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Brahms’ First is widely recognized as a piece reflecting the various circumstances of his life, contemporary with the time of its conception. Perhaps the most prominently publicized “reason” for its composition is the idea that, through it, Brahms was exercising an attempt at a response to Beethoven’s lauded Ninth.  Although this most likely captures a truth in the situation, the story behind the work is often eclipsed by a discussion of its success or failure to adequately follow up Beethoven’s work. This has occurred to such an extent, that seemingly Brahms’ First belongs more to Beethoven than to the actual composer himself. (At one time it was referred to as Beethoven’s Tenth!)

The program from this particular performance unabashedly backs up this idea by its bold, though unquestionably dour exclamation: “[Beethoven’s] footsteps [made] [Brahms] question if he could ever do anything on a par with the author of nine symphonies that seemed to define the limits of what music could express.” Taken critically and technically, perhaps this is true; Brahms’ final movement does share similarities with that of Beethoven’s Ninth. However, what must not be overlooked is the personality and unique character of Brahms’ First. Because, after all—and it seems trifling to have to say this—Beethoven is not Brahms, just as Brahms is not Beethoven.

Lacking knowledge of the technical aspects in music, I’m compelled to dwell on Brahms’ emotive message within his First. In this vein, it is known that at the point of the piece’s orchestration, Brahms was fostering a dubiously chaste relationship with composer Robert Schumann’s somewhat abandoned wife, Clara. A regular correspondence was upheld between the two, and conspicuously, Brahms included a melody inspired by Clara and the folk horns of the Swiss alps in the final, hope inducing movement of his First.

The trajectory of the symphony through and in its four parts examines the emotional longing and unrequited passion Brahms held for Clara. It opens angrily. The initial movement leaps forth with a cacophonous and pessimistic dissonance that carries on until the Adagio, in which the hopeful converse between french horn and flute reveals the melody mentioned above. In this case the french horns could be personified as the masculine interlocutor (Brahms) and the flute, the feminine (Clara).

The effect of this preliminary dissonance is hair-raising; the audience cannot find a resolution, their emotions oscillate with the disparate elements in the piece until, finally, an agreement is reached—the realization of love, of hope—in the melodic discourse of horn and flute.
This is all tragically romantic. In this, Brahms was a product of the times. What cannot be lost in the surfeit of emotion is Brahms’ mastery of tonality. Brahms was able to create a sound that, in the listener, reproduces the feelings of angst, longing, and desire he might have felt towards Clara. It is this transmission of feeling—of emotion—that makes Brahms’ First Symphony so powerful and equally as good as—and assuredly disconnected from—Beethoven.