Johannes Brahmms First Symphony Essay

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In 1853, Johannes Brahms visited at Düsseldorf, and it was trip for a fateful meeting with Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Clara Schumann (1819-1896). Robert was fascinated with this young composer when Brahms played his Piano Sonata in C Major, Op.1. In 1855, Robert encouraged Brahms to compose symphonic works, so that Brahms began to sketch his First Symphony, but he ceased working on the piece after sketching for three movements. Even though Johannes Brahms is well-known as a master of the symphonic genre, he composed only four symphonies in his lifetime. Brahms spent almost twenty years from the first sketches in 1855 to complete his Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 in 1876, which was called “Ludwig van Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony” by Hans von Bülow (1830-1894) due to Brahms’ following the compositional style of Beethoven instead of following the compositional trend of Nineteenth-Century …show more content…

The compositional process of Brahms’ First Symphony includes a long and mysterious history because of self-critical fastidiousness, causing him to destroy many drafts and whole pieces. In this regard, there is another compositional mystery as to how and why he completed his Second Symphony during only three months in the summer vacation of 1877. Following the exasperating first symphony, the second symphony demonstrates a unique compositional process in his entire life in part because it is the shortest compositional timeframe.
This paper examines why Brahms finished his Second Symphony in a short period of time, instead of his usual long compositional process. Biographers and scholars of Johannes Brahms have delved into this compositional process, and they attempted to explain the quick compositional process with Brahms’ summer vacation in 1877 and the pastoral mood of Brahms’ Second Symphony. For example, Paul Holmes asserts that the pastoral mood encouraged to complete his Second Symphony