Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms may have written the A major Piano Trio, published in 1938, in the early 1850s. He might have written it at some other time, or not at all. It is one of the most mysterious components of the composer's legacy, originally culled from a collection of musical manuscripts by musicologist Ernst Bücken in 1924. Some accounts state that the music's cover page was torn off, other versions of the story claim that the cover was there, but with only a question mark on it. Unlike most composers, Brahms kept no drafts or unpublished works for any extended period and burned everything he wrote that over time came to seem unsatisfactory to him. He was secretive and a perfectionist. Sometimes he would give out copies of unpublished works to get the opinion of trusted friends. If the response was unfavorable, he would take back the scores and either save them for reworking or destroy them. It is possible that over the course of his professional career, Brahms forgot to get back one of these scores. It is also possible that a musician friend such as the violinist Joachim or the pianist Schumann wrote the piece and planted it to be discovered and puzzled over. Clara Schumann for instance, was also a trained composer who as well acquainted with Brahms' work as anyone who has ever lived, and might have been able to knock off such a stylistically accurate forgery. It is not among his best works if it is his, generally regarded as a near miss, which is why it is believable that it could have been retracted and left unpublished. The score itself was not the original, but in another's hand, and scholars have determined that it was copied in the early to mid-1860s. Adding to the mystery is another, second music copier who made some small revisions. Neither hand is the composer's. Anyone interested in Brahms' music can read the debate regarding its potential authenticity. It did not make matters easier when the manuscript disappeared after Bücken's death. The scholastic debate that surrounds this work is often catty, approachable and fun to read. For many listeners, this would be a good way to find out what it is that musicologists actually do. It is also a smart method of learning how to hear Brahms' music.

The A major Piano Trio is in four movements and about forty minutes in duration. It has all the influences that are most common to his chamber music, including audible nods to Schubert and featuring a Neo-Baroque, Bachian flavor. Most chamber works by Brahms have at least one movement with a decidedly non-Germanic sound. True to form, the final movement of this piece is firmly Hungarian in flavor. It is generally placed among the composer's earlier works because the accompaniment is often not drawn from the thematic material, which became a standard practice in his mature works. Bücken did not put this work through a strenuous theoretical analysis, but instead played through it and determined what it was most likely to be, and this is nothing wrong with this approach, because at the end of the twentieth century, the debate remained open, with Bücken's original impressions of the work still a vital component of the argument. The music does not resemble that of another composer's. It is a problem seemingly built to live forever; of course Brahms withheld works not up to standard, but a talented composer could have imitated his style, not brilliantly but identifiably. If it was great Brahms, it could not have been imitated.