Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op.68 [unrevised from 13/10/75]

When Brahms did, at last, complete his First Symphony - in 1786 at the age of 43 - the first three movements had been ready for ten years. The problem with the finale was that, after Beethoven’s Ninth, the centr of gravity of the symphony had been moved from the first movement, where it had always been, to the last. To emulate Beethoven in this respect, and create a finale even stronger than the first movement, he had to exercise a supreme effort of will power and imagination.

There is a hint of how he will achieve it in the first movement, which is an epic struggle with misfortune beginning fairly hopeless in the C minor introduction and letting in little light (even in the second subject of the main Allegro) until the meno allegro echo of the introduction: here a familiar arpeggio figure, which had earlier incorporated a minor third, rises from the open G-string of the violins to C and E natural. So the movements ends in C major.

The two middle movements are as distant from the emotional issues of the first movement as they are distant in key. The Andante sostenuto is a serence inspiration in E major, disturbed a little by C sharp minor anxieties in the middle section but with no lessting effect, as the even more beautifully scored reprises confirms. The Allegretto is Brahms’s idyllic equivalent of a scherzo based on an innocently happy clarinet melody in A flat major.

Brahms begins the last movement with a restatement of the problems of the first and, when the violins rise from the the open G-string to the C above, offers another hint as to their solution. In the meantime the tonality clarifies to C major on a radiant horn call which echoes round the wind section. It is only when the tempo accelerates to Allegro non troppo that, rising from G to C, the first violins launch into their great melody in C major - a tune similar in shape, spirit, and function to the “Joy” theme in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. This, Brahms’s inspired answer to Beethoven’s choral challenge, lifts the work onto a new level of sublimity.

When Brahms completed his First Symphony - in 1876, long after he had proved his mastery in most other areas - the first three movements had been ready for ten years. His problem was the challenge issued by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony, which had shifted the centre of gravity of the symphony from the first movement to the last. In the end he succeeded in going one better than Beethoven by equalling by orchestral means alone what his predecessor had achieved with the help of a chorus and four vocal soloists. Once he had found a melody as good as the main theme of the last movement of the “Choral” Symphony - not without echoing a phrase or two of the Beethoven tune itself, by the way - he was in business. What he had to do was to arrange the structure of the work in such a way that when that melody makes its first entry in the last movement, its first two notes rising from the open G-string of the violins to the C above, it emerges as the inspiration we have long been waiting for.

The earliest hint of that melody is heard in the slow introduction to the first movement - not in the contradictory opening bars, where strings and wind strive in opposite directions and both are pinned down by repeated Cs in the bass, but a little later as the violins very quietly rise through an arpeggio beginning on the open G string. At present the harmonies are in a grim C minor rather than the radiant C major that will be achieved by the end of the work but the upward arpeggio figure is no less significant for that.

As soon as the Allegro bursts in on woodwind and horns, the arpeggio figure is incorporated by the violins in the first subject and becomes the most prominent theme in the exposition. On cellos it quietly underlies the expressive second subject on woodwind or rises above it on violins. If rather less is heard of it in the development, which is concerned for the most part with more dramatic material, the compensation is a prophetic moment in the slower section at the end of the movement, where it rises from the open G string of the violins in a now quite clear anticipation of the C major melody that will crown the work in the end.

The two middle movements are fairly distant from the emotional issues of the first movement. The Andante sostenuto is a notably serene inspiration, at least in the outer sections. In the middle - where the rhythms are syncopated, the key changes to the minor and the oboe and clarient eloquently express their anxiety - there is a palpable change of atmosphere. But when the first section returns, expanded and even more richly scored, its melody elevated and elaborated by a solo violin, no doubts remain.

The third movement, Brahms’s idyllic equivalent of a scherzo, has scarcely more to disturb its tranquillity. It is true that the innocently happy clarinet theme does, briefly, sport a worrying variant in the minor. There is a more agitated middle section too. But when the first section is repeated the passage in the minor is omitted and the effect of the middle section is softened in a lovely little più tranquillo coda.

The Adagio introduction to the last movement alludes in various ways to the big tune that is to emerge later but most clearly of all when, after a hurried pizzicato passage, first and second violins hit on its opening phrase on the G string. But before it can be definitively introduced the oppressive atmosphere has to be clarified - which is achieved by means of a radiant horn call and a short chorale on trombones. Now at last, at the beginning of the Allegro non troppo, the violins can remove their mutes, sound the open G string and launch into the great tune in C major. Having discovered his theme in this way, Brahms does not overdo it. Although he repeats it and develops it, he presents it in full only once more, at the beginning of the recapitulation. But, of course, there are fragments of the main theme everywhere and it is on the strength of one of them, pounding heavily in the strings, that the quicker coda finds its momentum. Now, although it seems to slow down for a massive embrace of the trombone chorale, there is no stoppping it.

Rupert Avis©

When Brahms completed his First Symphony - in 1876, long after he had proved his mastery in most other areas - the first three movements had been ready for ten years. What had held him up was not just the generally inhibiting perception of what he called the “tramp of a giant like Beethoven” behind him but the very specific challenge issued by the “Choral” Symphony, which had shifted the centre of gravity of the symphony from the first movement to the last.

In the end, Brahms succeeded in going one better than Beethoven by equalling by orchestral means alone what his predecessor had achieved with the help of a chorus and four vocal soloists. The major problem was to find a melody as good as the main theme of the last movement of the “Choral” Symphony. Once he had done that - not without echoing a phrase or two of the Beethoven tune itself, by the way - he was in business. What he had to do then was to arrange the structure of the work in such a way that when that melody makes its first entry in the last movement, its first two notes rising from the open G-string of the violins to the C above, it emerges as the inspiration we have long been waiting for.

The earliest hint of that melody is heard in the slow introduction to the first movement - not in the contradictory opening bars, where strings and wind strive in opposite directions and both are pinned down by repeated Cs in the bass, but a little later as the violins very quietly rise through an arpeggio beginning on the open G string. At present the harmonies are in a grim C minor rather than the radiant C major that will be achieved by the end of the work but the upward arpeggio figure is no less significant for that. As soon as the Allegro bursts in on woodwind and horns, the arpeggio figure is incorporated by the violins in the first subject and becomes the most prominent theme in the exposition. On cellos it quietly underlies the expressive second subject on woodwind or rises above it on violins. If rather less is heard of it in the development, which is concerned for the most part with more dramatic material, the compensation is a prophetic moment in the slower section at the end of the movement, where it rises from the open G string of the violins in a now quite clear anticipation of the C major melody that will crown the work in the end.

The two middle movement - the Andante sostenuto in E major and the Allegretto in A flat major - are as distant from the emotional issues of the first movement as they are distant in key. The slow movement is, in fact, in the same key as the slow movement of Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto and is an equally serene inspiration, at least in the outer section. In the middle, where the rhythms are syncopated, the key changes to C sharp minor and the oboe and clarient eloquently express their anxiety, there is a change of atmosphere. But when the first section returns, expanded, even more richly scored, its melody elevated and elaborated by a solo violin, no doubts remain.

The third movement, Brahms’s idyllic equivalent of a scherzo, has scarcely more to disturb its tranquillity. It is true that the innocently happy clarinet theme does, briefly, sport a worrying variant in the minor. There is a more agitated middle section too. But when the first section is repeated the passage in the minor is omitted and the effect of the middle section is softened in a lovely little più tranquillo coda.

The Adagio introduction to the last movement alludes in various ways to the big tune that is to emerge later but most clearly of all when, after a hurried pizzicato passage, first and second violins hit on its opening phrase on the G string. But before it can be definitively introduced the oppressive atmosphere has to be clarified - which is achieved by means of a radiant horn call and a short chorale on trombones. Now at last, at the beginning of the Allegro non troppo, the violins can remove their mutes, sound the open G string and launch into the great tune in C major. Having revealed his theme in this way, Brahms does not overdo it. Although he repeats it and develops it, he presents it in full only once more, at the beginning of the recapitulation. But, of course, there are fragments of the main theme everywhere and it is on the strength of one of them, pounding heavily in the strings, that the più allegro coda finds its momentum. Now, although it seems to slow down for a massive embrace of the trombone chorale, there is no stoppping it.

When Brahms complained how inhibiting it was always to “hear the tramp of a giant like Beethoven” behind him, he was not joking. He meant it, and you can hear the evidence of his dilemma in his First Piano Concerto in D minor which he wrote in 1858, when he was 25 and at about the right age for an ambitious first symphony. The first movement of the Piano Concerto echoes with memories of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the same key, which is particularly significant in the light of the fact that the first movement was adapted from material prepared by Brahms for a first symphony four years earlier. It was the Ninth which was the most inhibiting because in that work Beethoven had so devastatingly upset the conventional balance of the symhony by shifint its centre of gravity from the first movement to the last. Mozart had done it before Beethoven, but only once (in his “Jupiter” Symphony), and how to write a strong first movement and an even stronger finale was a problem even for giants.

When Brahms did complete his First Symphony, in 1876 at the age of 43, the first three movements had been ready for ten years. He knew what the last movement would be, but it took him that long to find the confidence to write it down. Even then he had not forgotten Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Like Beethoven, he entrusted the last movement to his melodic inspiration and, as other “asses”have noted (beginning with Hanslick in 1876), created a similar theme for a similar role. Actually, it is a similarity of kind rather than of notes, except in one phrase. That phrase is far less important to Brahms than the interval with which the theme begins - a rising fourth from the open G string of the violins to the tonic note C. The keys of Beethoven’s last and Brahms’s first symphonies are different of course, but the experience of progress from the darkness of the minor to the radiance of the major is common to the two works; and, indeed, the ground between C minor and C major had already been covered in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

So Brahms knows exactly what the outcome of the symphony will be even in the turmoil of the slow introduction to the first movement. At this stage he gives little away: violins and cellos strive upwards; wind and violas exert a contrary downward force; timpani and basses reiterate a monotonous C, as though to indicate how hopeless the striving is. However, still in the introduction, the violins do very quietly rise from the open G string through a C minor arpeggio but missing out the C and arriving on the E flat a minor third above it. This is the first indication of how the symphony will end.

If that seems far-fetched, it is still worth noting the arpeggio theme because, as soon as the Allegro bursts in on woodwind and horns, it is incorporated by the violins in the first subject and become the most prominent theme in the exposition. On cellos it quietly underlies the more lyrical if scarcely more tuneful second subject (in the relative major) or rises above it on violins, and clarinets and horn become very nostalgic about the missing fourth. In inversion, and in support of the prcussive three-note motif which so promptly restores the dramatic tension, the arpeggio theme exerts a positively violent influence here. But that is not its true character. At the beginning of the development it is almost cheerful in B major and, inaugmentation on bassoon and lower strings it broadens the movement, in much the same way as the second subject does before it is provoked to a climax by the three-note motif. Its benevolent influence - and its long-term structural function - is briefly but clearly demonstrated at the end of the movement in a meno allego echo of the slow introduction: on a hint from clarinets and bassoons, the violins try the arpeggio theme again and this time rise from the open G string to the missing C and not E flat but E natural. The movement ends in C major.

The two middle movement - the Andante sostenuto in E major and the Allegretto in A flat major - are as distant from the emotional issues of the first movement as they are distant in key. The slow movement is, in fact, in the same key as the slow movement of Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto and is an equally serene inspiration, at least in the outer section. In the middle, where the rhythms are syncopated, the key changes to C sharp minor and the oboe and clarient eloquently express their anxiety, there is a change of atmosphere. But when the first section returns, expanded, even more richly scored, its melody elevated and elaborated by a solo violin, no doubts remain.

The third movement, Brahms’s idyllic equivalent of a scherzo, has scarcely more to distrub its tranquillity. It is true that the innocently happy clarinet theme does, briefly, sport a worrying variant in F minor before the end of the first section. There is, too, in the repeated notes of the B major trio section a percussive quality which, at its ff climax, could be compared with that of the first movement. But when the first section is repeated the F minor passage is omitted, and the effect of the trio section is softend in a lovely little più tranquillo coda.

So it is the last ovement which has to andwer the problems raised in the first and confirm, not in some escapist E or A flat major but in C, the validity of the optimism expressed in the middle movements. Brahms has already hinted how he might do it and immediately, as he restates the problem in the Adagio introduction, he projects horn and violins in an experimental upward curve of melody. Still in the introduction, after the pizzicato passage, the violins try again, this time rising from the open G string to the C above. That particular hint is taken no further, however, and when the tonality does clarify to C major it is one a radiant horn call incorporating a fallin fourth. A flute repeats it and, as it echioes round the wind section, trombones - interest in the fourth - convert it into a short chorale. It is only after this, at the beginning of the Allegro non troppo, that the violins realise the joyful potential of the rising fourth, remove their mutes, sound the openg G string and launch into the great tune in C major.

One evidence of Brahms’s greatness in this movement is that, having discovered his theme, he does not overdo it. He repeats it, develops it, and introduces a variety of subsidiary theme, including a second subject with something like the innocent happines of the previous movement. It appears in full only once more, at what could be called the beginning of the recapitulation, with more development and a glorification of the horn call before the second subject is reintroduced. But of course there are fragments of the main theme everywhere. It is on the strength of one of them, pounding heavily in the strings, that the coda finds its più allegro momentum. Now, although its does broaden for a massive embrace of the trombone chorale, there is no stoppping it.