12 / 40
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) in the late eighteenth century
was the first to write string sextets (two violins, two violas, two
cellos). This small “orchestra” may be used to create an almost
symphonic impression, which partly explains no doubt why so
many composers, from the Romantics to the twentieth-century
avant-garde, took such an interest in it. Its exponents include
composers with very different styles: Brahms, Dvořák, Glière,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Dohnányi, Reger, Schoenberg,
Richard Strauss, Korngold, Schulhoff, Martinů, Maurizio Kagel,
and others.
Brahms’s two string sextets, dating from 1860 and 1865, were
written before his famous quartets and quintets. He may have
chosen this rarer form because he did not yet feel mature
enough to approach genres that had been practised with such
supreme skill by Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, whom he
revered. He nevertheless pays tribute to those composers in
these two works.