At least three features are peculiar about the opening of Brahms's Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102. Example 9.1 provides a two-staff reduction of the cello's opening cadenza, plus the orchestral introduction that precedes it and a couple of measures of orchestral music that follow it. Two of these three peculiar features are found as prescriptions for the cello soloist's entrance in the fifth measure. One of these two is the relatively rare notation of a half-note triplet. The other is the direction to play the music “in the style of a recitative, but always in tempo,” which is remarkable for the apparent exclusivity of its two constituent phrases. The first part of this chapter explores these peculiarities a little further, and investigates how cellists, at least as portrayed in multiple commercial recordings of the concerto, appear to respond to their co-occurrence. The second part of this chapter explicates a third peculiarity, which resides in the four-measure introduction and resists easy summary here. It then combines this third feature with the first two, giving rise to one form of what I will call “durational enharmonicism,” which in turn suggests one possible resolution to the paradox of an in-tempo recitative. The third part of this chapter deals with theoretical ramifications of durational enharmonicism.

A biographical connection concludes the chapter. Clara Schumann referred to this concerto as one of Versöhnungswerk or “reconciliation,” because Brahms wrote it, at least in part, for Joseph Joachim, a distinguished violinist and long-time friend, with whom he had fallen out of favor due to a rather unfortunate turn in the proceedings of Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie (née Schneeweiss). This divorce arose from Joachim's mistrust of Amalie, which in turn arose from—as Brahms described it—Joachim's absurd self-deceptions regarding Amalie's inclinations toward other men. Durational enharmonicism can also perpetrate convincing deceptions, and in so doing conjure experiences similar to those that Brahms claimed were vexing the work's dedicatee.

Performing the “Third Notes” in the Fifth Measure

The prescription of a notated half-note triplet occurs in the cello's first and fourth measures (mm. 5 and 8) but then never again, in any part, in the concerto. Compared to many other notated durations, the duration of a “third note,” as Henry Cowell preferred to call it, is scarce both in common-practice music overall and in Brahms's music in particular.