Bittersweet symphoniesBrahms's affair with Clara Schumann was a sizzling mess that left his life in chaos and filled his musicwith yearning

Jan Swafford

Saturday 26 April 2003 02.15 BST

I n 1855 Johannes Brahms wrote the pianist Clara Schumann a naked cry of frustration: "Ican do nothing but think of you... What have you done to me? Can't you remove the spellyou have cast over me?" The situation between them at the time was messy - very messy.

Clara was 35, Brahms 21, she famous, he rather more infamous. She was married to thecomposer Robert Schumann, and the pair had seven young children. On the other hand, formore than a year, Clara's husband had been in an asylum and Clara had not been allowed tosee him. When Robert fell off the edge, Brahms had hastened to her side.

Now Brahms, Robert's protege and discovery, was helplessly in love with Robert's wife.They had not expected it, didn't want it, and so on. Brahms loved and admired Robert.Shortly before jumping in the Rhine to escape the demonic oratorios in his head, Robert hadmade the name Brahms known across Europe, declaring this student from Hamburg thecoming saviour of German music.

Brahms, meanwhile, was living with Clara and the children - his bedroom on a separatefloor, to be sure, but spending most of his time consoling her, helping with the children, andgoing nearly out of his mind with yearning.

In those years Brahms was slim, beardless and drop-dead handsome. Gossip was sizzling inmusical circles. Clara was yearning mightily, too, but as with Brahms her feelings weretangled up with anxiety and guilt. Robert and Clara had been, after all, the supreme musicalromance of the Romantic period. Clara was the love of Robert's life, his prime musicalchampion, the heroic force that had held together his splintering mind longer than anyonecould have imagined.

After a protracted decline, Robert died in 1856, whereupon Brahms and Clara were free todeclare their passion, to marry. The couple went on holiday to Switzerland to sort it all out.Exactly what he said to her we will never know, but it amounted to this: Cheerio. I'm off toHamburg. Write if you get work.

Clara put him on the train, staggered home, and told her journal: "I felt as if I were returningfrom a funeral." Daughter Eugenie later said that Clara could never understand why Brahmsso ruthlessly turned away. Clara took up her performing career with a vengeance; it was hersolace and, she would tell Brahms, "the very breath of my body".

There are more ironies in this first and greatest, if not precisely last, love of Brahms's life. Ifhe would not marry Clara, neither would he marry anybody else - in his heart he could neverleave Clara, nor she him. For the rest of their lives they would maintain their strange but

inescapable connection. They spent holidays together. They hugged and kissed.

Their love may never have been consummated. This may seem absurd. But these weredifferent times: no birth control, lots of disease. Proper women shunned affairs. In lateryears Brahms told an acquaintance that he had never compromised a respectable woman,and for him the definition of a respectable woman was Clara. He once described the agedClara to a friend thus: "Virginal as ever."

It is hardly a question of Brahms or Clara being sexless. Brahms was famously devoted toprostitutes; for his purposes, he seemed to relegate sex to the professional variety. Duringtheir marriage Clara and Robert had maintained a kind of shorthand sexual diary, formedical reasons, which revealed that they were startlingly active throughout. Recall theseven children. And some years later Clara had a brief, unhappy affair with TheodorKirchner, one of Brahms's best friends. The latter business did not emerge until recentyears, and as far as we know Brahms never suspected. At one point he wrote to Clara thatKirchner was talking about killing himself. Never mind, Clara replied, he says that all thetime. We may presume this was after the affair.

In short, it was all a splendid mess. What seems to have motivated the rest of Brahms's life,romantic and otherwise, was no more mess. He kept to a life of composing and performing,fought with his friends, tried with imperfect success to keep women at bay, and fled real-lifedrama whenever it appeared. But the real mess, and a big one, lay inside Brahms himself, inhis relations to women and to emotional life in general.

The chaos, the divided nature, likely started at a vulnerable time. At age 13, Brahms wasalready a phenomenon, with his teachers predicting great things. His parents weresupportive, but they were also limited and naive. At some point money was short, so theboy was sent to earn his keep playing piano in some waterfront establishments where hisfather had worked in his own youth. Maybe these places had been something of a lark to thefather. They were not to Brahms.

Popular with sailors, these joints combined the services of bar, restaurant, dance hall andbrothel. Brahms was delicately pretty and bad things happened to him in the bars. Mostlyhe only hinted at what they were (to Clara among others), but for the rest of his life hetalked about it, with rage and anguish and sometimes with a fierce pride, for havingsurvived. It steeled him, he said. And this is true. Brahms reached maturity tough as nails.

He said that these experiences ruined women for him. One night, in his cups, he broke up aparty by branding all women with a word so sordid that nobody would repeat it. To thefriend delegated to sober him up in the park, Brahms raved: "You tell me I should have thesame respect, the same exalted homage for women that you have. You expect that of a mancursed with a childhood like mine."

In our terms, German culture at that time was thoroughly misogynistic. Brahms was moreso. He relegated sexuality to prostitutes, joked constantly about lady musicians. Onewoman recalled watching him at a party, stroking his moustache and leering at the girls "asa greedy boy stares at jam tartlets".

Yet if you happened to be female and happened to have talent, there was nobody you would

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rather have in your corner than Brahms. To a number of women performers he gaveextravagantly of his time and money and influence. One was the teenage violinist MarieSoldat, whom he sent off to study with his friend Joachim. When at 20 Soldat made asensation in Vienna with his Violin Concerto, Brahms was heard shouting from the balcony:"Couldn't she hold her own with 10 men?" Did he love Marie? Probably. How did he squireher? He took her to Vienna's Prater fun fair for the merry-go-round and puppet show.

So Brahms was paradoxically divided about women, as he was about many things. He fell inlove periodically after Clara, usually with singers. With the first, Agathe, he exchangedrings, but then sent her a brutal note: "I love you!... But I can't wear chains." Agathe was notthe sort you wrote that to. She broke it off and grieved for years. He admitted to friends: "Ihave played the scoundrel with Agathe."

Brahms understood himself and his divided nature with unsentimental clarity. He was aclassicising Romantic, a loner who was a creature of the musical mainstream, a backward-looking artist who anticipated and inspired the future of music. Brahms scorned women andloved them and fled from them, but inescapably needed them.

Whatever the chaos in Brahms's mind ("chaos" his own word, describing his feelings as ateenager), he negotiated his life with extraordinary discipline, common sense, integrity andhonesty. The chaos of emotion shackled and subdued by a relentless sense of form anddiscipline: that is Brahms's art in a nutshell. Likewise, his life. And the most familiar andbeloved note in his art is the note of yearning.

· Jan Swafford is a composer and writer on music. His Brahms: a Biography is published byMacmillan.