Vier ernste Gesänge Op.121 (1896)

Denn es gehet dem Menschen

Ich wandte mich, und sahe

O Tod, wie bitter bist du

Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelzungen redete

Brahms’s choice of words from the Bible for his last set of songs in the last year of his life does not imply a late conversion. He had used biblical texts before, most notably in the Deutsches Requiem completed 27 years earlier but also in the Triumphlied and a handful of psalm-settings and motets - none of them indicating any specifically Christian belief. There is little doubt, however, that the Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs) were inspired by the imminence of death, though not so much the composer’s own death as that of Clara Schumann who suffered what turned out to be a fatal stroke in March 1896. The Vier erneste Gesänge were completed between that event and the composer’s 63rd birthday six weeks later. Clara died two weeks after that.

The songs are not laments but reflections on life and death, beginning in grim resignation with the Andante funeral march of Denn es gehet dem Menschen but giving way to panic in a central Allegro section that returns in more philosophical mood before the cruelly abrupt ending. A motif of thirds prominent in the bass line of the central Allegro of the first songs rises to the surface in the vocal line of Ich wandte mich, und sahe, the pessimism of which is scarcely mitigated as the harmonies change from minor to major in acknowledgement of the innocence of those yet unborn. The thirds are a salient feature also of O Tod, wie bitter bist du, which is texturally and structurally the most inspired of the four songs. The change of mood in the second half is beautifully accomplished but profoundly ironic. The consolation is in the last song which, having apparently been conceived a few years earlier for a different project, exalts love above death.