Category: Brahms

  • The Blue Flower

    (Clara Wieck Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Robert Schumann.) On October 1, 1853, the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms, who was on tour accompanying violinist Eduard Remenyi throughout the German-speaking lands, knocked on the door of his idol, Robert Schumann in Düsseldorf. He played his Piano Sonata no. 1 in C Major for Schumann and his wife, the…

  • The Hobgoblin of Little Minds

    A hobgoblin is, in European folklore, a spirit of the hearth or fireside (the “hob”). Hobgoblins are considered meddlesome and mischievous beings. In the universe of Marvel Comics, the Hobgoblin is one of Spiderman’s nemeses. In his well-known 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” the American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that “A foolish consistency is the…

  • Variations on a Theme

    (Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann.) Robert Schumann, no. 4 of Bunte Blätter (Colored Leaves), op. 99. In 1853, his wife, Clara (Wieck) Schumann, wrote a set of variations on this piece. The following year, Schumann was confined to the insane asylum at Endenich. Clara, who gave birth to their seventh child that May, was forbidden to…

  • Is Absolute Music Possible?

    Or does music always have an invisible program? Consider Johannes Brahms, the ostensible champion of absolute music. Brahms as an old man, the way he’s most often pictured. Brahms in 1853, the year he met the Schumanns. The night of their first meeting, Robert Schumann wrote in his diary: “Visit from Brahms (a genius).” Soon…

  • Black Men Play (with) the Classics

    More cross-cultural encounters: The great jazz pianist Jason Moran (above right) plays one of the late piano works of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), the Intermezzo op. 118 no. 2, with his trio, the Bandwagon.  Listen to what happens. The piece as Brahms wrote it:

  • Poem: “Black Boys Play the Classics”

    (Photo: Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897.) Another example of “complicating” the repertoire. Is this poem about cultural appropriation or cross-cultural encounter? Black Boys Play the Classics BY TOI DERRICOTTE The most popular “act” in Penn Station is the three black kids in ratty sneakers & T-shirts playing two violins and a cello—Brahms. White men in business suits…