Minor Piano Trio
illustrates the kind of reaction these compositions initially elicited, even from critics normally hostile to Brahms: "This time the composer has created from the depths of his undeniably great lyric gift and has bestowed upon us
a work that gives pleasure not only to the expert through its artistic working-out, but also
to the soul and ears of the naive listener."72
The many critics and musicians under the sway
of ideas from Schopenhauer and Wagner believed that a composer could communicate directly to an audience, educated or not, through
heartfelt melody. While it had usually been
acknowledged that the "artistic working-out"
in his compositions gave pleasure to the musically educated ("the expert"), Brahms had often
been criticized for deficiencies in his melodic
style that made his works inaccessible to the
public at large. Reviewers therefore welcomed
the longer and more continuous melodic writing in these new works ("this time")-the critic
cited above went so far as to speak of the
composer's "undeniably great lyric gift."
The political crisis in Vienna deepened soon
after the premieres of the chamber works in
the 1886-87 season. "Talk of a potential antiLiberal coalition soon filled Vienna's political
clubs and salons in the autumn of 1887"73 after
Lueger gave his first anti-Semitic speeches in
June and September of that year. Not surprisingly, the polarization within the Viennese
musical world appears to have intensified
shortly thereafter, and in April 1889 Helm noted
that "in Vienna it seems to be even harder to
reach a reconciliation in music than in politics."74 The positions of several critics would
71Forthe reception of these works, see my Brahms's Chamber-Music Summer of 1886: A Study of Opera 99, 100,
101, and 108 (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1992).
72"Der Componist hat diesmal aus der Tiefe seiner
unleugbar grogfen lyrischen Begabung gesch6pft und uns
ein Werk beschert, das nicht blogf durch seine kunstvolle
Arbeit den Kenner, sondern auch Gemiith und Ohren des
naiven H6rers erfreute" (Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt, 27
February 1887).
7•Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 217-18.
74"Mit der musikalischen Vers6hnung geht es aber in Wien,
wie es scheint, noch viel schwerer, als mit der politischen"
(Deutsche Zeitung, 13 April 1889).
119
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
certainly seem to have hardened. Paumgartner
and Ludwig Speidel, for example-both enthuwrote fasiasts for Bruckner's music-initially
vorable reviews of Brahms's A-Major Violin Sonata but in subsequent reviews only a few years
later treated the same work with contempt.75
Paumgartner and Helm, both prominent critics, reviewed concerts in long-established newspapers. The former wrote for the Wiener
Abendpost, an "official" newspaper published
by the Austrian government.76 Although this
daily did not always agree with official governmental policies, its basic stance was non-Liberal: the Liberals had been the opposition party
in the central government since 1879. Helm,
on the other hand, wrote for the Deutsche
Zeitung, which had originally been Liberal but
then became aggressively anti-Semitic after
1887, eventually turning into a mouthpiece for
Lueger.77Both critics stressed the cerebral quality of Brahms's later music. In a March 1890
review of the second version of the B-Major
Piano Trio, op. 8, Helm regretted the changes
that Brahms had made in the exposition of the
opening movement and characterized the differences between the two versions in this way:
"What stood there earlier [in the 1854 version]
seemed to us the direct outpouring of a passionate youth's heart; what stands there now
has been dictated by the technical artistic understanding of one who has since become a
master but also a much more coolly thinking
man."78 Helm tended to criticize Brahms even
more for his connections with the Liberal establishment than for the content of his music
and asserted repeatedly that the strident advocacy of Brahms's music by the Liberal newspapers only hurt his cause. In the review from
April 1889 quoted above, he compared the enthusiastic reaction to the Third Symphony at
75Speidel's reviews are in the Fremden-Blatt issues from 7
December 1886 and 3 December 1893; Paumgartner's are
in the Wiener Abendpost issues from 16 December 1886
and 9 December 1893.
der 6sterreichischen
76See Kurt Paupid, Handbuch
Pressegeschichte 1848-1959, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1960), I, 121.
77Ibid.,p. 158.
78"11Wasfrfiher dort stand, diinkte uns der unmittelbare
Ergug eines gliihendes Jtinglingsherzens, was jetzt dort
steht, hat der technische Kunstverstand des seither zum
Meister emporgereisten, aber auch weit kiuhler denkenden
Mannes dictirt" (Deutsche Zeitung, 4 March 1890).
120
its premiere in 1883 with the cool reception of
a recent performance:
Of late not only ... the F-MajorSymphony, but in
general every largercomposition by Brahmshas met
the most distinct suspicion on the part of the public.
This is the fault of none other than that small group
of critical despots who are always enraptured by
Brahms,speaking as if he were a Bach or Beethoven,
while they basically ignore Bruckner.79
Paumgartner's reviews of Brahms pushed all
this much further. Even more than Helm, he
dwelt on "Liberal" traits in the composer's
music, concentrating-as
many critics before
him had-on Brahms's melodic style. His critique of the 1890 premiere of the G-Major String
Quintet, op. 111, is typical:
Ingenious, full of interesting details. . . . Neverthe-
less this newest creation of Brahms also bears the
cool reflecting trait sharedby everything by Brahms,
even if his faction .
. .
conducted itself in the most
enthusiastic manner. But enthusiasm is the very
feeling that Brahms never arouses. The themes, although treated so effectively and elaborately, seem
nonetheless more and more thought ratherthan felt,
more constructed than discovered. One is so seldom
in one's innermost soul touched by Brahms,and the
specific mood in which Brahms puts us is always
only a reflective pleasure.80
Describing the themes in Brahms's late style as
intellectually conceived ("thought rather than
in jiingster Zeit nicht nur . . . die F-dur
79"Dagf ...
Symphonie, sondern iuberhaupt, jede gr6foere Composition
von Brahms dem ausgesprochensten
Mif~trauen des
Publicums begegnete, hat niemand Anderer verschuldet,
als jenes kleine Hiuslein kritischer Despoten, die von
Brahms immer verztickt, wie von einem Bach und
Beethoven sprechen, wifhrend sie Bruckner grundsitzlich
unbeachtet lassen" (Deutsche Zeitung, 13 April 1889).
8011"Geistreich, voll interessanter Einzelheiten. . . . Doch
auch diese neueste Brahms'sche Sch6pfung hat den kiihlen
reflectirenden Zug, den alles Brahms'sche besitzt, an sich,
wenn auch die Partei ... sich auf das enthusiastischeste
geberdete. Gerade aber Enthusiasmus ist die Empfindung,
die Brahms nie erregt. Die Themen, so wirksam und
kunstvoll auch dieselben musikalisch verarbeitet werden,
scheinen doch immer mehr gedacht als empfunden, mehr
construirt als gefunden. Man wird so selten bei Brahms im
innersten Gemtith getroffen, und die spezifische Stimmung,
in welche wir durch Brahms'sche Musik versetzt werden,
ist doch immer nur ein reflectirter Genuf" (Wiener
Abendpost, 19 November 1890).
felt") and artificial ("more constructed than discovered"), Paumgartner focuses on those features of modern culture most despised by the
anti-Liberal reactionaries. Not only is there a
clear anti-Liberal stance in his reviews from
the late 1880s and early 1890s, there may also
be an anti-Semitic subtext: the features he chose
to emphasize, artificiality and intellectualism,
were-as we have seen-even more closely associated with Jews than with Liberals.
Paumgartner touched more explicitly on the
new Germanic ideology in a review of a concert given by Joseph Joachim and Brahms in
February 1889:
Herr Joachim received a great deal of applause;nevertheless, the enthusiasm of a deeply stimulated and
inspired audience was lacking. Brahmsas composer,
Joachim as performer-that is the new German music. It is clever and learned, interesting and tasteful;
nevertheless, if the German people had never felt
and heard any music but this, they would never in
all eternity have been permitted the experience of a
Sedan.81
Again stressing an undesirable learnedness in
his critique of both Brahms and Joachim,
Paumgartner was implying that German music
was being defiled by a non-German emotional
superficiality.82 (And Joachim was, in fact, Jewish.)
No holds were barred in the new anti-Liberal, anti-Semitic newspapers that proliferated
at the end of the 1880s. The music critics in
these papers took up some of the same themes
that appeared in Paumgartner's reviews, but
were shamelessly direct in their expression of
volkisch tribalism. The Deutsches Volksblatt,
German-national, anti-Semitic organ in Austria," began publishing at the end of 1888.83
Already in the newspaper's first numbered issue (1 January 1889), the importance of music
to its agenda was evident. The newspaper
showed its particular musical orientation by
quoting Wagner and making constant reference
to him on the very first page in an article that
borrowed its title from his essay "Was ist
deutsch?" The contributors included August
Gllerich, who had been Bruckner's student
and was later to be his biographer. An article
on German folk song, which he coauthored,
observed this: "To invent melodies requires
only strong feeling and that involuntary, unerring creative instinct which must be inborn.Both reside unweakened even today in the raw
core of the Volk."84
The composition of melodies as described
here sounds very like the "subjective gushing"
that D6mpke had found so deplorable in
Bruckner's music. And, indeed, the reviews and
other articles on music in the Deutsches
Volksblatt consistently espoused an irrationalist aesthetic, emphasizing the efficacy of melody
born of strong emotion and the related issue of
expressive immediacy. In a review of a concert
of chamber music by Schubert and Beethoven,
G6llerich (in typical fashion) offered an evaluation of Bruckner:
Only this master is capable today of elevating his
melody to the eternally effective, purely human type
of his great predecessors, while contemporary talents-even those of the most imposing natural gifts
[i.e., Brahms]-are for the most part understandable
only through the mediation of art-historical reflection.85
which has been called "the most significant
81"HerrJoachim errang sehr vielen Beifall, doch fehlte der
Enthusiasmus einer im Innersten erregten und begeisterten
Brahms als Componist,
Joachim als
Zuh6rerschaft.
Vortragender-das ist die neue deutsche Musik. Sie ist
geistvoll und gelehrt, interessant und feinsinning; doch
wenn das Volk der Deutschen nie Anders in T6nen geh6rt
und empfunden hatte, so hitte es in Ewigkeit niemals ein
Sedan erleben dirfen" (Wiener Abendpost, 13 February
1889).
12See the tabular summation of "German" and "Not German" traits in Ernst Hanish, "The Political Influence and
Appropriation of Wagner," trans. Paul Knight, in Wagner
Handbook, ed. Ulrich Muiller and Pater Wapnewski, trans.
ed. John Deathridge (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), p. 191.
83See Paupi6, Handbuch, I, 107. A "Probeblatt" appeared
on 15 December 1888; the first numbered issue appeared
on 1 January 1889.
84"Melodien zu erfinden, vermag nur ein starkes Empfinden
und jener unwillkiirlich das Wahre treffende, schaffende
Instinct, welcher angeboren sein mug.-Beide leben heute
im frischen Marke des Volkes"
noch ungeschwicht
(August G6llerich and Dr. J. Pommer, "Die Pflege
Volksliedes-eine
der
des deutschen
Ehrenpflicht
Deutschnationalen," in Deutsches Volksblatt, 21 January
1890).
8""Einzig dieser Meister vermag heute seine Melodie zum
ewig giltigen, rein menschlichen Typus zu erheben, gleich
seinen grogen Vorgangern, wahrend die zeitgen6ssischen
121
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal
19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
G611erich likewise lost no opportunity to disparage Brahms directly, even dragging his name
into a review of the pianist Eugen d'Albert:
"With d'Albert we do not enjoy immediately
with the feelings, but rather with the intellect.
... D'Albert's individuality thus corresponds
above all to the work of the master of brooding
thought but brittle invention, the work of J.
Brahms !"86
In other reviews, G611erich ridiculed the
composer's apparent attempts at a simpler, more
accessible style-especially
as found (or as believed to have been found) in the Third Symphony.8" He asserted in February 1889 that
Brahms "wants at any cost to be popular":
One of the cleverest critics in Vienna, L. Speidl [sic],
in an ingeniously apt way writes that when Brahms
wants to be popular,he displays a kind of "desperate
naivete." We were reminded of this choice expression again while listening to the Andante of the
[Third] Symphony-what wretched barrenness of
ideas reigns in this Zampa-like movement, which
does not even disdain Jewish-temple triplets simply
to appearproperly"understandable"!88
Talente uns-auch
bei den achtunggebietendsten
nur unter Vermittelung
Begabung-gr6tgtentheils
Reflexion verstandlich werden"
kunstgeschichtlicher
(Deutsches Volksblatt, 25 December 1889). Although he
does not mention his source, G6llerich has "borrowed"
several phrases from Wagner's essay on Beethoven of 1870:
"Die Melodie ist durch Beethoven von dem Einflusse der
Mode und des wechselnden Geschmackes emanzipirt, zumrn
ewig giltigen, rein menschlichen Typus erhoben worden.
Beethoven's Musik wird zu jeder Zeit verstanden werden,
wihrend die Musik seiner Vorginger gr6ftentheils nur
unter Vermittelung kunstgeschichtlicher
Reflexion uns
bleiben wird." See Richard Wagner,
verstindlich
Gesammelten Schriften und Dichtungen (3rd edn. Leipzig,
1897), IX, 102.
86"Bei d'Albert geniefen wir nicht unmittelbar mit dem
Gefiihle, sondern mit dem Verstande. . . . Deshalb
entspricht der Eigenart d'Albert's vor Allem das Schaffen
des Meisters griibelnden Denkens, aber spr6der Erfindung,
das Schaffen J. Brahms!" (Deutsches Volksblatt, 18 January 1889).
87David Brodbeck has seen Brahms as "for once determined
to take the better of the New Germans at some of their
own games" in this symphony. See his "Brahms, the Third
Symphony, and the New German School," in Brahms and
His World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton, 1990), p. 75.
88"Dabei sich um jeden Preis popular geben will. Einer der
geistvollsten Kritiker Wiens, L. Speidl, schrieb jiingst in
genialzutreffender Weise, daf Brahms, sobald er popular
werden m6chte, eine Art 'verzweifelter
NaivetAt'
entwickelte. Das kistliche Wort kam uns bei Anhorung
des 'Andante' der genannten Symphonie wieder so recht
122
The historian Steven Beller notes that in the
later days of Liberalism, "anyone could be discredited by being associated with the Jews,"
and that Liberals were the usual targets.89
Paumgartner, in a veiled way, may have intended, and G611erich certainly did intend, to
link Brahms with the Jews. But the music critic
of the Ostdeutsche Rundschau, Josef Stolzing,
was utterly blunt. In a sarcastic article from
March 1890 about the conservative Viennese
symphonic
programs, he remarked that
Goldmark and Brahms were "in any case the
right composers for the predominantly Jewish
audience of the midday concerts."90 Stolzing
then moved his survey from the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde concerts to those of the Philharmonic and in a rhetorical flight of fancy
transformed Brahms into a Jew:
We are very curious about the Philharmonic repertoire, which will be assembled, as ever, from some
frequentlyheardsymphonies of Beethoven,Schubert,
and Schumann, along with the most recent works
by Jews. . . . What a pleasing spectacle awaits us
when Hanslick, Hirschfeld, K6nigstein, and Kalbeck
again offer the palm to their great (?) fellow-clansmen Goldmark, Goldschmidt, Brahmsetc. and lead
them into the temple of immortality. Long live the
music-loving and music-making Jewry!
Strange!In the realm of politics Jewry is liberal;
in that of music, conservative.91
zum Bewuftsein-welch'
trostlose GedankendArre herrscht
doch in diesem 'Zampa'-mdifigen Satze, der selbst juIdische
nicht verschmdiht,
um nur recht
Tempel-Triolen
'begreiflich' zu erscheinen!" (Deutsches Volksblatt, 28
March 1889). Compare Brahms's approving remarks in October 1886 about Goldmark's Merlin: "Vor so einem fixen
Kerl wie Goldmark muf man Respekt haben; es ist eine
Freude, beim Durchlesen zu sehen, wie das alles wirken
wird, wie alles an seinem Platze steht. Und dabei jtidelt es
gar nicht, gar keine 'Triole"' (reported in Heuberger,
Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 155).
The remark by Speidel appeared in the Fremden-Blatt,
7 March 1889, in reference to "Vergebliches Stindchen,"
op. 84, no. 4: "Was will man am Ende mit einer solchen
verzweifelten Naivetit, die Brahms stets bekundet, wenn
er einem volksthiimlichen Stoff berfihrt."
89Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews 1867-1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 1989), p. 200.
90"Dagegen finden wir Goldmark und Brahms, jedenfalls
fiur das in seiner Mehrheit jiidische Publicum der
Mittagsconcerte die richtigen Tonsetzer" (Ostdeutsche
Rundschau, 19 October 1890).
sind wir auf den Spielplan der
91"Sehr neugierig
Philharmoniker, welcher sich wahrscheinlich, wie alle
Jahre, aus einigen often gehorten Symphonien von
Brahms, of course, was not a Jew, but he was
a Liberal-and not just because of his connections with the exclusive cultural organizations
and Liberal newspapers. For the motivic-thematic elaboration, chamber style, and reflective aesthetic experience associated with his
music were linked more generally with Liberal
intellectual elitism and, by implication, Liberal individualism. V6lkisch irrationalists embraced a diametrically opposed grouping of melodic invention, symphonic style, and a direct
emotional experience of music. To be sure, the
schematic categories established by the polemicists did not always hold, for example, in the
connection between politics and musical tastes:
Speidel, a Jewish journalist who wrote for the
Fremden-Blatt and the Neue freie Presse, admired the music of Bruckner but was critical of
both Wagner and Brahms; Moritz Szeps, the
Jewish editor of two leftist-Liberal newspapers,
the Neues Wiener Tagblatt and later the Wiener
Tagblatt, was a Francophile but also an ardent
Wagnerian.92 And a number of questions remain: for instance, what does "melodic invention" mean; and how close a connection can be
made between parts of what Dahlhaus called
"the second age of the symphony" and the transition to mass politics in the late nineteenth
century?
Beethoven, Schubert und Schumann und den modernsten
Jiidenwerken zusammensetzen wird.... Welch' erfreulicher
Anblick wartet unser, wenn Hanslick,
Hirschfeld,
Konigstein und Kalbeck ihren grofen (?) Stammesgenossen
Goldmark, Goldschmidt, Brahms u.s.w. wieder die Palme
reichen und sie in den Tempel der Unsterblichkeit fuhren
werden! Es lebe das musiktreibende und musikliebende
Judenthum!
"Sonderbar! Auf politischem Gebiete ist das Judenthum
'liberal,' in der Musik conservativ" (ibid.).
92For Speidel, see Charlotte Pinter, Ludwig Speidel als
Musikkritiker, 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna,
1949); for Szeps, see Berta Szeps, My Life and History,
trans. John Sommerfield (London, 1938).
Still, the skewed critiques reflect a real conflict that culminated in the collapse of Viennese
Liberalism in 1897, the year of Brahms's death.
His rehabilitation as an echt deutscher composer seems to have begun quickly thereafterit helped that he was not actually Jewish.93 The
Liberal party had little political power after
1897, but Albert Fuchs has noted that such
important (Jewish) intellectuals as Sigmund
Freud, Stefan Zweig, and Arthur Schnitzler continued to view the world from essentially Liberal perspectives.94 To his list, we could add
Arnold Schoenberg, whose emphasis on "musical logic" and composing "after models" surely
derives from the Liberal tradition (invoked now
by a musical "progressivist"). Moreover, Alban
Berg's polemic against Hans Pfitzner in 1920
took up the crucial aesthetic question ("inspired
invention" versus "'rational' elaboration"),"•
still imbued with political meaning, that had
engaged the factions around Brahms and
Bruckner in fin-de-siecle Vienna. The rhetoric
in the original musical controversy had often
been petty. But the central issue was not trivial,
and its aesthetic and political aspects
-..-.
had become inseparable.
9,In his reminiscences of Bruckner, published in 1901,
Hruby attempted to dissociate Brahms from the Liberals
around him. See his Erinnerungen an Bruckner, p. 37:
"Wenn Brahms gekonnt hitte, wiirde er vielleicht der Erste
gewesen sein, der die Hanslick-Fellinger'sche Clique, fuir
die er nur Ekel empfinden mufte, von sich abgeschiittelt
hitte. Denn schlietlich war Brahms auch ein Deutscher,
und ein guter obendrein! Aber er konnte eben die
Propagandisten seines Ruhmes nicht Lugen strafen."
94See Fuchs, Geistige Stromungen, p. 10.
9'This essay, "Die musikalische Impotenz der 'neuen
Asthetik' Hans Pfitzners," which appeared originally in
the Musikbliitter des Anbruch 2 (June 1920), is rpt. in
Willi Reich, Alban Berg: Mit Bergs eigenen Schriften und
Beitriigen von Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno und Ernst
Krenek (Vienna, 1937).
123
MARGARET
NOTLEY
Brahms as
Liberal