Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
Two Songs (1863 and ’84)
After Schumann and before Mahler, Johannes Brahms was perhaps the most important symphonic composer to take an interest in the German lied tradition. Indeed, he wrote over 200 songs during his career, though only the “Two Songs” of this program are for more than the traditional voice-and-piano instrumentation.
Interestingly, these lieder (for soprano, viola, and piano) were written twenty years apart and under very different circumstances. Both were composed for Brahms’s close friends, Joseph and Amalie Joachim, the earliest in 1863 to celebrate the birth of their son, Johannes (named after Brahms); and the second in 1884 in an effort to broach a reconciliation between the couple, who had since filed for divorce, and Brahms, who incurred Joseph’s wrath by testifying on Amalie’s behalf in the court case.
The choice of instrumentation is telling. Brahms loved the viola and Joachim, one of the greatest – and most important – 19th-century violin virtuosi was also a violist. Amalie was a soprano and Brahms, of course, a formidable pianist. These songs were initially intended for private consumption and performance: Brahms didn’t publish them until after the respective relationships had frayed in 1884.
The first lied of the set (which was actually the one written in 1884, at the height of the Joachim’s domestic squabbling) is a setting of Friedrich Rückert’s “Gestillte Sehnsucht” (or “Stilled Longing”). In it, Brahms gives the viola a singular, recurring melody that well captures the poem’s spirit of longing and nostalgia; the middle section in the minor mode provides the music a moment of turbulence, but the bucolic mood returns for a peaceful ending.
The second lied, “Geistliche Wiegenlied” (or “Sacred Lullaby”), adapts an old German Christmas carol, “Josef, lieber Josef mein.” After the viola introduces the opening phrase of the medieval melody, though, the voice enters with a different tune and an unexpected text: Emmanuel von Geibel’s translation of Lope de Vega’s “Song of the Virgin.” Again, the middle section of the song turns to the minor, but by the end peace returns: no harm will befall the infant under Mary’s watch – at least not on this night.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
Reproduction Rights: This program note may be reproduced free of charge in concert programs with a credit to the author.