Brahms's Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano

A Guide with Full Texts and Translations

Paul Stark

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780253334022
• eBook ISBN: 9780253028457
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

" . . . a generous treatment of some of Brahms's most endearing and imaginative creations." —Choice

" . . . an excellent addition to the literature on vocal chamber music . . . " —Notes

In this sequel to A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms, Lucien Stark opens up a beautiful and largely neglected repertoire, providing the full German text for each song, along with a new English translation, notes on vocal ranges, and a wealth of engaging commentary of technical, aesthetic, and historical interest.

Liebeslieder

OPUS 52 (SONGS OF LOVE)

TRANSLATED FROM VARIOUS LANGUAGES BY GEORG FRIEDRICH DAUMER (1800–1875)

Liebeslieder. Walzer für das Pianoforte zu vier Händen (und Gesang ad libitum) componirt von Johannes Brahms (Songs of love. Waltzes for piano, four hands, [and optional voices] composed by Johannes Brahms), Op. 52. Published in October 1869 by N. Simrock in Berlin; publication number 364; German only. A version for piano duet without voices, Op. 52a, appeared in December 1874 (publication number 7523), and one for voices with piano solo in April/May 1875 (publication number 7522). At the request of the conductor Ernst Rudorff, Brahms arranged a suite of Liebeslieder for SATB soli or chorus with small orchestra during the winter of 1869/70, which was first published only in 1938 by C. F. Peters in Leipzig; publication numbers 11392 (score) and 11397 (parts); it comprised Op. 52/1, 2, 4, 6, 5; a new number to be published later as Op. 65/9; and Op. 52/11, 8, 9.

The work may have been conceived as early as July 1868 but was completed in August 1869 in Lichtental near Baden-Baden. Clara Schumann wrote in her diary on 16 July 1869:

At the beginning of this month Johannes brought me some charming waltzes for four hands and four voices, sometimes two and two, sometimes all four together, with very pretty words, chiefly of the folk-song type.... They are extraordinarily attractive (charming even without the voices) and I very much enjoy playing them.

And on 24 August:

I went to Karlsruhe to hear Johannes’s waltzes with the vocal parts sung by Fräulein Murjohn, the Hausers, and Herr Stolzenberg. It was a very great treat. They are delightfully dainty and charming, of really remarkable musical form and melody.

The first public performance of the complete work took place on 5 January 1870 in the Kleiner Redoutensaal in Vienna. The singers were Luise Dustmann, Rosa Girzick, Gustav Walter, and Emil Krauss; the pianists, Clara Schumann and Brahms. Partial performances, private hearings, and open rehearsals had occurred during the preceding several months in Vienna and Karlsruhe. The version without voices, Op. 52a, was first performed on 14 November 1874 in Vienna by Brahms and Otto Dessoff. The suite for voices and orchestra had its first performance in Berlin on 19 March 1870, with Anna von Asten, Amalie Joachim, Herr Borchardt, Herr Putsch, and the orchestra of the Berlin Hochschule, Ernst Rudorff conducting.

The texts are from Poly dora, ein weltpoetisches Liederbuch (Frankfurt am Main, 1855).

Both the title and the performance medium of the work had a precedent in Robert Schumann’s Spanische Liebeslieder, Op. 138, composed in 1849 and published in 1857.

Through the work of Joseph Lanner and the two Johann Strausses, the Viennese waltz had become a large-scale orchestral composition intended for public performance, consisting of several dances with an introduction and a coda, and transitional material where necessary. Brahms’s model, however, was rather the smaller German dances and Ländler of Schubert, written for piano and for more intimate performance, and comprising series of brief separate dances without additional material. Brahms was a great admirer of Schubert’s music and an enthusiastic collector of Schubert manuscripts. In fact, a collection of twenty Ländler that Brahms had selected from his store of unpublished Schubert autographs, arranged as a coherent whole and edited anonymously, appeared in print in May 1869, about the time he was leaving for the summer in Lichtental.

Although the composition of the various waltzes of the Liebeslieder seems to have gone quickly, their ordering and format (and even their title) proved troublesome. When Brahms sent them to Simrock for publication, he wrote (28 August 1869):

I am a little uncertain about the title and the division into parts (Heftordnung). You can eliminate “Liebeslieder.” Do you prefer “Waltzes” for Piano Duet and in parentheses (with voices) or (voices ad lib.)? ...

I should think two booklets with nine each?

It also works well in one volume? Or do you want to make three booklets of six each? In that case, I would ask that numbers 7–12 be arranged as follows: 10, 11, 12, 7, 8, 9. (Briefwechsel, IX, 76; my translation)

Still undecided, he suggested to Hermann Levi shortly before the performance that Levi was preparing for 6 October in Karlsruhe that he perform the waltzes in two parts, the first comprising nos. 1–6 and 10–12; the second, nos. 7–9 and 13–18. (Only ten of the eighteen were actually performed in Karlsruhe.) There were other changes right up to publication and beyond—in his own copy of the first edition Brahms indicated that no. 3, “O die Frauen,” should be in A major rather than B♭ major, undeniably making a smoother progression of keys. It seems clear that Brahms’s goal was the creation of large subgroupings within a coherent whole.

In the work as published, nos. 1–6 constitute the first group. The keys flow logically because of their relatedness to A as a center, and the larger-scale no. 6 functions as a conclusion, its interior section in F major even clarifying the kinship of no. 4 in the same key.

The second group comprises nos. 7–9, whose keys descend by thirds to the E major in which the work began. The initial A♭ of no. 7, which is the tonic of no. 8, is enharmonically the related G♯; there is an important movement into A major in the second half of no. 7 and an analogous movement into E major in no. 8. Brahms obviously considered no. 9 an ending piece since he not only positioned it to conclude the first half of the work but also chose it to end the orchestrated suite and the second group of six if the work were divided into thirds.

Nos. 10–12 lead harmonically one to the next and share the rhythmic motive of a dot...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Opus 20 Three Duets for Soprano and Alto
• 28 Four Duets for Alto and Baritone
• 31 Three Quartets
• 52 Liebeslieder
• 61 Four Duets for Soprano and Alto
• 64 Three Quartets
• 65 Neue Liebeslieder
• 66 Five Duets for Soprano and Alto
• 75 Four Ballads and Romances for Two Voices
• 84 Five Romances and Songs for One or Two Voices
• 92 Four Quartets
• 103 Zigeunerlieder
• 112 Six Quartets
• WoO posth. 16 Little Wedding Cantata
• Poets and Translators
• Friends and Associates
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Titles and First Lines
• Index of Names