Johannes Brahms – Tragic Overture, Op. 81

[Originally authored on July 12, 2019]

The autograph for Johannes Brahms’s Tragic Overture (“Tragische Ouverture”), Op. 81, is a prized possession of the Memorial Library of Music at Stanford University, and the manuscript has a storied history that can be traced back to the genesis of the work. Brahms composed the Academic Festival Overture in summer 1880 as thanks for an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree conferred by Breslau University; it was performed there for an all-Brahms concert in early 1881.[1] That same summer, Brahms also completed a companion overture, though in a very different character. This Tragic Overture, published in 1881, is a freestanding sonata form (with a exposition of themes, a development of them, and an ultimate recapitulation) in an elegiac mood, and it was based on sketches going back ten years.[2] The second theme in particular has affinities with Brahms’s First Symphony (completed 1876), and musicologist Malcolm MacDonald suggests that it may have been originally intended for a symphonic work, like many of Brahms’s early concerti and orchestral works. The overture itself has had a mixed reception, ranging from positive opinions by Donald Tovey and MacDonald (“a compelling image of human defiance against dark destiny”) to more critical responses from Karl Geiringer and Michael Musgrave (the work is “colorless”; the form is “incongruous”).[3] Today, the overture is well known as a part of the performance repertory, but relatively little has been written about it in comparison to many of Brahms’s other compositions.

The overture’s autograph now sits in a mid-twentieth-century red binding done by the Memorial Library of Music and measures 14 by 11 inches. There are several hands visible in the manuscript, which is on Breitkopf und Härtel staff paper: the black ink in Brahms’s hand, the subsequent attribution to the composer in pencil, and rehearsal markings predominately in blue (some also in red). The pencil hand corrects a tempo marking on page 28 of the autograph, and there are numerous corrections throughout in blue pencil; all of the hands could very well have been Brahms’s at different times. All non-original markings may date to a trial run with the Berlin Hochschule Orchestra on December 6, 1880, or the work’s official premiere alongside the Academic Festival Overture on December 26th of that year with the Vienna Philharmonic.[4] The markings were likely in the autograph before it arrived at the publisher (the page 28 pencil correction, for example, is reflected in the published score).

The provenance of the manuscript can be traced directly from the publisher, N. Simrock Musikverlag in Berlin. Though named for its original founder Nikolaus Simrock, Brahms’s publications were handled by Friedrich “Fritz” Simrock (1837–1901), who made Brahms’s acquaintance in Bonn in 1860.[5] Simrock became one of Brahms’s closest friends and champions by the end of the composer’s life, and Simrock was personally responsible for publishing enormous numbers of the composer’s works beginning in 1870. That Simrock held on to the autograph manuscript was not unusual: when Brahms’s estate was turned over to Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde at the turn of the twentieth century, relatively few autographs remained.[6] In fact, the Simrock collection, as it became known, was one of the largest first-generation collections of Brahms’s manuscripts. This subsequently fell to Fritz Auckenthaler, Simrock’s nephew, and parts of the collection began to be auctioned once Auckenthaler had sold the firm to Anton J. Benjamin Verlag in Leipzig.[7] The Tragic Overture manuscript was purchased by George T. Keating probably no earlier than 1929. Keating also purchased several other Brahms autographs now held at Stanford. When Keating offered his manuscript collection to the Stanford in 1944, the music department and university heartily accepted, and the assembled collection, including this work, ultimately provided the foundation for the Memorial Library of Music as it exists today.

Notes

1. Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms, New York: Schirmer Books, 1990: 271.
2. Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography, New York: Vintage Books, 1999: 462.
3. Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms, 271.
4. Wolfgang Sandberger, hgg., Brahms Handbuch, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag, 2009: 534.
5. Peter Clive, Brahms and His World: A Biographical Dictionary, Lanham, The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006: 421.
6. George S. Bozarth, “The First Generation of Brahms Manuscript Collections,” Notes 40 (1983): 239–62.
7. George S. Bozarth, “The First Generation of Brahms Manuscript Collections,” 242.

Benjamin Ory received his PhD in musicology from Stanford University in 2022.

This article is one in a series highlighting rare music materials in the Stanford Libraries collections.