Johannes Brahms
Fame, criticism, and Dvořák

In May 1876, Cambridge University offered to grant honorary degrees of Doctor of Music to both Brahms and Joachim, provided that they composed new pieces as "theses" and were present in Cambridge to receive their degrees. Brahms was averse to traveling to England and requested to receive the degree 'in absentia', offering as his thesis the previously performed (November 1876) symphony. But of the two, only Joachim went to England and was granted a degree. Brahms "acknowledged the invitation" by giving the manuscript score and parts of his First Symphony to Joachim, who led the performance at Cambridge 8 March 1877 (English premiere).

The commendation of Brahms by Breslau as "the leader in the art of serious music in Germany today" led to a bilious comment from Wagner in his essay "On Poetry and Composition": "I know of some famous composers who in their concert masquerades don the disguise of a street-singer one day, the hallelujah periwig of Handel the next, the dress of a Jewish Czardas -fiddler another time, and then again the guise of a highly respectable symphony dressed up as Number Ten" (referring to Brahms's First Symphony as a putative tenth symphony of Beethoven).

Brahms was now recognised as a major figure in the world of music. He had been on the jury which awarded the Vienna State Prize to the (then little-known) composer Antonín Dvořák three times, first in February 1875, and later in 1876 and 1877, and had successfully recommended Dvořák to his publisher, Simrock. The two men met for the first time in 1877, and Dvořák dedicated to Brahms his String Quartet, Op. 34 of that year. He also began to be the recipient of a variety of honours: Ludwig II of Bavaria awarded him the Maximilian Order for Science and Art in 1874, and the music-loving Duke George of Meiningen awarded him the Commander's Cross of the Order of the House of Meiningen in 1881.

At this time Brahms also chose to change his image. Having been always clean-shaven, in 1878 he surprised his friends by growing a beard, writing in September to the conductor Bernhard Scholz: "I am coming with a large beard! Prepare your wife for a most awful sight." The singer George Henschel recalled that after a concert "I saw a man unknown to me, rather stout, of middle height, with long hair and a full beard. In a very deep and hoarse voice he introduced himself as 'Musikdirektor Müller'... an instant later, we all found ourselves laughing heartily at the perfect success of Brahms's disguise." The incident also displays Brahms's love of practical jokes.

In 1882 Brahms completed his Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83, dedicated to his teacher Marxsen. Brahms was invited by Hans von Bülow to undertake a premiere of the work with the Meiningen Court Orchestra. This was the beginning of his collaboration with Meiningen and with von Bülow, who was to rank Brahms as one of the ' Three Bs '; in a letter to his wife he wrote: "You know what I think of Brahms: after Bach and Beethoven the greatest, the most sublime of all composers."
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