Alto Rhapsody

Among journeying topics, the figure of the isolated wanderer has an incomparably rich history. Particularly among German writers, artists, and composers—men like Goethe, Friedrich, and Schubert—the wanderer stands poised at the center of numerous masterworks. At the tail end of that tradition, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) still felt its attraction. Brahms likely projected himself into the wanderer persona: a bit out of step with modernist tendencies in music, he was a confirmed bachelor deeply in love (from a distance) with Clara Schumann, the wife of his idol and benefactor. In 1869, not long after completing a magisterial German Requiem, Brahms composed the Alto Rhapsody as a wedding gift for the Schumanns’ daughter Julie (for whom the composer may also have nurtured unrequited longing). The scoring for alto solo, male chorus, and orchestra is particularly attractive and rather unique. The piece benefits from all that Brahms had learned in writing the Requiem, which in turn was enriched by his years programming Baroque music as director of the Vienna Singakademie. I doubt that the Rhapsody would have attained such emotional power—or been written at all—had Brahms not gone through those intervening stages.
The text comes from Goethe, and aesthetically it treads the same ground walked by Werther and Wilhelm Meister. Yet how brilliant on Brahms’ part to set this male-oriented persona with the rich, female alto voice. The Rhapsody unfolds in three sections; only in the last does the male chorus appear as a supporting spiritual force. By that time, the music has settled into a radiant C major. The preceding sections unfold in a darker C minor, a key that Brahms continually inflects with wide-ranging chromatic touches. There are hints here of Wagner—later to be Brahms’ antipode in a public battle over the “future” of German music. But here the Wagnerian influence emerges in the heavy chromaticism, motivic diminished-7th chords, string tremolos, and the recitative singing style used in the opening phrases.
With the turn to 6/4 meter, the music grows a touch more animated, albeit no less dark or imposing. In this lyrical middle section, Brahms draws the utmost pathos from every gesture, culminating in an octave fall followed by a huge dissonant leap of a diminished 12th at “aus der Fülle der Liebetrank” (from the cup of love). In the final section, a bright C major still wrestles with disturbing inflections toward other keys, symbolically akin to the topical wanderer as he continues to feel doubts despite measurable progress toward acceptance. In quick succession, Brahms shifts from C to E-flat major/minor, then to B major/minor. These changes of tonal scenery parallel the repeated efforts by the text to “revive this heart.”
In this magical work, Brahms brings together a sensitivity to poetry developed in the numerous songs and Liebeslieder Waltzes written just months prior; a handling of choral texture mastered in the Requiem; a skill with orchestral scoring refined in the protracted birth of his Symphony No. 1 (1855-1876)—all come to bear on the modest ambitions of this 12-minute wedding gift, a touching paean to marital bliss that its composer would never know for himself.

(c) Jason Stell