Tchaikowsky and d’Indy as probably the greatest, and touch
only incidentally upon the others, as of somewhat lesser im-
port; though if anyone take issue with this preference in regard
to Mahler and Bruckner I shall not combat him. For I believe
Mahler to be a real genius; feeling, however, that his wonderful
conceptions are sometimes not expressed in the most convincing
manner. There is no doubt that Mahler has not yet received his
bigger part in due valuation, but his time will surely come. As
for Bruckner, we have from him some of the most elemental and
powerful ideas in modern music—witness the dirge in theSev-
enth Symphonywith its impressive scoring for trombones and
Bayreuth tubas, a movement Beethoven might have signed; al-
though with the virgin gold there is mixed, it must be confessed,
a large amount of crude alloy, and there are dreary stretches of
waste sand.
Johannes Brahms, like Beethoven, with whom his style has
many affinities, was a North-German, born in 1833 in the his-
toric seaport town of Hamburg.[253] Brahms came of lowly though
respectable and intelligent parents, his father being a double-
bass player in one of the theatre orchestras. That the positive-
ness of character, so conspicuous in his famous son, was an inher-
ited trait may be seen from the following anecdote. The director
of the theatre orchestra once asked father Brahms not to play so
loud; whereupon he replied with dignity, “Herr Kapellmeister,
this is my double-bass, I want you to understand, and I shall
play it as loud as I please.” The music of Brahms in its bracing
vigor has been appropriately compared to a mixture of sea air
and the timbre of this instrument.
[Footnote 253: Noted as being the original centre of national
German opera and for its associations with the early career of
Handel.]
Brahms’s mother was a deeply religious woman who imbued
her son with a seriousness of purpose which runs through all
his work. From his earliest years he was trained for music, as
a matter of course, and showed marked precocity as a pianist,
though it soon became evident that he also was endowed with
rare creative gifts. The young student made such progress un-
der Marxsen, a famous teacher of the period, that at the age
of fifteen he gave a public concert, on the program of which
stood some original pieces of his own. The next few years were
spent in diligent study and in the composition of some of his