Tragic Overture, op. 81

The Tragic Overture was written in the summer of 1880 for a production of Goethe's Faust planned at the Vienna Burgtheater that never took place. Brahms resisted any programmatic reading and said the title merely indicated the character of the music; he summed up the difference from the Academic Festival Overture, composed a few months later, in a single line — one of them laughs, the other weeps. Hans Richter conducted the first performance in Vienna on 26 December 1880, and eight days later Brahms gave both overtures at Breslau.