The Three Intermezzi for piano, Op. 117, are a set of three solo piano pieces composed by

Johannes Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped wit ...

in 1892. The

intermezzi In music, an intermezzo (, , plural form: intermezzi), in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term ha ...

were described by the critic

Eduard Hanslick Eduard Hanslick (11 September 18256 August 1904) was an Austrian music critic, aesthetician and historian. Among the leading critics of his time, he was the chief music critic of the ''Neue Freie Presse'' from 1864 until the end of his life. H ...

as "monologues"... pieces of a "thoroughly personal and subjective character" striking a "pensive, graceful, dreamy, resigned, and elegiac note." The first intermezzo, in E major, is prefaced in the score by two lines from an old Scottish ballad, ''Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament'':

Balow, my babe, lie still and sleep!
It grieves me sore to see thee weep.

The middle section of the second intermezzo, in E minor, seems to Brahms’ biographer Walter Niemann to portray a "man as he stands with the bleak, gusty autumn wind eddying round him."

History

Brahms composed the three Intermezzi of Opus 117 in the summer of 1892 while staying in

Bad Ischl Bad Ischl (Austrian German ) is a spa town in Austria. It lies in the southern part of Upper Austria, at the Traun River in the centre of the Salzkammergut region. The town consists of the Katastralgemeinden ''Ahorn'', ''Bad Ischl'', ''Haiden' ...

. In June of that year he asked his friend, the musicologist

Eusebius Mandyczewski Eusebius Mandyczewski ( uk, Євсевій Мандичевський, translit=Yevsevii Mandychevskyi, ro, Eusebie Mandicevschi; 18 August 1857, in Molodiia – 13 August 1929, in Vienna) was a Romanian musicologist, composer, conductor, and t ...

, to send him manuscript paper so that Brahms could "properly sketch" the three pieces. In September 1892

Clara Schumann Clara Josephine Schumann (; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a ...

learned of the existence of the pieces from her student

Ilona Eibenschütz Ilona Eibenschütz (24 March 1871 in Budapest, Hungary – 21 May 1967 in London, England) was a Hungarian pianist. She received her first instruction in music from her cousin Albert Eibenschütz. Franz Liszt is said to have played at a concer ...

and wrote to Brahms requesting he send them to her. He obliged her request, sending her the completed pieces on 14 October 1892.

References

* Walter Gieseking. ''Schumann Brahms''. Columbia Masterworks (ML 4540), 1952.

External links

*
Detailed Listening Guide
using the recording by Martin Jones Piano pieces by Johannes Brahms Compositions for solo piano 1892 compositions {{classical-composition-stub