Three Intermezzi for piano, Op. 117 (Brahms)

The Three Intermezzi for piano, Op. 117, are compositions that Johannes Brahms created for solo piano. The intermezzi were described by the critic Eduard Hanslick as "monologues"... pieces of a "thoroughly personal and subjective character" striking a "pensive, graceful, dreamy, resigned, and elegiac note."

The Intermezzi of Opus 117 were composed in 1892.

The first intermezzo, in E♭ major, is prefaced in the score by two lines from an old Scottish ballad, Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament:

Balow, my babe, lie still and sleep!
It grieves me sore to see thee weep.

The middle section of the second intermezzo, in B♭ minor, seems to Brahms’ biographer Walter Niemann to portray a "man as he stands with the bleak, gusty autumn wind eddying round him."

The final intermezzo, in C♯ minor, has an autumnal quality also, suggesting the cold wind sighing through the trees as leaves are falling.