Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos, a violin oncerto, a double concerto for violin and cello, and two orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.

His large choral work Ein deutsches Requiem is a setting of texts which Brahms selected from the Lutheran Bible. The majority of the Requiem was composed after his mother's death in 1865. The fifth movement was added after the official premiere in 1868, and the work was published in 1869.

His chamber works include three string quartets, two string quintets and two string sextets, a clarinet quintet, a clarinet trio, a horn trio, a piano quintet, three piano quartets and four piano trios. He composed several instrumental sonatas with piano, including three for violin, two for cello, and two for clarinet. His solo piano works range from his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of character pieces. Brahms was a significant Lieder composer, and his Chorale Preludes for Organ, which he wrote shortly before his death, have become an important part of the organist's repertoire.

Despite his reputation as a serious composer of large, complex musical structures, some of Brahms' most widely known and most commercially successful compositions during his life were small-scale works of popular intent aimed at the thriving contemporary market for domestic music-making.