String Sextet No. 1 (Brahms)

The String Sextet No. 1 in B major, Op. 18, was composed in 1860 by Johannes Brahms and premiered 20 October that year in Hanover by an ensemble led by Joseph Joachim. It was published in 1862 by the firm of Fritz Simrock.
The sextet is scored for two violins, two violas, and two cellos.
The sextet has four movements:
The outlines of the main themes of the first movement and finale are similar.
In the same year of its composition, Brahms transcribed the second movement for solo piano, dedicating the arrangement to Clara Schumann.

Sextet chronology

There are earlier string sextets by Luigi Boccherini. However, between Boccherini and Brahms, very few for string instruments without piano seem to have been written or published, whereas within the decades following Brahms's two examples, a number of composers, including Antonín Dvořák, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Joachim Raff, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, all wrote string sextets.
Those few examples of such sextets that appeared between the Boccherini and the Brahms include a sextuor à deux violons, deux violes, violoncelle & basse from the 1780s by Ignaz Pleyel, Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński's Op. 39 in E, Louis Spohr's sextet in C major of 1848, and the sextet in D minor by Aloys Schmitt of 1852

Popular culture

This sextet was used as soundtrack by French director Louis Malle in the movie "The Lovers" ("Les Amants", 1958). The sextet's second movement is featured in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Sarek".
The second movement is also featured in "The Day of the Devil", an episode of Inspector Morse, and in the 2001 French-Austrian film The Piano Teacher.