Johannes Brahms was 43 when his First Symphony came out. By that age, Beethoven had already composed eight of them. Most important symphonists produced their first symphony sometime in their 20s or earlier. Sibelius, Bruckner, and Vaughn Williams wrote theirs in their 30s.

Why did Brahms take so long to produce a symphony?

As he explained it, “You can’t have any idea what it’s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you.” He referred to Beethoven, but all 19th-century composers had Beethoven marching behind them. It appears that Brahms’ friend Robert Schumann laid a special burden on him.

Johannes Brahms was the son of a bass player in the orchestra and opera of Hamburg, Germany. He started piano lessons when he was 7. He also liked to compose, which made his teacher complain that his composing interfered with his learning to play piano. His parents tried to discourage his interest in composition.

Brahms presented his first full piano recital at 16, but he had already composed his first piano sonata at 12. As a teenager, he published several compositions under a pseudonym.  Then he spent much of the rest of his life trying to destroy these juvenile works.

In 1853, Brahms became friends with the great violinist Joseph Joachim, and Joachim introduced him to Robert Schumann, a composer Brahms especially admired.

What Schumann wrote about Brahms

Robert Schumann quickly published an enthusiastic introduction of Brahms to a wide readership. He began his essay enumerating (in a footnote) several composers who had caught his attention over the years as new musical forces, then he wrote:

Following the paths of these chosen ones, it has seemed to me that, after such a preparation, there would and must suddenly appear some day one man who would be singled out to make articulate in an ideal way the highest expression of our time, one man who would bring us mastery, not as the result of a gradual development, but as Minerva, springing fully armed from the head of Cronus. And he is come, a young creature over whose cradle graces and heroes stood guard. His name is Johannes Brahms. . . Seated at the piano he at once discovered to us wondrous regions. We were drawn into a circle whose magic grew on us more and more. To this was added an altogether inspired style of playing which made of the piano an orchestra of lamenting and exultant voices. There were sonatas—veiled symphonies rather; lieder, w hose poetry one could understand without knowing the words, although a deep vocal melody ran through them all; single piano pieces, in part of a daemonic nature, most attractive in form; then sonatas for violin and piano; string quartets—and every work so distinct from any other that each seemed to flow from a different source . . .

Later, if he will wave with his magic wand to where massed forces, in the chorus and orchestra, lend their strength, there will lie before us still more wondrous glimpses into the secrets of the spirit world. May the highest genius strengthen him for what expectation warrants, for there is also latent in him another genius—that of modesty. . . . – “Neue Bahnen,” in Neue Zeitscrift für Musik (October 1853). English translation in Source Readings in Music History / edited by Oliver Strunk (Norton, 1950): 844-45.

At this time, the 20-year-old Brahms, apparently improvising for Schumann, hadn’t yet composed anything important. His performance must have shown an especially profound musical imagination.

Nowhere does Schumann explicitly mention Beethoven, but nearly everyone who mentions the article assumes that he meant to call Brahms Beethoven’s successor. Brahms himself appears to have taken it that way. It could only have made him more nervous about comparison with Beethoven than he probably otherwise would have been.

Composing the First Symphony

Brahms apparently started on a symphony in D minor, the key of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in 1854, but it eventually became his first piano concerto.

Brahms left behind few personal documents to explain the process of writing any of his works. He sent a completed first movement to Clara Schumann in 1862, which began immediately with the Allegro. In a letter to Joseph Joachim, Schumann commented that the beginning seemed harsh. If she expected Brahms to continue to work on the symphony, she was disappointed. He sent her the horn call from the introduction to the finale as a birthday card in 1868.

Under pressure from his publisher, Brahms finally got down to business to finish the symphony in 1874.

Only in 1876 did he play the entirety of the completed symphony on the piano for Clara Schumann. By that time, he had added the dramatic introduction to the first movement. Since it was apparently the last part of the symphony that he composed, it contains some important hints at the themes that will follow.

The premiere of the symphony took place on November 4, 1876—some 14 years after he started it. Rather than risk critical response in such major cities as Vienna or Leipzig, Brahms had it performed first in Karlsruhe. Simrock published the symphony the following year, but only after Brahms made extensive revisions.

For all of Brahms’ caution, the symphony proved immediately successful. Hans von Bülow bestowed the accolade “Beethoven’s Tenth” on it, declaring it the first worthy successor to the master Brahms had feared comparison with. Bülow also announced Brahms the final member of his “holy trinity” of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

Brahms First Symphony and its models

Sonata form as Beethoven inherited it included clear breaks between sections. Even the most unsophisticated members of the contemporary audiences for sonata movements by Haydn, Mozart, and their contemporaries could easily follow the form.

Beethoven began to disguise the breaks in various ways. Later composers followed that trend. Brahms especially went to great lengths to hide his transitions. Hardly anyone, therefore, can actually hear the formal structure of Romantic sonata forms.

Beethoven’s symphonies (except the Sixth and Ninth) begin with a sonata form movement, followed by a slow movement, a scherzo (or minuet), and a finale. The finale could be a sonata form or something else. The Third Symphony, for example, ends with a set of variations. The Sixth has five movements. The Ninth reverses the order of the inner movements.

Four of Beethoven’s symphonies begin with a slow introduction, although the Fifth and Ninth, Brahms’ principal models, do not.

In a break from Beethoven’s symphonies, Brahms provided his symphony with an introduction not only to the first movement but also to the finale.

Comparison with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

Like Beethoven’s Fifth, Brahms’ First Symphony begins in C minor and ends in C major. Beethoven’s slow movement is in A-flat major, a close relative of the C minor opening. Brahms chose the very distant key of E major for his slow movement. Instead of a scherzo, Brahms composed an intermezzo for his third movement.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Brahms First share one important detail of orchestration: Both introduce three trombones in the finale. In Brahms’ case, however, they are much more exposed, softly introducing a chorale tune that seems to interrupt the horn theme in the faster part of the introduction. This theme returns in the coda, very loudly with the full orchestra joining the trombones.

Comparison with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Brahms First Symphony is clearly modeled not only on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony but also the Ninth. Yet he deliberately chose important deviations from this model as well.

Wagner had taken Beethoven’s choice of a choral finale to mean that he had declared the purely instrumental symphony obsolete. No subsequent symphonist had taken it that way. Brahms clearly and boldly rejected the notion.

The theme of Brahms’ finale has often been compared to the Ode to Joy in the choral movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. When someone pointed out the resemblance to Brahms, he replied that any donkey knew that. The two themes start out very differently, but measures 10-12 of the two themes are nearly identical in pitch. The rhythms are similar.

In fact, measure 11 repeats measure 10, but in Brahms, it also repeats measure 9. That is, where Beethoven repeated a measure, Brahms has it played three times. Then, the two themes diverge again.

Why would Brahms, as inventive a composer as ever lived, put a direct quotation from Beethoven in the middle of his theme? One possibility is that he wanted to invoke the memory of Beethoven’s symphony and at the same time force listeners to consider how much the new work differed structurally.

Most notably, Brahms did not follow Beethoven in composing a choral finale. Could it be a deliberate attempt to “correct” Wagner’s mistaken view of musical progress?

Sources:

Johannes Brahms Symphony #1 (1876) / Morris Senegor
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C minor op. 68 / Philip Huscher, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Music memories: Johannes Brahms / Keith Chaffee, Los Angeles Public Library. May 1, 2020
Notes on the program / Laurie Schulman, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. 2018
A tale of two finales: “correcting” the Ninth in the Finale of Brahms’s First Symphony / Ayah Rifal, Journal of Arts & Humanities. October 18, 2018