In the modern world where we can be constantly in touch with each other, no matter how far separated across the globe, we should spare a compassionate thought for those many lovers since the time of Ulysses and Penelope who have been separated, sometimes for many years, at a time when there was no technology, nor even any kind of postal service. The traveller’s longed-for reappearance (if it ever happened) was a matter of daily hope and disappointment, also occasionally (as in
Parole) overwhelmingly joyous surprise. In the recital repertoire the most famous example of the sadder scenario is
Au pays où se fait la guerre. As in this famous Duparc mélodie, the woman in this Brahms song hears sounds that she initially mistakes for signs of her lover’s return.
In Parole, a song seldom performed, landscapes of castles and forests, essential ingredients of Eichendorff’s magic, suggest ancient times, but not before the invention of gunpowder. When she hears a rifle (or a musket) going off she will recognize this as the ‘password’ for her lover’s return. That such a sound should be audible from afar betokens both the quiet and seclusion of her isolated domain, and the idyllic lack of the extraneous noise of modern life.
The introduction (in a major key distant from the song’s minor tonality) strongly recalls the opening of the famous Mendelssohn setting Gruss, but with the added element of a horn call; as the absent lover is a hunter, the depiction of horn music (as in the left-hand chords accompanying the middle two verses, also in the major) is entirely appropriate. The composer declines, however, to mirror the words ‘ein Schuß’ with anything explosive in either voice or piano, although the pianist can choose to vary the dynamic somewhat. These two inner verses are in the major key, but the final strophe reverts to the minor and the music of the first verse. It is here that the semiquaver accompaniment, flowing downwards across both staves, depicts springs gushing forth from cliffs, as well as a twittering chorus of birdsong. This shift to the home key in the minor sets up a move into the tonic major via a number of ingenious modulations, and (unusually for Brahms) a triumphant and almost operatic vocal peroration. This is one of the few love stories in his lieder that seem to lead to a happy conclusion, although the postlude’s unexpected diminuendo to a concluding piano chord reminds us that triumph can be undermined at any time, and in a very Brahmsian way, by unexpected disappointment.
from notes by Graham Johnson © 2019