BRAHMS, JOHANNES

born May 7, 1833, Hamburg died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now in Austria] German composer and pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote symphonies, concertos, chamber music, piano works, choral compositions, and more than 200 songs. Brahms was the great master of symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th century. He can be viewed as the protagonist of the Classical tradition of Joseph Haydn, W.A. Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven in a period when the standards of this tradition were being questioned or overturned by the Romantics. Additional reading Karl Geiringer and Irene Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work, 3rd ed. (1982), was written by the curator of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, who has drawn extensively on the unpublished material in this collection. Hans Gl, Johannes Brahms: His Work and Personality (1963, reprinted 1977), is a sensitive account by one of the editors of the collected edition of Brahms's compositions. Other critical studies include Burnett James, Brahms (1972); Bernard Jacobson, The Music of Johannes Brahms (1977); Michael Musgrave, The Music of Brahms (1985); Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms (1990); and Walter Frisch (ed.), Brahms and His World (1990).