BRAHMS AS A READER AND COLLECTOR

Abstract

RARELY has the honorary title of Doctor of Philosophy been bestowed upon an artist with such well-founded justification as in the case of Johannes Brahms. When in 1879 the University of Breslau named him doctor honoris causa, it was for the great composer that the distinction was intended. The faculty probably did not know that they were simultaneously conferring the honor upon a man who was also entitled to it through the exceptional breadth and profundity of his culture. For Brahms, whose regular schooling had ceased in his fifteenth year, strove from his earliest youth with uncommon fervor to deepen and extend his knowledge. By his thirst for information and his never-flagging industry, this son of a poor musician became an authority esteemed not only by fellow artists but among men of science as well. It was no mere chance that Brahms's circle of friends and acquaintances included scholars like Spitta, Nottebohm, Pohl, Chrysander, Jahn, and Mandyczewski, the music historians, Wendt the philologist, and the famous physicians, Billroth and Engelmann. Already in his early years this hunger for knowledge manifested itself. As a schoolboy Brahms always used his pocketmoney for a subscription to the circulating library; and when, as a youth, he played dance-music in little pubs and pothouses, he would set a book before him on the music-rack, eagerly reading while his fingers mechanically performed the long-familiar tunes. He made diligent use of the library of his teacher, Marxsen. Here for the first time he had the run of a valuable and well-ordered collection of books and music which he studied with the greatest care, copying out in full anything-such as Beethoven symphonies -that particularly interested him. Later on he ransacked the Schumanns' library, as he himself wrote, with great delight (mit grosser Wonne); and he only too gladly undertook the task of arranging its books and music, in order to become acquainted in the process with their contents. During his summer visits to Thun, in 1886-88, he would wander over to his friend Widmann in Bern with a large leather travelling-bag in which to abduct as many books as possible from the house of that widely cultured writer. In the last years of his life, too, he was a frequent visitor