Variation 10

Poco adagio
2/4 time

After finishing fourteen variation during May and June of 1854, Brahms left the Schumann household in Dusseldorf. There is no doubt that he had fallen in love with Clara. In a letter to his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, he wrote,

Often I have to force myself to restraint from putting my arm gently around Clara. It seems so natural for me to do this and I do not think she would think badly of me if I did. I don't think I could now love a young girl. In fact I have forgotten about them. They may promise heaven but Clara reveals it to me.

We can speculate that Brahms returned to writing variations out of lovesickness. He added two more variations, nos. 10 and 11, both very romantic. At the top of the manuscript he wrote, "Fragrance of Rose and Heliotrope" (although the words never appeared in the published version).

This remarkable, complicated piece was "written in a day."[1]

Variation 10 has a beautiful melody which might seem unrelated to the theme, but in fact it is the bass line of Schumann's theme. Brahms creates another canon, the most elaborate canon of the entire set, with the bass playing the mirror image (inversion) of the theme; that is, each interval downward in the treble is mirrored by an equal interval upward in the bass, and so on. At the same time, the original melody now appears in the inner voices but at a faster pace than the original (diminution). 

The opening canon in inversion

The theme in diminution

Then the opening canon is repeated but with the bass one bar behind the treble.[2] 

In his letter to Joachim, when Brahms says that in his new variations, "Clara speaks!" he is referring to the fourth from last bar where, in an inner voice, he has used a theme that Clara herself wrote. She used it first in her Romance variee, Op. 3, "Romanza" and later in the coda of her Op. 20 variations. Robert later wrote a set of Impromptus on this theme, so Brahms is paying tribute to both Robert and Clara.

Clara Wieck, Romance variee, Op. 3, "Romanza". 

Clara re-used this theme in the coda of her Op. 20 variations. 

Robert Schumann used this as his theme in his Impromptus, Op. 5

Brahms's insertion of the theme in Variation 10

 Jan Swafford sums up the marvel of technique the twenty-year-old Brahms has created as "a contrapuntal tour de force: the theme he extracted from the original bass line works as counterpoint to a diminution of the main Schumann theme, works both in simultaneous mirror to itself and also as a canon in inversion, and can be superimposed on Clara's melody. All of that must be made to work by strenuous thought and patient craft."[3] 

Years later Brahms marked this piece with an N.B., which is understandable because of its high degree of craftsmanship, but also with a question mark, perhaps reflecting second thoughts about its complication.[4] 

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1.  Karl Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work, Da Capo, 1984, p. 211.

2. Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography, Vintage, 1999, p. 126. This last canon is all too complicated for me to see, but I certainly take Mr. Swafford as an authority.

3. Swafford, p. 126.

3. Geiringer, p. 217.