Brahms was an extreme perfectionist.

Brahms was a perfectionist who destroyed many of his own early works, including a violin sonata.

He began to compose quite early in life, but later destroyed most copies of his first works ; for instance, Louise Japha, a fellow-pupil of Marxsen, reported a piano sonata, that Brahms had played or improvised at the age of 11, had been destroyed.

Even after its first few performances, Brahms destroyed the original slow movement and substituted another before the score was published.

Brahms destroyed the original version for string quintet, but published the Sonata as opus 34 bis.

Brahms had sketched a second concerto for violin and cello but destroyed his notes in the wake of its cool reception.

Johannes Brahms, whose father was a double bass player, wrote many difficult and prominent parts for the double bass in his symphonies.

Nationalist composers emerged in Central Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain: the music of Dvorak, Smetana, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Liszt, de Falla, Wagner, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Bartók and many others drew upon folk melodies.

Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works – in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries.

Thus many admirers ( though not necessarily Brahms himself ) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and " pure music ", as opposed to the " New German " embrace of programme music.

Although Wagner became fiercely critical of Brahms as the latter grew in stature and popularity, he was enthusiastically receptive of the early Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel ; Brahms himself, according to many sources ( Swafford, 1999 ), deeply admired Wagner's music, confining his ambivalence only to the dramaturgical precepts of Wagner's theory.

Brahms wrote settings for piano and voice of 144 German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life.

His works, the symphonies in particular, had detractors, most notably the influential Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick, and other supporters of Johannes Brahms ( and detractors of Wagner ), who pointed to their large size, use of repetition, and Bruckner's propensity to revise many of his works, often with the assistance of colleagues, and his apparent indecision about which versions he preferred.

Other cantatas, Beethoven's Meeresstille, works of Brahms and many notable small English choral works, such as cantatas of John Henry Maunder and John Stanley, find various ways to set poetry to choral music.

Walter made many highly acclaimed recordings of other great Germanic composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss Jr., and Anton Bruckner, as well as of Bach, Wagner, Schumann, Dvorak, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, and others.

The critic William Mann along with many others, regarded him as a " supremely authoritative " conductor of Brahms, Cardus disagreed: " In German music Monteux, naturally enough, missed harmonic weight and the right heavily lunged tempo.

* Trios with clarinet include masterpieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Bartok ; many more works are listed in the articles Clarinet-violin-piano trio, Clarinet-viola-piano trio and Clarinet-cello-piano trio.

The group proceeded to record acclaimed interpretations of many other composers, notably Brahms and Haydn, and won the first ever Grammy Award for Chamber Music in 1977.

Furtwängler, whom many regard as the greatest interpreter of Wagner ( although Toscanini was also admired in this composer ) and Bruckner, conducted Beethoven and Brahms with a good deal of inflection of tempo – but generally in a manner that revealed the structure and direction of the music particularly clearly.

Field was very highly regarded by his contemporaries and his playing and compositions influenced many major composers, including Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt.

A number of Joachim's composer colleagues, including Schumann, Brahms, Bruch, and Dvořák composed concerti with Joachim in mind, many of which entered the standard repertory.

The Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio made many recordings, particularly of music by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert.

Brahms worked on the composition for some years, as was the case with many of his works.

This first concerto also demonstrates Brahms ' particular interest in scoring for the timpani and the horn, both of whose parts are notoriously difficult, with the timpani playing repeated notes for extended periods of time and the horn part being difficult for its many prominent usages with or without the piano.

He attended many musical evenings at the Wittgenstein home with such Viennese musicians of the day as Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Bruno Walter, and Richard Strauss.

The lyricism of Eichendorff's poetry is much praised, and his poems have been set by many composers, including Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans Pfitzner, and Alexander Zemlinsky.

Dvořák ’ s Symphony No. 6 has many similarities to symphonies by Brahms and Beethoven, as well as references to Czech folk tunes.

He has also recorded many romantic and classical choral and orchestral works, including the works of Johannes Brahms.

In the hands of a skilled composer or arranger, the natural harmonics can be used to haunting melancholy effect or, by contrast, to create a charming pastoral flavor, as in the lilting " Ranz des Vaches " and works by Brahms, Rossini, and Britten cited below.

Bartók's large-scale orchestral works were still in the style of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, but he wrote a number of small piano pieces which showed his growing interest in folk music.

Bassists may apply more rosin in works for large orchestra ( e. g., Brahms symphonies ) than for delicate chamber works.

Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos ( No. 1 in D minor ; No. 2 in B-flat major ), a Violin Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and two companion orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.

Despite his reputation as a serious composer of large, complex musical structures, some of Brahms's most widely known and most commercially successful compositions during his life were small-scale works of popular intent aimed at the thriving contemporary market for domestic music-making ; indeed, during the 20th century, the influential American critic B. H. Haggin, rejecting more mainstream views, argued in his various guides to recorded music that Brahms was at his best in such works and much less successful in larger forms.

Among the most cherished of these lighter works by Brahms are his sets of popular dances — the Hungarian Dances, the Waltzes, Op.

Brahms venerated Beethoven: in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style.

Brahms also edited works by C. P. E. and W. F. Bach.

The latter's influence may be identified in works by Brahms dating from the period, such as the two piano quartets Op.

The influence of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Brahms is less obvious, although occasionally one can find in his works what seems to be an allusion to one of theirs ( for example, Brahms's Scherzo, Op.

Antonín Dvořák, who received substantial assistance from Brahms, deeply admired his music and was influenced by it in several works, such as the Symphony No. 7 in D minor and the F minor Piano Trio.

Brahms had amassed a small fortune in the second half of his career, around 1860, when his works sold widely.

A comprehensive ( 752 pages ) look at the life and works of Brahms.

* Johannes Brahms: list of works from http :// www. johannesbrahms. org

* Brahms ’ scores – selection of printable works.

* Free scores of Brahms Lieder and orchestral works in GIF format from the Variations Project at Indiana University.

* Performances of works by Johannes Brahms in MIDI and MP3 formats at Logos Virtual Library

From his earliest works, Brahms wrote music that prominently featured the viola.