ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the minuets and scherzos from JohannesBrahms's Orchestral Serenades, Opus 11 and Opus 16, and String Sextet, Opus 18. It considers three movements that were composed somewhat later but are viewed in relation to the neoclassical opuses 11, 16, and 18. The published version of the first serenade as a work for orchestra consists of six movements a sonata movement, a scherzo, an Adagio non troppo, a pair of minuets, another scherzo, and a rondo but its compositional genesis is complex. Letters by Brahms and commentary by early writers give the original version of Opus 11 as an octet or a nonet for winds and strings. In letters to Joachim and to Julius Otto Grimm in 1858, Brahms variously writes of adding a pair of new pieces or 'two new scherzos and a minuet'. Even if the minuets predate the scherzos of Opus 11, one must not relate the difference in approach to the chronology of their composition.
