Zigeunerlieder Op.103 (1887-9)

He, Zigeuner! Brauner Bursche

Hochgetürmte Rimaflut Röslein dreie

Wisst ihr wann Kommst dir manchmal

Lieber Gott Rote Abendwolken

Hungarian-gypsy music had been a source of both inspiration and income for Brahms ever since his concert tours with the violinist Eduard Reményi in the early 1850s. So a series of settings of words from Ungarische Liebeslieder, Hugo Conrat’s German verse translations of twenty-five Hungarian folk songs, must have seemed a good idea to both the composer and his publisher. Eleven vocal quartets with piano accompaniment in the popular Hungarian manner, the Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy Songs), as they were called on their publication in 1888, most effectively combined the tuneful part-song attractions of the Liebeslieder Waltzes with the idiomatic zest of the Hungarian Dances. They were so successful in fact that a selection of eight of them were issued in a version for solo voice and piano a year later.

Brahms described the Zigeunerlieder as “excessively cheerful.” Certainly, only one of the eight songs, Kommt dir manchmal in den Sinn, is in a slow tempo, while most of the others are characterised by their dashing csárdás features with prominent dotted rhythm in a brisk duple time, as in the first two He, Zigeuner! and Hochgetürmte Rimaflut and the fifth Brauner Bursche. But there are more delicate inspirations, like the first lines of each stanza of the third, fourth and sixth songs Wisst ihr wann, Lieber Gott and Röslein dreie. The seventh Kommt dir manchmal in den Sinn is a timely episode of tenderly harmonised sentimental reflection before the He, Zigeuner! tune is recalled to close the cycle in Rote Abendwolken.