Johannes Brahms-Part 10

His Season

His sarcasm was widely known. To a young composer who showed him a manuscript he said: "My dear, you will never become a Beethoven," to which, however, he received the unexpected reply; "My dear master, none of us ever will."

One day as a friend came to tell him that admirers of Raff were getting up a subscription to erect a monument to his memory, he exclaimed, "Let them make haste, don't delay a moment, or he will be forgotten before you put it up."

At the same time he was modest. On one occasion Joachim attempted to toast him as the greatest of living composers, but Brahms anticipated him by saying; "Here's to the health of Mozart."

When asked by the wife of Strauss, the Waltz King, to write something on her fan, he penned a bar or two of the Blue Danube Waltz and subscribed it "Not, alas, by Johannes Brahms."

He was addicted to the habit of snoring.