Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [272]
Still, there are no unclouded relationships, and nothing near that was possible with Brahms. There was the matter of social graces, his lack of them. The Herzogenbergs had formed a circle of Brahms admirers in Leipzig, and when he was in town they gave many parties with the great lion as centerpiece. Ethel Smyth remembered the occasions as unpredictable. To begin with, Brahms often felt obliged to harangue the Leipzigers about how much he loathed their city, would never so much as set foot in the place if not for the Herzogenbergs. Compliments were another problem. While he might receive a sincere compliment from a friend with blushing pleasure, enthusiasm from a stranger, especially a female one, say at a party, was apt to draw the full blast of his scorn. Some were lucky, like the lady who asked him, “How do you write such divine adagios?” and he replied, amusingly enough, “Well, you know my publisher orders them that way.”
When he was not feeling generous, things got ugly. If expected to play the lion, he could also snarl and bite. Smyth saw him humiliate a timorous fan during a party, crooning with a cruel smile, “And did the gracious lady have all those beautiful feelings thanks to my poor quartet?… and where did they lodge? Beneath the little blue shawl? Or perhaps under the … bird on her hat?” He dominated the occasions, getting through them downing ham rolls and one mug of beer after another, taking on anybody intrepid enough to approach him. But at the end of the evening Smyth sometimes found “a sort of ‘after the battle’ atmosphere.… Some of the injured had been removed in stretchers; others were licking their wounds, brooding over a sortie that had gone awry.”19
For Brahms, the chief trouble with the Herzogenbergs was Heinrich’s music. The man was hugely prolific and had extraordinary technique that allowed him to dash off complex canons and fugues in a sitting; his daily schedule of composing reeled off like clockwork.20 The results, however, did not tend to be inspired. Heinrich had two distinct styles in his work, one manifestly Brahmsian, the other relatively more original.21 Brahms found both wearying. Unfortunately, Heinz also had a chronic and forlorn craving for approval from his hero. Early in their friendship he wrote Brahms:
You know how much a word or two of recognition from you, however relative, means to me, even a well-intentioned refusal or condemnation I can … appreciate as a kindness.… If you realized how I turn over in my mind any casual remark of yours, you would understand why I am always coming to you in spite of your anything but encouraging attitude.22
Such pathos from a friend would be nerve-wracking to anyone, to Brahms with his brutal honesty all the more so. Besides, while he liked Heinz well enough, there was probably a nagging itch of jealousy that this second-rater had managed to claim such a prize for a wife. To make it worse, the usually modest and self-effacing Lisl fought for her husband’s work like a tigress, and never let up about it. The most painful moments in their long correspondence consist of Brahms trying to squirm off the hook when she had sent him another frustrating opus of her husband’s. “Best thanks for your package,” he noted circumspectly of one new submission from Heinz, “which takes me back for the moment, with an ominous sigh, to certain tricks of my own in the old days.”23 Translation: He’s imitating me, and not even my best.
At times Brahms’s disdain for Heinz’s work spilled out in person, and then Lisl let him have it. After an incident in 1878 she wrote,
You were so sweet and good at Schillerstrasse, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed hearing you talk in the window-seat (after spilling all that liqueur).… Then the name of that