Classical Music

The Rocky Road to World Success: Max Bruch's Violin Concerto and Some Related Works

For, of the soul, the body doth take,
For soul is form, and both the body make. (Edmund Spenser)

Max Bruch doesn't make things easy for us. Not even with his real-and-true, unique and unrivaled pièce de résistance, which for almost 150 years the sparrows have been singing from the rooftops, the most diligent students of the higher art of fiddling have been bowing and fingering on their strings, and the members of the reviewing guild have heard reverberating in their inner ears like a more finely crafted musical variant of the tinnitus communis. This Violin Concerto in G minor op. 26 is really all that the whole wide music world associ- ates with the name of its composer; it is a work about which Johannes Brahms, the adversarial companion of the Rhineland composer, is supposed to have said words to this effect: while listening to it he did not have time to sit down because he constantly had to stand up to greet old friends (an assessment, by the way, represent- ing a completely unjustified act of verbal malice). It is also the embodiment of the romantic concerto in which everything, from the grand parlando of the enchanting introduction through the disarming Adagio to the furi- ous dance finale, seems so very much to form a perfect whole that we are inclined to regard the creator of this miracle as a Benvenuto Cellini shattering the form with a mighty stroke of the hammer and tossing a triumphant »exegi monumentum aere perennius« toward the public. And this is certainly how we like to hear it whenever we encounter it, whether in the concert hall or in our own four walls: a bronze monument that the passage

of time has left untouched and even in the future will be powerless to tarnish the least bit of its aura of perfection. We would do very well to leave things at this – for we have hardly turned our attention from the musical phenomenon represented by the work itself to its back- ground, to the history of its composition and early recep- tion, when – lo and behold – we also immediately find ourselves on the treacherous salt crusts of Chott el Djerid, which almost did in Kara Ben Nemsi on his way Durch die Wüste (Through the Desert), or we see ourselves surrounded by the deadly depths of the Grimpe Mire, through which no Baskerville would voluntarily wander. The shaky ground immediately gives way. Even the precise day on which the great virtuoso Joseph Joachim premiered the final version of the concerto in Bremen remains uncertain. Officially it was Tuesday, 7 January 1868. However, in letters to Hermann Levi and to Laura, the wife of Rudolph von Beckerath, his friend of many years, Max Bruch names the previous Sunday. In view of the closeness in time (the documents concerned date from 19 February and 23 March), this may be allowed to pass as a mistake only when we keep in mind the immediate juxtaposition of the spectacular premiere suc- cess and the composer's thirtieth birthday on 6 January. It may be accepted as a fact that the happy artist emp- tied the cup, glass, and goblet more than once during those days inasmuch as such behavior harmonizes with the nature of the matter – and with the nature of the

Rhinelander.
If controversy merely swirled around the date, the

matter would not be worth further thought. Considering all the other uncertainties, however, even this calendar- ial imprecision seems to be just as symptomatic as the question whether it was Bruch himself who conducted in Bremen or not instead Carl Reinthaler, who is mentioned here and there in this role. Or the thesis proposed by Wilhelm Altmann, who, surely after previous consulta- tion, reported in 1905 in the Rheinische Musik- und Theaterzeitung that it was already the nineteen-year-old Max Bruch who had hit upon the thematic main idea of his »Hungarian« concluding dance; an impossibil- ity, as he would be informed by other sources, since alone the Hungarian Concerto by the violinist Joseph Joachim might be assumed to have served as Bruch's source of inspiration for the Magyar touches of the last movement; but this would have been possible only if the two musicians had become acquainted personally, that is, not prior to 1865. That Max Bruch at the latest in Mannheim (1861–63) had begun to occupy himself with the chamber music of Johannes Brahms, who was five years his senior, and thus surely also took in hand the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor (!) with its »Rondo alla zingarese« seems to have been just as unimaginable to Altmann's correctors as the idea that many things that flutter through the intellectual expanses can be picked up independently in various places.

Of course, the early date assigned to the idea may have been one of the manifold veiling attempts with which the aging Max Bruch attempted to reduce to a minimum the creative contributions by others to his works. For in- stance, in 1911 he allowed Arthur M. Abell, the young Berlin correspondent of New York's Musical Courier, to print the highly informative letter in which Joachim had laid out his detailed suggestions for the violinistic improvement of the »principal voice« on 17–18 August 1866, but the note lines found in it were not indicated, which the credulous Abell explained to his readership by claiming that Bruch had not taken over a single one of them. As a result, Abell unwittingly contributed to a capital distortion of the historical record, of which he soon would have become aware if only somebody had forwarded to him Bruch's current correspondence with

Joachim's son Johannes, who at precisely the same time was preparing his late father's letters for publication in collaboration with Andreas Moser. The two editors had sent Max Bruch the relevant galleys, which, however, contained not only the above letter but also the com- poser's reply, and the position taken by him in it was so detailed that he now pronounced a loud veto:

»1. As far as my Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor is concerned, I have attached value only to the publica- tion of the important letter from Joachim, interesting to violinists of all schools and all lands, from Harzburg, August 1866; and this letter will certainly appear with J.'s other letters to me.

»2. I did not know that such a thorough answer from me to the Harzburg letter existed, and now that I know of it, I do not like it, for in this reply I appear to be immensely dependent (not to mention, like a pupil) vis-à- vis Joachim. To be sure, the discussion revolved around individual points, often small matters; for the main thing, the thematic content and the form, remained unchanged. The reading public, however, would not have this im- pression and would falsely judge my entire relation to J. (which later became very different). (The public would al- most have to believe, on reading all of this, that Joachim wrote the concerto, not me. The truth is that I employed some of his suggestions with thanks, but not others.)

»3. I am surprised that Mr. Moser picked out precise- ly this letter from the mass of all the others. I have never authorized Mr. Moser to publish the same, now refuse this authorization very decidedly, and ask you not to publish the letter.« Bruch blared these words onto paper on 14 March 1912. And three days later he added: »Each person, on readpower the man had; during his life he probably did not produce anything on his own' (while precisely the op- posite is the case!). This idea would become general, and people would spread it with grinning satisfaction in order to harm me.«

It is hard to believe that the author of these tirades was the same Max Bruch who for what would soon be a quarter of a century had been casting aspersions on his »Here-There-and-Everywhere Concerto in G minor,« (1) railing against the »lethargy, stupidity, and torpidity of many German violinists,« (2) one of whom wanted to play this opus for him every two weeks, and sent a self-made epigram entitled »Police Prohibition Concern- ing M. B.'s First Concerto« to his friend Philipp Spitta in 1893. His worries about his reputation covered over with their peculiar growths the unshakable facts that sometime or other had to come to light because the cor- rection sheets had not been destroyed. They found their way into the Max Bruch Archive at the Institute of Musi- cology at the University of Cologne and were available there to musicologists such as the later Grevenbroich secondary school teacher Wilhelm Lauth, who wrote his dissertation on Max Bruchs Instrumentalmusik and a thor- ough follow-up article on the composition and history of the concerto on the occasion of the fiftieth anniver- sary of the composer's death in 1970 (»Entstehung und Geschichte des ersten Violinkonzertes op. 26 von Max Bruch,« in: Beiträge zur Rheinischen Musikgeschichte). The »suppressed« letter plays a central role in the article.

Written in »Koblenz, 26 September 1866,« the letter reveals already in its first lines a tactfulness that has nothing in common with the Nöckergreis of Bruch's Berlin years: »Dear and honored Mr. Joachim: You have obliged me to the greatest thanks with your so very thor- ough letter about the concerto; nothing could be more delightful and reassuring than the certainty that after a

thorough look through it you are able to interest yourself in it permanently and uprightly. I have now continued my work with new pleasure and have gratefully em- ployed your good suggestions.« This is what we read at the beginning of the very nuanced reply, which after sixteen individual points and eighteen score examples concludes with the urgent wish for a personal discussion of the »last details.«

Shortly thereafter Bruch did indeed travel to Ha- nover. By this time the first premiere was already history. On 24 April 1866 the composer had presented the (lost) original version of his Opus 26 in Koblenz with the vio- linist Otto von Königslöw. As he reported to Laura von Beckerath four days later, he was »completely content with the overall effect,« although the finale seemed to him »too thickly instrumented in some passages. I am now putting the finishing touches on it and think that it will be very good. Joachim played through it in Ha- nover and was very content with it.« Nevertheless, our protagonist had been endeavoring to tame the shrewish material for about two years, ever since the Mannheim concertmaster Johann Josef David Naret-Koning had encouraged him to try his hand at a violin concerto. It certainly must have dawned on Koning that the author (a musician of his same age) of the Loreley, which under Vinzenz Lachner's expert hands had just experienced the beginning of its short flourishing, was by nature a bard and a storyteller who might best pave his way to his own original form of instrumental composition via the songlike qualities of the violin. The rocky road on which Bruch then set out, however, is something that he would hardly have foreseen.

On 11 November 1865 Bruch complained to his teacher Ferdinand Hiller: »My violin concerto is advanc- ing slowly: I do not feel surefooted on this terrain. Do you not find that it is really very bold to write a violining this letter, would say: 'Oh, how difficult and strenuous it was to write this work. M. B. actually did not know what he wanted; now one sees for the first time how little initiative and independent power the man had; during his life he probably did not produce anything on his own' (while precisely the op- posite is the case!). This idea would become general, and people would spread it with grinning satisfaction in order to harm me.«

On 11 November 1865 Bruch complained to his teacher Ferdinand Hiller: »My violin concerto is advanc- ing slowly: I do not feel surefooted on this terrain. Do you not find that it is really very bold to write a violin concerto?« That the mills of doubt did not run out of water, however, is to be credited to the Vinzenz Lachner pupil Hermann Levi. He had his doubts from the begin- ning, inserted his reservations between many a useful bit of advice, advised Bruch to become thoroughly ac- quainted with the works of Bach and Beethoven, and saw himself completely confirmed in his views when Bruch, after his visit in Hanover, where the director Hans von Bronsart even made the court orchestra available for a private rehearsal performance with Joseph Joachim, was again unhappy on 6 December 1866: »My Vio- lin Concerto spent a long time with Joachim during the summer; now [Ferdinand] David has it and is talking about another thorough revision of the principal voice. What in the end will come of it is something that only the gods know. The whole thing will soon bore me; I am not obliged to thank Koning that he drove me to a work to which I am not equal.« On 21 January 1867: »... I immediately felt that you (namely in the finale) had hit the nail on the head; as a consequence, in the interest of formal perfection, I have again done very much on the movement, and I genuinely believe that it now will be more satisfying to you. Joachim and Mrs. Schumann are very content with it – me not yet since I again have the very certain feeling that I am standing on unfamiliar terrain.«

Hermann Levi was fond of hearing such things. But now he began carrying his objections too far: »But do continue to write some violin concertos or sonatas; one cannot occupy oneself enough with one's weaknesses [...] What you lack is shown in all the passages of your vocal works in which musical invention could not pro- ceed directly from the word [...] A big step lies between a fine imagination and a fine work of art. Bridling one's imagination, capturing it in the artistic form – that is what makes the master. You should not ignore its failure

because of the belief that you have moved over foreign ground contrary to your 'nature'; cultivate the ground, it will bring forth beautiful fruits for you and for us« (11 February 1867). Bruch's tone clearly became sharper insofar as he at all continued to respond to criticism. A month prior to the Bremen premiere he pointed out to Levi that Joachim had »accepted the dedication« and that in January Crantz would publish »the engraved score too.« After the sensational success the tongue- stuck-out-in-text could no longer be hidden: »You should know that Joachim performed my violin concerto on 5 January in Bremen and on 11 January in Hanover (on 13 February in Aachen), as he writes to me, with very sensational success. He wants to play it again often. It will appear in fourteen days (the engraved score too) with the name of Joachim. I was in Hanover for eight days in October and determined the final version with Joachim.«

No question about it: after this victory on all fronts the friendship between Bruch and Levi had to break up [with a pun in German on the composer's name and »Bruch,« breakup]. On 16 April: »The concerto has en- couraged me to compose instrumental music, although you once believed that it was a failure. [...] The con- certo has begun to enjoy a fabulous career; Joachim has played it in Bremen, Hanover, Aachen, and Brussels and will play it next in Copenhagen and at Pentecost at the Cologne Music Festival, which brings me infinite joy. Auer is bringing it out in Hamburg (Philharmonic Concert) on the seventeenth of the month and in London (Philharmonic Society) in May, and David (!) in Leipzig (at the beginning of the next season), Leonhard and Vieuxtemps have ordered it – in short, things are mak- ing brilliant progress.«

At the other end of the line, however, somebody was sitting who was not ready to acknowledge his obvious mistake. It was then that Bruch blew his top: »It is not easy for me to find the right answer to your admonitions. Reproachful judgments by competent friends cannot be unwelcome to any genuine artist, but in this case I have the definite feeling that you no longer understand me. And this is in the end no wonder, for the whole world knows to what degree you are an exclusive fanatic of Brahms's music; but then we are complete antipodes in our orientations – thus it is not possible for you to be entirely just to me. You say I cannot write any beautiful music without the 'cribs' of the words; I must term this view toward the violin concerto, especially toward the Adagio, extraordinarily strange! You seem to believe that I have an extraordinarily limited understanding of the seriousness of the work process. Must I now first say that I began the violin concerto in the summer of 1864 but only now have published it after a work process that was genuinely longer, often taken up, full of love and effort? I went through it three, four times in the finale, made cuts, and could never do enough – finally it was the way I wanted to have it, and now it is good, and it is precisely the way that it has to be. And because it is good, violinists everywhere play it with the greatest joy, and because it is good, people love it everywhere – they do not marvel at it from the cold distance as some works by your idol [NB: Brahms]!, but they rejoice in the heart. I should think that this too is worth something. Summing things up – (I am going to be somewhat bold): Sit ut est, aut non sit. Not another note!«

There is indeed a point at which a human being capable of perception, despite all previous uncertain- ties, knows that he has created an adequate form for expression. »Over everything stands its dæmon, or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody. The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, and every flower-bed,

pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-cantations, which sail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with an ear sufficiently fine, he overhears them, and endeavors to write down the notes, without diluting or depraving them. And herein is the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's faith, that the poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature, with which they ought to be made to tally«: Ralph Waldo Emerson recognized this in The Poet. The friend who as an outsider misses the moment of harmony and with his »but nevertheless« goes into overtime beyond the final whistle risks having (or wants to have) his creative counterpart sink down in the morass of apathy or furiously rise up against him.

The excitable character of a man like Max Bruch, who continuously felt uncertain because of his genuine or imagined deficits of compositional-technical nature – such a volcanic personality will always react in the second manner. It is tragic that he always merely sensed that he might have a calling as a genuine tone-poet but never really interiorized it and lived it. In his incessant struggle for recognition as a composer, he repeatedly stormed the camp of his rivals and opponents, against whose combinatory tactics he would always end up on the losing side. What, for instance, could have been more foolish than his excursion onto the terrain of the symphony undertaken during the first half of 1868? »All the development that is not in the concerto and does not have to be there you will find in this symphony,« he promised Hermann Levi on 19 April, directly prior to their last quarrel, while on 1 May he wrote to »Rudel« von Beckerath that it involved nothing more than »an instrumental intermezzo, a Despair symphony.« Brahms, the dedicatee, then also removed himself from the affair one day after the Vienna performance of 20 February 1870 in the elegant manner that was uniquely his own: »The symphony really went very well – thoroughly. It was applauded without contradiction in all the movements. To be specific, the scherzo met with a very unusual form of applause, which not merely the composition but also the splendidly animated performance deserved.«

Whenever Max Bruch set out to do justice to formal givens, he was ultimately destined to fail. It was not for him – so much Hermann Levi had rightly seen – that the sonata and the symphony or the string quartet and the traditional concerto had been invented. He was a melo- dist in the deepest sense of the term. His relation to the folk song, the »inexhaustible fountain of youth of all true melody,« and his instinctive feeling for gripping scenes of instrumental or vocal nature would have enabled him to become a tone-sculptor of outstanding importance if he had strengthened his strengths, ignored his weak- nesses, and withdrawn from never-ending rivalry with the representatives of a guild to which he by nature did not belong.

The Serenade in A minor op. 75 is a model exam- ple of this dilemma between formal givens and inner structuring forces. It was Bruch's next-to-last concertante composition for violin and orchestra (3) and his last at- tempt once again to enthuse the great virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate for one of his creations. But the Spaniard, who had done so much for the first two concertos and the Scottish Fantasy, though he showed some initial enthusi- asm, proved not to be interested in this work composed in 1899. And when he then also forgot to reserve the deserved tickets of honor for one of his Berlin perfor- mances for a man who had once been his good friend, things went their inevitable course: »One indeed can term Sarasate's behavior laziness; but it is much more: it is a betrayal of our old friendship. I expect nothing from my opponents; but when old friends so completely leave me in the lurch, as Sarasate in this case, then I am finished with them. [...] After all, the Serenade will work

even without Sarasate; but he now would have had to get it going – that was his d[amned] duty and obligation. I do not want to go running after him now!« Bruch wrote these angry words to Hans Simrock, the nephew of his publisher of many years, who in the meantime had taken over the publishing house's business.

Wilhelm Altmann also prophesied that this new con- certo »soon will be the common property of all better violinists,« while Simrock lent expression to his hope by paying the handsome fee of six thousand marks. The »collegial« Joseph Joachim polished the principal voice in his proven manner and played through the new work on 19 December 1899 with Bruch conducting the Or- chestra of the Berlin College of Music during the trial run. The premiere proper was held on Wednesday, 15 May 1901, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The soloist Joseph Debroux was accompanied by the Orchestre Lamoureux under Camille Chevillard. Debroux presented the official Berlin premiere on Saturday, 30 November, at the Sin- gakademie Hall, where Max Bruch led the Philharmonic Orchestra. The Serenade was presented at Cologne's Gürzenich Hall on Tuesday, 25 February 1902, and here too, in the city of his birth, the composer conducted and found a committed advocate in Willy Hess, who was forty-two years old at the time. The new concertmas- ter of the Boston Symphony Orchestra took up the baton already in February 1903 to present the composition with the violinist Marie Nichols, before he was able to score a veritable victory with soloistic splendor one and a half years later.

What might have been the reason why the four movements of the Serenade, delightful over the widest stretches, were not able to fulfill the beautiful hopes of the first years, just like all the other violin compositions that Bruch had composed after his Opus 26? Was it ex- clusively the success – in fact an overwhelming one – of the warhorse that pursued its creator even into his Italian summer vacation, where violinists everywhere wanted to fiddle it for him? Was it the »lethargy, stupidity, and torpidity of many German violinists« in league with the comfortability of a public whose members did not want to miss their favorites for anything in the world? Or did the reason lie, as Wilhelm Altmann thought, in the »un- commonly high price that the publisher had set on it«?

Surely a little bit of all of the above. But we in no way should underestimate the significance of the com- poser's intention, which after the G minor concerto had noticeably shifted. Here what first and foremost was involved was the surmounting of inner barriers, a de- sign that would be as perfect as possible, the success- ful sound sculpture, and a romantic means of expres- sion par excellence. Then the desired solo candidate (Sarasate) entered the picture, while the struggle with fixed formal principles outweighed natural modulation and »poetic production.« This is why the Andante con moto of the Serenade everywhere risks losing something of its captivating charm whenever developmental ambi- tions threaten to supplant the magnificent art of seduc- tion – as if it would not have been enough to continue the soaring main theme, all the magical reminiscences of Schumann and of Mendelssohn's ethereal elfin dances, really to savor the juicy cello cantilena, and to let every- thing stream into the play of spirits delightfully scurrying between gossamers in the concluding measures.

What are the note-for-note repetitions in the Allegro moderato alla Marcia doing here if not making a show of their love for formal requirements? After the muscular main idea in the B part of the movement (un poco meno vivo), as in Schumann's Fantasy op. 131, a brightening touch of the Cologne Carnival is mixed in and makes for a fine surprise that loses its punch because of the im- mediate repetition. Here Bruch writes out for repetition a

total of four segments for a total of a good fifty measures: it is thus that the scherzo comes close to matching the playing length of the other three movements. Interest is maintained during its course, however, only if the per- formers are ready to incorporate a very high comple- ment of subtle variants into the identical musical text.

The notion that the Serenade, »similarly to the first concerto,« is »completely designed with a view to the finale« (W. Lauth) is emphatically to be denied – even though a bookkeeper's comparison of the raw figures of the measures (171, 186, 163, and 549) might cre- ate this impression. According to his temporal measure- ments, Bruch quite exactly divided the overall work into four parts, so that the fiery concluding dance with an Iberian pheromone precisely attuned to Sarasate's sen- sorium was not longer or shorter than the previous acts of the drama, while we naturally have to keep in mind the extended recapitulation of the Andante con moto, cyclically rounding off the episodes linked by skillfully constructed modulatory bridges. The curtain quietly falls, and it ends a dream play in which, as I feel, the Notturno represents the emotional high point. From the farthest faraway we have an inkling of something of the sumptu- ous bliss with which the Adagio of the first concerto must have taken shape before the wrestling with the definitive version began.

The first concerto was just about to celebrate its silver anniversary when Max Bruch composed his lengthiest instrumental song scene in the form of the adagio In Me- moriam in C sharp minor op. 65. On 9 January 1893, as was his custom, he sent the score and »the first pro- visional solo part of the piece« to Joseph Joachim with the request that he »change everything in it that does not appear to you to be proper to the violin.« Despite all the temporary dissonances (like Johannes Brahms, Bruch had taken Amalie's side in the Joachim divorce case), his trust in the artist remained untouched: »Perhaps a characteristic apposition for the somewhat sober title 'Adagio' occurs to you?

»The piece is actually a song of lament, a sort of instrumental Nänie; but I could not say that I have writ- ten it in memory of specific personalities or occurrences. When I say 'In Memoriam 1888,' then this title evokes the memory of the two dead German emperors; but they would have to be honored with vocal pieces for large masses – a violin piece does not seem to me to be suited for this, and the moment has passed.«

In the end the title by which the work is known today won out. And things remained at one movement that is so very much created out of itself that formal consider- ations are not at all necessary. Here Bruch once again is the poet and sculptor who without difficulty spans the quarter of an hour's development of tension, has the fifth lightning flashes from Beethoven's ninth symphony thunder over the central climax, and without the least haste or intention loses himself in absolutely otherworldly transfiguration. After this any further word would be too much, and so the author steadfastly refused to compose an Allegro to follow it, which Simrock and Sarasate very much would have liked to have had: »If it had originally been my intention to write a little concerto or a concer- tino consisting of an adagio and a finale, then I would have designed the adagio in view of this from the begin- ning; but I did not have this intention, and I would now most probably disimprove a piece born of the spirit if for business considerations (which, by the way, I compre- hend quite well) I were to make an addition for which an inner drive is not present.« The publisher gave in and paid a fee of a respectable two thousand marks.

The riddle concerning the memory of the year known as the »Year of the Three Emperors« in 1888 was never solved. In any case, as we can read, Max Bruch wanted

to avoid suggesting a reference to the deaths of William I and Frederick III and to surmount »the loss of a perso- nality standing very close to him,« as Wilhelm Altmann intimated. Now who might that have been? Certainly not somebody with whom Bruch had been »finished« for a decade and a half, after this mystery person had lent him a faithful and trustful ear for a many a year? Might In Memoriam have been intended for a former friend who had died in 1888 at the early age of fifty-five?

In the third part of the present edition we will learn more about this old friendship that fell victim to our com- poser's rather notorious irascibility.

Eckhardt van den Hoogen Translated by Susan Marie Praeder

(1) Letter of 13 January 1913 to his pupil Leo Sch- rattenholz.

(2) Letter of 26 November 1887 to Fritz Simrock.

(3) Only the two-movement Concertino op. 84 would follow, and it will be released on this edition's third CD.