Like the much earlier
Spanisches Lied, Op 6 No 1, this song has Brahms in Mediterranean mode, with touches of harmonic colour and a gentle rhythmic swing (a mournful bolero) that evoke a discreetly Spanish style. Spain is not mentioned as such, but we know we are somewhere in the warm south with mention of a vine-covered trellis, a balcony and cypresses. In the poem’s fourth verse we hear the name Dolores (chosen no doubt to rhyme with ‘Ohres’) and the Iberian inspiration of the poem comes into focus. Besides, Adolf von Schack is far more likely to have written about Spain than Italy as he was an expert on Spanish history at the time of the Moors. A north German who ended up a Bavarian grandee by adoption, Schack was also a great collector of paintings (one can still visit the Schack-Galerie in Munich). He is a useful, rather than a great, poet (a better-known Schack serenade than this one is the famous
Ständchen of Richard Strauss) but the three Brahms settings of his poems (
Abenddämmerung, Op 49 No 5, and
Herbstgefühl, Op 48 No 7, are the other titles) are all substantial and special songs.
This serenader plays on a zither according to the poet—‘Zither’ conveniently rhymes with the word ‘Gitter’ (the latticed window that screens the demure beloved, also appearing, featuring another Dolores, in William Walton’s song to Edith Sitwell’s Through gilded trellises). The zither is hardly a portable serenading instrument, but fortunately in this case, and also in Schumann’s Der Hidalgo to a poem of Geibel (who also rhymes ‘Zither’ with ‘Gitter’), the word can encompass, with poetic license, a number of stringed instruments; it may be translated, at a pinch, as lyre or lute. The gently staccato accompaniment suggests that Brahms had the strumming of a guitar in mind, as well as the sound of fountains plashing gently into the marble basins mentioned in the poem’s first verse. (Unlike the previous song on this album, the falling water—‘das Wasser niedertropfend’—does not emanate from the skies.) The serenader’s heart palpitates with longing, and this too falls within the illustrative remit of this kind of accompaniment. The choice of minor key betokens a suit without much hope of success.
Broadly speaking, Brahms casts this song as a rondo, A-B-A-C-A, where the length of the each section is different, and where melodic lines are always slightly altered better to suit the words. The A section is the initial serenade, the first fourteen bars of the song, the poem’s first verse. The B section is the second verse where the music passes through a number of different keys before reaching the dominant where the singer’s feelings are reflected in a more active vocal line supported by swathes of left-hand semiquavers. For verse three we hear what seems to be a return of the A section (although subtly varied). For the C section, 6/8 expands into a sensual 9/8 with euphonious thirds and sixths in the pianist’s right hand, intervals symbolic of the dearly desired intertwining of hearts and limbs. There is nothing quite like this music in all of Brahms, three verses of poetry and twenty-six bars of music addressed to the lovely Dolores that seem fashioned from the ghost of an Italian, rather than Spanish, popular song, but too serious to be intended as a parody. We also feel we are being allowed a forbidden glimpse of Brahms’ own delighted response to the girls of the south. At this point Brahms cuts the fifth and sixth verses of Schack’s nine-strophe poem. The poem’s seventh verse (now the song’s fifth) is altered by the composer with a tiny, but meaningful change: at ‘O dem Freund nur eine Stunde’, ‘nur’ (only) replaces the poet’s ‘noch’ (once more) which implied that he had already sampled Dolores’ delights. Brahms identifies more closely with a protagonist who has never experienced reciprocation: at ‘Freund’ and ‘Stunde’ piquant and untypical harmonic clashes in the accompaniment underline the singer’s, as well as the composer’s, longing. The return to 6/8 and the lilting serenading music of section A of this rondo (verse six of the poem as set to music) is extended by reminiscences of the B section—this on account of Schack’s near repeat of the second verse of his poem for the poem’s (and the song’s) conclusion.
A masterly coda, including six final bars for the piano alone, brings this remarkable song to a close. It was criticized by Max Friedländer for not being Spanish enough—and it is true that one would be surprised to find it today in a programme devoted to Spain—but the erotic middle section is unique, as sensual, and self-revealing, a passage as we might ever expect to find in the lieder of Brahms.
from notes by Graham Johnson © 2018