Is friedrich Brahms brother

Answer 1

Yes - here's an article I wrote about him in 1996. Forgotten Heroes of Western Art Music No. 3 - Friedrich Brahms I've always felt sorry for this man. He, like his father, was one of the vast army of skilled, solidly reliable musicians who are the life-blood of any town with pretensions to culture; not spectacularly talented but hard-working and dedicated. His career as a piano teacher in 19th-century Hamburg lasted over 30 years, and he earned a good living from it. He should have been held in such esteem ...

Brahms' father served a three-year apprenticeship learning his trade as a town musician before moving to Hamburg at the age of 19, following a similar career path to that of Quantz one hundred years before. In order to earn a living, town musicians needed to be versatile, and Father Brahms could perform competently on strings (violin, viola, cello, bass), Flute and French horn. He found himself a useful post as bugler in the town's military band, which he held for 32 years, while also performing as double bassist for many years in a local string sextet (eventually also joining the bass section of the Hamburg Philharmonic) and freelancing on whatever instrument happened to be required. He was well respected and liked by his fellow musicians.

At the age of 24 he married a woman 17 years older than himself and in due course the children arrived: a daughter in 1831 and two sons in 1833 and 1835. Friedrich, known as Fritz, was the youngest child. The lads showed some aptitude for music so their father started them off on violin and cello when they were four years old, taking it for granted they'd follow him into the music business. There was a bit of a problem when both boys decided they'd rather learn the piano instead as their father didn't play it - buying a piano and paying for lessons stretched the family budget rather thin - but the family managed somehow and the boys went to Otto Cossel, a respected teacher who had himself been taught by Hamburg's foremost pianist, Eduard Marxsen.

Pianists don't get orchestral jobs, and in choosing to concentrate on the piano the boys were condemning themselves to a fairly precarious professional existence as accompanists, choirmasters and the like, unless they attempted to embark on a career as soloists. Fritz was a good player but not a gifted one, and he didn't particularly enjoy performing in public, but he found his niche when he started taking pupils at the age of 16, as his brother had before him. In 1853, aged 18, he moved to Leipzig to take up a teaching post in the household of Countess Ida von Hohenthal, who had befriended his brother, but this didn't last and he was back in Hamburg living with his parents by the spring of 1854. But he gradually built up his teaching practice until he was earning a steady enough income to support himself, his parents and his semi-invalid sister, and teaching became his life's work.

Fritz spent nearly all of his life in Hamburg, although around 1870 he took off for Venezuela, where he spent two years. He did occasionally perform - one of his brother's pupils remembers playing through the Bach Triple Concerto with both Brahmses in 1855 - and there is at least one instance of his performing in public. Otherwise he lived a contented life teaching piano to the good people of Hamburg and steadily prospering. When he died in 1886 he left the substantial estate of 10,000 marks to his brother (who, like Fritz, never married).

A meritorious life, and one which should have brought him esteem and recognition in his own right; and it probably would have done had he not spent his entire life being compared to his elder brother Johannes. It would have been galling enough if Johannes had merely been a better musician than he was - but Johannes, of course, was a greater musician than nearly everyone else in Europe. He was a far better pianist whose tuition, by the time he was 10, had been taken over by Marxsen himself (Fritz stayed with Cossel) and as a composer he was regarded by his contemporaries as the natural successor to Bach and Beethoven. Against such overwhelming genius Fritz's competence and dedication faded into insignificance.

Johannes eventually settled in Vienna but continued to pay occasional visits home, often bringing musical giants such as Joachim and Clara Schumann with him. He arranged for his publisher to send Fritz a copy of each new piano work, and Fritz occasionally performed it. It was just his bad luck that on one occasion, when he tackled the Variations on a Theme of Handel Op 24, his audience included the woman who at the age of 18 had been ranked as one of the four greatest pianists in Europe together with Liszt, Hanselt and Thalberg. The only critique we have of his performance was Clara's, and she said he was hopeless and the piece was quite beyond him. But he can't have been that bad, surely ...

All musicians strive to do their best and we can't all be geniuses. Where would virtuosi be without the humble, hardworking teachers who first taught them their scales? Fritz followed his calling for over 30 years and did a fine job to the best of his ability. I hope readers of this article will pay their respects to this long-suffering man who, during his entire professional career, was known throughout Hamburg as "the wrong Brahms".

Hope this helps,

Clare Redfarn