A few Brahms Trivia questions?

Hi Glinzek, a lifetime we hadn't a fight.

To the best of my naiveness and unwillingness to stand up and look for a specific book, I always believed that the first sketches of the 1st symphony date back to 1862 and it took 14 years to get to the first performance, but in the meantime the material remained where it was originally, that is in Brahms's drawers. I greet with enthusiasm the news that he had attempted to write a zero symphony (Beethoven's 9.5th).

The mottos belong to the severe north-german tradition of a dark and symbolistic religiousness.

In Düsseldorf, in 1853, Schumann, Albert Dietrich, Brahms and violinist Joseph Joachim formed a merry circle. This last received a birthday present by Schumann and the others in the form of a violin/piano sonata based on an F – A – E note sequence, recalling Joachim’s favoeite motto (Frei aber einsam, Free but lonely); Schumann wrote the second movement (intermezzo) and the Finale. Brahms took the 3rd, a Scherzo. In 10 days the work was done. Schumann put his personal contributions in his Sonata no.3.

Brahms's "Symphony no. 3 in F" is the one of the Frei aber Froh (free but happy) motto.

Motet "Schaffe in mir, Gott," is based on Psalm 51, it has four movements for 5 voices (SATBB) and a very complicated canon structure. The motet (finished in 1864) follows Brahms’s deep attraction to Bach. The first movement was written in 1856 and has a complex canon which proceeds somehow hidden. The soprano line has a ‘normal’ line, whilst bass shows an "augmentation" (doubled rhythm: half notes get whole, quarters become halves, etc..)

Counterquestion: why are you asking this ?

Hey, on second thoughts: aren't you implying that he wanted to write a symphony when he deviated to his fabulous first piano concerto ??? No, I am sure you aren't.

Don't know the first two, but for the third, as I recall, the parts are identical, except the bass is twice as slow (augmentation) or maybe twice as fast?