his new
personality which had appeared in music.

Johannes Brahms was born at Hamburgh, May 7, 1833, the son of a fine
musician who was player upon the double bass in the orchestra there.
The boy was always intended for a musician, and his instruction was
taken in hand with so much success that at the age of fourteen he
played in public pieces by Bach and Beethoven, and a set of original
variations. At the age of twenty he was a master, and it was in this
year that he accompanied Remenyi, made the acquaintance of Joachim and
Liszt, and had a rarely appreciative notice from a master no less than
Robert Schumann himself, who in his _New Journal of Music_ said:

"He has come, a youth at whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch.
Sitting at the piano he began to unveil wonderful regions. We were
drawn into more and more magical circles by his playing, full of
genius, which made of the piano an orchestra of lamenting and jubilant
voices. There were sonatas, or rather veiled symphonies; songs whose
poetry might be understood without words; piano pieces both of a
demoniac nature and of the most graceful form; sonatas for piano and
violin; string quartettes, each so different from every other that
they seemed to flow from many different springs. Whenever he bends his
magic wand, there, when the powers of the orchestra and chorus lend
him their aid, further glimpses of the magic world will be revealed to
us. May the highest genius strengthen him! Meanwhile the spirit of
modesty dwells within him. His comrades greet him at his first
entrance into the world of art, where wounds may perhaps await him,
but bay and laurel also; we welcome him as a valiant warrior."

The next few years were spent by Brahms in directing orchestra and
chorus at Detmold and elsewhere, and in Switzerland, which has always
had great attraction for him. In 1859 he played in Leipsic his first
great pianoforte concerto; most of the criticisms thereon were,
however, such as now excite mirth. Lately he has played in Leipsic
again, conducted several of his works, and was greeted with the
reverence and enthusiasm due the greatest living representative of the
art of music. In 1862 Brahms located in Vienna, where he has almost
ever since resided. Mr. Louis Kestelborn, in "Famous Composers and
Their Works," says: "About thirty years ago the writer first saw
Brahms in his Swiss home; at that time he was of a rather delicate,
slim-looking figure, with a beardless f