Brahms: Clarinet Quintet
In 1890, and again in 1894, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) announced his retirement from composition. Both times, he returned to create more music for one particular performer: clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, from the court orchestra in Meiningen, Germany. After hearing Mühlfeld play in 1891, Brahms composed for the first time in a year, crafting both the Clarinet Trio (Opus 114) and the Clarinet Quintet (Opus 115) during his summer holiday in an Austrian spa town. Mühlfeld premiered both works that winter, joined by the string quartet led by Brahms’ longtime friend Joseph Joachim.
Brahms’ model for the Clarinet Quintet was a work that Mozart composed for the same ensemble in 1789. It may just be coincidence that these two composers gravitated toward the clarinet in their final years, but it is hard not to project some amount of wistful, nostalgic autobiography onto their autumnal masterpieces.
There is indeed a bittersweet quality to Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, much of it generated by the continual pull of the listener’s expectations between major and minor tonalities. The first movement begins with sweetness, as the violins twine together in thirds; at this point, the ear perceives the key as D-major. minute passes before the harmony lands with any real force on the actual home key of B-minor, and soon enough it leaves again for D-major, the setting of the secondary theme. Those two keys are flip sides of the same coin, sharing all the same scale tones, and the movement continually flips
that coin such that we bounce from the hopefulness of the major key to the heaviness of the minor. This conflict continues throughout the quintet, like when the slow movement in the key of B-major drops into a contrasting passage in B-minor tinged with “Gypsy” flair. The reverse transpires in the theme-and-variations finale, which dangles a possible resolution in B-major before arriving definitively in B-minor.
Mozart: Clarinet Quintet
The music that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote for his friend and fellow freemason Anton Stadler played no small part in elevating the clarinet to the indispensable concert instrument it is today. Until the eighteenth century, the closest precursor was the cylindrical, single-reed woodwind known as the chalumeau that had open finger holes like a recorder and which only played in a compressed, lower register. The advent of a register key opened access to the instrument’s upper range, which offered a bright tone not unlike a trumpet, or clarino in Italian—hence the diminutive clarinetto, rendered in English as clarinet. Through his friendship with Stadler, Mozart came to write a trio in 1786 for the novel combination of clarinet, viola and piano (the so-called “Kegelstatt” Trio). The Clarinet Quintet followed in 1789, scored for two violins, viola, cello and basset clarinet, an instrument designed by Stadler with an extended low range. The Clarinet Concerto that Mozart wrote just two months before he died in 1791 also featured Stadler and his basset clarinet.
Despite Stadler’s advocacy, his basset clarinet design died out, and most performers today perform the Clarinet Quintet on a modern clarinet, adjusting a few low notes as needed. The instrument’s wide range is on display from the outset, when it enters with rising and falling arpeggios in response to a smooth string chorale to start the first movement. The Larghetto emphasizes the voice-like quality of the clarinet’s sweet soprano range, while the Menuetto shows off the instrument’s fluid, graceful slurs. The finale begins with a simple, bouncing theme that would not sound out of place on a children’s playground, setting up a flashy series of variations.
Notes by Aaron Grad
