Symphony No.3 in F major, Op.90

As a disciple of Schumann and a true ally of both Robert and Clara, Brahms shared his colleague’s interest in musical cyphers. So did their mutual friend, the composer and violinist Joseph Joachim, who identified himself so closely with the three notes F-A-E (“frei aber einsam” or “free but lonely”) that the motif became the thematic basis of the Violin Sonata that Schumann, Brahms and Albert Dietrich collaborated on writing for him when he visited Düsseldorf in 1853. Brahms’s answer to Joachim’s F-A-E - as he demonstrated most vividly in his String Quartet in A minor in 1862 - was his own F-A-F (“frei aber froh” or “free but happy”).

When he came to write his Third Symphony in Wiesbaden in 1883 - he had gone there to be near to a favourite young singer called Hermine Spiess - Brahms was no longer quite so sure about being “free but happy.” That much is clear from the notes on the top of the three incisive wind chords that open the work - F-A flat-F with a distinctly dubious minor third where the major third used to be. The same three notes force their way up the bass line as the violins reach for the passionato main theme, which turns from F major to F minor within no more than two bars. Much of the rest of the work is devoted to an examination of that basic insecurity.

Even when he seems to be thinking about something else Brahms is concerned with the same problem. The grazioso second subject introduced by clarinet and repeated by violas in A major seems serene enough. But A major is not a very realistic key in an F major context and, as it reappears in an agitated C sharp minor in the development and in a still unrealistic D major in the recapitulation, that happy melodic inspiration entirely eludes capture in the key that matters. Indeed, it is only at a very late stage that the first subject itself is able to escape the minor harmonies that have been attached to it from the start and secure an unambiguously F major ending.

Since the two middle movements are neither ambitious in scale nor equipped to perform the slow-movement or scherzo functions conventionally expected at this point, they are usually and quite reasonably described as intermezzi. They are not, on the other hand, remote from the issues raised at the beginning of the work and still waiting to be resolved. Apart from the fact that the Andante is set in C major and the Poco Allegretto in C minor, to sustain the tension between major and minor even though on a less crucial level, they both have an influence on the finale. In the Andante, for example, the charmingly rustic first subject has to make way for a rather more serious theme, a kind of chorale on clarinet and bassoon which, though harmonically unstable at this point, has an important role to play later.

The outer sections of the Poco allegretto are highly melodious and, thanks not least to the scoring for cellos and horn, most appealing coloured. But, in spite of the playful A flat major middle section, it is such a deeply nostalgic movement that the unhappy opening of the final Allegro, with the melodic line now cramped into a whispered unison on strings and bassoons, is a natural reaction. There is some hope of release from F minor in a first, very quiet recall of the chorale from the Andante but no expression of confidence until the entry of the briskly heroic second subject on cellos and horn in C major. It is, however, the chorale that, intoned authoritatively by brass and woodwind in the course of a contentious development section, effects a change to F major. Although the beginning of the recapitulation plunges the harmonies straight back into F minor, the positive influence of the second subject, now recalled in F major, prevails this time.

The symphony does not, on the other hand, end in triumph. The chorale is recalled as the tempo winds down in the coda but so is the F-A flat-F motif from the opening of the work and, again, it is only at the last minute that the harmonies gently free themselves from the dubious minor third. Free but moderately happy?

Gerald Larner

A music critic associated mainly with The Times, Gerald Larner has specialised in French music - his Maurice Ravel was published in 1996 - while writing extensively on most other aspects of the repertoire.