Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [130]
IN AUGUST Brahms wrote Clara, “Tomorrow my girls are rehearsing a psalm [the thirteenth] which I have composed for them. I wrote it in the evening a week ago last Sunday, and it kept me happy until midnight.… I feel more and more convinced that you are my friend and the thought fills me with the greatest joy. To think it has become a necessity of my life!”12 (This was scant affection after what they had been through.) Brahms was unaffectedly dazzled by the feminine companionship and admiration he got from the Frauenchor. If they were enthralled by him, he felt similarly about them. As he explained to Joachim, he was not taking an excursion to the country this summer because “a little singing society (ladies only) detains me. Otherwise, I would have been on the Rhine or in some beautiful forest.”13
Like any number of choristers, Franziska Meier had a crush on Brahms, and for all the reticence of the time when it came to such things, her girlish passion left traces in her diary. After the March 28 concert in Hamburg, Franziska wrote rapturously, “I spent an almost sleepless night during which I wrote in my diary, made poetry and drew sketches of Joachim and Brahms.”14 He sometimes played piano for the girls and their visitors after the rehearsal. Franziska wrote of one occasion in her diary:
After our poor director had worked so hard to beat these new things into us, he was besieged by Mme. Peterson to play something for us! He has the reputation of being unaccommodating, proud, arrogant, and disagreeable. O, how can one wrong a person like that? He played some [Schumann] Kreisleriana which … he had not played for a long time. The poor man—when he made a mistake, he blushed purple, made an angry face, and shook his head. (30-1)
In September, Brahms showed up at Franziska’s house to retrieve some music she had taken to copy into her part-book. She swooned.
I could hardly believe my eyes … I asked him to come in and speak to my parents but he looked around the corner and said: “I have not a moment’s time.” He hunted in the dark with me for the music on the piano, and then he hurried quickly away. But the goblets of bliss were spilled, the fair fruits scattered and night was darkening round about. (33)
The Frauenchor rehearsed through late summer toward a September 19 performance at St. Peter’s, for invited guests, of Psalm 13 and some of the Marienlieder. In one of the last rehearsals the girls offered their conductor an honorarium they had collected. He turned the money down, saying he had enjoyed the work so much that money would only ruin it. In a preconcert rehearsal at the church, there were problems coordinating organ and choir. Franziska watched Brahms turn white as chalk and clench his fist to try and calm himself. (37) They decided to sing from the organ loft, from where the performance came off splendidly for a large audience.
At the end, everyone gathered around Johann Jakob and Christiane Brahms and Elise, who basked in reflected glory as they had been doing for years now. At a repeat performance a week later the girls wore black, they announced, in mourning at losing their conductor to Detmold for the winter. This time the pieces went badly, which did not seem to disturb Brahms at all. Afterward a crowd collected in the loft. When he asked what was going on, he was told that a lady was being shown how to pump the wind chest of the organ. Brahms had a look and the choir heard him exclaim, “Oh God, it’s my sister!” (41)
Soon after he reached Detmold, Brahms received a silver inkstand buried in a wreath of flowers