Johannes Brahms: A Biography
A New York Times Notable Book
“This brilliant and magisterial book is a very good bet to…become the definitive study of Johannes Brahms.”–The Plain Dealer
Judicious, compassionate, and full of insight into Brahms’s human complexity as well as his music, Johannes Brahms is an indispensable biography.
Proclaimed the new messiah of Romanticism by Robert Schumann when he was only twenty, Johannes Brahms dedicated himself to a long and extraordinarily productive career. In this book, Jan Swafford sets out to reveal the little-known Brahms, the boy who grew up in mercantile Hamburg and played piano in beer halls among prostitutes and drunken sailors, the fiercely self-protective man who thwarted future biographers by burning papers, scores and notebooks late in his life. Making unprecedented use of the remaining archival material, Swafford offers richly expanded perspectives on Brahms’s youth, on his difficult romantic life–particularly his longstanding relationship with Clara Schumann–and on his professional rivalry with Lizst and Wagner.
“[Johannes Brahms] will no doubt stand as the definitive work on Brahms, one of the monumental biographies in the entire musical library.”–London Weekly Standard
“It is a measure of the accomplishment of Jan Swafford’s biography that Brahms’s sadness becomes palpable…. [Swafford] manages to construct a full-bodied human being.”–The New York Times Book Review
The brilliant biographer of a quintessentially American, prototypically modern musician (Charles Ives) proves just as masterful in probing the life and art of a 19th-century German composer. Writing with passionate clarity that perfectly matches the genius of Brahms (1833-97), Jan Swafford traces the emotional wellsprings of this secretive man’s music without trivializing art into mere autobiography. A composer himself, Swafford understands and lucidly conveys Brahms’s unique position in musical history: beloved by many, emulated by few, the triumphant yet melancholy heir of a tradition coming to an end in his lifetime.