Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [238]
In short, he knew what kind of librettos he wanted and the form he wanted them in, ones that would demarcate his own territory as distinct from his rival’s; and he had several experienced friends plying him with librettos. What he could never settle on was a musical style for opera that suited the medium and suited him. Rinaldo and the Magelone lieder had been experiments in that direction, and they had not satisfied him. Yet year after year he kept mulling over ideas for the stage, and probably made musical sketches for some of the librettos.
As of 1872, if opera was preoccupying Brahms and nothing else particularly demanded to be done, at least he and Clara were maintaining a general cease-fire. At Christmas 1872 he wrote her affectionate greetings:
May many New Years go by without robbing you of so many precious things as the last one [meaning the deaths of Julie and of Clara’s mother].… Often, by way of making a miserable joke, I have said you look upon me as the police look upon one who has undergone three jail terms. I can only hope that this unfavorable opinion of me has frequently proved unjustified, just as I fear your more favorable opinions of my artistic work have been.… But neither of them need rob you of the feeling and belief that no one can be more attached and devoted to you than I am.23
Among his inner circle the next wrangle was with Joachim, and it was largely Brahms’s fault, or rather the product of his habitual obliqueness. It took shape in a contrapuntal series of misunderstandings. Bonn had planned a Schumann Festival in August 1873, to help build a fund for a memorial at Schumann’s grave. Joachim was named director of the festival. As plans developed, the Committee asked Brahms to compose a new work for the occasion. He declined. Instead, Joachim made plans to do the obvious thing—mount Ein deutsches Requiem, and do it on the opening day of the festival.
In responding to that proposition, Brahms seemed oddly ambivalent: “As to your wanting to put on my Requiem—yet—I can indeed not tell you my reasons against it—so further.…”24 He thereby attempted, he thought, to be properly restrained and modest about the honor of having his work performed, especially since some of the Committee were resisting the Requiem idea and Joachim was having to fight for it.25 If the Requiem were going to be done, meanwhile, Brahms preferred to conduct it himself, but he didn’t make that clear either. He simply assumed that Joachim could read his mind.
Instead, Joachim felt he had been battling for the piece and Johannes had let him down in the letter, so he allowed things to fall into a muddle. The result was that in June, staying in Tutzing, Brahms learned from a newspaper article that the Requiem was not going to be done at the festival at all. The confusion was complete and everybody angry at everybody else. Despite his disgust at the outcome, Brahms appears to have understood that some of it was his own doing. That shows in the tortuous letter he wrote Joachim:
I see from the newspapers that my Requiem is not going to be performed at Bonn, and what annoyed me still more, I heard that you justified your action on the grounds of a letter from me.
I am supposed to have written diplomatically and not to have made it clear whether the performance would please me or not.
If my letter really made this impression, I should, naturally, have preferred that you write and tell me so, or ask me a second question.… It is easy to attribute all sorts of motives to a man who is not keen on answering and explaining.… I certainly said nothing on a good many subjects which I had very much at heart—and on the matter as a whole. But that was not diplomacy, merely my dislike of letter-writing.…
If, in this case, you had considered the matter quite simply you would have known how completely