Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [391]
45. Schauffler 225–6. Schauffler’s book is rambling and dicey, but this story, usually mentioned but handled gingerly by biographers, feels authentic. For one thing, it is only the most specific of several reports of Brahms talking about the dark aspects of his childhood—see Schumann and Gal above. For another: there is no doubt of Brahms’s lifelong weakness for prostitutes and his problematical relations with women in general. Finally: what else could it have been like, playing in cheap waterfront bars?
46. Boyer 266.
47. Throughout his life, Brahms told a number of people about his time in the Lokale, but while he was no hypocrite condemning the prostitutes he visited, he was not so forthcoming about his adult sexual tastes and experiences. That’s why I say he had something to hide.
48. Niemann 24.
CHAPTER TWO
1. May 72–80.
2. Geiringer Brahms 21.
3. Krebs Schatzkästlein.
4. Dahlhaus Nineteenth Century 1.
5. Quoted in Walzel 28.
6. Quoted in Strunk 3.
7. Strunk 6.
8. From an 1855 JB letter to Joachim quoted in Keys 5.
9. Krebs Schatzkästlein, respectively, entries #1, 2, 4. Hereafter in this chapter, quotations from the Schatzkästlein are cited in the text by entry number.
10. Krebs Schatzkästlein #6.
11. Krebs Schatzkästlein #24.
12. Krebs Schatzkästlein #30.
13. Krebs Schatzkästlein #36. I am rendering Novalis’s neologism verschwistert, “sistered,” as “coupled.”
14. Krebs Schatzkästlein #39.
15. Dahlhaus 90–1. The article of 1813 is a combination and condensation of two earlier Hoffmann reviews, mainly the influential one of 1810 concerning Beethoven’s Fifth. The latter is both a technical analysis of the structure and a romantic evocation of the music; in one blow it gave the piece the almost mythical position it has retained ever since—a myth entirely in keeping with the force and character of the music.
16. The Hoffmann essay is in Strunk 35–41.
17. Kross “Brahms and Hoffmann” 194. This article first opened up this much-neglected aspect of Brahms studies with an examination of the “Certificate of Apprenticeship.” I owe much to the article, but have taken my ideas in different directions.
18. Brahms biographers tend mainly to mention Kreisler in connection with Kater Mürr. Though Brahms liked that unfinished novel, other writings of the fictional Kreisler were clearly as important to him. Kater Mürr seems to take its basic idea from Tieck’s Puss in Boots. The main character is Kapellmeister Kreisler’s cat and “beloved pupil” Mürr, who writes his observations about life on the back of a sheaf of wastepaper. The reverse sides of the sheets actually contain fragments of Kapellmeister Kreisler’s autobiography. When the printer unwittingly publishes both sides as if they were one manuscript, the result, in this berserk game of identities, is a book in which pages of Kreisler’s (that is, in some degree, Hoffmann’s) life story are interrupted by his own philosophical tomcat, who presumably is yet another avatar of Hoffmann himself. No wonder the writer was unable to get a handle on this incredible but ungovernable tale. (See Walzel 234.)
19. Translations from the preface to Kross “Brahms and Hoffmann.”
20. Quoted in Charlton 127.
21. Quoted in Charlton 133.
22. Quoted in Kross “Brahms and Hoffmann” 197.
23. The unsuccessful beard is mentioned in an Elise Brahms letter of 6/11/1853 (Stephenson) to her brother. Schauffler’s speculation that Brahms did not pass puberty at all until his twenties seems to me to be contradicted by that letter; surely Brahms was not so innocent as to try to grow a beard if he had no whiskers at all. The best guess is that at that point his beard was simply pale and skimpy, as is common with blonds. There remains the question of his abnormally high voice, which Brahms finally tried to lower artificially. In light of all that, my suspicion is that he reached puberty late in his teens, a highly problematical situation given his experiences in the Lokale, but maintained a childlike voice and appearance—an incomplete maturity that also goes