Johannes Brahms, known as the "Romantic Classicist," was born in 1833, in Hamburg, Germany.
Brahms began his study of the piano at the age of seven.
By ten-years-old he had given his first performances and was learning theory and piano from Edward Marxsen.
Brahms was a virtuoso pianist whose ability to read and transpose music at sight won him the attention of Hungarian violinist Remenyi.
Through Remenyi, Brahms was fortunate to meet Franz Liszt and Robert and Clara Schumann.
Brahms' career was furthered through the great friendship he had with the Schumann's.
Brahms composed in a highly personal manner and showed his rhythmic superiority with use of syncopations, polyrhythms, and rhythmic transformation.
However, Brahms, unlike many of his contemporaries, never wrote difficult music simply to create a glittering effect.
He began his compositional career with three piano sonatas, and though he never again composed sonatas thereafter, he continued to use sonata form as a basis for his compositions, including his Rhapsodie in G minor, Op.
79 No.
2.
Brahms' Rhapsodie, contrary to the typical form of a rhapsody, is set in sonata form.
Though he uses classical forms to envelope his compositions, his works sound anything but classical.
It is through the use of harmonic instability, introducing a multiplicity of material, eliminating or evading the natural resting-places (cadences), and using unusual phrase lengths that Brahms weaves dramatic, highly involved, virtuosic 19th century compositions.
Rhapsodie Op.
79 No.
2 is composed in the key of G minor, yet no G minor chord is heard until 11 measures of music have passed.
There also are four different distinct motives presented within the exposition.
Within the first theme of the exposition there are, quite unusually, no cadences at all.
Brahms then takes fragments of the four motives and cleverly weaves, stacks and alters them throughout the development section, ever building tension.
The recapitulation returns with the opening theme exactly as it was first heard.
The final few measures of the recapitulation builds tension to a climactic fortissimo leading to the coda or tail/ending.
The coda slowly diminishes in volume until it is pianissimo, soft and gentle in nature, just to awaken the audience with two dramatic fortissimo chords! What an absolutely glorious piece!