Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [135]
It has never been clear whether Brahms or Joachim had the larger hand in drafting the manifesto, but it articulated a mutual sentiment: the swindlers are trying to take over the shop, and it is time to expose them.
The undersigned have long followed with regret the proceedings of a certain party whose organ is Brendel’s Zeitschrift für Musik. The said Zeitschrift unceasingly promulgates the theory that the most prominent striving musicians are in accord with the aims represented in its pages, that they recognize in the compositions of the leaders of the New School works of artistic value, and that the contention for and against the so-called Music of the Future has been finally fought out, especially in North Germany, and decided in its favor. The undersigned regard it as their duty to protest against such a distortion of fact, and declare, at least for their own part, that they do not acknowledge the principles avowed by the Zeitschrift, and that they can only lament and condemn the productions of the leaders and pupils of the so-called New German School, which … necessitate the constant setting up of new and outlandish theories contrary to the very nature of music.24
Though it is not clear in the article—they should have made it clear—their main target was Liszt and the Music of the Future propaganda machine, not Wagner in his capacity as an opera composer. Propaganda was a formidable presence in the age’s musical life. Critic Eduard Hanslick wrote in 1862, “Liszt’s and Wagner’s compositions have the force of military commands. As soon as any work by one of these gentlemen appears, a small literature of explanatory articles, brochures, etc. follows in its footsteps.”25 Much as Brahms and Joachim hated Liszt’s music, they hated his influence more—the stream of literature emanating from Weimar that decreed program music and the Wagnerian Total Work of Art to be the only authentic path to the future. For the friends, as for Hanslick, that agenda threatened to turn most music written for the concert hall into formless fantasias. (And in their terms, that is exactly what had happened by the end of the nineteenth century.)
In contrast to the galvanizing elements in most feuds—power and money—this one was largely aesthetic and intellectual, at least on the side of the aggressors. After all, Joachim had found about as much success as is possible for a musician, and Liszt had been one of the people responsible for that. If Brahms did not command the kind of fees Joachim did, he was doing well enough by his own lights. As far as they were concerned, the battle was not for glory or money, but for the soul of music.
Their attack aimed to contain the spread of ideas they believed could contaminate not only the future but the past. Wagner had declared the work of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven superseded by the new music that, directly or symbolically, incorporated the Word. Wagner wrote: “These tone-mechanical, contrapuntal pieces of art handiwork were altogether incapable of filling a spiritual need.” Beethoven, said Wagner, discovered the Word in the choral music of the Ninth, and thereby wrote the last symphony, “the redemption of Music from out of her own peculiar element into the realm of universal art.… Beyond it no forward step is possible; for upon it the perfect artwork of the future alone can