Quintet for clarinet and strings, Op. 115

One does not easily walk away from things one loves and to which one has grown accustomed. In sports we’ve seen retirements undone by everyone from Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong to Rocky Balboa. The competitive/creative impulse is no less powerful in artists. In 1890, having just turned 57, Johannes Brahms (1833-97) decided to give up composing. Six months later he drew up his will, and in many respects the String Quintet No. 2 (1890) offered his “final testament” in music. But several things brought Brahms back into the game. First, the rapid diminishing of his circle of intimate friends inspired music in the wake of mourning. Brahms lost many close friends after 1890, including several family members and former love-objects: his sister Elise and the adored Elisabeth von Herzogenberg in 1892, soprano Hermine Spies in 1893, and then Clara Schumann in 1896. These losses help illuminate the nostalgia and expressive color of Brahms’ final works. But they postdate two significant works that Brahms composed in summer 1891, the Clarinet Trio Op. 114 and Clarinet Quintet Op. 115. Hence, the topic of “man’s mortality” cannot adequately explain his creative renewal.
Earlier that year he had heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, whose talent revealed a whole new dimension of clarinet playing that spurred Brahms to take up his pen. The immediate fruits were the trio and quintet just mentioned; Brahms added two Clarinet Sonatas during summer 1894. Each of these works conveys wistfulness and classical restraint. But it is the Clarinet Quintet in particular, like the late work by Mozart in the same genre, that has come to stand for the composer’s autumnal reflections upon a life nearer its end than its beginning.
The quintet’s brilliant opening gesture moves deftly between two keys, B minor and D major, which will be the guiding keys for the entire work. The first motive, a close duet for violins, suggests D major until measure 3 when a small inflection points toward B minor. But two measures later we are back in D for the important entrance of the clarinet. Note particularly how the clarinet’s rendition of the opening motive includes longer held notes and rich, dissonant suspensions in the strings—all of which generate a feeling of “suspended” or stretched time, of palpable yearning and reverie. The second theme is more incisive. Here Brahms pursues his delight in syncopation and cross-rhythms that introduce instability at an almost subconscious level. A highlight of the development is the lovely, restrained “Quasi sostenuto” passage for clarinet and first violin, where the two instruments crisscross each other from high to low, handing the melodic baton back and forth. The recapitulation culminates in an impassioned synthesis of the first and second main themes, but our lasting impression of nostalgia stems from the return of the opening motive as a parting gesture.
The second movement, Adagio, makes a virtue of metric ambiguity. Phrases slide constantly between being “in 3” (triple meter) and “in 2” (duple). This is no mere academic observation, for rhythm is critical to our appreciation of melody. Brahms uses rhythmic ambiguity to create a static canvas of sound that develops in a less linear and more spatial or atmospheric way. The middle section offers suitable contrast by means of an accompanied cadenza for the clarinet.
The following Andantino may be described as a “hymn” or “chorale” topic, and it picks up the quicksilver B minor/D major shifts that marked the opening movement. In the middle of everything we hear a fleet scherzo (à la Felix Mendelssohn), but always Brahms’ special interests reveal themselves. Here they appear as rhythmic conflicts between the syncopated solo clarinet and pizzicato strings.
For the final movement, Brahms composes a masterful theme and variations. The theme bears direct similarity to the Andantino and, perhaps more generally, to the falling outlines of the Adagio and the opening Allegro’s material. Thus the Finale’s theme itself—which will be a source of five distinct variations—sounds like a variation on a motive that we have been hearing, both overtly and otherwise, for the past half hour. The Gypsy-inspired finales of Brahms’ youth are eschewed in favor of greater nuance and introspection. These variations pay homage to Bach and Beethoven, both masters of the form. And the interrupted, pathos-laden final section, including a last-minute recall of the quintet’s very first theme, leads only to the darkest of cadences. Brahms seems reluctant to take leave of his material. Perhaps that, in symbolic fashion, helps us understand why he found it hard to take leave of composing music as a whole.

(c) Jason Stell