Brahms’ clarinet quintet.

iii, 34 p. illus. (music). 28 cm. Typewritten. Bibliography: p. 34.In discussing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet a short historical background ot the circumstances that prompted the writing of the composition has been given. Composers usually are stimulated by some certain event or circumstance to do their work. So Brahms was in his late years stimulated by the playing of Richard Mühlfeld to write his clarinet works. No detailed analysis for the form of the work was necessary, since numerous analyses have already been published. Edwin Evans, in Brahms Chamber and Orchestral Music Handbook gives perhaps the most enlightening analysis of this work. In the third chapter the writer discussed the use of the clarinet from the standpoint of orchestration, discussing and illustrating the various uses of the instrument in this work. Many of these uses had been standardized when this work was written, others were newer, while the delicate phrasing, and abundance expression marks were probably ideas which Brahms had been the first to use. Today the clarinet is thought of as being fairly well standardized in its possibilities, and we do not consider that many of today’s standard possibilities were realized by Brahms. In the chapter on the contributions of Brahms to clarinet writing, the writer has described the clarinet in its various stages of development. These changes in construction have made possible many improvements in performance which, in turn, have helped make the literature for this instrument of greater musical import