Eduard Hanslick celebrated them polemically as absolute music, and Hans von Bülow even cast Brahms as the successor of Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, an idea Richard Wagner mocked.

[27] Bozarth notes that "products of Brahms's study of counterpoint and early music over the next few years included "dance pieces, preludes and fugues for organ, and neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque choral works".

[28][34] After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement in a mental sanatorium near Bonn in February 1854 (where he died of pneumonia in 1856), Brahms based himself in Düsseldorf, where he supported the household and dealt with business matters on Clara's behalf.

Based in Hamburg at this time, he gained, with Clara's support, a position as musician to the tiny court of Detmold, the capital of the Principality of Lippe, where he spent the winters of 1857 to 1860 and for which he wrote his two Serenades (1858 and 1859, Opp.

Brahms's circle grew to include the notable critic (and opponent of the 'New German School') Eduard Hanslick, the conductor Hermann Levi and the surgeon Theodor Billroth, who were to become among his greatest advocates.

A seventh movement (the soprano solo "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit") was added for the equally successful Leipzig premiere (February 1869).

The work went on to receive concert and critical acclaim throughout Germany and also in England, Switzerland and Russia, marking effectively Brahms's arrival on the world stage.

[45] Following such successes he finally completed a number of works that he had wrestled with over many years such as the cantata Rinaldo (1863–1868), his first two string quartets Op.

He conducted a repertoire noted and criticized for its emphasis on early and often "serious" music, running from Isaac, Bach, Handel, and Cherubini to the nineteenth century composers who were not of the New German School.

Among these were Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Joachim, Ferdinand Hiller, Max Bruch and himself (notably his large scale choral works, the German Requiem, the Alto Rhapsody, and the patriotic Triumphlied, Op.

Brahms was averse to traveling to England and requested to receive the degree 'in absentia', offering as his thesis the previously performed (November 1876) symphony.

Brahms "acknowledged the invitation" by giving the manuscript score and parts of his First Symphony to Joachim, who led the performance at Cambridge 8 March 1877 (English premiere).

"[64] The singer George Henschel recalled that after a concert "I saw a man unknown to me, rather stout, of middle height, with long hair and a full beard.

In a very deep and hoarse voice he introduced himself as 'Musikdirektor Müller' ... an instant later, we all found ourselves laughing heartily at the perfect success of Brahms's disguise."

Richard Strauss, who had been appointed assistant to von Bülow at Meiningen, and had been uncertain about Brahms's music, found himself converted by the Third Symphony and was enthusiastic about the Fourth: "a giant work, great in concept and invention".

[68] In 1889, Theo Wangemann, a representative of the American inventor Thomas Edison, visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make an experimental recording.

Although the spoken introduction to the short piece of music is quite clear, the piano playing is largely inaudible due to heavy surface noise.

[71] He made the effort, three weeks before his death, to attend the premiere of Johann Strauss's operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft (The Goddess of Reason) in March 1897.

[73] His admiration for Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist with the Meiningen orchestra, revived his interest in composing and led him to write the Clarinet Trio, Op.

In terms of technique, Brahms's use of developing variation, Carl Dahlhaus argued, was an expository procedure analogous to that of Liszt's and Wagner's modulating sequences.

As was common from Schubert to Mahler, Brahms faithfully relied on such songs for melodic inspiration in his instrumental music[86] from his very first opus, the Piano Sonata No.

Peter Phillips heard affinities between Brahms's rhythmically charged, contrapuntal textures and those of Renaissance masters such as Giovanni Gabrieli and William Byrd.

Referring to Byrd's Though Amaryllis dance, Philips remarked that "the cross-rhythms in this piece so excited E. H. Fellowes that he likened them to Brahms's compositional style.

Bozarth speculates that his contact with Hungarian and gypsy folk music as a teenager led to "his lifelong fascination with the irregular rhythms, triplet figures and use of rubato" in his compositions.

[106] His use of counterpoint and rhythm is present in A German Requiem, a work that was partially inspired by his mother's death in 1865 (at a time in which he composed a funeral march that was to become the basis of Part Two, "Denn alles Fleisch"), but which also incorporates material from a symphony which he started in 1854 but abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt.

[120] Schoenberg and others, among them Theodor W. Adorno and Carl Dahlhaus, sought to advance Brahms's reputation in the early and mid-20th century against the criticisms[clarification needed] of Paul Bekker and Wagner.

Within his lifetime, Brahms's idiom left an imprint on several composers within his personal circle, who strongly admired his music, such as Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Robert Fuchs, and Julius Röntgen, as well as on Gustav Jenner, who was his only formal composition pupil.

In Anton Webern's 1933 lectures, posthumously published under the title The Path to the New Music, he claimed Brahms as one who had anticipated the developments of the Second Viennese School.

Ann Scott argued Brahms anticipated the procedures of the serialists by redistributing melodic fragments between instruments, as in the first movement of the Clarinet Sonata, Op.

[129] Still later composers, like Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and György Ligeti paid respect to Brahms in their music, especially in terms of their treatment of meter, motives, rhythm, or texture.