Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [308]
She had met him more than a year before and spent much of the previous summer at Wiesbaden in his company. If Brahms had undertaken to court Hermine, and in his fashion he probably had, his approach was remarkably oblique. There is every reason to assume, anyway, as with other “respectable” women, that he flirted full-tilt and kept his hands to himself.
AFTER THE OLDENBURG CONCERT, Brahms surprised the Herzogenbergs in Leipzig with a visit for Christmas 1884.28 Shortly after he left, Lisl wrote him of “the Bruckner excitement here, and how we rebelled against having him thrust upon us—like compulsory vaccination.… We are not to consider artistic results everything, but to admire the hidden driving-power, whether it succeeds in expressing itself satisfactorily or not.… One can only hold aloof, and resign oneself to be abused by the philistines.”29 She and Heinz were anti-Wagnerian as a matter of course, but like most of their persuasion including Hanslick, they acknowledged Wagner’s brilliance and felt a certain resignation about his triumph. (Clara never gave up hope, however. After attending Das Rheingold she fumed, “How posterity will marvel at an aberration like this spreading all over the world!”30)
Anton Bruckner was another matter; Brahms and nearly every Brahmsian despised his ecstatic, brassy, sprawling symphonies. Moreover Bruckner was vulnerable, could conceivably be suppressed. Brahms replied to Lisl’s letter with the kind of choler he usually reserved for Liszt’s music:
I understand! You have sat through the roaring of Bruckner’s symphony once, and now, when people talk about it, you are afraid to trust the recollection of your own senses.
Well, you may safely do that. Your delightful letter expresses most lucidly all that can be said.… He is a poor crazy person whom the priests of St. Florian have on their consciences [He is hinting at sexual abuses.].… You will not mind when I tell you that Hanslick shares your opinion, and read your letter with pious joy!
With supreme ill-humor, deepest respect, and kindest regards, yours,
J. Br.31
Bruckner had been brought from the Austrian provinces to Vienna in 1868, to become court organist and professor at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. In 1875, to Hanslick’s disgust, he began lecturing in music theory at Vienna University. Many of his students, among them Gustav Mahler, became fond of the old peasant, not only his music but the piety and ingenuousness (real or apparent) that merged into something more absurd and unbalanced. There were his homely bald head and blinking innocent eyes, the stocky figure and short legs encased in flapping provincial trousers.32 If the Angelus rang in the middle of a lecture, Bruckner would fall to his knees on the podium and pray, crossing himself, then return to his fugues and canons at the blackboard. While Brahms made a sport of alternately coddling and insulting his admirers, Bruckner was capable of addressing a letter to a patron, “Most Honored, Most Kind and Geniuslike Protector!”33 Second only to the Dear God and His Son, Bruckner adored Wagner, at whose feet he once fell crying, “Master, I worship you!” At concerts in the Musikverein Brahms sat in the Gesellschaft director’s box while Bruckner could only afford standing room in the back, with his students. When the two passed in the halls of the Musikverein, Bruckner bowed and scraped as Doktor Brahms swept past with a curt nod.
Outlandish