Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [302]
So he begins with the bold stride from F major to ambiguity in the winds, then presents a heroic double theme moving from F major to a suddenly shadowed, almost brutally proclaimed F minor—all that in the opening four measures, which set up essential motives, gestures, and tonalities for the entire symphony. The motive of the bass, F-A♭-F, will recur in myriad avatars; the turning point between F major and minor, the notes A♭ and A♭, resonate throughout (including in the progression of keys). Yet Schumann’s theme is the real bearer of meaning: at the beginning of the symphony Brahms moves it from major to minor; at the close it will return, unforgettably.
There is still another element to that theme, and to this work in which so many ideas and memories and stylistic elements come together. Wagner had died shortly before the work began6—Brahms’s rival, his respected enemy, his shadow. Several things in the Third hint at connections to Wagner, among them the atmospheric string textures of the end. The opening Schumann melody itself suggests some of Wagner’s grand triadic leitmotivs and themes: say, the Rhine motive:
Or this theme from “Siegfried’s Death”7 (here transposed to F):
Despite these echoes of Schumann and perhaps Wagner (plus the “cyclic” integration of thematic and tonal elements through the movements, a technique associated with Liszt8), Hans Richter dubbed the Third Symphony “Brahms’s Eroica,” after Beethoven’s Third. Brahms never escaped that comparison, however little his Third resembles Beethoven’s in sound and material.
Yet again: the point is how a self-contained work of absolute music, Brahms’s Third Symphony in itself, for all the references to Schumann and Wagner and Beethoven outside itself (there are always such references in Brahms), can create its own meaning in tones—something in the direction of what Hanslick was getting at in On Beauty in Music. Carl Dahlhaus has pointed out the most intriguing secret of the opening Schumann theme, which is an abstract one: in its descent toward a cadence it sounds not like an opening, but like a concluding theme.9 In other words, the Third’s opening, the heroic form of the theme, is not its ideal form and cannot bring the theme to fulfillment in its essential nature. Beyond that, as a theme that starts in major but is wrenched into minor—A♭ canceled by A♭—it awaits another kind of fulfillment and resolution.
After the searing opening, much of the first movement is gentle and beautiful, with flowing melodies and much intimate, chamber-like scoring. The second theme of the exposition is presented by clarinet, in A major, almost a micro-lesson in Brahmsian “developing variation”—each ensuing bar is a progressive variation of the first:
In this symphony the clarinet takes a leading soloistic voice; it is the principal “character” in the wind section. In his handling of the orchestra Brahms may never have equaled the subtle colorings of this symphony, much of it refined during the early performances. (The manuscript is full of revisions, the first Simrock edition riddled with mistakes—Brahms remained an inexplicably careless proofreader.)
The first movement’s themes are flowing and lyrical much of the time; the dynamic and tension-building element is rhythm. In the G Major Violin Sonata Brahms played elaborate games with phrasings. In the opening movement of the Third Symphony he carries those ideas further, sustaining the ambiguity of 3+3 versus 2+2+2 for long stretches,