From their first meeting in May 1853, Brahms and the internationally famous violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) were the best of friends. For several years the two collaborated on the study of composition, orchestration, and counterpoint, and Joachim's string quartet played through some of Brahms' chamber music. In late 1854, Brahms embarked on a focused period of compositional study, intent on mastering the art of classical polyphony. Among the surviving studies from this period are two gigues and two sarabandes composed in 1855. The two Gigues, WoO 4, were first published in 1927 as part of the volume Johannes Brahms sämtliche Werke (Johannes Brahms: Collected Works).

The gigue is a Baroque dance piece in binary time that originated in Ireland and England (as the jig), probably in the sixteenth century, and spread quickly throughout Europe. Like most German composers of gigues, Brahms combined the 12/8 time of the traditional Italian Baroque giga with the imitative texture of the French model. To create thematic relationships between the two halves of the dance, Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-67) used an inversion of the opening motive as the subject of the second section. Brahms employs this device in his neo-Baroque Gigues, both of which are in three voices.

Indeed, these are study pieces that, save for their instrumentation, make for fairly convincing facsimiles of the Baroque originals. The first of the two dances, in A minor, features a two-measure subject that is answered first at a fourth below and then at the octave. In the second half, the subject is first answered at a fifth below then an octave above. Each half contains a brief venture into the realm of A major. The second piece in B minor. The subject is very different from that of the first Gigue, featuring descending scales instead of turning motives. The answers sound first in the bass at a tenth below (the first note is altered to avoid a forbidden sonority) and then in the alto an octave below. Again, Brahms flirts with the major mode, applying similar techniques in both parts of the dance.

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