BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Full Name: Johann Jakob Brahms
Description: Composer, German
Known For: This famous lullaby has been known as “Brahms Lullaby” Title “The Cradle Song”
Instruments: Piano
Music Styles: Classical
Location: Germany
Date Born: 7th May 1833
Location Born: Hamburg, Germany
Date Died: 3rd April 1897
Location Died: Viena, Austria
Cause Of Death: Cancer
Memorial: Brahms is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.
Photo Comments: This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (German: [joˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria.
Brahms’s father, Johann Jakob Brahms, came to Hamburg from Schleswig-Holstein, seeking a career as a town musician. He was proficient on several instruments, but found employment mostly playing the horn and double bass. He married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress, who was seventeen years older.
A German composer of the Romantic period. He was born in Hamburg and in his later years he settled in Vienna, Austria.
Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training. He studied piano from the age of seven with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Brahms showed early promise (his younger brother Fritz also became a pianist) and helped to supplement the rather meager family income by playing the piano in restaurants and theaters, as well as by teaching.
For a time, Brahms also learned the cello, although his progress was cut short when his teacher absconded with Brahms’ instrument. After his early piano lessons with Otto Cossel, Brahms studied piano with Eduard Marxsen, who had studied in Vienna with Ignaz Seyfried (a pupil of Mozart.
He began to compose quite early in life, but later destroyed most copies of his first works; for instance, Louise Japha, a fellow-pupil of Marxsen, reported a piano sonata that Brahms had played or improvised at the age of 11.
Joachim had given Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and after a walking tour in the Rhineland Brahms took the train to Düsseldorf, and was welcomed into the Schumann family on arrival there. Schumann, amazed by the 20 year-old’s talent.
After Schumann’s death at the sanatorium in 1856, Brahms divided his time between Hamburg, where he formed and conducted a ladies’ choir, and the principality of Detmold, where he was court music-teacher and conductor.
He had been composing steadily throughout the 1850s and 60s, but his music had evoked divided critical responses and the Piano Concerto No. 1.
Brahms’ European reputation and led many to accept that he had fulfilled Schumann’s prophecy. This may have given him the confidence finally to complete a number of works that had been wrestled with over many years, such as the cantata Rinaldo, his first string quartet, third piano quartet, and most notably his first symphony.
Brahms frequently traveled, for both business (concert tours) and pleasure. From 1878 onwards he often visited Italy in the springtime, and usually sought out a pleasant rural location in which to compose during the summer.
In 1890, the 57 year-old Brahms resolved to give up composing. However, as it turned out, he was unable to abide by his decision, and in the years before his death he produced a number of acknowledged masterpieces.
Brahms was a lifelong friend with Johann Strauss II though they were very different as composers.
Brahms developed cancer (sources differ on whether this was of the liver or pancreas). His condition gradually worsened and he died on April 3, 1897.