Symphony No. 4

Johannes Brahms himself acknowledged that he delayed composing a symphony until after he was 40 out of respect for Beethoven’s great set of nine — and from a fear of being found wanting in comparison with his mighty predecessor.

When he finally resolved to write a symphony, Brahms had Robert Schumann’s symphonies sounding in his ears as strongly as Beethoven’s — which is why a similarity can be heard between the opening of Schumann’s Fourth and the way in which Brahms began his First. When we reach the finale of Brahms’s First, though, we encounter an unmistakable echo of the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth. “Any fool can see that,” was Brahms’s dismissive comment.

Once he had given one symphony to the world, it was easier for Brahms to embark on its successors. The rest followed more rapidly, within nine years. The Second followed very soon after the First, and the Fourth appeared within two years of the Third.

There is a higher level of dissonance and tension in the Fourth Symphony than in most of Brahms’s music — but as al­ways with this composer, it is perfectly judged, and balanced by faultless craft and an abundant melodic gift.

The symphony was first performed in Meiningen, a small town in central Germany that was briefly of great importance in the musical world thanks to the leadership of Hans von Bülow and Richard Strauss. The two persuaded Brahms in 1885 to grant them the first performance of his latest symphony, which would be a safe haven from the fickle audiences of Vienna, especially as Wagner-mania swept across Europe.

Brahms does not deviate from his Clas­sical inheritance in this symphony’s formal structure — a broad, substantial first movement precedes a lyrical slow movement, a jocular scherzo, and a strong, assertive finale. As usual, Brahms shows little interest in the more colorful instru­ments that most composers were delighting in at that time — no English horn, bass clarinet, tuba, or harp. He does, however, ask for a contrabassoon in the last two movements to enrich the bass, and a piccolo for the third movement, where he also ventures into the percussion section with a very un-Brahmsian triangle. And, although he clung to the old-fashioned natural horns, not the valved variety then in universal use, he writes for the horns with infinite mastery.

The first movement’s graceful opening theme, with its drooping thirds, weaves through the whole movement. And Brahms’s writing for strings had never been so rich as here. The main contrast in this move­ment is rhythmic, for triplet figures keep intruding. By the end of the movement, however, the powerful drive of the original 4/4 pulse is unstoppable.

A pair of horns declare the opening of the slow second move­ment with a misleadingly forceful gesture. For this is the tenderest of slow movements, rich in complex harmony and smooth melody. The clarinet is especially favored, and the second subject (first heard in the cellos) is one of Brahms’s greatest inspirations, intensified each time it returns.

The scherzo third movement brings out the hearty hiker in Brahms, and the triangle signals a breeziness that we rarely find in his music. The slower middle section is all too brief, as if Brahms was in a hurry to get back to his vigorous exercise.

For the last movement, Brahms broke with convention and composed a passacaglia (although he did not call it that), a Baroque form in which a short harmonic sequence is repeated many times in elaborate variation. This is the moment the trombones have been waiting for, and they lay down the eight firm chords that define the sequence, borrowed from the final movement of J.S. Bach’s cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (For Thee, O Lord, I long). The challenge for Brahms — as it was for Bach — is not to have the music get stuck in the home key. His eight-bar outline is heard 30 times in wonderfully inventive variations, but it escapes briefly from E minor to taste the nectar of E major following a desolate flute solo. The return to E minor sounds like a formal recapitu­lation of the beginning, with strong wind chords, but it simply heralds a stirring continuation of the variations, until the symphony, in Donald Francis Tovey’s memorable words, “storms to its tragic close.”

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.