Brahms as Revisor

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on how Brahms seems almost never to have left any musical form alone without experimenting with several examples. Virtually everything he ever published, even some relatively short works, appears to have undergone gestation periods of varying length. He is also known to have rearranged and transformed earlier compositions into a quite different mold. A classic example is the Piano Concerto in D minor (op. 15), which began life as a piano duet in 1854. Brahms then unsuccessfully attempted to work it into a symphony before discarding a few tentative movements as it metamorphosed into its ultimate concerto form in 1859. One of the discarded symphonic movement sketches was preserved, however, to eventually provide material for something very different—the second movement of the later Requiem, begun in 1861.