Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 52 and 65

In the vein of convivial Hausmusik, Johannes Brahms produced one of the 19th century’s most successful partsong collections, the Liebeslieder Waltzes. The 18 texts offer a glimpse into eastern-European folktales, which Brahms discovered in a collection entitled Polydora (1855). His settings depict a world where music imbues the home, where the piano functions as a hearth, men and women gathering around it to sing, flirt, and chase away loneliness. The composer’s own amorous frustrations are fairly well known, particularly his deep affection for Clara Schumann (wife of composer Robert Schumann). Art imitates life here, as Brahms and Clara sat side-by-side performing the four-hand piano accompaniment at the work’s premiere.

Brahms set all the texts as waltzes or, more specifically, as Ländler, an Austrian folkdance perhaps best known today because of its role in The Sound of Music. One attraction for modern listeners is the incredible freshness and variety that Brahms continued to find within the confines of triple meter. He had already composed several waltz sets, and yet the quality remains high.
The first text, Russian in origin, typifies the sentiment of the entire set, love: uncertain, unrequited and from afar, painful, yet the most natural thing in the world. Brahms gives the opening phrase to the men, along with a characteristic and highly charged figure: an upwardly resolving chromatic appoggiatura, the musical way to depict yearning. The second, third, and fourth texts stem from a mixed Russian-Polish tradition. In No. 2 Brahms introduces a new, dotted rhythm, one way in which he enlivens the predictable triple rhythm. Nos. 3 and 4, like many in the set, use a two-quarter-note pickup rhythm. The two songs are paired: one is a setting for two-part men of a very simple text about women’s charms (No. 3), and the other—for two-part women—deals with a woman’s longing for monogamous bliss (No. 4). In No. 5, a Russian text, Brahms alternates between male and female voices on a phrase-by-phrase basis. This strategy reinforces the clear, four-phrase structure of the song: women-men-women-both.

No. 6, the first of several Hungarian tales, finds Brahms at his best. The piece starts with a brief instrumental prefix, which leads to a tenor solo marked by dotted and clipped rhythms—all designed to project a comic spirit. The mood changes quite dramatically near the middle, as Brahms shifts from A major to F major, from staccato to lyricism for the passages dealing with the “safe homecoming” of love. The melodic line of No. 7 fixates around the interval of a semitone, giving a dissonant bite to the maiden’s reflections on faded love. This is one of only two solos in the collection (the other is No. 17). Song No. 8 is a more conventional binary dance for full chorus. Even though the recurrent pickup figure appears here, the interest turns to Brahms’s harmonic shifts and slides at the start of the second section.

Songs 13 and 14 form another female-male pair. The Russo-Polish text of No. 13, set for two-part women, uses a recurrent analogy from nature: like a bird seeking a secluded haven, each heart yearns for its mate. No. 14 repeats the connection between Nature and love as a vague relation between the calm, moonlit lake and the lovers’ embrace. Something certainly clicked for Brahms, for the song is one of the best in the entire collection. Its two-part male texture recalls his Alto Rhapsody, while certain harmonic progressions bring to mind the German Requiem. Song 15 returns to the evocation of birdcalls hinted at in earlier numbers. Brahms relies on a tripping, dotted rhythmic figure throughout to depict the nocturnal warble of the nightingale, bird of lovers’ shadowy embrace. The final two texts are Hungarian. Song 17, a tenor solo, offers a tender appeal to fidelity; Brahms indicates Mit Ausdruck (“With feeling”) at the start. The structure is a typical repeating binary, and the occasional syncopation in the melody complements the regular, lullaby-style accompaniment. No. 18 ends the collection with a full-bodied, full-voiced choral metaphor: Just as bushes are set in motion by a passing bird in flight, so my soul quivers because of love.

(c) Jason Stell