Johannes Brahms

Known as one of the three B’s (meaning Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) of classical music, is Johannes Brahms. Brahms is perhaps one of the greatest tributes to the Romanic era of music. Brahms’s music complemented the rapid growth of Romantic individualism in the second half of the 19th century. He often styled his works after Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, with an added influence from Franz Schubert, artists to whom he had a great adoration for. Johannes Brahms was born in the German city of Hamburg. His father was a musician who played several instruments but was not proficient at managing the family's money. For this reason Brahms and his family were constantly moving. However, Mr. and Mrs. Brahms did make sure that Johannes and his brother attended good schools wherever they happed to reside. Johannes loved to read and built a huge library. He also obviously loved music and learned to play the piano, horn and cello. Brahms is not only well known for his traditional music pieces, but also for the Hungarian dance pieces he wrote, twenty-one in all. As Brahms grew older, he toured as an accompanist, playing piano for a Hungarian violinist. The violinist and the gypsy bands Brahms heard later on when he traveled to Hungary inspired his Hungarian Dances, which were a hit with the public. His most famous dance piece is the Hungarian Dance No. 5. It is speculated that the composer Brahms aspired to be most like was Beethoven. Many people considered Brahms to be the successor to Beethoven. For a long time, Brahms refused to write a symphony, because he was afraid his work would not be as commendable as Beethoven's. However, Brahms ended up writing four symphonies.
Unfortunately, little is known of Brahms's methods of work. A harsh self-critic, he burned all that he wrote before the age of 19 as well as some sketches of later masterpieces. It is known that he frequently reworked pieces over a period of ten to twenty years until his piece was perfected. Until