BRAHMS AT A GLIMPSE

Johannes Brahms once was a choir director. From 1858 to 1862 he inspiringly let a woman chorus. His major works were written in Vienna, where he lived from 1862 to his death in 1897.

He was a contemporary of Bruckner in Vienna. Brahms is burried at the special section for great musician at Vienna’ s Central Cemetary together with Beethoven, Schubert, Schönberg, Gluck and many other great composers.

Why did Brahms move to Vienna? Why did so many great composers move to Vienna or were visitors there like Wagner or Richard Strauß? Vienna had and still has a very active music scene. To say it daringly, the reason for Vienna to exist as it does, is music. You can experience it!

Maybe it was Beethoven, who also moved from Germany to Vienna, though Brahms once said: "You don’t know what it means to the likes of us, when you hear his footsteps behind us".

In Brahms two traditions met, the contrapunctual tradition Bach represents and the architectural approach of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven left as a legacy. He did not
meet Beethoven, but is burried next to him and like Beethoven, he was given the distinguished honorary membership of the "Gesellschaft der Freunde der Musik" or simply said the "Musikverein", which is together with the Staatsoper the heart of Vienna‘s muisc life.

There in the archive of the "Musikverein" is also kept the original manuscript of the "Deutsches Requiem" which was premiered in the cathedral of Bremen. 

The Musikverein

In the famous "Golden Hall" with the world’s best acoustic next to the "Teatro Colon" in Buenes Aires, Brahms also conducted and became part of the Viennese music history.

In June 2007 he will be honored with the "Brahms International Choral Competition", by coincidence, exactly 110 years after he left this world with music belonging to the best ever written.

Let Brahms inspire your work as choral director!