Symphony No.4 in E minor, Op.98
- Allegro non troppo
- Andante moderato
- Allegro giocoso
- Allegro energico e passionato
Brahms famously took 20 years to complete his first symphony, so intimidated was he by the example of Beethoven. Having broken his duck, however, he produced a second within a year. His third and fourth symphonies likewise emerged within a short space of each other. In June 1884, the year after the composition and première of the Third Symphony, Brahms sent a hint to his publisher Simrock in the form of a local newspaper cutting announcing Brahms’s arrival in the Austrian mountain town of Mürzzuschlag. The composer was there, the paper assured its readers, to work on “a major new piece.” In a further letter in August Brahms casually mentioned that “I appear to be taking better paper with more staves on it.” The holiday in Mürzzuschlag and the quality manuscript paper were signs of the genesis of his Fourth Symphony.
Brahms was self-critical at the best of times, but the emerging work seemed to worry him more than usual. Writing to the conductor Hans von Bülow, he described it as “a pair of Entr’actes, such as one commonly calls a symphony... I’m afraid it tastes of the climate here; the cherries never ripen in these parts - you wouldn’t want to eat them!” Brahms’s insecurity as to how palatable the new symphony reflected the pressure of high expectations; the Third Symphony had been received with an unanimous enthusiasm not seen since his German Requiem in 1869.
The roots of the Fourth Symphony can be traced back to before he had written his third. In 1882 Brahms discussed Bach’s Cantata No. 150 “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich” [Unto thee Oh Lord do I lift up my soul] with von Bülow, and in particular its last movement, which is a chaconne - a set of variations over a repeating bass line. “What would you think about a symphony written on this theme some time?” Brahms pondered. “But it is too clumsy, too straightforward. One would have to alter it chromatically in some way.” A version of this theme, altered in precisely the manner Brahms suggests, underpins the finale of the Fourth.
He returned to Mürzzuschlag the following summer, where he completed the new symphony. He sent a copy to his friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, accompanied by a worried note: “In general, and unfortunately, my pieces are nicer than I am, and people find less in them to correct?! But round here the cherries do not ripen, do not become edible – if the item doesn't taste good to you, don't be embarrassed; I'm not at all keen to write a bad number 4.” Herzogenberg was normally an unabashed cheerleader for Brahms’ music, but on this occasion she confessed to some doubts about its accessibility: “The symphony is too cerebral”, she said; “it makes the listener or score reader work too hard: We feel we should like to fold our hands and shut our eyes and be stupid for once, leaning on the composer to rest, instead of his driving us so relentlessly afield.”
In Vienna in October, Brahms and his fellow composer Ignaz Brüll performed the symphony in a piano arrangement for a select audience of supporters. Here too, however, the reaction was more muted than he might have hoped: the critic Eduard Hanslick confessed after the first movement, “For the whole movement I had the feeling that I was being given a beating by two incredibly intelligent people!”
In the event, the first performances were successful, and it is now recognised as one of Brahms’ greatest achievements. The opening movement that so unnerved Hanslick begins almost nonchalantly, although right from the outset there is a sense of a tightly controlled and concentrated structure developing, even as the emotional turmoil gradual comes to the surface. From the opening bars Brahms’s obsessive reworking of tiny motifs to create larger themes suggests the kind of close-knit variations that will emerge in the finale. A contrasting second theme has a quality memorably characterised by Leonard Bernstein as “a kind of strange tango”, which if not a historically accurate description certainly evokes the combination of nobility and tragedy that it projects. The second movement provides a complete contrast: a strident horn call transforms into a tentative, withdrawn melody, floating over a gentle tread of plucked strings. The overall warmth is nevertheless tinged with melancholy.
Daylight bursts out in the third movement, which is perhaps the most boisterous and unbuttoned movement in all Brahms’ symphonies. In its jubilant air (subtly enhanced by the introduction of a triangle) it feels almost like a finale; in fact it takes on some of the function of a finale in resolving much of the tension built up by the previous two movements.
The slate is thus cleared for the actual finale, which is quite simply one of the most extraordinary things Brahms ever wrote. In digging deep into the past, both in his refashioning of an idea from Bach, and through his use of archaic techniques, Brahms in fact creates something new and unprecedented in symphonic writing. Rather than Bach’s Chaconne structure, Brahms presents a Passacaglia - the same principle of variations over a repeated line, except that the line in question may appears in registers other than the bass. The theme (in which the trombones make their first appearance) is followed by 30 variations. These are organised into a three-part structure that mirrors the previous three movements, with a slow and reflective central section contrasting with faster outer sections. When the final climax bursts through though, it is not in the jubilant major of the third movement, but a stern minor key. The rigid pattern that the music is built on only serves to heighten the tension, until in the closing pages it finally breaks free of its strictures. It remains sternly in the minor to its close, but is too full of fire and energy to be tragic.
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