Die Schwestern Op.61 No.1 (1873-4)

Es ging ein Maidlein zarte from 49 Deutsche Volkslieder (1894)

Phänomen Op.61 No.3 (1873-4)

Och moder, ich well ein Ding han from 49 Deutsche Volkslieder (1894)

Weg der Liebe Op.20 No.1 (1858)

Brahms took the art of writing for two or more solo voices and piano more seriously than either Mendelssohn or Schumann. Over a period of twenty years he wrote as many as twenty duets, including twelve specifically designated for soprano and alto. Of these none is more delightful than “Die Schwestern” where, taking a hint from Mörike’s line about the sisters singing “hand in hand,” Brahms links the two voices in rhythmic unison throughout, even when they fall out at the end.

When he completed his collection of arrangements of 49 German folk songs in 1894 Brahms remarked - surprisingly for a composer who had achieved as much as he had - “It is the first time that I look back with tenderness on what I have produced.” Certainly, while the authenticity of much of his material, drawn largely from the two-volume Deutsche Volkslieder of Kretschmer and Zuccalmaglio, is open to question, his affection for it is not. With the most modest of means, he created the most telling of effects, not least in the miniature death-and-the-maiden scenario of “Es ging ein Maidlein zarte.”

In “Phänomen,” a philosophical setting of words from the ageing Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan, Brahms’s strategy with the two voices diverges from that of “Die Schwestern.” Linking them in sixths to begin with, he sets them apart in canon in the second stanza, where he drains the harmonies of their colour before gradually restoring them for the reassuring return to the texture of the first stanza. The direct antithesis of “Es ging ein Maidlein zarte,” the the other folksong-setting in this group, “Och Moder, ich well en Ding han,” is a little masterpiece of comic characterisation. In one of the earliest of his duets, “Weg de Liebe,” Brahms treats the voices in much the same way as in “Phänomen” - joining them in thirds and sixths, dividing them in imitative counterpoint, re-uniting them - and, brilliantly, creates an entirely different, irrespressibily exuberant effect.