3 Mädchenlieder

Das Mädchen Op.95 No.1 (1883-4)

Das mädchen spricht Op.107 No.3 (1886)

Mädchenfluch Op.69 No.9 (1873-4)

There are so many Brahms Mädchenlieder - songs with “maiden”or “girl” in the title - that one could probably fashion a narrative cycle out of them. Today’s selection covers the range between anticipation, happiness and disillusion in just three items. Das Mädchen, which Brahms set as both a part-song in his Lieder un Romanzen Op93a in 1883 and as a solo song in his 7 Lieder Op.95 a year later, must have been a special favourite among Friedrich Kapper’s translations from the Serbian. Certainly, he treats it with affection, never overloading its folk-song sentiments with sophisticated musical techniques but at the same time making an effective modulation from minor to major as the girl’s thoughts turn from the old man to the young man and reflecting her new feelings of fondness and then excitement in two changes of metre and tempo just before the end.

The girl in Gruppe’s Das Mädchen spricht recognises her own newly-wed happiness in the activity of the swallow building its nest. Brahms’s simple strophic setting, included in 5 Lieder Op.107 in 1889, is one of the most delightful of all his songs, not least because of its graceful imitation of the flight of the swallow in the piano part. In striking contrast, Mädchenfluch is one of his most dramatic. The earliest of his settings of Kapper’s translations from the Serbian - it is one of the 9 Lieder und Gesänge Op.69 of 1874 - it is probably not entirely innocent of irony: like the girl, whose feelings are mixed in spite of her betrayal, it seems to protest not only passionately but perhaps also a little too much.