7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7set to miraculously fresh and mercurial music. This, his
last dramatic work, produced at La Scala in 1893, was a
tremendous success.
Even after Falstaff, Verdi still interested himself in
composition. His list of works ends with sacred music for
chorus: a Stabat Mater and a Te Deum published, along with
the somewhat earlier and slighter Ave Maria and Laudi alla
Vergine Maria, under the title Quattro pezzi sacri (Four Sacred
Pieces) in 1898. After a long decline, Verdi’s wife Giuseppina
died in 1897, and Verdi himself gradually grew weaker
and died four years later.
Johannes Brahms
(b. May 7, 1833, Hamburg [Germany]—d. April 3, 1897, Vienna,
Austria-Hungary [now in Austria])
J
ohannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of
the Romantic period, who wrote symphonies, concerti,
chamber music, piano works, choral compositions, and
more than 200 songs. Brahms was the great master of
symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th
century. He can be viewed as the defender of the Classical
tradition of Joseph Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in a
period when the standards of this tradition were being
questioned or overturned by the Romantics.
The Young Pianist and Music Director
The son of Jakob Brahms, an impecunious horn and double
bass player, Johannes showed early promise as a pianist.
He first studied music with his father. Between ages 14
and 16 Brahms earned money to help his family by playing
in rough inns in the dock area of Hamburg and meanwhile
composing and sometimes giving recitals. In 1850 he met
Eduard Reményi, a Jewish Hungarian violinist, with whom