Polski opis

Gatunek :	Classical
Rok Wydania :	2003
Jakość :	APE
Okładki :	Nie

Opis:
Johannes Brahms (ur. 7 maja 1833 w Hamburgu, zm. 3 kwietnia 1897 w Wiedniu) - niemiecki kompozytor, pianista i dyrygent okresu romantyzmu. Jego pierwszym nauczycielem muzyki był ojciec - miejski muzykant, później kontrabasista orkiestry miejskiej w Hamburgu. Następnie kontynuował naukę u F.W. Cossela i E. Marxsena.

Robert Schumann, kompozytor, a zarazem krytyk muzyczny, po wizycie Brahmsa w 1853 roku i zaznajomieniu się z jego próbami kompozytorskimi, zamieścił artykuł w swoim Neue Zeitschrift für Musik obwieszczający pojawienie się geniusza muzyki niemieckiej. Przyjaźń obu kompozytorów trwała również w czasie choroby Schumanna (Schumann cierpiał na chorobę psychiczną), aż do jego śmierci w 1856 roku. Później Brahms stał się opiekunem i najbliższym przyjacielem Klary Schumann (słynna pianistka w XIX wieku, żona Roberta Schumanna), aż do końca jej życia w 1896 roku.

Brahms uważał, iż jako kompozytor urodził się za późno. Tym sformułowaniem dawał wyraz swemu przywiązaniu do tradycji, które wyrażało się w kontynuowaniu barokowych i klasycznych form oraz wzorców, uważanych w romantyzmie powszechnie za przebrzmiałe. Tym samym przeciwstawił się programowości w muzyce, pisząc muzykę absolutną. Ideologia taka znalazła swoje sformułowanie teoretyczne tuż po roku 1850 w dziele znanego krytyka wiedeńskiego Edwarda Hanslicka, który był zwolennikiem muzyki Brahmsa, a przeciwnikiem Wagnera. Hanslick twierdził, iż wyrażanie uczuć nie jest zadaniem muzyki, a piękno utworu polega na pięknie jego formy, melodii i innych elementów muzyki. Sam Brahms nie lubił Wagnera, ale go doceniał. Wagner zaś Brahmsa nie poważał, nazywając go drewnianym Johannesem. Brahms nie angażował się w konflikty dzielące niemieckie środowisko muzyczne. Mimo to był celem nieustannych ataków ze strony wyznawców Wagnera, którzy upatrywali w nim głównego przeciwnika ideologicznego.

Źródło: wikipedia.pl

 English description

Genre :	Classical
Year :	2003
Quality :	APE
Covers :	No

Description:
Johannes Brahms (May 7, 1833 – April 3, 1897) was a German composer of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, he eventually settled in Vienna, Austria. Brahms's father, Johann Jakob Brahms, came to Hamburg from Schleswig-Holstein, seeking a career as a town musician. He was proficient on several instruments, but found employment mostly playing the horn and double bass. He married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress, who was seventeen years older than he was. Initially, they lived near the city docks, in the Gängeviertel quarter of Hamburg, for six months before moving to a small house on the Dammtorwall, located on the northern perimeter of Hamburg in the Inner Alster.

Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training. He studied piano from the age of seven with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Brahms showed early promise (his younger brother Fritz also became a pianist) and helped to supplement the rather meager family income by playing the piano in restaurants and theaters, as well as by teaching. It is a long-told tale that Brahms was forced in his early teens to play the piano in bars that doubled as brothels; recently Brahms scholar Kurt Hoffman has suggested that this legend is false. Since Brahms himself clearly originated the story, however, some have questioned Hoffman's theory.

For a time, Brahms also learned the cello, although his progress was cut short when his teacher absconded with Brahms's instrument. After his early piano lessons with Otto Cossel, Brahms studied piano with Eduard Marxsen, who had studied in Vienna with Ignaz Seyfried (a pupil of Mozart) and Carl von Bocklet (a close friend of Schubert). The young Brahms gave a few public concerts in Hamburg, but did not become well known as a pianist until he made a concert tour at the age of nineteen. In later life, he frequently took part in the performance of his own works, whether as soloist, accompanist, or participant in chamber music. He was the soloist at the premieres of both his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1859 and his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1881. He conducted choirs from his early teens, and became a proficient choral and orchestral conductor.

Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos (See First Piano Concerto; Second Piano Concerto), a Violin Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and a pair of orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.

His large choral work Ein deutsches Requiem ("A German Requiem") is not a traditional, liturgical requiem (Missa pro defunctis), but a setting of texts which Brahms selected from the Lutheran Bible. The work was composed in three major periods of his life. An earlier version of the second movement was first composed in 1854, not long after Robert Schumann's attempted suicide, and was later finished and used in his first piano concerto. The majority of the Requiem was composed after his mother's death in 1865. The fifth movement was later added after the official premiere in 1868. The complete work was then published in 1869.

Brahms's works in variation form include the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel and the Paganini Variations, both for solo piano, and the Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn in versions for two pianos and for orchestra. The final movement of the Fourth Symphony (Op. 98) is also formally a set of variations.

His chamber works include three string quartets, two string quintets and two string sextets, as well as a clarinet quintet, a clarinet trio, a horn trio, a piano quintet, three piano quartets and three piano trios. He composed several instrumental sonatas with piano, including three for violin, two for cello and two for clarinet (which were subsequently arranged for viola by the composer). His solo piano works range from his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of character pieces. Brahms also wrote about 200 songs and is considered among the greatest of Lieder composers (with Schubert and Schumann). His chorale preludes for organ, which he wrote shortly before his death, have become an important part of the organist's repertoire.

Brahms never wrote an opera, nor did he ever write in the characteristic late-19th-century form of the tone poem, strongly preferring to compose absolute music that does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative.

Despite his reputation as a serious composer of large, complex musical designs, some of Brahms's most widely known and commercially successful compositions during his life were aimed at the thriving contemporary market for domestic music-making, and are small-scale and popular in intention. These included his arrangements of popular dances, in Hungarian Dances, the Waltzes Op. 39 for piano duet, the Liebeslieder Waltzes for vocal quartet and piano, and some of his many songs, notably the Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4 (published in 1868). This last item was written (to a folk text) to celebrate the birth of a son to Brahms's friend Bertha Faber, and is universally known as Brahms' Lullaby.

Source: wikipedia.org