9 Lieder

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

Es träumte mir Op.57 No.3 (by 1871)

Wenn du nur zuweilen lächelst Op.57 No.2 (by 1871)

Ach, wende diesen Blick Op.57 No.4 (by 1871)

Unbewegte laue Luft Op.57 No.8 (by 1871)

Ständchen Op.106 No.1 (1888)

Da unten im Tale Op. 97 No.6 (by 1885)

O kühler Wald Op. 72 No.3 (by 1877)

Vergebliches Ständchen Op.84 No. 4 (by 1882)

The Brahms group at least begins happily: the girl in Das Mädchen spricht sees her newly-married bliss reflected in the activity of the swallow – its graceful flight swooping through the piano part – building its nest. Es träumte mir, based on a translation by Georg Friedrich Daumer from a Spanish original, hovers poetically between sleep and wakefulness, illusion and reality, major and minor harmonies, finally settling for the dreamy illusion. Wenn du mir zuweilen lächelst, another Daumer translation (from the Persian of Hafiz) inspired another extraordinary song. It 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. There is no illusion either in the third of these four Daumer songs, 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. Passion, it seems, is stilled in the nocturnal opening of Unbewegte laue Luft 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 major-key consummation.

The rejuvenating effect of Brahms’s friendship with Hermine Spies – a singer more or less half his age when he first met her – is illustrated nowhere better than in his setting of Franz Kugler’s Ständchen. It is remarkable notonly or its delightful detail but also, and even more so, for its youthfully romantic attitude as, stirring in her sleep, the object of the serenade dreams of her musician lover in the garden outside. After that the simple pathos of the folk-song setting Da unten im Tale (also known as Trennung) makes a poignant contrast, which takes on an extra dimension with the profoundly elegiac Brentano setting O kühler Wald. One of the composer’s own favourites among his many Lieder, Vergebliches Ständchen – irrepressibly cheerful in spite of its ironically chilly minor harmonies in the third stanza – finally clears the air.