Opus 33 comprises a large number of romances from L. Tieck’sMagelone. These songs, which incline to be long and somewhat pretentious, do not maintain the high standard usual with Brahms. There are here rather too much sound and fury. We may, however, mention three which are very fine: ‘Hey, Bow and Arrow,’ a song made of fire and steel; ‘Is It Sorrow?’ deeply emotional; and the lovely ‘Rest, Sweet Love.’ From now on we have merely a steady stream of songs with words garnered from here and there, the music of a very high standard of workmanship and the interest often hidden to the superficial glance. Each song has its individuality which must be sought out by the student. A commentary on all the songs would fill many pages. In opus 43 we find the fine song, ‘With Eternal Love,’ and the barbaric ballad, ‘The Song of Herr von Falkenstein.’ Such intentional crudity as Brahms puts into this latter song should redeem him from any suspicion of pedantry. The ‘Magyar Love Song’ of opus 46 treats the words with unusual freedom even for Brahms. The same can be said for ‘Gold Outweighs Love,’ in opus 48. Opus 49 offers us an interesting song, ‘On Sunday Morning,’ and the famous Lullaby. In opus 57 we have ‘Motionless Air,’ and in opus 58 ‘Oh, Come, Holy Summer Night,’ both fine enough to be the masterpieces of another man’s output, though they are Brahms’ second best. ‘Twilight Falls,’ of opus 59, is a deeply tragic piece in the folk-mood. In opus 63 we have one song which shows us Brahms as the most thorough technician. The ‘Consolation of Spring’ makes the most elaborate use of syncopation and mixed rhythms, accompanying the 6/4 voice part with a piano part practically in 3/2. ‘Remembrance,’ from the same group, is worth knowing, and ‘O, Would I Knew the Returning Road’ is one of the sweetest of Brahms’ songs.
In opus 66 is one of the daintiest and most humorous of the songs, a duet to folk-words, which might be sung as a solo—‘Have a Care.’ ‘I Call from the Bank,’ in opus 69, is Brahms once more in the generous world of romance. ‘The Maiden’s Curse,’ in the same group, is a fine tragic song set to a Servian folk-poem. It is an interesting question here whether Brahms did not fail entirely to catch the spirit of the words. The maiden, in a dialogue with her mother, curses her lover, who has prevented her from finishing the washing. She hopes he may be hanged (upon her white breast), chained (in her white arms), drowned (in her love), and so on. The point of the song is the double meaning of the curses. Brahms has treated the words as the passionate rhetoric of love. But it is probable that the poem, in its true spirit, is a comic song. The second part of each curse should probably be deliveredsotto voce, so that the mother shall not hear. In such areading there would be a delightful comic contrast between the coarse hussy which the girl pretends to be and the sentimental love-sick maiden that she is. Brahms makes no sort of distinction between the two parts of the curses and the song in his hands attains a certain tragic intensity by virtue of the girl’s defiance of her mother.
In opus 71 are ‘To the Moon’ and theMinnelied, one of the most admired of Brahms’ songs. In sheer beauty, however, this is inferior to the lovely lyric in opus 72,O, kühler Wald. Opus 84 contains Brahms’ most spirited comic song, the delightful ‘Vain Serenade,’ the high spirits of which make it an irresistible concert number. Two fine folk-songs are to be found in opus 85, a Servian ‘Maiden’s song,’ andAde, from the Bohemian. Opus 94 contains the famous ‘Sapphic Ode.’[28]Here we find, in the simple melody (as apart from the song as a whole), Brahms’ intellectuality and sensuous beauty fused into a perfect whole. Over it all is that fine artistic reserve which Brahms was so master of and which makes the music so fitting an expression of Greek verse. Among others of the later songs we should mention two Heine songs, ‘Death Is the Cool Night’ and the ‘Sea Journey.’
Brahms’ songs are as permanent a part of concert programs as those of Schubert or Franz. If they are not as popular in the looser sense of the word, it is because concert audiences are not yet as a whole willing to give the necessary attention to them. For, while the Brahms songs are emphatically not dull, they do demand careful listening. Without doubt their popularity will grow steadily. And this will be the best of events both for audiences and for singers. He who has learned to listen to Brahms’ songs will never again be quite so indulgent with what is cheap and facile. And the singer who has learned how to make effectivethe striking qualities hidden in a Brahms song will find himself equipped with a power and dignity in his work which he could hardly get in any other way.
Wagner’s songs are few. They comprise only those written during his early years in Paris, when for a time he hoped to make himself a fashion in Parisian drawing rooms, and those written under the influence of Mathilde Wesendonck in the late fifties, when he was planning ‘Tristan.’ The former group, being composed at the time when he was writing ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and being, moreover, designed for a debased public taste, can by no means be ranked with his typical work. The songs it contains are not great. But Wagner’s genius was too imperative to blot itself out at any time and these early lyrics show evidences of the artistic energy which was later to flower in ‘The Ring.’ The earliest known of Wagner’s songs is ‘The Fir Tree,’ written in 1838 in Königsberg. It has little more than historic interest. In Paris he wrote the ‘Three Melodies,’ which are still occasionally sung and will repay a little study. The lullaby,Dors, mon enfant, is marked with a suavity in the melody and a variety in the accompaniment which betray with certainty the touch of the true musician. The second ‘melody,’ called ‘The Rose,’ is rather too sweet but is saved by its interesting accompaniment. ‘Waiting’ is vigorous in conception and execution. But the best of Wagner’s Parisian songs is ‘The Two Grenadiers,’ composed to a French version of Heine’s famous poem, to which Schumann wrote his popular setting. Wagner’s method is more dramatic than Schumann’s. It gives a much more important function to the accompaniment, which is something approaching the ‘orchestral comment’ of his later theories. At times the voice part is freely declamatory.Throughout it is kept remarkably free from the running comment of the piano. The long crescendo up to the final lines is managed with skill. For these lines the Marseillaise is used, as in Schumann’s setting, but only in the accompaniment, the voice singing an independent part. Here we have something approaching a trueleit motifused in a way foreshadowing the later revolutionary music dramas. The introduction of the Marseillaise by both Schumann and Wagner must be regarded purely as a coincidence, since the songs, as it happens, were written in the same year.
The ‘Five Poems,’ to words by Mathilde Wesendonck, are, with one exception, songs of the first rank. This exception is the ‘Sorrows,’ which is a bit pompous and rings insincere. ‘The Angel’ is a simple melody with a soft, flowing accompaniment much in the style of the ‘Lohengrin’ music. ‘Stand Still’ is a vigorous and dramatic song, combining both the lyrical and the declamatory elements. The two remaining songs will always be masterpieces of the first order. They are regarded as ‘studies’ for the Tristan music and both contain motives from ‘Tristan’ or harmonic peculiarities which mark them out unmistakably.Träume(‘Dreams’), the better known of the two, weaves a wonderful sensuous spell about the listener. Its melody is constructed in a peculiar manner which we sometimes meet in Brahms—a sort of telescoping of successive phrases, so as to bind the parts more cogently and increase the emphasis of the whole. The harmony is a wonderful series of melting chords, culminating in ecstatic chromatic modulations on the words:
‘Sanft an deiner Brust verglühenUnd dann sinken in die Gruft.’
‘Sanft an deiner Brust verglühenUnd dann sinken in die Gruft.’
‘Sanft an deiner Brust verglühenUnd dann sinken in die Gruft.’
The other ‘Tristan’ song isIm Treibhaus(‘In the Hothouse’). It contains two of the ‘Tristan’ motives,slightly altered, those of the wounded Tristan and Tristan’s longing. The harmony in this song is exceedingly delicate and chromatic—revolutionary for its time. Here the chromatic development toward which composers had half consciously striven for two centuries at last attained a complete development. The lyric must rank as one of the wonders of modern song literature.
Liszt’s songs also we may roughly divide into two classes—those of the Paris period and those of the Weimar period. More than Wagner, Liszt wrote his French songs in the taste of the time and the nation. As one of the pets of the capital he was sure to be heard gladly by the Parisians and his wonderful instinct for pleasing made him write naturally in a style which we cannot usually differentiate from the style of native song writers.Comment!for instance, is as French a song as though its composer had never travelled beyond the Parisian fortifications. Its sensitive feeling for the words, its delicate use of the accompaniment in the thin French style, mark it as utterly un-German. The most striking of the Parisian songs isEnfant, so j’étais roi, to words by Victor Hugo. It is elaborate and pretentious, but it has a good deal of real power. On the whole, however, Liszt’s French songs are without the very qualities which make the later German songs so valuable—chiefly the dramatic and the declamatory values.
Not all these German songs are of high rank, though we may select a dozen or so which are the work of genius. The cheapness which so often entered into the rest of Liszt’s work, finds its way now and then into the songs, but on the whole this department of his creative activity maintains a higher average than any other. Cheapness enters somewhat into two of the earlier German songs, ‘The Fisher Boy’ and ‘The Shepherd,’ both to words by Schiller. The accompaniments are graphicallydescriptive. Caring little for the formal unity of the songs, Liszt introduced the description suggested by the words whenever the suggestion came. In fact, the songs are really declamations for the voice with a running comment in the piano. They are far superior to the longer declamatory songs of Schubert, which were little more than pretentious recitatives; they raise the declamation into real melody and the descriptive comment into real music. But these songs are far surpassed by some of the Weimar period. ‘The Loreley,’ to Heine’s words, is one of the most elaborate descriptive songs ever written. The opening lines are freely declaimed to a suggestive accompaniment. When the description of the Rhine enters—die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt—we hear a lovely 9/8 motive set over an arpeggio accompaniment which strikingly suggests the calm flowing river. The music becomes deeper and richer as the Loreley enters the action. The passage where the fisher is dragged into the depths of the water is treated with free and impressive dramatic power. Then the Rhine once more flows quietly over the place where the man was drowned and the lovely river theme returns once more, deepening into silence as the darkness falls. This song illustrates almost at its best the principle of the descriptive song, the principle held by many that the effect ofthe wholeis to be gained by treatingeach partwith fidelity. It is interesting to compare this setting with the simple folk-like setting provided by Silcher and universally sung. The latter makes a very regular strophic melody serve for all the stanzas. The two settings are both wonderful and in very different ways. A choice between the two must be a matter of individual taste. It will be a nice exercise for the student to study the two and choose, on personal grounds, between them.
Fine as ‘The Loreley’ is, Liszt has written two ballads which are finer. His setting of ‘The King of Thule,’from Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ is almost beyond praise. In this he uses a brief suggestive phrase in the accompaniment which becomes the germ of the whole ballad, being repeated in many connotations and moods. ‘The Ancestral Tomb,’ to Uhland’s words, perhaps suffers just a trifle from the pompous, but is nevertheless one of the best ballads (or, more properly, romances) that we have. The old warrior, the last of his race, goes to his ancestral tomb, in which one stone vault is still empty. He hears the voices of his fathers singing an impressive and mysterious song of family pride. The voices cease and he lays himself in the empty vault and dies. Suggestions of unguessed mystery and grandeur hang over the ballad.
In addition to these larger compositions, Liszt achieved what might reasonably have been considered an impossibility for him—the pure lyric. Some of his settings are almost flawless. Heine’sDu bist wie eine Blumehas never received such fine music at the hands of another composer. The opening and typical phrase seems to contain the essence of the religious sentimentalism of Heine’s words. ‘Mignon’s Song’ commences with a phrase, set over an altered chord, which has become famous for its accurate delineation of a mood in a few notes. Perhaps the most impressive of his brief lyrics isDer du von dem Himmel bist. Liszt’s simple setting of this poem is finer, if possible, than Schubert’s.Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsamandIm Rhein, im schönen Stromepresent many elements of beauty and interest. But the most typical and possibly the finest of all Liszt’s songs is ‘The Three Gypsies,’ to Lehnau’s words. In the poem the speaker tells of having passed along a country road and having seen three gypsies, one smoking, one fiddling, and one sleeping. In the music each of the gypsies is carefully differentiated. The characterization in this song is beyond all praise. The voice part is an eloquent declamation, risinghere and there into inspired melody. For the basic theme, the theme of the joy of life, Liszt has a magnificent Hungarian melody, surely one of the finest he ever used. The song is one of the most effective of concert pieces.
In spite of his comparatively small output, Liszt’s songs are of great importance in the history of song writing. He, better than any other, fused the declamatory and the lyrical—truth to the words and truth to the emotions. He several times struck the grand note as few purely lyrical composers (not even Schubert) have been able to do. In the development of the piano part along the purely descriptive side no composer has gone beyond Liszt.