Editing Johannes Brahms (section)

====Beethoven and the Viennese Classical tradition====
Brahms venerated Beethoven; in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. Brahms's [[Symphony No. 1 (Brahms)|First Symphony]] bears the influence of Beethoven's Fifth, for example, in struggling toward a [[C&nbsp;major]] triumph from [[C&nbsp;minor]]. The main theme of the finale of the First Symphony is also reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's [[Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)|Ninth]], and when this resemblance was pointed out to Brahms he replied that any dunce<ref>Brahms used the German word "Esel", of which one translation is "donkey" and another is "dunce": ''Cassell's New German Dictionary'', Funk and Wagnalls, New York and London, 1915</ref> could see that. In 1876, when the work was premiered in Vienna, it was immediately hailed as "Beethoven's Tenth". Indeed, the similarity of Brahms's music to that of late Beethoven had first been noted as early as November 1853 in a letter from [[Albert Dietrich]] to [[Ernst Naumann]].{{sfn|Floros|2010|loc=80}}<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BF29_4kLipcC&q=ernst+naumann+brahms&pg=PA6|title=Recollections of Johannes Brahms|first1=Albert Hermann|last1=Dietrich|first2=J. V.|last2=Widmann|date=2000|publisher=Minerva Group|access-date=8 October 2017|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-89875-141-3|oclc=50646747}}</ref>

Brahms loved the classical composers Mozart and Haydn. He especially admired Mozart, so much so that in his final years he reportedly declared Mozart as the greatest composer. On 10 January 1896, Brahms conducted the ''Academic Festival Overture'' and both piano concertos in Berlin, and during the following celebration Brahms interrupted Joachim's toast with "Ganz recht; auf Mozart's Wohl" (Quite right; here's Mozart's health).<ref>{{cite book|last=Spaeth|first=Sigmund|author-link=Sigmund Spaeth|title=Stories Behind the World's Great Music|year=2020|publisher=Pickle Partners Publishing|page=235}}</ref> Brahms also compared Mozart with Beethoven to the latter's disadvantage, in a letter to [[Richard Heuberger]] in 1896: "[[Consonance and dissonance|Dissonance]], true dissonance as Mozart used it, is not to be found in Beethoven. Look at ''[[Idomeneo]]''. Not only is it a marvel, but as Mozart was still quite young and brash when he wrote it, it was a completely new thing. You couldn't commission great music from Beethoven since he created only lesser works on commission—his more conventional pieces, his variations and the like."<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Fisk|editor1-first=Josiah|editor2-last=Nichols|editor2-first=Jeff|title=Composers On Music: Eight Centuries of Writings|year=1997|publisher=University Press of New England|pages=134–135|url=https://archive.org/details/composersonmusic0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up|url-access=registration|isbn=978-1-55553-279-6}}</ref> Brahms collected first editions and autographs of Mozart and Haydn's works and edited performing editions.