That Johannes Brahms’s beard was a psychological disguise has always been admitted, masking Johannes’s inveterate shyness, self-pitying morbidity, and perennial sexual frustrations. But it’s not until now, and findings released in a new collection of essays (The Beard in Crisis: Masculinity, Subjectivity, and the Hirsute Performativity of Gender in 19th Century Central Europe – A Critical Reader (University of Bart College, Indiana), that the astonishing truth has come to light. Under one of the floorboards in Brahms’s bachelor pad in Vienna, a stash of fake beards in various stages of greyness has been discovered. This - at last! - explains why there are no photos or images of Brahms in between clean-shaven late-pubescence and full-on beardy-weirdy fulsomeness. What was he hiding? Something even more remarkable: a collection of hosiery, corsetry, and undergarmentry that correspond roughly to Brahms’s rotundity suggest that his performance of gender went beyond merely hiding behind a beard. Those otherwise inexplicable comments from Brahms’s favourite courtesans in Vienna’s cafés - “Johannes was one of us!”, Elisabeth Schwanenberg said after his death - now begin to make sense… [x]

OH MY GOD