Johannes Brahms

Twenty years old and unknown, Brahms was introduced to the musical world in 1853 by Robert Schumann's article New Paths, which greeted him as the awaited successor. He came from Hamburg and modest circumstances, learned his craft from Otto Cossel and Eduard Marxsen, earned a living as a pianist and arranger and toured with the violinist Eduard Reményi before meeting Joseph Joachim, Liszt and the Schumanns. Vienna became his home. Four symphonies, four concertos, a body of chamber music, the late piano pieces, some two hundred songs and A German Requiem make up the work; opera and programme music he left alone. Schoenberg discussed his developing variation and irregular phrase lengths. He died in Vienna in 1897. His practical posts included a choral society in Detmold from 1857, a women's choir in Hamburg from 1859, then the Vienna Singakademie and, from 1872, the concerts of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, which he gave up in 1875. The University of Breslau made him an honorary doctor in 1879. The clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld drew the late chamber works out of him, a trio and a quintet in 1891 and the two sonatas of 1894.