Posted August 26, 2024
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (+ piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, triangle, strings
Johannes Brahms
(Born in Hamburg in 1833; died in Vienna in 1897)
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98
- Allegro non troppo
- Andante moderato
- Allegro giocoso
- Allegro energico e passionato
During the two summers of 1884 and 1885, Brahms stole away from Vienna to the countryside of the Austrian Alps to write his Fourth Symphony. During those months, he began realizing that his time on Earth was growing short, and that this Fourth might well be his last word in his beloved symphonic genre, and so the Fourth then took on a tenor of deep loss and finality for Brahms. But with inspiration from his musical heroes, particularly Bach and Beethoven, Brahms achieved both a masterpiece in this final Symphony, and created one of the towering musical works in Western music.
The opening to the first movement feels gentle and serene, yet tinged with a feeling of melancholy. Right away, the upper strings play this movement’s signature “sighing” motive of two descending notes, followed by their musical inversion – and in response, one beat afterwards, the woodwinds repeat the strings’ sighing motives in a canon (an old musical form that makes a melody echo itself in harmony). Both the “sighing” motive – a technique dating from before the Renaissance – and the use of the canon form are clearly Brahms tipping his hat to the music of his musical forebearers. Brahms then takes the movement through the standard architecture of a Beethovan-esque symphony as the music battles between the opening’s veiled gracefulness against a sense of mounting angst. The conclusion is an accretion of fury, ending with four brutal strokes on the timpani.
The second movement, Andante, begins in an atmosphere of quietude and deep pathos. The opening theme quietly unfolds in the horn with a sense of loss and loneliness, gradually working its way through several variations until building into one of the most lyrical moments in the entire Symphony. Then, the movement slowly retreats to its original quietude, as the clarinets ascend into the stratosphere.
The third movement, Allegro giocoso (quick and merry), balances the more tragic tone of the Symphony. And with the addition of the percussionist’s triangle, the mood becomes boisterous. Listen, for example, at about two minutes in, when after plenty of musical raucousness, deep growls from the basses and timpani are answered with delightfully lighthearted squeaks from the piccolo and triangle. Despite this merriment, the movement flirts with a dangerous feeling of wildness, and its final bars are hammered out with an almost primal aggression.
The origins for the final movement, Allegro energico e passionate (fast, energetic and passionate) began around 1880 when Brahms was studying the final chaconne of Bach’s Cantata No. 150, “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich.” (A chaconne uses a repeating bass line to anchor a progression of variations, also referred to as a passacaglia.) The first eight bars establish this repeating bass-line with an almost raging force, upon which Brahms then creates 32 exceptional variations which will travel through a universe of emotions ranging from trepidation, majesty, even to fragility. But this finale ultimately concludes with a series of ever-intensifying phrases, like a fire beginning to rage white hot. And rather than morphing into a triumphant major key to rectify all that came before it as Classical symphonies typically would, instead, Brahms’s last Symphony remains in the minor key until its final, crushing blows.
© Max Derrickson