Brahms: The Sextets
No 1 in Bb Op 18, No 2 in G major, Op 36.

Hausmusik London

Monica Huggett
Pavlo Beznosiuk
Roger Chase
Jeremy Williams
Richard Lester
David Watkin

Programme Notes

Brahms's two string sextets date from 1859-60 and 1864-5 respectively-a period characterized by several commentators as the composer's 'first maturity'. While this judgement may well be somewhat patronising towards the earlier music, it nevertheless points to a central truth about the works of that time, that they embody many of the distinctive features of Brahms's creative mission in a newly focused, refined and synthesized way, with influences assimilated and harnessed, an assured mastery of technique, and increased expressive definition and diversity.

Brahms had been involved with chamber music from the earliest stages of his commitment to composition, playing with his father's colleagues in a private concert in 1843, which included Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Wind Op.16 and one of the Mozart piano quartets (it is not known which). In 1851 at the silver wedding of a well-to-do Hamburg merchant he performed two of his own chamber works (now lost): Lied-Duett for cello and piano and a Piano Trio. His friend around this time, Louise Japha, testified: 'Beethoven and Bach were his chief Gods, he could not share my enthusiasm for Schumann', and from reports of his later pupil, Gustav Jenner, we learn how important it was for the emerging composer to model his movements on those of Mozart and Beethoven.

In Spring 1853 Brahms embarked on a concert tour with the violinist Eduard Remenyi, and they played violin and piano works by Beethoven, Vieuxtemps and Ernst. Following this tour Brahms visited Joseph Joachim, Franz Liszt, and then, in September and October, the Schumanns in Düsseldorf. These were decisive encounters for his artistic development, none more so than that with Robert Schumann, who hailed him as a genius and wrote the press article 'Neue Bahnen' ('New Paths') extolling his achievement and promise (the article also mentions violin sonatas and string quartets-all now lost). Schumann's approval, the immediate exposure to national attention, and the subsequent first publication of his music which all this engendered, brought Brahms to the view that he needed to study further, a view which had significant ramifications. His period of self-imposed, self-regulated study lasted some three years and included understanding, copying and imitating Renaissance and Baroque styles and works, together with canonic and fugal exercises. As a result Brahms came to know music from a broader historical range than any composer before; among his special and lasting enthusiasms were Isaac, Palestrina, Lotti, Schütz, Couperin 'Le grand', J S Bach, Handel, C P E Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Chopin. More important than knowing and understanding it, he let it influence the development of his own distinctive creative voice. 

During his years as court musician at Detmold he involved himself particularly with the music of Haydn and Mozart, writing his orchestral serenades; furthermore his enthusiasm for Schubert was growing, so that in 1863 he could claim 'My love for Schubert is a very serious one, perhaps just because it is no fleeting fancy'. When Franz Brendel proclaimed the emergence of The New German School led by Liszt in the summer of 1859, this forced Brahms to come to terms with his contemporary context and its relation to the heritage he so much valued. He was convinced that Liszt represented a false direction: 'The pestilence will grow and grow, and will make the asses' ears of the general public and of our young composers longer and longer, inevitably spelling disaster' he wrote to a friend; and he and some like-minded colleagues wrote a manifesto, couched naturally in more temperate terms but nevertheless just as firm in content, which was published in May 1860. Yet we should not see the First String Sextet op.18 and the great flowering of chamber music composition which followed it simply as ripostes to Liszt's symphonic poems and programme symphonies; altogether profounder issues were at stake. In any case, to view Brahms as an 'absolute' composer is essentially naive and takes little account of ways in which audiences listened at the time.

As Wagner said of Brahms in 1864, 'One sees what may yet be achieved in the old forms when someone comes who understands how to handle them'. The revitalisation of classical forms (sonata, variation, rondo) in the context of a paramount classical genre (chamber music) became a mission to create an original and durable body of work, true to its past because recognising its strengths and realising its latent possibilities. Brahms met the most powerful crisis of this mission in string quartet and symphony, both these quintessentially Beethovenian genres causing him many years of consideration, trial and error before he released his first contributions. In the main he found generic innovation easier; the Variations on a Theme of Haydn (the first self-standing variation-set for orchestra), for instance, took less time and its genesis was more assured. The string sextet, while not quite so innovative, had very little significant precedent and certainly did not carry the particular weight of classical example which a string quartet or symphony did; furthermore, it clearly provided a texture that appealed directly to Brahms's ear for rich sound, and to his developing interest in orchestrational possibilities within chamber music. Indeed, in many ways, particularly to do with breadth of conception, clarity of structure and expression, his First String Sextet op.18 could be regarded as a successor to the orchestral serenades (the first of which was originally conceived as a chamber work).

Brahms started work on the Bb Sextet at the same time as finishing the Second Serenade op.16 and before he had finished the final version of the First Serenade op.11. He sent the first movement of the Sextet to Clara Schumann in November 1859; Brahms's friend, the composer Julius Otto Grimm, received the first two movements in December and in early 1860 also the scherzo. At that time Brahms was revisiting his First Serenade, resetting it for full orchestra, and so at last letting go of his earlier chamber conception for the work. In September 1860 Joseph Joachim received the whole of the Sextet, though the first three movements were already known to him.

The first movement originally began at bar 11, Brahms adding the opening 10 bars at a relatively late stage and at Joachim's suggestion-as has recently been confirmed by the discovery of the original manuscript parts. This change brings into being a sonic parallel between the openings of the first and last movements, representing a structural enrichment of the whole. It also gives a statement-plus-enhanced-response shape to the first subject of the sonata form, setting in train a structural feature which is replicated in most of the other sections of the movement. The expansive lyricism of the movement is at its broadest in the second subject, which consists of four distinct melodies, each repeated in varied instrumentation; in this and in the mediant key opening of the subject, the effect of Brahms's love of Schubert comes particularly to the fore. Beethovenian chamber-style dialogue conditions the beginning of the development, and this section is organised as two energy waves, the first culminating in a minor version of the second subject, the second in recapitulation, with the opening tune spread across three octaves.

The theme and five variations which constitute the second movement carry forward the idea of enhancement on repetition, the viola statement of the two halves of the theme being answered by the first violin above a full texture. The passionate and emphatic theme is accorded three figurative variations in the tonic minor which, following classical precedent, increase in animation. A break in this build-up of motion occurs for the flowing but sedate major version of the theme as variation 4; variation 5 is a musette, again in the major, before a return to the unadorned theme and a brief coda extending the cadence. Brahms arranged this movement for solo piano, presenting it to Clara Schumann on her birthday, 13 September 1860, and giving the work a separate title: Thema mit Variationen von Johs Brahms. He used it as a recital piece with good reason, for the music is compelling as idiomatic and fine-grained piano writing.

The brisk scherzo and trio inject a tone of Beethovenian vigour, with motivic brevity and accented syncopations characterizing the scherzo, and with upward tonal wrenches in the yet more ebullient trio. This movement too received a structurally enhancing later addition, in the shape of the coda, which returns to the trio material in a new climactic cadential thrust.

The classically-poised opening of the finale sets a relatively slow movement in train, with broad thematic areas and an extended rondo structure. The graceful self-contained melodies of the first and second subjects have audible affinities with the opening of the work and the scherzo respectively-not as variations or derivations so much, but rather as using similar figurative repertoires. The movement structure is treated schematically, with clear sections of differing character: the central development treats the second subject in diminution, sequence and imitation, while the faster coda offers a dialogic perpetuum mobile of simpler purport. In this sense it does after all become clear that we have to do with Brahms's 'first maturity': the integration of lyricism and drama was fully-fledged; differentiation between thematic presentation and treatment was however, destined to become less stark, as Brahms developed further his interest in motivic integration and expansion and in modulating more flexibly between different expressive characterizations.

The first performance of the Sextet was given on 20 October 1860 in Hanover, under the leadership of Joseph Joachim. Brahms responded to the invitation to attend: 'I'm somewhat nervous about the long and sentimental piece'. Joachim brought the work to England in 1867 where it became a firm favourite, especially during the succeeding decade. Brahms himself gave the public premiere of the solo piano transcription of the slow movement on 20 February 1869 in Vienna. He also arranged the whole work for piano four hands, and took a lively interest when his friend Theodor Kirchner transcribed it for piano trio in 1883, along with the Second Sextet.

Brahms's other string sextet was written in his summer retreat of Baden-Lichtental, movements 1-3 in September 1864, and movement 4 in May 1865. But the seeds of the work go back to the mid-1850s, well before the First Sextet was conceived; it is almost, therefore, as if the musical details at issue were waiting to meet a texture and genre which would lead to their appropriate fulfilment. Brahms had written the theme of the slow movement by 7 February 1855, when he sent it to Clara Schumann, describing it as a 'song or melody'; and the scherzo is a significantly expanded rewriting of a Gavotte in A minor for piano, written about the same time-Clara Schumann knew it in March 1855. Both these fragments of knowledge about the creative process behind the Sextet are of very considerable interest. 

It is clear, for instance, that the extraordinarily distinctive and original opening theme of the Sextet, at once instrumentally idiomatic, modernist, pastoral and Schubertian, came into being as a schematic transformation of the theme of the slow movement, the rising fourths being altered to fifths, the diatonic to chromatic, counterpoint to ostinato, etc. Brahms constructs here an extended paragraph, mirroring the Schubertian deviation to the flat submediant in the first phrase with a turn to the mediant major towards its end. The paragraph is repeated in variation before the bridge introduces contrapuntal imitation. The second subject consists of a broad, sweeping melody followed by a more motivically-based passage with shorter phrases. It is this passage which can be related to Brahms's claim in a letter to Josef Gänsbacher that in the Sextet he had 'said goodbye' to his erstwhile fiancee, Agathe von Siebold, for Brahms uses a spelling device he had learnt from Schumann, the notes A-G-A-[T]H-E, A-D-E forming the basis of the thematic material. In the development Brahms allows baroque influences stronger play, with canons, overlapping imitations, inversions and sequence building a dialogic fragmentation of the first subject. The retransition is a special moment, with orchestral-style tremolo and chromaticized minor inflections of first subject material.

The Gavotte in A minor for piano, WoO.3 no.1, rediscovered in the 1970s, had real importance for its composer. It was initially part of the exploration of Baroque style referred to above, became grouped with a Sarabande, WoO.5 no.1, and a further Gavotte, WoO.3 no.2, which together formed the first music of Brahms publicly performed in Danzig, London and Vienna in 1855 and 1856, and was incorporated into a Suite in A minor, completed in 1855; this Suite was later destroyed as an entity but served as thematic quarry for subsequent chamber works-the present Sextet, the First String Quintet op.88 (which reuses the Sarabande and second Gavotte) and the Clarinet Quintet op.115 (which reuses the Sarabande and this first Gavotte again). This intriguing story is both sign and focus of Brahms's assimilation of Baroque style into his own compositional voice.

The sonata-form scherzo adds new elaborations and continuations to the Gavotte, which then evolve into a fugal exposition as second subject-a radical structuring which makes additional and fresh connections with the Baroque. Brahms retains an 'antique' feel in this movement but within the context of a modern veiled intermezzo style peculiarly his own. The trio offers the distinct contrast of an ebullient presto giocoso, featuring another device with Baroque origins, the hemiola.

The slow movement is a theme with five variations and coda. Brahms again follows classical precedent in structuring the first four variations in terms of incremental increase in animation, and then breaking to a slower tempo and change of mode. Unlike in the corresponding movement in the First Sextet, however, Brahms here allows the calm, luxuriant major variation 5 to generate the coda, the ending acting at once as tonal clarification and expressive transfiguration. Maintaining the Baroque leanings of the work, Brahms features contrapuntal devices throughout the movement: variation 1 inverts the constituent lines of the theme, a version of the lower counterpoint becoming here the melody, and a diminution of the original melody becoming accompanimental figuration; variation 3 uses pervasive imitation across the six instruments, variation 4 extending this with new countersubjects; in variation 5 the counterpoint is essentially in paired voices.

The finale continues both the radical originality of expression and the harnessing of Baroque traits so characteristic of the middle movements, contained within a straightforward sonata-form structure. The thematic material takes its beginnings from hints in the scherzo-the first subject here, for instance, being a transformation of the fugue subject there. The broadly swinging second subject is based throughout on sequences, and the development opens with a fugato, which returns in compressed and accelerated form as the coda. 

It was thought until recently that the work had first been performed in Boston, Massachusetts, but Michael Musgrave has definitively established that the date of this performance is wrong by several years, and that the actual first performance was on 20 November 1866 in Zurich, Friedrich Hegar leading the ensemble.

Robert Pascall, 1999