Brahms

Johannes Brahms (1833-97) of Germany "composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus." He honored both Baroque and Classical structural techniques, yet he also aimed to "create bold new approaches to harmony and melody." [1] Brahms is featured in one of Wallace Stevens' more beautiful poems "Anglais Mort a Florence" (1936), which addresses the aging process and structurally imitates the declining mind of the aging man.
A little less returned for him each spring.                                         
Music began to fail him. Brahms, although
His dark familiar, often walked apart. (1-3) 
While at times in the poem Brahms is far from the man's mind, the composer returns again as the man "exercised his will, / Turning in time to Brahms as alternate / In speech" (14-16). [2] In his critical article "Wallace Stevens and Music: A Discography of Stevens' Phonograph Record Collection," Michael O. Stegman writes that the poet collected a wide range of recordings, including piano solos of Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, and others [3], so a reference to Brahms as a composer and accomplished pianist who speaks for the figure of the man within the poem when he cannot speak for himself seems appropriate, hearfelt, and moving.
==Notes==
1.Johannes Brahms                                                  
2. Stevens in Kermode and Richardson 119-20.
3. Stegman 80.
==References==
Johannes Brahms
Stegman, Michael O. "Wallace Stevens and Music: A Discography of Stevens' Phonograph Record Collection." The Wallace Stevens Journal: Commemorative Issue 3.3 & 4 (Fall 1979): 79-97. 
Stevens, Wallace. "Anglais Mort a Florence." Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. 119-20. Print.