8 Lieder und Gesänge von G.F.Daumer, Op.57

Von waldbekränzter Höhe

Wenn du mir zuweilen lächelst

Es träumte mir

Ach, wende diesen Blick

In meiner Nächte Sehnen

Strahlt zuweilen auch ein mildes Licht

Die Schnur, die Perl’ an Perle

Unbewegte laue Luft

But for Brahms’s settings of his poems and verse translations Georg Friedrich Daumer would probably be totally forgotten by now. He was best known even in his own day as the author of the words of Brahms’s Liebeslieder part songs and, to a smaller audience, of the texts of thirty or so solo songs written by the same composer over the twenty years between 1864 and 1884. Although Brahms was surprised and disappointed when he visited Daumer in 1872 to find that the poet had never heard of him or his music, he did not let that put him off writing a second set of Liebeslieder to words from the same source. Just why Brahms was so keen on the not very distinguished work of this minor poet is a question perhaps best answered by his belief that the greatest poetry is “so finished that there is nothing one can do to them with music.” It is a view shared by several composers including, as we shall see, Brahms’s French contemporary Henri Duparc.

The eight Daumer settings of Op.57, which were written in 1871 between the Liebeslieder and the Neue Liebeslieder, are the only group of solo songs Brahms ever devoted to one poet (apart, that is, from the five Ophelia Lieder, which were intended for stage performance and not for publication). They are also unusual among Brahms Lieder, though not actually unique, in that they seem to be put together as an informal cycle. They cover a range of emotional states, from the pain of unrequited love to an exalted anticipation of some kind of union, and all but two of them are in keys more or less closely related to E minor and E major. It is also just about possible to trace a thematic link between them, although - unlike that of Fauré’s Mélodies de Venise - it is so tenuous in some cases that it is scarcely worth following.

If the first appearance of the theme that is supposed to link the songs together is significant, it is for a different reason. It occurs in a short piano interlude between the first and second stanzas of the introductory Von waldbekränzter Höhe and is an extraordinary moment. Everything changes: the piano figuration, the harmonies and, above all, the melodic line, which now seems to echo one of the themes which Brahms’s late colleague Robert Schumann addressed to his beloved Clara. Brahms had also been in love with Clara Schumann and even at this stage in his life - not long after a period of infatuation with her 25-year-old daughter Julie - he possibly still was. Perhaps this allusion to Schumann’s Clara theme was his discreet way of dedicating the songs, and their expression of frustrated passion, to her. Certainly, the new melody and the minor harmonies associated with it in the three central stanzas add a new and personal dimension to a poem which, on the face of it, requires no more than a conventional setting of its standard romantic sentiments.

Wenn du mir zuweilen lächelst (translated by Daumer from the Persian of Hafiz) inspires another extraordinary song. It too begins conventionally but within a few lines, provoked by harmonies that uncompromisingly reflect the unsmiling truth of the situation, it develops into a cry of pain. Es träumte mir (based on a similarly short poem translated from a Spanish original) is less inclined to face the facts and hovers poetically between sleep and wakefulness, illusion and reality, major and minor harmonies, finally settling for the dreamy illusion. There is no illusion in Ach, wende diesen Blick, the first and third stanzas of which are firmly set in the minor and are all the more poignant for the brief glimpse of peace in the middle.

The emotional turning point occurs in In meiner Nächte Sehnen. It begins in E minor and is carried on its urgent keyboard figuration to a climax of passion in the third stanza with the vocal line dramatically doubled in the left hand of the piano part. Significantly, however, the exaltation of the “divine woman” in the last line plainly recalls the Clara theme and brings the song to a gentle ending in E major. Strahlt zuweilen auch in mildes Licht retains the E major tonality to start with and, although changes of harmony acknowledge the illusion, it ends lyrically enough in that same key. The situation is so changed by now that, in Die Schnur, die Perl’ an Perle (translated from the Hindi) there is room for a an exquisite erotic fantasy. Passion, it seems, is stilled in the nocturnal E major opening of Unbewegte laue Luft, where the only movement is the splashing of the fountain. But then, with a sudden change of tempo, desire surges up again and, driven by an urgent version of the motif that so peacefully opened the song, it achieves its final consummation in E major.