Johannes Brahms
In 1833, Johannes Brahms was born in Germany. As a teenager playing for drunken sailors in a Hamburg bar, Brahms would prop up books of poetry to read as a diversion. His favorite poet was the anticlerical G.F. Daumer, described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as "an enemy of Christianity". Brahms' works were influenced by such writers as Hoffman, Friedrich Schiller and Robert Burns. He was well-read in philosophy and science, and was an avid hiker who took inspiration from nature. When asked by a conductor to add additional sectarian text to his German Requiem, Brahms responded, "As far as the text is concerned, I confess that I would gladly omit even the word German and instead use Human; also with my best knowledge and will I would dispense with passages like John 3:16." (Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography). A liberal, Brahms ardently opposed anti-Semitism, was approachable even at the height of his fame, and was always generous with his time and charity. Biographer Swafford writes of the young composer: "Though he was to be a freethinker in religion, Johannes pored over the Bible beyond the requirements for his Protestant confirmation." From then on, "Music was Brahms' religion." According to Swafford, Brahms was "a humanist and an agnostic." After nearly 64 years of near perfect health, never even enduring a headache, Brahms succumbed quickly to liver cancer. There was no deathbed conversion. D. 1897.
In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs". The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.
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“Leave off driving your composers. It might prove to be as dangerous as it is generally unnecessary. After all, composing cannot be turned out like spinning or sewing. Some respected colleagues (Bach, Mozart, Schubert) have spoilt the world terribly. But if we can’t imitate them in the beauty of their writing, we should certainly beware of seeking to match the speed of their writing. It would also be unjust to put all the blame on idleness alone. Many factors combine to make writing harder for us (my contemporaries), and especially me. If, incidentally, they would use us poets for some other purpose, they would see that we are thoroughly and naturally industrious dispositions . . . . I have no time: otherwise I should love to chat on the difficulty of composing and how irresponsible publishers are.”
“The only true immortality lies in one's children.[Letter to his friend, Richard Heuberger]”
“If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.”