Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [369]
In September he went up to Viktor Miller’s villa in Gmunden to celebrate Eduard Hanslick’s seventieth birthday. It was a moving occasion for the circle who gathered there. Brahms and Hanslick had been Duzenbrüder for over thirty years, during which they had sustained an unprecedented partnership for an artist and a critic. During that time, Hanslick had taken it upon himself to lead the Brahmsians, to uphold the antipope to Wagner even as his pope steadfastly refused to take the throne. Together they had resisted Bruckner, but Hanslick had stood alone against Wagner while Brahms stood apart.
One of the most famous musical caricatures of the nineteenth century shows Hanslick as an acolyte swinging a censer before Brahms, who is installed on a pedestal and decked out as Pope. In the picture Brahms looks impassively into the distance, raising one hand in benediction, the other hand holding the Messiah’s palm branch. His pedestal is worn and chipped. Year after year the critic and acolyte had pulled his punches and bit his tongue when he did not like his hero’s music. For his part, Brahms had let the critic fight battles for his benefit, and bit his tongue so as not to speak too plainly that he believed Hanslick could not understand his music. For three decades they had sustained that peculiar partnership, and for each other a genuine affection.
Brahms was mostly on good behavior at the dinner. Conservatory Professor Anton Door gave a long meandering speech full of superlatives. When he declared that Hanslick’s knowledge stretched from Brahms backward to Bach, Brahms was heard to mutter into his beard, “You must mean Offenbach.”2 In his toast to Hanslick, Brahms said some things he had planned (he had written them to Clara a couple of weeks before), his words surely addressed both to those present and to history. For history above all, he wanted to commend his friend and their friendship, and at the same time to distance himself from his best champion. In a choked voice Brahms made his toast:
We men very rarely have occasion to say tender sorts of things to each other, and the occasion must be unusual for that to happen. But today’s celebration is such an occasion. I can say that in my rather long life I have rarely known anyone so consistently faithful, honest, clever, and good as our beloved Hanslick. We all know that he has his weaknesses. His great weakness is the one sitting next to him [Hanslick’s considerably younger wife]. But apart from such defects he is quite a man, a splendid fellow, and despite our pronounced tendencies to take different paths—so little do many things interest him that please me, and vice versa—I can only say that I have scarcely known a more discerning and upright man.…
At that point tears overcame him and he could only get out, “Well, here’s to long life!” Blubbering, the two fat old men awkwardly hugged. Somebody began to play the little Waltzes Opus 39, the only thing Brahms had ever dedicated to the critic. At the end there was another embrace and Hanslick rasped, “God be with you, you old beast!”3
From Ischl, Brahms went to Meiningen for a grand festival of the “Three B’s,” then to Clara in Frankfurt for a quick visit, only a day. He was in splendid form, smoking and storytelling and opinionating for hours. Meiningen had been very fine, he said, with some wonderful renditions of his songs. He no longer composed for the public, only for himself. After all, the clarinet music notwithstanding, you can only create until your fiftieth year, then the ideas begin to run out. In the evening there were many songs and much laughter.
Next morning Eugenie heard the sound of