Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
String Sextet no. 2, in G major, op. 36 (1864-65)
Johannes Brahms wrote much of his chamber music early in his career. The String Sextet no. 2 dates from the mid-1860s, when Brahms wasn’t quite yet thirty. To look at the pieces that surround it is an exercise in controlling astonishment: after completing the String Sextet no. 1 in 1861, Brahms wrote both of his orchestral serenades, three chamber pieces with piano, and the mammoth Piano Concerto no. 1. And, by the time of the Second Sextet’s premiere in Boston in 1866, he had completed all but the fifth movement of what became the German Requiem.
At the same time, Brahms had been romantically linked – or at least infatuated with – the soprano Agathe von Siebold, for whom he had also penned a number of songs. Though their relationship had broken off by the time Brahms completed the Sextet, Agathe’s name is inscribed in the notation of the first movement’s second theme and the entire work is imbued with a bittersweet tone that might fit a definition of love sickness.
The first movement begins with a gently murmuring viola figure that persists throughout much of the movement. The opening theme is simplicity itself: two rising perfect fifths sounding almost like horn calls across an open field. Brahms lets this opening material unfold for a while, echoing back and forth across the ensemble, before moving on and subtly eliding into the movement’s second theme (the one that ultimately references Agathe – and one that is closely related to the first).
The development section is fairly extensive and leads to the recapitulation in which the opening section of the work is varied. The coda, too, is not slight – there’s really no sense of hurry in this movement – but it features some wonderful little touches, such as the transformation of the movement’s opening theme that goes from G major to the remote key of B major before finding its way back again.
Brahms placed the Scherzo as the second movement, rather than in the more traditional third section. Though it features a vigorous Trio section, this is as subdued a Scherzo as one is likely to find: rustic and expressive, for sure, but also strikingly nostalgic.
The slow third movement maintains this air of longing and sadness. As the music begins, it is filled with all sorts of gestures redolent of misery: descending chromatic scales, sighing turns, and the like. But an imitative section suddenly changes the mood and the music ultimately works its way from E minor to E major, a remarkable depiction of light overcoming darkness, but notably not one of joyful triumph.
The finale marries the kind of brilliant, light textures reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the rich, warm character of Brahms’s mature style. The gloomy nature of the earlier movements is largely absent from the finale, especially its first half, but recollections crop up in the development section as the music turns to the minor mode. Low spirits, though, are swept away easily now: geniality reigns supreme, as the return of imitative textures – last heard in the context of the third movement’s heartbreak – usher in a brilliant, sunny coda.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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