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piano sound inevitable for the medium at hand. Arguably, more often than with any other composer of his stature, Brahms’s scoring lacks that sense of inevitability in chamber and orchestral music. Thus his readiness to rearrange pieces for different media, beyond the usual pragmatic piano arrangements. This, however, is very different from saying, as many did in his own time and later, that Brahms “could not orchestrate.” His scoring, manifestly uncertain in his early career, became more than merely competent in his maturity. As we will see, there are stunning and original moments in his scoring. To repeat a point made earlier: Brahms’s scoring is not weak, but rather the relatively weak suit of an extraordinary technician.

17. MacDonald 175.

18. In a letter to Richard Heuberger, Brahms claimed a practical reason for the choice of natural horn: “If the performer is not obliged by the stopped notes to play softly, the piano and violin are not obliged to adapt themselves to him, and the tone is rough from the beginning.” (Quoted in May 371–2.) Certainly the Trio presents balance problems, with the horn tending to dominate. It took some time to catch on, and only occasionally—including the Karlsruhe premiere with Brahms at the piano in December 1865—was it done on the natural instrument.

19. Litzmann 239.

20. Stephenson 115, trans. in Geiringer Brahms.

21. Specht 154.

22. Stephenson 115–6, trans. in Gal.

23. M. McCorkle 130.

24. Dietrich/Widmann 48.

25. Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters 12/3/1865.

26. Geiringer “Wagner and Brahms” 184–5.

27. Dietrich/Widmann 94.

28. Litzmann Life 242.

29. Bickley Joachim Letters 334–6.

30. Schauffler 132.

31. Litzmann 242.

32. Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters 1/24/1866.

33. Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters 2/4/1866.

34. Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters 12/30/1866.

35. Geiringer Brahms 94.

36. Barkan Brahms/Billroth Letters 6.

37. Gartenberg 153.

38. Stephenson 121.

39. Hanslick “Memories” 172.

40. Litzmann Life 246.

41. Litzmann Life 246n.

42. Geiringer Brahms 356.

43. Keys 55.

44. May 384–5.

45. Litzmann 247–8.

46. Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters 12/30/1866.

47. Litzmann Life 249.

48. May 386.

49. Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters 4/26/1867.

50. Gal 72. The “all-engendering love” that Levi proclaims as the indispensable moral and personal foundation for an artist hints at a reason for his future connection to Wagner, who proclaimed and at times marvelously evoked (not only in Tristan, but in the Ring) a world-encompassing vision of love. Part of the pathos of Levi’s later idolization of Wagner is that he managed to convince himself of Wagner’s personal goodness—a faith not only delusional but masochistic.

51. Litzmann Life 254.

52. Litzmann Life 256.

53. Schumann/Brahms Letters 11/13/1867. (This letter is split between Litzmann’s Life and the Letters.)

54. May 390.

55. Geiringer Brahms 97.

56. Gal 43.

57. From several letters, one of them 12/7/1867 in Litzmann Schumann/Brahms Letters.

58. Keys 57.

59. Niemann 96.

60. May 396.

61. The manuscript of the Requiem reveals that the French horns in the third movement fugue, which with cavalier disregard for the endurance of the players’ lips had originally been assigned the D for the duration (though alternating—Brahms did understand that horn players have to breathe), were now provided new figures with rests. Meanwhile, the trombones and tuba still alternate on one pitch for the whole thirty-six measures, a stiff demand on any brass player, and one saying much about Brahms’s still shaky understanding of orchestral instruments. On the evidence of his letter to Marxsen in the text, Brahms appears to have worried that the sustained D would not have enough weight without organ, which was lacking in the old Gesellschaft hall, so he awkwardly tried to build up the sonority of the pedal tone in the low brass. (In that Brahms was probably thinking of another D pedal that never got enough weight in his scoring—the one that begins the First Piano Concerto.) In all these calculations and revisions he seems never