The first sketches for Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony date from 1862. Including interruptions, the work took him more than fourteen years. The premiere was set for 4 November 1876 in Karlsruhe, under Felix Otto Dessoff. Brahms is reported to have told the conductor Hermann Levi: Ich werde nie eine Symphonie komponieren! Du hast keinen Begriff davon, wie es unsereinem zu Mute ist, wenn er immer so einen Riesen (Beethoven) hinter sich marschieren hört.
“I will never compose a symphony! You have no idea how someone like me feels when he always hears such a giant (Beethoven) marching behind him.” The remark comes to us as reported speech, and the edition that quotes it does not name its written source.