GK: Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833, and died one hundred years ago in Vienna, a great man with a big beard who lived long enough for his voice to be recorded on phonograph. He stuck his head in a horn and said: "This is Dr. Brahms, Johannes Brahms." His dad was a bandleader and young Johannes started out arranging dance music for him, but he networked and met Franz Liszt and then Robert Schumann and he met Schumann's wife, Clara, and Brahms fell in love with her, a hopeless unconsummated romance that he continued for the rest of his life.
He wrote: O die Frauen --- O these women, how they lead me close to heaven. I would long have been a monk in a cloister were it not for women.
CHORUS ONE
Johannes Brahms was fourteen years younger than Clara Schumann, who was herself a fine pianist, and when he came to the Schumann's house and played, she admired his hands. Brahms was young and athletic; he played volleyball, he was a good golfer, and Clara's husband was such a bore, such a neurotic, and here was this handsome guy.
"He has such beautiful hands, such lovely and expressive hands," Clara wrote in her journal. And then, afraid that someone might read what she'd written, she switched from English to German.
"Einem, Einem, zu Gefallen sonder Ende Wonne spruhn."
CHORUS TWO
Clara's husband Bob Schumann was more than a bore, he was a nut case, and Brahms could see that. The guy was babbling, walking into walls, he was a hopeless neurotic, he heard telephones ringing, and the telephone hadn't even been invented then --- Bob Schumann had written some okay music, not as great as Brahms's German Requiem, but passable, little piano pieces, but he was a nutcase, and here was his wife, whom Brahms adored, the lovely Clara ---- how unfair life is, Brahms thought, how much better for her if---- but he dared not say it. This was the 1860s. If a man were to take another man's wife, even if the other man were off his rocker, that man and that woman wouldn't be able to stay in Vienna, where the good jobs were. They'd have to emigrate to someplace like the American Midwest. Brahms purchased a map of the Midwest and a warm coat.
He wrote: Voegelein durchrauscht die Luft, sucht nach einem Aste.
Every bird that soars across the sky is looking for a branch to nest on, and every heart seeks a place for the spirit to rest. And underneath he wrote: New Ulm, Minnesota. Call the real estate agent.
CHORUS THREE
Brahms was about to buy tickets for Minnesota for himself and Clara, and then he stopped to think. It was true that he adored her, he was wild about her, he was never so happy as when he could be in her presence, but he found that when he had spent an evening with her, making popcorn, playing piano four-hands, playing Scrabble, he was supremely happy for days afterward and everything he wrote was junk. Marches, waltzes, Hungarian schlock. Whereas, when he had gone for months without seeing Clara, his heart almost breaking, he wrote the German Requiem, the Symphony No. 1, the Symphony No. 2, the Symphony No. 3, the Symphony No. 4, the Piano Concerto No. 1, the Piano Concerto No. 2, the Violin Concerto, the Double Concerto. Did he want to stay in Vienna and do great work, or did he want to move to Minnesota with Clara, be happy, and write polkas for the rest of his life?
He wrote: Ein Dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe
A well of sorrow is love,
Love is a perilous madness,
I fell into it unguarded
And ever since I have known bitter pain.
Schumann was upstairs talking to the bedpost, Brahms was at his apartment sobbing into the pillow, Clara was at the piano playing the Liebeslieder waltzes, tears flowing down her beautiful cheeks. Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe.
© 1997 BY GARRISON KEILLOR