The Songs of Johannes Brahms ~ 3

SIMON BODEGRAHAM JOHNSON

THIS DISC IS THE THIRD OF A SERIES that will present the entirepiano-accompanied songs and vocal works of Johannes Brahms. As

such it is a companion series to the series undertaken by Hyperion forthe complete songs of Schubert, Schumann, Fauré and Strauss.

Brahms, like Schumann, but unlike Schubert with his much greateroutput, issued the majority of his songs in groups collected by opusnumber. There is a tendency in modern scholarship to suggest that heenvisaged, or at least hoped for, performances of his songs in theseoriginal opus number groupings. Of course one cannot deny that someplanning (though of a rather variable kind) went into the arrangementof these song bouquets for publication, but good order and cohesion inprinted form (as in an anthology where poems are arranged to bediscovered by the reader in a certain sequence), though pleasing tothe intellect, do not automatically transfer to the world of the recitalplatform where one encounters a host of different practical problems,casting (male or female singer) and key-sequences (high or low voice)among them. There is nothing more meticulously planned in all songliterature than the volume of 53 songs of Hugo Wolf ’s Mörike Lieder—but we have no evidence to suggest that the composer, who had workedclosely with the publishers to make this volume a feast for the eye,envisaged a performance of these songs in a single sitting, or on asingle day.

Printed poetry collections are as lovingly assembled as an opus of acomposer’s varied settings, but this does not mean the poems thereinare designed to be read aloud from cover to cover: the compiler of thesevolumes, whether or not the poet himself, would expect items to beselected by the reader according to taste or need. The anthology (or indeed opus number) might be likened to a well-ordered jewel case from which precious items may be extracted for use, depending on the occasion: the wearing in publicof every item therein on a single occasion would be both impractical and vulgar. There is little evidence, especially fromconcert practice of the time (where items from the Schubert and Schumann cycles were often ruthlessly excerpted), thatBrahms’s publications were conceived within a spirit of cyclic unity that called for an integral performance of the entiregroup.

There is a modern tendency to see a famous cycle like Winterreise as the nineteenth-century norm to which all othergroups of songs should be made to conform, and this ‘search for cycles’ has become something of an obsession in present-day musicology, a means of using the popularity of Schubert’s and Schumann’s genuine cycles as an excuse to pretend thatthere are similarly cohesive works in the repertoire waiting to be rescued, or restored to the unified shape the composerhad intended for them all along. It is perhaps a symptom of our ‘bigger is better’ society that solitary songs, exquisite

2

Johannes Brahms, a portrait by Willy Beckerath (1928)

miniatures, are thought to be more significant if they form a part of something bigger. If this is true, it represents anongoing challenge to the planners of programmes whose efforts can yield far better and more imaginative results whenallowed to range over a broader canvas than that of a single opus number where all sorts of practical considerations,including commercial ones, had restricted the composer’s choices.

Each disc of the Hyperion edition takes a journey through Brahms’s career. The songs are not quite presented inchronological order (Brahms had a way of including earlier songs in later opus numbers) but they do appear here moreor less in the order that the songs were presented to the world. Each recital represents a different journey through therepertoire (and thus through Brahms’s life). In a number of these Hyperion recitals an opus number will be presentedin its entirety. In the case of this disc it is the five songs of Op 49. In this series the folksongs of 1894 will be shared betweenall the singers. In a letter to Marie Scherer of 20 October 1894 we learn of Brahms’s reaction to an evening (arranged bythe well-meaning Amalie Joachim) where an entire occasion was given over to these Volkslieder: ‘I do not think it a happyidea to spend a whole evening singing nothing but these folksongs. A few introduced among other (serious and sober!)songs might be enjoyable and refreshing.’ In this series this is exactly what will happen. In Volumes 1 and 2 the folksongsappeared at the end of each disc; in the present volume three songs are presented at the beginning of the programme, andthree at the end.

Three songs from the Deutsche Volkslieder WoO33 (1894)

Brahms was probably the first great composer to value folksong as a source ofinspiration and renewal, a source of national pride and a gift to musicians thatcame directly from the people—a provenance that was sometimes more amatter of fantasy than reality. He was singularly in love with the idea of folksongas a kind of manifestation of national unity (and this before the unificationof Germany in 1871), and there are few other composers who took suchpainstaking care to incorporate folksong melodies into their works. In hisBrahms’s Lieder (English translation, 1928) Max Friedländer writes:

From the time when, in his twentieth year, he introduced a folksong air into his firstpublished work, the pianoforte sonata in C major, he returned again and again to theGerman folksong: in the years 1850–59, 38 times; 1860–69 , 39 times; 1870–79,50 times; 1880–89, 24 times; and 1890–94, 56 times … As a source for Germanfolksongs Brahms used for the most part the collections of Friedrich Nicolai, AndreasKretzschmer and August Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio.

Herein lies the problem with Brahms as a student and exponent of folksong: helived rather too early to benefit from real, disciplined scholarship in this field,and he trusted his various sources to be as truthful and reliable as he himselfwould have been. There were obviously a considerable number of melodies andtexts that were indeed gathered from authentic folksong sources, but at a timewhen there was a vogue for this kind of music, and a market that allowed and

3

Title page of the Deutsche Volksliederby Kretzschmer and Zuccalmaglio (Berlin, 1840)

encouraged a romanticized view of the form that went back to the Des Knaben Wunderhorn anthology, it was easy forsomeone like Zuccalmaglio (who clearly had a knack for pastiche) simply to invent folksong material and pass it off asoriginal. Brahms was completely fooled by this, and on several occasions lovingly lavished his attentions on what heimagined were genuine folksongs and were in fact Zuccalmaglio’s original compositions. It is little wonder that composersof a later age who used folksong material tended to trust the melodies most that they had gathered for themselves.

Brahms was particularly proud of the 49 folksong settings with piano accompaniment—42 solos songs and seven songswith solo singer and chorus (SATB)—published in 1894. He regarded these as the crowning achievement of his life’s work,a body of work that had a connection with the soil of the country and his reply to the output of Wagner, who had createdworks around old German sagas. The practitioners of the so-called music of the future, such as Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner,had no interest in folk music. With the arrival of the new century and composers like Bartók, Kodály, D’Indy, VaughanWilliams and Grainger, Brahms’s earlier enthusiasm for folk material made him something of a pioneer; his admirationof Antonín Dvorvák was enlightened for the time in Viennese terms and was inextricably connected with that composer’sabsorption in the folksong of his own country. It is interesting that there was no great composer in the more modernGerman tradition who attempted to broach this repertoire and arrange it with greater authenticity. Instead the KnabenWunderhorn settings of Mahler created an even more sophisticated simulacrum of folk music tinged with humour andirony—a palimpsest of sources old and new, genuine and fake, where so-called authenticity ceased to be an issue ofimportance or interest. Perhaps the question of authenticity mattered less with a dominant language and culture likeGerman than with Hungarian and Czech (and to an extent English) that were struggling to achieve their independencefrom the very German tradition that Brahms represented. Nevertheless, when it comes to folksong in Germany there isno composer before or since who has done as much as Johannes Brahms and this may have something to do with the factthat he always identified himself deep down, and with considerable contrariness, as a working-class, rather than a middle-class, artist.

1 Wach auf, mein Herzensschöne Awake, O beauty of my heartWoO33 No 16. F major (original key),

�� Anmutig bewegt

Wach auf, mein Herzensschöne, Awake, O beauty of my heart,Zart allerliebste mein. My tender, dearest one,Ich hör’ ein süß Getöne I hear a sweet soundVon kleinen Waldvöglein, Of little forest birds,Die hör’ ich so lieblich singen, I hear their charming songs,Ich mein’, es woll’ des Tages Schein And feel that day is dawning,Vom Orient her dringen. Bursting from the East.Ich hör’ die Hahnen krähen I hear the cocks crowUnd spür den Tag dabei, And sense that daylight’s nigh.Die kühlen Winde wehen, The cool breezes blow,Die Sternlein leuchten frei; The little stars shine brightly;Singt uns Frau Nachtigalle, Mrs Nightingale sings to us,Singt uns ein’ süße Melodei, Sings us a sweet melody,Sie meld’t den Tag mit Schalle. She heralds the day with her song.

4

Du hast mein Herz umfangen You have captured my heartIn treu inbrünstger Lieb, In loyal, ardent love,Ich bin so oft gegangen, So often, my love,Feinslieb, nach deiner Zier, Have I followed your beauty,Ob ich dich möcht ersehen, If I might only see you,So würd erfreut das Herz in mir, My heart would be so glad,Die Wahrheit muß ich g’stehen. I must confess the truth.Selig ist Tag und Stunde, Blessed be the day and hourDarin du bist gebor’n, In which you were born,Gott grüßt mir dein rot Munde, God bless your red mouthDen ich mir hab erkor’n; Which I have chosen;Kann mir kein Liebre werden, No one can be dearer to me,Schau daß mein Lieb nicht sei verlor’n, Make sure that my love be not lost,Du bist mein Trost auf Erden. You are my comfort on earth.

This charming song—suitably marked Anmutig bewegt—is in strophic form, like almost all of the folksong settings.The first two verses are accompanied by discreet quavers, delicately separated by rests at the beginning, as if bowing ingentlemanly manner to an imaginary lady. As the text becomes more passionate the piano-writing for the third and fourthverses flowers into semiquavers which weave a graceful wreath around the vocal line. There are six further verses to thepoem, which probably predates the rather similar morning hymn by Hans Sachs which is sung in the last scene of Wagner’sDie Meistersinger. As in the folksong Nur ein Gesicht auf Erden lebt (No 19 in the collection) the melody appears at theend of the second of Zuccalmaglio’s volumes with the heading Kleiner feiner Almanac. This refers to the 1777–8 satiricalpublications of Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811) for which the North German composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt(1752–1814) provided the music. This pretty melody is thus neither a folksong nor a Zuccalmaglio fabrication, but acomposition by an important composer in Lieder history—a friend of Goethe, one of the founding fathers of the NorthGerman Lieder school, a frequent inspiration to Franz Schubert, and Felix Mendelssohn’s favourite song composer.

2 Erlaube mir, feins Mädchen Permit me, sweet maidenWoO33 No 2. G major (original key),

�� Zart

Erlaube mir, feins Mädchen, Permit me, sweet maiden,In den Garten zu gehn, To step into the garden,Daß ich dort mag schauen, That I might gaze uponWie die Rosen so schön. The beautiful roses.Erlaube sie zu brechen, Permit me to pick them,Es ist die höchste Zeit; The time is ripe;Ihre Schönheit, ihr Jugend Their beauty, their youthHat mir mein Herz erfreut. Has delighted my heart.

5

O Mädchen, o Mädchen, O maiden, O maiden,Du einsames Kind, You lonely child,Wer hat den Gedanken Who has engraved the thoughtIns Herz dir gezinnt, On your heartDaß ich soll den Garten, That I should gaze atDie Rosen nicht sehn? Neither garden or roses?Du gefällst meinen Augen, You delight my eyes,Das muß ich gestehn. I must confess.

The text of this enchanting song is from F W Arnold’s collection and probably dates from the seventeenth century. There aremore verses in the original source. As for the tune, this is an instance when Brahms knowingly imported into his folksongcollection something that was not a folksong at all—but perhaps should have been from the point of view of its melodicmemorability. The tune was said to have been composed by a friend of Brahms in 1850 as they were travelling by boat upthe Rhine, and carefully preserved in the composer’s memory for over forty years. The chromatic harmonization of the lastfour bars of each strophe, the pianist’s right hand ascending in semitones, implies the stealthy yet determined approach ofa suitor, courtly yet insistent, and not ashamed to use wheedling charm when necessary.

3 Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund My girl has a rosy mouthWoO33 No 25. B flat major (original key), � Sehr lebhaft, herzlich und ungeduldig

Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund, My girl has a rosy mouthUnd wer ihn küßt, der wird gesund; And whoever kisses it is healed;O du! o du! o du! O you! O you! O you!O du schwarzbraunes Mägdelein, O you dark-brown girl,Du la la la la la! You la la la la la!Du la la la la la! You la la la la la!Du läßt mir keine Ruh! You give me no peace!Die Wangen sind wie Morgenröth’ Your cheeks are like rosy dawnWie sie steht über’m Winterschnee! Breaking over winter snow!O du! o du! o du! … O you! O you! O you! …Dein’ Augen sind wie die Nacht so schwarz, Your eyes are as black as nightWenn nur zwei Sternlein funkeln drin; When only two stars are shining.O du! o du! o du! … O you! O you! O you! …Du Mädel bist wie der Himmel gut, Girl, you are as good as heavenWenn er über uns blau sich wölben tut; When it arches blue above us.O du! o du! o du! … O you! O you! O you! …

This is one of the most often performed of all folksong settings, and a firm favourite in the recital hall. The syncopationsin the accompaniment perfectly illustrate the impatience asked for in the song’s marking. The delightful two-bar postlude,where the accompanist must play forte octaves in a falling sequence, supported by syncopated left-hand chords, seems toindicate the moment where this enthused swain draws breath, or rather gulps it, in order to recommence his paean ofpraise to his beloved. The high spirits and giddy devotion expressed here by the young man are not often to be encounteredin late Brahms. He was inspired by the tune of course which could hardly have been set in any other way. Brahms’s source

6

was probably another one of those unauthentic pastiches by Zuccalmaglio which undermined the scholarly credentialsof his folksong collection at the same time as deepening its musical attractions as far as the non-purists were concerned.Brahms’s attitude seems to have been that if Zuccalmaglio really was the composer of a melody like this, with all theinevitability of a genuine folksong, he was to be admired all the more.

4 Ein Sonett A SonnetOp 14 No 4. Composed in Göttingen in September 1858; published in December 1860. A flat major (original key),

�� Langsam, sehr innig

Ach, könnt ich, könnte vergessen sie, Ah, could I, could I forget her,Ihr schönes, liebes, liebliches Wesen, Her fine, loving, lovely nature,

Den Blick, die freundliche Lippe, die! Her look, her friendly lips, ah them!Vielleicht ich möchte genesen! I might perhaps be healed!

Doch ach, mein Herz, mein Herz kann es nie! Yet ah, my heart, my heart can never!Und doch ists Wahnsinn zu hoffen sie! And yet to hope for her is madness!

Und um sie schweben And to hover around herGibt Mut und Leben Gives zest and courageZu weichen nie. To waver never.

Und denn, wie kann ich vergessen sie, And then, how can I forget her,Ihr schönes, liebes, liebliches Wesen, Her fine, loving, lovely nature,

Den Blick, die freundliche Lippe, die? Her look, her friendly lips, ah them!Viel lieber nimmer genesen! Much better never to be healed!

THIBAULT DE CHAMPAGNE (1201–1253), translated by JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER (1744–1803)

The original literary source for this poem was acollection of Chansons choisies, a three-volumeanthology of French romances with attached airsthat was edited by Monnet and published in Parisin 1765. This was the collection in which the youngMozart, dallying in Mannheim with two pretty sisters,found the texts for songs composed to impress them,Oiseaux, si tous les ans and Dans un bois solitaire,K307 and K308. Over one-hundred-and-fifty yearslater, Francis Poulenc found in the supplementaryfourth volume of the same set (for sale in theeighteenth century under the counter in Paris andIspahan) the scabrous and erotic poems for hisChansons gaillardes (1926). Brahms owed the textof his Sonett (though hardly a sonnet at all) to thefact that Johann Herder took an interest in the poemwritten by Thibault, Count of Champagne and King ofNavarre, which is printed at the beginning of the first

7

The title page of Anthologie françoise (1765), Herder’s source

volume (‘Las! si j’avais pouvoir d’oublier sa beauté,sa beauté, son bien dire et son très-doux, très-douxregarder’) and translated it for his Stimmen derVölker in Liedern (published in 1773, and of whichBrahms owned the 1827–30 reprint).

The poem with its subtitle (‘from the thirteenthcentury’) has prompted the composer to find amusical solution that suggests the venerableprovenance of the text. The accompaniment isfour-part writing of rigorous restraint (at least inthe beginning), not a medieval pastiche, butsufficiently archaic-sounding to suggest the epochof courtly love. It is curious that thirty-six years laterGabriel Fauré, in Une sainte en son auréole, theopening song of his cycle La bonne chanson,conjures an identical musical texture of flowingquasi-contrapuntal crotchets, and in the same key,to evoke an imaginary chatelaine in her tower in thetime of Charlemagne. Brahms was to use this kindof time-travel again for his Magelone poems inspired

by courtly love and Minnesang, a musical equivalent of the Nazarene painting—allusively medieval but not genuinely so ofcourse—that was very much in vogue at the time.

The vocal melody is hymn-like and ardent in the extreme, the flowing crotchets in the inner voices of the accompanimentpull at the heart strings, the strength and masculinity of the vocal line constrained by the etiquette of the bar line, heroicpassion suppressed in favour of gallantry. But such feelings can only be contained for so long—a marking of Poco piùanimato allows the voice off its leash as it climbs higher and higher in describing the divine madness that affects the suitor.And then a dominant pedal for thirteen bars in which the vocal line, now crestfallen and intent on obedience, attaches itselfto the piano’s right-hand chords weaving a dance of attendance on the beloved in a sarabande of devotion. The high note on‘nie’ denotes undying, unswerving service with no thought of reward. This passage sets up the return to A flat major, moreor less the same as the opening of the song, except for the passionate and masochistic outburst at the end (‘Viel liebernimmer genesen!’). The singer in his closing bars is first vehement then downtrodden, leaving nothing for the piano to dobut provide a solemn ‘Amen’. This vocal cri de cœur exceeds the otherwise courtly boundaries of the piece; it is here thatwe can perhaps detect the subjective voice of the twenty-five-year-old Brahms, already a veteran of the non-love affair withClara Schumann, and now unhappily involved with Agathe Siebold in a courtship both intense and eventually doomed. Thesong praises a matchless madonna on a pedestal, perpetually unavailable, especially for a heart-injured young man from

8

The original French air by Thibault de Champagne

the lower classes, no matter how he might try to disguise himself as a knight. It also permits us an early glimpse of arecurring pattern in the composer’s life when dreams of reciprocated love (permitting the sweetness of painful longing)were shattered as soon as they threatened to turn into reality, seemingly the last thing that Brahms felt he deserved.

5 Ständchen SerenadeOp 14 No 7. Composed in Göttingen in September 1850. F major (original key),

�� Allegretto

Gut Nacht, gut Nacht, mein liebster Schatz, Good night, good night, my dearest love,Gut Nacht, schlaf wohl, mein Kind! Good night, sleep well, my child!Daß dich die Engel hüten all, May all the angels in heavenDie in dem Himmel sind! Guard thee well!Gut Nacht, gut Nacht, mein lieber Schatz, Good night, good night, my dear love,Schlaf du, von nachten lind. Sleep sweetly through the night!Schlaf wohl, schlaf wohl und träume von mir, Sleep well, sleep well, and dream of me,Träum von mir heute Nacht! Dream of me this night!Daß, wenn ich auch da schlafen tu, So that when I too fall asleep,Mein Herz um dich doch wacht; My heart shall stay awake for you;Daß es in lauter Liebesglut And think of you continually,An dich der Zeit gedacht. Consumed with pure love.Es singt im Busch die Nachtigall The nightingale sings in the bushIm klaren Mondenschein, In the clear moonlight,Der Mond scheint in das Fenster dir, The moon shines in at your window,Guckt in dein Kämmerlein; Peeps into your little bedroom;Der Mond schaut dich im Schlummer da, The moon sees you there asleep,Doch ich muß ziehn allein! But I must set out on my lonely way.TRADITIONAL, from A KRETZSCHMER and A W VON ZUCCALMAGLIO: Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Original-Weisen

Brahms took the text from the second volume, p.465, of Zuccalmaglio (already a favourite as early as 1858) where he wasnot afraid of changing words. In the song’s opening line, for example, ‘allerliebster’ becomes simply ‘liebster’ the better tosuit the composer’s rhythm. And rhythm here is the main driving force. The young Brahms, already a creator ofextraordinarily accomplished chamber music, clearly conceived this song in instrumental terms. One might imagine thatthe Ländler-like lilt of this kind might have turned up as a trio section of a scherzo movement in an instrumental sonata.This is an enchanting moto perpetuo, somewhat in the manner of Mendelssohn, or Schubert’s Die Sterne D939; in thatfamous song there are similar twists and turns, explorations of unexpected harmonic byways, but those tonal shifts, unlikethe excursions in Ständchen, are prompted by verbal nuances. In any case, it is perhaps unfair to compare late Schubertwith early Brahms. There is little in this Brahms song where the words themselves make a real difference (apart from thegeneralized geniality and teasing affection that is built into the music itself). The delicately chugging rhythm with its staccatoarticulations is culminative in effect—the longer it continues the more one is drawn into a Bewegung that becomes almostfoot-tappingly hypnotic as the three verses progress. The word ‘von’ set on a strong downbeat minim (verse 2, bar 13)would have been studiously avoided by others, but the experienced performer will attempt to disguise this fault in Brahms’sprosody. This weakness is not entirely untypical of the composer who was inclined to brush aside such details as long as thevocal line remained attractive; he was disinclined to specify the minute rhythmic adjustments of a composer like Wolf. This

9

evocation of guitar music was conceived for a piano from the mid-nineteenth century rather than a present-day instrument.The pianist of today should not be afraid here of creating a lighter and drier texture than the pedalled and opulent texturewhich is a trademark of the later Brahms.

6 Der Kuss The kissOp 19 No 1. Composed in Göttingen in September 1858; published in March 1862. B flat major (original key),

�� Poco adagio

Unter Blüten des Mais spielt’ ich mit ihrer Hand, Among May blossoms I played with her hand,Koste liebend mit ihr, schaute mein schwebendes Caressed her lovingly, saw my reflection

Bild im Auge des Mädchens, Hover in the girl’s eyes,Raubt’ ihr bebend den ersten Kuss. And trembling stole the first kiss from her.

Zuckend fliegt nun der Kuss, wie ein versengend Feu’r, Quivering the kiss now pierces, like scorching fire,Mir durch Mark und Gebein. Du, die Unsterblichkeit My very frame. O you, who flashed

Durch die Lippen mir sprühte, Immortality on my lips,Wehe, wehe mir Kühlung zu! Breathe, breathe coolness on me now!

LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY (1748–1776)

Students of the much more famous song Die Mainacht, another setting of Hölty, maynotice that this poem is written in the same metre. These intractable Asclepiads wouldmake difficulties for any song composer, and the result is a vocal line that is extremelychallenging—the singer is scarcely permitted to pause for breath (the first restassigned to him is after sixteen bars, and then it is a only a snatched quaver). Themusic itself is beautiful, but the young composer is less considerate in terms oftessitura, and placing difficult vowels on high notes, than he would become in lateryears. Der Kuss is performed on a kind of vocal trapeze, all very well as a reflection ofthe lover’s ethereal mood, but not exactly encouraging to the prospective performerwho usually avoids the challenge by moving on to another song in the volume. Thedepiction of fiery emotion that courses through the narrator’s soul with a sudden andawkward high A at ‘Mir durch Mark und Gebein’ is another idea that is better in theorythan in vocal practice. As in the previous song, written at the same time in Göttingen,Brahms seems to have treated the voice here first and foremost as a stringedinstrument, capable of providing a legato line at any speed (the marking is too slow forpracticality) and at any height. The composer’s response to a text about a stolen kisscertainly comes from Brahms’s developing relationship with Agathe Siebold. Therapturous wafting of a vocal line supported by sylvan horn calls, euphonious thirds andsixths, depicts a kind of moonstruck ecstasy, as well as the floating image of himselfthat the singer believes he sees in the eyes of the beloved. The final phrase with its plea

for cooling quietus, a wistful lift of a third, is also to be found, in rather more sophisticated form, at the close of a later songon this disc, In Waldeseinsamkeit. Brahms used the 1804 edition of Hölty’s poetry which incorporates the amendations ofVoss, not always to the advantage of the poem; Schubert had used the same revised edition over forty years earlier.

10

The title page of Hölty’s Gedichte (1804)

7 An eine Äolsharfe To the Aeolian harpOp 19 No 5. Composed in Göttingen in September 1858; published in March 1862. A flat major (original key), � alla breve, Poco lento

Angelehnt an die Efeuwand Leaning against the ivy-clad wallDieser alten Terrasse, Of this old terrace,Du, einer luftgebornen Muse O mysterious lyreGeheimnisvolles Saitenspiel, Of a zephyr-born Muse,Fang an, Begin,Fange wieder an Begin again,Deine melodische Klage! Your melodious lament!Ihr kommet, Winde, fern herüber Winds, you come from afar,Ach! von des Knaben, Ah! from the fresh green moundDer mir so lieb war, Of the boyFrischgrünendem Hügel. Who was so dear to me.Und Frühlingsblüten unterweges streifend, And brushing spring flowers along the way,Übersättigt mit Wohlgerüchen, Saturated with fragrance,Wie süß bedrängt ihr dies Herz! How sweetly you afflict this heart!Und säuselt her in die Saiten, And you murmur into these strings,Angezogen von wohllautender Wehmut, Drawn by their sweet-sounding sorrow,Wachsend im Zug meiner Sehnsucht, Waxing with my heart’s desire,Und hinsterbend wieder. Then dying away once more.Aber auf einmal, But all at once,Wie der Wind heftiger herstößt, As the wind gusts more strongly,Ein holder Schrei der Harfe The harp’s gentle cryWiederholt, mir zu süßem Erschrecken, Echoes, to my sweet alarm,Meiner Seele plötzliche Regung; The sudden commotion of my soul;Und hier—die volle Rose streut, geschüttelt, And here—the full-blown rose, shaken,All ihre Blätter vor meine Füße! Strews all its petals at my feet!EDUARD MÖRIKE (1804–1875)

Brahms’s response to this great poem predates Hugo Wolf ’s wonderful setting by exactly thirty years but it has very littleto fear by comparison. The Wolf has a broader emotional range and a more lavish piano part, and few things can competewith its other-worldly postlude, but Brahms is here inspired to write his first great song—if the definition of a great song isa wonderful lyric matched by equally wonderful music. It is here that he shows the world, perhaps for the first time, that hehas right of entry, alongside Schubert and Schumann, to the royal enclosure of Lieder composition. (Wolf was later to claimhis place in the same elite company.) The opening recitative (‘Angelehnt an die Efeuwand’) is supported by nine bars wheresemibreves provide the minimum of understated harmonic support. It is only on the word ‘Geheimnisvolles’ that themusic, now marked a tempo, stirs into life with mezzo staccato chords, crotchet triplets, that throb high in the treble, star-like, for the next fourteen bars. These magical pulsations signify the rustling of the wind through the instrument, a woodenbox with sounding board and strings. Aeolian harps were usually placed near an open window, or were designed to hangoutdoors where they would produce random sounds depending on the strength of the breeze. When the strings are tuned

11

to different notes the instrument produces chords, and in stormy weather thedisembodied sounds can sometimes be mistaken for human cries. It is this strangecharacteristic that astonishes Mörike at the heartrending climax of his poem.

As in the Wolf setting the first section of the poem is a recitative, an extended upbeatto the main aria-like part of the work. The phrase ‘Deine melodische Klage!’ is themagical entry-point to the heart of two very different songs. The rapturous rise andfall of Brahms’s setting of these words, an inspired bridge passage, exceeds Wolf ’sin eloquence. At ‘Ihr kommet, Winde’ the younger composer makes use of the fullscope of the piano keyboard, hands far apart, but Brahms elects—somewhatuncharacteristically—to restrict both hands, modestly and sweetly, to the treble stavefor twenty-six bars of music of the greatest ethereal beauty, the vocal line plaintive, thepiano-writing wafting in triplets and duplets. After this the bass clef is deployed and thearpeggio triplets are transferred to the left hand. The stirrings of emotions matched bythis strange outdoor music become gradually more intense as the poet’s grief andlonging harmonize with the fragrances of spring, and with memories of his recentlydead brother. It is this young man, and his fresh-greening burial mound, that arereferred to in the lines ‘Ach! von des Knaben, / Der mir so lieb war, / FrischgrünendemHügel’. Eric Sams makes the point that it is unlikely that Brahms knew thisbiographical information concerning Mörike, and that he might have assumed thenarrator of the poem to be a girl, deserted or bereaved. If this is so, perhaps Brahms

imagined her to be related to the abandoned servant girl, Das verlassene Mägdlein, one of Schumann’s settings of the poetwhich Brahms would have known well.

Perhaps this accounts for the essential modesty and restraint, one might even say fragility, of a setting that lacks the moredramatic sweep of the later Wolf, particularly at the phrase ‘Aber auf einmal, / Wie der Wind heftiger herstößt’. Here Brahmsprefers to revert to recitative and to play down the shock of the phrase ‘Ein holder Schrei der Harfe’. For this we return tothe treble-clef modesty where the voice expresses regret and sorrow in a far less dramatic way than the searing manneremployed by Wolf. But we have to remind ourselves that this composer was twenty-seven years younger and writing in apost-Wagnerian world; the poet Mörike himself, devoted musician that he was, would almost certainly have preferred theclassical containment, the almost shy gentleness, of the Brahms song.

There is one more wonder to be savoured in this setting: for the words ‘Und hier—die volle Rose streut, geschüttelt, / Allihre Blätter vor meine Füße!’ Brahms marks the music poco più lento, a winding-down that serves as a kind of concludingbenediction. The duplet chords high in the treble gradually waft their way down the stave supported by the left hand’sundulating triplets. This is a perfect tonal analogue for nature’s sad ceremony, the strewing of rose petals, albeit in slowmotion, as if they were floating slowly through the air before settling. The etiolated postlude, gradually evaporating intosilence, permits us to imagine the narrator, momentarily shattered by a surge of painful emotion, regaining his composurein a convergence of happy and sad memories. We hear in this resolution the acceptance of his loss, as well as his gratitudefor a combination of sensations, chiefly aural, that have enabled him to gain access, if only for a moment, to a happier

12

The title page of Möricke’s Gedichte (1838)

past—a Proustian epiphany avant la lettre. And for capturing the essence of that inward journey, and for writing a greatsong about the power of music to evoke the hinterland of vanished happiness, the listener feels similarly grateful toBrahms.

8 Magyarisch A Magyar songOp 46 No 2. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868; published in October 1868. A major (original key),

�� Andante

Sah dem edlen Bildnis in des Auges I saw the all too sweet radianceAllzusüßen Wunderschein, In gazing at that noble portrait,Büßte so des eigenen Auges heitern Thus forfeiting the serene glowSchimmer ein. Of my own.Herr mein Gott, was hast du doch gebildet O Lord God, why didst thou createUns zu Jammer und zu Qual For our grief and tormentSolche dunkle Sterne mit so lichtem Such dark stars with so brightZauberstrahl! A magic ray?Mich geblendet hat für alle Wonnen That splendour has blinded meDieser Erde jene Pracht; To all the rapture of this world;All umher, wo meine Blicke forschen, All around, wherever I peer,Ist es Nacht. It is night.GEORG FRIEDRICH DAUMER (1800–1875)

At first it may seem as if there is very little Hungarianabout this song: perhaps with this title the listenermight expect something more zany and up-tempo,music more obviously temperamental. But there ismore to Hungarian music than feisty Zigeunerlieder,and in 1854 Brahms noted down the melody of thissong (with figured bass) in his own manuscriptcollection of folksongs under the rubric UngarischeVolksweisen. It is somewhat hymn-like, a love-struckchorale to the beauties of the fairer sex, and with thisaccompaniment it would have made a beautiful cellosolo. The composer failed to keep clear blue waterbetween art song and folksong and this is a goodexample of a Lied that may, or may not, have stemmedfrom an old Hungarian melody. This depends onwhether the tune that Brahms noted down wasoriginally his own composition anyway—a distinctpossibility.

13

Georg Friedrich Daumer, and the title page of Polydora (1855)

For a melody of this kind there had to be Hungarian words, and Brahms went in search of a suitable poem in the pagesof Georg Daumer’s Polydora (the source of the Liebeslieder Walzer and other song settings) where there are poems thatpurport to be (and sometimes truly are, when not Daumer originals) from every corner of Europe. The poem describes thecontemplation of a picture of a beautiful girl—as in Tamino’s aria ‘Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön’ from The MagicFlute, or the Intermezzo (‘Dein Bildnis wunderselig’) from Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis. For the accompanimentBrahms favours soft chords in the bass clef to signify hidden depths of emotion, or quavers that sidle up and down thestave, rocking reverently between the hands and hugging the vocal line as if the singer, feasting on the depicted beauty, canscarcely bear to tear his eyes away from such a satisfying sight. In the central verse (‘Herr mein Gott’) there are hunting-horn motifs in thirds and sixths; these add an outdoor note to music that otherwise seems candle-lit, or they may well referobliquely to the joys of the chase. It is now the hunter who appears to be caught in a trap and who must submissively yieldto his fate. With the exception of a passage in the middle of the song (‘Uns zu Jammer und zu Qual’) which is markedforte, the music is soft and ingratiating, lost in tender contemplation. As befits music of central-European inspiration thereis a more than a tinge of resignation, even pessimism in this music, and this despite the major key. The combination ofbright eyes and smouldering good looks brings on a mixture of contained elation and runaway depression, as if to ask, asthe postlude descends into the depths of the bass clef, ‘what is the use of all this beauty if it can never be mine?’

9 Die Schale der Vergessenheit The chalice of oblivionOp 46 No 3. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868 (but, according to Kalbeck, already composed by spring 1864); published in October 1868.E major (original key),

�� Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch

Eine Schale des Stroms, welcher Vergessenheit A chalice of that stream which rollsDurch Elysiums Blumen rollt, Oblivion through Elysium’s flowers—Bring, o Genius, bring deinem Verschmachtenden! Bestow it on him who languishes for love, O guardian spirit!Dort, wo Phaon die Sängerin, There, where the poetess forgot Phaon,Dort, wo Orpheus vergaß seiner Eurydike, There, where Orpheus forgot his Eurydice,Schöpf den silbernen Schlummerquell! Draw water from the silver springs of sleep!Ha! dann tauch’ ich dein Bild, spröde Gebieterin, Ah! I shall then immerse your image, coy mistress,Und die lächelnde Lippe voll And your smiling lips brimming Lautenklanges, des Haars schattige Wallungen, With lute music, and your hair’s shadowy waves,Und das Beben der weißen Brust, And the heaving of your white breast,Und den siegenden Blick, der mir im Marke zuckt, And the conquering gaze that pierces my frame—Tauch’ ich tief in den Schlummerquell. I shall immerse them deep in the springs of sleep!LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY (1748–1776)

One hears this song very seldom in the concert hall. Brahms himself was convinced it was a failure until the great baritoneStockhausen sang it to the composer one morning and persuaded him to publish it after all; it thus belongs to that group ofsongs that need sympathetic performance, and this despite the fact that Eric Sams asserts that the complex construction ofthis music shows Brahms at his finest.

14

Forgetfulness, and the draught from Lethe that enables oblivion, is the merciful release offered in the underworld to thosesouls who would otherwise remain tormented and ensnared by their earthly obsessions. The ‘Genius’ mentioned in thepoem is the friendly guardian spirit who will have the good grace to supply the necessary beverage. The cup or chalice thatcontains these healing waters is thus a very desirable and useful object for those on earth who find themselves tormentedby a love that refuses to be extinguished, however hopeless it may be. The poet accordingly calls for this ‘Schale derVergessenheit’, and the liquid it contains, to effect his own cure. Classical allusions abound here: Phaon is the handsomeboatman of Lesbos with whom Sappho was supposedly in love to the point of suicide; the legend of Orpheus and Eurydiceis a better-known example of a doomed, yet enduring, attachment. Both of these stories would have come to Hölty fromOvid, from the Heroïdes and Metamorphoses respectively. The poet compares his enslavement to his own ‘coy mistress’ tothe plight of these classical characters who have died while in thrall to their passions. Until they have been handed thechalice that contains the waters that will bring longed-for oblivion, they will remain in torment; but having consumed thisdrink, their souls will be able to enjoy the endless felicity of Elysium. This absolution would seem to necessitate an initialvisit to the Underworld—Lethe, pace Hölty’s opening assertion, runs through hell rather than heaven—before progressingto more salubrious living quarters upstairs. For the gods we must believe anything is possible.

Brahms’s musical solution to this poem, complex in every way, including metrically, is impassioned and turbulent. If he iswriting water music to illustrate the poem’s opening imagery, the stream is made to roll and thunder through Elysium, butperhaps the composer is concentrating instead on the intensity of the poet’s desperation. If this loose-limbed poem inclassical metre is to work as a musical entity it has to be welded into one piece by the composer’s will-power. The right-hand triplets appear to be shuddering tremolos, while the insistent E–D sharp in the bass for four bars (E–S in Germannotation) are the initials of Elisabet von Stockhausen (later Herzogenberg) on whom the composer had a crush—seemingly unsuitable and obsessional if Hölty’s poem provides a hidden clue to the situation. And here we perhapsuncover the real grounds for withholding the song from publication.

The second section of the song (‘Dort, wo Phaon die Sängerin’) is marked poco animato with a change of key fromE major to A flat. At this speed we scarcely notice that the inessential word ‘den’ has been assigned an entire dotted minim.At ‘Ha! dann tauch’ ich dein Bild’ we revert to E major (and thus shuddering triplets) with an added animato to give thesong an even stronger forward thrust as the poet goes into physical details regarding his uncooperative mistress. Thesong does not end with the poet imbibing the draught from Lethe; instead he chooses to dip his beloved’s hair and breasts,as well as her conquering gaze (or the idea of them at least), in the river. The pianist’s triplets, less hectic now, collaboratein this ritual submersion in search of quietus. The poco sostenuto eight bars from the end, and the unalloyed E major ofthe postlude, suggest that this ploy has achieved the required result without Hölty having to quaff the sulphurous watersthat would have killed him if he had not been already dead. But what a tempestuous journey between heaven and hell ithas been!

15

FÜNF LIEDER FÜR EINE SINGSTIMME UND KLAVIER Op 49Published in November 1868

bl Am Sonntag Morgen On Sunday morningOp 49 No 1. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868. E minor (original key),

�� Andante espressivo

Am Sonntag Morgen, zierlich angetan, On Sunday morning, in your dainty clothes,Wohl weiß ich, wo du da bist hingegangen, I know very well where you were going,Und manche Leute waren, die dich sah’n, And there were many people who saw you,Und kamen dann zu mir, dich zu verklagen. And then came to me to denounce you.Als sie mir’s sagten, hab’ ich laut gelacht, When they told me, I laughed out loud,Und in der Kammer dann geweint zur Nacht. Only to cry in my bedroom at night.Als sie mir’s sagten, fing ich an zu singen, When they told me, I began to sing,Um einsam dann die Hände wund zu ringen. Only to wring my hands sore when alone.ITALIAN FOLK POEM, translated by PAUL HEYSE (1830–1914)

It is good to be reminded that Brahms appreciated the charm of Heyse’s ItalienischesLiederbuch some twenty-three years before Hugo Wolf discovered the same collection.In this masterpiece-in-miniature, Brahms anticipates the psychological depths andperceptions that have made Wolf ’s settings so famous. The question arises as towhether it is a man or woman who sings this lyric; singers of both sexes have recordedthe song from Ameling to Kipnis, Flagstad to Schlusnuss, and lovers of both sexes arecapable of betrayal. On balance it is perhaps more likely that a woman, rather than aman, would be ‘zierlich angetan’; the broad and bluff setting of ‘laut gelacht’ followedby tears in private has something mannish about it, while the aggressively brave facepresented to the world of ‘fing ich an zu singen’ suggests masculine bravado. Of coursesingers and pianists can find ways of turning these gender characteristics on theirheads, but it does seem likely that this is a pretty girl, prettily dressed, who is on herway to visit her new boyfriend, that the whole village is aware of the fact, and that thejilted lover must hide his humiliation. Malcolm MacDonald suggests that ClaraSchumann’s affair with the young composer Theodor Kirchner, a well-kept secret onpaper, in terms of gossip perhaps less so, might have been the reason why Brahmspoured so much of himself into this music.

The opening crotchets, both accented, point a finger of accusation. The mezzo staccatovocal line and well-paced thirds alternating in the accompaniment suggest ordereddaintiness. She is shamelessly going to visit her new paramour in her church clothes!

Later the same articulation, on tiptoe as it were, indicates covert observation, as if from behind a curtain, and informationpassed surreptitiously from person to person. At ‘Als sie mir’s sagten’ the music is marked animato and suddenly thesecret is out in the open, if not the young man’s anguished response which, for shame, he keeps behind closed doors. Inthe meantime he pretends not to care one way or the other. The contrast between the seemingly unconcerned ‘fing ich an

16

The cover, blue cloth and gilt, of Heyse’s Italienisches Liederbuch

zu singen’ in C major, and the highly strung chromaticism of ‘die Hände wund zu ringen’ is masterly. Everything aboutsmall-town life in an imaginary Italy is here encapsulated: outward respectability, jealousy, the saving of face, as well as anexaggerated and quick-fire emotional reaction to even a whiff of anything untoward. The whole thing could be wildsupposition; whatever the gossips have come to tell this young man, the young lady may be visiting her uncle, a priest inthe next village, and innocent of any impropriety. But this is a misunderstanding perhaps to be resolved in another of thesewonderful picture-postcard Tuscan rispetti. Without such dramas how dull life would be!

bm An ein Veilchen To a violetOp 49 No 2. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868. E major (original key),

�� Andante

Birg, o Veilchen, in deinem blauen Kelche, Hide, O violet, in your blue calyx,Birg die Tränen der Wehmut, bis mein Liebchen Hide the tears of sorrow, till my belovedDiese Quelle besucht! Entpflückt sie lächelnd Visits this spring! Should she then with a smileDich dem Rasen, die Brust mit dir zu schmücken; Pluck you from the grass to adorn her breast;O, dann schmiege dich ihr ans Herz, und sag’ ihr, Ah, then nestle close to her heart and tell herDaß die Tropfen in deinem blauen Kelche That the drops in your blue calyxAus der Seele des treu’sten Jünglings flossen, Were shed from the soul of her most faithful young lover,Der sein Leben verweinet, und den Tod wünscht! Who weeps away his life and longs for death!LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY (1748–1776)

The Italian theme continues undercover in the next song of the opus; Hölty’s poem is loosely based on Sonetto XIV byGiovanni Battista Zappi (1667–1719), beginning ‘O Violetta bella, che ti stai / Tra foglia e foglia infra la molle erbetta’.As with all his other Hölty settings, Brahms uses the 1804 edition of the poems which contains the editorial adjustmentsof J H Voss. The general consensus of scholars today is that Hölty, who died young, did not need to be rescued by hiscontemporaries and that the original poems are fresher than the edited versions. The nineteenth century, however, didnot see it that way.

On this occasion Brahms chooses to ignore the eleven-syllable metre that governs the eight highly polished lines of Hölty’spoem; this allows him to repeat words and phrases, if not exactly with impunity, then with a musical hand freed ofinhibition. We are so swept away with the delight and delicacy of this music that we scarcely notice that the poet has writtena highly polished classical ode. A glance at the printed poem above will show the listener that Brahms’s musical shape israther different from Hölty’s—the way the composer has constructed his song suggests an entirely different versification.The tempo is Andante, but once the accompanying semiquavers have begun to flutter between the hands like butterfliescreating a shimmer of sound, the impression is not of a slow song. The composer’s original marking of Andante con moto(the ‘con moto’ was deleted at proof stage) would have run the risk of introducing a hectoring note into performances. Inthe third bar a genuinely touching melody appears, offset from these pianistic murmurings like violets peeping out fromtheir surrounding foliage (Schubert’s Nachtviolen comes to mind), or like a linked constellation of stars pricked out in theheavens.

By the time we reach the words ‘Diese Quelle besucht!’ at the top of the second page, the riddle of this allusiveaccompaniment is explained: this is of course water music (the beloved is visiting a spring) and Brahms’s means ofdepicting the gentle bubbling of water is worthy of Schubert, who was the absolute master of water music in all its shapes

17

and forms. The patterns that govern the greatest accompaniments are capable of variation and versatility and thus it is nosurprise that at the words ‘Entpflückt sie lächelnd’ the crisp and decisive gesture of plucking a flower is also appropriate tothe texture of this piano-writing (if it is not over pedalled), and that the music seems to smile effortlessly at the same timeas the beloved does so. Once the lucky violet adorns her breast the vicariously excited poet exhorts it to nestle ever closer tohis lady’s heart. For this undercover task the accompaniment changes: chords are tenderly pressed between the hands insyncopated alternation, the music overflows into ��, and the airy delicacy of the opening has been supplanted by somethingmore urgently erotic. The rising sequence of ‘dich ihr ans Herz’ set twice is giddily ecstatic. ‘Und sag’ ihr’ signposts andheralds the message consigned to the flower in its new role as the lover’s spokesman with privileged access. A smallinterlude allows the poet to collect himself, as if he needs time to get his overexcited thoughts into order and find exactlythe right words. These intervening bars also facilitate a gracious and perfectly timed return to E major. At ‘Daß die Tropfenin deinem blauen Kelche’ (the beginning of the communication the violet is charged to deliver) the accompaniment is thesame and yet not the same; those familiar E major harmonies are recycled in a less bubbly texture that glows in the darkrather than shimmers in sunlight. The beloved is to be informed that the dew-bedecked violet is really the repository of thepoet’s tears. The song’s final page winds down, the music receding into itself, as if the flower were withering and dying, butit is the poet who has a death wish and he talks of his passing (with a marvellous tonal shift on the first appearance of theword ‘Tod’). Is this a threat or the manipulative tugging of heartstrings? We are reminded that the poem is Italian andsomething like a rispetto: the whole of this floral conceit is Zappi’s roundabout and exaggerated way of praising thebeloved’s beauty and of telling her he can’t live without her—until the next girl comes along. The surprise is that such anidea, not particularly original, should have been taken so seriously by Brahms and inspired from him such an out-and-outmasterpiece.

bn Sehnsucht LongingOp 49 No 3. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868. A flat major (original key),

�� Langsam

Hinter jenen dichten Wäldern Behind those dense forestsWeilst du, meine Süßgeliebte, You dwell, my sweet love,Weit, ach weit! Weit, ach weit! Far, ah far! far, ah far away!Berstet ihr Felsen, Burst, you rocks,Ebnet euch Täler, Rise up, you valleys,Daß ich ersehe, That I might glimpse,Daß ich erspähe That I might beholdMeine ferne, süße Maid! My sweet, far distant maiden!TRADITIONAL BOHEMIAN, translated by JOSEF WENZIG (1807–1876)

This strange and demanding song is seldom performed. It is divided into two distinct sections each of which seems almosteccentrically exaggerated in terms of expression. The excuse for this is of course the literary provenance of the text, JosefWenzig’s Westslavischer Märchenschatz. One of the purposes of Brahms’s introducing such folksong-derived poetry intohis song composing life was, as he saw it, to shake up the genteel refinements of an art form stuck perennially in thebookish and upper middle class grooves of Goethe, Schiller or Eichendorff on the one hand, and post-Heinean sentimentalsalon effusions on the other. Poetry of the Wenzig variety was authentic new blood, and if the result was sometimes songs

18

that were clumsy or awkward, larger than life, or even emotional in a confrontationalway—so be it! This Sehnsucht is a far more violent and potentially destructive emotionthan we usually encounter in the German song repertoire.

The opening has an accompaniment of widely spaced left-hand crotchets which initiatein the right the second and third notes of equally widely ranging triplets. This isdefinitely rustic music with rough edges, restless even within the Langsam tempo.Perhaps it is meant to suggest the hard physical work associated with peasants, likebending and digging, or perhaps even ploughing. In the wake of the ponderous steps inthe bass clef, the right hand etches furrows in the stave with insistent determination asif the pianist were some kind of Slavic Paul Bunyan. The singer complains of how faraway he is from his beloved and the repeated phrase ‘Weit, ach weit!’ expands into abar of four beats that is expressive of this heartbreaking distance. The final phrase onthe first page is crowned by a high A flat that resonates in an emotional void beforefalling to a D natural. Eric Sams notes wryly that this will be ‘far too ostentatious forsome tastes’, and it is true that such music would not be out of place in an opera ariaby an Eastern European composer. We are left dangling on a B flat7 in third inversionas an upbeat to a new section.

Encouraged by the word ‘Berstet’ (burst) and with a Lebhaft direction, thunderingright-hand triplets in the piano provide a bulwark between a vocal line that swoopsdown the stave, threatening destruction, and a left hand in octaves that confronts thevoice head-on in contrary motion. No stone will be left unturned in the search for this ‘ferne, süße Maid!’; valleys are to beexalted, if necessary, and mountains and hills made low. In pianistic terms this is by far Brahms’s most Lisztian song (thefast sections of that composer’s Es war ein König in Thule come to mind), including the clichés of the accompanyingtriplets that now throb exultantly, if somewhat predictably, to the end of the piece. All pretence at the niceties of the Liedertradition are more or less abandoned in favour of the robust kind of vocal writing, with ad hoc repetitions, that Brahmsclearly believes is appropriate for an Eastern European at the end of his tether; it takes an imaginative leap into the futureto realize that the sudden and explosive passion unleashed in this music, with its shuddering triplets and high-wirevocalism, would much later feature in the operas of Janácvek; this music strives to capture the temperament of a characterwho might have come from such an opera, without possessing a trace of that composer’s originality. The postlude (markedcrescendo, stringendo) must certainly rank among the most banal bars ever penned by Brahms for the piano. It is all as ifhe were attempting to find a new way of setting poetry of this kind, but during the experiment he lost rather too much ofhis own authorial voice. In setting folksong texts he was soon to master such challenges with much greater success.

19

The title page of Wenzig’s Westslavischer Märchenschatz (1857)

bo Wiegenlied LullabyOp 49 No 4. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868. F major (original key),

�� Zart bewegt

Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht, Good evening, good night,Mit Rosen bedacht, Canopied with roses,Mit Näglein besteckt Bedecked with carnations,Schlupf ’ unter die Deck’. Slip beneath the coverlet.Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, Tomorrow morning, if God wills,Wirst du wieder geweckt. You shall be woken again.Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht, Good evening, good night,Von Englein bewacht! Watched over by angels!Die zeigen im Traum In your dreams they’ll show youDir Christkindleins Baum: The Christmas Tree:Schlaf ’ nun selig und süß, Sleep sweetly now and blissfully,Schau im Traum’s Paradies. Behold Paradise in your dreams.ANONYMOUS verse 1; GEORG SCHERER (1828–1909) verse 2

It would be hard to imagine a more different song to follow the overwrought Sehnsucht of Op 49 No 3, and one of manyindications that Brahms did not have a subtly interconnecting programme in mind when preparing these songs forpublication under the umbrella of a single opus number. If Opus 49 is to receive a complete performance by a singlesinger, as it does here, that singer has to be male on account of the text of No 3. (No 1 is a male text also, as is No 2,although this has never prevented women from singing either song.) Wiegenlied, on the other hand, a reflection of parentaldevotion, is almost always sung by female singers and a male performance makes for an interesting change. Brahms nevercomposed a more famous song, or one that exerts a permanently tenacious hold on the public imagination: BrahmsCradle Song, a poem from Wendy Cope’s recent Family Values (2011), begins: ‘I’ve heard it on the radio / Twice thisweek …’ It has been subjected to so many awful arrangements that one can forget what a peerless masterpiece it is, with atonic pedal appearing on the first beat and hypnotically sustained for thirty-six bars. The poem for the first verse is age oldwith a provenance that goes back to Des Knaben Wunderhorn and beyond; the second derives from Scherer’s Dieschönsten deutschen Volkslieder, adapted by Brahms to fit the music. The song was written ‘for the happy use’ of BerthaFaber, née Porubsky, on the birth of her second child. She was a Viennese girl who had joined Brahms’s choir in Hamburgat the age of seventeen and who had remained friendly with the composer when he moved to Vienna in 1862. In Hamburgshe had delighted him with performances of popular songs in dialect, including one by Alexander Baumann, Op 3 No 1,for soprano and tenor duet; this had a lilting refrain in oscillating thirds set to the words ‘Du moanst wol, du moanst wol, /Di Liab last si zwinga’. Wiegenlied, especially the introductory bars, is derived from that happy memory, a fragment ofmusical nostalgia recycled by Brahms in a way that was entirely typical of his way of showing affection, his attraction to theyoung mother sublimated in unobtrusive technical musical mastery.

20

bp Abenddämmerung DuskOp 49 No 5. Probably composed in Bonn in the summer of 1868. E major (original key),

�� Ruhig

Sei willkommen, Zwielichtstunde! I bid you welcome, twilight hour!Dich vor allen lieb’ ich längst, Long have I loved you best of all,Die du, lindernd jede Wunde, You who, soothing every wound,Unsre Seele mild umfängst. Tenderly enfold our soul.Hin durch deine Dämmerhelle There amid your dusky brightness,In den Lüften, abendfeucht, In the breezes moist with evening,Schweben Bilder, die der grelle Hover visions that were banishedSchein des lauten Tags gescheucht. By the garish light of loud day.Träume und Erinnerungen Dreams and memoriesNahen aus der Kinderzeit, Draw near from childhood days,Flüstern mit den Geisterzungen Whispering with ghostly tonguesVon vergangner Seligkeit. Of vanished rapture.Und zu Jugendlust-Genossen And we return to our paternal homeKehren wir ins Vaterhaus; And youthful joy’s companions;Arme, die uns einst umschlossen, Arms that once embraced usBreiten neu sich nach uns aus. Reach out to us again.Nach dem Trennungsschmerz, dem langen, After the long pain of partingDürfen wir noch einmal nun We can now, once more,Denen, die dahingegangen, Rest on the beloved heartsAm geliebten Herzen ruhn, Of those who have passed away,Und, indes zum Augenlide And, while sleep flows softlySanft der Schlummer niederrint, Down into our eyes,Sinkt auf uns ein sel’ger Friede A blessed peace descends on usAus dem Land, wo Jene sind. From that land where they abide.ADOLF FRIEDRICH VON SCHACK (1815–1894)

Any pianist on encountering this song for the first time will notice that the undulating thirds in the key of E major bearan uncanny resemblance to those that accompany ‘Soave sia il vento’, sung by Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso inMozart’s Così fan tutte. The sixth line of Schack’s lyric (in the poem’s second strophe) refers to moist evening breezes, butthe connection between Schack and the Da Ponte trio in E major goes further than this single image: Schack promises joyafter the long sorrow of separation, a blessed peace that descends from heaven; Da Ponte with his gentles breezes andwaves promises an equally benign outcome. After a long journey, we are told, all will surely turn out for the best.

Another rather less likely composer also comes to mind. The opening seven bars are a gentle moto perpetuo with clearlydefined part-writing and an extended bass pedal; we might also imagine the participation of woodwind and strings. Whenthe voice in quasi-instrumental fashion initiates its welcome to the twilight hour (‘Sei willkommen, Zwielichtstunde!’) itdovetails effortlessly with the continuing sinfonia, each strand of the intensifying texture independent, and yet co-dependent, exactly as in a cantata by J S Bach. The syncopation across the barline of ‘Zwielicht’ strikes an eerily baroque

21

note. With mighty musical ghosts such as these presiding at the birth of Abenddämmerung it is clear that Brahms took thesong very seriously indeed. Whatever his own religious convictions, or lack of them, he treats Schack’s poem as a kind ofreligious homily and without a hint of cynicism.

Once the tempo is established the song glides along on predestined rails. We realize that it is meant to signify aremembered journey, the journey of an entire lifetime, and then another Mozartian resonance comes to mind—the songAbendempfindung, of which Abenddämmerung is a Brahmsian equivalent, the gathering together of evening thoughts inpreparation for the soul’s onward journey. There is no room here for romanticized variations of tempo and gratuitousrubato, although the disruption of seraphic certainty is planned for later in the setting. For the poem’s second verse theplush Così fan tutte undulations are temporarily replaced by rising semiquaver arpeggios shared between the hands, butthis is only for four bars.

It is only at verse 4 (‘Und zu Jugendlust-Genossen’) that there is a change of key-signature (from four to three sharps).Brahms cannot resist replacing the smooth mechanisms of near-pastiche with music entirely his own—trademarkhemiolas and trompe-l’oreille conflict between voice and accompaniment where four crotchets’ worth of semiquavers inevery bar seem to turn into six disorientating groups of triplets. This A major section incorporates two searching verses ofpoetry; aided by the marking sempre un poco animato, this music provides the necessary turbulence and sense of strivingto break the almost monotonous security of the eighteenth-century-inspired pulse that has so far driven the songineluctably forward. Clara Schumann did not like this passage and made it clear to Brahms that she preferred the E majorsection. But it is a necessary foil, a moment of struggle (a musical metaphor for passing though the various tribulations oflife itself) that must be endured and surmounted in order to give any significant meaning to the resolution of the finalverse. When this arrives we return to the safe certainties of those wonderful thirds in E major; it is as if a ship, hitherto indanger, has reached the safety of port at last. And this reminds us once again of Così fan tutte and of a trio where angelscould not have provided more seraphic part-writing and greater melodic and harmonic felicities.

There is no mention of God in Schack’s poem, so the agnostic, even atheist, Brahms is not to be accused of hypocrisy; afterall, themes of remembered childhood and lasting love were always dear to him. Nevertheless, the placing of this setting in akind of stylized baroque frame could serve as the composer’s defence against criticism for writing a song that describes theafterlife. The evocation of Bach-like certainties plus the blessing of an extra-terrestrial Mozart, make of this piece an obliquehomage to two great composers and the unquestioning pieties of the past. One also senses how deeply Brahms might havewished to have lived in an age when an unshakeable belief in such fairytale endings was shared by everyone as a matter ofcourse.

bq Mein wundes Herz verlangt My wounded heartOp 59 No 7. Composed in the spring of 1873 in Vienna and Tützing; published in December 1873. E minor–E major (original key), � Bewegt

Mein wundes Herz verlangt nach milder Ruh, My wounded heart craves gentle peace,O hauche sie ihm ein! Oh! breathe such peace into it!Es fliegt dir weinend, bange schlagend zu— It flies to you, weeping and beating anxiously—O hülle du es ein! Oh! enfold it in your arms!

22

Wie wenn ein Strahl durch schwere Wolken bricht, As when a sunbeam pierces heavy cloud,So winkest du ihm zu: So you beckon to my heart:O lächle fort mit deinem milden Licht! Oh! let your gentle light shine on!Mein Pol, mein Stern bist du! You are my pole, you are my star!KLAUS GROTH (1819–1899)

The search for cooling balm to assuage a wounded heart is a familiar and important theme in the songs of Brahms(cf another Groth setting, Dein blaues Auge). Mein wundes Herz verlangt is not one of the better Groth poems, but itsappeal to the composer seems to be personal: these words clearly mean something special to him, or there is somethingin the verbal imagery that moves him to this unusual music. Broken chords are adopted as an apt analogue for a brokenheart. This is especially evident in the four-bar prelude which is both rich in chromatic harmony and austere in terms ofthe solitary broken sixths in the bass clef that seems both punitive and cruelly exposed. This strangely gestural motif isrendered even more perverse and lopsided by sforzati on the fourth quaver of bars 2 and 3, the least expected place for anaccent in ��.

The words ‘Mein wundes Herz’ are first heard unaccompanied; the wound is open for all to see and hear. As the vocal linecontinues, ascending the stave on the word ‘verlangt’, the pianist’s left hand plays the vocal melody we have just heard, butin quavers rather than crotchets. It is as if a wound were being dressed, rather too late for comfort, with a self-protectivegauze of counterpoint. This did not stick with Hugo Wolf, one of Brahms’s sternest critics, who took this kind of technicaldisplay as a sure sign of emotional impotence. Nevertheless, a master craftsman is clearly at work: strands of voice andpiano are (almost) fugally entwined and separated, then entwined again in contrary motion or mirror image, but what hasa wounded heart to do with canons and imitation in diminution and augmentation? Why is it, as Eric Sams brilliantly putsit, that the heart ‘swells and contracts, in a typical diastole and systole of longing and assuagement, expressed by deliberateartifice, as well as unselfconscious artistry of the highest order’?

The answer is that this is a perfect illustration of an essential Brahmsian paradox: ‘the hurt heart and the contrapuntalbrain’ (Sams again) follow one another in strict canon. The composer was heart-injured, seemingly as a child; the infiniteextent of his pain and lack of self-esteem on a personal level was counterpointed by hard-won technical mastery in musicwith which no one else could compete. Self-abasement and professional grandiosity went hand in hand in a famouslyprickly personality. If he believed he was unlovable for himself, he knew he was revered for his music—the technicalresources of which were his refuge, raison d’être and, on occasion, his protective carapace. In building a cupola of technicalwizardry around the raw and exposed vocal line of this song, Brahms somehow softens, if not neutralizes, the pain towhich words and feelings such as these are attached. Listening to music lightens the heart, but creating it can be a healingprocess—something Schubert also understood. The modulation into the major key for ‘O lächle fort mit deinem mildenLicht!’ has a Schubertian magic, and although the closing words of this poem are in praise of a beloved woman, in thisinstance they seem addressed to music itself, surely Brahms’s pole and star. His technical mastery, far from being the aridposturing condemned by Wolf, brings him, time and again, into the presence of the Muse who loves him unconditionally. IfMein wundes Herz verlangt were a covert, or even unconscious, An die Musik, it would be one of many instances whenBrahms, master of self-concealment, requires us to read between the lines.

23

br Im Garten am Seegestade In the garden by the shoreOp 70 No 1. Composed in Vienna in February 1877; published in July 1877. G minor (original key), � Traurig, doch nicht zu langsam

Im Garten am Seegestade In the garden by the shoreUralte Bäume stehn, Ancient trees are standing,In ihren hohen Kronen In their high canopiesSind kaum die Vögel zu sehn. The birds can scarce be seen.Die Bäume mit hohen Kronen, The trees with high canopiesDie rauschen Tag und Nacht, Rustle day and night,Die Wellen schlagen zum Strande, The waves beat against the shore,Die Vöglein singen sacht. The little birds sing softly.Das gibt ein Musizieren The music they makeSo süß, so traurig bang, Is so sweet, so full of sad foreboding,Als wie verlorner Liebe Like the song of lost loveUnd ewiger Sehnsucht Sang. And endless longing.KARL LEMCKE (1831–1913)

The poetry of Lemcke here evokes the world of nature, and then music, in the mannerof Eichendorff, and this is one of those songs where the Lieder lineage that connectsSchumann and Brahms seems especially clear. In one of the most fecund periods ofhis career the composer seems content to dream of the past, including his old passionfor Schumann’s widow. Clara herself adored this music (‘a song one can dream in’), asdid Elisabet von Herzogenberg.

The introduction has a rainbow of crotchets descending the stave in evenly spacedthirds; Brahms has known how to make magic out of such a simple motif since theAndante espressivo movement of his Piano Sonata in F minor Op 5. In this songcontrary-motion mezzo staccato quavers ascend in the left hand. This conjunctionof articulation with the help of the pedal produces the impression of sea mist,unmentioned but implied by the poet. This veil of sound obscures the birds at the topof the trees, shrouding them in mystery, and blurs the contour of old emotions thathave been softened and changed by time. This is a song full of apt illustration: as soonas the branches of the trees begin to move in the breeze, left-hand duplets quicken intotriplets; the buffeting of waves in the piano-writing at ‘Die Wellen schlagen zumStrande’ is effortlessly suggested between the hands. Tangible pictures such as these areonly part of the charm of a song that is largely impressionistic: after ‘Die Vöglein singensacht’ the evocation of birdsong in single syncopated notes in the pianist’s righthand—F and then F sharp—is a heartbreaking and exquisite pre-echo of the avian

aria in Debussy’s En sourdine and Colloque sentimental (Fêtes galantes I and II). After this dreaming and driftinginterlude the two hands of the pianist are brought together in organized ensemble at ‘Das gibt ein Musizieren’; this signifiesthe making of music—a gathering of resources whereby trees, waves and birds are coordinated into chorus.

24

The title page of Lemcke’s Lieder und Gedichte (1861)

In the Debussy songs the poet Verlaine specifies a nightingale. One suspects that, in his mind’s eye, Brahms has placed thisseaside vignette in the early evening, and that the bird he has in mind is indeed a nightingale, harbinger of unrequited orunhappy love; neither of these facts are part of the poem, but Brahms excels in the creation of a rich contextual palimpsest.The result is a small masterpiece that is both vivid and immediate, very much of the present, while wreathed in the seamists of nostalgia and regret.

bs Lerchengesang Lark’s songOp 70 No 2. Composed in Vienna in March 1877; published in July 1877. B major (original key), � alla breve, Andante espressivo

Ätherische ferne Stimmen, Ethereal distant voices,Der Lerchen himmlische Grüße, Heavenly greetings of the larks,Wie regt ihr mir so süße How sweetly you stirDie Brust, ihr lieblichen Stimmen! My breast, you delightful voices!Ich schließe leis mein Auge, Gently I close my eyes,Da ziehn Erinnerungen And memories pass byIn sanften Dämmerungen, In soft twilights,Durchweht vom Frühlingshauche. Pervaded by the breath of spring.KARL AUGUST CANDIDUS (1817–1872)

In the wake of the Franco-Prussian War Brahms was taken by the patriotic verses of Karl Candidus, although he preferredto set to music the more gentle lyrics of this Alsatian poet who became a Protestant minister in Odessa and died in theCrimea. Candidus, like Lemke, seems to have released in Brahms a passing fondness for a musical style that might betermed impressionistic. Lerchengesang is highly prized by those who find a great deal of the more intense Brahms heavyand stodgy. Here the composer seems infinitely relaxed. He has nothing to prove, nothing to underline; he seems refreshed,released even, by Candidus’s old-fashioned nostalgia. The ethereal music of the introduction seems related to the wind-music of the Aeolian harp; there is something disembodied about the yearning sequences in the right hand as the pianisttentatively essays the stretch of a tenth, a physical metaphor for reaching out to touch the unattainable—perhaps inan attempt to crystallize half-forgotten memories.

After four bars of this other-worldly introduction, Brahms allows the unaccompanied vocal line to float free (albeit stillmeasured in triplets) as if a lark were drifting in stratospheric currents of air. Two bars of birdsong dovetail with twobars of piano music; for a good deal of the time the pianist’s hands (as in An eine Äolsharfe) are permitted to disportthemselves in the airier regions of the treble clef. At ‘Wie regt ihr mir so süße’ the left hand’s supporting quavers add anote of nurture, as if weaving, far beneath the avian songsters, a safety net that enables the vocal triplets to weave theiruntrammelled way through the heavens. If these birds and their voices are lost in the ethereal void, the thoughts of thesinger are lost with them.

The interlude between the two musical strophes (each taking four lines of the poem) is a subtly varied version of theintroduction. The same applies to the song’s second verse which at first sight appears to be a repeat of the first but whichis in fact different in many details. As the singer turns inward (‘Ich schließe leis mein Auge’) the music of the larks is nolonger the song’s primary focus, but it has set in train a moment of introspection both blissful and painful. The crystallinesounds of the treble clef continue in the accompaniment but the vocal line is a third lower. In the first verse the music for

25

‘Der Lerchen himmlische Grüße’ had delighted us; in the corresponding place in the second verse, the unaccompaniedtenderness of ‘Da ziehn Erinnerungen’ seems infinitely sad, even without a hint of the minor key. This phrase is elongatedto include a poignant mention of twilight where the difference between the D sharp of the previous phrase and the Dnatural that colours ‘Dämmerungen’ draws a veil of sadness over the entire song. The hushed and elongated setting of‘Frühlingshauche’ is a marvel; the long vowel of ‘hauche’ that concludes the song is filled with airy secrets. Far above, thelarks continue their song into infinity; at first it seems the postlude will be allowed simply to melt away but the lowest noteof the piece has been reserved for the solemnity of the closing bar: in the breath of springtime renewal there is alsoclosure, an intimation of mortality.

bt Serenade SerenadeOp 70 No 3. Composed in Vienna in May 1876 or possibly in the spring of 1875; published in July 1877. B major (original key),

�� Grazioso

Liebliches Kind, Lovely child,Kannst du mir sagen, Can you tell me,Sagen warum Tell me whyEinsam und stumm Lonely and silent,Zärtliche Seelen Sensitive soulsImmer sich quälen, Always agonize,Selbst sich betrüben Always grieve,Und ihr Vergnügen And feel they’d be happierImmer nur ahnen Anywhere than whereDa, wo sie nicht sind; They actually are;Kannst du mir’s sagen, Can you tell me,Liebliches Kind? Lovely child?JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749–1832)

This is a charming trifle of a song, pure and simple. But it is a Goethe setting and Brahms,who composed only five solo Goethe songs, takes the text and its provenance seriously. Thelyric is from the Singspiel Claudine von Villa Bella, which Schubert set to music in 1815(there is, unfortunately, only one surviving act). The genial bandit-chief Rugantino(Crugantino in another version of the play) sings a serenade to the two main femalecharacters, Lucinde (with whom he is enamoured) and the eponymous heroine Claudine.The song is meant to communicate with both girls, a kind of double vision that Brahmstranslates into music in a most unusual way: the opening words ‘Liebliches’ is set to adescending phrase of quavers—D sharp, C sharp, B. At the distance of a dotted crotchetthe pianist’s right hand comments on this in canon—once again, D sharp, C sharp, B—but this time in semiquavers and twice, albeit in adjoining octaves. This device, laboriousin explanation, winsome in effect, is applied throughout the first page of the song; oneRugantino phrase in sung quavers is followed by the same notes played in diminution, twolittle sets of semiquavers, one for each of the girls, all within the context of an ingeniouscanon between voice and piano.

26

The title page of Goethe’s Claudine von Villa Bella (1788)

The music is everything that is required, charming and ingratiating and somewhat condescending to the fairer sex in theItalian manner, although this stems directly from Goethe’s playfully remonstrative text. For the final ‘Kannst du mir’s sagen’(the song’s final ten bars) the nature of the canon changes: two sets of semiquavers in the piano-writing are replaced by amore straightforward mirroring of the vocal quavers by pianistic ones at the distance of a bar: it is as if Rugantino has nowfocused his attentions on the one girl, Lucinde, who really interests him. There is no surviving Schubert setting of this text,but Brahms must have known the setting of these words, one of a collection of Serenaden, by Beethoven’s teacherChristian Gottlieb Neefe (1748–1798). It is from Neefe that Brahms has taken the title of the song, Serenade, and notSerenate as printed in the Peters edition. There are also two settings by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and much later onesby Bruch and Medtner.

bu An den Mond To the moonOp 71 No 2. Composed in March 1877; published in August 1877. B minor (original key),

�� Nicht zu langsam und mit Anmut

Silbermond mit bleichen Strahlen Silver moon, with pale raysPflegst du Wald und Feld zu malen, You paint both wood and field,Gibst den Bergen, gibst den Talen Imbue mountains and valleysDer Empfindung Seufzer ein. With sighs of longing.Sei Vertrauter meiner Schmerzen, Be the confidant of my sorrows,Segler in der Lüfte See: You who sail over the sea of space;Sag’ ihr, die ich trag’ im Herzen, Tell her, whom I carry in my heart,Wie mich tötet Liebesweh. How the pangs of love are killing me.Sag’ ihr, über tausend Meilen Tell her that across a thousand milesSehne sich mein Herz nach ihr. My heart yearns for her.„Keine Ferne kann es heilen, ‘No distance can heal it,Nur ein holder Blick von dir.“ Only a loving look from you.’Sag’ ihr, daß zu Tod getroffen Tell her that this frame of mine,Diese Hülle bald zerfällt; Stricken to death, will soon decay;Nur ein schmeichlerisches Hoffen May a single flattering hopeSei’s, das sie zusammenhält. Hold it together.KARL JOSEPH SIMROCK (1802–1876)

Music in praise of the moon is usually diaphanous and atmospheric, as transparent as a beam of light. The fragility of theBrahms song Mondenschein to a Heine text is a case in point. Occasionally, however, this friendly satellite inspires a morerobust musical response, usually when the moon is addressed by an earthbound mortal. In Schubert’s Seidl setting DerWanderer an den Mond the tramp of the traveller is built into the music, as well as his somewhat misanthropic view oflife, and he speaks to the moon (a masculine noun in German, feminine in French) man-to-man. Although it is notintimated in the text, it is likely that this poem by Simrock, certainly not the finest poem that Brahms ever set, was alsomeant to incorporate the determined trudge of someone unhappy who is making his way through a moonlit landscape.Perhaps the piano’s left-hand chords represent a guitar to indicate a serenade, whether stationary or ambulant.

27

Even if the singer is not on the move the moon is always adrift. The Bewegungin triplets is prophetic of the Heine setting Meerfahrt, composed some sevenyears later—an indication that Brahms imagines a ship at sea and themoon in the heavens both wading through a similar watery lagoon, amedium buoyant enough to encourage the rise and fall of triplets thatgently bob above and below the water line, viscous enough to producesonorous sixths in the middle of the piano—no Clair de lune this!Simrock’s metre results in a succession of three-bar musicalphrases, one for each line of verse. The introduction to the wholesong is also a solo of three bars, rather than the symmetrical four.This length of phrase is a continuing feature of the song and gives acurious limp to the music, a feeling of being out of breath, as if thesinger were tired or disillusioned or at the end of his tether. Of coursethis is exactly the case as we are soon to discover. After an interlude, thetraveller asks permission to confide his sorrows to his lunar friend (‘SeiVertrauter meiner Schmerzen’). When there is clearly no answer from thelong-suffering moon (implied by the verbal silence of another three-barinterlude) the narrator embarks on his fervent petition.

With ‘Sag’ ihr, die ich trag’ im Herzen’, the nub of the song, the triplets disappearfrom the music and the atmosphere changes completely. We may have expected awoebegone complaint from this traveller but Brahms supplies him instead with a declaration of love worthy of the beauty ofhis lunar intermediary. The marking is dolce. In the piano-writing (beginning in F sharp major, the dominant of the homekey) there is a suggestion of distant muted horns—an evocation of the empty forests and the vast and peaceful terrain thatseparate the poet from his lover, distances that would be easy for the moon to traverse as a messenger and go-between.After this oasis of tranquillity the triplets reappear, a piano interlude that begins in G major and then reverts to B minor.With ‘Sag’ ihr, daß zu Tod getroffen’ the voice takes up the triplet motif for the next six bars. A return of those distant horncalls, now in G major (at ‘Nur ein schmeichlerisches Hoffen’), promises further peaceful reflection, but a shift to C major(‘Sei’s, das sie zusammenhält’) and a heightened tessitura turns the screw in terms of anguish. These two lines of poetryare then repeated even more ardently and desperately in B major. In the tenor of this writing the supplicant is no longercontained and dignified, perhaps because he realizes that the moon is powerless, or unwilling, to accede to his request.The eleven-bar postlude lavishly employs the materials of the opening, first to darker and more intense effect, and thendistancing and thinning out the music as the traveller, embittered and disappointed, disappears over the horizon. UnlikeSchubert’s moonstruck traveller he has learned nothing that might lighten his heart.

28

KARL SIMROCK

cl In Waldeseinsamkeit In woodland solitudeOp 85 No 6. Composed in Pörtschach in May 1878; published in July 1882. B major (original key), � Langsam

Ich saß zu deinen Füßen I sat at your feetIn Waldeseinsamkeit; In woodland solitude;Windesatmen, Sehnen A breath of wind, a yearning,Ging durch die Wipfel breit. Moved through the broad tree-tops.In stummen Ringen senkt’ ich I lowered in silent struggleDas Haupt in deinen Schoß My head into your lap,Und meine bebenden Hände And clasped my trembling handsUm deine Knie ich schloß. Around your knees.Die Sonne ging hinunter, The sun went down,Der Tag verglühte all, All daylight faded,Ferne, ferne, ferne Far, far, far awaySang eine Nachtigall. A nightingale sang.KARL LEMCKE (1831–1913)

In this powerful masterpiece, as is often the case in Brahms’s songs, we sense an autobiographical echo. Elisabet vonHerzogenberg wrote that it was ‘born from a deep inward experience’, as if she might have guessed from somethingBrahms told her that it described a real incident. The song is closely related to Wir wandelten, composed six years later,where Brahms once again described an emotional closeness, a twinning of souls, which transcends sexual inferences.Admittedly, Waldeseinsamkeit describes physical proximity—trembling hands on the beloved’s knee, a head in her lap—which might have led to a full-scale erotic encounter for the poet Lemcke. But the fact that Brahms, in publishing this song,was prepared to share these long-internalized emotions with the rest of the world strongly suggests that there was no sexualoutcome, which is not to claim that the repression of his desire in favour of anguished chastity, in this instance at least, wasemotionally healthy. The poem probably stirred memories of a walking holiday shared by Clara and Johannes in Switzerlandin 1856; she was thirty-seven, and he a stripling of twenty-three. An album of lovingly labelled cut flowers (published in1991 in a beautiful facsimile) was assembled by Clara and kept in memory of their time together. It would seem likely thatClara might well have contemplated an affair at this time, and that this was seemingly impossible for Brahms.

The opening bar of piano prelude seems to suggest a diminution of light; the sun is setting and the forest fronds create asylvan oasis of repose. The slow-moving quavers of the accompaniment entwined with a heartbreakingly beautiful vocal linesuggest intimacy, complicity, a kind of rapture without contentment or quietus. The gently restless chromaticisms of ‘senkt’ich / Das Haupt in deinen Schoß’ allow for those small movements and adjustments while a comfortable nestling positionis found on the forest floor. It is then that suppressed desire and physical closeness engender potentially dangerouselectricity. Beyond mastery is the musical setting of the following passage (‘Und meine bebenden Hände / Um deine Knieich schloß’ and the subsequent repeat of those lines) where three musical phrases follow each other, a semitone lowereach time, a subtle musical analogue for detumescence. Within this time-span physical temptation almost too hard to bearis gradually mastered by a combination of fear, awe and will-power. Perhaps the singer has momentarily had his mind onother parts of the body than the beloved’s knees, but when he finally settles for these, renouncing all temptation, theharmonic return to the F sharp major of the opening is like a ship coming safely, and unnoticed, into port, or the return

29

of a hero, unbesmirched and unannounced, who has survived every kind of trial. Or so the music powerfully implies.Locked in this position for some minutes of speechless intimacy, this couple seems spiritually related to the lovers in Ensourdine (Verlaine, Debussy, Fauré), who find the sadness of their love contained within the shadows of the branches thatshelter their outdoor idyll.

The final strophe of the song unfolds within this moment of speechless intimacy. The music, a recapitulation of theopening, is heavy with such a mixture of sadness and happiness, relief and regret, as only a great song composer couldhave created. Verlaine’s poem ends with the poet saying on behalf of his lovers ‘Voice of our despair, / The nightingale willsing’. The Lemcke text, written eight years earlier, says something similar, and it is the same bird who trills its perennialtheme of love that is doomed to failure. We hear ‘ferne’ three times, twice on the rising third of D sharp to F sharp,harmonized in B major, then in B minor. This word also represents the unbridgeable distance between the two figuresclinging to each other in the forest, and when D sharp slips to D natural followed by F sharp (now harmonized in D major)the acknowledgement of loss, the giving up of hope, is almost unbearably poignant. When the nightingale itself ismentioned in two of Brahms’s most beautiful (and difficult to sing) phrases we are aware that nature gives voice to asadness unchangeable by any human power. The first ‘Nachtigall’ is sung to the same notes as the word ‘Widerhall’ inBrahms’s later Nachtigall, Op 97 No 1, where it is indeed an echo of this earlier masterpiece. The second ‘Nachtigall’(D sharp and F sharp, the same phrase as ‘ferne’) has the voice rising as the piano descends. Their meeting on the tonicchord for the word’s final syllable leaves the accompaniment in the depths of the keyboard, the singer dangling exquisitely,out on a limb, as he contemplates a life of loneliness and regret. Consummation is not to be; from the very beginning everynote of this extraordinary song has pointed to the same, sad conclusion.

cm Auf dem Schiffe On the shipOp 97 No 2. Composed before May 1885; published in March 1886. A major (original key),

�� Lebhaft und rasch

Ein Vögelein A little birdFliegt über den Rhein Flies over the RhineUnd wiegt die Flügel And sways its wingsIm Sonnenschein, In the sunlight,Sieht Rebenhügel Sees vine-clad hillsUnd grüne Flut And green wavesIn goldner Glut.— In a golden glow—Wie wohl das tut, How good it feelsSo hoch erhoben To be borne so highIm Morgenhauch! In the morning breeze!Beim Vöglein droben, O to be up thereO, wär’ ich auch! With the little bird!CHRISTIAN REINHOLD KÖSTLIN (1813–1856), under the name CHRISTIAN REINHOLD

Brahms in such a playful mood is a delight at any time, and in the late songs especially so. The setting was sent as a giftto his dear friends the Fellingers. Maria Fellinger (not to be confused with the singer Marie Fillunger, lover of EugenieSchumann) was the daughter of Christian Köstlin, the poet who wrote under the pseudonym Christian Reinhold. She wasalso an amateur photographer whose pictures of Brahms were used as the basis of several busts and lithographs. It was

30

clearly pleasing to Brahms to send her a setting of her late father’s words that reflectedthe light-hearted companionship he enjoyed chez Fellinger in the last thirteen years ofhis life.

In Das Mädchen spricht Brahms had already proved himself a master of depicting thetwitterings of birds as well as their unexpected and seemingly random flights of fancy.In this poem Reinhold (Köstlin) finds himself on a boat on the Rhine. The movementsof the little bird who claims the poet’s attention seem even friskier when observed fromaboard a moving vessel. The forte marking at the beginning rather shocked earlylisteners who might have hoped for something gentler to depict a dear little ‘Vögelein’:Elisabet von Herzogenberg refers, perhaps not altogether approvingly, to the ‘cheerfulhammering of the ivories’. The accompaniment, where only the first two notes of aright-hand triplet figure are heard (resulting in a succession of chords that sound asif they are ornamented with a succession of snatched and ebullient acciaccature),brilliantly captures avian ducking and weaving, joyful chirruping, the disruptive energyof swoops and somersaults buffeted by air currents and gusts of wind.

The vocal line has all the persuasive bonhomie of someone who loves being outdoorsand enjoys disporting himself on deck in glorious summer weather, perhaps singing orwhistling the while. With the changing tessitura of the vocal line Brahms is cleverenough to suggest that the singer’s gaze switches between the heavens and the horizonfrom the vantage point of the ship-deck. We are not altogether sure if this is a sail boator a steamer; the poet lived during a transitional age when both would have been commercially available. If Brahms wereimagining the former, the sforzati in the piano-writing might also have something to do with the clacking sound of sailsfilling with air and flapping in the wind. What the poet would have liked best is an aerial tour of the Rhine in a not-yet-invented aeroplane, but until that time he can dream of the freedom of being a bird himself. The setting by Schubert ofFriedrich Schlegel’s poem Der Knabe describes a boy with a similar longing to fly. The Schubert song fades away dreamily,but Brahms ends his with two forte bars as if to say ‘too bad!’ with a cheery shrug of the shoulders: ‘what fools we humansare to even imagine such a thing!’

cn Es hing der Reif Hoarfrost hung from the linden treeOp 106 No 3. Composed in Thun in the summer of 1888; published in October 1888. A minor (original key),

�� Träumerisch

Es hing der Reif im Lindenbaum, Hoarfrost hung from the linden tree,Wodurch das Licht wie Silber floß; Through which light flowed like silver;Ich sah dein Haus, wie hell im Traum I saw your house, bright as in a dream,Ein blitzend Feenschloß. A gleaming fairy castle.Und offen stand das Fenster dein, And your window was open wide,Ich konnte dir ins Zimmer sehn— I could look into your room—Da tratst du in den Sonnenschein, You then stepped into the sunshine,Du dunkelste der Feen! You the darkest of fairies!

31

The title page of Reinhold’s Gedichte (1853)

Ich bebt in seligem Genuß, I trembled in blissful pleasure,So frühlingswarm und wunderbar: Filled wth springtime warmth and wonder:Da merkt ich gleich an deinem Gruß, Then I saw at once from your greetingDaß Frost und Winter war. That frost had set in and winter.KLAUS GROTH (1819–1899)

The musical means employed in this song are relatively simple, but strikingly original. The effect of dream-like stillness, thesuspension of reality, the strangeness of a world of fairytale visions, all are created by placing musical weight on the thirdbeat of the bar which makes the supposedly strong beat that follows appear weak—a cross-barline trompe-l’oreille. Thisconjures an extraordinary sense of frozen time and hovering unease. Elisabet von Herzogenberg found the minims ‘languidand laborious’ but she had clearly not understood what the composer was trying to do, and was also repelled by the sheerstrangeness and modernity of the music. In this same year Hugo Wolf composed his Mörike songs, a series of masterpiecesthat threatened to topple the older man’s song-writing supremacy, but in Es hing der Reif Brahms shows that he can evokeas cold and empty a landscape of frozen emotions (and dream up as original a song) as the composer of Das verlasseneMägdlein.

Four-note arpeggios in the left hand drift upwards in dreamy reverie, and the song’s marking specifically confirms that thisis the desired mood. But the first of these three left-hand notes anticipates by a quaver the chord that is the perverselyemphasized third beat of the bar. This increases the sense of disorientation in this music, the impression of draggingbehind the beat which adds a heavy, benumbing note to the music. The unimportant words ‘der’ and ‘im’ are placed onthese emphasized third beats (bars 5 and 6) as well as being set higher in the voice than ‘hing’ and ‘Reif ’. This is breakingevery rule of word-setting, as only a master at the height of his powers is able to do and get away with it.

For the poem’s second verse (‘Und offen stand das Fenster dein’) the accompanying pattern changes and the vocal line islargely unaccompanied; the pianist’s interjections illustrate the tentative nature of peeking into someone else’s bedroom.The appearance of the beloved (‘Da tratst du in den Sonnenschein’), a fairy princess in this metaphor, transforms theopening accompaniment into something warmer and friendlier where A minor is replaced with A flat major, a tonalityassociated with worshipping the beloved, albeit unrequitedly (as in Ein Sonett, track 4). In his dream the singer tremblesat the sight of his beloved (‘Ich bebt’). Even by Brahms’s unconventional standards the placing of the word ‘in’ on a high A(‘in seligem Genuß’) seems ill-advised, but it works here because the ‘blissful pleasure’ is revealed as something far morepainful and shocking. The way the song subsides from its moment of near-happiness back to the frozen emotional wastesof the opening is achieved by a vocal line that slowly winds its way down the stave, a graduated and disillusioned retreat.The final phrase of the song (‘Daß Frost und Winter war’) incorporates the ghost of the final vocal cadence of Schubert’sDer Doppelgänger, another song with a supernatural scenario that takes place outside the beloved’s house and with evenmore devastating consequences. This also confirms that Groth’s lyric contains certain echoes of Heinrich Heine’s poetry.The piano’s postlude, an A minor chord decorated with a protracted and mournful passing note, is chilling and bleak.

32

co Ein Wanderer A travellerOp 106 No 5. Composed in 1885; published in October 1888. F minor (original key),

�� In langsam gehender Bewegung

Hier, wo sich die Straßen scheiden, Here, where the roads divide,Wo nun gehn die Wege hin? Where do the paths now lead?Meiner ist der Weg der Leiden, Mine is the path of suffering,Des ich immer sicher bin. Of that I am always certain.Wandrer, die des Weges gehen, Travellers on the roadFragen freundlich: Wo hinaus? Enquire with kindness: whither bound?Keiner wird mich doch verstehen, Not one of them will understandSag’ ich ihm, wo ich zu Haus. When I tell him where my home is.Reiche Erde, arme Erde, Rich earth, poor earth,Hast du keinen Raum für mich? Have you no room for me?Wo ich einst begraben werde, Where one day I’ll be buried,An der Stelle lieb’ ich dich. That’s where I shall love you.CHRISTIAN REINHOLD KÖSTLIN (1813–1856), under the name CHRISTIAN REINHOLD

The connection between this ‘Wanderer’ and the winter traveller of Schubert’s Winterreise is very clear. In gehenderBewegung is a marking that Schubert used for that cycle, and the key of F minor is the one in which Brahms would haveaccompanied the baritone Stockhausen in Der Wegweiser, the song in the Schubert cycle to which Ein Wanderer is mostclosely related. (If F minor is the baritone key for Der Wegweiser, it is a demandingly high one for a tenor in the Brahms—indeed the emotional temperature of Ein Wanderer appears especially intense in this original tonality.) By the time Brahmscomposed this song the collaboration with Stockhausen was a distant memory but Schubert and his music were very muchstill on the agenda. Brahms was a lifelong enthusiast and a collector of the composer’s manuscripts and he was deeplyinvolved as an adviser for the preparation of the new Schubert Gesamtausgabe where the songs would eventually appearunder the inspired editorship of his protégé, Eusebius Mandyczewski.

The time-signature is ��, four quavers in the bar, like Der Wegweiser. The two chords of the opening bar are something of asignpost that points the traveller in the direction of his sad fate. The image of diverging paths is aptly illustrated by the wayin which the semiquaver accompaniment for ‘Hier, wo sich die Straßen scheiden’ goes in opposite directions beneath thehands. For ‘Meiner ist der Weg der Leiden’, the pianist’s left hand, forcibly establishing its independence with a sforzatoon the second quaver of the bar, acts as a deadweight that pulls the accompaniment into the Stygian regions of the bassclef. Again this illustrates a divergent path: as the piano burrows in the depths the singer rises to the top of the stave for avehement confirmation of his continuing bad luck in love (‘Des ich immer sicher bin’). Friedländer mentions Brahms’slove of Hungarian folk-music in connection with this song and maybe it does have some bearing; the singer is certainlymore temperamental and excitable than Schubert’s protagonist.

As an introduction to the second verse, the signpost motif (two descending crotchet chords, a third apart) is now heardlower than before. We are set up to expect a strophic repetition but it is nothing so simple. The accompaniment is busy andthe harmonic scheme restlessly inventive; this is very far from Schubert’s trudging linear manner in a barren landscape—in fact this terrain seems positively hilly by comparison. In the middle of the verse (at ‘Keiner wird mich doch verstehen’) a

33

dotted motif renders the journey surprisingly spiky and jerky—perhaps an attempt to depict the playing down of grief withan assumed cheerfulness for the benefit of the other travellers who ask where he is going. Surprisingly, the words ‘wo ichzu Haus’ prompt a pair of melodramatic pianistic flourishes, the most dramatic music of the piece—as if he does not wantto actually say that death and the grave are on the agenda, but he is prepared to drop a heavy hint.

The words of the third strophe are nearest in spirit to the no-room-at-the-inn pathos of Das Wirtshaus in Schubert’s cycle,but once again this music is far too active and passionate to invite any true comparison with Schubert. Under ‘Reiche Erde,arme Erde’ there is the muffled drum of a death march and the harmonic direction of the music pulls the narrator,swearing eternal devotion, ineluctably to the grave. The song is full of Brahmsian skill but Reinhold’s poem does not servethe composer well, despite his fondness for Maria Fellinger, the poet’s daughter (see track cm). This traveller wears hisheart far too much on his sleeve genuinely to engage our sympathies; as a result Ein Wanderer is very seldom performedon the concert platform.

Three songs from the Deutsche Volkslieder WoO33 (1894)cp Die Sonne scheint nicht mehr The sun no longer shines

WoO33 No 5. G major (original key) �� Gehalten und empfindungsvoll

Die Sonne scheint nicht mehr The sun no longer shinesSo schön, als wie vorher, As beautifully as it did,Der Tag ist nicht so heiter, The day’s no longer as sereneSo liebreich gar nicht mehr. Or as loving as it was.Das Feuer kann man löschen, Fire can be extinguishedDie Liebe nicht vergessen, But love not forgotten,Das Feuer brennt so sehr, Fire burns so brightly,Die Liebe noch viel mehr. Love burns even more.Mein Herz ist nicht mehr mein, My heart’s no longer mine,O könnt ich bei dir sein, If only I could be with you,So wäre mir geholfen There’d be some comfortVon aller meiner Pein. For all my pain.Das Feuer kann man löschen … Fire can be extinguished …

The song starts slowly in duple time, the piano wanly trailing the voice in dejected echo. The second section is in ��(a feature of rustic dance music this) and is marked Lebhaft. The music suddenly bursts into flame with leaping,hocketing quavers in the vocal line chased by the piano in imitation, as if it were the pianist’s responsibility to containthe emotional fire that has been kindled by a devastating separation, a losing battle. Brahms somehow manages to suggestsadness, even desperation, without going anywhere near the minor mode, as if love burns brightly in the major whetheror not reciprocated. The poem and the tune that goes with it have been stitched together by Zuccalmaglio from disparatesources. He says that this is from ‘Western Vosges’, one of those vague attributions of his that sound scholarly but are verydifficult to take seriously.

34

cq Wo gehst du hin, du Stolze? Where are you going, proud girl?WoO33 No 22. G major (original key),

�� Lebhaft und hell

Wo gehst du hin, du Stolze? Where are you going, proud girl?Was hab ich dir getan, What have I done to you,Daß du an mir vorbeigehst, That you should walk past meUnd siehst mich gar nicht an? And not look at me at all?Seh ich dich kommen, grüß ich dich, When I see you coming, I greet you,Du gehst vorbei und dankst mir nicht; You walk past me without a thank you;Es wird die Stunde kommen, The time will come,Wo du noch denkst an mich! When you shall think of me.Die Rosen, die im Walde The roses in the forestErblühn in frischer Pracht, Blossom in fresh splendour,Bald sind sie abgefallen, Soon they will have faded,Verblühet über Nacht. Withered over-night.Fällt eine Rose in den Staub, When a rose turns to dust,So blüht die andre auf am Strauch, Another blossoms on the bough,Und ist es nicht die eine, And if the one does not,Die andere mir lacht. The other will smile on me.

This is another case of Brahms being happy to use unalloyed major-key tonality to describe rejection and hurt, although theignored lover threatens, not altogether convincingly, that he will find someone else just as attractive. Whatever the intensityor veracity of the young man’s complaints (and this may be just a passing tiff) the appeal of this setting (almost certainlybased on something invented by Zuccalmaglio) is the ingenious dovetailing of vocal line and piano. The strength of the bassline is exemplary, as is the economy and sophistication of the three-part writing that blossoms into four parts to give onlyan occasional hint of effulgence. All in all this is the work of a master technician, easily overlooked by those listeners whohave never had to attempt harmony exercises. The careful placing of rests in the otherwise seamless flow of piano crotchetssuggests the swagger, insouciant but not quite convincing, of a young man who is hurt and perplexed, but who would ratherdie than admit it. The interlude and postlude, both marked forte, depict pique and defiance, but there is a clinginess to thismusic where voice and piano are welded closely enough to suggest that the young man would come running if ‘die Stolze’gave him half an excuse to do so.

cr Es steht ein Lind A lime tree standsWoO33 No 41. C major (original key), � Zart und ausdrucksvoll

Es steht ein Lind in jenem Tal, A lime tree stands in that valley,Ach Gott, was tut sie da? Ah, God, what is it doing there?Sie will mir helfen trauren, trauren, It will help me to mourn, to mournDaß ich mein’ Lieb’ verloren hab’. That I have lost my love.Es sitzt ein Vöglein auf dem Zaun, A little bird sits on the fence,Ach Gott, was tut es da? Ah, God, what is it doing there?Es will mir helfen klagen, klagen, It will help me to grieve, to grieve,Daß ich mein’ Lieb’ verloren hab’. That I have lost my love.

35

Es quillt ein Brünnlein auf dem Plan, A little stream flows over the plain,Ach Gott, was tut es da? Ah, God, what is it doing there?Es will mir helfen weinen, weinen, It will help me to weep, to weep,Daß ich mein’ Lieb’ verloren hab’. That I have lost my love.WILHELM TAPPERT (1830–1907)

The piano’s opening bars, minims in quasi chorale, suggest the solidity of a linden tree, the kind that typifies an imaginaryGerman village of yore, and under which countless lovers, including those in Schubert’s Winterreise, have plighted theirtroth. The wafting quaver movement of the accompaniment suggest branches swaying in the wind (verse 1), the flitting of abird from branch to branch (verse 2) and gently running water (verse 3), a musical economy typical of late Brahms. Thepoem is by Wilhelm Tappert (1830–1907) who affixed it to a melody he claimed came from a Nuremberg collection from1550. He published it in the 1870s as No 24 of Deutsche Lieder aus dem 15., 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, a collectionTappert dedicated to Wagner. The tune is eerily reminiscent of Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund. The vocal melismason ‘trauren’ in the first verse, and then ‘klagen’, and finally ‘weinen’ (echoed in the piano only once, six bars from the end)are unusual for these folksong settings where one note per syllable is the order of the day. This stems from the Tappertarrangement. Indeed, Brahms did little other than discreetly rearrange the piano part, substituting his more nobleaccompaniment for Tappert’s chugging and rather uninspired quavers. The way in which the line ‘Daß ich mein’ Lieb’verloren hab’’ is set twice, first as a two-bar phrase, and then as a four-bar phrase with longer note values, is also unusual,and this is a genuinely Brahmsian touch. As a result this faux folksong setting teeters on the borders of art song.

Perhaps this is because the words are contemporary pastiche; Brahms knew this of course and seemed to have littlescruple in including them among all the other texts, some of which were genuinely ancient. Authenticity in any strictmusicological sense seems not to have mattered to him: if the words or music were imitations of the ‘real thing’ they wereexcluded only if they were ineffective; if they touched him they were allowed into the fold. In fact, he would sooner use aneffective fake than something irreproachably original and dull.

Notes by GRAHAM JOHNSON © 2011English translations by RICHARD STOKES, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber and Faber, 2005)

with thanks to George Bird, co-author of The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1976)

Recorded in All Saints’, Durham Road, East Finchley, London, on 23–25 November 2009Recording Engineer JULIAN MILLARD

Recording Producer MARK BROWNPiano STEINWAY & SONS

Booklet Editor TIM PARRYExecutive Producer SIMON PERRY

P & C Hyperion Records Ltd, London, MMXI

Front photograph by Benjamin Ealovega

36

37

Also available

The Songs of Johannes Brahms – 1ANGELIKA KIRCHSCHLAGER mezzo-sopranoGRAHAM JOHNSON pianoCompact Disc CDJ33121‘The first volume of what promises, on the evidence of thisdisc, to be yet another absorbing and invaluable encyclopaediaof a songmaster’s life and work. Graham Johnson, onceagain, is both mastermind and pianist, and, as ever, hisaccompanying notes and essays are as witty and richly allusiveas his playing’ (BBC Music Magazine) ‘A very fineimagination is at play, doing things with tone, colour anddynamics that are utterly beguiling. Johnson is, as you mightexpect, immaculate’ (The Guardian)

The Songs of Johannes Brahms – 2CHRISTINE SCHÄFER sopranoGRAHAM JOHNSON pianoCompact Disc CDJ33122

‘The second volume of Hyperion’s complete Brahms songs isthe generous and imaginatively planned anthology that we havecome to expect from these important series compiled byGraham Johnson—witness his excellent Schubert andSchumann series. And it comes, as ever, with richly cross-referenced notes and essays’ (BBC Music Magazine)

All Hyperion and Helios recordings may be purchased over the internet at

www.hyperion-records.co.ukwhere you will also find an up-to-date catalogue listing and much additional information

SIMON BODE

Born in Hamburg in 1984, Simon Bode started his musical educationwith violin and piano lessons, going on to win several awards on bothinstruments. He later began his vocal studies with Professor CharlotteLehmann at the Hochschule für Musik and Theater in Hanover. The youngsinger has won many prestigious prizes early in his career, including theHans-Sikorski memory-prize of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben,awards from the Walter Kaminsky Foundation, the NiedersächsischeSparkassenstiftung, the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation ‘Live music now’, andthe Jürgen Ponto Foundation. Accompanied by Nicholas Rimmer he was aPrize-winner at the 2009 International Schubert Competition in Dortmund.He is also a scholar of the German National Academic Merit Foundation.

Since 2010 Simon Bode has been a member of the opera studio at OperFrankfurt, making his critically acclaimed debut as Belmonte in ChristofLoy’s fêted production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail in March2011. He is also a regular guest at the State Opera in Hanover and the StateTheatre Braunschweig, notably as Gomatz in Mozart’s early opera Zaide.

Aside from opera, Simon Bode is a dedicated Lieder singer. He regularlycollaborates with pianists Graham Johnson, Igor Levit and Nicholas Rimmer, and bayan player Elsbeth Moser, performingpremieres of contemporary works as well as more familiar repertoire. He has given recitals at the international Rising Starsfestival ‘The Next Generation II’, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Festival Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and hasmade numerous recordings and broadcast appearances with the Norddeutscher and Bayerischer Rundfunk.

GRAHAM JOHNSON

Graham Johnson is recognized as one of the world’s leading vocal accompanists. Born in Rhodesia, he came to London tostudy in 1967. After leaving the Royal Academy of Music his teachers included Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons. In 1972he was the official pianist at Peter Pears’ first masterclasses at The Maltings, Snape, which brought him into contact withBenjamin Britten—a link which strengthened his determination to accompany. In 1976 he formed The Songmakers’Almanac to explore neglected areas of piano-accompanied vocal music; the founder singers were Dame Felicity Lott, AnnMurray DBE, Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Richard Jackson—artists with whom he established long and fruitfulcollaborations. Graham Johnson has accompanied such distinguished singers as Sir Thomas Allen, Victoria de los Angeles,Elly Ameling, Arleen Auger, Ian Bostridge, Brigitte Fassbaender, Matthias Goerne, Thomas Hampson, Simon Keenlyside,Angelika Kirchschlager, Philip Langridge, Serge Leiferkus, Christopher Maltman, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp, ChristophPrégardien, Dame Margaret Price, Thomas Quastoff, Dorothea Röschmann, Kate Royal, Christine Schäfer, Peter Schreier,Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Sarah Walker.

38

© N

icolas

Kro

eger

Graham Johnson’s relationship with Wigmore Hall in London is a special one.He devised and accompanied concerts in the hall’s re-opening series in 1992,and in its centenary celebrations in 2001. He has been Chairman of the juryfor the Wigmore Hall Song Competition since its inception. He is SeniorProfessor of Accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music and has led abiennial scheme for Young Songmakers since 1985. He has had a long andfruitful link with Hyperion, for whom he has devised and accompanied a setof complete Schubert Lieder on 37 discs, a milestone in the history ofrecording, as well as the complete songs of Schumann and, as part of a widerFrench song series, Fauré. Awards include the Gramophone solo vocalawards in 1989 (the first Schubert volume with Dame Janet Baker), 1996(Die schone Müllerin with Ian Bostridge), 1997 (for the inauguration of theSchumann series with Christine Schäfer) and 2001 (with Magdalena Kozvenáon DG). He was The Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Yearin 1998; in June 2000 he was elected a member of the Royal SwedishAcademy of Music. He is author of The Songmakers’ Almanac: Twenty yearsof recitals in London, The French Song Companion (OUP, 2000), Britten:Voice and Piano (Ashgate, 2003) and Gabriel Fauré: the Songs and theirPoets (Ashgate, 2009). He was made an OBE in the 1994 Queen’s BirthdayHonours list and in 2002 he was created Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts etLettres by the French Government. He was also made an Honorary Memberof the Royal Philharmonic Society in February 2010.

If you have enjoyed this recording perhaps you would like a catalogue listing the many others available on the Hyperion and Helios labels. If so,please write to Hyperion Records Ltd, PO Box 25, London SE9 1AX, England, or email us at info@hyperion-records.co.uk, and we will be pleasedto send you one free of charge.

The Hyperion catalogue can also be accessed on the Internet at www.hyperion-records.co.uk

39

Copyright subsists in all Hyperion recordings and it is illegal to copy them, in whole or in part, for any purpose whatsoever, withoutpermission from the copyright holder, Hyperion Records Ltd, PO Box 25, London SE9 1AX, England. Any unauthorized copyingor re-recording, broadcasting, or public performance of this or any other Hyperion recording will constitute an infringement ofcopyright. Applications for a public performance licence should be sent to Phonographic Performance Ltd, 1 Upper James Street,London W1F 9DE

© M

alcolm

Cro

wthe

rs

The Songs of Johannes Brahms ~ 31 Wach auf, mein Herzensschöne WoO33 No 16 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'08]2 Erlaube mir, feins Mädchen WoO33 No 2 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'22]3 Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund WoO33 No 25 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'01]4 Ein Sonett Op 14 No 4 JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER translated from THIBAULT DE CHAMPAGNE . . . . [1'54]5 Ständchen Op 14 No 7 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [3'18]6 Der Kuss Op 19 No 1 LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'51]7 An eine Äolsharfe Op 19 No 5 EDUARD MÖRIKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [4'03]8 Magyarisch Op 46 No 2 GEORG FRIEDRICH DAUMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'54]9 Die Schale der Vergessenheit Op 46 No 3 LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY . . . . . [1'43]bl Am Sonntag Morgen Op 49 No 1 PAUL HEYSE translated from traditional Italian . . . . . . . . . [1'26]bm An ein Veilchen Op 49 No 2 LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'46]bn Sehnsucht Op 49 No 3 JOSEF WENZIG translated from traditional Bohemian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'46]bo Wiegenlied Op 49 No 4 ANONYMOUS / GEORG SCHERER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'01]bp Abenddämmerung Op 49 No 5 ADOLF FRIEDRICH VON SCHACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [4'38]bq Mein wundes Herz verlangt Op 59 No 7 KLAUS GROTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'54]br Im Garten am Seegestade Op 70 No 1 KARL LEMCKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'23]bs Lerchengesang Op 70 No 2 KARL AUGUST CANDIDUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'51]bt Serenade Op 70 No 3 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'21]bu An den Mond Op 71 No 2 KARL JOSEPH SIMROCK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [3'17]cl In Waldeseinsamkeit Op 85 No 6 KARL LEMCKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'35]cm Auf dem Schiffe Op 97 No 2 CHRISTIAN REINHOLD, pseudonym of CHRISTIAN KÖSTLIN . . . . . . . [1'07]cn Es hing der Reif Op 106 No 3 KLAUS GROTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'52]co Ein Wanderer Op 106 No 5 CHRISTIAN REINHOLD, pseudonym of CHRISTIAN KÖSTLIN . . . . . . . . [3'02]cp Die Sonne scheint nicht mehr WoO33 No 5 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'21]cq Wo gehst du hin, du Stolze? WoO33 No 22 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1'18]cr Es steht ein Lind WoO33 No 41 TRADITIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'45]

SIMON BODE tenorGRAHAM JOHNSON piano

CDJ33123

MADE IN ENGLANDwww.hyperion-records.co.uk

HYPERION RECORDS LIMITED . LONDON . ENGLANDBR

AH

MS

TH

E C

OM

PLE

TE

SO

NG

S –

3H

yper

ion

SIM

ON

BO

DE

teno

r· G

RA

HA

M J

OH

NSO

N p

iano

CD

J331

23B

RA

HM

ST

HE

CO

MPL

ET

E SO

NG

S – 3H

yperionSIM

ON

BO

DE

tenor· G

RA

HA

M JO

HN

SON

pianoC

DJ33123

CDJ33123Duration 60'51

DDDThe Songs of Johannes Brahms ~ 31 Wach auf, mein Herzensschöne WoO33 No 16 [2'08]

2 Erlaube mir, feins Mädchen WoO33 No 2 [1'22]

3 Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund WoO33 No 25 [2'01]

4 Ein Sonett Op 14 No 4 [1'54] 5 Ständchen Op 14 No 7 [3'18]

6 Der Kuss Op 19 No 1 [1'51] 7 An eine Äolsharfe Op 19 No 5 [4'03]

8 Magyarisch Op 46 No 2 [2'54] 9 Die Schale der Vergessenheit Op 46 No 3 [1'43]

bl Am Sonntag Morgen Op 49 No 1 [1'26] bm An ein Veilchen Op 49 No 2 [2'46]

bn Sehnsucht Op 49 No 3 [1'46] bo Wiegenlied Op 49 No 4 [2'01]

bp Abenddämmerung Op 49 No 5 [4'38]

bq Mein wundes Herz verlangt Op 59 No 7 [1'54]

br Im Garten am Seegestade Op 70 No 1 [2'23] bs Lerchengesang Op 70 No 2 [2'51]

bt Serenade Op 70 No 3 [1'21] bu An den Mond Op 71 No 2 [3'17]

cl In Waldeseinsamkeit Op 85 No 6 [2'35] cm Auf dem Schiffe Op 97 No 2 [1'07]

cn Es hing der Reif Op 106 No 3 [2'52] co Ein Wanderer Op 106 No 5 [3'02]

cp Die Sonne scheint nicht mehr WoO33 No 5 [1'21]

cq Wo gehst du hin, du Stolze? WoO33 No 22 [1'18]

cr Es steht ein Lind WoO33 No 41 [2'45]

SIMON BODE tenorGRAHAM JOHNSON piano