ply religious woman who imbued her son with a
seriousness of purpose which runs through all his work. From his
earliest years he was trained for music, as a matter of course, and
showed marked precocity as a pianist, though it soon became evident
that he also was endowed with rare creative gifts. The young student
made such progress under Marxsen, a famous teacher of the period, that
at the age of fifteen he gave a public concert, on the program of
which stood some original pieces of his own. The next few years were
spent in diligent study and in the composition of some of his early
works, of which the Scherzo op. 4 is the most significant. Brahms was
extraordinarily precocious and during these formative years manifested
a trait which is noticeable throughout his career--that of knowing
exactly what end he had in view and of setting to work quickly and
steadily to attain it. Finally in 1853, when he was twenty, he was
invited to participate in the memorable concert-tour with the
Hungarian Violinist Remenyi, which was the cause of his being brought
before the public under the auspices of three such sponsors as
Schumann, Liszt and Joachim. It seems that, at one of the concerts in
a small town, the pianoforte was a semitone too low, whereupon young
Brahms transposed at sight a difficult Beethoven Sonata into the
requisite higher key. This remarkable feat of musicianship so
impressed Joachim, who was in the audience, that he gave Brahms two
letters of introduction--one to Liszt at Weimar and one to Schumann at
Duesseldorf on the Rhine. Following up these letters, Brahms now spent
six weeks at Weimar with Liszt, assimilating important points of
method and style. Although the two natures were somewhat
unsympathetic, Liszt was so impressed with the creative power and
character of Brahms's first compositions, that he tried to adopt him
as an adherent of the advanced school of modern music; while Brahms
was led, as some would claim, through Liszt's influence to an
appreciation of the artistic effects to be found in Hungarian music.
Brahms's visit to Schumann in the autumn of 1853 was in its
consequences a significant incident. After hearing Brahms's music,
Schumann wrote for the "Neue Zeitschrift" an article entitled "Neue
Bahnen" ("New Paths") in which the young composer was heralded as the
master for whom the world had been waiting, the successor of Beethoven
in the symphonic style. Through Schumann's influence, the publishers