A New York Times Notable Book
"This brilliant and magisterial book is a very good bet to...become the
definitive study of Johannes Brahms."--The Plain Dealer
Judicious, compassionate, and full of insight into Brahms's human
complexity as well as his music, Johannes Brahms is an indispensable
biography.
Proclaimed the new messiah of Romanticism by Robert Schumann when he was
only twenty, Johannes Brahms dedicated himself to a long and
extraordinarily productive career. In this book, Jan Swafford sets out
to reveal the little-known Brahms, the boy who grew up in mercantile
Hamburg and played piano in beer halls among prostitutes and drunken
sailors, the fiercely self-protective man who thwarted future
biographers by burning papers, scores and notebooks late in his life.
Making unprecedented use of the remaining archival material, Swafford
offers richly expanded perspectives on Brahms's youth, on his difficult
romantic life--particularly his longstanding relationship with Clara
Schumann--and on his professional rivalry with Lizst and Wagner.
"[Johannes Brahms] will no doubt stand as the definitive work on
Brahms, one of the monumental biographies in the entire musical
library."--London Weekly Standard
"It is a measure of the accomplishment of Jan Swafford's biography that
Brahms's sadness becomes palpable.... [Swafford] manages to construct
a full-bodied human being."--The New York Times Book Review
