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

The introduction has a rainbow of crotchets descending the stave in evenly spaced thirds; Brahms has known how to make magic out of such a simple motif since the Andante espressivo movement of his Piano Sonata in F minor Op 5. In this song contrary-motion mezzo staccato quavers ascend in the left hand. This conjunction of 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 top of the trees, shrouding them in mystery, and blurs the contour of old emotions that have been softened and changed by time. This is a song full of apt illustration: as soon as the branches of the trees begin to move in the breeze, left-hand duplets quicken into triplets; the buffeting of waves in the piano-writing at ‘Die Wellen schlagen zum Strande’ is effortlessly suggested between the hands. Tangible pictures such as these are only part of the charm of a song that is largely impressionistic: after ‘Die Vöglein singen sacht’ the evocation of birdsong in single syncopated notes in the pianist’s right hand—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 drifting interlude the two hands of the pianist are brought together in organized ensemble at ‘Das gibt ein Musizieren’; this signifies the making of music—a gathering of resources whereby trees, waves and birds are coordinated into chorus.

In the Debussy songs the poet Verlaine specifies a nightingale. One suspects that, in his mind’s eye, Brahms has placed this seaside vignette in the early evening, and that the bird he has in mind is indeed a nightingale, harbinger of unrequited or unhappy 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 sea mists of nostalgia and regret.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

In the wake of the Franco-Prussian War Brahms was taken by the patriotic verses of Karl Candidus, although he preferred to set to music the more gentle lyrics of this Alsatian poet who became a Protestant minister in Odessa and died in the Crimea. Candidus, like Lemke, seems to have released in Brahms a passing fondness for a musical style that might be termed impressionistic. Lerchengesang is highly prized by those who find a great deal of the more intense Brahms heavy and 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 pianist tentatively essays the stretch of a tenth, a physical metaphor for reaching out to touch the unattainable—perhaps in an attempt to crystallize half-forgotten memories.

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

The interlude between the two musical strophes (each taking four lines of the poem) is a subtly varied version of the introduction. The same applies to the song’s second verse which at first sight appears to be a repeat of the first but which is in fact different in many details. As the singer turns inward (‘Ich schließe leis mein Auge’) the music of the larks is no longer the song’s primary focus, but it has set in train a moment of introspection both blissful and painful. The crystalline sounds of the treble clef continue in the accompaniment but the vocal line is a third lower. In the first verse the music for ‘Der Lerchen himmlische Grüße’ had delighted us; in the corresponding place in the second verse, the unaccompanied tenderness of ‘Da ziehn Erinnerungen’ seems infinitely sad, even without a hint of the minor key. This phrase is elongated to include a poignant mention of twilight where the difference between the D sharp of the previous phrase and the D natural 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, the larks continue their song into infinity; at first it seems the postlude will be allowed simply to melt away but the lowest note of the piece has been reserved for the solemnity of the closing bar: in the breath of springtime renewal there is also closure, an intimation of mortality.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

The poetry of Candidus, an Alsatian poet who became a Protestant minister in Odessa and died in the Crimea, came into the hands of Brahms in 1870, the time of the Franco-Prussian war when the Rhineland was the main bone of contention between the Germans and the French. In this regard, the patriotic poet’s background almost certainly increased the composer’s sympathy for his work.

The poetry of Candidus, like that of Lemcke, seems also to have released in Brahms a passing fondness for a musical style that might be termed somewhat impressionistic. I first heard this song in a performance on a 78 disc by the great tenor Karl Erb and was transported; it sounded so much more ethereal, with far fewer notes, than one would normally associate with Brahms. The etiolated 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 pianist tentatively essays the stretch of a tenth, a physical metaphor for reaching out to touch the unattainable—perhaps in an attempt to crystallize half-forgotten memories.

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

The interlude between the two musical strophes (each taking four lines of the poem) is a subtly varied version of the introduction. The same applies to the song’s second verse which at first sight appears to be a repeat of the first but which is in fact different in many details. As the singer turns inward (‘Ich schließe leis mein Auge’) the music of the larks is no longer the song’s primary focus, but it has set in train a moment of introspection both blissful and painful. The crystalline sounds of the treble clef continue in the accompaniment but the vocal line is a third lower. In the first verse the music for ‘Der Lerchen himmlische Grüße’ had delighted us; in the corresponding place in the second verse, the unaccompanied tenderness of ‘Da ziehn Erinnerungen’ seems infinitely sad, even without a hint of the minor key. This phrase is elongated to include a poignant mention of twilight where the difference between the D sharp of the previous phrase and the D natural 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, the larks continue their song into infinity; at first it seems the postlude will be allowed simply to melt away but the lowest note of the piece has been reserved for the solemnity of the closing bar: in the breath of springtime renewal there is also closure, an intimation of mortality.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2019

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. The lyric 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 female characters, 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 Brahms translates into music in a most unusual way: the opening words ‘Liebliches’ is set to a descending phrase of quavers—D sharp, C sharp, B. At the distance of a dotted crotchet the 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, laborious in explanation, winsome in effect, is applied throughout the first page of the song; one Rugantino phrase in sung quavers is followed by the same notes played in diminution, two little sets of semiquavers, one for each of the girls, all within the context of an ingenious canon between voice and piano.

The music is everything that is required, charming and ingratiating and somewhat condescending to the fairer sex in the Italian 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 a more straightforward mirroring of the vocal quavers by pianistic ones at the distance of a bar: it is as if Rugantino has now focused 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 teacher Christian Gottlieb Neefe (1748–1798). It is from Neefe that Brahms has taken the title of the song, Serenade, and not Serenate as printed in the Peters edition. There are also two settings by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and much later ones by Bruch and Medtner.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2011

The song appears in the Peters edition as Serenate (instead of the correct Serenade) and that is not the only confusion surrounding this lyric from Goethe’s Singspiel, Claudine von Villa Bella. The singer is Rugantino, a Sicilian bandit, whose real name is Carlos von Castellvecchio. In the second act there is a Così fan tutte-like mix-up between him and his brother Pedro; Carlos is in love with Lucinde, and Pedro with Claudine, and there are surviving Schubert arias from his lost Goethe opera (only the first act survives) for both these women. Although we know that Schubert assigned the song to Pedro in the second act of his lost opera, it is in fact sung by Rugantino (Carlos) and is teasingly addressed to both the ladies. Brahms perhaps knew settings of this famous lyric by Neefe and Reichardt.

This is a short song of considerable charm and skill. The melody is a model of tender spontaneity but, like everything in Brahms, sensuality is underpinned by formidable, some would say intrusive, musical technique. The whole song is a kind of canon between voice and piano where the three opening quavers of the vocal line in almost every bar are immediately echoed by the same notes in semiquavers in the piano, a diminution that emphasizes the nature of the word ‘Kind’ as well as the singer’s delight in smallness and delicacy. Sams describes this musical process as depicting ‘deliberate yet unobtrusive teasing’. The way these semiquavers are written as they descend the stave (the left hand semiquavers artfully ascend) suggests a caress, the pianist lightly stroking the keys as hands meander from one tessitura to the other: a musical metaphor for wandering eyes and, if given half a chance, the very thing demonstrated at the keyboard—wandering fingers.

This is one of those rare Brahms songs where there is a gentle smile on the face of the singer from beginning to end. Of course this music has a gently seductive intent, and its Italian scenario has encouraged the composer to produce a stylization that owes its lazy good humour to the warmth of the southern lands, perhaps despite the formidable and venerable stature of its poet. (Brahms avoided most of the serious Goethe and took care not to revisit territory conquered by Schubert.) In the seventh line of the poem Brahms sets ‘betrüben’, most probably a simple misreading of Goethe’s original ‘betrügen’, but one which largely maintains the rhyme with ‘Vergnügen’.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2018

Neither Keller’s poem, nor Brahms’s setting of it, found much favour with the composer’s friends. Elizabet von Herzogenberg, Clara Schumann and Theodor Billroth (three of the closest) were annoyed that what they regarded as the Swiss poet’s cumbersome and fulsome self-doubt had been given such eloquent musical voice. Brahms had just had a bruising encounter with Wagner (who had recently demanded back a manuscript of Tannhäuser in Brahms’s possession that had been acquired in good faith); the whole question of Brahms’s immortality and the reputation he might, or might not, enjoy after his death (supposedly in contrast with the all-conquering master of Bayreuth) is examined in this song with what the Brahms circle took to be undue modesty. As far as his close friends were concerned there was no doubt as to Brahms’s importance and genius in the here and now (not only in some indeterminate future) and he was letting down the side of musical conservatism by indulging in such deference. These reactions are interesting as no one at the time seems to have interpreted the poem as being about Keller’s own prospects of immortality, as opposed to the composer’s. This reinforces our general impression that unlike Wolf’s settings of poetry for the poetry’s sake, Brahms allowed the content of his chosen poems to form a personally revealing diary of emotions, especially when the poet’s experiences or moods matched his own. The subjectivity of the composer’s adoptions of his texts was understood by his friends; it was on this account that Clara Schumann’s disapproval of some of Brahms’s poems seems tinged with personal censure.

From the purely musical point of view the song is one of the composer’s richest and most deeply felt—perhaps because Brahms was clever enough to realize that it would take a century or so for his own musical innovations to be heard as such and equally valued with Wagner’s—and he was prepared to wait to receive his due. His self-doubts are the sign of a truly modest man. In the introduction we hear drops of rain and the staccato marking should be continued for the opening six bars. The accompaniment for the passage about ‘Der Wanderer’ moves into flowing quavers; this is recognizable as a salute to a Schubert song of that name—not the famous Schmidt von Lübeck setting D489, but Der Wanderer D649 with its Schlegel text and philosophical reflections. There is a deep affinity between the chromatic contours of bars 11–14 of the Schubert song and bars 17–22 of the Brahms. (Schubert is surely the supreme example of a composer who had to wait decades for posterity to catch up with his true worth.) For the third verse of the poem the music leaves the minor key and opts for an unequivocal C major in a new tempo—Leise und feierlich—and a solemnity appropriate to the exposition of an artistic credo. This music with its generously serene melody is recapitulated, with some changes, for the poem’s fifth verse. The words ‘Der Ehre Regenbogen stehn’ are repeated by way of envoy, and the six-bar postlude, with a succession of chords tracing the shape of a rainbow in the sky, is one of the composer’s loveliest. The entire song lifts a mood of resignation, familiar enough in Brahms songs, to a higher plane of wisdom, patience and serenity.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2010