Brahms became deeply involved with Robert Schumann’s familial and musical circles in 1854, and through their influence he engaged in rigorous studies of Bach’s music in the ensuing years. Around this time, he drew inspiration from Bach’s English Suites and partitas and began composing a suite of his own, and while he finished a handful of movements and occasionally performed them in private contexts, the work was never completed. Several ideas and procedures from this abandoned suite, however, found their way into some of his later compositions, and the Sarabandes in particular seem to have greatly informed Brahms’s Intermezzo, Op. 116, No. 2. Both the Sarabandes and the Intermezzo demonstrate striking similarities in their parallel major/minor tonal shifts, phrase structure, formal design, and sectional layout, suggesting that the dance movements can be understood as early antecedents to the more mature work. Considering Brahms’s practice later in life of revisiting and revising compositions from his youth, this relationship between the Sarabandes and the Op. 116 Intermezzo is especially plausible.

Works: Brahms: Suite in A Minor, WoO posth. (unfinished) (250-669), Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 (269), Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88 (269, 275, 279-80), Intermezzo in A Minor, Op. 116, No. 2 (269-83).

Sources: J. S. Bach: English Suite in G Minor, BWV 808 (256-57, 263), Partita in B-flat Major, BWV 825 (261-62), Partita in D Major, BWV 828 (262-63), English Suite in D Minor, BWV 811 (263), English Suite in A Major, BWV 806 (263), English Suite in A Minor, BWV 807 (263), English Suite in E Minor, BWV 810 (263), English Suite in F Major, BWV 809 (263); Brahms: Suite in A Minor, WoO posth. (unfinished) (269-83).

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: Matthew G. Leone