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

The opening crotchets, both accented, point a finger of accusation. The mezzo staccato vocal line and well-paced thirds alternating in the accompaniment suggest ordered daintiness. 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 information passed surreptitiously from person to person. At ‘Als sie mir’s sagten’ the music is marked animato and suddenly the secret is out in the open, if not the young man’s anguished response which, for shame, he keeps behind closed doors. In the meantime he pretends not to care one way or the other. The contrast between the seemingly unconcerned ‘fing ich an zu singen’ in C major, and the highly strung chromaticism of ‘die Hände wund zu ringen’ is masterly. Everything about small-town life in an imaginary Italy is here encapsulated: outward respectability, jealousy, the saving of face, as well as an exaggerated and quick-fire emotional reaction to even a whiff of anything untoward. The whole thing could be wild supposition; whatever the gossips have come to tell this young man, the young lady may be visiting her uncle, a priest in the next village, and innocent of any impropriety. But this is a misunderstanding perhaps to be resolved in another of these wonderful picture-postcard Tuscan rispetti. Without such dramas how dull life would be!

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

The Italian theme continues undercover in the next song of the opus; Hölty’s poem is loosely based on Sonetto XIV by Giovanni 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 adjustments of J H Voss. The general consensus of scholars today is that Hölty, who died young, did not need to be rescued by his contemporaries and that the original poems are fresher than the edited versions. The nineteenth century, however, did not see it that way.

On this occasion Brahms chooses to ignore the eleven-syllable metre that governs the eight highly polished lines of Hölty’s poem; this allows him to repeat words and phrases, if not exactly with impunity, then with a musical hand freed of inhibition. We are so swept away with the delight and delicacy of this music that we scarcely notice that the poet has written a highly polished classical ode. A glance at the printed poem above will show the listener that Brahms’s musical shape is rather 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 butterflies creating 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. In the third bar a genuinely touching melody appears, offset from these pianistic murmurings like violets peeping out from their surrounding foliage (Schubert’s Nachtviolen comes to mind), or like a linked constellation of stars pricked out in the heavens.

By the time we reach the words ‘Diese Quelle besucht!’ at the top of the second page, the riddle of this allusive accompaniment is explained: this is of course water music (the beloved is visiting a spring) and Brahms’s means of depicting the gentle bubbling of water is worthy of Schubert, who was the absolute master of water music in all its shapes and forms. The patterns that govern the greatest accompaniments are capable of variation and versatility and thus it is no surprise that at the words ‘Entpflückt sie lächelnd’ the crisp and decisive gesture of plucking a flower is also appropriate to the texture of this piano-writing (if it is not over pedalled), and that the music seems to smile effortlessly at the same time as the beloved does so. Once the lucky violet adorns her breast the vicariously excited poet exhorts it to nestle ever closer to his lady’s heart. For this undercover task the accompaniment changes: chords are tenderly pressed between the hands in syncopated alternation, the music overflows into 9/8, and the airy delicacy of the opening has been supplanted by something more urgently erotic. The rising sequence of ‘dich ihr ans Herz’ set twice is giddily ecstatic. ‘Und sag’ ihr’ signposts and heralds the message consigned to the flower in its new role as the lover’s spokesman with privileged access. A small interlude allows the poet to collect himself, as if he needs time to get his overexcited thoughts into order and find exactly the right words. These intervening bars also facilitate a gracious and perfectly timed return to E major. At ‘Daß die Tropfen in deinem blauen Kelche’ (the beginning of the communication the violet is charged to deliver) the accompaniment is the same and yet not the same; those familiar E major harmonies are recycled in a less bubbly texture that glows in the dark rather than shimmers in sunlight. The beloved is to be informed that the dew-bedecked violet is really the repository of the poet’s tears. The song’s final page winds down, the music receding into itself, as if the flower were withering and dying, but it is the poet who has a death wish and he talks of his passing (with a marvellous tonal shift on the first appearance of the word ‘Tod’). Is this a threat or the manipulative tugging of heartstrings? We are reminded that the poem is Italian and something like a rispetto: the whole of this floral conceit is Zappi’s roundabout and exaggerated way of praising the beloved’s beauty and of telling her he can’t live without her—until the next girl comes along. The surprise is that such an idea, not particularly original, should have been taken so seriously by Brahms and inspired from him such an out-and-out masterpiece.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

Composed by the summer of 1868, published in November 1868. The song’s autograph is in private hands.
E major (original key), 6/8 Andante

Hölty’s poem is loosely based on Sonetto XIV by Giambattista Felice Zappi (1667-1719), beginning thus: ‘O Violetta bella, che ti stai / Tra foglia e foglia infra la molle erbetta’. Brahms chooses to ignore the eleven-syllable metre that governs the eight lines of Hölty’s poem, a highly polished classical ode; this allows him to repeat words and phrases so felicitously that we scarcely notice that the song is constructed in such a way as to suggest an entirely different versification from that of the poet.

The tempo is andante, but once the accompanying semiquavers have begun to flutter between the hands, creating a shimmer of sound, the impression is not of a slow song. In the third bar a genuinely touching melody appears, offset from these pianistic murmurings like a violet peeping out from its surrounding foliage (Schubert’s Nachtviolen comes to mind), or like a star pricked out in the heavens. By the time we reach the words ‘Diese Quelle besucht!’ we realize that these semiquaver ripplings are really water music (the beloved is visiting a spring) and that this accompaniment is worthy of the many instances of Schubert’s aqueous wizardry.

Once the lucky violet adorns the beloved’s breast, the vicariously excited poet exhorts it to nestle ever closer to his lady’s heart. For this undercover task the accompaniment changes: chords are tenderly pressed between the hands in syncopated alternation, the music overflows into 9/8, and the airy delicacy of the opening is supplanted by something more urgently erotic. The rising sequence of ‘dich ihr ans Herz’, set three times, is giddily ecstatic. ‘Und sag ihr’ signposts and heralds the message consigned to the flower in its new role as the lover’s spokesman with privileged access. A small interlude facilitates a gracious and perfectly timed return to E major. At ‘Daß die Tropfen in deinem blauen Kelche’ (the beginning of the communication the violet is charged to deliver) the accompaniment is the same, and yet not the same; those familiar E major harmonies are recycled in a less bubbly texture that glows in the dark rather than shimmering in sunlight. The beloved is to be informed that the dew-bedecked violet is really the repository of the poet’s tears.

The song’s final page winds down, as if the flower were withering and dying, but it is the poet who has a death wish and talks of his passing (with a marvellous tonal shift on the first appearance of the word ‘Tod’) with the pathos born of an exaggerated Italian rispetto, that genre of pithy love poetry where death is often, and almost casually, poetically invoked. Brahms takes the poem seriously, however—for him it is a German, not Italian, outpouring—and it has inspired him to compose an out-and-out masterpiece.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2020

This strange and demanding song is seldom performed. It is divided into two distinct sections each of which seems almost eccentrically exaggerated in terms of expression. The excuse for this is of course the literary provenance of the text, Josef Wenzig’s Westslavischer Märchenschatz. One of the purposes of Brahms’s introducing such folksong-derived poetry into his song composing life was, as he saw it, to shake up the genteel refinements of an art form stuck perennially in the bookish and upper middle class grooves of Goethe, Schiller or Eichendorff on the one hand, and post-Heinean sentimental salon effusions on the other. Poetry of the Wenzig variety was authentic new blood, and if the result was sometimes songs that were clumsy or awkward, larger than life, or even emotional in a confrontational way—so be it! This Sehnsucht is a far more violent and potentially destructive emotion than we usually encounter in the German song repertoire.

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

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

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

The Brahms Cradle Song (Wiegenlied, Op 49 No 4), is a contemplative study characterized by much arpeggiation and the use of suspensions, with the first statement of the melody cast in the tenor range of the keyboard—a favoured treatment by Grainger.

from notes by Barry Peter Ould © 2002

La Cradle Song de Brahms (Wiegenlied, op. 49 no4) est une étude contemplative caractérisée par de nombreux arpèges et l’utilisation de retards, la mélodie étant la première fois énoncée dans le registre de ténor du clavier—un des procédés favoris de Grainger.

extrait des notes rédigées par Barry Peter Ould © 2002
Français: Josée Bégaud

Das Wiegenlied von Brahms (Op. 49, Nr. 4) ist eine besinnliche Studie. Zu den Charakteristika gehören die vielen Arpeggierungen und Haltebögen, wobei die Melodie erstmals im Tenorregister des Klaviers erscheint—eine von Grainger bevorzugte Technik.

aus dem Begleittext von Barry Peter Ould © 2002
Deutsch: Viola Scheffel

It would be hard to imagine a more different song to follow the overwrought Sehnsucht of Op 49 No 3, and one of many indications that Brahms did not have a subtly interconnecting programme in mind when preparing these songs for publication under the umbrella of a single opus number. If Opus 49 is to receive a complete performance by a single singer, 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 parental devotion, is almost always sung by female singers and a male performance makes for an interesting change. Brahms never composed a more famous song, or one that exerts a permanently tenacious hold on the public imagination: Brahms Cradle Song, a poem from Wendy Cope’s recent Family Values (2011), begins: ‘I’ve heard it on the radio / Twice this week …’ It has been subjected to so many awful arrangements that one can forget what a peerless masterpiece it is, with a tonic pedal appearing on the first beat and hypnotically sustained for thirty-six bars. The poem for the first verse is age old with a provenance that goes back to Des Knaben Wunderhorn and beyond; the second derives from Scherer’s Die schönsten deutschen Volkslieder, adapted by Brahms to fit the music. The song was written ‘for the happy use’ of Bertha Faber, née Porubsky, on the birth of her second child. She was a Viennese girl who had joined Brahms’s choir in Hamburg at the age of seventeen and who had remained friendly with the composer when he moved to Vienna in 1862. In Hamburg she 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 of musical nostalgia recycled by Brahms in a way that was entirely typical of his way of showing affection, his attraction to the young mother sublimated in unobtrusive technical musical mastery.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

Any pianist on encountering this song for the first time will notice that the undulating thirds in the key of E major bear an uncanny resemblance to those that accompany ‘Soave sia il vento’, sung by Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. The sixth line of Schack’s lyric (in the poem’s second strophe) refers to moist evening breezes, but the connection between Schack and the Da Ponte trio in E major goes further than this single image: Schack promises joy after the long sorrow of separation, a blessed peace that descends from heaven; Da Ponte with his gentles breezes and waves 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 clearly defined part-writing and an extended bass pedal; we might also imagine the participation of woodwind and strings. When the voice in quasi-instrumental fashion initiates its welcome to the twilight hour (‘Sei willkommen, Zwielichtstunde!’) it dovetails 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 note. With mighty musical ghosts such as these presiding at the birth of Abenddämmerung it is clear that Brahms took the song very seriously indeed. Whatever his own religious convictions, or lack of them, he treats Schack’s poem as a kind of religious 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 a remembered journey, the journey of an entire lifetime, and then another Mozartian resonance comes to mind—the song Abendempfindung, of which Abenddämmerung is a Brahmsian equivalent, the gathering together of evening thoughts in preparation for the soul’s onward journey. There is no room here for romanticized variations of tempo and gratuitous rubato, although the disruption of seraphic certainty is planned for later in the setting. For the poem’s second verse the plush Così fan tutte undulations are temporarily replaced by rising semiquaver arpeggios shared between the hands, but this 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—trademark hemiolas and trompe-l’oreille conflict between voice and accompaniment where four crotchets’ worth of semiquavers in every bar seem to turn into six disorientating groups of triplets. This A major section incorporates two searching verses of poetry; aided by the marking sempre un poco animato, this music provides the necessary turbulence and sense of striving to break the almost monotonous security of the eighteenth-century-inspired pulse that has so far driven the song ineluctably forward. Clara Schumann did not like this passage and made it clear to Brahms that she preferred the E major section. But it is a necessary foil, a moment of struggle (a musical metaphor for passing though the various tribulations of life itself) that must be endured and surmounted in order to give any significant meaning to the resolution of the final verse. When this arrives we return to the safe certainties of those wonderful thirds in E major; it is as if a ship, hitherto in danger, has reached the safety of port at last. And this reminds us once again of Così fan tutte and of a trio where angels could 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; after all, themes of remembered childhood and lasting love were always dear to him. Nevertheless, the placing of this setting in a kind of stylized baroque frame could serve as the composer’s defence against criticism for writing a song that describes the afterlife. The evocation of Bach-like certainties plus the blessing of an extra-terrestrial Mozart, make of this piece an oblique homage to two great composers and the unquestioning pieties of the past. One also senses how deeply Brahms might have wished to have lived in an age when an unshakeable belief in such fairytale endings was shared by everyone as a matter of course.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011