Scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the relationship between Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann. The two first met in 1853, when Brahms visited the Schumanns in Düsseldorf and played many of his compositions for them, eliciting Robert Schumann’s famous article “Neue Bahnen,” which is also on display in this exhibit. After Robert was hospitalized in 1854, Brahms took over many of his responsibilities in the Schumann household, helping with the family and managing their business affairs. (He also regularly visited Robert in the hospital; the doctors did not permit Clara to do so.) Brahms was certainly in love with her, and she may have reciprocated his feelings, but after Robert’s death made it possible for them to marry, they chose not to do so, perhaps because of Brahms’s concern about maintaining his independence. Over the course of the ensuing forty years, they remained close friends and musical collabora­tors, but their relationship was never simple, and they had several quarrels.

One such dispute occurred in the late 1860s, and Brahms’s gift of the manuscript displayed here may have been part of their reconciliation. It is written on paper with a printed decorative border, and bears the inscription “Cl. Sch.” as well as the date “12. Sept. 71.” Sep­tember 12, 1871 was the 31st anniversary of Clara’s marriage, and September 13 was her 52nd birthday. For most of the decade, the piece seems to have been known only to her, but in 1879, Brahms published a revised version, without a dedication and now bearing the title “Capriccio,” as the first in a set of Klavier­stücke, Op. 76. Clara, who may have had proprietary feelings about the original, complained that the new version was marred by hidden parallel octaves.

This manuscript formerly belonged to S. Ellsworth Grumman (1891–1975). Grumman (Yale Class of 1913, M.A., 1918) taught piano at the Yale School of Music from 1919 to 1960. He donated the manuscript to the library in 1961.

According to Paul Berry (Yale Ph. D., 2007), this piece is closely related to the song “Alte Liebe,” Op. 72, no. 1, which Brahms composed in 1876. In a remarkable coincidence, the song manuscript is now part of the Frederick Koch Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, just across the street from the Gilmore Music Library.