8. Chamber music.

Brahms revived chamber music after the death of Schumann, one of its greatest Romantic practitioners, and defined it for the later 19th century. Across 40 years, from the Piano Trio op.8 (1854) to the Clarinet Sonatas op.120 (1894), ranges a corpus of 24 complete works that is arguably the greatest after Beethoven. For many commentators, chamber music captures Brahms's basic creative personality, as the music drama does Wagner's.

A good number of compositions, all destroyed or lost, preceded the B major/minor Piano Trio op.8, which in its original version is an ambitious, somewhat uneven attempt to synthesize Classical and Romantic traditions. The main theme of the first movement has a breadth and tunefulness reminiscent of Schubert; the hymn-like theme of the Adagio seems inspired by Beethoven; and the propulsive Scherzo is Mendelssohnian in spirit. Into the mix comes Baroque counterpoint: the large second group of the first movement begins with a Bach-inspired chromatic theme which in the recapitulation becomes the subject of an elaborate fugato.

Written during Brahms's earliest and most intense involvement with the Schumanns, the trio is also replete with allusions. The second theme of the finale seems based on the last song of Beethoven's cycle An die ferne Geliebte, a work which also had particular significance for Schumann. Brahms's slow movement includes an apparent reference to the song Am Meer (from Schubert's cycle Schwanengesang), whose text by Heine about frustrated love may have had special resonance for Brahms at the time.

In 1889, after Simrock bought from Breitkopf & Härtel the publishing rights for this and other early works, Brahms took the opportunity to revise op.8 extensively. He excised the fugato, removed the most obvious allusions and tightened up the formal structures. This process included writing a new contrasting theme for the slow movement and a new second theme for the finale. Brahms's revisions, although not greeted with enthusiasm by some in his circle, bring the trio more into the style of his later chamber works.

The B String Sextet op.18 (1859–60) stands at the head of a group of seven chamber works, extending to the Horn Trio op.40 (1865). Together they comprise what Donald Tovey called Brahms's ‘first maturity’, in which the influences of his predecessors, especially Beethoven and Schubert, were absorbed into a style of great originality.

The B Sextet represents a consolidation in the spirit of the contemporaneous orchestral serenades and the Handel Variations for piano. The main theme of the first movement is as tuneful as that of op.8, but more compact and restrained. Brahms adopted a streamlined version of the ‘three-key’ model of Schubert's sonata forms: the traditional dominant, F major, is delayed by a modulation from the initial tonic to a remote key (A major). The slow movement, whose dour theme and chaconne-like bass recall Beethoven's 32 piano variations in C minor (woo80), tempers the Romantic approach to variation form characteristic of the early piano works.

By contrast with the Sextet, the piano quartets in G minor op.25 and A op.26 are unabashedly innovative. Both are massive in scale, lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour in performance. The exposition of the first movement of op.25 has no fewer than five thematic groups, which trace a path from the sombre opening to an exuberant D major close. In a striking tonal reversal that may owe something to the first movement of Schubert's G major String Quartet d887, the recapitulation begins in G major with the middle rather than the initial segment of the tripartite first theme. In the Intermezzo of op.25, Brahms for the first time substituted for the expected scherzo or minuet a gentler movement that became a hallmark of his works. The fiery rondo-finale ‘alla Zingarese’ constitutes the earliest appearance of the style hongrois (and one of the most successful) in Brahms's chamber music.

The first movement of the A major Piano Quartet is remarkable for the way in which a profusion of lyrical melodies is generated by the kind of small-scale motivic manipulation that Schoenberg called ‘developing variation’. The slow movement is full of striking timbral effects, among them an episode (reminiscent of Schubert's Die Stadt, from Schwanengesang) in which the piano's sweeping diminished 7th arpeggios confront an impassive four-note motif in the strings.

The F minor Piano Quintet op.34 originated in 1862 as a string quintet with two cellos (in imitation of Schubert's identically scored work) and was also arranged as a two-piano sonata (op.34b). It is perhaps the most tightly integrated work of Brahms's first maturity, especially in the way harmonic and melodic details determine large-scale structure. The note D , prominent in the opening theme (and representing the flattened sixth degree), is projected on to the tonal scheme of the three-key exposition, which moves to C minor, then to its enharmonic parallel D major. A D –C motivic figure and its transpositions permeate the scherzo, especially the energetic final cadences. The coda of the finale begins in C minor and returns to the tonic area with a prominent descent in the bass from D to C.

Also important in the F minor Quintet is the technique of thematic transformation, whereby themes retain their basic contour and length but are altered in mood or character. In the development section of the first movement, the sinuous main theme, originally played in stark octaves, is adjusted in rhythm and texture to yield, in Tovey's apt phrase, ‘the lilt of an ancient ballad’.

The first movement of the G major Sextet op.36 is justly admired for its elegant tonal and motivic symmetries. The main theme swiftly outlines keys that lie a major 3rd on either side of the tonic: E and B major. The taut fugal finale of the E minor Cello Sonata op.38, based on a theme that recalls the two mirror fugues (Contrapunctus nos.16 and 17) of Bach's Art of Fugue, shows how far Brahms had advanced since the Piano Trio op.8 in the integration of strict contrapuntal technique and sonata form.

Brahms wrote the Horn Trio op.40 for the natural or Waldhorn, whose timbre and capabilities lend the work an unforgettable sound and unique formal qualities. For the only time in the first movement of an instrumental work Brahms abandoned sonata form, as if sensing that a relaxed rondo structure might allow the horn a broader range of expression. The Horn Trio is also characterized by motivic connections, and even direct thematic recalls, among the four movements.

After an eight-year hiatus in chamber music – a period marked mainly by large choral works – Brahms returned to it in 1873 with the revision and completion of the two string quartets op.51, in C minor and A minor, begun some years earlier. The C minor Quartet reflects a new stylistic phase, characterized by motivic density and formal compactness. The first movement churns with chromatic turbulence, rarely settling down into stable key areas or broad themes. Its language resembles that of the First Symphony in the same key, which was gestating at this time. The movements are linked thematically in a way that lends the work a breathless unity. The A minor Quartet is more overtly lyrical, but still concentrated in technique. The Andante, whose theme is generated from the constant rhythmic-metric displacement of the interval of a 2nd, was justly singled out by Schoenberg as a miracle of musical economy.

In 1875 Brahms attacked more unfinished chamber music with the Piano Quartet in C minor op.60, begun in 1855 in C minor. The early date of at least the first movement may account (as with the original version of the B major Trio) for the oddly experimental treatment of sonata form. The second group, in the key of E , is built as a quasi-independent theme and variations. In the recapitulation, in a case probably unique in the history of sonata form, this group is transposed not to the expected tonic, but to the dominant, G major.

In the last String Quartet (no.3 in B , op.67) Brahms's writing for the medium becomes especially transparent. Formal and thematic structures are correspondingly lucid, and often innovative. In the first movement, the sonata exposition is articulated not only by conventional harmonic and melodic procedures but also by metrical ones. The main theme is cast in a buoyant 6/8, the second in a more hesitant 2/4. The transition between them is made by a series of striking hemiolas. The finale represents the first time Brahms ended a multi-movement work with a set of variations, here exploited to create a new kind of cyclic unity. After the sixth variation, the opening theme of the first movement returns suddenly and manages as if by magic to integrate itself into the variation structure. In the final bars it is combined with the original variation theme in seemingly effortless counterpoint.

In the interregnum between his symphonic periods, Brahms completed three chamber works, the Violin Sonata in G op.78, the Piano Trio in C op.87 and the String Quintet in F op.88. The pastoral first movement of the Violin Sonata represents a kind of expressive overflow from the first movement of the Second Symphony. As in the symphony, a more sombre tone is struck by the slow movement, especially the funeral march in the più andante episode, and by the finale, which begins in the minor mode with a citation of Brahms's song Regenlied, and into which the main theme of the slow movement momentarily reasserts itself.

In the String Quintet op.88 Brahms innovated a three-movement format in which a central rondo structure combines the functions of a slow movement and scherzo. The theme of the Grave ed appassionato, adapted from a keyboard saraband of 1854 (woo5), alternates with an Allegretto vivace based on a gavotte from the same period (woo3). Like the finale of the Cello Sonata op.38, the Quintet's last movement integrates sonata and contrapuntal form, here in a more jovial spirit. The first group is a fugal exposition, with a Baroque-style subject in busy quavers. For the second group, the subject retreats to an inner part to accompany an expansive melody.

Brahms achieved a remarkable new level of economical lyricism in the next four works, the Cello Sonata op.99, the Second Violin Sonata op.100, the Third Piano Trio op.101 and the Third Violin Sonata op.108. The opening theme of op.99 consists essentially of a two-note figure (C–F) whose intervallic and rhythmic structure (semiquaver–minim) evolves rapidly by means of developing variation. The process is so continous that it also envelops the second group, derived from the same material. In all four works the highly concentrated approach makes for very brief structures: the four movements of op.108 altogether last just over 20 minutes, barely longer than the first movement of the F minor Piano Quintet.

The first movement of the G major String Quintet op.111, a work with which Brahms initially thought to take leave of composition, seems to press against the limits of chamber music. The powerful opening tremolos announce a symphonic manner, and the main theme, introduced by the cello, is one of the most expansive in all Brahms, with an ambitus and harmonic scope that invite comparison with the athletic melodies of Richard Strauss.

Very different in mood are those in the final group of chamber works: the Clarinet Trio op.114, the Clarinet Quintet op.115 and the two Clarinet/Viola Sonatas op.120. Although the timbre of the clarinet imparts a reflective quality – critics have used the word ‘autumnal’ – there is nothing retrospective about the compositional techniques. Structural fluidity is especially evident in the first movements, where the conventional boundaries of sonata form become blurred. With the exception of the Clarinet Quintet, the expositions are not repeated. Brahms built complex thematic groups, in which the opening ideas, harmonically and formally ambiguous, are at the same time introductory in nature and integral to the exposition. In op.120 no.1 the initial unison flourish could be in either F minor or D major. When the first theme reappears at the end of the the development, it is harmonized in the remote key of F minor. The recapitulation proper begins with the appearance on the tonic of what was the contrasting part of the first group. With these kinds of techniques, the late chamber works achieve both continuity and clarity in a way that is unique in the history of music.

Brahms, Johannes