Brahms performed the sonata in Mannheim in July 1865 and then offered it to Breitkopf & Härtel, who turned it down.

(In performances, like the recording made by Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim, in which the opening songful quality is taken to mean that Brahms meant the movement for an Andante or even slower tempo.)

Brahms' antiquarian interests, his studies of music from the Renaissance to the Classical periods, show in his work — he edited and helped publish a two-chorus motet by Mozart Venite Populi, he had a collection of sonatas by Scarlatti — and in his composition, his motets Op.

A chromatic third relationship between the keys of a minuet or scherzo and its trio occur in only one other multimovement Brahms work: Symphony No.

The opening theme, which is based on Contrapunctus 13 from the Kunst der Fuge, does develop fugally until into the G major second subject group, a section which is much more conventionally, if wonderfully, treated.

After a repeat of the second theme, the opening fugato (what one calls a fugal section that's part of a larger movement rather than itself a fugue) returns, quoted in its entirety but staying in E minor rather than modulating to G, leading to the Più presto coda.

[citation needed] It has been suggested[5] that a sonata by Bernhard Romberg also helped inspire this work.