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Schumann had called this public philistine because they were un-adventurous and worshipped shallow virtuosity. Only occasionally, however, did Brahms wield the epithet philistine, and never with the vituperation Schumann did. Brahms accepted the bourgeois public as the ultimate judge, even if their verdict was slow to take shape and manifestly unpredictable. (His experience with the D Minor Piano Concerto would be an unforgettable lesson in how slow and unpredictable.) Eventually he spent a fair amount of his time writing commercial dances and a patriotic extravaganza, and piles of the sorts of vocal duets, quartets, and such that were staples of social music-making, Hausmusik, in the nineteenth century. None of this is hackwork, but it was largely written to move off the shelves, and did. When the concertgoing public and critics balked at an ambitious effort toward the end of his life, the Double Concerto, Brahms responded not by denouncing the philistines but by renouncing—fortunately with relapses—his creative life.

Thus, in 1858, Brahms adjured Clara: let my music find its own way with the public, in its own time, and don’t try to prod them too sharply. He ended that overbearing letter, “You might answer me more quickly; don’t often keep me waiting as long as you did this time.” Meanwhile, of course, Clara’s proselytizing continued to be one of the main forces helping his music find an audience, and Joachim’s another. If Brahms rarely expressed gratitude to either of them, he responded amply in his way—with a string of masterpieces written for, inspired by, sometimes dedicated to Clara and Joachim. He felt those gifts would repay them more than mere words of appreciation, and they did.

THAT SPRING, Johannes and Clara were invited on a vacation to Göttingen by Julius Otto Grimm, Brahms’s friend from Düsseldorf who now directed music in that college town. To Clara, Brahms groused about even this friendly invitation, threatening not to go. At the end of her long response angrily repudiating his letter grumbling about her manner of promoting him, Clara said, “I am very much upset by what you write about Göttingen. That you so much dislike the idea of going there is hateful to me.… I am waiting for another letter, my Johannes. If only I could find longing as sweet as you do. It only gives me pain and fills my heart with unspeakable woe.” She meant longing for him, and he knew it, and she knew he knew it. Johannes hastened to write her a pleasant response, to which she replied with relief. To make her happy, he would go to Göttingen.

Grimm had settled into the stone, brick, and ivy environs of Göttingen as conductor of the ninety-voice Cäcelienverein and associated women’s chorus. There he married the enchanting Philippine, called Pine, nicknamed “Pine Gur” after the growled R’s of her dialect. Grimm meanwhile had been dubbed “Ise” for “Isegrimm,” meaning old bear or grouch.40 In 1857, they had named their first child Johannes, after Ise’s admired friend.41

Among their circle in the town was a professor’s daughter of twenty-three with a lovely soprano voice named Agathe von Siebold, called Gathe. Thus the friends Ise, Gur, and Gathe, like some fairy-tale trio. They were young and in the first flush of life and work, and Agathe a catch for the best sort of suitor, and the Cäcelienverein was a steady pleasure for all of them. In inviting Brahms to Göttingen, Grimm wrote, “If it would please you to have a few good voices, lodged in very lovely girls, sing for you, they will take pleasure in being at your disposal. Come quickly!”42 It appears that Pine Gur and her husband aspired to some matchmaking.

At the end of July 1858, Johannes showed up in Göttingen, grumbling. His reluctance to leave Hamburg shows his concern over work—he had begun a serenade for a small group of winds and strings—but also his lack of interest in singing girls, lovely or not. When Clara and her five youngest children arrived they settled in with the Grimms, and Johannes roomed nearby. Clara’s half-brother Woldemar Bargiel joined the party