7 Lieder

Liebestreu Op. 3 No. 1 (1853)

Anklänge Op. 7 No. 3 (1853)

Von ewiger Liebe Op. 43 No. 1 (1864)

Die Mainacht Op. 43 No. 2 (1866)

Dein blaues Auge hält so still Op. 59 No. 8 (1873)

Der Gang zum Liebchen Op. 48 No. 1 (1859-62)

Verzagen Op. 72 No. 4 (1877)

Brahms chose Liebestreu to open his first set of songs not because it was the earliest but because he thought it was the best. The earliest of his published songs, hidden at the end of Op.7, is Heimkehr, which he developed and reworked to different words in Liebestreu so effectively as to impress not only Joseph Joachim but also Robert Schumann. The throbbing quavers sustained in the pianist ‘s right hand throughout, the canonic dialogue between the mother’s vocal line and a submerged left hand that then rises to double the daughter’s reply, the resourcefully modified strophic form: all these add up to a song that distinguished the young composer as, in Schumann’s words, “a man of destiny.”

The abandoned maiden is a recurrent feature in Brahms’s songs. The maiden in Anklänge seems to be in that category but one cannot be sure exactly how the composer interprets the situation in a setting that so subtly reflects the ambiguity of Eichendorff’s atmospherically evocative verse. Separation is certainly far from the thoughts of the lovers in Von ewiger Liebe, a dramatic scena where the boy’s B-minor challenge is so sweetly answered, with a melting change of tempo and metre, by the girl’s devout B major. Another recurrent feature is the lonely outsider, as so poignantly represented in Die Mainacht, the basically strophic structure of which is modified to incorporate a harmonically distraught middle section. After two short songs where the poet is at ease, serene under the cool eyes of the loved one in Dein blaues Auge hält so still and teasingly cheerful in the waltz-time episodes of Der Gang zum Liebchen, the lonely outsider again fails to find consolation in nature in Verzagen. Ending the group where it began, in the depths of the sea, a rising and falling arpeggio initiates an uncharacteristically virtuosic but stormily picturesque piano part.