Symphony No. 1 in c minor, Op. 68

• Clara Schumann was one of the first people to sample this symphony. Brahms sent her an early draft of the first movement in 1862.¹
• Brahms didn’t complete this symphony until the summer of 1876.²

“I shall never compose a symphony! You have no idea how it feels to our kind when one always hears such a giant marching along behind.”

Brahms to Hermann Levi in the early 1870s. The “Giant” was Beethoven, whose legacy unnerved Brahms.³

• Brahms’s 1st Symphony bears many resemblances to Beethoven’s 9th, including its key areas (starts in c minor, travels to C Major by the end) and its chorale-like final movement theme.⁴

“It’s remarkable how similar the C major theme in your finale is to the ‘Joy’ theme in the Ninth.” 

An aristocratic listener, to Brahms

“Yes, and even more remarkable is the fact that any ass can see it right away.”

Brahms’s response, gracious as always⁵

“My symphony is long and not exactly charming.”

– Brahms on his 1st Symphony, to Carl Reinecke (Dec. 1876)⁶

1. George S. Bozarth and Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Johannes,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 17, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051879.
2. Ibid.
3. Quoted in George S. Bozarth, “‘A Modern of the Moderns’: Brahms’s First Symphony in New York and Boston,” in Brahms and His World, ed. Kevin C. Karnes, Walter Frisch (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 287.
4. George S. Bozarth and Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Johannes,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 17, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051879.
5. Quoted in Hans A. Neunzig, Brahms, trans. Mike Mitchell (London: Haus, 2003), 122.
6. Styra Avens, ed., Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, trans. Josef Eisinger and Syran Avians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 505.