FIVE "Echt symphonisch": On the Historical Context of Brahms's Symphonies.

The phrase quoted in the title of this essay, "echt symphonisch," or genuinely symphonic, was used in 1870 by the critic Emanuel Klitzsch to describe the main theme of Max Bruch's First Symphony, op.28.(1) (We will return below to the review and the symphony itself.) Identical or similar expressions appear with striking frequency in reviews of new symphonies in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Austria and Germany. The description "echt symphonisch" may seem tautological: to call a symphony "symphonic" gives it the label of the genre to which it already belongs. In fact, such expressions are symptomatic of a nexus of issues absolutely central to music during the period in which Brahms conceived and completed his four works in the genre.

There are, of course, many studies of the major symphonic composers of the later nineteenth century, and even some of minor ones. But by focusing primarily on individual stars in the symphonic galaxy -- whether of greater or lesser magnitude -- musicologists have tended to ignore the interstellar dust: the historical, aesthetic, compositional, institutional, and sociopolitical contexts. It is something of this admittedly vast and ill-defined portion of the cosmos that I wish to sketch out in the present essay. I will discuss first the rise of the "great symphony" as an aesthetic and critical category. Then I will address more specifically historical and social aspects, including the role of professional orchestras and concert series. Next, the First Symphony of Max Bruch will be discussed as an example or locus of some issues of symphony writing in the 1860s. Finally I will consider briefly the first movement of Brahms's own First Symphony, conceived at the same time.

I

From the late eighteenth century across most of the first half of the nineteenth, the gro[Beta]e Symphonie, or great symphony, became established as the most elevated and important form of instrumental music. Already in the late eighteenth century, when the genre was relatively young, modest in dimensions, and still related to the opera overture, the symphony began to take on a hallowed and elevated position. In Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kunste of 1771-74, the writer of the article "Symphonie," most likely J. A. P. Schulz, begins a long tradition of identifying the symphony as suited to "expressions of grandeur [des Gro[Beta]en], solemnity, and the sublime."(2) Writing under the sway of Beethoven a few decades later, E. T. A. Hoffmann and other early Romantic writers elaborate this image of the symphony. Hoffmann's review of Beethoven's Fifth, from 1810, in which the work is seen as occupying the realm of the "mighty" (das Ungeheuere), the "immeasurable" (das Unermessliche), and the "infinite" (das Unendliche), is the most famous example of this kind of criticism.(3)

In 1824 Friedrich Rochlitz further investigated the quality of the "great," or das Grosse, which he sought to distinguish from the sublime, or das Erhabene. His topic was not specifically the symphony, but his comments are clearly applicable to that genre:

 
   The great (powerful, convulsive) excites the mind with all its powers in an 
   extensive and powerful fashion -- to be precise, to wield them in a way 
   such that we are aware of a multitude of representations that are more or 
   less clear and amalgamated into a whole.... Music that has the great 
   character demands the press of a multitude of melodies and harmonic turns 
   that at first seem impossible to combine yet nevertheless come to be united 
   in a melodic and harmonic whole.(4) 

Especially characteristic of Rochlitz's description is the idea of a collective whole, of many divergent parts or elements that become combined into a cohesive entity.