Symphony No. 1 (Brahms)

As early as 1853, Robert Schumann , responding to Brahms' piano compositions, wrote that a large-scale symphonic composition should be expected from this author. The first drafts in the symphonic genre, Brahms made in 1854 - 1855 , but in the end they were used by him for the First Piano Concerto . The next approach to the symphony was for the composer Serenade No. 1 for the orchestra (1858). A draft sketch of the first part of the future dominor symphony was created by Brahms in 1862, this sketch by Brahms was shown to his friend Joseph Joachim . However, the continuation of work was postponed for more than a decade. In 1868, Brahms sent Clara Schumann a postcard with a melody, which later appeared in the final of the symphony. Apparently, only in 1874 Brahms began to work closely on the symphony, and the shock part of this work fell on the summer of 1876: from June 12, Brahms lived in the spa town of Sassnitz - and on October 5 wrote to his friend and publisher Fritz Zimrok that the symphony almost completed.

The symphony premiered on November 4, 1876 in Karlsruhe , conducted by Felix Otto Dessoff . Three days later, on November 7, Brahms himself conducted a symphony in Mannheim . In the next three months, the symphony was also performed in Munich , Vienna , Leipzig and Breslau - and only after that, in February 1877, Brahms considered it possible to send the score to Joachim for recall. Having received the manuscript back, Brahms, starting in May, revised his work again and only then sent it to Zimrok for publication. The score and arrangement for piano four hands were simultaneously published in October 1877.

The symphony was greeted with an enthusiastic reception by the moderately conservative part of the German and Austrian musical public - in the person of, above all, critic Edward Hanslik . Hans von Bülow , who called Brahms' First Symphony “ Beethoven ’s Tenth Symphony”, fully expressed expectations of this flank of the musical community (evaluating them as fulfilled): this was connected not only with the roll-call between the main themes of the finals in Brahms’s work and in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony , but and with a general idea of ​​Beethoven's symphonies as an unsurpassed peak indicating the only correct direction for the further development of music. Byulov’s point of view is sometimes shared by modern musicologists ^[1] , however, in general, the dependence of the mature Brahms on Beethoven should not be exaggerated: as M. S. Druskin noted, “continuing the line of Beethoven’s effective symphony, Brahms paid less attention to folk heroic images < ...> he devoted his works to the primary expression of the emotional drama of his contemporary. The theme of personality, its struggle in life and moral perfection takes Brahms' first place ” ^[2] . Some experts hypothesized that the First Symphony was hidden in programming - for example, that it was based on the story of Manfred, taken from Byron’s poem of the same name and used earlier by Robert Schumann (and later by P. I. Tchaikovsky in the symphony of the same name ) ^[3] .

The symphony is written in four parts:

1. Un poco sostenuto - Allegro - Meno allegro (C minor / C major)
2. Andante sostenuto (E Major)
3. Un poco allegretto e grazioso (A flat major)
4. Adagio - Più andante - Allegro non troppo, ma con brio - Più allegro (C major)

• Symphony No. 1 (Brahms): sheet music by International Music Score Library Project