Brahms Piano Quintet 3rd Movement

Brahms Piano Quintet 3rd Movement

1. Context

   • 1864
   • Romantic era
     • Music A2 Listening exam
   • Video score
     • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoWYpjvnkR8 
   • Professional Performers not amateurs and suitable for a small concert hall

2. Rhythm and metre

   • Duple time throughout, switches between compound and simple (12-13)
     • Syncopation - Theme A (2)
   • Time signatures suit the different melodies
   • Theme B - March rhythm (13), semiquaver rests and staccato markings
   • Augmentation - theme B and C
   • Theme C - off beat accents Sfz (26-8)
   • 1st countersubject (67) continuous staccato quaver pattern

3. Texture

   • Wide variety of textures
     • (1) cello pedal accompanying 1st Violin and Viola melody, which is in octaves
     • Free imitation (5) between piano and strings
     • Main theme - melody dominated homophony
   • Central section of scherzo (67-) is in fugal style
     • Subject in Viola, first 3 counter subjects in LH piano
       • Builds to 5 part texture at Stretto (93)
         • Stretto - the close overlapping of statements of the subject in a fugue, each voiceentering immediately after the preceding one. 
     • Answer RH piano (71)

4. Structure and Tonality

   • Ternary within ternary due to da capo structure

5. Melody

   • Highly motivic with a combination of conjunct and disjunct movement
   • Theme A
     • 1-13
     • Highly syncopated, with a rising sequence
   • Theme B
     • 13-21
     • Jerky and fragmented theme
   • Theme C
     • 21-29
     • Part B of Theme B is rhythmically augmented and played in the major key to create the first 4 notes of theme C. Semiquavers become dotted crotchets
   • Falling minor 2nd (190-2)
   • Chromaticism (166-169) in 1st Violin

6. Instrumentation

   • Piano
     • Technically demanding : multi-note chords
       • (22) 6 note ff piano entry over octave bass line
     • Full range of instrument
       • Low bass line (53) , high register in RH climax (174-5)
   • String quartet : violin, viola, and cello
     • Wide range
       • (154) 1st violin rises to high Bb, 3 octaves above middle C.
         • Repeated bottom C's in cello (1), lowest note on instrument
     • Pizzicato and arco
       • 1st Violin double stopping (18-20)

7. Harmony

   • Chromatic harmony
   • (7) chromatic F# in Piano creates dissonance with F natural in 1st violin and Viola
   • (5) German augmented 6th being built up
     • (Ab-C-Eb-F#) 
     • Clearer version (39) when fragments of Theme A return
   • Diminished 7th chords (232) over a pedal G
     • (F#-A-C-Eb)
     • Half diminished 7th in Trio (223) beat 2
       • chord of C#-E-G-B resolves on a chord of B major
   • There are instances of diatonic harmony and cadences
     • Root position chords (22)
     • Frequent imperfect cadences (12-13) without the 3rd of V
       • Perfect cadences avoided
     • Plagal cadence with a tierce de picardie (189-90) at the end of Scherzo

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