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Beethoven's String Quintet in C major, Op. 29, and Brahms's String Sextets: A Wallflower Blooms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2021
Abstract
Beethoven's String Quintet, Op. 29, has been described as a ‘wallflower’ work that, without enough suitors, remains on the sidelines of the string chamber music repertoire. But in the nineteenth century it had a prominent champion, Joseph Joachim, whose performances of the quintet must have attracted the attention of his close friend, Johannes Brahms. The opening theme of Brahms's String Sextet, Op. 18, is clearly reminiscent of the beginning of Beethoven's quintet. Evidence from Donald Francis Tovey's recollections of Joachim, Joachim's correspondence with the Brahms biographer Max Kalbeck, and the manuscript of Op. 18 shows that Joachim influenced an important revision that aligns the beginning of Brahms's sextet closely with the opening of Beethoven's Op. 29 also in terms of texture and formal design.
The striking tremolo opening and virtuosic scale passages in the finale of Beethoven's quintet prefigure similar elements in the last movement of Brahms's Op. 36 sextet. But the deeper relationship between these movements lies in certain shared formal elements: a common emphasis on sound, texture and sharp contrasts between agitato and pastoral elements as defining features of the overall form – and several distinctive similarities of contrapuntal strategy, form and tonal design between the substantial fugatos that dominate the development sections of both movements.
It is often observed that Brahms wrote chamber works in pairs. Scholars have often posited that his two string sextets form such a pair, but the separation of four years in their inceptions and his extensive use of Baroque-style materials composed in the 1850s in the later sextet have made this argument tenuous. It now emerges that an unusual pairing feature of Brahms's string sextets is that both works respond to Beethoven's ‘wallflower’ masterpiece.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 18 , Special Issue 2: Brahms and the Influence of Beethoven , August 2021 , pp. 241 - 268
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2021
Footnotes
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I am grateful for support from the Francisco M. Gonzalez, M.D., Endowed Professorship of Loyola University New Orleans, and for close readings and helpful comments from Robert Eshbach, Valerie Goertzen and Stephen Whiting.
References
1 See Ries, Ferdinand, Biographische Notizen von Ludwig van Beethoven von Dr. F. G. Wegeler und Ferdinand Ries (Coblenz: Bädeker, 1838): 120Google Scholar, MacArdle, Donald M., ‘Beethoven, Artaria, and the C Major Quintet’, The Musical Quarterly 34 (1948): 567–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ludwig van Beethoven: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, ed. Dorfmüller, Kurt, Gertsch, Norbert and Ronge, Julia, 2 vols (Munich: G. Henle, 2014), 1: 170–172Google Scholar.
2 van Beethoven, Ludwig, Streichquintette. Studien-Edition, ed. Kurth, Sabine (Munich: G. Henle, 2001): VIIGoogle Scholar.
3 Even today the Quintet is sometimes overlooked; it is not discussed in Lockwood, Lewis, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005)Google Scholar, nor in the Beethoven Handbuch, ed. Hiemke, Sven (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2009)Google Scholar. As recently as 1994 Rudolf Stephan observed that ‘The string quintet in C major, Op. 29, ranks among the chamber music works of Beethoven that are scarcely ever to be heard in concert’. See Stephan, Rudolf, ‘Streichquintett C-dur op. 29’, in Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke, ed. Riethmüller, Albrecht, Dahlhaus, Carl and Ringer, Alexander L., 2 vols (Laaber: Laaber 1996), 1: 237–242Google Scholar. All English translations are my own unless otherwise specified.
4 Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, ed. Andreas Moser, 3rd edn, 2 vols (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908; repr. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1974), 1: 132.
5 The works performed by the Joachim Quartet in the Singakademie concert series are tabulated in the Appendix CD of Beatrix Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph Joachim. Biographie und Interpretationsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005). According to Borchard's tabulations, the Joachim Quartet performed Op. 29 12 times between 1871 and 1905, more frequently than any of Mozart's quintets (K515 five times, K516 – the famous G minor quintet – nine times, K593 four times, and K614 three times). Unlike the Mozart quintets, Beethoven's Op. 29 was always placed last on the programmes. Only Schubert's C Major Quintet, D. 956, was played more frequently (17 times); like Beethoven's Op. 29, it always concluded the programme.
6 Therese Ellsworth, ‘“Caviare to the Multitude”: Joseph Joachim and the Monday Popular Concerts in London’. Paper presented at ‘Joseph Joachim at 185: An International Conference’, 16–18 June 2016, Boston.
7 Some contemporaneous accounts reflected Ellsworth's statistics. The violinist John Matthews noted that Op. 29 was ‘almost as often heard at the Monday Popular Concerts as anything of Beethoven's’. See John Matthews, The Violin Music of Beethoven (London: E. Shore & Co., 1902), 88.
8 Robert Eshbach, ‘“For All are Born to the Ideal”: Joseph Joachim and Bettina von Arnim’. Paper read at the North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, Nashville, 7–9 June 2017.
9 Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim. Ein Lebensbild, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Berlin: Verlag der Deutschen Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1910), 2: 207–211. For the complete programme, see Rainer Cadenbach, ‘Joseph Joachims Programme: Die große Zeit die Bonner Kammermusikfeste von 1890 bis 1907’, in 1889–1989. Verein Beethovenhaus (Bonn: Verlag Beethovenhaus Bonn, 1989), 65–90.
10 Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, 2: 250.
11 See Katalog der mit der Beethoven-Feier zu Bonn am 11.–15. Mai 1890 verbundenen Ausstellung von Handschriften, Bildnissen, Reliquien Ludwig van Beethoven's sowie sonstigen auf ihn und seine Familie bezüglichen Erinnerungen (Bonn: Verlag des Vereins Beethoven-Haus, 1890): Nr. 215. It is generally assumed that in 1890 Joachim owned the autograph of Op. 29 based on the Bonn exhibition catalogue entry. See Ludwig van Beethoven: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, 1: 172–3. But it is possible that Joachim only had the manuscript on loan. It belonged to Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in 1868 and was later acquired by the Preussische Staatsbibliothek from Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Paul's son) in 1908. It seems odd to me that Joachim would have purchased the manuscript from Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and then sold it back to him; if Joachim had ever come into possession of such a precious document, it is difficult to believe he would have relinquished it. On the other hand, Joachim's artistic stature and his closeness to the Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family would have made a loan of the manuscript easy to arrange. For Joachim's relationship to the family of Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, see Borchard, Stimme und Geige, 568–71. The manuscript is now located in the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Kraców.
12 See Wilhelm von Lenz, Beethoven et ses trois styles (St Petersburg: Bernard, 1852), in which, however, analytical remarks are focused only on Beethoven's piano sonatas. Joachim is more likely to have known Lenz's work through later publications: Beethoven: Eine Kunst-Studie, 4 vols, 2nd edn (Hamburg: Hofmann & Campe, 1860), or Kritischer Katalog sämmtlicher Werke Ludwig van Beethovens mit Analysen derselben, 4 parts (Hamburg: Hofmann & Campe, 1860). In the latter work Lenz examined all of Beethoven's principal compositions. The Quintet is discussed at length in the Zweiter Teil. II. Periode op. 21 bis op. 100. Erste Hälfte op. 21 bis op. 55: 94–121.
13 This practice was an extension of Joachim's long-time habit of beginning all-Beethoven quartet concerts with one of the Op. 18 quartets, followed by middle-period and late-period quartets. His only exception to this practice was equally consistent: when the late-period quartet to be featured was the relatively slight Op. 135, he placed it in second position on the programme and concluded the evening with a middle-period quartet, usually Op. 59, No. 1 or 3. I am grateful to Valerie Goertzen for allowing me to study her transcription of the large collection of Joachim Quartet programmes housed at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
14 Cadenbach, ‘Joseph Joachims Programme’, 70–72.
15 See Lenz, Kritischer Katalog, 109, 114–16 and 119–20.
16 See Bathia Churgin, Transcendent Mastery: Studies in the Music of Beethoven (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2008), 9.
17 For a general overview of Brahms's whereabouts between 1853 and 1856, see Renate Hofmann and Kurt Hofmann, Johannes Brahms: Zeittafel zu Leben und Werk (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1983), 14–30.
18 Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, ed. Johannes Joachim and Andreas Moser, 3 vols (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1911–13), 1: 228. The date of this letter shows that Joachim had been hosting private chamber music gatherings in his Hanover residence well before he initiated more formal Sunday matinées in the hall of Hanover's Künstlerverein in April of 1855 (see Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, 2: 72–4). The other members of Joachim's Hanover quartet were Theodor Eyert, second violin, Karl Eyert, viola, and August Lindner, cello.
19 See Georg Fischer, Musik in Hannover: Zweite vermehrte Auflage (Hanover: Hahn'sche Buchhandlung, 1903), 239–40 and 244.
20 See Hanns-Werner Heister, ‘Sextett für zwei Violinen, zwei Violen und Zwei Violoncelli No. 1 B-dur’, in Johannes Brahms: Interpretationen seiner Werke, ed. Claus Bockmaier and Siegfried Mauser, 2 vols (Laaber: Laaber, 2013), 1: 119–28, and Michael Kube, ‘Brahms’ Streichsextette und ihr gattungsgeschichtlicher Kontext’, in Die Kammermusik von Johannes Brahms: Tradition und Innovation: Bericht über die Tagung Wien 1997, ed. Gernot Gruber (Laaber: Laaber, 2001), 149–74.
21 Marie Sumner Lott, ‘Domesticity in Brahms's String Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36’, in Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall: Between Private and Public Performance, ed. Katy Hamilton and Natasha Loges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 43–94.
22 Lott, ‘Domesticity in Brahms's String Sextets’, 49–50.
23 I am aware of only one other suggestion of a connection between Beethoven's Op. 29 and Brahms's Op. 18 in the literature. Angus Watson recently observed that ‘Brahms … was surely inspired by [Op. 29] when he wrote the opening theme and flowing accompaniment for his Sextet in B flat major’. See Angus Watson, Beethoven's Chamber Music in Context (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010), 117.
24 The passage calls to mind a moment in the second subject of the first movement of Beethoven's ‘Pastorale’ Sonata, Op. 28 (bars 77–82 and following), which was written around the same time as Op. 29. There the homorhythmic parts in minims and crotchets moving in neighbour-note motion in the outer voices and the luminous, undulating quavers in the centre of the texture anticipate the opening of Op. 29 to a remarkable degree. In the Sonata, this music pulls away from the local tonic, i.e., it is harmonically disruptive, whereas in the Quintet a similar idea establishes the tonic at the outset of the work. It is almost as if Beethoven, entranced by the texture he had invented in Op. 28, wanted to try beginning a piece with such an idea. It is worth noting that Brahms was familiar with Beethoven's Op. 28 at least from the summer of 1857, when Clara Schumann was studying the work. In a letter to Joachim of 21 August she wrote: ‘Johannes has told me all his thoughts about the Pastoral Sonata, and now I play it differently’. See Berthold Litzmann, Clara Schumann: Ein Künstlerleben, 3 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1920), 3: 22.
25 Stephan, ‘Streichquintett C-dur op. 29’, 1: 238.
26 Stephan, ‘Streichquintett C-dur op. 29’, 1: 238.
27 Ludwig Finscher, ‘Streichquintett’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Zweite, neubearbeitete Ausgabe, 21 vols in 2 parts, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Sachteil 8: Quer-Swi (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1998), 1990–2006, esp. 1999.
28 Otto Jahn, W. A. Mozart (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1856), 588.
29 Even though Lenz associated Op. 29 with the rather straightforward Mozartian ‘cassation style’, he was by no means blind to the forward-looking elements in the quintet on which modern critics have focused. He noted, for example, that the first movement of Op. 29 is the first major-key sonata form in which Beethoven used a second key a third away from the tonic, with a second key of A major/minor for the second subject of the C major movement. Lenz claimed that Op. 29 presented the first use of this tonal strategy not only in Beethoven's works, but in the entirety of music literature. See Lenz, Kritischer Katalog, 104.
30 Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4th edn, 4 vols (Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1904–21), 1: 419.
31 Donald F. Tovey, ‘Brahms, Johannes’, in Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, ed. Walter Willson Cobbett, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1963, originally published 1923), 158–82.
32 Johannes Brahms Autographs: Facsimiles of eight Manuscripts in the Library of Congress, Introduction by James Webster, Notes about the Manuscripts by George S. Bozarth (New York: Garland, 1983), xi.
33 Johannes Brahms Autographs, xv.
34 Constantin Floros, ‘Max Kalbecks “neugeirige Fragen eines wissensdurstigen Brahms-Biographen”: Die Fragebögen für Joseph Joachim und Albert Dietrich’, in Internationaler Brahms-Kongress Gmunden 1997: Kongreßbericht, ed. Ingrid Fuchs (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2001), 359–75. Clearly Joachim meant the first ten bars, not the first eight bars. His laconic response to Kalbeck also gives no hint that Brahms experimented with another instrumentation of the new opening in which the melody was assigned to the first viola and the quaver inner part to the first cello, something that was revealed by the discovery of the engravers’ models of the parts. See Michael Struck, ‘Johannes Brahms’ kompositorische Arbeit im Spiegel von Kopistenabschriften’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 54 (1997): 1–33.
35 Concerning Joachim's views on the subject of virtuosity, see Karen Leistra-Jones, ‘Virtue and Virtuosity: Brahms, the Concerto, and the Politics of Performance in the Late Nineteenth-Century Austro-German Culture’ (PhD diss., Yale University, 2011).
36 J.A. Fuller-Maitland, Joseph Joachim (London: John Lane, 1905), 36–7.
37 By the time he composed the last movement of his Op. 36 sextet in May of 1865, Brahms would have been able to hear a performance of Beethoven's Op. 29 Quintet by the Hellmesberger Quartet in Vienna on 24 January 1864. For a complete tabulation of the Hellmesberger Quartet's performances of Op. 29, see Borchard, Stimme und Geige, Appendix (CD).
38 Beneath this racing passagework lies fundamentally the same harmonic structure found at the beginning of the first movement: (I–V–I) – (ii–V/ii–ii)–IV–V–I, forging a strong connection between Beethoven's outer movements that is entirely independent of their melodic surfaces. For further consideration of structural connections within and between the movements of Op. 29, see Christopher Hatch, ‘Thematic Interdependence in two Finales by Beethoven’, The Music Review 45 (1984): 194–207.
39 See Walter Riezler, Beethoven, Achte, teilweise umgearbeitete und wesentlich erweiterte Auflage (Zurich: Atlantis, 1951), 131. It is reasonable to believe that Riezler, who was born in 1878 in Munich and had many educational advantages, would have heard Joachim play.
40 Paul Bekker, Beethoven (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1912), 488. That Bekker heard Joachim play is clear from his article ‘Joachim’, in Paul Bekker, Gesammelte Schriften, 3 vols (Stuttgart & Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1922), vol. 2, Klang und Eros: 215–19. Associating the opening of the Finale with ‘storm-music’ entered the Beethoven literature early on; for a summary of this hermeneutic connection, see Kurth, Beethovens Streichquintette, 83–5.
41 See comments in Warren Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music, 2nd edn, trans. Margaret Bent and Bathia Churgin (Durham: Duke University Press, 1979), 231. In design this fugato bears comparison with the one in the second movement of the Eroica Symphony, which also has a complete exposition in five voices, uses two countersubjects, presents a truncated statement of the subject in the major mode after an episode, and dissolves into an elaborate dominant preparation. For a close analysis of the Op. 29 fugato, see Ludwig Misch, ‘Ein unbemerktes Stück Beethovenscher Fugenkunst’, in Neue Beethoven-Studien und andere Themen (Munich: G. Henle, 1967), 51–5.
42 Bathia Churgin regards the C major subject statements as ‘partial entries’. See Churgin, Transcendent Mastery, 444. I regard them as ‘stretto-like’ entries because they provide closer imitation than that found in the fugato's exposition – imitation at a distance of four bars rather than six. The effect is like stretto, even though the entries do not overlap.
43 Churgin regards this interpolated music as an adaptation of the da capo overture form. See Transcendent Mastery, 445. The close relationship between this music and the third movement of Beethoven's Creatures of Promethius, Op.43, is noted by Kurth in Beethovens Streichquintette, 85. Beethoven's ‘scherzoso’ directive suggests that this material might also have been intended to have an ironical effect, somewhat like the emotively incongruous coda in the last movement of the Quartetto Serioso, Op. 95. See Mark Evan Bonds, ‘Irony and Incomprehensibility: Beethoven's “Serioso” String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, and the Path to the Late Style’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 70 (2017): 285–356.
44 See Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms (New York: Schirmer Books, 1990), 173.
45 Wolfgang Ruf, ‘Die zwei Sextette von Brahms: eine analytische Studie’, in Brahms-Analysen: Referate der Kieler Tagung 1983, ed. Friedhelm Krummacher and Wolfram Steinbeck (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), 121–33.
46 Arno Mitschka, ‘Der Sonatensatz in den Werken von Johannes Brahms’ (PhD diss., Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität zu Mainz, 1961), 251. Both Ruf and Mitschka evidently elaborate the view expressed by Karl Geiringer in Brahms: His Life and Work, 2nd edn, trans. H. B. Weiner and Bernard Miall (London: Allen & Unwin, 1948), 230–31: ‘The Finale [of Op. 36] exhibits an interesting mixed type; the original sonata form approximates to the Rondo by repeating, in the manner of a ritornell, the same idea (b. 1–6) throughout all parts of the movement. Here we find already the idea of a “motto”, which plays an important part in the work of the mature Brahms’.
47 Hanns-Werner Heister, ‘Sextett für zwei Violinen, zwei Violen und zwei Violoncelli Nr. 2 G-dur Op. 36’, in Johannes Brahms: Interpretationen seiner Werke, ed. Claus Bockmaier and Siegfried Mauser, 2 vols (Laaber: Laaber, 2013), 1: 242–50.
48 Friedhelm Krummacher, ‘Kammermusik für Streichinstrumente’, in Brahms Handbuch, ed. Wolfgang Sandberger (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2009), 382–407, esp. 387–8.
49 See also Werner Czesla, ‘Studien zum Finale in der Kammermusik von Johannes Brahms’ (PhD diss., Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn, 1968), 139. Czesla regards the first six bars as an introductory ‘varied anticipation-motive’ of the first theme.
50 The accent marks in bars 1–4 of Example 4 make explicit the relationship between the plain version of the motive and its tremolo version. They are not found in the first edition of the score or parts of Op. 36 and are also missing from the copyist manuscripts of the parts that were used as engraver's models for the first edition of the parts. The accent marks do appear in Brahms's autograph, which was used as the engraver's model for the first edition of the score, and they are entered by hand, presumably by Brahms, in his personal copy of the first edition of the score. They were included in the old Brahms complete edition: Johannes Brahms, Sämtliche Werke. Ausgabe der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 26 vols, vols 1–10 ed. Hans Gál, vols 11–26 ed. Eusebius Mandyczewski (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1926–27), 7: 82. However, the first-edition reading, without accents, has been restored in the new Brahms complete edition: Johannes Brahms, Streichsextette Nr. 1 B-dur op. 18 und Nr. 2 G-dur op. 36, ed. Katrin Eich, Johannes Brahms Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, Serie 2, Band 1 (Munich: G. Henle, 2017), 105.
51 For a related reading of this passage, see Czesla, ‘Studien zum Finale in der Kammermusik von Johannes Brahms’, 139–44.
52 See Pascall, Robert, Brahms Beyond Mastery: His Sarabande and Gavotte and Its Recompositions (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)Google Scholar, and Horne, William, ‘Through the Aperture: Brahms's Gigues, WoO 4’, The Musical Quarterly 86 (2002): 530–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is worth noting in this regard that a great deal of the reconstructed pastorale in Example 5 can be played comfortably on the keyboard.
53 Czesla relates the omission in the recapitulation of the tremolo-based introduction and transition to the substantial use of similar material in both the development and the coda. See Czesla, ‘Studien zum Finale in der Kammermusik von Johannes Brahms’, 148.
54 See Johannes Brahms, Streichsextette Nr. 1 B-dur op. 18 und Nr. 2 G-dur op. 36, 140 and 206.
55 See Nottebohm, Gustav, Beethoven's Studien. Erster Band: Beethoven's Unterricht bei J. Haydn, Albrechtsberger und Salieri, ed. Ronge, Julia, Quellenkataloge zur Musikgeschichte 47 (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 2009), 176–91Google Scholar. Beethoven wrote two complete triple fugues under Albrechtsbergers's tutelage. The first of these is in the same key as the fugato in Op. 29, D minor. Perhaps coincidentally, Albrechtsberger's assigned subject for this study-fugue bears some resemblance to the subject in Op. 29. Beethoven would not employ a triple-fugue exposition again until the fugato of the second movement of the Third Symphony, Op. 55.
56 The use of developmental fugatos also link the finales of Brahms's First Piano Concerto, Op. 15, and Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Op. 37, two movements whose close structural connections are widely accepted in the literature. For a summary, see Sholes, Jacquelyn E. C., Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms's Instrumental Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 134–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 Webster, James, ‘Schubert's Sonata Form and Brahms's First Maturity’, 19th-Century Music 2 (1978): 18–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and 3 (1979): 52–71. Webster (Part II, p. 70) notes in particular structural parallels between the first movement of Op. 36 and that of Schubert's String Quartet in G Major, D. 887.
58 Clara Schumann: Johannes Brahms. Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896, ed. Litzmann, Berthold, 2 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1927), 1: 73–76Google Scholar.
59 See Kämper, Dietrich, ‘Ein unbekanntes Brahms-Studienblatt aus dem Briefwechsel mit F. Wüllner’, Die Musikforschung 17 (1964): 57–62Google Scholar.
60 See Webster, ‘Schubert's Sonata Form’ for an extensive discussion of Brahms's adaptation of Schubertian compositional devices in the chamber works of his ‘first maturity’.
61 Brahms's double presentation of the fugatos in Op. 36 in itself reflects Beethovenian practice. Brahms was intimately familiar with Beethoven's Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110, which contains two fugues in its last movement. Beethoven's second fugue in Op. 110 is a complete reworking of the first one, with the subject inverted. Brahms retained the original version of the subject in his second fugato, but infused it with inversion of another kind: the descending stepwise sequence in the stretto of the first fugato is rewritten as an ascending stepwise sequence in the stretto of the second one.
62 See McCorkle, Margit L., Johannes Brahms: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Munich: G. Henle, 1984), 130Google Scholar.