(Masterpieces of Music Book 3) Matthew Rye - Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1-Erudition (2014)

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About the Author
Author Matthew Rye studied music at Magdalen College, Oxford, and has
spent his career in music journalism as a writer, editor and critic. He has
written numerous programme and CD booklet notes, was a reviewer for the
Daily Telegraph for 13 years and BBC Music Magazine for over 15, and has
also written for the Independent,Sunday Times, Musical Times, The Wagner
Journal and other publications. He contributed to The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd edition), The Rough Guide to
Classical Music, The Blackwell History of Music in Britain and was general
editor of 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die (Cassell
Illustrated, 2007). He is currently reviews editor of The Strad.
Table of Contents
1. How to use this publication
2. Background
3. The story behind Brahms's First Piano Concerto
Walk-through
1. First movement: Maestoso
2. Second movement: Adagio
3. Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non-troppo
Resources
1. Supplementary articles
2. Further information
3. Glossary
4. Appendix
5. Copyright
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Background
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op. 15
Composer profile
Timeline of Brahms's life

Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor
op.15
The mid-1850s: the British Pre-Raphaelites were at their height, Richard

Wagner was composing the Ring and Tristan, Charles Dickens was
publishing story after story... and Johannes Brahms was beginning to make
a name for himself as the successor to Schumann in the pantheon of
German music. Brahms was still in his early 20s, and had not yet grown the
beard that would later give him the grizzly, grand-old-man visage. Although
not sharing the revolutionary spirit of the ‘New German School’ fostered by
Liszt, he was nonetheless regarded in some circles as a radical figure,
ambitious and determined to make his own mark. His own revolutionary act
was to draw the Classical ideal of formal rigour and the emotional volatility
of Romanticism into a single musical voice. This marriage is best
represented among his early works by the piano concerto he wrote during
the 1850s. Typical of great works of art, its creation was troubled and its
initial reception unfavourable. But what the young composer brought into
being was a work that combined the virtuoso needs of the concerto with the
seriousness of the Beethovenian symphony. On a more personal level, it can
be seen as a response to his life-changing meeting with the Schumanns, and
his witnessing of Robert’s tragic mental decline, yet it is no less a
monument to his own genius and a work that is universal in its depiction of
struggle and resolution.
"One of the grandest surprises in music since Beethoven"

Donald Tovey on an unexpected chord in the first movement
Composer profile
For someone who effectively became one of the aristocrats of European art
music, Brahms had humble beginnings. He grew up in the rough port area
of Hamburg, living in an effective slum and earning his first money playing
the piano in brothels. Yet the city was a cultured place and offered the
young Brahms a good musical education and openings for his emerging
talents as a pianist and composer. His piano-playing brought him into
contact with the Hungarian violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, who became a
great friend and helped foster the young composer’s early career, which at
this stage was concentrated on piano music.
The house in Hamburg, subsequently destroyed, where Brahms was born in

1833
Joachim encouraged him to expand his musical horizons beyond

Hamburg and after a less than comfortable meeting with Liszt and his
acolytes in Weimar, Brahms went on to introduce himself to Clara and
Robert Schumann in Düsseldorf, a meeting that changed all their lives
(see Brahms and the Schumanns). Brahms’s compositional scope,
meanwhile, was expanding, with his first successful ventures into chamber
music and a wealth of choral works and, after much struggle and effort, his
first large-scale orchestral work in the form of his First Piano Concerto.
Joseph Joachim and his actress wife Amalie Weiss
Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.
Johannes Brahms
His travels eventually took him to Vienna, where he would be based for
much of the rest of his life, though he preferred to do much of his
composing in quieter, more rural conditions. He continued to travel widely
in Germany and beyond, and maintained his links with Hamburg, where his
family remained. His mother died in 1865, and in her memory he composed
his German Requiem, using non-liturgical texts from the Lutheran Bible. He
was also by now struggling with his first symphony, but felt the weight of
Beethoven too overpowering to succeed for the time being – he only
managed to complete it in 1876, by which time he had also written much
chamber music, had heard early performances of parts of
Wagner’s Ring and ‘discovered’ and promoted the music of Dvořák.
Brahms in later life

You haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like to have the constant
presence of such a giant looming over you.
Brahms on the example of Beethoven

Three more symphonies followed more easily, and he also composed two
concertos for Joachim, the second a double concerto for violin and cello.
During these years he also spent much time in the tiny ducal town of
Meiningen in Thuringia, which, despite its size, boasted a world-class
orchestra under the direction of Hans von Bülow. Brahms was inspired by
the orchestra’s clarinettist, Richard Mühlfeld, to write his late masterpieces
for the instrument: a trio, quintet and two sonatas. Also in these later years
he returned to his own instrument, composing a series of short rhapsodies,
intermezzos and fantasias for the piano.
I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a

giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed
as a genius.
Tchaikovsky, diary entry 1886

Clara Schumann
Following a fraught journey to attend the funeral of Clara Schumann in

the spring of 1896, Brahms’s own health went into rapid decline and he was
diagnosed with cancer of the liver. He died on 3 April 1897, was given one
of the grandest funerals Vienna had ever seen and was buried in the city’s
Central Cemetery close to his two musical idols, Beethoven and Schubert.
As the successor to both – taking the dynamic, musical power of one and
the songful lyricism of the other – he had earned his place in music’s
pantheon as a supreme Classicist in Romantic garb.
Timeline of Brahms's life
1833 Born 7 May in Hamburg
1839 First musical studies with his father
1843 Debut as pianist
1853 Meets Joachim, who introduces him to Liszt; meets Robert and Clara
Schumann and is welcomed into their circle; composes B minor Piano Trio
1858 Completes first version of First Piano Concerto
1865 Writes A German Requiem in memory of his mother, who had

recently died in Hamburg.
1876 Completes First Symphony, having begun work on it in 1862
1877 Composes Second Symphony
1878 Composes Violin Concerto, in consultation with Joachim
1881 Completes Second Piano Concerto
1883 Composes Third Symphony
1885 Composes Fourth Symphony
1891 Composes Clarinet Trio and Quintet for Meiningen clarinettist

Richard Mühlfeld
1897 Dies of liver cancer on 3 April, and is buried in Vienna's Central

Cemetary
Graves of Johann Strauss II and Brahms (r) in Vienna's Central Cemetary
Click here to see the enhanced version of the Brahms's

life timeline
The story behind Brahms’s first
piano concerto
Introduction
The concerto finds its true form
Performance and reception
Brahms and the Schumanns
A brief history of the concerto
rahms and the piano
A piano concerto apart – what makes it different

Introduction
Despite his large, wide-ranging output of music, Brahms was a particularly

self-critical composer, and it’s sometimes a surprise that anything emerged
at all. He spent ages, sometimes many years, working at a piece or a genre
until he was happy to release it to the world. For instance, he claimed to
have destroyed some 20 string quartets before he wrote one that met his
exacting standards, and composed a number of piano sonatas at the start of
his career that pre-date those he eventually published. The symphony
provided him with arguably his greatest stumbling block in the example of
Beethoven, whose nine works in the medium acted as both an inspiration
and a seemingly insurmountable challenge to come anywhere close to
equalling. As a result, he was already 43 by the time he completed his First
Symphony in 1876 (the other three then followed relatively swiftly).
One of the presumably many attempts on the way to this first symphony
was a transitional form of what would become his First Piano Concerto. Yet
that in itself was not the beginning of a work that would take Brahms the
best part of a decade to get right. In early March 1854 he was reported by a
friend to have completed three movements of a sonata for two pianos, and
the letter’s date somewhat contradicts the idea that he wrote it directly in
response to Schumann’s suicide attempt, which had happened only a little
more than a week earlier (see Brahms and the Schumanns). But one can
argue that it was this catastrophe that spurred him into transforming the
sonata into a symphony. Just three months later the composer reported to
Joachim, ‘I wish I could leave my D minor Sonata alone for a long time. I
have often played the first movement through with Frau Schumann, but I
find two pianos just aren’t enough.’
Photo of Robert Schumann taken in 1850.

The concerto finds its true form
Brahms’s initial response was to orchestrate the first movement – it was in

fact his first attempt at writing for the orchestra and he sought advice from
both Joachim, who was living in Hannover, and his friend the pianist and
composer Julius Otto Grimm, who was by his side in Düsseldorf. A year
later, Brahms was able to report that he had started a symphony: ‘The first
movement is already orchestrated; the second and third fully sketched out,’
he wrote to Robert Schumann. But some time that year or later, Brahms
decided to transform his music yet again, this time into a piano concerto,
and he sent the first movement to Joachim in April 1856 for his approval.
At this stage in his career, Brahms used Joachim almost as an editor,
advisor, even teacher, since the violinist moved in more international and
high-powered musical circles and presumably seemed more worldly wise to
the young composer.
Joseph Joachim
It was another eight months before Joachim replied with his thoughts: ‘I
like the composition more and more, although there is something about it
which is unsatisfying.’ Clara Schumann, meanwhile, thought it ‘splendid’
and was delighted by ‘the grandeur and beauty of its melody’. Brahms
revised the movement, nonetheless, and by the end of 1856 was remarking
in a letter to Joachim that ‘I am making a gentle portrait of you in the form
of an Adagio.’ This slow movement was not part of the aborted symphony
– though the saraband from that would eventually be reworked as the
second movement of Brahms’s German Requiem (1863–7) – but a possible
recomposition of part of an unpublished Mass, or alternatively a newly
composed tribute to Schumann. It seems to have met with Joachim’s
approval without further amendment, but the rondo finale was less lucky:
‘A conversation with Clara Schumann,’ he wrote, ‘has convinced me that
you should rewrite the last movement.’ Brahms duly did so and sent the
whole revised manuscript to Joachim in April 1857. ‘Your concerto’,
Joachim responded, ‘is a lasting joy to me now that I see it as a whole... No
doubt you will polish up some of the detail when you have heard it.’ And
Brahms needed no further encouragement on that front. Joachim arranged
for a run-through with his orchestra in Hannover in March 1858, after
which Brahms wrote to his friend, ‘After the fine rehearsal we had in
Hannover my head was full of improvements for the concerto; now I have
gone and forgotten them all.’ (See A brief history of the concerto)
Performance and reception
He certainly gave the piece more than a few tweaks before a chance for a
first public performance finally arrived on 22 January 1859, again with
Joachim and his Hannover orchestra, and with the composer himself as
soloist. There’s little in the way of report from this occasion, but a repeat
performance in Leipzig – Germany’s musical capital at the time – five days
later is better documented. ‘It did not go too badly,’ Brahms wrote to
Joachim, before complaining that the rehearsals were accompanied by stone
faces from the orchestral players and members of the public present. ‘At the
performance the first and second movements produced no effect whatsoever
and at the end there was only a little half-hearted applause which was
immediately suppressed.’ He was effectively hissed off the stage by an
audience that had come to Leipzig’s Gewandhaus concert hall expecting a
virtuoso concerto and had been faced with a symphony in all but name. It
had made no impression on either the conservatives for whom it was too
‘monstrous’ or the Young Turks of the Weimar-based New German School
(the acolytes of Liszt) for whom it was not modern enough. And there were
even complaints, inconceivable from other evidence, that Brahms’s piano
technique was not up to the demands of his own keyboard-writing.
Leipzig's Gewandhaus
For more than three quarters of an hour one must endure this rooting
and rummaging, this straining and tugging, this tearing and patching
of phrases and flourishes!
Review of the Leipzig performance by Edward Bernsdorf in the ‘Signale’
‘Yet the concerto will become popular when I have improved its
construction,’ Brahms continued in his letter to Joachim, ‘and a second one
is going to sound very different.’ He was to be proved right on both
accounts. He made further revisions to the work and after a performance in
Hamburg in March 1859 offered it to the leading music publisher Breitkopf
& Härtel, who upon learning that it was the work that had so unimpressed
the Leipzig audience, rejected it. It was to be another 14 years before the
concerto finally appeared in print in full score, though it was preceded by
an edition for piano duet, and the solo and orchestral parts appeared as early
as 1861–2.
Brahms’s habit of destroying incomplete works and sketches means that

we have no manuscript evidence of his long compositional process with the
concerto, and our knowledge of the early two-piano sonata and symphony
is more-or-less restricted to what can be gleaned from the copious
correspondence between Brahms, Joachim, Clara Schumann and others
during their creation. Yet it is this long gestative process that goes some
way to explain why this concerto is unique in the repertoire. Its origins in
the completely unshowy media of sonata and symphony give it a
seriousness not heard in the concerto since Beethoven. (See A piano
concerto apart) And its first movement, at around 25 minutes in most
performances, was conceivably the longest and most substantial symphonic
movement since the master of Bonn’s death in 1827.
Brahms and the Schumanns
Whole books have been written on the relationships between Brahms,

Robert and Clara Schumann. In the early 1850s, Robert Schumann was
ensconced in the Rhineland town of Düsseldorf as its director of music –
not that successfully, it should be said, as his behaviour and ability to work
began to be affected by mental illness soon after his appointment in 1850.
He now had a full household, with his wife Clara – one of the leading
concert pianists of the 19th century – and five young children to care for.
Encouraged by his friend Joachim, the 20-year-old Brahms set off from
his Hamburg home in spring 1853 to engage with the principal composers
and performers of the day. Through another Hungarian violinist friend,
Eduard Reményi, he was introduced to Liszt’s circle in Weimar, but was put
off by both the affluence and revolutionary musical ethos. And then on 30
September 1853 he stepped across the threshold of the Schumanns’ more
welcoming Düsseldorf home and his life was never going to be the same
again. The Schumanns were entranced by the young composer’s piano
music; he in turn was rather star-struck by Robert and smitten by his wife.
Robert wrote in his diary: ‘Visit from Brahms, a genius.’ Clara wrote in
hers: ‘Here again is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’
What Brahms thought on that day is not recorded, but it was not long before
he was regarded as one of the family. While Robert proclaimed the eagle’s
arrival in print, Johannes helped out with the baby-sitting, and all seemed to
be going smoothly until the following February when Robert made his
suicide attempt by jumping off a bridge into the Rhine.
Robert and Clara Schumann Robert Schumann
The house where Schumann was born in Zwickau

Brahms became Clara’s comfort when her husband was committed to an
asylum outside Bonn, and later even looked after her family while she
resumed her concert career. They remained close through Robert’s final
illness and corresponded passionately when they were apart – whether or
not their relationship ever had a physical side has been much-disputed, but
there was an emotional bond that nourished both of their lives and their
artistic work. Tragically, a confusion over train connections meant that
Brahms missed her funeral in 1896, just a year before he himself died.
A brief history of the concerto
The Italian term ‘concerto’ has confusing roots: it derives from the Latin
‘concertare’, which means both to ‘dispute’ and to ‘work together’, so both
a musical battle and a collaboration... In its first usage in a musical context
it seems to have meant a coming together of voices as an ensemble, while a
subsequent reference to ‘concertato’ implies an instrumental
accompaniment as an opposing musical force. But by the 18th century a
‘concerto’ had come to mean a work for one or more soloists and
accompanying orchestra, usually in three movements: fast–slow–fast. This
was the form as exploited by a generation of Italian masters, led by Vivaldi
and Corelli, who also used the medium of the so-called ‘concerto grosso’,
or ‘large concerto’, in which two or more ensembles of instruments are
pitted against each other. Both these forms, solo concerto and concerto
grosso, were exploited by Bach, in his violin and keyboard works as well as
his Brandenburg Concertos.
The concerto, and particularly the piano concerto, entered a new phase
with the works of Mozart, who developed the soloist-versus-orchestra
medium as a work equal to the symphony in terms of seriousness, despite
maintaining an element of showiness in the solo part – they were written,
after all, to promote himself and dazzle his audience. Beethoven, in his five
piano concertos, developed the symphonic weight of the form further, but in
all these cases certain formal traditions crystallised. Principal of these was
the way soloist and orchestra shared the presentation of the concerto’s main
themes in a double exposition – first the orchestra would play some or all
the themes and then the soloist would largely repeat the exercise. This
contrasted with the earlier Baroque practice where ‘tutti’ or ‘ritornello’
passages for the orchestra would alternate with solo sections, almost in the
sense of a rondo. Following Beethoven, a more virtuoso style developed,
with the concerto designed principally as a vehicle for display (see A piano
concerto apart).
Brahms and the piano
The young Johannes proved a natural on the piano, soon outgrowing his
teachers in his command of the instrument. Although his father had initially
tried to steer him towards the violin and cello, the piano in fact proved a
useful way of supplementing the family income, first by playing in seedy
dives in Hamburg’s red-light district, later providing the first steps on a
career as a professional musician by accompanying other players, through
which he developed his early connections with Joachim and others.
The piano was also the most useful instrument at which to compose and
it is no surprise that much of his earliest surviving music consists of piano
sonatas and sets of variations or chamber works incorporating the piano. It
was also inevitable that his first large-scale work with orchestra would
develop into a concerto for his own instrument, though, apart from the
second concerto of 1881, he largely neglected the piano as a medium until
he came to write a series of miniatures late in life, the rhapsodies,
intermezzos and fantasias of 1891–3.
Any pianist looking at Brahms’s printed piano music will immediately

become aware that he must have had large hands. The writing often looks
thick, with long processions of octaves and closely packed chords,
contrasting both with the more filigree pianistic style of Chopin and with
the fiery virtuosity of Liszt, but potentially as difficult to play as either. As a
couple of fairly representative examples, here are excerpts from two works
at each end of Brahms’s career, the early F minor Piano Sonata op.5 (1853;
usual changes of clef have been omitted to accentuate the physical nature of
the pianistic demands):
Click to play the audio and then return to read the rest of the publication.
and the G minor Ballade op.118 no.3 (1893):
A piano concerto apart – what
makes it different
After Beethoven’s last essay in the medium, the ‘Emperor’ of 1809,

composers began to move away from his symphonic approach to one that
provided more of a means of display. Of the major concertos in the first half
of the 19th century, only Schumann’s really eschews this virtuoso trend for
a more lyrical approach. Weber, Mendelssohn and Liszt sought pianistic
brilliance. Against this background it is perhaps easy to see why Brahms’s
First Piano Concerto stood out for early audiences as not being what they
thought a concerto should be. There’s no shortage of challenges for the
soloist in the work, but they are set in the context of a seriousness of
thought and formal weight that make the pianist less a showman competing
with the orchestral forces than a protagonist collaborating on equal terms.
A roll-call of 19th-century piano concertos:
Beethoven no.3 (1800)
Beethoven no.4 (1806)
Beethoven no.5 'Emperor' (1809)
Weber no.1 (1810)
Weber no.2 (1812)
Weber Concertstück (1821)

Chopin no.2 (1829)
Chopin no.1 (1830)
Mendelssohn no.1 (1831)
Mendelssohn no.2 (1837)
Schumann (1845)
Liszt no.1 (1856)
Brahms no.1 (1854-8)
Liszt no.2 (1861)
Saint-Saëns no.2 (1868)
Tchaikovsky no.1 (1875)
Brahms no.2 (1881)
Grieg (1883)
Franck Symphonic Variantions (1885)
Rachmaninov no.1 (1891)

Work timeline
1854
Brahms composes B major Piano Trio op.8, Schumann Variations op.9

and Ballades op.10
Hans von Bülow composes his symphonic poem ‘Nirwana’, which

influences Wagner’s ‘Tristan’
American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau publishes ‘Walden’
Jan Charles Dickens begins writing ‘Hard Times’
27 Feb Robert Schumann attempts suicide by throwing himself into

the Rhine
3 Mar Brahms rushes to Düsseldorf to provide support to Clara

Schumann
4 Mar Robert, at his own request, is taken to an asylum in Endenich

outside Bonn
Early Mar Brahms begins transforming a planned sonata for two

pianos in D minor into a symphony
22 Mar Heinrich Dorn’s five-act opera ‘Die Nibelungen’ premiered in

Weimar
27 Mar UK declares war on Russia, joining the Crimean War, with
France following a day later
25 May Bamberg Conference at which a ‘Third Germany’ is proposed,

uniting smaller German states as a counterweight to the dominance of
Prussia and Austria; an early stage on the way to the united Germany
achieved in 1871 (a confederation of German states has already existed in
some respects since the Congress of Vienna in 1815)
3 Jul Czech composer Leoš Janáček born
1 Sep German composer Engelbert Humperdinck born
Autumn Clara Schumann launches her concert career as a touring

piano soloist
Sep/Oct Wagner conceives ‘Tristan und Isolde’ while infatuated with the

poet Mathilde Wesendonck, whom Brahms later befriends in 1866
16 Oct Irish writer Oscar Wilde born
25 Oct Battle of Balaclava, scene of the disastrous Charge of the Light

Brigade
10 Dec First performance of Berlioz’s ‘L’enfance du Christ’

1855
Brahms continues work on D minor symphony
Anthony Trollope publishes the first of his Barchester Chronicles, ‘The

Warden’; Ivan Turgenev completes his play ‘A Month in the Country’;
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow completes ‘The Song of Hiawatha’ and Walt
Whitman the first version of his ‘Leaves of Grass’
German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen invents the Bunsen Burner;

English engineer Henry Bessemer patents his Bessemer process of
steelmaking; Scottish physicist James Clark Maxwell formulates theory of
electromagnetism
20 Jan French composer Ernest Chausson born
17 Feb Liszt gives first performance of his Piano Concerto no.1 in

Weimar, conducted by Berlioz (he revises it before publication the
following year)
31 Mar English novelist Charlotte Brontë dies
13 Jun Verdi’s ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ premieres in Paris
17 Nov David Livingstone becomes first European to see Victoria Falls

(below)
27 Nov Brahms’s Piano Trio op.8 premieres in New York
12 Oct German conductor Arthur Nikisch, later an important interpreter

of Brahms’s music, born
1856
Brahms decides to turn the symphony into a piano concerto, though

keeping only its first movement (the slow ‘scherzo’ is worked into his
Deutsches Requiem in 1863)
Liszt completes his ‘Dante Symphony’; Wagner completes ‘Die Walküre’,

begins ‘Siegfried’ and makes first sketches of ‘Tristan’; ‘The Five’, or
‘Mighty Handful’ of Russian composers begins to form around the figure of
Mily Balakirev
Silesian scientist Gregor Mendel begins research into genetics
17 Feb German poet Heinrich Heine dies
31 Mar Crimean War ends with Treaty of Paris
6 May Austrian father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud born
14 Jul Clara aborts her British concert tour to return to Düsseldorf

on hearing that her husband’s health is deteriorating
26 Jul Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw born
29 Jul Schumann dies at Endenich
Aug 40,000-year-old pre-human remains found in Neanderthal, 12km

east of Düsseldorf:
1 Oct Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary’ begins serialisation and
scandalises French society
1857
Jean-François Millet paints ‘The Gleaners’; Ernst Rietschel sculpts his

Goethe–Schiller Monument, which still stands outside the National Theatre
in Weimar (below)
German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict

Listing independently discover properties of the Möbius Strip
15 Feb Russian composer Mikhail Glinka dies
2 Jun English composer Edward Elgar born
15 Jul Austrian composer and pianist Carl Czerny dies
9 Aug Wagner breaks off work on ‘Siegfried’ to concentrate on ‘Tristan’

27 Aug Joachim formally breaks with Liszt and the ‘New German
School’ in a letter to the pianist–composer
Oct–Dec Brahms takes up first annual three-month season as court

conductor at Detmold; he works on his two orchestral serenades, the G
minor Piano Quartet and the concerto
26 Nov German Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff dies; Brahms

later sets some of his verses for his Hamburg women’s choir
1858
Mar Brahms completes the first version of the concerto
30 Mar Joachim conducts a private rehearsal of the concerto with his

orchestra in Hannover, with Brahms as soloist. The composer is
dissatisfied and continues to revise the music over the rest of the year
7 Apr Wagner’s affair with Mathilde Wesendonck (below) is discovered

by her husband
4 Jun Passport and visa controls abolished between Austria and Germany
1 Jul Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is first presented in public to

the Linnean Society; ‘On the Origin of Species’ was published in
November 1859
6 Oct Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg begins studies at Leipzig

Conservatoire; he and Brahms (who meet in the company of Tchaikovsky)
later become good friends
21 Oct Offenbach’s ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’ premieres in Paris

15 Dec The Weimar premiere of Peter Cornelius’s opera ‘The Barber of
Baghdad’ ends in uproar and encourages to Liszt, who directs the
performance, to decide to retire from conducting; Cornelius later befriends
Brahms in Vienna and engineers a meeting between him and Wagner
22 Dec Italian composer Giacomo Puccini born

1859
German mathematician Bernard Riemann publishes his number theory
22 Jan First performance of the concerto in Hannover, with Brahms

as soloist, Joachim as conductor
27 Jan Second performance in the more prestigious venue of the

Gewandhaus, Leipzig, after which Brahms is hissed off the stage by a
hostile audience
Wilhelm II of Germany – ‘Kaiser Bill’ of First World War fame – born
17 Feb Verdi’s ‘Un ballo in maschera’ premieres in Rome
19 Mar Gounod’s ‘Faust’ premieres in Paris
24 Mar A further performance of the concerto in Hamburg is more

warmly received
30 Apr Charles Dickens’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ published
6 Aug Wagner completes ‘Tristan und Isolde’
22 Oct Composer and violinist Louis Spohr dies aged 77
16 Dec Wilhelm Grimm – younger of the two Brothers Grimm – dies

aged 75 (Jacob dies four years later)
1865
Summer Brahms performs the concerto under Hermann Levi in

Mannheim and it is finally a triumph with the audience
Walk-through
First movement
Second movement
Third movement
Please note, in the music examples that follow, the solo piano part is
indicated by bracketed staves ({), and the orchestral reduction by
unbracketed staves.
First movement: Maestoso
A hybrid form
An elemental beginning
Spinning the yarn
Towards an answer
A subtle arrival
Secondary grandeur
A brief interruption
A grand surprise
Race to the finish

Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestoso > A hybrid form
A hybrid form
One of the formal traditions of the concerto form (see A brief history of the concerto) is the double exposition,
where the orchestra introduces the themes of the first movement before the soloist enters with its own presentation
of the same material (a pattern famously ignored by Beethoven in his Fourth Piano Concerto and, indeed, by
Brahms in his Second). And here Brahms conforms to type, at least to begin with. It should not be forgotten that
the movement began as the opening of a symphony (itself derived from a sonata) and the most usual form for that
in Classical and Romantic music is so-called ‘sonata form’, with its presentation of contrasting themes, their
development and reconstitution.
Here Brahms seems to combine aspects of both sonata and concerto form. His double exposition is
unconventional in sharing the introduction of his thematic material between soloist and orchestra (see Table of
themes). And he makes relatively little – in symphonic terms – of his development. Yet, as we shall see, the music
is in an almost constant state of development. With the exception of the second subject, there is little in this
movement that appears twice in exactly the same manner, and the way in which the composer derives each motif
from the last suggests an ongoing fluidity of thematic transformation that can’t be pigeon-holed into conventional
movement subdivisions.
Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor op. 15 > First movement: Maestoso > An elemental beginning
An elemental beginning
Audio:
Brahms confounds our expectations in another way virtually from the start: his main theme is not in D minor, the
supposed home key of the concerto as a whole. He certainly begins with a solid, undeniable D in the horns,
timpani and double basses, but his first melodic idea enters just a bar later and outlines the triad of B flat major (B
flat–D–F) instead – the D proves to be this chord’s middle note.
This opening theme (see Brahms’s melodies) sets the mood for the work to come, and it’s worth breaking it up
into its component parts. It sounds like a stern challenge, and its first phrase [1a] is like a forcibly asked question,
with its final upward trajectory providing the question mark*:
The pause that follows then sounds like a wait for an answer, and when it doesn’t come the result is two grumbling
further attempts at asking the question, the ‘foreign’ A flats angrily tugging the music downwards:
And a final exasperated tirade of trills seems to give up the questioning in a huff:
But all is not lost. The bass slips down a semitone to a C sharp, and the whole questioning process is repeated, this
time based around the chord of A major, the dominant of the home key, D minor. This ‘brighter’ chord and its
suggestion of preparation for a resolution makes the questioning this time sound more amiable, yet again it seems
to go unanswered and the final arrival at some solid D minor – in the 25th bar of the piece – is made to feel like a
rather resigned, unresolved achievement.
*It would be wrong to attempt to tie in any specific extra-musical associations with Brahms’s music – and his of
all music – and I won’t attempt to attach made-up words to the music in Thomas Beecham style. But this kind of
description shows how analogies can exist between musical phraseology and other modes of expression such as
speech.
Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor op. 15 > First movement: Maestoso > Spinning the yarn
Spinning the yarn
An almost barcarolle-like, undulating wave pattern becomes established in the bass as a repeating phrase – its
shape is patently based on [1a]:
And a new, gentler theme [1b] unfolds in the violins and low clarinet – this is no answer to the powerfully asked
questions, but a sensitive, mitigating plea nonetheless. The brief turn to the major, with its F sharps, seems to offer
hope, but it just as soon returns to the F natural of the minor:
As with [1a], this idea is repeated in another key area, this time modulating into the distant realm of B flat minor
for another new, but related theme [1c], atmospherically scored for wind choir and tremolo strings:
Throughout this short interlude, the bass line keeps returning to the note F, the dominant of B flat, and just when
the music seems to have tailed off into nothingness a fortissimo F thunders out of nowhere to support a
dissonant diminished 7th chord that resolves the music back into D minor:
Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestoso > Towards an answer
Towards an answer
[1a] now returns just as at the beginning over a pedal D, but now in a compressed triple canon with horns and
lower strings to ratchet up the tension:
This time, rather than the repeat in A major, the music moves to G minor and introduces a little motif [1d] in the
strings and wind (marked with a bracket) that is soon to become quite important:
This resolves into a seemingly triumphant D major and another new theme [1e] that with its fanfare-like shape has
the sense of arrival about it:
Brahms integrates it into the fabric of the music by accompanying it with both [1d] and [1a]:
Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestoso > A subtle arrival
A subtle arrival
Audio:
These accompanying figures continue and wind the music down to a moment of repose in D minor as, at last, the
piano soloist enters, not with the forceful main theme, but with effectively the same music as we’ve just been
hearing turned into a gentle, but richly textured new theme [1f]:
Orchestral accompaniment is minimal at first: just a few dabs from trumpets and timpani, later warming to held
string chords at the point at which the piano – which has been keeping this quaver pattern going throughout –
develops a rising sequence from [1d]:
The soloist builds to a forte climax at the top of the piano’s range, plunges to the depths and hurls upwards again
into music from [1a]:
The orchestra answers in another key, the piano bites back in another and then the orchestra takes over for a brief
imitative development of the very opening idea [1a], taking the music from the tonic, D minor, to the dominant, A:
The piano now continues the rest of this first subject material in very much the same order as it appeared in the
earlier orchestral introduction, with 1b and then 1c (in A flat this time) to arrive at a cadence in C.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestoso > Secondary grandeur
Secondary grandeur
Audio:
This proves to be the dominant of F major (the relative major of D minor) and marks the arrival – already over
150 bars into the movement – of the second subject [1g] in an extended unaccompanied piano solo that is marked
by a slackening of the tempo (‘a little more moderately’):
But notice how even here everything is integrated, with its second phrase picking up the [1d] motif in a tied,
syncopated version:
Notice, also, how thick and typically ‘Brahmsian’ the piano writing is: chords in the right hand and octaves in the
left, which all go to give the impression of solidity.
And then [1e] becomes a subsidiary phrase of the theme in its own right – had this been a premonition of the
second subject all along?
Looking at the shape of both themes, we see that they have the same broad outline of notes:
That opening 4th – C to F – is proving to be the key defining and unifying feature of the work as a whole. It is the
interval (downwards B flat to F) with which the work opened and the signature to which all the main ideas comply.
The solo piano, meanwhile, winds down from its climactic heights and a brief interlude for the woodwind choir
leads to a further full presentation of the second subject by the orchestral strings, with the piano providing a
bubbling accompaniment in quavers.
This time the fanfare-like [1e] becomes more dominant, passed around different instruments of the orchestra, but
finding its seemingly natural home on the solo horn, which takes it down to the depths of its instrument. A
short coda then follows with a calm version of [1c] leading to a cadence on a chord of F major.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestoso > A brief interruption
A brief interruption
The composure is rudely brought to an end with a return to the Maestoso tempo and an eruption of octaves from
the piano:
Although this leads to a return to the opening theme [1a] in the original key area (D minor/B flat major) any sense
of stability is soon undermined by the piano ruminating on a B flat dominant 7th chord over the
orchestra’s pedal D as soon as the opening question is asked:
And the A major follow-up over the pedal C sharp ensues as before, but now the pace of key change and
instability confirm that this is no ‘repeat’ of the exposition but rather the movement’s development section. One
of the most unstable of chords is the diminished 7th and the piano thunders out the trilling motif on one based
over G sharp, which segues into the barcarolle accompaniment and the return of [1b], first in the original A minor
but soon taken up a major third higher in C sharp by the piano. This in turn is picked up by the strings a minor
third lower in B flat before the music modulates to B minor and the piano introduces a new idea [1h] that
nonetheless pays homage to the [1d] motif:
The bass arpeggios (bracketed [x] above) are taken up in canonic form by the piano and bring the music to a brief
cadence on B major. Now the music takes on a gentler cast, with piano lightly colouring the texture
with arabesques as the violins pick up [1h] and use it in a sequentially descending series to effect another
modulation:
The phrase is repeated at a higher pitch and then woodwind solos take it up, but the piano seems to become
frustrated by this seeming lull and picks up the latter, quaver part of the motif to launch a hammered challenge
with the orchestra, each protagonist stabbing out alternating chords:
And the surprisingly short development section (just 63 bars in a movement of 484) is over.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestroso > A grand surprise
A grand surprise
Those pounding chords resolve, as would seem natural, on to a unison D, to launch the recapitulation with the
same music as at the very start of the concerto. But here Brahms again thwarts our expectations. One might expect
the theme to enter in the audacious B flat of the opening:
or even, finally, in a concerted emphasis on D minor:
but instead Brahms suddenly shifts to E major, prompting Donald Tovey to label the moment ‘One of the grandest
surprises in music since Beethoven’. The pedal D briefly implies a dominant 7th chord, but by picking up the trill
motif at the pitch it does, it sets out the more unstable chord of a diminished 7th (D–F–G sharp–B):
Brahms repeats the same trick a fourth higher – A major theme over G natural pedal, with a diminished 7th this
time leading up from C sharp. A brief stretto of the trill motif between piano, wind and strings leads to a
sequential use of the main theme [1a], taking us away from D minor and back again, with the piano providing the
momentum:
There’s something about the rhythm in those last two full bars of the piano part – it is the same as the theme with
which the piano first entered the scene, [1f], which now duly follows on full orchestra and is then elaborated and
dismantled by both soloist and orchestra over the ensuing bars. And just as in the exposition, the motif [1c] is
passed between woodwind instruments as the piano winds down to cadence on A and we return to the slower,
Poco più moderato tempo and the second subject given in full by solo piano in D major. This is almost note-for-
note – apart from the change of key (the original was in F) – the same as in the exposition, until the end of the
fanfare-like horn solo [1e].
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > First movement: Maestoso > Race to the finish
Race to the finish
But Brahms leaves out the later section and leaps – back in the original tempo – straight to the music from halfway
through the development, [1h]. This is now the coda of the movement – the energy now seems relentless and the
little [1d] motif drives the music onwards to its emphatic conclusion in D minor:
Meanwhile, underneath, the soloist uses this motif as the starting point for a welter of runs and arpeggios that gives
Liszt’s piano-writing a run for its money – no one can accuse Brahms of completely shirking pianistic challenges
or even virtuosity in his symphonically conceived concerto. In the absence of manuscript sources, could these
perhaps have been added after the poor reception of his work in Leipzig?
Second movement: Adagio
Brahms’s second movement is in a simple A–B–A form, with the second A
section an elaborated version of the first. Although the tempo is much
slower, Brahms adopts the same time signature for his second movement as
he had for the first: 6/4. It engenders a further sense of connectedness
between all elements of the work.
A: Serenity after the storm
Pensive moments
B: Yearning and pining
A1: Home again

Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Second movement: Adagio > A: Serenity after the storm
A: Serenity after the storm
Location:
Audio:
A further link with the first movement is the prominence of the 4th. Here a rising one (see bracket) characterises
his opening theme, a serene melody for upper strings over gently wandering bassoons in thirds [2a]:
Its continuation introduces a yearning little motif that becomes associated with a rising 7th and a poignant
resolution – notice how before it appears definitively on the solo oboe, it has been hinted at in the two previous
string phrases (see brackets):
When the solo piano finally enters, it takes over the bassoon thirds, but adds a new melody on top:
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Second movement: Adagio > Pensive moments
Pensive moments
Location:
After playing with these ideas for a few bars, Brahms alternates a meditative passage on the strings:
with a dreamy chromatic idea on the piano:
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Second movement: Adagio > B: Yearning and pining
B: Yearning and pining
Location:
The second appearance of this piano idea meanders further and leads into the B section of the movement, which
begins with a new theme on the piano in the key of B minor:
After a varied repeat of that theme in F sharp minor, a subsidiary idea is introduced by the two clarinets:
This is immediately taken up by the full orchestra in the movement’s first, brief climax. The piano explores a
syncopated version of its theme and the clarinet idea is repeated and extended by the woodwind section as a whole.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Second movement: Adagio > A1: Home again
A1: Home again
Location:
But before things get too far, we find ourselves back in the home key of D major and the return of the opening
theme, this time played by a solo oboe. At first, the music proceeds in a fashion very similar to the original, with
further changes in the orchestration, but the solo piano repeat soon turns into a series of arabesques beneath an
expansion of the main theme – emphasising its rising 4ths and at last integrating the rising 7ths – on fortissimo
wind in octaves:
The ruminating strings and chromatically dreamy piano alternate their phrases again and this time the latter leads
into a short cadenza. The main theme returns on strings and bassoons as at the opening but with C naturals
darkening the mood. It is repeated by the violas and the movement draws to a serene close with a richly scored
pianissimo chord for the whole orchestra.
Third movement: Rondo - Allegro
non troppo
Brahms chooses the
rondo
form for his finale, in which repetitions of a main theme are separated by
interludes of other music. In this case his form is broadly one of A–B–A–
C–A–B–C–A. Even here, though, unity is the order of the day – all the main
themes are launched with an upward arpeggio (compare 3a, 3b and 3c
in Thematic Table) and the first two share staccato semiquaver
accompaniments in a toccata-like style that seems to hark back to the
counterpoint of Bach.
A: Back into the fray
B: Majestic major
A1: Return to base
C: Growing affection
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > A: Back into the fray
A: Back into the fray
Location:
Audio:
Brahms’s principal subject [3a], played by the solo piano, quickly diffuses any sense of torpor that had held in the
air after the quiet end to the slow movement:
Notice how close its opening phrase is to the melody of the second subject of the first movement [1g], with that
tell-tale rising 4th again impressing upon us its unifying purpose throughout the work:
Brahms repeats the theme with the full orchestra, inserts a brief harmonic and textural digression for the soloist
before they share one more iteration of the subject, completing the first A section.
The piano picks up an unusual-looking rhythmical phrase (first bar below), which can be reduced to a series of
sustained octave arpeggios (see second bar):
It is used to double the brief melodic phrases played by the violins:
And is then repeated in a minor-key version.

Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > B: Majestic major
B: Majestic major
Location:
The piano subsides into a new, more noble theme in F major [3b], marking the first true B section:
It meanders into minor-key areas, but recovers to rise to a brief but imposing climax:
The rising, offbeat idea is then picked up by the strings for a brief interlude:
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > A1: Return to base
A1: Return to base
Location:
The music peters out, but horn and trumpet fanfares derived from the theme, taken up by the cellos and basses,
herald a welter of dominant-chord arpeggios from the soloist and a full return to the main subject for the second A
section.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > C: Growing affection
C: Growing affection
Location:
A sudden change of key to B flat major brings in section C, the second major interlude and a warm, expressive
theme on the strings [3c]:
Its accompaniment is marked by imitative entries for other instruments and note how the descending bass line of
the first phrase exactly matches that of [3b] (if in the new key and shorn of semiquavers), giving it the same
harmonic flavour as that earlier interlude:
In fact, both themes are characterised by their upwards thrust and downwards-tending bass, and when the piano
takes up its own extension of [3c] it emphasises this falling bass line even more by filling in the chromatic notes in
between:
Now we’ve heard all three main themes of the rondo, we can see how they are related not only by having an
upward arpeggio in common but also by that arpeggio being based on the tonic chord of each’s key. This becomes
clearer if we strip away extraneous notes and bar-lines – compare the bracketed notes (themes 3b and 3c also both
begin on a note a 6th below the tonic and share their common shape a little further):
Suddenly the music is whisked away into the more distant key of D flat major and a brief but sumptuous variant of
the [3c]:
The piano drifts off into trills, scales and arpeggios, taking the music into B flat minor and a fugal version of [3c],
with successive entries from second violins, cellos, violas and first violins:
Once all the strings are amassed in this way, the first bar of the main theme [3a] pokes through and the fugue
dissipates into fragmentary semiquaver phrases based on 3c’s arpeggio.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > A2-B1: A glimmer of h
A2–B1: A glimmer of hope
Location:
This prepares us for the next A section and the return of [3a], but for the moment it is transformed into the relative
major key, F. It also takes on the semiquaver figuration from the earlier fugal subject, helping to link everything
together:
A flurry of arpeggios from the soloist leads to a full repeat of the theme, now back in D minor. A further repeat
sees phrases flung between piano and orchestra in alternation, leading to a tumultuous climax from which the
soloist emerges in an assertive return to the theme of the first B section, [3b], this time marked ‘con passione’. A
brief build-up from the orchestra, based on the rising 4th motif from [3a] brings us to a portentous pause.
The piano launches into its cadenza, a fairly short passage dominated by arpeggios and trills, marked ‘quasi
fantasia’ and which once and for all banishes the darkness of D minor for the brightness of D major.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > C1: One last diversion
C1: One last diversion
Location:
The cadenza leads directly into the movement’s coda, though this begins with the return of 3c, now transferred to
the woodwind and horns – it is heard twice in full, both times paired with joyous flurries of notes from the soloist.
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op.15 > Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non troppo > A3: Marching to victor
A3: Marching to victory
Location:
The tempo drops a little to ‘meno mosso’ (less movement) and a solo bassoon creeps in with the major version of
the main theme [3a], its second phrase taken over by the oboes:
The tempo picks up again and the main theme finds a new confidence in a version divided between the two violin
sections:
The piano passagework provides the harmonic filler, later joined by the woodwind, and thunders out the persistent
pedal Ds in the bass – the effect is almost Beethovenian in its insistence. Its second appearance fragments into an
orchestral tutti that lands on another dominant cadence and another short cadenza for the soloist.
This ends in a series of trills, building up the dominant chord of A major, over which the wind mounts up in
repeated fanfares from the main theme:
And with the resolution on D major, a whole skein of arpeggios and chords leads the music hurtling to its
triumphant conclusion.
Recording excerpt:
Resources
Further information
Glossary
Brahms’s melodies
Thematic table
Brahms’s melodies
It’s an admittedly simplistic division, and plenty of examples can be found

to dispute it, but in general terms, many of Brahms’s most important
melodies and motifs can be split between those that are based on triadic
arpeggios and those on stepwise movement. Taking the triadic ones first, we
have a prime example in the main theme of the First Piano Concerto,
delineating the notes of a B flat major chord:
But, just to take Brahms’s major orchestral works, three of his four
symphonies and half his concertos (including the present work) open with
triadic themes. It’s a trick he borrowed from Beethoven (think of the
openings of the Third, Fifth and Ninth symphonies just for starters) and
gave him a highly succinct way of embedding harmonic possibilities into
his melodies, so that motivically they could be developed both horizontally
and vertically – melodically and harmonically.
Brahms, Symphony no.2:

Brahms, Violin Concerto:
And then we have a wealth of melodies and motifs that eschew the wider
leaps of these examples and maintain steady, stepwise motion. These are
often second subjects designed to contrast with the triadic themes and in
their rhapsodic way can often give the impression of endless melody, good
examples being the subsidiary themes that make up the present work’s first-
movement first subject, 1b, 1c and 1f, and the piano’s first theme in the
Adagio:
< Go back to An elemental beginning

Thematic table
1a
1b
1c
1d
1e
1f
1g
2a
2b
2c
3a
3b
3c
< Use the back history button to go back to the text.
Further reading
Bernard Jacobson, The Music of Johannes Brahms (Tantivy Press,

London, 1977) A thematic discourse on many of the technical
characteristics of the composer’s music.
Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms (The Dent Master Musicians) (Dent,

London, 1993) The definitive life and works in English – a book to read for
its engaging biography and perceptive musical insight as much as a work of
reference.
Michael Musgrave, The Music of Brahms (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1985/94) A thorough dissection of Brahms’s music style and
compositional methods, with detailed discussion of each genre in turn.
Web Resources
Brahms Museum, Murzzuschlag (www.brahmsmuseum.at) Website of a

museum in the house in the Austrian alps where Brahms spent some of his
summers and composed the Fourth Symphony
Johannes Brahms Websource (www.johannesbrahms.org) Decent if
slightly antiquated repository of Brahmsian web resources
Johannes-Brahms-Gesellschaft Hamburg (www.brahms-hamburg.de)

Website of the Hamburg Brahms Museum and Society
Schumann Netzwerk (www.schumann-portal.de) Includes information

on Brahms’s friendship with the Schumanns
Further listening
Clifford Curzon, George Szell/London Symphony

Orchestra (Decca, 1962)
A classic from the 1960s which intriguingly pits a

leonine pianist against a fiery conductor with
outstanding results.
Click here to buy from Amazon.co.uk
Emil Gilels, Eugen Jochum/Berlin Philharmonic

(DG, 1972)
Long regarded as the benchmark recording by which

all others are judged, combining the Russian pianist’s
power and insight with the great conductor’s skills as
an accompanist.
Click here to buy from Amazon.co.uk
Cédric Tiberghien, Jiří Bělohlávek/BBC

Symphony Orchestra (Harmonia Mundi, 2007)
A powerful yet unusually poetic account of the solo

part from a young French pianist – the music’s
massive element isn’t ignored – especially by the
orchestra – but its lyricism is also to the fore.
Click here to buy from harmonia mundi
Glossary
Accent
An emphasis on one or more notes, indicated in music by a > sign
Antiphony
two or more bodies of musicians set against each other and often
singing/playing in alternation, possibly spatially separated across, for
instance, a church
Appoggiatura
a ‘leaning’ melodic note, foreign to the harmony, that resolves on to a note

of that harmony
Arabesque
A florid melody (akin to the florid nature of Arabian architecture).
Arpeggio
A kind of figuration in which the notes of a chord are played sequentially

rather than together, often giving a rippling effect in accompaniments.
Atonality
Music that is not in any key and has nothing of the tonal centring a key
would bring. A growing trend in western music from the early years of the
20th century.
See also tonality
Bar (US: measure)
A horizontal subdivision of written music, and a group of beats as defined

by its time signature.
Barcarolle
Literally a 'boat song', such as those sung by Venetian gondoliers,

characterised by a repeated rhythmic accompaniment that mimics the sway
and regular motion of a boat, usually with up-and-down arpeggios.
Bar-line
The graphical line dividing bars of written music
Beat
The pulse of the music, usually defined by a number of strong and weak
beats in a bar
Cadence
A melodic or harmonic close of a phrase or section of music.

Cadenza
A virtuoso flourish for a soloist positioned in the final cadence of a

concerto movement, usually unaccompanied by the orchestra and either
improvised or (more commonly by the 19th century) written out in full by
the composer.
Canon
Music in which two or more voices/instruments enter successively with the

same theme so that they overlap; also known as a round; a term also for the
well-established body of a person's creative work
Cantata
a vocal form, usually in multiple movements and either to a secular or

sacred text
Cantus firmus
literally a ‘fixed melody’, but generally used to refer to a pre-existing tune

used as the basis for a new composition
Chant
simple melodies used in early church music; often a specific melody was
associated with a particular religious text (= Gregorian chant; plainsong)
Chord
A vertical combination of three or more notes played together.
Chromatic
Music, such as a scale, defined by notes consistently a semitone apart; the

octave can be divided into 12 semitones, making up a chromatic scale (C-
C#-D-D#E-F-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B).
Clef
A symbol at the beginning of each line of music that indicates the location
of a given pitch on the five lines of the stave. A treble clef indicates that the
G above middle C falls on the second line; a bass clef shows the position of
F below middle C on the fourth line; and an alto and tenor C clef show the
position of middle C itself on the third or fourth line.
Coda/codetta
Literally, the ‘tail’ of a piece, or the closing section; a short or internal coda
(eg to a section rather than a movement) might be termed a codetta.
Concertato
a Baroque vocal style in which voices and instruments share the same
music (ie as compared to melody and accompaniment)
Concerto
a form of music developed in the Baroque era in which one or more soloist
is pitted against an orchestra (the term derives from a Latin word meaning
both ‘contesting’ and ‘working together’)
Concerto grosso
A form of concerto for two or more separate bodies of musicians or

orchestras, or a group of soloists and an accompanying ‘ripieno’ orchestra
(‘the filling’); usually alternating solo passages with ‘ritornelli’ for full
orchestra
Continuo
A form of accompaniment in Baroque music in which a keyboard

instrument, such as a harpsichord or organ, is given a bass line (often
doubled by a cello) and required to improvise harmonies above it, based on
a numerical shorthand known as ‘figured bass’
Counterpoint
The combination of two or more independent lines of music
Crescendo
Getting louder in volume; may be indicated by a hairpin: < (NB NOT a

synonym for a climax – ‘to reach a crescendo’ in this sense is a common
misuse of the term). See also decrescendo/diminuendo
Crotchet (US: quarter-note)
A musical unit of duration, symbolised by
Cycle (circle) of fifths
A figurative, circular arrangement of the 12 major and 12 minor keys, each

a fifth apart, so going clockwise, each key adds a sharp (or removes a flat)
from its key signature:
major: C – G – D – A – E – B – F#/G♭– D♭– A♭– E♭– B♭– F – C
minor: a – e – b – f# – c# – g#/a♭– e♭/d# – b♭– f – c – g – d – a
It helpfully shows how different keys are related:

Decrescendo/diminuendo
Getting softer in volume; may be indicated by a hairpin: >
Development
The process, or section in a sonata form movement, where a composer

breaks up the components of the musical material
Diminished 7th
A chord in which all the notes are a minor 3rd (or augmented 2nd) apart,
effectively dividing the octave into four equal intervals, eg C-E flat-F sharp-
A; a sometimes misleading term since, as here, the top note may be only a
6th from the root, but that’s an artefact of note naming – if the same chord
is spelt up from its F sharp we do then see the 7th from F to E: F sharp-A-
C-E flat. The tonal ambivalence of this kind of chord makes it an important
one for composers as it gives a sense of musical jeopardy and
indecisiveness – it feels like meeting a brick wall and yet can resolve in a
variety of directions.
Diminished 9th
A dominant 7th chord with an added fifth note a semitone above the tonic
to give a dissonant effect, eg C-E-G-B flat-D flat.
Dominant
The most important pitch or key after the tonic itself and a 5th above that
tonic, eg the dominant of C is G. See also subdominant
Dominant 7th
A chord that adds a fourth note to the dominant triad (eg G-B-D-F in C
major), which gives it a tendency to resolve on to the tonic chord.
Duple time
Metre with two beats to the bar, eg 2/4.
Dynamics
The dynamic or volume level of a passage of music is indicated by
combinations of letters indicating degrees of piano (softness) or forte
(loudness):
pianissimo pp
piano p
mezzopiano mp
mezzoforte mf
forte f
fortissimo ff
(more ps or fs can be added for more extreme dynamics).
see also crescendo, decrescendo
Exposition
The opening section in a sonata form movement in which the themes are
presented for the first time; traditionally it comprises a first subject in the
home key, a second subject in the dominant and perhaps a short codetta. In
many cases the composer indicates for this section to be played twice, by
means of a repeat sign.
First subject
The principal theme, or motif, in a sonata form movement
Flat
A note a semitone lower than its natural form, indicated with a ♭ sign, eg
E♭is a semitone lower than E. See also sharp, natural
Forte
Loud (dynamic), often abbreviated in music to f
Fortissimo
Very loud (dynamic), often abbreviated in music to ff
Fugato
A short passage of imitative, fugal writing
Fugue
A musical form in which two or more melodic lines enter one by one in
succession with the same music at the same or different pitch, forming an
often dense counterpoint; from the Italian fuga, meaning flight, as if the
musical lines are chasing each other
Fugue subject
The main melodic theme or motif of a fugue, as opposed to a

countersubject, which may be set against it in counterpoint
Gigue
Dance form in quick, triple time, common in Baroque dance suites (= jig)
Homophony
‘Sounding together’ – music governed by chordal writing and all parts

following the same rhythm (eg hymns) as opposed to the freer, horizontal
lines of counterpoint
Interval
The vertical distance between two notes, measured in numbers of note

names, eg the interval between C and D is a 2nd, between C and E is a 3rd,
between C and G above is a 5th (C-D-E-F-G), that between a C and G
below is a 4th (C-B-A-G), and so on. Intervals of 4ths and 5ths can be
‘perfect’ (eg a perfect 5th between C and G), ‘diminished’ (eg B up to F –
an F sharp would make it perfect), or ‘augmented’ (eg F up to B is a an
augmented 4th – a B flat would make it perfect); intervals of 2nds, 3rds and
6ths can be ‘major’ (C to D, C to E, or C to A) or ‘minor’ (C to D flat, C to
E flat, or C to A flat), and also augmented; 7ths can be ‘major’ (C to B),
‘minor’ (C to B flat) or ‘diminished’ (F sharp to E flat) See also diminished
7th
Key
A specific tonality in music, using a particular pool of notes common to

that tonality. A piece is often said to be in a key, eg ‘Symphony in C major’,
which is specifying the home tonality of the piece, though the music will
invariably pass through a number of different keys between its
establishment at the start and resolution at the end. Western tuning offers a
pool of 24 keys in major and minor forms – see cycle of fifths
Key signature
A symbolic representation on a stave of music of its key, by means of a

configuration of either sharp signs, flat signs or none at all. Each note in the
music so indicated is taken to be sharp or flat unless cancelled by a natural
or other symbol. Eg F major will have a key signature of one flat (the B), so
all Bs appearing in the music will be taken as B flats unless otherwise
shown
Madrigal
A setting of a secular text for a group of solo singers or choir, popular in

Renaissance Italy and England
Major key/scale
A particular configuration of notes characterised by a specific pattern of

whole tone and semitone intervals, eg the white notes on a piano from C
delineate C major: C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C. A defining feature is the presence
of a major third above the tonic (C to E in the above example – an interval
of two whole tones or of four semitones). Often seen subjectively as bright
and positive.
Measure
see bar
Metre (US: meter)

A combination of beats into successive groupings. see also time signature
Mezzoforte
Moderately loud (dynamic), often abbreviated in music to mf
Mezzopiano
moderately soft (dynamic), often abbreviated in music to mp
Minor key/scale
A particular configuration of notes characterised by a specific pattern of

whole and semitone intervals, eg the notes on a piano from A delineate A
minor: A–B–C–D–E–F–G–A. A defining feature is the presence of a minor
third above the tonic (A to C in the above example – an interval of a whole
tone and a semitone, or of three semitones). Often seen subjectively as dark
and melancholy.
To complicate matters, there are two further forms of minor scales: a

melodic minor scale that will vary depending whether ascending (A-B-C-D-
E-F#-G#-A – note we sharpen the 6th and 7th notes) or descending (A-G-F-
E-D-C-B-A – the same notes now naturalised again); and a harmonic minor
scale that simply sharpens the 7th note (A-B-C-D-E-F-G#-A) which ever
way the scale goes. See scale
Mode
A scale, including major and minor, that is characterised by a particular
pattern of intervals depending on what note it begins on, using, for instance,
the white keys of a piano; those apart from major (beginning on C in this
context) and minor (from A) are more characteristic of folk music
Modulation
The process of moving from one key to another.
Motet
A vocal setting of a liturgical text for use in a service (= the Anglican

anthem)
Mute
A physical dampening of an instrument’s sound to make it sound quieter

and more subdued – strings use a clip on the instrument’s bridge, brass a
‘bung’ in the open bell end
Natural
The characteristic pitch of a note in its unqualified form, eg C. See also

sharp, flat
Note
A graphical mark indicating a musical sound, usually a combination of a
circle (indicating the pitch on the stave) and a vertical tail that between
them indicate its duration, classified as follows:
Note names
English-speaking countries have the easiest nomenclature for the notes of

the scale, simply taking the letters A to G and cycling through them up and
down the octaves, and adding sharps and flats to them as necessary, eg A-B-
C-D-E-F-G-A
Obbligato
‘Obligatory’, but used musically more in the sense of indicating a special

solo role, usually in Baroque and Classical music in the context of one or
more solo instruments on equal footing with a solo voice in, for instance, an
aria
Oboe d'amore
A larger member of the oboe family with a characteristic bulge at the

bottom (literally, ‘oboe of love’, so named for its mellow, dove-like sound)
Octave
The interval between two notes that sound the same (because the upper note
has a wavelength half that of the lower note); music notation conveniently
gives them the same letter name, and they are described as an ‘octave’
because they are eight notes apart, eg A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A.
Orchestration
The distribution of music between the different instruments of the

orchestra, or the specific list of instruments used in a piece (=
instrumentation)
Partita
A composite instrumental form, often comprising a suite of dances
Pedal
a) a sustained bass note that stays static while harmonies change above it;
b) a foot-activated mechanism on a piano (to prolong or soften notes) or
organ (a counterpart to the manual keyboards above).
Pianissimo
very soft (dynamic), often abbreviated in music to pp
Piano
soft (dynamic), often abbreviated in music to p

Pizzicato
An articulation in which string players pluck rather than bow their strings
Polyphony
A more general term than counterpoint to describe a number of musical

lines running in parallel with the emphasis on the horizontal (melody) rather
than the vertical (chords)
Recapitulation
The section in a sonata form movement that follows the development and
where the home key and main themes are re-established.
Relative major
A major key with the same key signature as its minor-key sibling, eg C
major (no sharps or flats) and A minor (also no sharps or flats).
See alsotonic major
Relative minor
A minor key with the same key signature as its major-key sibling, eg C
minor (three flats) and E flat major (also three flats).
See also tonic minor
Repeat sign
Notated as a double bar with two dots to indicate to the player to go back to
the beginning (or a previous forward-facing repeat sign) and play the same
music again.
Ritornello
The main tutti passage in, for instance, a concerto movement that
repeatedly ‘returns’ after other music
Rondo
Or 'round', a form in which a main theme comes round time and again,
divided by other themes, to give a pattern such as A-B-A-C-A.
Scale
A melodic succession of adjacent notes; these can either be notes of a given

key (eg a C major scale is C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C), chromatic (each note a
semitone apart), whole tone (each note a tone apart – eg C-D-E-F#-G#-A#-
C), pentatonic (when only five notes are used – eg most easily represented
by only using the black notes on a keyboard – F#-G#-A#-C#-D# – a
somewhat clichéd suggestion of orientalism) or more rarely octotonic (the
octave divided into 8 in a regular pattern of alternating whole tones and
semitones, eg C-D-E flat-F-G flat-A flat-A-B-C)
Scherzo
Literally ‘joke’ in Italian, the traditional fast movement in a symphony
before the finale and a successor to the more stately minuet
Second subject
The subsidiary theme or motif in a sonata form movement, usually in the

dominant key and in a contrasting (gentler) vein.
Semitone
The smallest normal interval between two notes, eg between B and C, or

between E and F on a keyboard (some modern composers and alternative
tunings use smaller intervals of quartertones, or microtones).
Sforzando
An articulation in which a note is attacked with extra emphasis, usually

marked in music by the abbreviation ‘sf’.
Sharp
Indicated in music with a # sign – makes a given note a semitone higher

than its natural form, eg C# is a semitone higher than C. See also natural,
flat
Slur
A smooth transition between two or more melodic notes, signified in music
by a curved line over or beneath the series of notes
Sonata form
The pre-eminent musical form from the Classical period onwards, usually
in three sections in which a pair or more of musical ideas are first presented,
then developed and finally recapitulated. Most first movements of
symphonies, sonatas, quartets etc from Haydn onwards are in sonata form
or a variant thereof. See also first subject, second subject, development,
recapitulation, coda
Staccato
A form of articulation in which notes are clipped, or played as short as

possible; indicated in music by a dot above or below a note.
Staff/stave
The five lines on which music is written (plural in both cases is staves)
Stretto
In a fugue when a voice enters before its predecessor has finished the
subject, literally ‘drawing closer’
Subdominant
Literally, ‘below the dominant’, the second most important pitch or key
after the tonic itself and a 4th above that tonic, eg the subdominant of C is
F. See also dominant
Syncopation
Displacement of a rhythm away from strong beats on to weak ones
Symphony
The pre-eminent instrumental form in western music, effectively codified in

the more than 100 examples of Haydn in the later 18th century out of roots
in operatic overtures and dance suites and a vehicle for a composer’s most
serious and profound statements to this day.
Time signature
Numerical indication of how many beats there are in a bar, comprising two
numbers, one above the other. The lower number indicates the unit of notes
(crotchet, quaver, etc), the upper the number of those notes in a bar. Eg 4/4
means four beats of crotchets, 12/8 means twelve quavers, usually grouped
into four subdivisions of three. See also note, duple time, triple time
Tonality
Music in one of the 12 major or 12 minor keys. Most pieces will have a
home tonality and will then explore some of the other keys most closely
associated with it, chiefly the dominant, subdominant and relative minor, eg
a piece in C major might also include sections in G major (the dominant
key), F major (the subdominant key) and A minor (the relative minor), in
other words those closest to C in the diagrammatic cycle of fifths. See also
atonality
Tonic
The home note of a key, after which it is named, eg C is the tonic of C

major
Tonic major
The major version of a key with the same letter name, eg C major and C
minor.
See alsorelative major
Tonic minor
The minor version of a key with the same letter name, eg C minor and C
major.
Tremolo
Shaking or trembling: a fast reiteration of a single note or rapid alternation

of two notes (or chords).
Triad
A chord made up of three notes, eg a C major triad is C-E-G
Triple time
Metre with three beats to the bar, eg 3/4.
Whole tone
Or simply ‘tone’ – the primary measurement of an interval between two

notes in music that are two semitones apart, eg between C and D on a
keyboard. See also semitone
Appendix
1a
< Use the back button to return to reading the rest of the eBook.
1b
1c
1d
1e
1f
1g
1h
2a
3a
3b
3c
Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced,

transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in
any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as
allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as
strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised
distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s
and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law
accordingly.
Copyright (c) Matthew Rye, 2014
The right of Matthew Rye to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by his in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Recording excerpts: (p) & (c) 2008 harmonia mundi usa
Image credit of Johannes Brahms Memorial: Roman Nezval. Click here to

view the creative commons license.
Image credit of Zwickau Robert Schumann Birth House: André Karwath.

Click here to view the creative commons license.
Image credit of Brahms' grave: James Grimmelmann. Click here to view

the creative commons license.
First published in the UK in 2014 by Erudition Digital
Erudition Digital
10 Tuscan Studios
14 Muswell Hill Road
Highgate
London
N6 5UG
WWW.ERUDITIONDIGITAL.CO.UK

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About the Masterpieces of Music

Masterpieces of Music is a series of eBook guides to the greatest classical

Series Partner - Harmonia Mundi

Founded in 1958, harmonia mundi is today the oldest independent classical

1. How to use this publication

3. The story behind Brahms's First Piano Concerto

1. First movement: Maestoso

2. Second movement: Adagio

3. Third movement: Rondo - Allegro non-troppo

Thank you for purchasing or downloading our Kindle™ edition. The

Table of contents – we’ve included a table of contents so that you can

Pop-ups – the Kindle format doesn’t support pop-ups therefore any

Please visit https://erudition.zendesk.com for further information or if

Audio excerpts can be played by clicking on the highlighted 'play the

There are two types of audio excerpts, simplified versions played on a

Glossary definitions, related musical excerpts, links to other parts of

Enhanced timelines open as separate browser pages and allow for a

This publication features a comprehensive step-by-step walk through

Play – plays musical excerpts relating to the step

Location – shows the location of the step within a movement

A detailed index of resources including related listening, recordings,

Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor op. 15

Timeline of Brahms's life

The mid-1850s: the British Pre-Raphaelites were at their height, Richard

"One of the grandest surprises in music since Beethoven"

The house in Hamburg, subsequently destroyed, where Brahms was born in

Joachim encouraged him to expand his musical horizons beyond

Joseph Joachim and his actress wife Amalie Weiss

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Brahms in later life

Brahms on the example of Beethoven

I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a

Tchaikovsky, diary entry 1886

Following a fraught journey to attend the funeral of Clara Schumann in

1833 Born 7 May in Hamburg

1839 First musical studies with his father

1843 Debut as pianist

1858 Completes first version of First Piano Concerto

1865 Writes A German Requiem in memory of his mother, who had

1876 Completes First Symphony, having begun work on it in 1862

1877 Composes Second Symphony

1878 Composes Violin Concerto, in consultation with Joachim

1881 Completes Second Piano Concerto

1883 Composes Third Symphony

1885 Composes Fourth Symphony

1891 Composes Clarinet Trio and Quintet for Meiningen clarinettist

1897 Dies of liver cancer on 3 April, and is buried in Vienna's Central

Click here to see the enhanced version of the Brahms's

The concerto finds its true form

Performance and reception

Brahms and the Schumanns

A brief history of the concerto

rahms and the piano

A piano concerto apart – what makes it different

Despite his large, wide-ranging output of music, Brahms was a particularly

Photo of Robert Schumann taken in 1850.

Brahms’s initial response was to orchestrate the first movement – it was in

Review of the Leipzig performance by Edward Bernsdorf in the ‘Signale’

Brahms’s habit of destroying incomplete works and sketches means that

Whole books have been written on the relationships between Brahms,

The house where Schumann was born in Zwickau

Any pianist looking at Brahms’s printed piano music will immediately

and the G minor Ballade op.118 no.3 (1893):