In the two summers of 1884 and 1885, Brahms stole away from Vienna to the countryside of Mürzzuschlag, in the Austrian Alps, to write his Fourth Symphony. During those months, he began to realize that his time on earth was growing short, and that this Fourth might well be his last work in his beloved symphonic genre. And so the Fourth then took on a tenor of deep loss and finality for Brahms. As a devotee of early music history, Brahms wanted to acknowledge his musical forebearers, on whose shoulders he had perfected his own compositional genius. “Archaic” music (which Brahms considered as the music of Bach and before him), therefore, would inform Brahms’s Fourth together with his much-admired Beethoven’s Symphonies. By weaving these inspirations together, Brahms not only achieved a masterpiece, but created one of the towering musical works in Western music.

The opening to the first movement, Allegro non troppo (fast, but not too much) feels gentle and serene, tinged with a feeling of melancholy. Woven through its bucolic nature is Brahms’s symphonic testament as well as his love of older music. Right away, the upper strings play two short, alternating motives: the first, a mournful “sigh” of two notes descending in an interval of a third, followed by their musical inversion of an interval of an ascending sixth – meanwhile, one beat afterwards in response, the woodwinds repeat the strings’ alternating motives in a canon (an old musical form that makes a melody echo itself in harmony). And with this opening, Brahms conveys two important elements: first is the “sighing” character of the opening motive, which was historically a musical technique signaling sadness. Second is his use of the canon, one of the oldest musical structures in Western music, and which was used particularly effectively by Bach; Brahms thereby celebrates his deep appreciation for “archaic” music. Throughout the rest of the movement, Brahms brings the musical material through the standard architecture of the Beethoven-esque symphony, while making the music battle between the opening’s veiled gracefulness and a sense of mounting angst. And near the end of the movement, at about seven-and-a half minutes in, an especially magical moment of music occurs. Here, as the tempo becomes ominously slower, the orchestra comes to a suspended hush. Now, the winds have taken up the “sighing” motive in a faltering rhythm and are answered by the strings with rising musical stirrings like cosmic wisps. The ethereal beauty of this passage, however, does not linger. Soon, everything changes as the movement concludes in an accretion of fury, ending with four brutal strokes on the timpani.

The second movement, Andante, begins in an atmosphere of quietude and is filled with deep pathos. Like the first movement, it too begins with a nod to archaic music, by Brahms’s setting of it in the Phrygian mode – essentially a “white-note” scale beginning on ‘E,’ which dates back to ancient Greece (but which Brahms would have known from his scholarship in Renaissance music). As the opening theme gently unfolds in the horn, this unusual scale causes some uncommon intervals to occur, creating a sense of loss and loneliness. That horn’s theme gradually works its way through several variations and builds into one of the most lyrical moments in the entire Symphony, albeit underpinned with a deep melancholy. The ending gradually retreats into the Andante’s original quietude, as the clarinets ascend into the stratosphere.

The third movement’s tempo marking, Allegro giocoso (quick and merry), allows Brahms to balance the more tragic tone of the Symphony. And with the addition of the percussionist’s triangle, the mood becomes boisterous and cheery. Listen for the moment at about two minutes in when – after plenty of musical raucousness – deep growls from the basses and timpani are answered with lighthearted squeaks from the piccolo and triangle, creating genuinely delightful moments. Despite its seeming mirth, however, the music seems to come uncomfortably close to nervous laughter. Ambiguity was Brahms’s hallmark, and rather than the contrasting emotional currents of the previous movements, this Allegro giocoso may indeed be a flirtation with frenzy, and perhaps even menace. One of several examples occurs at about five-and-a-half minutes, when, over a sound bed of driving rhythms and incessantly menacing timpani, colossal horn calls arise, reminding us of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, followed by full orchestral forces blazing towards the finish line (including the triangle, but now almost sounding like crackling glass). It’s incredibly exciting, but the movement feels propelled by a sense of impending dread, with the final bars hammered out with an almost primal aggression. 

The origins for the final movement, Allegro energico e passionate (fast, energetic and passionate) began around 1880 when Brahms was deeply involved in editing a critical edition of Bach’s entire oeuvre, specifically, his study of the final chaconne of Bach’s Cantata No. 150, “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich.” A chaconne is a musical structure that uses a repeating bass line as the anchor for a progression of variations, also often referred to as a passacaglia. Brahms adapted Bach’s old chaconne to this symphonic format, and his creation is considered one of the most revolutionary and surprising choices in the symphonic repertoire. The finale’s first eight bars establish the bass-line of the chaconne and create an atmosphere of trepidation, introduced by the first appearance in the Symphony of the trombones. In “archaic” musical history, trombones were associated with death and destruction, and Brahms’s use of them for the anchor line of the chaconne is bone chilling. Upon this extraordinary opening, Brahms then creates 32 variations, and of them, two are as memorable as anything he wrote. One is the flute variation at about three-and-a-half minutes into the movement, with its remarkably beautiful and fragile character. And a second exquisite moment occurs on the heels of this flute variation, with a gorgeously expansive trombone chorale – a feature which also links this Symphony to Brahms’s prior three like a signature, each containing a trombone chorale in their finales. But the chaconne ultimately concludes with a series of ever intensifying phrases – like a fire beginning to rage white hot. Contrary to symphonic norms, however, Brahms does not morph his finale to conclude in a triumphant major key to rectify all the preceding tragedy and pathos. Instead, this extraordinary Symphony remains in the minor key until its final, crushing blows.

© Max Derrickson