Painted portrait of Johannes Brahms in 1889, swept-back grey hair, long white beard and broad moustache, dark coat and pale cravat, against a warm ochre ground

Portraits · Composers · IV of XVII

Johannes Brahms

1833–1897 · Composer

There is no real creating without hard work. … a gift, which I ought even to despise until I have made it my own by right of hard work.

“There is no real creating,” he said, “without hard work. That which you would call invention, that is to say, a thought, an idea, is simply an inspiration from above, for which I am not responsible, which is no merit of mine. Yea, it is a present, a gift, which I ought even to despise until I have made it my own by right of hard work.”

Johannes Brahms · as recorded by George Henschel, 1876
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Johannes Brahms said this on a train from Koblenz in February 1876. The young singer George Henschel was alone with him in the compartment and wrote it in his journal the next day. Brahms was forty-two.

Some twelve years earlier he wrote out this setting of Goethe's Wechsellied zum Tanze.

George Henschel, journal entry, Wiesbaden, 27 February 1876, on a conversation the day before on the train from Koblenz. George Henschel, Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1907), p. 22.

The originals

Black-and-white photograph of Johannes Brahms in 1889, swept-back hair and a long white beard, wide pale cravat, looking to the side
The likenessPHOTOGRAPHED BY C. BRASCH, BERLIN · 1889Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (photograph published in the 19th century). Wikimedia Commons. A small printed mark in the corner cropped away.
A handwritten page in brown ink headed 'Wechsellied zum Tanze', marked Tempo di Menuetto, con moto, with voice parts over a piano part
Wechsellied zum Tanze, c. 1864Goethe's dance song, set for four voices and piano as Op. 31 No. 1. Here alto and bass, 'the indifferent ones', begin: 'Come along, fair one …'Autograph fragment, c. 1864, found in the estate of Theodor Avé-Lallemant; Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg since 2010. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.