Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [0]
Johannes Brahms
“A meticulous portrait.… Swafford has thoroughly mined the existing literature, both scholarly and popular, and has managed to weave it into his narrative in a seamless fashion.… At times [the writing] unfolds with remarkable lyricism and sweep.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A thoroughly involving portrait of Brahms … the scale of Swafford’s research and acuity of his insights contribute to a book of rare value.… It cannily balances the man and his music, doing justice to both.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“A big, ambitious … book that takes the whole man as its subject.… [Swafford] delivers the goods on Brahms … with panache.”
—Washington Times
“Jan Swafford’s intelligent, gracefully written biography … offers perhaps the richest and most integrated portrait we’ve yet had of Brahms as man and artist.”
—The Hartford Courant
“[Swafford’s] analysis of Brahms’s performing career as pianist and conductor is especially fascinating.”
—The New York Times
“An informative and well-researched path into the complex personality of [Brahms].”
—The Boston Globe
“[Swafford] colors in our grainy portrait of a man who was ambivalent, insecure, arrogant and only intermittently loveable.… Sharply drawn.”
—Newsday
“The author of [the] much-acclaimed biography Charles Ives: A Life with Music, Swafford has produced yet another masterpiece. This voluminous work combines formidable scholarship with an engaging, can’t-put-it-down writing style.”
—Library Journal
JAN SWAFFORD
Johannes Brahms
Jan Swafford received degrees from Harvard and the Yale School of Music and is the author of Charles Ives: A Life with Music, which was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, won the PEN/Winship Award, and was hailed by Newsweek as “one of the best biographies in recent memory.” He is also the author of The Vintage Guide to Classical Music and a featured commentator on NPR’s Performance Today. An award-winning composer whose work has been widely performed by ensembles here and abroad, he lives in eastern Massachusetts.
ALSO BY JAN SWAFFORD
The Vintage Guide to Classical Music
Charles Ives: A Life with Music
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 1999
Copyright © 1997 by Jan Swafford
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1997.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Swafford, Jan.
Johannes Brahms: a biography / by Jan Swafford.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897.
2. Composers—Germany—Biography.
I. Title.
ML410.B8S93 1997
780′.92—DC21 97-29308
[B] MN
eISBN: 978-0-307-80989-6
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
For my brother, Charles Johnson—
with thanks, among other things,
for all the laughs and all the patience
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Prologue
ONE Homeland
TWO Kreisleriana
THREE Two Journeys
FOUR The Eagle’s Wings
FIVE Waiting
SIX Words Spoken and Unspoken
Photo Insert
SEVEN Resolution in a Minor Key
EIGHT Premiere and Postlude
NINE Rebirth
TEN A Garden Full of Nightingales
ELEVEN City of Dreams
TWELVE Farewell
THIRTEEN They That Mourn
FOURTEEN Ruthless Beauty
FIFTEEN Herr Musikdirector
SIXTEEN The Tramp of Giants
Photo Insert
SEVENTEEN Late Idyll
EIGHTEEN Song of the Fates
NINETEEN Valedictions
TWENTY The Taking Back
TWENTY-ONE Laurels
TWENTY-TWO Secrets and Foreboding
TWENTY-THREE Who Shall Bring Him to That Place?
Epilogue and Provocation
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Illustrations will be found following
this page and