More Brahms
As admitted previously, Johannes Brahms’ music was a bit of an acquired taste for me; it took me a while to get the hang of it. Now I can’t imagine how I got along without this. One experience that helped me change my mind was a performance I partook in back in the Nineties, delivered by Bach-Chor Siegen, of Brahms’ four “songs for choir and orchestra”. That’s not the official title, it’s basically four independent pieces revolving around topoi from classical antiquity (gods, heroes, fate, … and so forth), three of which involve full choir and orchestra, and one of which involves male choir and alto solo.
The latter piece, Altrhapsodie, is melancholic and a bit anchoretic (perhaps misanthropic). The poem is by Goethe. The text has always reminded me a bit of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, who ended up as a proper misanthropos himself. Here’s a performance.
Set to another text by Goethe, Gesang der Parzen is a vastly more dramatic piece, contemplating the futility of human endeavour against the (antique) gods. It features a six-part choir and is thus a bit more interesting than the usual four-part settings. Et voilà.
Schicksalslied is based on a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin. It ponders the fact that the gods live in eternal bliss, while us mere mortals are cast out into the wilderness that is the world. Brahms has found the perfect music for this contrast.
Finally, Nänie - the saddest of the four - is based on a poem by Schiller. It is one large and stunningly beautiful lament whose subject is the depressing truth that beauty, too, must die, but that there is solace in remaining in the world in the form of an elegy. Whoa. The way the sopranos start the singing after the orchestral prelude gives me goose bumps to this day.
So there I was, thinking not much of Brahms, suddenly being confronted with this sacred bunch of notes (to paraphrase Leonard Bernstein). I changed my mind almost on the spot. These four pieces have accompanied me since. I keep coming back to them. They represent the pinnacle of late romantic choral music.
Tags: music