The German composer Johannes Brahms was born seven years after Beethoven died, but Beethoven became his strongest musical influence - and his muse - his entire life.

As Brahms scholars have frequently noted, Brahms's first piano sonata starts out with a direct salute to Beethoven's Hammerklavier. When still a young man, King George of Hannover heard Brahms play and dubbed him the "Little Beethoven." When Brahms visited Vienna when he was 21, he exclaimed, "Well, this is it! I have established myself here... and can drink my wine where Beethoven drank his." In a letter to his friend Clara Schumann, Brahms once confided, "No youth should have to wait long for the works of Beethoven and Shakespeare. Once he owns them, he need not run rapidly to any others. In these two he has the whole world."

Brahms also collected Beethoven manuscripts. One of his greatest treasures was the manuscript of Beethoven's beautiful late period Sonata in A-flat Major, Opus 110. He eventually owned a dozen pages of sketches, a letter, the manuscript of the song "I love you," and the copy of Beethoven's Missa solemnis with corrections in the composer's own hand.