Nietzsche and Brahms: A Forgotten RelationshipAuthor(s): David S. ThatcherReviewed work(s):Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 261-280Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/733704 .Accessed: 22/05/2012 08:52

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A/US/C and Letters JULY I973

VOLUME LIV No. 3

MUSIC AND LETTERS was founded in 1920 by the late A. H. Fox Strangways. It was continued by the late Richard Capell and is now the property of Music and Letters Limited, a Company Limited by guarantee and comprising repre- sentatives from the Royal Musical Association and Oxford University Press

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NIETZSCHE AND BRAHMS: A FORGOTTEN RELATIONSHIP

BY DAVID S. THATCHER

IT WAS Nietzsche's belief that without music life would be a mistake. His whole existence was inextricably bound up with it, and his philosophy cannot be fully understood unless this fact is taken into account. He associated, on various levels of intimacy, with com- posers, conductors, pianists and musicologists; of these Wagner was clearly the most important to him, for Wagner provided the most crucial experience of his life; but his relationship to Brahms, the reluctant champion of the anti-Wagnerians, has been unduly neglected. There are different reasons for this. At first sight the relationship lacks the colour and drama of Nietzsche's dealings with Wagner, or even Bizet. References to Brahms are discouragingly infrequent, scattered and difficult to assemble. Most of them will be found only in out-of-the-way German sources by someone obstinately determined to track them down. Finally there is the feeling, in part a misapprehension, that Nietzsche is only interested in Brahms for the light he sheds on his main preoccupation, the phenomenon of Wagner. It is surely time some of these obstacles and prepossessions were cleared away.

Though Nietzsche (I844-I900) and Brahms (I833-97) never met, they were almost exact contemporaries and their lives present some striking parallels. In each case their early lives were enriched by intimate association with a leading composer, Wagner and Schumann respectively, who were revered as father-figures as well as musicians. Nietzsche fell as deeply in love with Cosima Wagner as Brahms with Clara Schumann, although only in the latter case was the affection reciprocated. Both remained shy, withdrawn, reticent

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men, frei aber einsam, spending their years in bachelor apartness, Nietzsche as Einsiedler and Brahms as Abseiter-hermit and outsider. Several times they tottered precariously on the brink of matrimony, but both drew back at the last moment, only half-relieved at the narrowness of their escape, for both experienced intermittent longings for a settled domestic life with wife and children. They were native- born Germans who lived fairly contentedly in exile, Nietzsche mostly in Switzerland and Italy and Brahms in Austria. They shared a passion for Italy and a detestation of England, which neither of them visited. Always they sought an environment of natural beauty which would nourish their creative imagination, for invariably their best inspirations came to them during long morning walks. Disappoint- ment and suffering they transformed, by dint of rigorous self- discipline, into the material of their work. Though they retained a feeling for the heroic grandeur of the Old Testament, they rejected Christian belief (Brahms with reluctance and Nietzsche with impassioned militancy) and evolved in different ways a tragic view of human existence.

As young men they read widely in the work of the German Romantics, especially Heine, Tieck, Hoffmann, Eichendorff and Holderlin. They fell deeply under the spell of Schumann's music, and both claimed to understand Wagner better than the most ardent Wagnerians, though they were led, instinctively, to oppose what he stood for-Nietzsche most memorably in 'The Case of Wagner', which he wrote in I888 as Germany's self-appointed "physician of culture" and Brahms in the ill-advised manifesto he drew up with Joachim, Grimm and Scholz in i86o (Wagner branded them "Jews" for their pains, which only served to increase their hatred of anti-Semitism). Bizet's music appealed to them enorm- ously: Nietzsche covered his copy of 'Carmen' (an opera he heard over twenty times) so thickly with marginal glosses that a whole book has been constituted from them, and Brahms made a point of acquiring as many Bizet scores as he could and studying them with loving care.

Throughout hiis life Nietzsche was a dedicated concert-goer. The Rhine Music Festival at Cologne in June I865 opened with a performance of Handel's 'Israel in Egypt'; Nietzsche, at that time a student at Bonn University, was one of the basses in the choir. He found it exhilarating to participate in the festival: "One returns with arrant irony to one's books, to textual criticism, and to other things",' he commented after it was all over. This festival probably marked his first exposure to the music of Brahms, two of whose 'Magelone Romances' were sung by their dedicatee, Julius Stock- hausen. In a list of "musikalische mignonnes" compiled after his fourth semester at Leipzig, works by Schumann, Beethoven and

1 'Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche', edited and translated by Christopher Middleton (Chicago, I969), p. Io.

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Schubert bulk large; there are also references to choral works of Bach and "ein paar" of Brahms's Lieder.' A positive sign of interest is shown in a letter he wrote to Friedrich Hegar (also a friend of Brahms) at the beginning of April I874: "I'll be attending your Zurich Music Festival; I especially look forward to hearing the 'Song of Triumph'-at last!"3 This jubilant work was designed by Brahms to commemorate the Prussian victory over the French in I871, and it played to enthusiastic audiences throughout Germany and Austria. A review of a performance in Vienna on 8 December i872 called it a "truly sensational" work, and ranked it alongside the first act of the 'Valkyrie':

Wagner, the mighty spirit of fire, Brahms, the great contrapuntalist of our time, both deriving from Beethoven but diverging from him in diametrically opposed directions, each representing a brilliant peak of achievement-this is the indelible impression the 'Song of Triumph' leaves on hearing it for the first time.4

Nietzsche probably read this review (as did Wagner, who would have relished it less); it may have contributed to his desire to hear the work, which was played at several centres in i874, including Munich, Leipzig, Cologne, Berlin and Basel. After the Basel per- formance on 9 June Nietzsche wrote to Rohde:

Recently your countryman Brahms was here. I have heard a lot of his music, in particular the 'Song of Triumph' which he himself con- ducted. Coming to terms with him was, for me, a most difficult test of asthetic conscience; I now have my own modest little opinion of this man, but as yet it is still rather vague.5

Despite hiis indecision, or perhaps because of it, Nietzsche under- took a special journey with his friend Romundt to hear the work performed again in Zurich the following month. In August, armed with the piano score, he went to Bayreuth. Wagner recounted the famous scene it led to :6

When I entered his room at the hotel I saw a suspicious-looking little red book, some songlet of triumph or of destiny by Brahms, with which he made readv to attack me. But I was not going to have any of it. Towards evening the Professor came to Wahnfried and behold, he had the accursed red book under his arm. He now had a mind to put it on the piano desk and play it to me in all seriousness. He thought that I ought to know this work to appreciate the composer as he deserved. I declined; he would not cease to urge me. At last 2 Nietzsche, 'Werke: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe' (Munich, I934-40),

iii, p. 3i6. Possibly these Lieder were from the recently composed 'Liebesliederwalzer' which Overbeck and his wife had played to Nietzsche, who had listened "attentively", in the summer of I870. Carl Albrecht Bernouilli, 'Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche: eine Freundschaft' (Jena, I908), p. 234.

3 Nietzsche, 'Briefe: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe' (Munich, I938-42), iV, p. 62.

4Th. Helm, Musikalisches Wochenblatt, iv (I873), p. io. The 'Song of Triumph' had received its premiere at Karlsruhe on 5 June I872, under the direction of Hermann Levi.

5 'Briefe', iv, p. 82. 6 Richard Specht, 'Johannes Brahms', translated by Eric Blom (London, 1930),

p. 259.

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I became violent . . . . I was rude and-Heaven knows how- Nietzsche was kicked out.

Wagner's explosion of temper might have been predicted. Though impressed by the 'Handel Variations' which Brahms had played to him on their first meeting in I864, Wagner had soon become jealous of Brahms's success and resentful of the attacks made on his music by followers of the rival composer. In I865 a dispute had arisen between the two men concerning the rightful ownership of a section of the 'Tannhauser' autograph score, and correspondence on the subject grew rather intemperate; Wagner found further vent for his spleen in the essay 'On Conducting' of I869. He might have discerned in some of Nietzsche's own compositions of the time, especially the 'Hymn to Friendship', a number of features attribut- able to an absorption in Brahms's music7 and regarded this as rebellious and heretical. In any event he was horrified by Nietzsche's action.

According to a lesser-known version of the episode Nietzsche pointed excitedly to the score exclaiming: "Look, that is absolute music, yes, absolute music!" He managed to persuade Hans Richter, an innocent bystander, to play the piece through with him. At first Wagner was amused at this display of presumption; how could anyone hope to do justice to Brahms? But when it dawned on him that Nietzsche was adamant about playing the work through to the bitter end he broke in impatiently with: "Now, that's quite enough of your absolute music!" He was stupefied that Nietzsche should betray such bad taste in approving of a work which seemed to him so cold, insipid and shapeless: "Handel, Mendelssohn and Schumann bound in leather!" he snorted. When urged not to take the issue so seriously Nietzsche replied that he found it very distress- ing to find himself supporting Wagnerian opera and absolute music at one and the same time.8

Wagnerian opera and absolute music: here is a distinct reminder of the fierce controversy which raged unabated in the nineteenth century over the respective merits of Wagner and Brahms. The dispute was waged with a torrid missionary fervour which is hard to understand now that the fires have died down and cooler heads gratefully acknowledge both men to have been giants in their respective spheres. The issue seemed clear-cut: was music to draw on extra-musical sources and associations, such as poetry, myth, politics or philosophy, for its inspiration and expressive power, or was it to continue on basically eighteenth-century lines as an

7 The 'Hymn to Friendship' was composed before Nietzsche had heard the 'Song of Triumph' performed, so specifically Brahmsian influence ought to be ruled out: "It was rather a question of parallel interest displayed by Nietzsche in the conservative mus- ical elements of periodic melody, clear tonality, and old-fashioned counterpoint in his own composition and in the work of one of Wagner's enemies". Frederick Love, 'Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience' (Chapel Hill, I963), pp. 78-9.

8 See Leopold Zahn, 'Friedrich Nietzsche: eine Lebenschronik' (Dusseldorf 1950), pp. I53-4.

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autonomous formal art, depending for its effect on its inherent musical structure? Programme music, or absolute music? Music of the future (Zukunftsmusik) or music of the past? Wagner or Brahms? It was the civil war of music, an internecine struggle in which one was forced to take sides. Any catholicity of taste which presumed to offer hospitality to both Wagner and Brahms, accepting them equally on their own merits, was considered suspect if not down- right treasonable. Prominent conductors like Hans von Biilow, Hans Richter and Hermann Levi suffered agonies of indecision in this disconcerting situation, falling off the fence first on one side and then on the other. It was indecorous, but proper balance was virtually impossible to maintain. A seasoned and zealous polemicist, Wagner was the leading fighter in his own cause; Eduard Hanslick (pilloried as the pedantic, bumbling reactionary Beckmesser in 'The Master- singers') became the spokesman for Brahms, who hated controversy of any kind, even when his own artistic principles were at stake.

In a century which was passionately devoted to the unlimited expansion of the possibilities of musical representation and in which increasingly fanciful literary interpretations of the abstract music of the Viennese classicists were the order of the day, Hanslick achieved prominence as one of the few articulate voices of reason and moderation. 9

A "well-marked copy" of the I865 edition of Hanslick's 'The Beautiful in Music', essentially a defence of the Brahmsian point of view, was found in Nietzsche's library when it was catalogued, and "in Nietzsche's notes of' the same year there is a clear parallel to Hanslick's view of the natural limitations of music as an expressive medium'. I 0

It might be thought odd that Nietzsche should describe the 'Song of Triumph', which after all is set to a Biblical text and has a specific, extra-musical purpose, as "absolute music". But he had always classified the oratorio as absolute music in contradistinction to opera and programme music generally.", Choral works had been his favourite form of music as a youth: the Passions and Masses of Bach, the oratorios of Handel, Haydn's 'Creation' and Mozart's 'Requiem' filled him with awe. In an astonishingly precocious essay, 'On Music', he maintained that music was given by God to raise our thought to higher things; he regretted that much modern choral music (he had in mind the Zukunftsmusik of Berlioz and Liszt) should lack the power of the old-it was entertainment merely, not

Love, 'Young Nietzsche', p. 32. 10 Ibid., p. 32. Love omits to mention that some of Nietzsche's annotations were far

from complimentary, e.g. "stupid" and "shallow syllogism". 'Die Briefe des Freiherrn Carl von Gersdorff an Friedrich Nietzsche', ed. Karl Schlechta (Weimar, 1934), ii, p. IOI. Brahms read Hanslick's book (first ed. I854) long before Nietzsche did. He had glanced through the volume and found "so many stupidities in it that he did not read on". Later he revised his opinion and told Hanslick how greatly the book had stimulated and calmed him. The intervening upsurge of Wagnerism probably occasioned this change of front. See Specht, 'Brahms', pp. 6o-6i, 174-5.

See theJanuary i86i letter to Krug and Pindar, 'Briefe', i, p. 125.

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a sacred thing which conferred blessing on life. In church one Ascension Day he was tempted to join in the singing of the 'Halle- lujah' chorus from Handel's 'Messiah'. It seemed to him like a choir of angels bearing Christ up to heaven on the wings ofjubilation. He felt an irresistible urge to compose similar music himself and took a "childish" delight in the modest success of his efforts (he was only nine years old). As a schoolboy he set about composing a Christmas Oratorio, sketches and fragments of which, dating from i 86o-6 i, are still in existence. During the winter of I864-5 he heard 'Judas Maccabxeus' at Bonn, at least the second time he had heard this work, and, as already noted, took part in a performance of 'Israel in Egypt' in I865. In Handel he found "the Jewish-heroic trait that gave the Reformation a touch of greatness-the Old Testament become music, not the New'".2 Small wonder that the 'Song of Triumph', consciously modelled on Handel's 'Dettingen Te Deum' and thoroughly Handelian in character, should have moved him so deeply; he acclaimed the work as "a rebirth of the spirit of the Handelian chorus',l3 just as he had acclaimed Wagnerian opera as a rebirth of the spirit of Greek tragedy.

It was indeed "a most difficult test of asthetic conscience" to find himself admiring a musician so cordially detested by his idol. It imposed on him, as on others, the strain of divided loyalties-a strain he was constitutionally unable to bear. His health, never very strong, suffered as a result, and though he did not sever his weaken- ing links with Bayreuth for another two years, the breach was already in the making. Wagner claimed, rather inaccurately, that his hostility to Brahms resulted from the 'Song of Triumph' episode, as he felt that through it he had forfeited Nietzsche's sympathy for ever; it rankled him to think that he had lost such a promising and serviceable disciple. As for Nietzsche, the incident brought some positive gain, for it gave him further insight into Wagner's psy- chology, particularly his lust for power, which he later developed more fully in his philosophical speculations about human motiva- tion: the "will to power" concept is directly traceable to Nietzsche's close watch of Wagner's behaviour. After the incident Nietzsche wrote in a private notebook: "The tyrant admits no individuality other than his own and that of his most intimate friends. The danger is great for Wagner when he is unwilling to grant anything to Brahms or to theJews".'4 (He later ascribed the violence of Wagner's reaction to professional jealousy. With some amusement he recalled Wagner's refusal of a much-coveted medal offered him by the King of Bavaria; eventually Cosima and friends prevailed upon him to

12 'The Portable Nietzsche', selected and translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York, I954), p. 668.

13 See Arthur Egidi, 'Gesprache mit Nietzsche im Parsifaljahr I882', Die Musik, i (1902), p. I896.

14 Elisabeth F6rster-Nietzsche, 'The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence', translated by C. V. Kerr (London, I922), p. 223.

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accept it, and shortly after it was conferred he discovered to his horror that the same honour had already been accorded to Brahms.)'

Apart from his general animosity to Brahms there were, perhaps, two specific reasons why Wagner disliked the 'Song of Triumph'. First, it resembled an oratorio, a form he abominated: to him oratorios were "unnatural abortions", inferior to opera as a "sexless embryo" is to the fully-mature sexual organism. Secondly, although he had, unlike Brahms, no special love for the Reich of the Hohen- zollern dynasty, he had composed a 'Kaisermarsch' in I870, hoping by this token of homage to woo the Kaiser and his chancellor Bismarck into providing funds for his Bayreuth venture. Unfortunately the 'Kaisermarsch' did not achieve the immediate popularity of the 'Song of Triumph', which was one severe blow, and the Bayreuth exchequer remained as empty as before, which was another. "To Wagner's 'Kaisermarsch' not even the young German Kaiser could march",l6 was Nietzsche's acerbic quip at the time of Wilhelm II's accession in i888.

In the first flush of this intense but short-lived enthusiasm for the music of Brahms, Nietzsche acquired during his years at Basel not only the score of the 'Song of Triumph' (Op. 55), but also the 'Magelone Romances' (Op. 33), 'Eight Songs for solo voice and piano accompaniment' (Op. 57), another set of 'Eight Songs' (Op. 59) and 'Abendregen' (Op. 70, no. 4). According to the wife of his university colleague, Miaskowski, Nietzsche would amuse a social gathering by playing 'Tristan', singing a Brahms Lied or simply imp- rovising. 17At this time Nietzsche, possibly alone among his contem- poraries, envisaged a Wagner-Brahms entente to spearhead a revival in German music. The 'Song of Triumph' incident was not an idle and mischievous act of provocation on Nietzsche's part, though that has been the common interpretation; rather it was a genuine if fumbling and radically misconceived attempt to put the feasibility of such an entente to an initial test. 'The Birth of Tragedy' of I872 had already proclaimed Wagner as the champion of a new Diony- sian music; Brahms's 'Song of Triumph' suggested he was capable of providing the complementary Apollonian element; if only the two greatest composers of the age could settle their differences and unite their gifts in a common artistic aim German music might be on the threshold of emulating the rich and lasting achievement of Greek tragedy. The problem was that neither composer was ready to admit the genius of the other, and the whole situation was exacer-

15Egidi, 'Gesprache mit Nietzsche', p. I896. The medal in question was the Maximilian Order for Science and Art, first offered to Wagner on Io October I864. He declined acceptance. On 8 December I873 it was offered again; this time Wagner deigned to accept it, but discovered that Brahms had been a recipient earlier that year. See Richard du Moulin Eckart, 'Cosima Wagner' (Berlin, 1929), pp. 677-8. This work also mentions the 'Song of Triumph' episode, pp. 705.-6

16 'The Portable Nietzsche', p. 664. 17 Nietzsche, 'Lettres A Peter Gast', edited by A. Schaeffner (Paris, I959), i, p. I15.

By virtue of its excellent editorial apparatus this two-volume work is indispensable for anyone researching into the musical aspects of Nietzsche's career.

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bated by the petty squabblings of the rival factions: "In Wagner, as in Brahms, there is a blind denial of the good, in his followers this denial is deliberate and conscious"., 8 Hope mingled uneasily with doubt: "The most wholesome phenomenon is Brahms, in whose music there is more German blood than in that of Wagner's. With these words I would say something complimentary, but by no means wholly so".19

It is not too difficult to see what Nietzsche is getting at here. As a fervent German patriot and admirer of Bismarck, Brahms was passionately involved in the events of the Franco-Prussian War: he even thought of enlisting as a soldier. But by this time victory was assured and he diverted his martial energies into a musical cele- bration, nominally dedicated to the Kaiser but actually written in honour of his hero Bismarck, whose portrait, decoratively wreathed in laurel, hung on a wall of his Viennese apartment. For a time Brahms was honorary president of a society of Bismarck's admirers in Vienna; his library contained copies of Bismarck's speeches and letters as well as miscellaneous material dealing with the war. As a young man Nietzsche, too, had admired Bismarck for his political acumen, opportunism, courage and audacity; his speeches, he said, went to his head like strong wine. The prevailing patriotic euphoria temporarily overcame his better judgment, and he actually volunteered for service in the Austro-Prussian War of I866 (he served as a medical orderly) and to the end regarded Bismarck as a strong German type. But he was saddened that Bismarck failed to seize the moment of victory over the French to found a truly German educational institution for the regeneration of the German spirit: Instead of advancing the German Geist, he felt, Bismarck was only concerned to extend the imperial sway of the German Reich, building up its armaments and presenting "the aspect of a hedgehog with heroic inclinations".20 Bismarck sym- bolized a nation brutalized by the demon of power and willing to risk destroying itself in war. Nietzsche's last wish before his collapse was that Bismarck, together with the Kaiser and all anti-Semites, should be done away with.

Is it surprising, then, that the 'Song of Triumph' should have posed him a difficult test of conscience, not only aesthetic but also moral and political? Only a year before hearing the work for the first time Nietzsche had written a pamphlet expressly warning the delirious Germans of the dangers of success and complacency. The victory, he said in his polemic on David Strauss, was a triumph of

18 'The Case of Wagner', translated by Anthony M. Ludovici (London, I9I i), p. I oo. It is probably with Brahms in mind that Nietzsche writes (in section I O of 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuth'): "Many who wish, by hook or by crook, to make their mark, even wrestle with Wagner's secret charm, and unconsciously throw in their lot with the older masters, preferring to ascribe their 'independence' to Schubert or Handel rather than to Wagner".

19 Ibid., p. 99. 20 'Selected Letters', p. 284.

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arms, not of culture: the culture of the defeated French was far superior to that of the philistine and materialistic Prussians. The 'Song of Triumph' was a powerful expression of this complacency and gave further encouragement to indulge in it; though a splendid work, full of Handelian majesty, it catered obsequiously to the middle-class patriotic sentiment of 'Deutschland, Deutschland fiber Alles' (a phrase which Nietzsche mocks whenever he uses it); as a popular flag-wagging piece the 'Song of Triumph' was on the level of Wagner's frightful 'Kaisermarsch'. Like Wagner, Brahms had condescended to the Germans; he had become a German Imperial- ist. It was unforgivable; this was not the ideal entente Nietzsche had envisioned.

By 1884, after his momentous discovery of Bizet in i88i, Nietzsche had abandoned his hope in Brahms. He takes not the slightest interest in the growing literature on Brahms, nor does he ever again refer specifically to any of his individual compositions: his comments are broad and generalized. There is a marked change of attitude. Brahms is an 'epigone', an imitator of borrowed forms, and the German mentality is never happy with borrowed forms which it "confuses, compromises, confounds and moralizes".s' Brahms is no longer seen as a fructifying antithesis to Wagner, simply a link in the chain of developments that led up to him. He is neither "a major event" nor "an exception"; though he respects the work of many different composers he is essentially the North German composer par excellence. His music appeals strongly to the average middle-class German who finds his own mediocrity reflected in it.22 This was the same audience which refused to read Nietzsche's books and to surrender to the music of Peter Gast, his friend, amanuensis and musical protege. Concerning Gast, Nietzsche wrote in I 884:

The main opposition he faces lies in German obscurantism and sentimentality, whether conscious or unconscious, in neo-romanticism of the kind Brahms dishes out, in sum in the mediocrity of the German middle-class mind which is highly sensitive to anything 'southern', which it regards suspiciously as smacking of frivolity. My philosophy meets with the same opposition; like Gast's music, it is hated for its clear sky.2"

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Nietzsche maintains, Germany had brought the art at which she excels to the height of perfection; German music of the nineteenth century was only a brilliant, many-sided and erudite form of decadence.24 French music, like that of Offenbach or Bizet, offered "real liberation from the

21 'The Will to Power', edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York, I968), pp. 66, 438.

22 Nietzsche, Grossoktavausgabe' (Leipzig, I901-3), xiv, p. 141. 23 'Friedrich Nietzsches Briefwechsel mit Franz Overbeck', edited by Richard

Oehler and Carl Albrecht Bernouilli (Leipzig, I9I6), p. 269. 24 'Grossoktavausgabe', xiv, pp. 139-40.

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sentimental and at bottom degenerate musicians of German roman- ticism".25 The "divine frivolity" of Offenbach's musical buffoon- eries was infinitely preferable to the "ponderousness" of Wagner and Brahms:

Offenbach: French music with the spirit of Voltaire, free, high- spirited, with a little sardonic grin, but bright, clever almost to the point of banality (-he does not use make-up-) and without the mignardise [affectation] of morbid or blond-Viennese sensuality.26

Every time he listened to 'Carmen' he felt more remote from "the vapid idealism of Schumann and Brahms-after a time I cannot stand it, it has no backbone".27

The linking here of Schumann and Brahms opens up a revealing perspective. In his last years at school, and later at Bonn, Nietzsche had studied Schumann scores with the same assiduity he had earlier applied to the classical masters. He thought the 'Frauen-Liebe und Leben' song cycle to be Schumann's best; he learnt to love the 'Faust' and 'Manfred' music, and was particularly fond of 'Das Paradies und die Peri'. In December of I864 he visited Hermann Deiters (a future biographer of Brahms) who played a good deal of Schumann to him. As in the case of Handel earlier, Schumann left his mark on Nietzsche's musical compositions during these years; the songs he wrote between i862 and i865 are strongly reminiscent, in melodic and harmonic development, of Schumann. Set to texts by such romantic poets as Ruickert, Groth, Chamisso, Petofi and Byron, these songs run the gamut of conventional romantic moods: home- sickness, longing (Sehnsucht), nostalgia and generally invertebrate despair. Schumann (and we might add Brahms, though Nietzsche does not) "has in himself Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine, Hoffmann, Tieck".28 Schumann is "the eternal youth", but there are moments "when his music reminds one of the eternal 'old maid' ".29 It is surely with Schumann and Brahms in mind that Nietzsche objects to what he calls "northern artificiality":

Everything clouded with silver mist, emotions which are artificially induced-art up there in the north is a way of escaping from the self. 0, such pallid joys, all suffused with October light!30

In June I887 Nietzsche fled from a Schumann concert exasperated beyond measure by the "softening of sensibility" in the music-it was like "a sea of fizzy lemonade'".31

By this time Nietzsche had overthrown Schumann, the consola- tion of his lonely adolescence, quite unambiguously:

25 'The Will to Power', p. 439. 26 Ibid., p. 439. 27 'Friedrich Nietzsches Gesammelte Briefe' (Leipzig, I908), iv, p. 144. 28 'The Will to Power', p. 67. 29 'Human, All-Too-Human', translated by Paul V. Cohn (London, I909), Part i i,

p. 272. 30 'Grossoktavausgabe', xiv, p. I4r. 81 'Selected Letters', p. xvi.

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Is it not considered a good fortune among us today, a relief, a liberation, that this Schumann romanticism has been overcome? ... His 'Manfred' music is a mistake and misunderstanding to the point of an injustice-Schumann with his taste which was basically a small taste (namely, a dangerous propensity, doubly dangerous among Germans, for quiet lyricism and sottishness of feeling), constantly walking off to withdraw shyly and retire, a noble tender-heart who wallowed in all sorts of anonymous bliss and woe, a kind of girl and noli me tangere from the start: this Schumann was already a merely German event in music, no longer a European one, as Beet- hoven was and, to a still greater extent, Mozart. With him German music was threatened by its greatest danger: losing the voice for the soul of Europe and descending to mere fatherlandishness. 2

"Quiet lyricism and sottishness of feeling" might well describe, for all their engaging charm, Nietzsche's own lyrico-elegiac Lieder; the whole passage foreshadows the criticism of Brahms in 'The Case of Wagner', where his Schumannesque characteristics-his "melancholy of impotence", his "yearning", his "impersonality", his restricted Germanity, and his secret raptures and self-pity-are singled out for condemnation. Whereas Nietzsche found Wagner's music exces- sively voluptuous and sexual, the music of Schumann and Brahms he thought prim and spinsterish: how different both were from the tragic exultation of passion in 'Carmen'!

The crucial point is this: Schumann and Brahms presented, as Wagner had presented, a problem in self-overcoming. They em- bodied aspects of Nietzsche's own personality (his romantic pessim- ism, his propensity to "pity" and "softness", his decadent Germanity) which he knew he had to eradicate before his true self could blossom in the full flower of its own independence and freedom. Just as he had to break with Wagner and dissociate himself from Bayreuth, the symbol of virulent pan-Germanism and bourgeois vulgarity, so he had to sever himself from Brahms. In Nietzsche's view both Wagner and Brahms were guilty of capitulating to the spirit of their age; he felt he could not allow himself such a luxury, for the true philo- sopher has to be the "bad conscience of his time":

What does a philospher demand of himself first and last? To over- come his time in himself, to become 'timeless'. With what must he therefore engage in the hardest combat? With whatever marks him as a child of his time. Well, then! I am, no less than Wagner, a child of this time; that is, a decadent: but I comprehended this, I resisted it. The philosopher in me resisted.33

Tearing himself away from Wagner was an anguished and protracted affair: there were, after all, those precious memories of the halcyon Triebschen days which kept flooding back; but with Brahms, and Schumann, the self-overcoming was a relatively painless process.

Dashed, then, were Nietzsche's hopes that Wagner and Brahms 32 'Beyond Good and Evil', translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York, I966),

pp. I8I-2. 33 'The Case of Wagner', translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York, I967), p. I55.

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would amicably combine forces in the world-historical task of over- coming the eighteenth century. Goethe had done it "by imagining a European culture that would harvest the full inheritance of attained humanity"; but German music (with the partial exception of Mendelssohn) lacked "the full, redeeming and binding element of Goethe".34 Disillusioned that the eighteenth century could not be overcome, Nietzsche returned to it with "a nihilistic sigh" for consolation, nourishing himself once again on Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Chopin. While still at school he had written of Chopin:

I particularly admired in Chopin his freeiing of music from German influences, from the tendency to the ugly, dull, pettily bourgeois, clumsy and self-important. Spiritual beauty and nobility, and, above all, aristocratic gaiety, freedom from restraint and splendour of soul, as well as southern warmth and intensity of feeling, were expressed by him for the first time in music.35

Chopin and Bizet: the two names represent a continuity of musical taste only temporarily interrupted by successive infatuations for Schumann, Wagner and Brahms, whose music had contributed to the ruin of his health. A sick, lonely and troubled man, he sought music that would be "a school of convalescence", a stimulus to creativity: "Bizet makes me fertile. Whatever is good makes me fertile. I have no other gratitude, nor do I have any other proof for what is good".36 He no longer possessed the strength or desire to swim in a sea of "endless melody"; he wanted to dance to music of strongly marked rhythms and strict tempi, to refresh himself in its breezes, now warm and now cool. Gast's music, especially his opera 'The Lion of Venice', was, he said, "balm" to his soul:

One grows old, one pines for things; already I need music like that King Saul-Heaven has luckily given me also a kind of David. A man like me, profondement triste, cannot endure Wagnerian music in the long run. We need the south, sunshine 'at any price', bright, harmless, innocent Mozartian happiness and delicacy of tones.37

Gast, the "new Mozart", wrote the kind of restorative music Nietzsche wished it was in his own power to compose.

The voluminous correspondence between Nietzsche and Gast reveals an almost conspiratorial coolness towards Brahms. In February i882 Gast alluded to a concert given in Vienna at which "only Brahmsian things" were played. He was amused to learn that Brahms had sent a wreath to Bayreuth at Wagner's death in I883, imagining how insulted Cosima would be (she was). In I884 he

34 'The Will to Power', p. 66. For elaboration of this point see sections 48-50 of 'The Twilight of the Idols'.

35 Quoted by Gerald Abraham, 'Nietzsche's Attitude to Wagner', Music & Letters, xiii (1932), p. 64-

I8 'The Case of Wagner', p. 158. 87 'Selected Letters', p. 251. But Nietzsche was rarely David to Gast's Saul. "I can

barely stand this terrible, dreary music", he once wrote about Nietzsche's piano-playing in Venice in I884, "it should be consigned to hell!" Erich Podach, 'Gestalten um Nietzsche' (Weimar, 1932), p. 203.

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reported a visit to Munich: Brahms is very popular there, but for the life of me I cannot stand his gloomy, muttering, brooding, depressing music. Just recently I have looked once again at some volumes of Brahms which the book- seller sent for my inspection. A grey sky is preferable to such music.38

In November of the same year he heard performances of Brahms's first and third symphonies. In both he found moments of great charm as well as power, but admitted that very little touched him deeply; the "lightning and thunder" allegro movements, he said, had a certain stiffness about them, and the players were often unable to bring the score to life. In October i888 he heard von Billow rehearsing the 'Haydn Variations' with the Berlin Phil- harmonic, and dismissed them as "academic icebox-music". In March i888 Nietzsche told Gast, with obvious relish, that von Seydlitz had compared the khamsin (a hot, dry, Saharan wind) to a Brahms symphony, "brutal, sandy, dry, incomprehensible, enervating, ten times worse than the sirocco".59

Only through such second-hand reports was Nietzsche aware that Brahms was still alive and productive. Then fate took a dramatic hand in the matter. On 24 September i886 Nietzsche wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug of his pleasure in reading a review of 'Beyond Good and Evil' headed 'Nietzsche's Dangerous Book'. It flattered him to be reviewed at all, and even more to be called "dynamite". The reviewer was Josef Viktor Widmann, editor of the Swiss paper Der Bund. He recognized Nietzsche's importance, and, although he became increasingly disenchanted with some of his deas (particularly concerning Brahms), went on reviewing his works as they appeared. Widmann had been an intimate friend of Brahms since the two men first met in I874; Brahms used to spend weekends at Widmann's house in Thun, near Berne, "carrying off, for his own perusal, the latest books which the editor had received for review, indulging in endless debates with his host, delighting in pointing out little inaccuracies in Widmann's editorials, eating large slices of his favorite plum cake, and taking a friendly interest in all that concerned each member of the household, including the dog".4G From i888 on, Brahms made regular visits to Italy with Widmann as his companion.

Widmann's laudatory review led to correspondence with Nietzsche, and thus an indirect link with Brahms was unexpectedly forged. In July I887 Nietzsche learnt from Widmann that Brahms was reading 'Beyond Good and Evil' "with great interest", and was

38 'Die Briefe Peter Gasts an Friedrich Nietzsche' (Munich, I923-4), ii, p. 17. 89 'Gesammelte Briefe', iv, p. 362. Cf. "May I say that the tone of Bizet's orchestra is

almost the only one I can still endure? . . . How harmful for me is this Wagnerian orchestral tone! I call it sirocco. I break out into a disagreeable sweat". 'The Case of WMagner', p. 157.

40 Karl Geiringer, 'Brahms: His Life and Work', translated by H. B. Weiner and Bernard Miall (New York, i 96 I), p. 150.

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about to apply himself to 'The Gay Science'. Nietzsche was ecstatic: readers of his books were a rare commodity, and few of these were as distinguished as Brahms. Apart from the personal satisfaction this afforded, a connection with Brahms held the promise of furthering Gast's musical career. Gast had been seeking an opportunity of getting 'The Lion of Venice' performed; perhaps through Brahms's good offices, Nietzsche wondered, this might be done. He instructed his publisher to send Brahms a copy of 'The Genealogy of Morals', and also presented him, among other notables, with what he called a ''musical commentary" to 'The Gay Science': this was the 'Hymn to Life', a work for mixed chorus and orchestra. He asked Widmann if he would pass on the score to Brahms: "You see I am really, as Wagner said, an unsuccessful musician, just as he is an unsuccessful philologist".41 Nietzsche set great score by this 'Hymn', which Gast had helped him to orchestrate: it was the musical testament by which he wanted to be remembered:

This small link with music and almost with composers, to which this 'Hymn' does testify, is something of inestimable value, consider- ing the psychological problem which I am; and now it will make people think. Also in itself the 'Hymn' has some passion and serious- ness and it defines at least one central emotion among the emotions from which my philosophy has grown. Last of all, it is something for Germans, a little bridge, which might enable even this ponderous race to become interested in one of its strangest monstrosities.42

He was, understandably, anxious to see how his sole published com- position would be received. A number of friends (including Krug and Overbeck) praised it warmly. Nietzsche wrote:

Nobody else has acknowledged receipt of the 'Hymn', except Brahms (who wrote "Dr. Johannes Brahms takes the liberty of thanking you most sincerely for what you have sent him-he regards it as a signal honour, and he is grateful for the considerable stimulus he has derived from it. Most respectfully, . . .") .43

In the following year Nietzsche expressed pleasure at receiving signs of "piety and deep recognition from a number of artists, among them Dr. Brahms".44

Nietzsche, it is clear, was well satisfied with Brahms's response.

41 Elisabeth F6rster-Nietzsche, 'Friedrich Nietzsche und die Kritik', Morgen (1907), P. 490.

42 'Selected Letters', p. 273. In I887 Gast played the 'Hymn' for two Italians, revealing nothing of the text. Afterwards one exclaimed: "Magnifico! Che vigore! Questa # la vera musica ecclesiastica!" When Gast showed him the text he was incredulous, and said he had seen images of Calvary and the Stations of the Cross float before his eyes. Gast relayed the story to Nietszche, who refers jokingly to his 'hymnus ecclesiasticus' in November I887. 'Selected Letters', p. 275. Gast, like Wagner, thought Nietzsche's music too churchy; the 'Hymn', he told Nietzsche, sounded like a "crusader's march", more suited to the philosophy of a knight of the Holy Grail. 'Die Briefe Peter Gasts', i, pp. 263-6.

4" 'Gesammelte Briefe', iv, p. 343. The German text reads: "J.B. erlaubt sich hierdurch seinen verbindlichsten Dank fuir Ihre Sendung zu sagen: fur die Auszeichnung, als welche er sie empfindet, und die bedeutsamen Anregungen, welche er Ihnen verdankt. In hoher Achtung ergeben".

44 'Selected Letters', p. 282.

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As for Brahms, the biography by his friend Max Kalbeck shows that he was acutely embarrassed by Nietzsche's gesture and uncertain as to how he should acknowledge the 'Hymn' and the copy of 'The Genealogy of Morals'. Kalbeck reports finding Brahms one day chortling with self-satisfaction: "I've done it! I've extricated myself beautifully from this Nietzsche business. I simply sent him my visiting card and thanked him politely for the stimulus he had given me. The amusing thing is that I quietly avoided mentioning the music at all!" Brahms's face fell when Kalbeck pointed out that this well-intentioned card was a double-barrelled insult, first to a well-established writer and secondly to an ill-established musician. Brahms laughed again: "It'll do him good-he is such a conceited fellow, always praising himself"." Indeed, Brahms's card is so ambiguously worded that only Nietzsche's conceit or thirst for praise could have led him to see in it an unmistakable sign of "piety and deep recognition". Ironically, Brahms privately dismissed the 'Hymn' as "much the same as any young student's effort"," but it is unlikely that this curt judgment ever came to Nietzsche's ears.

Brahms never had much time for philosophy. In his early days in Vienna he had listened unmoved to Karl Tausig's exposition of Schopenhauer: only Schopenhauer's theories about music held any interest for him. His library contained few philosophical works, though he did possess a four-volume edition of Lichtenberg's mis- cellaneous writings, and Lichtenberg closely resembles Nietzsche in wit and stylistic verve. He read, probably at Widmann's suggestion, some of Nietzsche's books, and discussed them with his friends. One of the closest of these, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, summarized her impressions of Nietzsche in a letter to Brahms in November i888:

I have already abused Nietzsche with some vigour, and am always lamenting that such an intellect should have gone to the wrong man. For I do think him extremely clever despite all his vagaries, his paradoxes, and his boundless exaggerations. I have seldom been so fascinated by any book as by his 'Genealogie der Moral', for instance, and I would rather disagree with one of his calibre than agree with many others, who are more orthodox but have less to say. . . . One has to sift the wheat from the chaff as one reads, and exercise much toleration; but the remainder is worth it, and there are certain things no one but this odd person is able to say.47

She reveals that she has heard that the 'Hymn to Life' is "beneath criticism", and is appalled by Nietzsche's vanity which, she remnarks with unconscious foresight, "will bring him to a lunatic asylum yet!" (She mistakenly believed, as did Widmann and Richard Pohl, that

45 Max Kalbeck, 'Johannes Brahms' (Berlin, I 9 I), iv, pp. 157-8. 46Johannes Brahms, 'The Herzogenberg Correspondence', edited by Max Kalbeck

(New York, 1909), p. 373. A certain piquancy is lent this dismissive judgment by knowing that several commentators have found the 'Hymn to Life', which, after all, is based on the chorale of the 'Hymn to Friendship', reminiscent of Brahms. Clearly this was not Brahms's own opinion, though he had a habit of humorously denigrating his own compositions.

47 Ibid., pp. 370-7I.

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Nietzsche had himself in mind when he stated, in 'The Case of Wagner', that there was "only one musician capable today of creating an overture that is of one piece" -in fact, he was referring to Gast.) Brahms replied that Nietzsche was reputed to be "a fitting illustration of his 'Jenseits von Gut und Bose' . . . Don't waste the precious daylight too often by reading such things, and remember the saying: 'The reverse may be true' ".48 Other remarks scattered throughout the correspondence suggest that Brahms found Nietzsche's work as lugubrious as Nietzsche found Brahms's music.

This, then, was the state of affairs as it existed until the publica- tion of 'The Case of Wagner' of i888. Nietzsche was aware he had reserved the "strongest passages" for the two postscripts to this work. As he told Gast:

A lot of pepper and salt; in the second postscript I take the problem by the horns in amplified form (I shan't easily find another oppor- tunity to speak of these matters again; the form chosen this time allows me many "liberties"). Among other things, a judgment of the dead also for Brahms.49

A declaration of war upon Wagner, Nietzsche insisted, did not imply a celebration of other musicians who, beside Wagner, were of no account whatever. Wagner had the courage to explore musical decadence to the very depths: other musicians hesitated to take such a step, with the result that their music is less decisive than Wagner's:

What does Johannes Brahms matter now?-His good fortune was a German misunderstanding: he was taken for Wagner's antagonist- an antagonist was needed.-That does not make for necessary music, that makes, above all, for too much music.-If one is not rich one should have pride enough for poverty. The sympathy Brahms inspires undeniably at certain points, quite aside from this party interest, party misunderstanding, long seemed enigmatic to me-until finally I discovered, almost by accident, that he affects a certain type of man. His is the melancholy of impotence; he does not create out of an abundance, he languishes for abundance. If we discount what he imitates, what he borrows from great old or exotic-modern styles- he is a master of imitation-what remains as specifically his is yearning.-This is felt by all who are full of yearning and dissatis- faction of any kind. He is too little a person, too little a centre. This is understood by those who are 'impersonal', those on the periphery-and they love him for that. In particular, he is the musician for a certain type of dissatisfied women . . . . Brahms is touching as long as he is secretly enraptured or mourns for himself- in this he is 'modern'; he becomes cold and of no further concern to us as soon as he becomes the heir of the classical composers.- People like to call Brahms the heir of Beethoven: I know no more cautious euphemism.50

48Ibid., p. 373. "Vielleicht ist auch das Gegenteil wahr". Ever since he had stumbled on this saying in Beethoven, Brahms applied it almost habitually to contemporary philosophers he thought sophistical or equivocal.

49 'The Case of Wagner', pp. I94-5. bO Ibid., pp. I 87-8. Gast wrote to Nietzsche on i i August I888: "By 'exotic-modern

styles' in Brahms you are referring, I take it, to the Hungarian Dances. They were not written by him, but by composers some of whom are still living. But Brahms did not

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There is nothing particularly novel about this critique; the remarkable thing about it is its correspondence to the official Bay- reuth party line. Wagner, too, had objected to Brahms's mechanical over-productivity; he, too, had seen Brahms as a backward-looking eclectic and shameless plagiarist, and was nauseated by von Biilow's description of the first symphony as Beethoven's tenth:

I know famous composers whom you can meet at concert masquer- ades, today in a ballad singer's disguise . . . tomorrow in Handel's Hallelujah wig, another time as a Jewish czardas player, and then again as genuine symphonists decked out as a number ten.5'

Folksong, Handelian pastiche (the 'Song of Triumph'), Hungarian dances, symphony-Brahms was master of them all. But, Nietzsche agreed, such mastery could not save him, for Brahms was unable to furnish any justification for his use of traditional forms: he was not "strong, proud, self-assured, healthy enough" to imitate them well, and his imitation remained on the level of counterfeit:

Nothing can cure music in what counts, from what counts, from the fatality of being an expression of the physiological contradiction- of being modern. The best instruction, the most conscientious training, intimacy on principle, even isolation in the company of the old masters-all this remains merely palliative-to speak more precisely, illusory-for one no longer has the presupposition in one's body, whether this be the strong race of a Handel or whether it be the overflowing animal vitality of a Rossini.52

Wagner put it more crudely. Brahms was one of the "odd guardians of musical chastity", he wrote in his essay 'On Conducting', which one scholar describes as a rather unsubtle attempt to equate Brahms's classical virtuosity with "primness", "woodenness", and, by innuendo, with the impotence of the castrated.53 In Bayreuth circles it was rumoured in fairly loud whispers that Brahms was "the eunuch of music". By coining the notorious phrase "the melancholy of impo- tence" Nietzsche was perhaps atoning to Wagner's memory for the hopes he mistakenly placed in Brahms and for the unpleasantness of the 'Song of Triumph' episode and its repercussions.

'The Case of Wagner' caused some consternation in the Brahms dovecote and the pigeons began to flutter. Yet Brahms refrained from replying to Nietzsche's charges; such was his detestation of publicity that he once declared he would not reply publicly even if a news- paper accused him of murdering his father.54 He blandly ignored

mention them by name, so that everybody believed that he himself had written them for two pianos. Even the title gave that impression-not a pretty story! It was these dances which made Brahms famous!" 'Die Briefe Peter Gasts an Friedrich Nietzsche', ii, p. 148. In fact, Brahms was provably guiltless of plagiarism or dishonesty (see Specht, 'Brahms', pp. 235-6); Gast and Nietzsche had become so unsympathetic to Brahms that they eagerly accepted at face-value disparaging rumours that were grist to their mill.

51 Quoted by Robert W. Gutmann, 'Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind and His Music' (New York, 1968), p. 397.

5" 'The Case of Wagner', p. I88. I Gutmann, Op. cit., p. 38in. 5" Specht, 'Brahms', p. 59.

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Nietzsche's personal insinuations, mildly protesting to his friends that it was nonsense to call him Wagner's antagonist, "for I am not the man to be placed at the head of any party whatsoever. I must go my way alone and in peace, and I never crossed that of others".'6 Elisabeth von Herzogenberg tried to soothe his ruffled feelings:

[Nietzsche's] description of Wagner's style is excellent, better than anything else I have read-don't you agree? But when he goes on to discredit the worth and style of another composer, so precious to us, dismissing the subject with careless levity, I simply ignore it as I do his flippant, short-sighted depreciation of Christianity and many other things.56

Widmann rallied to Brahms's defence in the Bund, calling Nietzsche's portrait absurdly inaccurate. Allowance might be made, he con- ceded, for the possibility that the nomadic Nietzsche had not yet had the opportunity of hearing any of Brahms's symphonies, yet the scores were available had he wanted to peruse them. Moreover, it was inconsistent of Nietzsche so presumptuously to belittle a man whom a short while before he had respected enough to favour with a copy of the 'Hymn to Life'.57 In a later article he explained this inconsistency by suggesting that Nietzsche had been offended by the manner in which Brahms had acknowledged the 'Hymn'; even if Nietzsche had been pleased by the wording at first, he may later have been insulted by the omission of any direct reference to his composition (Widmann claimed he knew from personal experience how changeable Nietzsche's opinions were). Wounded vanity, he concluded, was at the bottom of it all.5s

Gast indignantly repudiated this charge. The card, he insisted, bore eloquent witness to Brahms's magnanimity, exposed as he was to many ill-informed and slanderous remarks on Nietzsche currently rife in Viennese circles. Nietzsche himself was delighted with the card, but this was really beside the point: Nietzsche never allowed personal factors to interfere with the objectivity of his zsthetic judgments. The view of Brahms in 'The Case of Wagner', Gast maintained, had been reached long before the 'Hymn' was sent. He summarized this view:

Without question Nietzsche respected Brahms; he particularly admired his North German seriousness, his austere masculine manner, his rejection, despite its fascination, of 'endless melody' [der planlosen Durcheinandermusik], his sense of logic and construction. Of course there was a good deal in Brahms's music which he found alien, emotionally cold, lifeless, stiff. . . In Brahms he missed the im- mediately captivating, the delightful, the fanciful, the emotional crescendo, the exuberance of imagination, the sheer magic of sound. 5 Ibid., p. 262. Specht adds (Brahms was then near death): "I did not at the time

dare to ask the sick master: What of the manifesto?" 56 'The Herzogenberg Correspondence', p. 371. 57 'Nietzsches Abfall von Wagner', Bund, No. 322 (Bern, 2I November I888).

Widmann could not be expected to know of Nietzsche's inability to read orchestral scores.

b8 'Brahms und Nietzsche', Zunkuft (Berlin), v (I897), pp. 326-8.

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Above all he missed the simplicity and ease of true genius and what springs from this-light, gaiety and joy, in short, all the things he wanted in the music of the future.,,

As a known deserter from the Wagnerian cause Nietzsche wanted to guard against the possible misapprehension that Brahms repre- sented his musical ideal: that is why, Gast argued, only the negative side of his attitude to Brahms appears in 'The Case of Wagner'.

Gast's account is substantially correct; he was, after all, in a better position than anyone to know the facts of the case. Widmann, however, persevered in his belief that Nietzsche was being vindic- tive-a view that certain of Brahms's biographers, including the influential Kalbeck, have unfortunately perpetuated.6o Whatever we think of Nietzsche's estimate it is wholly consistent with his earlier thinking. But Widmann remained unconvinced by Gast's argument, and vowed that he would have nothing more to do with Nietzsche. As his later reviews of 'The Antichrist' and 'The Will to Power' show, he did not keep his promise. Furthermore, he con- ceived the idea of writing an anti-naturalistic play to combat some of Nietzsche's pernicious ideas. It bore the borrowed title 'Jenseits von Gut und Bose' and received its first performance in the ducal court of Meiningen on 29 January I893; Brahms, who had admired the play from the beginning, was in the audience. Widmann told a friend how dlelighted he was with the "deep impression" the play had made:

What pleases me most of all is the fact that Brahms was so generous in his praise-I have never heard him praise anything so ecstatic- ally. He proposed a toast to the play while we were having supper in the castle after the performance. That is a quite unprecedented thing for Brahms to do!86

Later that year Brahms told Clara Schumann that she would need to know something of Nietzsche's philosophy and its influence in order to appreciate Widmann's "very fine" play. 62

Nietzsche, of course, knew nothing of these later developments. just before his collapse in a Turin street in January I889 he had been gratified to learn that 'The Case of Wagner' had received "veritable acts of homage" for its discerning exposure of decadence

59 'Nietzsche und Brahms', Zukunft (Berlin), v (I897), p. 268. 60 Cf. Kalbeck, 'Brahms', iv, p. I58; Walter & Paula Rehberg, 'Johannes Brahms:

sein Leben und scin Werk' (ZuOrich, I947), p. 324. Specht ('Brahms', p. 260) is an honour- able exception; he also puts forward an attractive speculation: "If Nietzsche had known the master's last chamber works and been able to receive them in the whole sanity of his sun-thirsting, dithyrambic nature, he would have revised his opinion of Brahms, who never before made music that so bravely affirmed life and so joyously enjoyed its sensuous pleasure" ('Brahms', p. 322).

61 Elisabeth & Max Widmann, 'J. V. Widmann: ein Lebensbild' (Leipzig, 1922-4), p. 208. In November the same year the play was presented in Berlin, the stronghold of naturalism. Though acclaimed by the public, it infuiriated a number of pro-Nietzsche critics, one of whom unkindly remarked that Widmann had as much understanding of Nietzsche as a cow has of a steam-engine.

62 Clara Schumann & Johannes Brahms, 'Briefe aus der Jahren I 853-I 896', edited by B. Litzmann (Leipzig, 1927), ii, pp. 528-9.

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in modern music and musicians: "My remarks on Brahms are said to be the last word in psychological sagacity". 63 As a patient at the Jena Clinic he spoke little, and only about music; from time to time he would break out into boisterous song. He still improvised, with sadly decreasing skill, at the piano; it was a way of keeping him occupied and calm. The death of Brahms on 3 April 1897 left him unmoved, as did the death, a few weeks later, of his mother, who had nursed him with such devotion for seven arduous years. Before long Nietzsche was dead too. At the funeral ceremony two friends of his sister sang a duet, a song of lamentation-but it was not an appropriate piece by Bizet, or Gast or even Nietzsche himself. It was the duet, Op. 66, no. 2, 'Wenn ein miider Leib begraben / Klingen Glocken ihn zur Ruh', by Johannes Brahms.

[Research for this article was made possible by a travel grant from the Canada Council, whose assistance I ami most grateful to acknowledge.]

63 'Selected Letters', p. 323.

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