Notes for: August 8, 2006
Like the string quartet, the string sextet – two violins, two violas and two cellos – grew out of the 18th century divertimento, an informal piece designed for lighter entertainment. The early divertimentos were composed for a variety of small instrumental ensembles, using whatever instruments the composers had available. In the 1760s and 1770s, Haydn developed the grouping of two violins, viola and cello into the string quartet. In 1776, Boccherini did the same for the string sextet, composing six works for that instrumental combination.
Mozart and Beethoven followed Haydn’s model with the string quartet, and their lead was followed by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. Paralleling the four conventional groupings of the human voice – sopranos, altos, tenors and basses – the quartet seemed the most appropriate chamber-music medium for the development of musical ideas. The string sextet, in contrast, languished, presumably because composers considered six string parts unduly burdensome or the resulting texture muddy.
As a young and innovative composer, Brahms salvaged the string-sextet idea and forged it into two masterpieces – his Opus 18, completed in 1860, and his Opus 36, completed in 1865. These successes notwithstanding, the string sextet never really caught on, although other composers – notably Dvorák, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Schoenberg – were sufficiently attracted to write one string sextet each. Brahms himself reverted to the string quartet and then the string quintet.
When Brahms composed the Opus 18 sextet, he was still a struggling young composer. In fact, to make ends meet, he had spent the three fall months of 1857, 1858, and 1859 in the court at Detmold, a sleepy little principality in the Teutoburger forest some 100 miles from his home in Hamburg. Here he conducted a choral society, played at court concerts and taught piano to Princess Frederike and her friends. While the fee was modest, he had plenty of time to compose.
Further, the restful environment at Detmold gave Brahms the opportunity he needed to recover from the emotional pressures of the preceding three years. In February, 1854, Schumann, his friend and mentor, had attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine and had voluntarily entered an asylum. Brahms had immediately joined Schumann’s wife Clara in Düsseldorf to take charge of her household and to look after her children, while Clara, a concert pianist, went on concert tours to support her family.
Young and inexperienced, Brahms declared his love for Clara, and to some degree the lonely Clara, 14 years his senior, reciprocated. However, after Schumann died in July, 1856, opening the door to marriage, their ardor cooled, perhaps because of Brahms’s inhibitions – he never did marry, or perhaps because of Clara’s sensitivity about their age difference. They remained intimate, life-long friends – how intimate we will never know. Understandably, Brahms found these years emotionally draining, and the little court and surrounding forest of Detmold – ideal for lone country walks, provided the perfect antidote.
While Detmold was hardly a stimulating musical environment, the 18th century atmosphere of the court inspired him to write his two orchestral serenades and two strong quintets, and to work on what would eventually become his two piano quartets, Opus 25 and Opus 26, and his piano quintet, Opus 34. Brahms often worked on several manuscripts at one time and took years to complete any one, and the Opus18 sextet was the first of these Detmold projects to reach fruition.
The sextet opens with a demonstration of the enriched sonority made possible by six instruments. At first we hear only three instruments – the first cello playing the warm melody in its upper register, the second cello providing the base, and the first viola offering an accompanying figure in between. This sound is obviously impossible with a string quartet. In the ninth measure, the first violin picks up the theme, and the second violin is added. The second viola joins in the 23rd measure, but the full sonority of the group is not reached until the 35th.
In his early chamber works, Brahms was characteristically generous with his themes, and the sextet is no exception. The second theme, waltz-like, is marked by unstable tonality, a device favored by Schubert. The first cello presents the more expressive third theme, and still another theme is offered by the two violins and first viola to round off the exposition.
The second movement is a theme with six variations. The theme, in the minor mode, reflects Brahms’s affection for Hungarian Gypsy music, with one biographer hearing an imitation of the cembalom – a Hungarian zither, in the accompanying figure in the lower strings. The first three variations give the impression of increasing speed through the use of figurations of 16ths, 16th triplets and 32nd notes, the last being a particular challenge to the cellists. The fourth variation shifts to the major and provides a tranquil contrast. The fifth variation, suddenly piano, is seasoned by a bagpipe drone in the second viola, and the sixth variation returns to the minor with the first cello restating the theme.
Clara Schumann was particularly fond of this movement, and on her 41st birthday in September, 1860, Brahms presented her with a piano transcription of it. Brahms often played the transcription in public; it was published in 1927, and there are now several recordings of it.
The scherzo is short, with a sprightly staccato theme. The animated trio is supported by the opening figure of the main section, and it returns for the coda.
As in the first movement, Brahms opens the finale with a gradual introduction of the instruments. The first cello presents the graceful theme accompanied only by the second viola and second cello. The two violins and first viola then pick up the discourse. The lower instruments return, and the full group is not heard until the 41st measure. The rest of the movement is marked by frequent contrasts between the two groups.
In the coda, we hear still another coloration. The first viola plays the main theme in 16th note arpeggios against a pizzicato accompaniment in the other five instruments. Before the end, however, everyone is using his or her bow.