Brahms: The Solo Songs

What follows is a list of all Brahms's songs for solo voice and piano. 

You'll will find links to large numbers of the songs. Please click on the name of the individual song. As Brahms's lieder are one of the most neglected parts of his output, however, you will find that quite a few are missing. Sorry about that.

Sometimes (though not very often) a whole opus number will be available for listening, so please click on the Op. number (and any continuations therewith) and swallow it down whole.  

Sometimes (but not often) the link to an individual song will take you to a miscellaneous collection of songs, but you should find it easy to locate song you are after (and maybe enjoy the bonus ones whilst you're at it!) 

As you will also notice, though the majority of the links take you to performances by some of the stellar names of lieder singing, quite a few (where no such option is available) carry you to less stellar performances in less than ideal recording quality. Still even those should give you a good flavour of the song in question. 

Hope you have a good rummage through all these largely unknown songs by one of the greatest of all the great composers!

6 Songs, Op.3
1. Liebestreu
2. Liebe und Frühling
3. Liebe und Frühling
4. Lied aus dem Gedicht "Ivan"
5. In der Fremde
6. Lied

6 Songs, Op.6
1. Spanisches Lied
2. Der Frühling
3. Nachwirkung 
4. Juchhe!
5. Wie die Wolke nach der Sonne
6. Nachtigallen schwingen lustig

6 Songs, Op.7
1. Treue Liebe
2. Parole
3. Anklänge
4. Volkslied 
5. Die Trauernde
6. Heimkehr

8 Songs and Romances, Op.14 
1. Vor dem Fenster
2. Vom verwundeten Knaben
3. Murrays Ermordung
4. Ein Sonett 
5. Trennung 
6. Gang zur Liebsten 
7. Ständchen 
8. Sehnsucht

5 Songs, Op.19 
1. Der Kuss 
2. Scheiden und Meiden
3. In der Ferne 
4. Der Schmied
5. An eine Äolsharfe

9 Songs, Op.32 
1. Wie rafft ich mich auf in der Nacht 
2. Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen
3. Ich schleich umher
4. Der Strom, der neben mir verrauschte
5. Wehe, so willst du mich wieder
6. Du sprichst, dass ich mich täuschte 
7. Bitteres zu sagen denkst du 
8. So stehn wir, ich und meine Weide
9. Wie bist du, meine Königin

Romances from Tieck's Liebesgeschichte der schönen Magelone ("Magelone-Lieder"), Op.33
1. Keinen hat es noch gereut 
2. Traun! Bogen und Pfeil sind gut für den Feind
3. Sind es Schmerzen, sind es Freuden
4. Liebe kam aus fernen Landen 
5. So willst du des Armen 
6. Wie soll ich die Freude
7. War es dir
8. Wir müssen uns trennen
9. Ruhe, Süssliebchen
10. So tönet denn
11. Wie schnell verschwindet 
12. Muss es eine Trennung geben
13. Geliebter, wo zaudert
14. Wie froh und frisch
15. Treue Liebe dauert lange

4 Songs, Op.43 
1. Von ewiger Liebe
2. Die Mainacht
3. Ich schell mein Horn
4. Das Lied vom Herrn von Falkenstein

4 Songs, Op.46 
1. Die Kränze
2. Magyarisch
3. Die Schale der Vergessenheit
4. An die Nachtigall

5 Songs, Op.47 
1. Botschaft 
2. Liebesglut
3. Sonntag
4. O liebliche Wangen, ihr macht mir Verlangen
5. Die Liebende schreibt

7 Songs, Op.48 
1. Der Gang zum Liebchen
2. Der Überläufer 
3. Liebesklage des Mädchens 
4. Gold überwieigt die Liebe
5. Trost in Tränen
6. Vergangen ist mir Glück und Heil
7. Herbstgefühl

5 Songs, Op.49 
1. Am Sonntag Morgen
2. An ein Veilchen
3. Sehnsucht 
4. Wiegenlied
5. Abenddämmerung

8 Songs, Op.57 
1. Von waldbekränzter Höhe 
2. Wenn du nur zuweilen lächelst 
3. Es träumte mir 
4. Ach, wende diesen Blick
5. In meiner Nächte Sehnen
6. Strahlt zuweilen auch ein mildes Licht 
7. Die Schnur, die Perl an Perle
8. Unbewegte laue Luft

8 Songs, Op.58 (continued here) 
1. Blinde Kuh 
2. Während des Regens
3. Die Spröde
4. O komme, holde Sommernacht verschwiegen 
5. Schwermut 
6. In der Gasse
7. Vorüber 
8. Serenade

8 Songs, Op.59 
1. Dämmrung senkte sich von oben
2. Auf dem See
3. Regenlied
4. Nachklang
5. Agnes 
6. Eine gute, gute Nacht 
7. Mein wundes Herz verlangt nach milder Ruh 
8. Dein blaues Auge hält so still

9 Songs, Op.63 
1. Frühlingstrost 
2. Erinnerung
3. An ein Bild 
4. An die Tauben
5. Junge Liebe I
6. Junge Liebe II
7. Heimweh I
8. Heimweh II
9. Heimweh III

9 Songs, Op.69 (continued here)
1. Klage I
2. Klage II 
3. Abschied 
4. Der Liebsten Schwur 
5. Tambourliechen 
6. Vom Strande 
7. Über die See 
8. Salome 
9. Mädchenfluch

4 Songs, Op.70 
1. Im Garten am Seegestade 
2. Lerchengesang 
3. Serenade
4. Abendregen

5  Songs, Op.71 
1. Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze! 
2. An den Mond
3. Geheimnis
4. Willst du, dass ich geh'?
5. Minnelied

5 Songs, Op.72 
1. Alte Liebe
2. Sommerfäden 
3. O Kühler Wald
4. Verzagen
5. Unüberwindlich

5 Romances and Songs, Op.84 
1. Sommerabend
2. Der Kranz
3. In den Beeren 
4. Vergebliches Ständchen
5. Spannung

6 Songs, Op.85 
1. Sommerabend
2. Mondenschein
3. Mädchenlied
4. Ade!
5. Frühlingslied
6. In Waldeinsamkeit

6 Songs, Op.86
1. Therese
2. Feldeinsamkeit
3. Nachtwandler
4. Über die Heide
5. Versunken 
6. Todessehnen

2 Songs, Op.91
1. Gestille Sehnsucht
2. Geistliches Wiegenlied

5 Songs, Op.94
1. Mit vierzig Jahren ist der Berg erstiegen 
2. Steig auf, geliebter Schatten
3. Mein Herz ist schwer, mein Auge wacht
4. Sapphische Ode
5. Kein Haus, keine Heimat

7 Songs, Op.95
1. Das Mädchen
2. Bei dir sind meine Gedanken
3. Beim Abschied
4. Der Jäger
5. Vorschneller Schwur
6. Mädchenlied
7. Schön war, das ich dir weihte

4 Songs, Op.96 
1. Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht 
2. Wir wandelten, wir zwei zusammen
3. Es schauen die blumen
4. Meerfahrt

6 Songs, Op.97 
1. Nachtingall
2. Auf dem Schiffe
3. Entführung 
4. Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus 
5. Komm bald
6. Trennung

5 Songs, Op.105
1. Wie Melodien zieht es
2. Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer
3. Klage
4. Auf dem Kirchhofe
5. Verrat

5 Songs, Op.106
1. Ständchen
2. Auf dem See
3. Es hing der Reif
4. Meine Lieder
5. Ein Wanderer

5 Songs, Op.107
1. An die Stolze
2. Salamander
3. Das Mädchen spricht
4. Maienkätzchen
5. Mädchenlied

Vier ernste gesänge, op. 121 ('Four serious songs')
1. Denn es gehet dem Menschen
2. Ich wandte mich und sahe
3. O Tod, wie bitter
4. Wenn ich mit Menschen under mit Engelzungen

Regenlied (without opus)

The Waltz VI: Love-Song Waltzes

As the Strauss Family reached its peak of fame in the 1860s, Johannes Brahms took to writing waltzes. Brahms adored the music of Johann Strauss II, famously writing "unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms" over a quotation of the theme from The Blue Danube. His own waltzes, however, don't owe very much to the Strauss Family, (like Ravel) following much more the example of Schubert. Yes, young Franz's Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales are the obvious progenitors of Brahms's Waltzes, Op.39 (Nos.9-16 here), though the spirit of Schumann and his inward-looking piano cycles are also discernible. 

These 16 short pieces (all in simple binary form) were originally composed as four-hand duets but the composer subsequently arranged them twice for solo piano - one set for "clever hands" and the other "perhaps for more beautiful hands", as he put it so charmingly. I think they are truly wonderful. I'd go so far as to say that they are my favourite waltzes of all, a collection of magical miniatures, so varied in character and mood as to make the continuous hearing of the whole set a joy from start to finish. They are 'popular' in style yet also full of intimate feeling and deep craftsmanship. 

One thing that has always puzzled me is the relationship between the penultimate waltz from the set, No.15, and "Brahms's Lullaby" - his world-famous Op.49/4 song Wiegenlied: Guten Abend, gute Nacht. Op.39/15 is also called 'Wiegenlied' and shares quite a bit of its material with the song  that so many mothers have sung to their babies over the last 150 years, though there are marked differences of direction taken by each piece once we've passed the opening phrase. Which one was based on the other? Or, to put it another way, which came first? Seemingly, the songs were written in 1867-8 while the piano waltz was composed by 1865, which seems to make the piano piece the ur-lullaby (as it were). Fascinating! (OK, probably not). 

Just after writing the Waltzes, Op.39 Brahms began writing his Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op.52 for vocal quartet and piano (four-hands), following them (given their great success with the public) in the mid 1870s with the Neue Liebeslieder Walzer, Op.65. These love-songs in waltz form (all but one based on frivolous, amorous poetry) are another of the treasures of Brahms's art. The Op.52 ones have always been closer to my heart than their successors, full of delightful things as the second round of songs are. They bear no relationship (beyond their title) to the Liebeslieder Waltz, Op.114 of Johann Strauss II. If you were wondering.

Alas, Brahms's friend and mentor Robert Schumann was more the sort of composer to slip into the spirit of a waltz during the course of a piece rather than doing a Schubert, Chopin or Brahms and explicitly writing waltzes. The nearest he came to writing a collection of waltzes was his fanciful Papillons, Op.2 - one of the pieces which seems to me to show the direct influence of Schubert's waltzes on Schumann's style. Most of the thirteen movements of Papillons take waltz form (with a couple of polonaises chucked in for good measure) and the final movement sees phrases from the opening waltz alternating poetically with phrases from the old Grossvaterlied (which Schumann associates with philistinism). 

There is said to be a very direct link between Schubert's waltzes and Schumann's masterpiece, Carnaval, Op.9. It's claimed that the opening Préambule makes reference to Schubert's Trauerwalzer, D365/2. I've listened a few times now to both pieces and I can't say that I can hear any connection whatsoever between the two. Am I missing something? There are, regardless, two explicit waltzes in Carnaval - the first of which bears a Schubertian name, Valse noble. The second is the Valse allemande. I love them both. 

Brahms's friend Antonin Dvorak, a master at translating popular dances into popular classical music, wrote quite a few waltzes. I made the mistake of listening to his own set of Waltzes, Op.54 straight after listening to the Brahms Op.39 set. The Brahms pieces are so subtle that the open brilliance of Dvorak's waltzes then came as a shock. Listening to them again on their own terms - and they were designed to be something different from either Chopin or Brahms - reveals their own genius, marrying as they do Slavonic melodies with the demands of the Austro-German waltz. They are valses brillantes, designed to delight audiences (as his wonderful Slavonic Dances had already delighted audiences. There are all those little shift of mode and mood that you expect from the composer and tunes galore. I was new to these ingenious piano pieces, but the orchestral Prague Waltzes, composed in the immediate wake of the Op.54 pieces, were familiar to me. They are a likeable mixture of Strauss Family-style populism and Dvorak-style Slavonic melodic traits. 

The waltz was spreading its wings and heading east.

On Brahms (1)

Brahms, long before the beard

Schumann announced Johannes Brahms to the world, saying he "sprang, like Minerva, fully-armed from the head of the son of Cronus." The composers who formed his youthful armour were primarily Beethoven and Bach (with Haydn and Mozart lurking in the background.) It was on Beethoven's example and forms - sonata, symphony and chamber music - that he built much of his early output.

His Op.1, the Sonata in C major, begins with a figure

that deliberately echoes the opening of Beethoven's most ambitious sonata, the Hammerklavier:

It was a declaration of intent, it seems: I will build my music on Beethoven.

Brahms was a very different composer to Beethoven. The latter was a maker of big, optimistic statements, a dramatic writer, a heroic figure, an experimenter, a radical re-thinker, a dare-devil composer. Brahms, on the other hand, was essentially a lyrical composer, much more pessimistic in nature, a musical conservative, far more cautious in temperament. Beethoven got wilder and more exuberant as he aged while Brahms mellowed from the passionate lion of his youth into a composer of works often characterised as 'autumnal'. When it came to counterpoint Beethoven struggled like Michelangelo chiselling fugues out of granite, while Brahms wrote contrapuntally with a masterly Raphael-like ease. 

This is not to say that Brahms didn't bring something new to the Classical forms he adopted in such a thoroughgoing fashion. He often transformed the work's scherzo into an intermezzo, even when that movement (as it frequently did) still retained the old scherzo label. His first intermezzo in a large-scale work came in the Piano Quartet in G minor, Op.25. That movement is slower than any traditional scherzo would be and has a different character to the traditional scherzo whilst still retaining its ternary (ABA) structure complete with trio section. These less-driven scherzi recur again and again in his output, as (to pick at random) in the second movement of his Horn Trio, Op.40 or that of his Piano Quartet No.3, Op.60. Sometimes their trio sections are faster-moving than their main sections - another innovation! - as in the third movement of the Second Symphony or the third movement of the Clarinet Quinet, Op.115. Even when the scherzo does move quickly, its character can be far removed from that usually associated with such a movement - as in the quiet, edgy-sounding second movement of the Piano Trio No.3 in C minor, Op.101 Not that Brahms wouldn't write a more traditional, robust and dynamic scherzo if he felt like it - as with the third movement of the Fourth Symphony. To further enrich the form, in some works he would fuse the scherzo with the slow movement as in the central movement of the String Quintet No.1 in F major, Op.88 or the equivalent movement in the Violin Sonata No.2 in A major, Op.100.

Brahms's adored Clara Schumann

Brahms was the supreme contrapuntalist of his age and many of his works are strengthened through counterpoint. If you want to hear a pristine (and hardly ever heard) Brahms fugue, complete with inversion, augmentation and diminution, please try the excellent Fugue in A flat minor for organ - Brahms as the heir of Bach! Even if you know that piece, I suspect you may never had heard the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, the Prelude and Fugue in G minor, or the Chorale Prelude & Fugue on 'O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid' - pieces that again point back to Bach   and his immediate predecessors such as Bruhns and Buxtehude but also forward to Max Reger. These are all early works, but Brahms was to return to organ music at the very end of his life with the magnificent Chorale Preludes, Op.122. No other great Romantic composer wrote such pieces. 

The opening prelude, Mein Jesu, der du mich, displays the Baroque art of treating each line of the chorale melody fugally but, as with all of the set (and unlike the earlier works), Brahms's highly subtle and personal harmonic language sets the piece firmly in Brahms's world rather than Bach's - even when setting 'the Passion chorale' so closely associated with the St. Matthew Passion ('O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden'), as in the strongly chromatic four-part first setting of Herzlich tut mich verlangen - a remarkable act of re-imagining. The second take on Herzlich tut mich verlangen presents the chorale melody on the pedals and surrounds it with lovely figuration. I suspect you will also like Brahms's beautiful take on the Christmas chorale Est Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen (the tune in its most familiar form can be heard here and helps show how ingeniously the composer has transformed it). As so often Brahms was at his most touching when thinking about death, and his first setting of Heinrich Isaac's early-Renaissance Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, O Welt, Ich Muss Dich Lassen (the switch from 'Innsbruck' to 'O Welt' ('O World') had been made centuries before Brahms) sounds particularly personal, and so does the later five-part O Welt, Ich Muss Dich Lassen with which the composer ends his collection, especially with its many lingering wistful echoes. I imagine that Bach would have been impressed with these rich tributes to his great spirit.

Brahms, as a young man

Counterpoint also runs through Brahms's choral output. Here the other main influence, Bach, makes its presence felt. The lovely Geistliches Lied, Op.30 is a double canon at the ninth. Listen to the tenors as they follow the sopranos at the distance of a bar and a ninth lower than the ladies. The basses follow the altos in the same fashion. The personal harmonies and the warmness of the accompanying figuration make this anything but an academic exercise. Another lovely and highly original use of canon can be heard in Einförmig is der Liebe Gram, the closing number from the composer's Op.113 - a six-part piece for female voices based on the lump-in-the-throat closing song from Schubert's Winterreise, The Hurdy-Gurdy Man. Brahms has the two altos provide the song's drone - in canon. From the opening of the motet Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz, Op.29/2 you will hear (or more likely see in the score) that the second basses sing an augmented canon with the sopranos (singing twice as slowly), and O Heiland reiß die Himmel auf, Op.74/2 ends with a short 'Amen' section that packs in two consecutive canons, both using inversion. Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, Op.29/1 opens with a chorale harmonisation, the tune of which is then set against a fugue based on the melody. 

Clara, as Brahms first knew her

Counterpoint can crop up anywhere in Brahms's music. The Schumann Variations, Op.9 are based on a theme from Robert Schumann's Bunte Blätter, but also incorporate a theme by Clara in Variation 10 - the melody of which is tenderly shadowed by the bass line in inversion. The fourteenth variation (another lovely one) sets the melody as a canon at the second two bars behind. 

Another set of piano variations, the towering Handel Variations, Op.24, ends with an exhilarating fugue - a fugue that sounds more like Bach than Handel. There's more inversion, plus augmentation and some double counterpoint too. 

My favourite piece of Brahms, the magical Haydn Variations, Op.56 (based on the St. Antoni Chorale, almost certainly not composed by Haydn), contains passage after passage where counterpoint plays a part, yet the piece is so cunningly crafted that you hardly notice - a classic case of art concealing art. There's double counterpoint in Variation 1 and double counterpoint and inversion in Variation 4. The contrapuntal prowess shown in Variation 8, however, is not concealed but instead put in the composer's shop window for all to see, admire and enjoy.  

Before leaving the influence of Bach on Brahms, the ground (with a slight tweak) of the closing passacaglia from the Fourth Symphony was drawn from a work by Bach - the cantata Nach dir Herr verlanget mich, BWV150, which is a strong candidate for being the composer's earliest cantata. So the opening movement of Bach's first cantata (possibly) provided the inspiration for the finale of Brahms's final symphony. 

For all Brahms's Classical and Baroque inspirations, he was still a Romantic composer. Who can have heard the magical introduction to the finale of the First Symphony without being delighted by the horn call over a shimmering tremolo, the woodbird-like flute response and the near-Brucknerian chorale which answers them both? The pacing and the key-changes of that section point to the influence of Schubert, whose music Brahms did so much to promote, but the ambiance has more of, say, the introduction of the Introduction and Allegro, Op.92, the Konzertstück, Op.86 or Beim Abschied zu singen by Robert Schumann. Brahms writes in this vein more often than you might think. The irresistible and masterly Fünf Gesänge, Op.104 contains a number called Nachtwache II which uses echoing calls across all six parts to evoke the horns of night watchmen and, in a simpler vein, the adorable Der Jäger from the Marienlieder, Op.22 also evokes horn calls (this time hunting horns.) The lovely Four Songs for Women's Choir, two Horns and Harp, Op.17 (Pt.2 here) are even closer to the spirit of that passage.

Schumann was certainly a key influence, leaving young Johannes much more than a friendly young widow. As a passionate devotee of Robert's music and an advocate of his late works, what surprised me most on getting to know them is just how much they seem to anticipate late Brahms. There is a more Classical, mellow quality to much of late Schumann that must have spoken straight to his friend's heart. If you are familiar with late Brahms already but unfamiliar with late Schumann, then please take a listen to the Fantasy Pieces, Op.73, the Three Romances, Op.94 and the Fantasiestücke, Op.111.

Still beardless

Harmony and counterpoint were certainly something Robert was fascinated by, counterpoint becoming of prime importance as he got older. Something of his way with harmony certainly rubbed off on Brahms, though his radically innovative forms and inspired flights of fancy were something Brahms chose not to try to emulate. The main exception came with the Four Ballades, Op.10, superb pieces full of early Schumannesque spirit. The first piece of the set is a very rare piece of Brahms that isn't abstract but instead inspired by a literary tale, namely a Scottish ballad about Edward (a tale of murder and curses). It has a central crescendo that truly merits the term 'exciting'. (Liszt, eat your heart out!) 

That supremely German Romantic interlude in the finale of the First Symphony and memories of the Marienlieder point up another aspect of Brahms's music and another influence - his love for his country's folk music. I don't think many people know about this aspect of his art, or that he arranged and published folk songs himself - the Vierzehn Volkslieder, WoO.34 and Zwölf deutsche Volkslieder, WoO.35 are excellent places to start exploring this very attractive  part of his output. 

Folk-like simplicity is not the first quality that springs to mind when thinking about the music of Brahms. It can, however - as the Marienlieder and Op.17 Songs demonstrate - be both artfully crafted yet direct and simple-sounding - especially when Brahms is wanting a piece to sound as fresh as folk song. The delicious carol-like Ave Maria, Op.12 is a case in point. He can also, however, write in an even more popular vein, pieces that sound as if they could be written for friends to sing at parties - pieces like the six-part-yet-remarkably-uncomplicated Tafellied, Op.93b and those loveable collections of part-songs with piano, the masterly and supremely tasty Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op.52 and their sequel, the Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op.65. Yes, Brahms can let his hair (including his beard) down, but without ever letting his standards down. Anyone who knows the Academic Festival Overture will already know that. 

Clara, in middle age

This romantic, lyrical, warm-hearted side of Brahms (which many feel to be his best side) is expressed most openly in the songs - strangely the least well-known area of his music despite including many absolute gems. Some, like Ständchen (from Op.106), Vor dem Fenster (from Op.14), Der Schmied (from Op.19) and Dort in den Weiden (from Op.96), seem to spring melodically from folk song. Others have a Schubert-like sense of drama (and genius for key shifts), such as the splendid Wehe, so willst du mich wieder (from Op.32), or a Schumann-like feel for setting dialogue, such as the no-less-splendid Liebestreu (from Op.3). Great depths of beauty and feeling are reached with songs like Feldeinsamkeit (from Op.86), Waldeseinsamkeit (from Op.85), Sapphische Ode (from Op.84) , the sorrow-filled O wüßt ich doch den Weg zurück (from Op.63) and, best of all, the towering Von ewiger Liebe (from Op.43). If you want a warm glow in your stomach then look no further than the 2 Gesänge, Op.91 (featuring viola), so tender, so lovely. The second of these songs is the much-loved Geistliches Wiegenlied - a lullaby with the warmth of a Christmas carol (indeed, does it not remind you of one in particular?) 

Here's the beard!

His greatest songs are his final ones - the Four Serious Songs, Op.121, songs written after the "greatest wealth" of his life, Clara, suffered a stroke and he became haunted at the prospect of her death. (She was to die in the year of their composition, 1896, one year before Johannes himself). Settings of Luther's Bible translations, mostly from Ecclesiastes - a book of the Bible that, like myself, Brahms felt spoke to him most - these songs stand apart from his other songs. Nothing in his previous song output anticipates them. 

Talking of Luther, from the other end of his life comes a setting of a Luther-inspired hymn text, Begräbnisgesang, Op.13 - a gripping piece for mixed choir, brass, woodwinds and timpani that harks back to Germany's Baroque greats, Schütz and Bach, but also looks forward to the German Requiem. The piece is a funeral march whose sombre character is enhanced by the scoring, keeping the brass to just tubas and trombones. Brahms balances this by providing moments of light where the higher voices are foregrounded and where woodwind provide arpeggiated accompaniments. There's a crescendo and a climax at the work's heart of the thrilling kind later found in the German Requiem's second movement where, again, the timpani pound like a giant's heart. Though rarely heard and early, this is one of the composer's most moving works. 

His greatest choral work (and one of his greatest works in toto) is the German Requiem itself. The outlook expressed in the Serious Songs is also found within the Requiem and the words are also Luther's. This was a requiem written to console the living. 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted' is the title of the first movement and the purpose of the whole piece.  With calm solemnity this opening section rises from the lowest depths of the strings towards the gentle elation of high woodwinds and harp in a mood that combines Beethoven-like grandeur, Brahmsian Romantisim and Lutheran chorale-like phrases. 

The second movement, 'For all flesh, it is as grass', is part-sarabande, part-funeral march and is both beautiful and thrilling. Its theme is a chorale and its initial entry on strings over muffled drum rhythms is haunting. The men's chorus get to sing its first bars before, magically, women's voices enter join in for the lovely second phrase. The main theme modulates thrillingly, the drums pound and there is a spine-tingling/spine-chilling full choral and orchestral reprise of the chorale theme. The central section is much sweeter, with major-key harmonies, happy woodwind counterpoint and a swaying triple-time rhythm. The dark-sounding funeral march then returns to send more thrills/shivers down the spine before a great flame of choral light brings a confident fugue that eases into chorale-like writing before a dramatic section (with last trumps and all) leads to a sustained climax and, in time, a consolatory close. I prefer all that precedes the fugue.

Clara, again

The third movement, 'Lord, teach me', again moves towards the light, culminating in a vigorous and optimistic fugue. My favourite part of the movement, however, again comes before that fugue. Here a baritone soloist leads off with what sounds like an aria with chorus; indeed, it would make for a great operatic scene where the doubts and fears of the protagonist spread into the attentive crowd. A melody, introduced immediately by the baritone, is thematically worked with much majesty and a second theme is derived from this same melody by inverting a motif from it. The music moves towards that resolutely major-key fugue by masterly means - a horn call, women's voices and a Romantic surge.                        

The fourth movement, 'How lovely are thy dwellings', is a short section of repose. Listen to the inviting woodwind phrase in the opening bars and the way the chorus comes in (high voices foregrounded) over a soft horn call. Then when the strings emerge into prominence (less than a minute in), the lilt and grace of the music instantly captivates. Brief passages of contrapuntal writing aside, all is lightness and loveliness.   

The fifth movement, 'You now have sadness', is a soprano-aria-with chorus and a gorgeous piece of music, more serious in tone than its predecessor. The vocal writing is sublime and the orchestral accompaniment is delicate - no 'mahogany' here. 

The sixth movement, 'For here we have no lasting place', is the dramatic climax of the Requiem, its Dies Irae. It is gripping, beginning quietly (the calm before the storm!) with more delicately-scored writing, before the baritone introduces the dramatic action (with moments of Brucknerian sonorities!) to fascinating scoring and wonderful modulations. The chorus erupts into full Dies Irae- style storminess, their fervour alternating with the baritone's gravely beautiful music. A grand (somewhat disappointing) fugue then begins.

The final movement, 'Blessed are the dead', has always been my least favourite movement. I feel that the first few minutes are are bit too staid and conventional. The chorale-like phrases introduced by the winds (some three minutes in) are a blessing and their reappearance always brings satisfaction (to me). 

No, it's not Karl Marx

It's worth remembering that A German Requiem came at the end of the composer's early maturity . It is a remarkable achievement.

Before moving onto those late works in the next post, I want to end this one by mentioning in passing an aspect of Brahms's music than Charles Rosen has also dwelt on - the composer's extraordinary way with rhythm. Brahms is no knee-jerk four-bar-phrase man. No, he uses all manner of phrase lengths, overlaps his phrases, combines phrases moving at contrasting speeds, employs unusual rhythms (etc). Brahms is the master of cross-rhythms. There are so many examples of this that it's pointless to single many out. The opening of the Cello Sonata No.1 in E minor, Op.38, setting a beautiful cello melody against a syncopated piano accompaniment provides a simple example. A classic instance of unusual rhythms is the slow movement of the Piano Trio in C minor, Op.101 - a movement with the very unusual feature of a double time signature - 3/4, 2/4. The way it works out it would now be called 7/4 time. This flexibility helps keep Brahms's music interesting. 

The late pieces are full of interest...

Album-leaves are Falling

BBC Radio 3's Music Matters, with some (metaphorical) fanfare, today broadcast a newly-discovered piano piece in A minor by Johannes Brahms. It's quite something to find a lost piece by a composer who so assiduously covered his own tracks (mostly by destroying everything that didn't meet his exacting standards). The conductor Christopher Hogwood told us how he discovered it completely by chance and the great pianist András Schiff performed its broadcast premiere for us. It's a wholly characteristic, mature-sounding piece, despite being an early work (1853), with rich textures, some unexpected harmonies and a beautiful melody. Mr. Hogwood called it Albumblatt (Album-leaf).

If you go to 2.51 on this link, you'll hear this very tune played by a horn. It's the start of the trio section from the scherzo of Brahms's great Horn Trio. The programme made it clear that this complete-sounding little piano piece is an early version of that trio section. Comparative listening (which I advise) reveals that the older Brahms didn't change very much of it, either melodically or harmonically, when he came to re-score and re-use it. The twofold presentation of the melody is very similar in both versions (except in the scoring!). The following sequences diverge but follow the same overall shape, with the trio version rising more smoothly and, if I may say so, less interestingly than the Albumblatt version but falling away more interestingly, through the use of syncopation. Immediately afterwards, the two pieces are pretty much (metaphorically) singing from the same hymn-sheet again - though the final cadences are somewhat different. So what we have is a little piece that Brahms later incorporated, almost wholesale, into the second movement of his Horn Trio. 

There is, surprisingly, the intriguing whiff of controversy over this 'new' piece. Norman Lebrecht links to the story here. Clicking on Mr. Lebrecht's own link takes you to The Music Antiquarian Blog, which in turn links to a sales catalogue from April 2011, where the manuscript of the newly-discovered piece is shown and the work described, which is very rum! It gets rummer. At The Music Antiquarian Blog, a wholly different tale is told of the re-discovery of this little piano piece. It's a fascinating read. What's going on? Are some people embroidering the truth?

YouTube posted a performance of the piece a couple of days ago by Andrew Sun, two days earlier than the BBC's premiere broadcast. As our American friends say, 'Go figure!' I'd only add, 'Go listen!'

Canons to the left of them, Canons to the right of them

A few years ago, BBC Radio 3 broadcast 'A Bach Christmas', playing all the works of old Sebastian, and having enjoyed a feast of counterpoint I thought I might surprise the family with a little canon based on Bach tunes. They're not really into classical music (to put it mildly), but as I recorded it using the 'Bells' sound on our electric organ, it sounded very festive - like having our own cathedral to ring in the new year. It grabbed their attention for at least a couple of minutes. Yes, that was one wild new year!

I love trying to write canons but, no, I'm not going to share them with you. Instead, I want to try to give a short overview of what canons are.

You'll certainly all know what canons are anyhow (if you don't already know) if I tell you that they're also called 'rounds' (or 'catches') and you may have sung them at school. Popular examples are Frère Jacques, Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Three Blind Mice. 

A round is a piece of music where one voice (or instrument) begins the tune and two or more other voices (or instruments) join it later, singing the same tune, note for note, overlapping the first voice. The result is that different phrases of the tune are sung simultaneously. The result should sound harmonious. 

This definition (my own) of a round can serve just as well as the definition of a canon, as the round is only the simplest form of canon, known as a canon at the unison - that is when the second voice (and then the third voice and the fourth voice, etc) begins the tune on exactly the same note as the first voice. A canon at the octave is very nearly the same thing (and will sound pretty much identical to the listener, especially when a mixed choir is singing), except that the second voice begins...and I think you might guess where I'm going with this one...an octave higher. All my attempts so far have been canons at the unison or octave. 

The first-ever (known) piece of counterpoint was a canon at the unison: Sumer Is Icumen In (Summer is here!), dating from around 1260. Even if you don't read music, comparing the shapes of each of the lines in the score below should give you a good idea of how a canon at the unison looks on the page, and perhaps how it might work in practice:

With Sumer Is Icumen In, it's not very difficult to hear the process in action. Even the accompanying figure (which you can see beginning in the tenor part at the end of printed score) doesn't distract the ear. 

That's not always the case. A well-known later example of a canon at the octave is the eight piece, God grant with grace, in Tudor composer Thomas Tallis's extremely beautiful Nine Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter, a piece known as Tallis's Canon, or as the hymn Glory to thee, my God, this night. Here the soprano follows four beats behind the tenor and begins an octave higher. The other two voices do their own thing, though occasionally echoing parts of the canon. Whether you listen from 6.10 in this video or 6.07 in this one or 6.08 in this one, can you hear the canon being sung between the tenor and soprano? I'm afraid I just seem unable to hear the piece as anything other than a soprano tune accompanied by three other voices providing harmony. For me, the tenor's tune gets lost in the lines and harmony of his two non-soprano companions. I can see the canon in the score but can't hear it in performance. Possibly if some performances brought out the tenor part out more (got Placido Domingo to sing it maybe!) then I might hear the process of Tallis's canon in action, but I'm not so sure about that. 

You can have canons at any interval - at the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, etc. Pachebel's Canon, if you were wondering, is a canon at the unison, with a ground bass for accompaniment: 

Canons are fun for composers. They are a bit like doing crossword puzzles or playing chess. They take a great deal of ingenuity to pull off. Many composers want us listeners to share their pleasure in the ingenuity of their canons. They want us to hear what they're up to. We listeners can indeed find it highly satisfying to follow the different voices as they imitate each other. However, some composers are far less concerned that the listener hears the canonic process. They might even wish us not to notice the intellectual scaffolding beneath their music. Or they might care only to please themselves, or connoisseurs of scores, or performers. The anonymous composer of Sumer Is Icumen In clearly fell in the first camp, and I suspect Tallis fell in the second camp.

Where does Webern fall with his Dormi Jesu from the 5 Canons on Latin Texts, Op.16? Well, he's not exactly hiding the fact that his pieces are all canons, having chosen that title for the set. This particular tiny little piece for soprano and clarinet, however, is an example of a type of canon that is rather hard for the listener to follow as a canon - canon by inversion. Here any rising interval in the first voice becomes a falling interval in the second voice - an instance of contrary motion. It's easiest heard at the very start of Dormi Jesu, where the first four notes played by the clarinet rise through three intervals and the soprano then enters with four notes falling through the same three intervals, upside down. Thereafter I suspect you will find it harder to follow (as a listener), given the wide leaps in the two lines and the fact that you will probably hear the two parts as being completely different melodies.

Even harder not to hear as two completely different melodies is the retrograde canon, or crab-canon, or cancrizans. Here the second voice imitates the first voice by simultaneously singing/playing the melody backwards. The ear is, I would say, incapable of hearing the second voice's part as a new tune altogether, unrelated to the original tune - except to anyone reading a score. With a crab-canon, the composer is satisfying himself and score-reading scholars, but not his listeners - at least as regards the satisfaction given by following canons. Obviously, the piece can still delight us even if we don't know that there are canons at work. (That really is obvious!) This truly excellent YouTube video gives a very clear demonstration of the cancrizans at work in a movement from Bach's Musical Offering.

And there's more. Stravinsky wrote a deeply expressive Double Canon, where two canons on different themes proceed simultaneously. You can have triple canons, or as many canons going on as you like. The great American-born maverick Conlon Nancarrow had twelve of them going on in his jaw-dropping Study No.37 for player piano! Plus, as the Nancarrow example shows, canons can be played at different speeds. There are prolation canons where the tune is, indeed, played at different speeds in different voices. A beautiful recent example is Arvo Pärt's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten. where an A minor scale falls repeatedly against itself at various speeds.

Canons have been with us since around 1260 then and continued to flourish for the rest of the Medieval period. They were very popular with the Renaissance and the Baroque. After a very short dip they rose again with the Classical era. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all wrote them. Many were jokes, such as Beethoven's delightful Ta ta ta, lieber Mälzel (the tune of which might well remind you of this). One of Beethoven's most wonderful creations, the quartet Mir ist so wunderbar from the opera Fidelio, is also a canon. YouTube has huge numbers of these fantastic little chips from Beethoven's workshop here. Canons lasted even through the Romantic era, where they tended to become far less strict and were usually accompanied examples, such as this gem from Schumann, his Study No.4 from Op.56. Brahms was their greatest Romantic exponent, using canons in many of his works and writing a fair few stand-alone ones, such as this magical specimen, Einförmig is der Liebe Gram, based on Schubert's Der Leiermann from Die Winterreise. With the coming of the Twentieth Century, canons of the stricter and unaccompanied kind came back with a vengeance. All manner of composers relished them, from Schoenberg (you should enjoy these!) to Stravinsky (see above), from Pärt (also see above) to Ligeti (not yet on YouTube). 

In other words, they've always been loved by composers and are one of the most durable musical forms.  Long may that continue to be so!

Art that Conceals Art (or Does it?)

I've been enjoying re-listening to an old CD that came free with a music magazine a few years ago. One piece stood out and give me so much pleasure that I wanted to post about it and recommend it to you. Unfortunately, there's a snag. There's no complete performance of it on YouTube. Five out of seven movements are available though; however, it's hopefully not too unkind to say that the amateur performances  linked to aren't all of the highest quality. So, here I am about to enthuse about a piece of music which, alas, I can't offer you the means to fully enjoy. Still, if you like the sound of the piece in question, there's always the option of buying it!! So, with that in mind...

Johannes Brahms has a well-deserved reputation for being among the most musically sophisticated of the great composers - a consummate craftsman; a far-sighted structural architect; a man intimately aware of music history and his own place in it; an artful writer of counterpoint, ingenious in his sleight-of-hand harmonies and cunning cross-rhythms; someone whose phrasing knowingly avoids the four-square; and who was so scrupulous that he destroyed vast swathes of music that he didn't consider good enough to put before the public. An encyclopedia I was given as a boy told me, in no uncertain terms, that Brahms is a composer who appeals more to connoisseurs than to the general listening public. That very public, however, flocks to concerts where the four symphonies, the four concertos, the German Requiem and the Haydn Variations are to be performed, so my old encyclopedia certainly seriously underestimated the popular appeal of certain of Brahms' pieces. Still, that sophistication does mean that some of his works don't immediately fully hit the spot and will not fall effectively on the ear unless you get to know them better. (The Clarinet Trio was such a piece for me). Moreover, you certainly can't use much of Brahms' music as mere mood music without losing most of the experience.

That's not to say that Brahms can't be 'populist' when he wants to be - there are those Hungarian Dances after all - and there's bags of uncomplicated charm to be found in the Waltzes Op.39, the world-famous 'Brahms' Lullaby' and the two sets of Liebeslieder Waltzes (plus bags of subtlety too). Some of his many songs are similarly easy-on-the-ear. Plus there are such sweet, direct little gems as the swaying, pastoral Ave Maria, Op.12. The subject of this post, the lovely set of Marienlieder ('Songs of Mary'), Op.22, is no less instantly appealing - but nor is it in any way unsophisticated.

If in many of his motets Brahms exulted in the ways of old polyphony, in these seven part-songs for mixed choir he savours the relative simplicity of German homophony, such as you find in chorales and folk-singing. The Marienlieder set the words of old folksongs - all but one for Christmastide - to tunes of the composer's own invention. The result is a set of hymns, yet so melody-driven are they that you might take them for folksongs - which was surely the effect Brahms intended. But. Brahms being Brahms, harmony is used with considerable sophistication and what might seem, at first hearing, to be simplicity itself is, on closer listening, revealed to have many depths. Like the chorales of Bach, the elegance of the part-writing is especially satisfying, plus there is plenty of half-hidden counterpoint. So there's something for easy-going listeners and something for connoisseurs too!

Just take the second piece (though you probably can't, as it isn't on YouTube), Maria's Kirchgang ('Mary Going to Church'). This is a beauty, instantly beguiling, but some of the harmonies in the main section wouldn't be out of place in such a complex piece as the German Requiem, even though its central section sticks to bread-and-butter harmonies suggestive of bells. Even bread-and-butter harmonies can become fresh and full of magic in the hands of Brahms though, as here, and as in the horn-call-inspired harmonies of the central section of the fourth song, the delightful Der Jager ('The Huntsman') - the most folksong-like of all the songs. The first piece, Der englische Gruss, ('The Annunciation'), another beauty, boasts a joy-inducing key change before the ecstatic cries of 'Maria! Maria!' The third song, Maria's Wallfahrt ('Mary's Pilgrimage', not on YouTube either) has old-time harmonies that give off more than a whiff of Bach. Ruf zur Maria ('Call to Mary', No.5) has a lovely refrain whose simplicity provides balm following the increasingly complex verses. Magdalena (No.6), the only setting that isn't Christmas-based, being about another Mary altogether) is graced (rejoice, O you connoisseurs!) by unexpected phrase-lengths. Befitting its Eastertide subject, it is graver in character than its companion and features some openly imitative writing. The utterly charming final song, Maria's Lob ('Mary's Praise') plays a little trick that is found in many folk music traditions - that of switching metre (here from 3/4 time to 4/4 time and back again) in mid phrase. Try beating a waltz rhythm at the start and see how hard it gets, very quickly!

Please try and seek out complete performances of the Marienlieder, Op.22 of Johannes Brahms. Like so much of Brahms' music, they are pieces you can hear over and over again and keep finding new subtleties - even if they sound like German Christmas carols.