Piano Quartet No. 1 (Brahms) - First Movement

First Movement

This first movement, a sonata form movement in G minor and common time, begins immediately with the first theme, a declamatory statement in straight quarter-notes, stated in octaves for the piano alone. This theme is the opening cell that governs the content of the rest of the musical material in the movement. The other instruments soon join in to develop this initial theme and cadence in G minor. There are five other themes in the exposition. The second is in B-flat major (for all instruments), the third is in D minor (beginning with violoncello solo), and the fourth and fifth are in D major (the fourth being the D minor theme in the major mode and developed differently as well, and the fifth being a more exuberant idea for all instruments, marked 'animato'). The exposition ends with a closing section that develops only the opening theme and oscillates between D major and D minor, and eventually ends, almost reluctantly, in D major. Although the exposition is not repeated, Brahms creates the illusion of its repetition by starting the development section with the identical ten measures that begins the exposition, up to and including the strong G minor cadence. The develop section then goes through many of the themes previously heard and extends them in new ways, and moves from A minor to E minor and eventually to D major. Very atypically, the recapitulation begins not with the first theme, but with the second theme in G major. The resolution is short-lived, as it moves back to the minor mode, where it cadences after an imitative development of the first theme in G minor. The recapitulation ends with a coda that is relatively brief but intense, concluding with an ascending passage built through imitation of the opening cell, whose buildup comes suddenly crashing down in a descending 'fortissimo' phrase. The piece ends on a desolate and incomplete-sounding G minor chord, the highest notes being the third and fifth scale degrees of the tonic triad rather than the tonic.