One way in which he responded to this preference was to compose 12 superlative piano concertos, Nos. Viennese audiences loved Mozart for his piano playing above all. Here is a translation of the first verse: He developed all this material extensively and ingeniously, and crowned the overture with a majestic setting of the most well-known of the songs, Gaudeamus igitur, a solemn medieval hymn in praise of student life. Next is What Comes There From on High, a satiric ditty which Brahms introduced on the bassoons. This is followed by Most Solemn Song to the Father of the Country, a heartfelt tune first heard in the strings. After a soft timpani roll, the brass pompously play We Had Built a Stately House. Brahms founded it upon four traditional German student songs. The main section changes all that quickly.

It gives what proves to be a deliberately and playfully misleading impression of the piece as a whole. The bustling yet quiet and serious introduction appears to be based on original Brahms material (the Breslau faculty must have loved this part!). The faculty frowned upon his responding to their gravely serious gesture with something so informal and folksy, but the students laughed and cheered for the same reason. He conducted the premiere in Breslau during January 1881. He didn’t care for the title but couldn’t come up with a better one.Ĭomparing it with the music of the original master of Viennese operetta, he referred to it as a “boisterous medley of student songs à la (Franz von) Suppé.” He scored it for the largest orchestra he ever used, including a handful of percussion instruments. His Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy bore the inscription “first among today’s masters of serious music in Germany.” His ironic sense of humor, plus the fact that he had received his musical education from private teachers rather than by attending the “institutes of higher learning” that he viewed with suspicion, led him to make it as jolly and informal as the university was conservative and stuffy. He wrote the merry Academic Festival as a gesture of thanks for a degree that the University of Breslau bestowed upon him. “One weeps, the other laughs,” was how he described the Tragic Overture and the Academic Festival Overture. Vienna, Austria / April 3, 1897īrahms composed his only two concert overtures during the summer of 1880.

Debussy blanc et noir program notes