Johannes Brahms

Born in Hamburg on 7 May 1833 to a musical family, Brahms toured Central Europe as a young pianist, meeting Franz Liszt in Weimar and eventually winning the backing of Robert and Clara Schumann. He lived with Clara in Düsseldorf during Robert's voluntary commitment and stayed devoted to her after Robert's death, though he never married. Critics cast him as the conservative in the War of the Romantics - a label he resented - while Eduard Hanslick praised his works as absolute music and Hans von Bülow named him heir to Bach and Beethoven, a claim Wagner ridiculed. He led Vienna's Singakademie and Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, programming early repertoire he studied closely, and kept composing chamber music late in life despite talk of retirement. Arnold Schoenberg later called his structural method "progressive," and the four symphonies, concertos, Requiem, and hundreds of Lieder he left behind anchor the repertoire still.