  Johannes Brahms desired to give thanks publicly to the University of Breslau because he had received from the illustrious dignitaries of that university the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. How best could he express his thanks in music? By something stately, pompous? Or by something profound and cryptic? Brahms acted with shrewdness in the matter; he took for his thematic material well-known students’ songs. These songs are familiar throughout Germany, and it is not as though a composer called upon, for instance, to write an appropriate overture for an approaching jubilee at Yale should take songs peculiar to that college; nor is it as though a composer should take “Eli Yale” and “Fair Harvard” and a Dartmouth or Williams song for his themes. Wherever Brahms’ overture is heard by a German student, whether of Heidelberg, Bonn, Berlin, or Breslau, the themes are old friends and common property. But where is the reckless gayety of student life in this overture? Much of it is dry, on account of the orchestration. For even The Brahmsite turns triumphantly to the Fuchslied—“Was kommt dort von der HÖh”—which is introduced by two bassoons, accompanied by ’cellos and violas pizzicati. “There! there!” he exclaims, “that is excruciatingly funny. Only a master, only a Johannes could make so easily a master stroke!” If you cross-examine him you will find that the humor consists in the choice of instruments. Somebody once said that the bassoon is the clown of the orchestra. Therefore the double bassoon should be twice as funny—perhaps even a Shakespearean clown. And simply because somebody gave the poor bassoon this name, it must be regarded as funny per se. “Funny”? The bassoon is lugubrious, ghostly, spectral, weird, unearthly, demoniacal. It smells of mortality. It suggests the glow-worm and the grave. The wicked nuns in Robert le Diable heard it and obeyed the spell, for corruption called to corruption. It lends a flavor of the charnal house to Tchaikovsky’s PathÉtique. It pictures the mood of Leonora without Di Luna’s tower. It chatters and gibbers as the murderous artist in the Symphonie fantastique goes his wretched way to the scaffold. It is the instrument dear to all that inhabit the night air, the cemetery, the diseased mind. But these bassoons appear in Brahms’ overture “etwas plÖtzlich”—a phrase I once heard used in a Berlin beer hall by a dapper and corseted and monocled officer, who was extremely thirsty and thus addressed the waiter. And I defy any sober-minded person who has not the fear of Brahms before his eyes to find the introduction or the treatment of the song spontaneously gay or humorous. The song itself is a good freshman hazing song. Some of the books—and books of authority—say that the Academic was written for performance at Breslau on the occasion Brahms wrote two overtures in the summer of 1880 at Ischl—the Academic and the Tragic. They come between the Symphony in D major and that in F major in the list of his orchestral works. It is said by Heuberger that Brahms wrote two “Academic Festival overtures”; so he must have destroyed one of them. When the Academic was first played at Breslau, the rector and Senate and members of the Philosophical faculty sat in the front seats at the performance, and the composer conducted his work. Brahms was not a university man, but he had known with Joachim the joyous life of students at GÖttingen—at the university made famous by Canning’s poem: Whene’er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I’m rotting in, I think of those companions true who studied with me at the U- niversity of GÖttingen— niversity of GÖttingen; —the university satirized so bitterly by Heine. Brahms wrote to Bernard Scholz that the title ‘Academic’ did not please him. Scholz suggested that it was “cursedly academic and boresome,” and suggested Viadrina, for that was the poetical name of the Breslau University. Brahms spoke flippantly of this overture in the fall of 1880 to Max Kalbeck. He described it as a “very jolly potpourri on students’ songs À la SuppÉ”; and, when Kalbeck asked him ironically if he had used the “Foxsong,” he answered contentedly, “Yes, indeed.” Kalbeck was startled, and said he could not think of such academic The first of the student songs to be introduced is Binzer’s “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus” (We had built a stately house, and trusted in God therein through bad weather, storm, and horror). The first measures are given out by the trumpets with a peculiarly stately effect. The melody of “Der Landesvater” is given to the second violins. And then for the first time is there any deliberate attempt to portray the jollity of university life. The “Fuchslied” (Freshman Song) is introduced suddenly by two bassoons. There are hearers undoubtedly who remember the singing of this song in Longfellow’s “Hyperion”; how the freshman entered the Kneipe, and was asked with ironical courtesy concerning the health of the leathery Herr Papa who reads in Cicero. Similar impertinent questions were asked concerning the Frau Mama and the Mamsell Soeur; and then the struggle of the freshman with the first pipe of tobacco was described in song. “Gaudeamus igitur,” the melody that is familiar to students of all lands, serves as the finale. |
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