Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Opus 56b
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

Brahms spent the summer of 1873 in the village of Tutzing on the western shore of the Starnberger See south of Munich. He was 40 years old and his career was going well. Named conductor of the chorus and orchestra of the Vienna Gesellschaftkonzerte the previous fall, he had spent that first concert season training and leading these forces in a series of concerts. Now he came to this resort town to relax and compose.

Brahms loved it there. To the conductor Hermann Levi he wrote: "Tutzing is far more beautiful than we first imagined. We have just had a gorgeous thunderstorm; the lake was almost black, but magnificently green along the shores; usually it is blue, though of a more beautiful and deeper hue than the sky. In the background there is a range of snow-covered mountains-one can never see enough of it." That summer, after years of work, Brahms finally refined two string quartets to the point where he would allow them to be published, and he was still at work on his First Symphony. This most imposing of musical forms (with its inevitable comparison to Beethoven) had occupied him since he was in his twenties, but he was still plagued by self-doubt. In particular, he was worried about his ability to compose for orchestra, and during that summer at Tutzing Brahms planned to write a brief work for orchestra to give himself practice composing for orchestra.

This was a set of variations on a theme attributed to Haydn and shown to Brahms by his friend Carl Ferdinand Pohl, biographer of that earlier composer. The theme (which had never been published) appeared in the manuscript for a Feldpartita Haydn had composed for Prince Esterhazy's troops during the 1780s; as its name suggests, a Feldpartita is a piece designed to be played in open fields, usually by military band. Though Brahms gave his work the title Variations on a Theme by Haydn, subsequent research has shown that the original Feldpartita was not written by Haydn, but probably by his student Ignaz Pleyel, who in turn may have borrowed it from an old pilgrims' hymn: in the manuscript, the theme is marked "Chorale St. Antoni." Brahms may have planned this project to give him practice writing for orchestra, but he was still so unsure of his abilities that he first composed the variations for two pianos, and only then did he orchestrate them. The triumphant première of the orchestral version took place in Vienna on November 2, 1873, but Brahms and Clara Schumann had already played through the two-piano version together the previous summer; the official première of this version took place in Vienna on February 10, 1874.

The structure of the Haydn Variations is simplicity itself: the theme, eight variations, and a finale that itself is a further variation. The original theme falls first into two five-bar phrases, followed by a series of phrases of irregular length. The eight variations, which stretch the theme in a range of ingenious ways, are all relatively brief; curiously, Brahms often writes tempo indications in the piano version that are slightly different from the orchestral version. The finale is ingenious-and very impressive-music. Brahms derives a five-measure theme from the original theme and uses this new version as a ground bass, very much in the manner of a passacaglia or chaconne (this finale looks ahead to the magnificent passacaglia that would conclude Brahms' final symphony twelve years later). This ground bass repeats seventeen times as Brahms spins out a series of further variations in the upper voices; all of this builds to a brilliant close full of swirling runs and one final, powerful restatement of the original theme.

Sonata in E-flat Major for Viola and Piano, Opus 120, No. 2
JOHANNES BRAHMS

In the fall of 1890, Brahms decided that he was through composing. He was 57 years old, he felt that he had said the things he wanted to, and he intended that his String Quintet in G Major, completed the summer before, should be his last work. He had made vague plans to begin work on a Symphony No. 5 during a projected trip to Italy the next spring, but now he canceled plans for both the trip and for a new symphony and instead began clearing out his files, destroying old manuscripts he did not want to keep and publishing a few pieces he did. But he was fairly sure there would be no new music.

Then in 1891 Brahms met the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld and was captivated by his playing. Mühlfeld (1856-1907) had originally joined the fine Meiningen orchestra as a violinist. He taught himself to play the clarinet and soon became the principal clarinetist of that orchestra (which gave the first performance of Brahms' Fourth Symphony) and served as principal clarinet of the Bayreuth orchestra from 1884 until 1896. So enthusiastic was Brahms about Mühlfeld's playing that he came out of retirement and began to compose for him: from 1891 came a Clarinet Trio and then the great Clarinet Quintet. Three years later, in 1894, Brahms wrote his final instrumental works for Mühlfeld, two sonatas for clarinet and piano. The clarinet and viola have similar ranges, and Brahms himself immediately arranged these sonatas for viola and piano.

Both sonatas share the somewhat severe and autumnal quality of Brahms' late music, though the Second Sonata is the more immediately friendly of the two. The opening tempo marking, Allegro amabile, sets the tone for the entire work, for this is indeed music full of love. The viola enters immediately with a lyric theme that seems to flow endlessly, and this quality of continuous lyricism extends throughout the movement. The poised and noble second subject (Brahms marks it sotto voce) helps maintain the mood of calm acceptance that characterizes this sonata. The Allegro appassionato is in the standard scherzo-and-trio form. The viola's surging, twisting opening establishes the high energy level of this movement, and the trio section of characteristically Brahmsian nobility is all the more effective by contrast. The Andante con moto is a set of variations based on the viola's opening theme, which preserves some of the amabile spirit of the first movement. The theme undergoes four variations, all in 6/8 time, and then Brahms provides an unusual conclusion by shifting to 2/4 for the final variation and suddenly speeding the music up. In effect, the final movement performs the function of both slow movement and finale, and the last of Brahms' chamber works comes to its conclusion in a great rush of energy.

Two Songs for Alto, Viola, and Piano, Opus 91
JOHANNES BRAHMS

"In due course I shall send you a wonderful old Catholic song for singing at home; you will never discover a more beautiful lullaby," wrote Brahms to violinist Joseph Joachim in 1863. The two men had been good friends for a decade, and now Brahms was promising a gift for a special occasion: Joachim had married the singer Amalie Weiss, and the couple was expecting their first child. It was a very personal gift, for this song for the new baby was scored for the three friends to perform together "at home"-contralto (Amalie), viola (Joachim), and piano (Brahms)-and the three of them did perform the song frequently when it was completed the following year. So personal an expression was this song that Brahms did not publish it, but kept it as a private possession.

And then-twenty years later-things fell apart. In 1884, Joachim suspected Amalie of infidelity and filed for divorce. Brahms believed Joachim's suspicions without merit and wrote Amalie a letter declaring his confidence in her; to his surprise, she produced this letter in court and used it to block the divorce. Joachim felt betrayed, and a thirty-year friendship came to a quick end. Stunned by this sudden turn of events-and genuinely wishing the couple to reconcile-Brahms wrote a companion song to the lullaby of two decades earlier in the hopes that Joachim and Amalie would perform the song together and that it might be a vehicle of reconciliation between them all. In this he had no success. Amalie did sing these songs, but not with Joachim, and the two men remained estranged for years (it was another Brahms work-the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello-that would become the vehicle for their eventual reconciliation, but the old closeness between the two would never return).

Brahms' dealing with the Joachims-so happy and so painful-produced two of his finest songs. The Two Songs for Alto, Viola, and Piano are Brahms' only songs for an extra instrument (they have been called his only "chamber-music songs"), and for this Brahms chose one of his favorite instruments. The viola closely matches the range of the alto voice, and those two share duties evenly in these songs, which truly are a partnership of all three performers. When Brahms published these two songs in 1884, he reversed the order of their composition, placing the newer song first. Gestillte Sehnsucht sets a text by the German poem Friedrich Rückert, whose poetry would later be set so frequently by Mahler. Rückert's daughter had been pained that Brahms had never set one of her father's poems, and in 1891 Brahms asked his publisher to send a copy of this song on to her (he later set several more Rückert texts). Gestillte Wiegenlied is a statement of disquiet and longing in the midst of natural beauty, all of it tinged with the old romantic fascination with death. Brahms assigns the viola a central role here: it announces the main theme at the beginning, and at three points in the song (always on the words "lispeln die Wind") Brahms has it softly imitate the sound of the wind in the forest at sunset. The more agitated middle section moves to the tonic minor-D minor-before the return of the opening mood and the quiet close.

The "wonderful old Catholic song" that Brahms spoke of is the fourteenth-century carol Resonet in laudibus, known in its German folksong version as Joseph, lieber Joseph mein. In this song, Mary looks down on the sleeping baby Jesus as the winds blow in the palms overhead, and she asks them to hush so that her baby might sleep. Again the viola leads, and Brahms has it "sing" the carol at the beginning: he writes the words into the violist's part to suggest how the meaning of the text should shape the player's phrasing. This truly is a lullaby, and it rocks along gently on its flowing 6/8 meter; Brahms' ideas about how this song should be performed are made abundantly clear by the fact that he marks the violist's part some form of dolce espressivo at ten different points! The "beautiful lullaby" forms the backbone of this song as Mary hovers over the sleeping baby. She is aware that there is pain ahead for him, and this song too moves into the tonic minor-in this case F minor-for this darker meditation. But the viola's soothing song always returns, and at the end it leads this lullaby to its peaceful close.

String Quintet in F Major, Opus 88
JOHANNES BRAHMS

Brahms liked to get away from Vienna during the summers, and in 1880 he discovered what would remain his favorite retreat, Bad Ischl, high in the Alps east of Salzburg. Here, beneath snowcapped mountains, he could relax by the dark blue water of the Salzkammergut and enjoy the genial company of many friends from Vienna. He came back to Bad Ischl for the next several years, and in 1882 he wrote two superb chamber works there-the Trio in C Major, Opus 87 and the String Quintet in F Major, Opus 88. The normally self-critical Brahms was so pleased with the quintet that he wrote to his publisher, "You have never had such a beautiful work from me"; in a letter to Clara Schumann he called it "one of my finest works."

This was a very good period for Brahms the composer. At 49, he found himself famous and at the height of his powers-the previous summer had seen the composition of the Second Piano Concerto; the Third Symphony would come from the following year. Though the String Quintet No. 1 is one of Brahms' sunniest chamber works, it is full of complex music beneath that genial surface. The viola quintet (a form much favored by Mozart, who wrote some of his finest works for this combination of instruments) offers a composer a rich sonority and the opportunity to use the additional viola as a thematic instrument rather than relegating it to its more traditional accompanying role. Brahms responds to these opportunities with imaginative compositional choices-this quintet features unusual voicing, structure, and harmonies.

This Quintet was actually composed during the spring of 1882 at Bad Ischl (Brahms went early that year), and many commentators have been unable to resist hearing the sound of spring in the lyric and easy opening measures. The surprises begin immediately: even within the initial statement of this theme, the second violin has climbed above the first (Brahms intermeshes the voices in unusual ways in this quintet). A long transition passage, based on dotted rhythms, leads to the second theme in the first viola; this melody's easy flow on triplets hides the fact that it arrives in a totally unexpected key, A major. The lengthy development of this sonata-form movement then takes place over a sustained deep pedal C from the cello before the vigorous close.

The middle movement brings a number of further surprises. It is a slow movement, but Brahms incorporates two fast episodes that give this movement by turns the character of adagio and then scherzo. The opening, marked Grave ed appassionato, begins with a somber melody that finds the cello, with the lowest register of the five instruments, playing the theme above the other four voices. In a curious touch, Brahms bases this movement on themes he had written for suites of piano music nearly thirty years before. The dark beginning gives way to a dancing Allegretto; a return of the opening material leads to a sparkling Presto, itself a variation of the Allegretto. The concluding moments of this movement, with the first violin arching high above the other voices, bring some of Brahms' most moving and effective music.

The powerful finale, Allegro energico, explodes to life with two sharp chords that introduce a fugue. But this movement is not really a fugue-instead, it is a sonata-form movement that uses fugal material as part of the development. In yet another ingenious touch, Brahms derives all the secondary themes from the fugue subject-it is one more display of composing virtuosity in a piece full of such touches. The Presto coda is itself based on one more derivation of the fugue theme.

A description of the complex technique of the String Quintet in F Major makes the music sound over-intellectualized. It is not. This is one of Brahms' most glowing chamber works, and its fusion of lovely music and ingenious technique is a mark of that composer's music at its finest.