Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [175]
Brahms was not likely to compose a piece purely inspired by a competition. Most likely he viewed the cantata as an experiment in the direction of an opera. The fantasy of composing opera and confronting Wagner on his own turf was to possess Brahms for years. (In the same spirit, Wagner periodically toyed with the notion of writing symphonies beyond his early one in C Major.)
The Goethe text for Rinaldo (after a Tasso tale) concerns the eponymous crusader, enticed from the siege of Jerusalem by an enchantress, lured back to duty and arms by his fellow knights. The parallels of the story with Brahms’s life—with Clara and Agathe and all his flights from women to art—are manifest. If Rinaldo has virtues enough to make it worth hearing, in the end it is arguably among his least characteristic and least satisfying large works. Since the subject is heroic and the forces are solo tenor and men’s chorus with orchestra, one might expect Brahms to use his “bardic” tone. Instead, the feeling of the arias, at least, is often precious, emotionally unengaged, uncomfortably “operatic.” The men’s choruses come off as lusty and effective, if sometimes less interesting than the instrumental touches that accompany them. The scoring points up that Brahms used his choral works, including the later Requiem, to experiment with orchestration while hiding it behind voices. But while he wrote superb music for choir and orchestra, he would never hit on an approach for opera that suited both the requirements of the theater and his personality as a composer. If Rinaldo is a clue to what a Brahmsian opera might have been, then his instincts would serve him well in keeping him from the stage.
In some degree relieved to be back in his hometown and working away, Brahms still felt adrift. Joachim’s critical response to the Rinaldo sketches did not reassure him about how he was spending his time.37 He did, at least, reconnect with an amiable group of friends. One afternoon some of the old Frauenchor girls, picnicking in Blankenese, noticed their old leader in the distance in a pose they recognized: lumbering along, hands cocked behind his back, thinking. After some hasty discussion the ladies got Brahms’s attention by launching into one of his favorite folk songs, and he turned in his tracks with a smile.38 He began seeing the choristers again, some of whom visited on May 7 for his thirtieth birthday. For them he apparently wrote on the spot one of the canons that would end up in Opus 113, and composed several more of those women’s-choir canons that month.
Around then, from her new summer house in Baden-Baden, Clara Schumann wrote him that daughter Julie was just back from Nice where she had suffered from anemia, cough, periodic catatonia, and nervous problems; but the eighteen-year-old was still in cheerful spirits as usual. In the same letter Clara wrote that Theodor Kirchner was expected for a long visit. After he came she wrote, “both Kirchner and I are fascinated by your [A Major] Quartet. I have played it at two parties at my house.… I must confess that you were right after all, it is more beautiful than the G Minor, and finer altogether.”39 As Clara saw nothing of Brahms’s infatuation with her daughter, so he, despite her perhaps deliberate hints, suspected nothing about the real relations between Clara and Kirchner. Beyond their affair, Brahms’s friend and fellow composer continued to struggle to convince Clara to marry him. But for her, in all things, it was first-rate or nothing. If Kirchner had written her better music, Clara might have become his bride.
ONCE AGAIN ENJOYING his circle of female admirers, Brahms toyed with the idea of reviving the Frauenchor. At the same time, it must have felt as if he were back where he started, in Hamburg, having made no progress at all during the last years. He still felt humiliated about losing the Philharmonic. Vienna seemed like a dream, delightful and sympathetic, but not in his blood, not home. What should he do?
His indecision was