Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897. Symphony No. 4 in e, Op. 98. Completed 1885, first performance October 25, 1885, in Meiningen, Germany. Scored for 2 each flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tympani, triangle, and strings.
Johannes Brahms was a tremendously insecure man who constantly worried that he was not worthy of the musical tradition set by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and wondered whether he was losing his abilities. One of the most unfortunate effects of his lack of confidence was embodied in a reluctance to attempt a symphony for fear of being compared unfavorably to those masters, waiting until he was 43 years old to complete his First.
Once he had surmounted that initial hurdle, however, he quickly adapted to the form, producing his remaining three symphonies in the space of only nine years. Each seemed to be more successful than its predecessors; each introduced more depth and innovation from the most complex of 19th-century composers.
Perhaps the supreme achievement of the four symphonies is found, fittingly, at the end of the Fourth. The final movement is structured as a passacaglia, a type of variation in which the ostinato (Italian for ``obstinate'') theme repeats in the lower voices while other instruments create new ideas around it. Brahms based the movement on a simple passage from Bach's Cantata No. 150 and produced no less than 34 different interpretations of the melody.
The theme is first presented alone, as the first eight notes of the movement. After giving the listener this clear guide to the impending journey, Brahms then makes only a minor modification, as if to warn us that our attention is required. Each succeeding variation becomes more complex, more distantly related to the opening statement, yet the composer always leads the audience with careful consideration, making sure that we are able to find the ostinato underlying it all, until at the climax it is clear how everything intertwines even though the original has somehow slipped away into the mists, leaving only enough of a ghost for us to remember how majestically it had begun.
© 1999, Geoff Kuenning
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