Sextet in G major, Op.36 (1865)

Of the two Brahms sextets - both of them scored for two each of violins, violas and cellos - the one in B flat major Op.18 is an at-first-sight love affair with the sonorous potential of the medium. The second in G major, which was completed five years later, is a more reflective, even slightly melancholy work. The darker aspect is immediately perceptible in the grumbling drone of the viola accompanying the introduction of the first subject and the early deflection of the harmonies towards the minor. The G minor opening section of the Scherzo has a peculiar wistful quality about it and the way it is brushed aside by the vigorous cross-rhythms of the furiant in the Presto giocoso middle section is not so much a joke as an act of violence. As in the Sextet in B flat, the slow movement is a theme and variations - the theme in this case being a plaintive melody in E minor, the melancholy of which is purged only in the fifth and last variation. The concluding Allegro confirms the happy situation by combining pattering Mendelssohnian playfulness with melodious geniality.

Of the two Brahms string sextets - both of them scored for two each of violins, violas and cellos - the first (in B flat, Op.18) is an at-first-sight love affair with the sonorous potential of the medium. The second (in G major, Op.36) which was completed five years later in 1865, is a more reflective, even slightly melancholy work. That Brahms was still in love with the medium is clear enough from the exultant and wonderfully scored second subject of the first movement. Indeed, the melody introduced at that point on the first cello runs straight into a motif - high on first violin in octaves with first viola - which is based on the musical letters in the first name of Agathe von Siebold, to whom Brahms had more or less got engaged in 1859 and who, though he had promptly abandoned her, evidently still meant much to him.

The darker aspect of the Sextet in G is immediately perceptible in the grumbling drone of the viola accompanying the introduction of the first subject and the early deflection of the harmonies towards the minor. Both of these remain prominent features of the first movement. The G minor outer section of the Scherzo, based on a gavotte Brahms had written in 1859, has a peculiar wistful quality about it. The way it is brushed aside by the vigorous cross-rhythms of the furiant in the Presto giocoso middle section is not so much a joke as an act of violence.

As in the Sextet in B flat, the slow movement is a theme and variations - the theme in this case being a plaintive melody in E minor with a faintly lugubrious and faintly barber’s-shop cadence. It is only in the fifth and last variation, a serene Adagio, that Brahms is able to purge his melancholy. The last movement confirms the fact by confronting two sorts of celebratory material - pattering Mendelssohnian playfulness on the one hand and melodious geniality on the other. It is such a fruitful contrast that the reconciliation between them is withheld until the animato coda.

Gerald Larner ©2004