feat
implied, introduced himself to Brahms, and laid the foundation of a
life-long friendship. Joachim gave him introductions to Liszt at Weimar
and to Schumann at Dusseldorf; the former hailed him for a time as a
member of the advanced party in music, on the strength of his E flat
minor scherzo, but the misapprehension was not of long continuance. The
introduction to Schumann impelled that master, now drawing near the
tragic close of his career, to write the famous article "Neue Bahnen,"
in which the young Brahms was proclaimed to be the great composer of the
future, "he who was to come." The critical insight in Schumann's article
is all the more surprising when it is remembered how small was the list
of Brahms's works at the time. A string quartet, the first pianoforte
sonata, the scherzo already mentioned, and the earliest group of songs,
containing the dramatic "Liebestreu," are the works which drew forth the
warm commendations of Schumann. In December 1853 Brahms gave a concert
at Leipzig, as a result of which the firms of Breitkopf & Haertel and of
Senff undertook to publish his compositions. In 1854 he was given the
post of choir-director and music-master to the prince of Lippe-Detmold,
but he resigned it after a few years, going first to Hamburg, and then
to Zurich, where he enjoyed the friendship and artistic counsel of
Theodor Kirchner. The unfavourable verdict of the Leipzig Gewandhaus
audience upon his pianoforte concerto in D minor op. 15, and several
remarkably successful appearances in Vienna, where he was appointed
director of Ihe Singakademie in 1863, were the most important external
events of Brahms's life, but again he gave up the conductorship after a
few months of valuable work, and for about three years had no fixed
place of abode. Concert tours with Joachim or Stockhausen were
undertaken, and it was not until 1867 that he returned to Vienna, or
till 1872 that he chose it definitely as his home, his longest absence
from the Austrian capital being between 1874 and 1878, when he lived
near Heidelberg. From 1871 to 1874 he conducted the concerts of the
"Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde," but after the later date he occupied no
official position of any kind. With the exception of journeys to Italy
in the spring, or to Switzerland in the summer, he rarely left Vienna.
He refused to come to England to take the honorary degree of Mus.D.
offered by the university of Cambridge; the university of Breslau made
hi