Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Johannes Brahms

String Quartet No. 1 in c minor  Play

Aeolus Quartet Quartet

Recorded on 02/21/2010, uploaded on 07/21/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Johannes Brahms is well-known for his extreme self-criticism. Several of his works underwent long periods of gestation. Most famously, his First Symphony was in the works for twenty years before reaching its final form, premiere and publication. For Brahms (who on one occasion admitted to Henschel, “I never cool down over a work, once begun, until it’s perfected, unassailable”), it was not merely self-criticism but a keen sense of the past, of responsibility to the masters before him, and knowing that his works would be judged by that standard. Like the symphony, Brahms’s sense of history was even more present with the composition of string quartets, a genre likewise built by the hands of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

Brahms’s String Quartet No. 1 in C minor appeared in 1873, three years before his First Symphony, when the composer was forty years old. However, he had already been long at work in the genre. His first attempts appeared in the 1850s, coinciding with his first symphonic attempt. Brahms even stated on occasion that he had worked out and destroyed twenty sketches before completing the C minor Quartet. Whether this is true or mere hyperbole on Brahms’s part remains an open question, yet it gives a sense of the tremendous standard Brahms laid upon himself. Work on the C minor Quartet possibly began in the mid-1860s, as a quartet in that key was discussed between Brahms and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Later, in 1869, Brahms mentioned to his publisher some quartets he was rehearsing in hopes of making one ready for publication. These works may have been early versions of the String Quartet No. 1. However, Brahms was notorious for destroying his own sketches, leaving little or no trail as to the genesis of his works.

Published alongside the A minor Quartet as the first number of opus 51, the String Quartet No. 1 in C minor represents the culmination of Brahms’s craft thus far, yet also looked forward to many of his works to come. Building largely on the models of Beethoven, in particular the “Rasumovsky” Quartets, Brahms pushed his “developing variation” technique, constructing an entire piece out of a handful of motives heard at the outset, to the limit. Every theme flows from these basic ideas and every measure nearly breaks because of the richness of substance and nuance. Combined with the Beethovenian intensity and the fateful tone of the tonic key, the quartet is a profoundly serious work.

The first movement is a tightly woven sonata form, showcasing Brahms’s masterly handling of Classical form. Though its form is strict, Brahms nonetheless utilized a rich harmonic language, which Schoenberg interestingly compared to Wagner’s Tristan. Though simpler in approach, the middle movements are further discourses on the themes of the first movement. The finale returns to the terse and vigorous language of the first movement. Partially borrowing from the cyclic form seen in some of the works of Liszt, Brahms’s finale seemingly takes on the role of recapitulation in a much larger sonata design. Though back in the tonic key, its affirmation is greatly delayed. Furthermore, the movement’s own sonata design is shortened by the overlapping of the development and recapitulation sections. Like a pithy closing sentence in a well-constructed argument, the quartet closes with an almost barefaced variation of the first movement’s opening theme.      Joseph DuBose

String Quartet No. 1 in c minor            Johannes Brahms

I. Allegro

II. Romanze

III. Allegretto molto moderato e comodo

IV. Allegro

Performers: Nicholas Tavani, Violin

                  Rachel Shapiro, Violin

                 Greg Luce, Viola

                 Alan Richardson, Cello