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Brahms submitted to Clara Schumann all his great works: the lovely, contemplative string quartets; the German Requiem for which, true to his Protestant upbringing, he used a simple. Biblical text; the four symphonies which were worthy successors to Beethoven's with their beautiful themes craftily amplified even more intricately than Beethoven developed his. Brahms's tender andantes stamped him as a product of the romantic age in which he lived but because he clung unfashionably to established musical forms (unlike revolutionary Richard Wagner) he came to be rated as the last of the classical titans.
Like the titans before him Brahms spent most of his musical life in Vienna, continued to take short winter concert tours with his friend Joachim, summered with Clara Schumann at the German spas. Vienna knew him as a churlish, thick-set man who on fine days went around in colored shirts, no collar, trousers too short. a shabby alpaca coat; on rainy days wore an old-fashioned bluish-green shawl fastened in front with an enormous pin. Brahms made many enemies in Vienna by his ill-mannered effort to assure himself privacy. Death came to him at 63. the immediate result of a cold contracted at Clara Schumann's grave. Vienna gave him a fine funeral, buried him near Beethoven and Schubert. Vienna will honor him with festival performances which musical Europeans will travel far and near to attend.