Brahms and E. T. A.

Hoffmann
Author(s): Siegfried Kross
Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1982), pp. 193-200
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746459
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Brahms and E. T. A. Hoffmann
SIEGFRIED KROSS
The autograph of Brahms's Piano Sonata in C
Major, the first of his printed works to which
an opus number was given,1 not only bears the
title Vierte Sonate fur das Piano-which
shows that three works of the same genre had
preceded op. 1-but is signed at the end "Fine.
[oh. Kreisler jun." The conclusion of the
Sonata in F Minor, op.5, displays the same
pseudonym, while the double bars at the end of
each movement are drawn out to an elaborate
"B"-the initial of the composer's true sur-
name. Other autographs also bear this mystify-
ing signature, such as the Rondo after Weber,
dated "Fine. 1852," and the Piano Trio in B, op.
8, which is inscribed at the end "Hannover
Januar 54. Kreisler jun." A noteworthy combi-
'The Sonata in F# Minor, op. 2, was composed earlier but
printed later, in order to feature the more mature work.
0148-2076/82/010193+08$00.50 ? 1982 by The Regents of
the University of California.
nation of Brahms's own name with the ficti-
tious, adopted one can be seen in the autograph
of the Little Variations on a Theme by Him,
Dedicated to Her, op. 9. Here the ending reads
"Disseldorf luni 1854" and the dedication,
which gives the date of completion and deliv-
ery as 15 June 1854, is signed with his own
name. But while the double bars at the end of
variations 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, and 16 are extended
out to form a "B" for Brahms, those of varia-
tions 5, 6, 9, 12, and 13 form a "Kr" for Kreisler
(see plate 1).2
2The autographs of these "Kreisler" works are at present in
the following locations: op. 1 is in the Osterreichische
Nationalbibliothek in Vienna; op. 5 is in the Brahms-
Archiv of the Hamburg Staats-und Universitatsbibliothek;
the original version of op. 8 is in private hands in Switzer-
land, but is available on film in the Hoboken Photo-
gramm-Archiv of the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek;
the op. 9 Variations and the Rondo after Weber are in Vi-
enna at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The Rondo is
printed in vol. XV (p. 6) of the Brahms Samtliche Werke,
and in the Dover reprint of that volume.
193
 19TH Brahms's identification with Kapellmeister
CENTURY
MUSIC Kreisler appears in a significantly different way
in his correspondence. (It should be borne in
mind that very little of this has been preserved
from the earliest years.) From the letters,
which are after all communications between
real persons, it becomes clear that this iden-
tification applied only to Brahms's artistic and
poetic existence. Despite the extensive use of
the name Kreisler to indicate the author of his
compositions, Brahms seems never to have
signed a letter with it. It is most remarkable
that the name of Kreisler plays hardly any role
in his correspondence with Joseph Joachim,
whom he entrusted with the continuation of
his literary commonplace book, the Schatz-
kdstlein des jungen Kreislers-Joachim,
who even completed the Schatzkdstlein with
his own entries, and who was thus closely in-
volved in the Kreisler cult. Joachim used the
name only once in the correspondence for a
salutation;3 Brahms himself never used it,
perhaps because of Joachim's skepticism about
such literary disguises. On the other hand,
Julius Otto Grimm addressed Brahms as
Kreisler for a long time;4 he also referred to
Brahms in this way in most of his corre-
spondence with Joachim.5 After 10 November
1854 the name Kreisler appears nowhere in the
correspondence of the Brahms circle.
Though most of the allusions to the name
Kreisler occur after Brahms's first meeting
with Robert Schumann (30 September 1853),
the date on the autograph of the Rondo after
Weber, 1852, and the undated signature of the
C-Major Sonata (which was already finished
when Brahms came to Diisseldorf) both dem-
onstrate that the process of identification
with Kreisler was complete before Brahms en-
tered the Schumann circle and thus was not
associated with their literary interests and
tendencies. This fact is important for an under-
standing of the young Brahms's Schatzkdst-
3Letter of April 1854, Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel (16
vols., Berlin, 1907-22), V, 36.
4Letters written between 21 December 1853 and October
1854, Briefwechsel IV, 1, 2, 4.
5Letters of 9 March, July, and 10 November 1854, Brief-
wechsel V, 27, 36, 48, 71.
194
lein.6 It is a pity that the beginning of this
collection bears no date, only a reference to
Hamburg as the place of origin; one could
therefore assume that it was begun before he
met Schumann (though the reference consti-
tutes no proof, of course, since Brahms often
went back to Hamburg). The difficulty with
this collection is that its entries, like the corre-
spondence and Brahms's musical autographs,
refer to the figure of Kapellmeister Kreisler
rather than to his creator, the poet-musician-
painter Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
(1776-1822). Hoffmann appears only once,
with a minor excerpt from his Serapions-
bruder. The title of this collection, however,
Schatzkdstlein des jungen Kreisler, is bor-
rowed directly from the work of Hoffmann: "I
would think, Kreisler, that in your present tol-
erable mood you could do nothing better than
to open your heart or your soul or whatever you
call that little inner treasure chest [Schatzkdst-
lein] and take out this and that from it."7
The identification with Kreisler, which
lends all Brahms's early works a strongly liter-
ary tendency, is accepted by most commen-
tators on Brahms without further inquiry, or
with simply a reference to the creator of the
figure of Kreisler, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and espe-
cially to his novel, Lebensansichten des Katers
Murr, known in English as The Life and Opin-
ions of Kater Murr. But the problems raised by
this identification are widely ignored-that is,
that Kapellmeister Kreisler already led a highly
complicated literary existence of his own in
the work of his creator. Kreisler appears there
in three different roles: (1) Hoffmann signed
some of his music reviews with this name; (2)
Kreisler, with strongly autobiographical fea-
6Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkdstlein, ed. Carl Krebs (Ber-
lin, 1909).
7The Life and Opinions of Kater Murr, in Selected Writings
of E. T. A. Hoffmann, ed. and trans. Leonard J. Kent and
Elizabeth C. Knight (Chicago, 1969), vol. II, The Novel, p.
77. All future page references to Kater Murr in this article
are taken from this English version, by permission of the
University of Chicago Press. Translation ) 1969 by
The University of Chicago.
The latest German edition of the novel, in Hoffmann's
Werke, III (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1967), takes its text
from the newly revised edition by Herbert Kraft and Man-
fred Wacher (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1958).
 ^
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Plate 1: Johannes Brahms, Variationen uiber ein Thema von Ihm Ihr zugeeignet, op. 9.
Reproduced by permission from the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna (MS A145, p. 7).

tures, appears in the Fantasiestu'cke in Callots senior (in Kater Murr)."9 Later on he promised
Manier of 1814-158 with statements on the to send her the other literary source for
world of the romantic artist-statements de- Kreisler, the Fantasiestuicke in Callots Ma-
veloped partly in collaboration with Friedrich nier.10 But strictly speaking these are only
de la Motte-Fouqu6 (1777-1845) after Hoff- after-effects of the true impact of Hoffmann on
mann had discovered the spiritual relationship Brahms.In his correspondenceas well as in his
of his figure Kreisler with Wallbom, the works, its traces are lost near the end of 1854.
romantic poet in de la Motte-Fouqu6's novella The reference to Kater Murr tells us little,
Ixion, published in 1811; and (3) Kreisleris one though it seems to be widely accepted in the
of the central figures in Hoffmann's Kater Brahms literature as sufficient clarification of
Murr, published in 1819-22. this whole question. First, the novel was never
Brahms appreciated Hoffmann's under- completed by Hoffmann; the third part, which
standing of the arts, especially of music. How- was probably going to reunite the different
ever, a direct reference to Hoffmann cannot be levels of the plot, was announced but never
found until Brahms introduced Clara written, probably because of the plot's com-
Schumann to the literary world of the so-called plexity. The second problem is the very intri-
"ghostly [Gespenster] Hoffmann" in 1854. In cate literary structure-a psychologial novel
addition to recommending several Hoffmann
works to her, he names the source of his
identification with Kapellmeister Johannes
Kreisler:"You really must get to know Kreisler 9Letter of 21 August 1854: Clara Schumann-Johannes
Brahms: Briefe aus den Jahren 1853-1896, ed. Berthold
Litzmann (Leipzig, 1927), I, 16. See also Litzmann, Clara
Schumann: Ein Kunstlerleben nach Tagebuchern und
Briefen, rev. edn. (Leipzig, 1925; rpt. 1971), II, 323.
8In volumes I (1814) and IV (1815), parts of which were 'Letter of 24 October 1854. Schumann-Brahms Briefe I,
written earlier and published separately. 25.
195
 19TH that runs along two levels of action, to neither
CENTURY
MUSIC of which Kreisler belongs completely. At the
same time the work satirizes the classical
novel of education, or Bildungsroman. On this
level, Hoffmann himself appears only as the
supposed editor of the memories of a tom-
cat-Kater Murr-who has the ability to
speak and who professes a keen interest in
poetry. All the stages of a Bildungsroman are
reflected in the distorting mirror of the cat
world and of cat mentality.
Awkwardly enough, the fictitious feline is
supposed to have written his original manu-
script on waste paper already printed with
another psychological novel, whose hero is-
Kapellmeister Kreisler. Not recognizing the
situation, the printer set the sheets continu-
ously, so that parts of Kreisler's biography al-
ternate with the cat's reminiscences, both re-
maining fragmentary. As if this were not com-
plicated enough, the parody of education and
society on the cat level is contrasted with the
highly stylized but equally fictitious world of
Kreisler, that of a tiny principality in the late
absolutist period. The artist has no birthright
in either sphere-neither in the bourgeois cat
world nor in the stylized life of court society.
Yet he is the true subject of the novel, which
perhaps remained a fragment because it was
impossible to rationalize these two levels
plausibly.
Brahms clearly identified with this frag-
mentary Kreisler. But we see how little of this
identification is explained by mere reference to
the literary sources of the figure of Kreisler, or
even to Kater Murr.
II
If one wants to get beyond the vague empty
formula that Brahms adopted the name of the
character Kreisler because he identified with
him, one has to look into the matter more
closely. Which are the statements in the liter-
ary sources that may be regarded as starting
points for the process of identification? How
does this identification manifest itself in the
character of Brahms?
To a highly sensitive young man of sixteen
or seventeen, as Brahms was in the period of
Hoffmann's first impact on him, there are in-
deed phrases in Hoffmann's work that must
196
have seemed addressed expressly to him.
Hoffmann's stories must have seemed like the
tales of the unknown stranger in Kreisleriana,
no. 7, "which in an inexplicable manner
brought dark, shapeless presentiments before
the mind's eye in a luminous, intelligible
form."'l Because Brahms had, by chance, the
same first name as Kreisler, certain passages
must have sounded like a direct address: "Once
more, dear Johannes! Who knows you better
than I, and who else possesses the authority to
say that you have now gained the mastery
which is necessary to begin true and proper
learning?"'2 And when he began to reach out
past what he could lear in Hamburg, espe-
cially from Marxsen, who was rooted in the
Beethoven tradition, Brahms must have felt
that Hoffmann described precisely his frame of
mind. In the same article he read:
At this time my inclination to music grew day by
day, and my father, a good musician himself, took
responsibility for instructing me carefully. He in-
tended to train not only a good performer,but proba-
bly a composer too, since I so assiduously searched
out at the piano melodies and chords, which often
had much expression and coherence. But often I
wanted to weep bitterly-and indeed resolved in
faint-hearted despair never to touch the piano
again-for whenever I touched the keyboard,it gave
forth something other than what I had intended.
Unknown songs that I had never heardbeforeflowed
through my soul, and they seemed to me not my
father's song, but rather those songs which sounded
around me like ghostly voices.13
These "songs" Brahms felt to be the essen-
tials which had to be awakened to artistic exis-
tence. What was as yet unnamed yearning and
"miraculous presentiment"-this "I often
heard resound like marvelous ghostly voices,
when the wind rushed through the leaves; but
the melodies the voices sang, which had long
rested in my bosom, now awoke and lived."14 It
is evident that Brahms found here, expressed
l Hoffmann, "Johannes Kreislers Lehrbrief" (Fantasie-
stucke in Callots Manier, v. 4, Kreisleriana, no. 7), Werke
(Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1967), I, 271.
An English translation of this tale appears at the begin-
ning of this issue of 19th-Century Music-EDITORS
12Ibid.
13Ibid.,p. 274.
14Ibid.,p. 275.
on a linguistic level unreachable by him, feel-
ings that occupied him at the time and that
only found a means of expression through his
understanding of Schumann and his work,
which did not occur until much later.15
The goal of this process of recognizing his
own creative powers, and the course he had to
adopt in order to develop his abilities beyond
mere romantic enthusiasm, were already per-
fectly defined by Hoffmann:
The musician, that is, he in whose soul music de-
velops to a distinct and clear consciousness, is
everywhere bathed in melody and harmony.... Just
as, accordingto the statement of a gifted physicist,16
hearing is seeing from within, so for the musician
seeing is hearingfrom within, that is listening to the
innermost consciousness of music, which, vibrating
simultaneously with his soul, resonates from all
that his eye takes in.... With knowledge, the inner
will increases.... The more animated, the more
penetrating the perception grows, the higher the
musician stands as a composer; and his capability to
recordand to fix those impulses as signs and letters
is the art of composing.17
Even Brahms's exchanging of his real family
name for the name Kreisler is anticipated
by Hoffmann: "I will call you by the gentle
name Johannes so that I may at least hope that
behind the satyr's mask a gentle spirit is hid-
den after all. And then! I will never be con-
vinced that the bizarre name Kreisler was not
smuggled in and substituted for a quite dif-
ferent family name" (Kater Murr, p. 59).
III
There remains the problem that Brahms
identified with a complex literary figure-a
figure who appears on many levels of the plot
and who is endowed with many autobiographi-
cal features of his author-even
though
Hoffmann describes his character as one
threatened by madness. In the Brahms litera-
ture we usually read the simple statement that
Brahms, in his romantic exuberance, took on
S1Brahms told Joachim that he came to know and revere
(kennen und verehren)Schumann's music only in the fall
of 1853, at Mehlem, on his way to Diisseldorf. See letter of
September 1853, Briefwechsel V, 9.
16JohannWilhelm Ritter (1776-1810), Fragmenteaus dem
Nachlasse eines jungen Physikers (Tiibingen, 1810)I, 224.
17WerkeI, 276.
the name of the "half-mad" Kapellmeister SIEGFRIED KROSS
Brahmsand
Kreisler. In Kater Murr Hoffmann writes of his E. T. A. Hoffmann
hero (who is really an anti-hero) in the follow-
ing terms: "The present biographer unfortu-
nately finds it necessary, if the portrait is to be
accurate, to present his hero as an absurd per-
son who, in regard to his enthusiasm for music,
seems to the calm observer almost like a ma-
niac" (p. 114). And the artist inwardly accepts
the way he must appear from the perspective of
a calm observer-but only "almost" like a
maniac. "Kreisler ... had had the fixed notion
that insanity was lurking near him, like a wild
beast thirsting for its prey, and that it would
sometime suddenly tear him to pieces" (Kater
Murr, p. 133).
In another passage this state of "madness' is
described much more clearly. It already appears
to be more a state of stress felt by the artist
between an external reality and an inner, artis-
tic one:
When I felt myself free, then the indescribable rest-
lessness which, since my earliest years, has so
often torn me took hold of me. It is not the yearning
which ... endures forever because it is never
fulfilled, neither deceived nor cheated, but only
not fulfilled so that it does not die; no-there often
erupts a barren, insane desire for something that I
am restlessly seeking outside myself although it is
concealed in me; a dark secret, a confused puzzling
dream of a very highly satisfying paradise which
even the dream is unable to name, only to surmise;
and this presentiment tortures me with the agony of
Tantalus (p. 63).
But a little later Hoffmann himself ironi-
cally prescribes the means to cure such a state
of stress, which appears much less as madness
in the true sense than as a tension between the
artist and his environment caused by differing
behavioral norms:
Let the worthy composer become a conductor or
musical director, let the poet become a court writer,
the painter a court portraitist, the sculptor a creator
of court likenesses, and you will shortly have no
more useless visionaries in the country, nothing but
useful citizens of good education and gentle man-
ners! (p. 64).
In his Kreisleriana Hoffmann had already
described the reaction of the public to the ar-
tist's goal of stirring and indeed unsettling the
souls of his audience. This goal was defamed as
madness:
197
19TH If you haven't alreadynoticed, I shall now reveal to
iEMUSIC you that poets and musicians are joined in a very
dangerouspact against the public. They intend no-
thing less than to drive spectators out of the real
world, where they feel really comfortable,and ... to
torment them with all possible emotions and pas-
sions highly dangerous to their health ... But who
shall prevent this nonsense? Who shall see to it that
the theater remains a reasonable relaxation, that all
remains calm and quiet, and that no psychically and
physically dangerous passion will be aroused?Who
shall do that? None other than yourselves, gentle-
men! You have the delightful duty to unite against
the poets and musicians for the good of educated
mankind. The first principle from which you must
proceed in all your efforts is: war against the poets
and musicians, destruction of their evil plan to en-
circle the spectator with false illusions and drive
him out of the real world.18
In the long run the artist is not mad, but
only appears mad when reflected in the con-
sciousness of a society which does not perceive
the truth of his inner, romantic, artistic
reality-which cannot perceive it, and there-
fore denies it. "As far as music is concerned,
only incorrigible despisers of this noble art can
deny that a successful composition, that is, one
which duly keeps within bounds and lets one
agreeable melody follow another without rais-
ing a ruckus or making a fool of itself with all
sorts of contrapuntal passages and resolu-
tions-that such a composition provides us
with an excellently comfortable impulse to
exempt ourselves entirely from thinking."19 It
is recommended to carry on a light conversa-
tion when listening to music, because music
makes conversation unusually easy, as can be
seen at most concerts and recitals. Only mad-
men may discern more in art. "They think that
art lets people divine their own higher princi-
ples.... And of music these madmen hold the
most thoroughly eccentric opinions; they call
it the most romantic of all arts, since its object
is the infinite."20 Precisely with these notions,
which he here derogates as mad ones, Hoff-
mann had himself characterized Beethoven's
instrumental music.21
18Ibid.,p. 55-56.
19Ibid.,p. 32.
20Ibid., p. 34.
2lIbid., p. 37. English translation in Oliver Strunk, Source
Readings in Music History (New York, 1950), pp. 775-81.
198
The artist is not mad-but he is so charac-
terized by a society that neither can nor wants
to understand him, and that above all does not
want its tranquility and self-satisfaction dis-
turbed. It is therefore not true that Brahms
identified with a "halfmad" artist. He iden-
tified only with a kind of art whose desire for
inner truth in its artistic manifestations was so
strong that it could be understood by society
only as madness. In the Fantasietuzcke in
Callots Manier, Hoffmann asserted bitterly
that almost no artist comes from the upper
classes; if an upper- or middle-class family is
unfortunate enough to have a child with strong
inclinations to the arts, this must be corrected
by the proper education until the child is rein-
doctrinated into the common contempt for the
arts and artists.22
Only through irony, then, can the true ar-
tist defend himself against the demands of both
the artificial court world and the trivial society
portrayed in Kater Murr. Because the artist be-
longs to neither of these worlds, although he is
a part of them, his irony is always interpreted
by the society around him as mad, bizarre
humor and bitterness. But, as Kreisler says in
the novel, "I certainly love a joke, but only a
bad one; and then it is not a joke any more"
(Kater Murr, p. 178).
It is useless to ask whether Brahms culti-
vated his surly irony in response to the image
of the artist presented here, or if he could read-
ily identify with this image because irony was
one of his own most prominent characteristics.
The Bildungsroman Kater Murr had already
shown him how society would react to his
irony. "If his cynical contempt for all conven-
tional relations, his defiance of the customary
forms, bears witness to a superior intelligence,
then we must all bend our knees before this
Kapellmeister; but he should leave us in peace
and not attack everything that is recognized as
a correct, realistic view of life and as the basis
of our contentment. Therefore! Heaven be
praised that he is gone; I hope never to see him
again" (p. 197).
There is no doubt about what constitutes
the "correct, realistic view of life." And the
22Ibid., p. 35.
spiritual dilemma of the artist existing in a
higher "reality" will be understood as follows
by those with whom he must deal in real life:
"Isn't our friend inwardly so lacerated that life
can no longer give him peace?" (p. 197-98). For
"it is a dangerousgame to set yourself up above
convention and to try to approachcloser to the
world spirit in the mystifying of one's own be-
ing" (p. 198).
The romantic artist is not integrated into
bourgeois society because this trivial world is
too narrowfor him. He confronts society: "The
spirit of true love dwells in [the artist]; but can
it warm a heart that is frozen for all eternity, in
which, indeed, there never was the spark
which that spirit can inflame?" (p. 198). One
could scarcely formulate more precisely the
idea that constitutes the romantic artist's un-
derstanding of himself. Even today we can
imagine without difficulty the impression
these texts must have made on a highly sensi-
tive young man, one who was filled with that
nameless yearning of romanticism and who
was still on the way to finding himself.
Notwithstanding the usual view expressed
in the Brahmsliterature, Brahmswas evidently
led to his identification with Kreisler less by
that character's adventures in the novel than
by Hoffmann's general statements (even when
these are part of the novel's plot23) about the
romantic artist and his art, and their function
or dysfunction in society. Kater Murris a novel
of psychological growth and change, so we
cannot simply suggest an identification based
on its statements about romantic art and
music, and on their social functions. We are
less interested in the action of the novel than
in the changes it causes in the hero. The
changes can be seen first in Kreisler's attitude
to his own work. Its fragmentary, "bizarre"
character disappears; compositions emerge
from the center of his being and are mellow,
sweetly melancholy, instead of painfully ex-
pressive (Kater Murr, p. 233). Kreisler is now
delighted with his own artistic products (p.
234). Seeing his image reflected in a lake, he
can say: "The person who is going next to me
down there is a calm, thoughtful man who, no
23Ibid., III. See, for example, pp. 246-47.
longer buzzing wildly around in vague, endless SIEGFRIED KROSS
Brahms and
spaces, holds firmly to the established path; E. T. A. Hoffmann
and it is a lucky thing for me that the person is
none other than I myself" (p. 216).
But as Brahms became increasingly con-
scious of his own artistic genius, the shifting of
romantic yearning to rational, conscious crea-
tion from the center of his being must have
made the identification with Kreisler dubious.
Brahmshimself was well aware of this when he
wrote to Clara Schumann on 15 August 1854:
"I often argue with myself, which means that
Kreislerand Brahmsare struggling. But usually
each of them has his own opinion and they
fight it out. This time, however, both are ut-
terly confused, and neither knows what he
wants."24The identification has progressed to
a stage at which Kreisler and Brahms are be-
coming dissociated; although the two per-
sonalities are still experienced as different as-
pects of one and the same man, Kreisler is
obviously seen as the earlier phase of the not-
fully-developed consciousness of the other.
Shortly thereafter Kreisler disappears com-
pletely from the biography of Brahms.
IV
There remains the difficult question of the
consequences of the identification, at least for
Brahms'sbiography.He himself seems to have
provideda clue when he comparedthe Court of
Detmold with that in Kater Murr and Clara
Schumann with the characterof Julia: "But we
shall not compare Julia and Kreisler any
further; otherwise strange differences will ap-
pear."25But to follow such traces would mean
abandoning the methods of historical research
and pursuing the less certain path of possible
literary motivation. Moreover, a novel is no
textbook for living.
More concrete statements are, however,
possible about Brahms's artistic production. I
have already referred to the Schatzkdstlein.
Psychologically, Kalbeck's well-known in-
terpretation of the inscription Brahms wrote
above the second movement of his D-Minor
Piano Concerto, op. 15, "Benedictus qui venit
in nomine Domini," seems very dubious to
24Clara Schumann-Johannes Brahms: Briefe I, 9.
25Ibid., p. 118 (26 June 1855).
199
19TH me.26He assumes that the inscription refers to
CENTURY
MUSIC Schumann, who was addressed as "Mynheer
Domine" by the members of his circle. But this
would mean that Brahms had dared to speak
"in nomine Domine," that is, on behalf of
Schumann, a presumption of which he would
never have been guilty. Nor is it convincing to
interpret the inscription as a reference to the
Ordinaryof the Mass.
The real answer is, I believe, to be found in
Hoffmann. In Kater Murr this verse is written
on the portal of the Abbey Kanzheim where
JohannesKreisler ultimately finds himself and
achieves peace of mind (p. 230). If we recall
how Brahms struggled over the properform for
his op. 15-it began as a piano sonata, then be-
came a symphony, and ended up as a piano
concerto-the finishing of the first movement
and the beginning of the second may very
plausibly be seen in connection with the figure
of Kreisler. The "Benedictus" above the slow
movement would then mark Brahms'spassage
from the bizarre style of the Kreislerperiod to
the secure knowledge of his own artistry. It
would therefore characterize the emotional
content of this movement only to a limited ex-
tent, and would not refer at all to Robert (or
Clara)Schumann.
Brahms had intended to entitle some piano
pieces "Leavesfrom a Musician's Diary, edited
by Young Kreisler."27Joachim, however, regis-
26Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4th edn. (Berlin, 1921), I,
166.
27Bldtter aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers, herausgege-
ben vom jungen Kreisler. See Briefwechsel V, 43, and Kal-
beck, Brahms I, 173.
200
tered his firm disapproval: "But I must de-
cidedly object to the title. At the time of
Hoffmann and Jean Paul, such obfuscations
were a novelty, and were the expression of a
certain disarming insolence which sought to
outwit the Philistines in every possible way.
Nowadays meaningless usage has reduced such
titles to a mere fashion."28Brahmsnever pub-
lished any pieces under this title, nor any of the
exercises for piano he had entitled in manu-
script "Fantasies in Callot's Most Daring
Manner."29
PerhapsJoachim's criticism accelerated the
process of the dissociation of Brahms and
Kreisler.The process may explain what at first
seems so extraordinarily playful in the auto-
graphof the op. 9 variations, the drawingout of
the double-bar lines into the initials of the
names Brahmsand Kreisler.It is evident, how-
ever, that this was no random game, but that
"Brahms"(variations4, 7, 8, 11, 14, and 16) and
"Kreisler" (variations 5, 6, 9, 12, and 13), al-
ready dissociated, are being used to create a
typology of characters in which the "satyr-
mask" of Kreisler is opposed to the calmly
self-confident personality of Brahms, who now
no longer needed such mystifications.- But
this is the point at which biographical-literary
analysis of the relationship between Brahms
and Hoffmann must pass on its task to -.
musical analysis and style criticism. '-
28Ibid., p. 47.
29Fantasiestucke in Callot's kiihnster Manier. Sammlung
Wittgenstein. Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien,
Photogramm-Archiv, No. 228.