ABSTRACT
The characteristic dynamics underpinning Johannes Brahms's creativity in the last years are those of a person in active retirement. He reviewed what he had done and completed or abandoned unfinished projects. For an eight-day Festival in mid-March 1891, Brahms visited Meiningen, the Residenzstadt which Duke Georg II had made into a world-class centre for music and drama. On 14 July 1891 Brahms sent Eusebius Mandyczewski the autograph of the newly completed Clarinet Trio, in order to have score and parts copied. On 21 July he asked Mandyczewski to send manuscript paper to him in Bad Ischl so that he could write out Clarinet Quintet, remarking that the Trio "is the twin of a much bigger foolishness". The inclusion of the clarinet in both works, and the distinct sound-worlds of each, provides one aspect of the twinship of Trio and Quintet, therefore. Another hugely significant and contrasted aspect of their twinship lies in the type and quality of their creative retrospection.
