Therese Op 86 No1 (1878)

Och Moder from 49 Deutsche Volkslieder (1898)

There is surely little doubt about the innocence of the boy with the questioning eyes in Gottfried Keller’s Therese. Even so, in Brahms’s setting in his 6 Lieder Op 86 Therese is so puzzled that, very charmingly, she deflects the unspoken question in the last stanza and just as fancifully diverts the course of the music. As for Och Moder, a Low German folk song arranged by Brahms in Book 5 of his collection of 49 Deutsche Volkslieder, the daughter in this little scene with her mother is just at the point of loss of innocence - or, to judge by the thinginess of the words and the flightiness of the piano part, just beyond it.