Intermezzo in B-Flat Minor (Op. 117 No. 2)

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Introduction

The late piano pieces of Brahms are for many pianists a source of profound inspiration, one of the reasons we play the piano, as one of my music theory instructors memorably said. The twenty short pieces he published in the four opus numbers from 116 to 119 are, in the words of his biographer Jan Swafford, “a summation of what Brahms had learned, almost scientific studies of compositional craft and of piano writing, disguised as pretty little salon pieces.” It is this singular fusion of science and sentiment, of deep feeling concealed by consummate craftsmanship (or is it the other way around?) that draws us back to these pieces again and again throughout our musical lifetimes.

Brahms referred to the three Intermezzi of Op. 117 as “three cradle songs of my sorrows.” Indeed, the set is prefaced by a quotation, translated into German, of the recurring refrain from a Scottish lullaby known as “Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament”:

Balow, my boy, ly still and sleep, It grieves me sore to hear thee weep.

What sorrows these were for Brahms personally has been the object of much biographical speculation. Perhaps what matters more for us now is that Brahms, in these pieces, has transmuted his personal suffering into a universal expression that speaks to all of us.

The second Intermezzo from this set, in the rich and somber key of B-flat minor, has an unsettled, restless quality (like troubled slumber) that comes from the nearly continuous flow of 32nd notes, and from the elusive harmony, which doesn’t find repose until the final cadence.

Brahms’s "science" in this piece, a favourite in college analysis classes, has to do with this harmonic subtlety, and with his use of a single motivic idea to unify the entire piece. Without entering into a complete theoretical analysis, this edition will underscore some of these technical subtleties, which help us to understand the piece more fully, and to practise it more effectively.

Like most of Brahms’s late pieces, this Intermezzo is in ABA form with a coda. In this edition, we’ll take one section at a time, providing harmonic reductions and suggesting practice methods for each section. In the full score that follows, these sections are indicated with circled numbers, making it easier to go back and forth between the full score and the practice methods.

Resources and further reading For a complete, downloadable version of this walkthrough, please see From the Ground Up Edition (Click here if you already own it or click here to purchase it) Click here to view open domain editions for this work (external link). Click here to view introduction to the From the Ground Up series and an index of featured works. Click here to view Skeleton Practice series which serves as background reading with further information on concepts and the approach featured in From the Ground Up.