View source for Johannes Brahms

===Youth (1833–1850)===

[[File:Brahms geburtshaus in Hamburg.jpg|thumb|upright|Photograph from 1891 of the building in Hamburg where Brahms was born. It was destroyed by [[Bombing of Hamburg in World War II|bombing]] in 1943.]]

====Upbringing====
Brahms's father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from the town of [[Heide]] in Holstein.{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=4}}{{efn|His family name was also sometimes spelled Brahmst or Brams, deriving from Bram, the German word for the shrub [[Genista|broom]].{{sfn|Swafford|1999|p=7}}}} Against his family's will, Johann Jakob pursued a career in music, arriving in Hamburg at age 19.{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=4}} He found work playing [[double bass]]; he also played in a sextet in the Alster-pavilion in Hamburg's [[Jungfernstieg]].{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=4–5}} In 1830, Johann Jakob was appointed as a [[natural horn|horn]] player in the Hamburg militia.{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|pp=3–4}} He married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen the same year.{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=3}} A middle-class seamstress 17 years his senior, she enjoyed writing letters and reading despite an apparently limited education.{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=6–9}}

Johannes Brahms was born in 1833. His sister Elisabeth (Elise) had been born in 1831 and a younger brother Fritz Friedrich was born in 1835.{{sfn|Swafford|1999|pp=14–16}}{{efn|Fritz also became a pianist; overshadowed by his brother, he emigrated to [[Caracas]] in 1867, and later returned to Hamburg as a teacher.{{sfn|Musgrave|2000|p=13}}}} The family then lived in poor apartments in {{ill|Gängeviertel (Hamburg)|lt=Hamburg's Gängeviertel|de|Gängeviertel (Hamburg)|display=1}} and struggled economically.{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=9–11, 14}} (Johann Jakob even considered emigrating to the United States when an [[impresario]], recognizing Johannes's talent, promised them fortune there.){{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=10, 17}} Eventually Johann Jakob became a musician in the [[Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg]] playing [[double bass]], horn, and [[flute]].{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=12}} For enjoyment, he played first [[violin]] in [[string quartet]]s.{{sfn|Geiringer and Geiringer|1982|loc=12}} The family moved over the years to ever better accommodation in Hamburg.{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|pp=4–8}}

====Training====
Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training; Johannes also learned to play the violin and the basics of playing the cello. From 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel complained in 1842 that Brahms "could be such a good player, but he will not stop his never-ending composing."

At the age of 10, Brahms made his debut as a performer in a private concert including [[Beethoven]]'s [[Quintet for Piano and Winds (Beethoven)|Quintet for Piano and Winds]] Op. 16 and a [[piano quartet]] by [[Mozart]].{{which|date=May 2025}} He also played as a solo work an [[étude]] of [[Henri Herz]]. By 1845 he had written a [[piano sonata]] in G minor.{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|pp=9–11}} His parents disapproved of his early efforts as a composer, feeling that he had better career prospects as a performer.{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|p=12}}

From 1845 to 1848 Brahms studied with Cossel's teacher, the pianist and composer [[Eduard Marxsen]]. Marxsen had been a personal acquaintance of Beethoven and [[Schubert]], admired the works of Mozart and [[Haydn]], and was a devotee of the music of [[J. S. Bach]]. Marxsen conveyed to Brahms the tradition of these composers and ensured that Brahms's own compositions were grounded in that tradition.{{sfn|Swafford|1999|p=26}}

====Recitals====
In 1847 Brahms made his first public appearance as a solo pianist in Hamburg, playing a fantasy by [[Sigismund Thalberg]]. His first full piano recital, in 1848, included a [[fugue]] by Bach as well as works by Marxsen and contemporary virtuosi such as [[Jacob Rosenhain]]. A second recital in April 1849 included Beethoven's [[Piano Sonata No. 21 (Beethoven)|''Waldstein'' sonata]] and a waltz fantasia of his own composition and garnered favourable newspaper reviews.{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|pp=17–18}}

Persistent stories of the impoverished adolescent Brahms playing in bars and brothels have only anecdotal provenance,<ref>Including tales allegedly told by Brahms himself to Clara Schumann and others; see [[Jan Swafford]], [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1999/03/18/aimez-vous-brahms-an-exchange/ "'Aimez-Vous Brahms': An Exchange"], ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' 18 March 1999, accessed 1 July 2018.</ref> and many modern scholars dismiss them; the Brahms family was relatively prosperous, and Hamburg legislation very strictly forbade music in, or the admittance of minors to, brothels.{{sfn|Swafford|2001|loc=''passim''}}{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|pp=12–14}}

====Juvenilia====
Brahms's juvenilia comprised piano music, chamber music and works for male voice choir. Under the pseudonym 'G. W. Marks', some piano arrangements and fantasies were published by the Hamburg firm of Cranz in 1849. The earliest of Brahms's works which he acknowledged (his ''Scherzo'' Op. 4 and the song ''Heimkehr'' Op. 7 no. 6) date from 1851. However, Brahms was later assiduous in eliminating all his juvenilia. Even as late as 1880, he wrote to his friend Elise Giesemann to send him his manuscripts of choral music so that they could be destroyed.{{sfn|Hofmann|1999|pp=16, 18–20}}