‘In fond memory of Johs Brahms’
The music album of the Hamburg composer and pianist Louise Japha
‘Zur freundlichen Erinnerung’ (‘In fond memory’). This short dedication was added by Johannes Brahms to the autograph entry of his then unpublished song ‘Liebe und Frühling I’ in the music album of Louise Japha. Japha and Brahms knew each other from their hometown of Hamburg and this entry, dated October 1853, documents their meeting again in Düsseldorf, which, as Brahms told his friend Joseph Joachim, made him ‘as happy as a child’. In Düsseldorf, where Robert and Clara Schumann were living at the time, Japha and Brahms were part of a larger circle of musical friends which, in a way, materialises in the album.
This album is a unique collection of musical autographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, containing 16 compositions, some of which have not been printed to this day. It offers insights into some of Japha’s musical contacts which were previously unknown. At the same time, it is evidence of a custom which played an important part in the musical friendships of the nineteenth century, and which – in similar form – is still found in Poesiealben and friendship memory books.
Collecting music in albums was, at the time, an extremely popular pastime. Musicians, but also music lovers, owned such albums and collected inscriptions from colleagues, acquaintances, friends or members of their families. Among the owners of such albums are such prominent names as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy or Robert and Clara Schumann. While most album owners collected pictorial and text entries in their albums – in addition to music – there is a small group of music albums which only contain staff paper. The album of Louise Japha belongs to the latter group.
Louise Japha received the album in 1851, around the time of her 25th birthday; a dedication found on fol. IIr suggests that the book was a gift. The landscape-format book is bound in violet velvet, measures 32.8 × 23.5 cm and contains 42 sheets of music staff paper as well as three loose leaves. Folios 1–21 have nine staves each and are primarily designed to allow songs to be entered, as there is space for the lyrics (see, for example, Fig. 1). The subsequent folios have ten staves, always with two staves closer to each other, and were to be used for inscribing piano music (see, for example, Fig. 7). On the front cover we find the title ‘Album’ which, like the decorative border, is applied in gold (Fig. 2).
The Norwegian composer and violin virtuoso Ole Bull inaugurated the new book. Bull was on an international tour in 1851 which included a concert in Hamburg in the spring. We may assume that Bull and Japha met on this occasion, and that Japha asked Bull to write the first entry in her album. Thus, on 14 April 1851, Bull notated a song from his incidental music to the play ‘Fjeldstuen’ (The Mountain Hut) by the Norwegian poet Henrik Wergeland, and, in broken German, added the dedication ‘Zum freundlichen Andenken an Fräulein Louise Japha von ihr aufrichtiger Verehrer Ole Bull’ (‘In fond memory for Miss Louise Japha from her sincere admirer Ole Bull’) (Fig. 3). The lyrics of the song, which is in a traditional idiom and was to become one of Bull’s most successful compositions, are about the love of the homeland in which the lyrical self – in the drama, a young woman, Sigrid – wants to remain until her lover returns.
After this initial entry, Japha did not make use of the album for over two years. However, she must have taken it to Düsseldorf in November 1852, where the next entry was made in October 1853 which was the song composed and entered by Brahms shown above. Two further Brahms autographs are included in the album as loose sheets. The first, an album leaf, is dedicated not only to Louise but also to her sister, Minna – the sisters had moved to Düsseldorf together where Minna was studying painting (Fig. 4). The second is not an album leaf and was probably not intended to be kept (Fig. 5). Brahms has notated his song ‘Liebe und Frühling II’ on the recto and in the upper half of the verso page and has added ‘Göttingen July 1853’ to the notation – whose final flourish, as is often the case with Brahms is a ‘B’. It is reasonable to assume that Brahms notated this music while visiting Joseph Joachim in Göttingen in the summer of 1853 and brought it with him when he travelled to Düsseldorf in the same year, where he met the Japha sisters.
Before leaving Düsseldorf at the end of the following year, Japha collected three more entries in her album – from Brahms’s friends Albert Dietrich and Julius Otto Grimm, who also belonged to the Schumann circle, as well as from Oscar Axel Frithiof Lindhult, who was active in Düsseldorf as a singing teacher and who taught Marie and Elise Schumann at times. On 7 January 1854, Lindhult inscribed a Swedish folk song entitled ‘Wermlands-visa’ (Fig. 6), which is still very well known today: for example, Rufus Wainwright sang it at the Nobel Prize banquet in 2022.
Dietrich’s contribution, a ‘Phantasiestück’, dated 23 February, is the first piano piece to be inscribed in the album – a surprising finding given the fact that the album’s owner was a pianist (Fig. 7). Dietrich belonged to Robert Schumann’s circle of close friends, and, in his well-known essay ‘Neue Bahnen’, Schumann counted him among the ‘hochaufstrebenden Künstler der jüngsten Zeit’ (‘best emerging artists of recent times’). As far as I know, Dietrich’s ‘Phantasiestück’ has only survived in Japha’s album; it was composed at a time when Robert Schumann’s poor health was very stressful for his friends in Düsseldorf.
Grimm’s addition to Japha’s album was a song entitled ‘Unruhe’, which was printed a year later by Kistner in Leipzig as No. 2 of his Sechs Lieder für eine Singstimme mit Begleitung des Pianoforte op. 7, dedicated to the Leipzig singer and salonnière Livia Frege.
Japha left Düsseldorf in November 1854 and, from 1855 to 1857, regularly gave concerts in Berlin. Entries in her album document her stay in Berlin until the spring of 1858, but also indicate that she often visited her hometown of Hamburg. Between 1855 and 1858 she was able to add a total of six compositions to her album, including two short pieces for piano. The first was notated by the Berlin pianist and composer Clara von Gossler in Berlin in 1855 and the second by the Stendal-born composer and conductor Julius Schaeffer in Hamburg in 1857. Two songs and a duet were added between January and April 1858. The first was inscribed on New Year’s Day when Japha was probably on home leave; it was a song by the pianist and composer Wilhelm Goldner who, like Japha, was born in Hamburg. He wrote down a song entitled ‘Das Grab’. This entry was followed in February by a duet inscribed by the Berlin composer and music critic, Richard Wüerst (Fig. 8), and, in April, by a song on a text from Lord Byron’s Hebrew Melodies composed by the singer and composer Auguste Leo (née Loewe), who had been a member of the Berlin Singakademie since 1838 and regularly performed solo parts there until 1847 (Fig. 9).
On 15 July 1858, Louise Japha married the violinist, composer and music writer Friedrich Wilhelm Langhans, with whom she would have three sons. After her marriage, she seems to have put her album aside – which is why I use her maiden name, Japha, throughout. Thus, there are no traces in the album of what were probably the most successful years of her career: in the 1860s, Louise and her husband were renowned for their performances of German chamber music in Paris. The fact that Louise Japha did not continue her album after her marriage was not unusual; indeed, it seems to have been common practice for women. Fanny Mendelssohn Bartholdy, for example, did the same. However, the last entry before Japha's wedding is very interesting; it was written on 10 July 1858 by the violinist and composer Carl Witting, who was to marry Louise’s sister Minna, whom he had met through Louise Japha, in 1860. Witting wrote a piece for violin and piano in the album, which he dedicated ‘Der talentvollen Kunstgenossin Louise Japha zur freundschaftlichen Erinnerung an Carl Witting, Bruder in Apollo’. (‘To the talented fellow artist Louise Japha in friendly memory of Carl Witting, brother in Apollo’) (Fig. 10). This is the only composition for violin in the album and was perhaps included because Japha was about to marry a violinist. On the other hand, the fact that Witting was also a violinist may well have influenced the decision.
A volume of Witting’s memoirs is in the hands of Japha’s descendants – who also own her album. These memoirs were previously unknown to the public and have therefore not been studied by scholars, but they offer further information about Louise Japha’s life and career. One section provides an interesting insight into a meeting between Witting and Japha in Hamburg in 1858, i.e. around the time that he included his inscription in the album (I would like to thank Dorothea Grube for the transcription of the German original):
One day I was walking along the Alster when, to my great delight, I noticed L. Japha, whose acquaintance I had made in Berlin, on the other side of the road. I hurried over to greet her, but she turned into a side street before I could reach her [...]. That evening was the concert of the violinist Haffner, to which I had received an invitation [...]. I had taken my seat at the appointed time when someone tapped me on my shoulder, I turned round and noticed Japha, who was seated behind me. After the performance we left together, and I was surprised to hear that she was from Hamburg and was now visiting her parents. She also urgently wished to introduce me to her family immediately [...]. My objection that it might be a little late for her parents to receive someone they did not know at all, was of no use, I had to go with her. By 10 o’clock we had arrived at the house, and she introduced me as her colleague from Berlin.
The parents welcomed me warmly, and the Miss immediately asked the cook to bring another place setting because her dinner was ready, the younger sister Meta immediately went to fetch it while another sister, Minna, leant on her mother’s arm and looked at me almost melancholically with her large black eyes. The colour of her face was elegantly pale and her calm, contemplative nature made her seem the exact opposite of her lively sister Louise, my Berlin colleague, who enjoyed making witty comments. Here I must remark that Louise was held in high esteem as an important piano virtuoso and as a musician with an excellent knowledge of musical theory. [...] From then on, I was often a guest in this friendly family.
The Langhans’s marriage was not to last – Louise and Friedrich Wilhelm Langhans had been living apart since the early 1870s and were divorced by 1890. After a stay in the south of France, Louise settled in Wiesbaden in 1875, where she lived until the end of her life in 1910. Here, she composed, gave concerts and became a popular piano teacher, especially for advanced female students. A progressive hearing impairment caused her to withdraw from public life in the 1890s; thus, only a close circle of friends visited her in her home and had the opportunity of listening to her piano playing. One such visitor was the composer, music journalist and music teacher Edmund Uhl, who also lived in Wiesbaden. Uhl, a whole generation younger, seems to have had a close relationship with Japha. On her eightieth birthday, in 1906, he dedicated a two-page article to her in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik where, in the last paragraph, he writes (see, for the German original, the German version of the present text):
May these lines remind our fast-moving times – as they hasten nervously onwards – of the name of this venerable veteran of the arts, who, [...] while remaining faithful to her favourite master R. Schumann, knew how to maintain a close touch with the currents of our modern music.
It was to these ‘modern currents’ that Japha once again opened her album in the last years of her life. In July 1904, the then 24-year-old composer and conductor, Hermann Noetzel, who was born in Wiesbaden and was presumably on home leave at the time, wrote a short piano piece for her album that clearly bears impressionistic traits (Fig. 11).
In addition to his article Edmund Uhl was also allowed to inscribe the album. He dedicated his contribution, dated 23 November 1903, to ‘Seiner verehrten mütterlichen Freundin zur freundlichen Erinnerung’ (‘His revered maternal friend in fond memory’). In his composition he puts a poem of the Austrian poet and journalist, Jenny Schnabl, to music. Schnabl had attended the conservatory in Vienna and was killed in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. It is entitled ‘Einst...’ (‘Once...’) and the text reads as follows:
Über meinem Leben lag
Einst ein Hauch wie Sonnenduft,
Wie er an Frühsommertagen
Taut in blauer Morgenluft.Über meinem Leben liegt
jetzt ein Dämmerhauch, so still,
Wie an kurzen Wintertagen,
Wenn es Abend, Abend werden will.
(Over my life once lay
a film – like a scent of the sun
when, on an early summer’s day,
it turns to dew in the blue morning light.Over my life now lies
a dusk-like film, resting,
as when, on a short winter’s day,
it is about to become evening, evening.)
These melancholic verses may be seen as an image of old age, i.e., of Louise Japha’s isolation consequent on her hearing impairment and as a memory of earlier, more agreeable times. The image of the approaching evening may refer to the finiteness of life. Indeed, Uhl’s piece – as a setting that gradually decelerates, and fades into lower pitch ranges – encourages this metaphor.
Thus, the album of Louise Japha, married name Langhans, covers her life, from when she was a young, unmarried woman still living with her parents until her 79th year. Here, it must be added that the time she lived with her husband was a significant interruption to the expansion of the album, albeit typical for women of that time. The entries were made in only four different places: Her birthplace Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Wiesbaden. Japha seems to have made very deliberate choices as to who would contribute to her album, and to have clearly expressed her expectations regarding the entries. The fact that only complete, performable compositions can be found in the album, most of which had not yet been published at the time of the entry, can certainly be considered to be exceptional.
The fact that there are no inscriptions by Robert and Clara Schumann is rather surprising. We know that Robert Schumann appreciated Louise Japha as a composer from a letter he wrote to the Austrian poet, Hermann Rollett, in 1854, in which he notes that Louise Japha knew how to find ‘gute töne zu guten Liedern’ (‘good tunes to good Lieder’ – whereby ‘Lieder’ here means ‘poems’). On the other hand, it is possible that the Schumanns did make contributions to the album, since there are several stubs indicating that leaves were removed; thus, entries by the two Schumanns may have been taken out of the album at a later date. The removal of some of the leaves of this exceptional manuscript is not, in itself, remarkable; indeed, such practises were typical of this manuscript genre.
The album described here establishes its owner as a well-connected musician who was held in high esteem by many of her colleagues (Fig. 13 shows Louise Japha at an advanced age in one of only two surviving portraits). By and large, the album documents Louise Japha’s time in Düsseldorf particularly well. Here, Johannes Brahms holds a privileged position among the contributors, as the album contains three autographs by this composer. He may not have been aware of this accumulation of entries, as only one of the entries was made directly into the album. For today’s observer, however, the collection gives an impression of how important the exchange with Brahms might have been for Japha, especially in the 1850s.
Digitised manuscript
Music Album of Louise Langhans (née Japha), Private Collection, Freiburg, 1851–1904 <http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.10770>
Overview of the collected album leaves:
Die Einträge im Musikalbum von Louise Langhans, geb. Japha, <http://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.14829>
References
Babbe, Annkatrin (2011), ‘Langhans, Louise, Luise (Hermine), geb. Japha’, in Europäische Instrumentalistinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Sophie-Drinker-Institut für musikwissenschaftliche Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, <https://www.sophie-drinker-institut.de/langhans-louise> (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Beer, Axel (2023), ‘Hermann Noetzel’, in Musik und Musiker am Mittelrhein 2, ed. Axel Beer, <https://mmm2.mugemir.de/doku.php?id=noetzel&rev=1700642193> (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Beer, Axel and Gudula Schütz (2023), ‘Edmund Uhl’, in Musik und Musiker am Mittelrhein 2, ed. Axel Beer, <https://mmm2.mugemir.de/doku.php?id=uhl&rev=1697971341> (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Droese, Janine (2023), ‘“J’aime bonne compagnie” – Fragile Cohesion, Communicative Processes and the Stratigraphy of Nineteenth-century Music-related Albums’, manuscript cultures, 20: 51–70, <https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/mc/files/articles/mc20-droese.pdf> (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Droese, Janine and Janina Karolewski (eds, 2024), Manuscript Albums and their Cultural Contexts: Collectors, Objects, and Practices (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 34), Berlin: De Gruyter 2024, <https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111321462> (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Falling, Carol (2022), Dokumentarfilm Louise Langhans-Japha (1826–1910) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0LIrIB2uBI> (Wiesbadener Komponistinnen: Schicksale und Erfahrungen 2) (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Falling, Carol (2022), ‘Brahms’s Childhood Friend Louise Langhans-Japha: New Discoveries’, The American Brahms Society Newsletter XL/2: 1–6.
Kalbeck, Max (1904–1914), Johannes Brahms, 4 vols, unaltered reprint of the last authorised version, Tutzing: Schneider 1976.
Schütz, Gudula (2024), ‘Louise Langhans-Japha’, in Musik und Musiker am Mittelrhein 2, ed. Axel Beer, <https://mmm2.mugemir.de/doku.php?id=langhans&rev=1721026557> (last accessed on 26 August 2024).
Teske-Spellerberg, Ulrike (1996), ‘“Ich habs gewagt”. Louise Langhans-Japha. Eine vergessene Komponistin der Romantik’, in Festschrift für Winfried Kirsch zum 65. Geburtstag, eds Peter Ackermann, Ulrike Kienzle and Adolph Nowak, Tutzing: Schneider, 359–375.
Description
Location: Private collection, Freiburg im Breisgau
Size and number of pages: 32,8 × 23,5 cm (landscape format); III, 42, II folios plus three loose additions
Material: ink on paper; purple velvet binding with gold embossing, gilt edges on three sides; printed graphic as title page; moiré endpapers
Period in which entries were made: 1851–1904
Places where entries were made: Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Wiesbaden
Copyright Notice
Copyright for all photographs: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt thanks go to the descendants of Louise Japha, who made the digitisation and scientific analysis of the album possible and provided me with further material. I would also like to thank Eva Baumann and Dorothea Grube for the joint organisation of a lecture recital on this album, which took place on 14 October 2023 at the Musikhochschule Freiburg im Breisgau and on 15 October 2023 in the Evangelische Stadtkirche Emmendingen and which formed the starting point for the present text. I wish to thank the two pianists, Jörn Bartels and Michael Baumann; they participated both in the organisation of the concert and as pianists. I would also like to express my warmest thanks to Siri Thornhill and Pascale Jonczyk (voice) and Antonio Pellegrino (violin). All these musicians gave their permission to record the concert and publish extracts from it. Last but not least, many thanks go to Joseph McIntyre, whose scrupulous second language editing significantly improved the text and who also contributed the English translation of Jenny Schnabl’s poem.
Reference Note
Janine Droese, ‘In fond memory of Johs Brahms’: The music album of the Hamburg composer and pianist Louise Japha. In Leah Mascia, Thies Staack (eds): Artefact of the Month No. 32, CSMC, Hamburg.