Brase studied at the Conservatory of Music at Leipzig where his teachers included Carl Reinecke, Hans Sitt, and Salomon Jadassohn.

[4] His wife, Elsa, whose full name was Elisabeth Henriette Antonie, arrived in Ireland on 1 March 1923 and was granted her Irish naturalisation between 1 January 1946 and 20 October 1947.

[citation needed] In 1906, he was appointed conductor of the Infantry Regiment 13's band at Münster and received early encouragement, when in 1909, at the age of 34, he was promoted Prussian "Königlicher Musikdirektor" (Royal Music Director).

[2] Following the German defeat in World War I, Brase was discharged from service in April 1919 and spent the following four years in various consignments including conducting a police band in Berlin.

Having failed to find a potential Frenchman and wanting to avoid a British appointee for the army's school of music, their search for an "expert military musician" chose the German for the post.

[8] In 1927, he also co-founded the Dublin Philharmonic Society, a successful orchestra and chorus with a brass section recruited from the army band, which he directed until 1936 when he had to resign for health reasons.

At the Army School of Music, he educated a number of prominent Irish musicians including Michael Bowles, Arthur Duff, and Dermot O'Hara.

That appears to me to be the difficulty with the orchestras in this country— that the talent that is there has not been sought out by the officials, the directors or whoever is in control of Radio Éireann and utilised so as to give employment to the fullest extent to Irish musicians and artistes.

[13][2] Brase's influence on the cultural life of the nascent Irish republic was considerable and he was an ambitious composer who also wrote many works outside the military band repertory.

He chose the army and his career[15] allowing Adolf Mahr, another German immigree and director of the National Museum of Ireland, to assume the position.