Brahms, Johannes

Brahms, Johannes (1833-97), German composer.

Johannes Brahms's father was a poor musician who played the double-bass. He taught Johannes the piano and by the age of nine he was a skilled performer.

To earn a living while studying music, he played in dock-side taverns in his home town of Hamburg.

Before he was twenty, Brahms had composed many piano pieces which people still play today.

He was for a time a music teacher and a musical director to one of the German courts. Then in 1862 he settled in Vienna as conductor of a singing society.

He composed a wide range of music and became one of the most well-known men in Vienna which, at this time, was the most famous city in the world for music.

See Jan Swafford Johannes Brahms