These ‘folk-songs’ are numerous. From opus 7 we may select two very beautiful songs for special mention—namely, the Volkslied and ‘The Mournful One,’ the latter one of Brahms’ finest expressive melodies. Opus 14 is a treasure. ‘Before the Window’ is a thing of great beauty. ‘Going to My Sweetheart’ has a humorous touch, which Brahms could get inimitably. But it is very restrained; the melody is so very simple that for a moment it seems almost trivial. The ‘Serenade’ and ‘Longing’ from the same group are delightful. From opus 47 we should mention ‘Sunday’ and from opus 48 ‘Joy Hath Left Me,’ a fine song in the style of an old German chorale. In opus 69 are an exquisite ‘Lament’ and the delicious song, ‘The Lover’s Oath.’ ‘The Maiden,’ in opus 95, is a dialogue between the girl and the reflection of her face in the water. The words are a Servian popular poem and the music is in an irregular metre which is peculiar to the Slavic races. Brahms’ last group of lyrics, the Gypsy Songs, opus 103, are beyond all praise. These eight songs, written when the composer was past middle age, have all the fire and ardor of early youth just awakened to its powers. There is in them a frenzy of animal spirits which befits their Gypsy words. In them we seem to hear the message of that fine Hungarian song:
‘Brechen muss das Herz vor freude oder Leid;
Das allein heisst bei den Ungarn Fröhlichkeit.’
The Gypsy Songs, all in strophic form, are very short. Into a few seconds of melody Brahms injects his musical message. Not a note is wasted. The mood is carried over with perfect accuracy and conviction. The songs are all nicely contrasted. Each might be a tiny movement from a symphony, multum in parvo. There is an allegro agitato, an allegretto, an allegro giocoso, a vivace grazioso, an andantino grazioso, and so on. Each song has a very distinct ‘style,’ as modern critics would say. The mood is established at the first note and maintained until the last. The melodies themselves are altogether charming. But a mere knowledge of the melodies will not suggest the thrilling effect which these songs make when well sung in a large hall. The startling effectiveness of many of the Brahms songs is the best answer to the charge that Brahms is academic and pedantic. It is hard to select any best out of these eight songs. ‘The Nut Brown Lad’ is perhaps the most popular of them, but the charm of each is so distinct that a comparison is difficult. ‘Three Roses in a Row’ is a delicate melody of great beauty. The vigorous ‘Hey, Ye Gypsies!’ and the furious ‘Red Evening Clouds’ which closes the series, are overflowing with animal spirits.
Of the pieces which are more specifically art-songs we must admit a gradual change in character corresponding to the general change in Brahms’ music from the ‘romantic’ to the ‘classic.’ Of course, this change has been overemphasized in superficial Brahms criticism. It was not so much Brahms who changed; it was the lay of the land. Music became much more sensuous and free and formless. Brahms became still more himself. The revolutionary Brahms of 1850 was a conservative Brahms in 1880. But, undoubtedly, where Schumann expected him to look forward, Brahms chose in many things to look backward—or, rather, perhaps, to look inward. And so we feel in Brahms’ music as a whole that it becomes stranger and more reserved as the man matures. He became more interested in the things that had ceased to interest the rabble, and less interested in the things which scores of new and radical composers were beginning to do very well. And we can feel this change in his songs. The earliest ones—in opus 3—are filled with the joy of spontaneous creation. The so-called ‘classic’ virtues seemed the last things the composer was thinking about. But the songs were in a pretty strict strophic form and their intelligence was at least equal to their exuberance. And it was these formal and intellectual qualities, and not the others, which were to receive the chief emphasis and intensification as the composer matured. To Schumann, Brahms was the continuer of Schumann. To the world he became the continuer of Beethoven.
The songs of opus 3 are filled with physical energy. ‘Fidelity,’ the first of them, with its accompaniment of throbbing triplets, seems to tap some hidden source of power like a huge dynamo. We cannot see the source but we know there is much more where that came from. ‘Love and Spring’ suggests certain of the later Brahms qualities and the song from ‘Ivan’ seems like a shooting arrow in the vigor and directness of its expression. The same physical energy is shown in the ‘Spanish Song,’ in bolero tempo, in opus 6; and the peculiarly rich Brahms modulation is again revealed in ‘As the Clouds.’ The ‘Nightingale’ song from the same group is the first to foreshadow the increased technical elaboration which Brahms was later to give his accompaniments. Here the fluttering triplets in the piano are meant to suggest the winging of the birds, but it is easy to see that the purely technical problem which they created had fascinated the composer. And, except for this technical care, such an accompaniment would have overbalanced the melody. The Anklänge of opus 7 has an elaborate syncopated accompaniment which shows the continuation of the technical concern; ‘The Return,’ from the same series, is another example of Brahms’ unsurpassed power to pour great energy into small compass. In opus 19 there are two more songs of the highest quality. One is ‘The Smith,’ to Uhland’s words, perhaps the shortest of all Brahms’ songs and certainly one of the most overwhelmingly effective. The maiden who speaks in Uhland’s delicious poem tells admiringly of her lover, who is a smith and who works all day amid the grime and the sparks. The melody, with that strange and very Brahmsian avoidance of the regular balancing of phrases which seems physically to condense great energy in a small compass, seems a succession of hammer blows. Each note has a ponderous weight of its own, but a weight which is followed by a fine rebound. The accompaniment, which is obviously intended to suggest flying sparks, is magically adapted to the peculiarities of the pianoforte. The short postlude, and, indeed, the whole of the accompaniment, is strikingly Wagnerian, recalling very closely the Valkyrie’s cry in Die Walküre. Such a detail is only one more proof of the foolishness of the artificial rivalry which stupid critics set up between Wagner and Brahms. The two men were great artists working in very different lines. As for their musical ideas, they could almost, at times, have been interchanged. The second remarkable song of opus 19 is the ‘Æolian Harp,’ one of the three or four most admired of all Brahms’ lyrics. This is one of the few that are in quite free form. It is almost a scena rather than a song, since it opens with a recitative and is interrupted in the middle with free declamation. The Æolian harp sings in the west wind the lament of a Greek boy who had been taken to a distant land. Here Brahms’ marvellously colored harmonies have created a peculiar beauty which quite escapes analysis.
As we come to the more mature work we find the mere animal spirits less frequently in the foreground. We feel more and more the qualities of control and dominant intellectuality. Not that these songs are better than their predecessors, for some of the earliest ones are finished masterpieces which could hardly be improved. Nor (let it be repeated) does Brahms’ fund of musical ideas become less fresh or less charming. But the composer had begun to show at their best the qualities which have chiefly given him a place in modern music. The second song of opus 32 is a triumphant justification of this mature Brahms. The song is entitled only with a number, but it can be known by its first line, Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen! Here is intellectuality in song writing at its best. Brahms never wrote a finer song; few composers, if any, have done so. Its popularity may always be limited, but it is surely one of the great songs of musical literature. Here, as nowhere else, Brahms has observed the rhythmic and quantitative values of his text to the last letter. The words, which are in a moody, reflective vein, are treated almost in declamatory fashion. Every rise or fall of the voice finds its expression in the melodic line of the voice part. The tempo is a slow 3/2, and through this winds the melody, now breaking off suddenly, as though gasping for breath, now rising sharply, as though choked with pain. If it were pure declamation, it could not be more faithful to the words; if it were pure melody, it could not be more faithful to the spirit. The accompaniment, answering the voice part simply but intensely, and providing a noble bass for the musical texture to be woven upon, shows Brahms’ finest qualities of restraint and perfect fitness. Here is a song which is never exhausted. Let the student play and sing it every day, it will still have something to teach him. Hardly less noble is another song in the same group, So steh’n wir, ich und meine Weide. Its theme has all the dignity of a great andante fugue subject by Bach. The treatment of the piano part, with its definite melody in the bass forming an answer and a sort of canon with the voice, is superb. We may also mention in this opus number the much overrated song, Wie bist du meine Königin, a piece which has doubtless gained its popularity by its passionate fervor, but which in musical beauty and artistic fitness is far inferior to Brahms’ best work.
Famous Modern Singers.
Top: Nellie Melba and Marcella Sembrich
Bottom: Lilli Lehmann and Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Opus 33 comprises a large number of romances from L. Tieck’s Magelone. These songs, which incline to be long and somewhat pretentious, do not maintain the high standard usual with Brahms. There are here rather too much sound and fury. We may, however, mention three which are very fine: ‘Hey, Bow and Arrow,’ a song made of fire and steel; ‘Is It Sorrow?’ deeply emotional; and the lovely ‘Rest, Sweet Love.’ From now on we have merely a steady stream of songs with words garnered from here and there, the music of a very high standard of workmanship and the interest often hidden to the superficial glance. Each song has its individuality which must be sought out by the student. A commentary on all the songs would fill many pages. In opus 43 we find the fine song, ‘With Eternal Love,’ and the barbaric ballad, ‘The Song of Herr von Falkenstein.’ Such intentional crudity as Brahms puts into this latter song should redeem him from any suspicion of pedantry. The ‘Magyar Love Song’ of opus 46 treats the words with unusual freedom even for Brahms. The same can be said for ‘Gold Outweighs Love,’ in opus 48. Opus 49 offers us an interesting song, ‘On Sunday Morning,’ and the famous Lullaby. In opus 57 we have ‘Motionless Air,’ and in opus 58 ‘Oh, Come, Holy Summer Night,’ both fine enough to be the masterpieces of another man’s output, though they are Brahms’ second best. ‘Twilight Falls,’ of opus 59, is a deeply tragic piece in the folk-mood. In opus 63 we have one song which shows us Brahms as the most thorough technician. The ‘Consolation of Spring’ makes the most elaborate use of syncopation and mixed rhythms, accompanying the 6/4 voice part with a piano part practically in 3/2. ‘Remembrance,’ from the same group, is worth knowing, and ‘O, Would I Knew the Returning Road’ is one of the sweetest of Brahms’ songs.
In opus 66 is one of the daintiest and most humorous of the songs, a duet to folk-words, which might be sung as a solo—‘Have a Care.’ ‘I Call from the Bank,’ in opus 69, is Brahms once more in the generous world of romance. ‘The Maiden’s Curse,’ in the same group, is a fine tragic song set to a Servian folk-poem. It is an interesting question here whether Brahms did not fail entirely to catch the spirit of the words. The maiden, in a dialogue with her mother, curses her lover, who has prevented her from finishing the washing. She hopes he may be hanged (upon her white breast), chained (in her white arms), drowned (in her love), and so on. The point of the song is the double meaning of the curses. Brahms has treated the words as the passionate rhetoric of love. But it is probable that the poem, in its true spirit, is a comic song. The second part of each curse should probably be delivered sotto voce, so that the mother shall not hear. In such a reading there would be a delightful comic contrast between the coarse hussy which the girl pretends to be and the sentimental love-sick maiden that she is. Brahms makes no sort of distinction between the two parts of the curses and the song in his hands attains a certain tragic intensity by virtue of the girl’s defiance of her mother.