We all need mentors. An inspirational teacher, a colleague to facilitate a choice introduction or someone to offer wise counsel. Perhaps we freelance musicians, without achievable goals and the agony of an annual review and sales targets, need them all the more.
In 1853, a young Johannes Brahms found not one, but two. After an impromptu meeting with Robert and Clara Schumann, where he performed some of his fledgling compositions, the then highly influential Robert Schumann wrote an article for the New Journal of Music in Leipzig. This hyperbolic write-up, titled Neue Bahnen (New Paths), helped launch the relatively unknown 20-year-old on to the international music scene.
“One whose mastery … spring[s] fully armed from the head of Jupiter … has arrived, a young blood, at whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch. His name is Johannes Brahms,” wrote Schumann.
The language of the article could be seen as telling, with its kaleidoscopic talk of a “peaceful rainbow”, “butterflies and nightingale voices” perhaps indicating Robert’s manic state of mind. It was a difficult period for him: his position as municipal director of music in Düsseldorf had come apart publicly, ousted by his musicians amid symptoms of deteriorating health.
