Sextet for clarinet, horn and string quartet

“All Brahms and water, m’boy, and more water than Brahms.” Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s verdict on the first pieces that Ireland brought him as a composition student at the Royal College of Music in 1897 was harsh but probably not inaccurate. There is still a high proportion of Brahms in the Sextet he wrote for Stanford a year later but little water and more than a little Ireland. The Brahms element was inevitable, not only because Brahms’ was Ireland’s favourite composer but also because he had recently heard the Clarinet Quintet performed by none other than Richard Mühlfeld (for whom the work had been written) and the Joachim Quartet.

“The clarinet in Mühlfeld’s hands,” Ireland recalled, “was like something we had never heard before.” To a young composer who was also an admirer of Brahms’s Horn Trio, the combinationn of string quartet with both clarinet and horn, though unprecedented, must have seemed the logical next step. Stanford was not entirely satisfied with the work, however – the last movement “is not organic, m’boy” – and, sadly, it remained unperformed until 1960, when it was revealed as a remarkably well written score.

The first word goes to the horn, which opens the work with an anticipation of the theme that is about to be presented by the strings as the first subject of the Allegro ma non troppo. The clarinet gets involved at an early stage, and ever more passionately, but it is again the horn that is entrusted with new material when, on the gentle prompting of the viola, it introduces the lyrical second subject. In the development section, an eventful and tuneful example of its kind, clarinet, horn, and first violin (if not the other string instruments) are given equal treatment. But in the recapitulation it is the clarinet which recalls the first subject and remains the more prominent of the two wind instruments almost to the end.

The first section of the slow movement, which is inspired by a Brahmsian melodic fervour, is virtually a clarinet quintet. The horn is not excluded here but has far more to do in the middle section, where it introduces a new theme, beginning with six repetitions of the same note, and takes part in a sort ot combined cadenza before the return of the opening section. It is another Brahmsian gesture to make the third movement a gently paced Intermezzo – where the clasrinet excels in this case – rather than a scherzo.

In the last movement, however, the one Stanford found “not organic, m’boy,” the Brahms precedent is less obvious. Though firmly based on the theme heard on viola in the opening bars, the In tempo moderato is more varied in expression and more dramatic in intention – to the extent that it seems at times to be pushing beyond the limits of chamber music to the orchestral. While it would be an exaggeration that the English composer emerges here, the voice is bolder and more individualistic.