When violinist Joseph Joachim proposed a toast to the world’s greatest composer, he was cut off in mid flow.
German composer Johannes Brahms was well-known for his mercurial attitude to praise. Up to a point he accepted it happily enough, but if ever it became oppressive he would do almost anything to escape it. Charles Villiers Stanford, professor of music at the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge University, was present on one of these occasions.
Composer Johannes Brahms disliked the adulation sometimes heaped on him by fans, and found quite imaginative ways to avoid it.
Composer Johannes Brahms liked his music to be appreciated, but if the eulogies became cloying his manner would undergo a marked change. His friend Charles Villiers Stanford tells us about one occasion when Brahms used all his ingenuity to escape a too-flattering fan.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford recalls the very different receptions given by British and German audiences to a little bit of Brahms.
Britain’s position outside the European Continent, politically and physically, has in no way lessened her appetite for European culture. Indeed at the very height of Empire, so Sir Charles Stanford tells us, a little critical distance gave the British an appreciation (and a common courtesy, one might add) that the Continentals lacked.
A Scottish widow’s lullaby for her fatherless child inspired his music, but Brahms’s message struck closer to home.
Johannes Brahms never came to Britain, apparently because he was so idolised here that the modest composer found every excuse to avoid it. Nonetheless his ‘Three Intermezzi’ Op. 117 were inspired by a Scottish folksong, and are a reflection on his complex relationship with Clara Schumann and her children, whom he supported financially and emotionally after Clara’s husband (and Brahms’s friend) Robert was taken from them.