Symphony No. 1, Op. 68

The timpani repeat C. Violins and cellos climb by semitones while winds and violas move downwards. The double basses and contrabassoon double the drumbeats.

Otto Dessoff conducted the première in Karlsruhe on 4 November 1876. Brahms was forty-three. By then he had already written two serenades, a piano concerto, the German Requiem and the Haydn Variations, and the First Symphony had taken much longer to reach performance.

The Allegro begins with a low C and the rising semitones of the introduction, now faster. First violins climb through an arpeggio above repeated notes in the inner strings. Cellos and bassoons continue the three-note ascent underneath.

The second theme is in E♭ major. The oboe plays it first, then the clarinets, while the violas repeat notes beneath. Its falling figures and small chromatic steps come from the introduction.

The violin arpeggio returns in B major, a semitone below the home keynote. The strings then drop to tremolo and a bassoon takes over the phrase. B major turns to B minor.

On 22 February 1873 the publisher Fritz Simrock wrote to Brahms: “Aren’t you doing anything anymore? Am I not to have a symphony from you in ’73 either?” Brahms finished the First three years later.

After a long pedal on G, the bass rises by semitones. Horns repeat the short-note rhythm, and oboes and clarinets reply with descending phrases. With each repetition the bass moves higher, until trumpets and timpani enter.

The rising semitones lead directly into the recapitulation. The first violins play their arpeggio in C minor again while the full orchestra is still moving. Brahms shortens the first group and moves on sooner than in the exposition.

The hammered thirds return as soft pizzicato notes under a long violin phrase. At bar 495, marked Meno allegro, the tempo slows and winds and strings pass the rising semitones between them. The arpeggio moves into C major, and the last chords are soft.

The strings open with a rising and falling line in E major, and a bassoon doubles the violins. Three low horn notes lead into a phrase in a darker harmony.

Most of the strings drop out, and the oboe plays over wind harmony and a light viola accompaniment. Its melody climbs to a high point. Underneath, the strings bring back their opening rise and fall.

After the cadence in E major the violins play a dotted rhythm. Their accents then move off the downbeat into syncopation, and rising semitones lead the harmony towards C♯ minor. The lower strings take over the rhythm at the pace of a funeral march.

On 22 February 1873 the publisher Fritz Simrock wrote to the composer, “Aren’t you doing anything anymore? Am I not to have a symphony from you in ’73 either?” The première took place in November 1876. Hanslick wrote that the musical world had awaited it “with such tense anticipation”.

At bar 67 oboes and clarinets play the opening theme again, now back in E major. Flutes play above them, the upper strings add a new accompaniment and the cellos play pizzicato triplets below.

Brahms’s friends responded to the symphony in different ways. Clara Schumann found the brilliant ending of the finale unconvincing, and Theodor Billroth admired it but objected to the harshness of the first movement. Hermann Levi thought the gentler middle movements belonged in another work.

The oboe melody returns with horn and solo violin. The violin leaves its section and plays as a soloist for the rest of the movement. The cellos accompany in pizzicato triplets.

The horn plays the oboe tune again. Above it the solo violin adds decoration that quickens into sextuplets. The low strings hold E beneath the other parts.

Pizzicato arpeggios rise through the strings to the solo violin, which plays with the bow. Its last note is held over the orchestra’s soft repeated chords. Below it the other strings return to the bow for the final chord.

A clarinet plays a five-bar phrase above pizzicato cellos. The answering phrase inverts the melody, so that each rise becomes a fall. Bassoon and horn fill in the harmony, and the upper strings enter near the end of the phrase.

Otto Dessoff conducted the première in Karlsruhe on 4 November 1876. Brahms was forty-three. He had already called the symphony “long and not exactly amiable”, and audiences and critics were divided over it.

In F minor, the strings divide a quick four-note pulse between high and low instruments. The clarinet begins an agitated melody, which the flute and oboe then take over.

The middle section moves to B major and 6/8. The winds repeat three notes, and the strings follow with falling broken chords. The beat now divides into threes, where the clarinet’s opening theme moved in twos.

Hermann Levi admired the finale of the First Symphony, but thought the two middle movements out of place in it. Here Brahms gives the orchestra a clarinet tune, plucked strings and a brief dance in B major.

The clarinet’s opening melody returns in A♭ major over its plucked cello accompaniment. Above it, flutes and oboes continue the trio’s repeated notes as triplets, so for a few bars material from both sections sounds together.

In October 1877 Simrock published the full score together with Brahms’s arrangement of the whole symphony for piano four hands. In the arrangement two pianists play all four movements, this clarinet tune included, at one keyboard.

The coda is marked Poco a poco più tranquillo (gradually more tranquil). The violins play the trio’s repeated notes softly, and the lower strings follow with falling broken chords. The harmony turns briefly to D♭ and returns to A♭, and the final cadence comes after an exchange between winds and strings.

Violas, cellos and double basses begin a four-note descent. Above them the violins play a slow version of the melody that later returns as the main tune in C major. Here it is in C minor, and accelerating pizzicato strings interrupt it.

In the introduction all the strings play pizzicato. Two-note figures pass between the groups, starting very soft and growing faster and louder through G minor, E♭ minor and F minor, until a chord is suddenly cut off. A second pizzicato passage, shorter and faster, follows later.

The music moves to C major, and a horn plays the call. Muted violins and violas play a tremolo beneath the long notes, and the timpani roll softly. The tune passes between the horns, so the line continues without a break. The flutes take it up next.

In 1868 Brahms sent Clara Schumann a birthday greeting containing the melody that became this horn call. Eight years later he placed it at the turning point of his First Symphony.

Trombones and bassoons play a short chorale. The trombones play for the first time in the symphony in this movement. The chorale is absent through the Allegro and returns with the full orchestra near the end.

Low in their range, the violins begin the broad tune in C major over plucked lower strings, and horns fill out the harmony. The phrase runs to seventeen bars. Its second half delays the cadence by one bar.

The big C major tune recalls the “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth. When Brahms was asked about the likeness, he is reported to have replied: “Yes indeed, and what’s more remarkable is that every jackass immediately hears it.”

A third statement of the big tune begins in the full orchestra and breaks off at once; only its opening three-note turn is kept. Running scales in strings and bassoons move towards G major, punctuated loudly by winds, brass and low strings.

Flute and horn bring back the alphorn call from the introduction, the horn echoing the flute. The low strings then repeat the four-note descent that opened the movement, and above it the violins play a second tune that winds down, leaps back up and continues.

Violas begin a tremolo that grows louder. The strings join in a descending arch that leads to a dotted rhythm, with loud cadences from winds and brass. From bar 176 the full orchestra, trombones included, plays the extended cadence in E minor.

The broad tune returns in C major with a fuller accompaniment. Its continuation soon turns towards E♭ and then F♯.

In the development (bars 204–⁠219), plucked figures pass from the violins to the low strings, as in the two pizzicato passages of the introduction. Horns and bassoons hold chords over them, and trumpets join as the passage builds. The key moves up to F♯ major, and the pizzicato starts again.

At the point where the transition began its running scales in the exposition, two bars of heavy accents in the strings break in. The scales then move to D minor, fully harmonised, and thin out. Above them, oboe and flute exchange fragments of the opening turn of the big tune.

Winds play the turn figures of the main theme over brass chords and timpani rolls. At the climax the full orchestra plays descending figures from the horn call off the beat, in C minor, and the trombones enter for the first time since the exposition.

The horn call returns over smoothly moving violas and cellos. The tremolo strings of the introduction are absent. Violins extend the tune, then descend, marked calando — dying away.

The second theme returns in C major. Its four-note descending bass passes between the low strings and flute, clarinet and bassoon. The descent comes from the finale’s first bars.

In the exposition this closing material was in E minor; strictly transposed it would now be in A minor, but the symphony ends in C, so in bars 316–⁠339 Brahms keeps it in C minor. The violas play tremolo, the strings descend in unison and loud cadences move towards B♭.

Leopold Damrosch conducted the first American performance at New York’s Steinway Hall on 15 December 1877. Boston heard it on 3 January 1878 under Carl Zerrahn. The Boston Symphony Orchestra played it in its first season, on 10 December 1881, under Georg Henschel.

Trombone, contrabassoon and low strings play the main theme in its darker form. Violin arpeggios rise above a timpani roll. The phrases shorten and speed up until seven hammered chords begin the Più allegro.

Più allegro, in cut time. The strings repeat three notes taken from the turn in the main theme, over the timpani. Against them the winds and brass play two diminished-seventh chords, and each one resolves.

The quiet chorale from the introduction returns in brass and strings together. Around it, the strings play turning figures as the faster coda (bars 407–⁠457) moves towards the final chords in C major.

The churning figure returns under loud chords in the brass and wind, which work upward. The basses play a loud rising arpeggio over a timpani roll. The full orchestra then plays three short C major chords and a long final chord over the roll.