J. Brahms Left Hand Arrangment of 

J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in D minor from Violin Partita No. 2

J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in D minor is one of the most monumental works in western music history. An opinion largely held inside and out of the classical music world. Joshua Bell described the piece as “not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history.” The Chaconne is a composition comparable to any masterpiece in visual and stage art, language and literature, as well as any invention in its field. Many scholars and musicians have attributed a work standing the test of time to how it is transferred from one generation to the next. This Chaconne holds a high standard in that regard, being praised and rearranged in nearly every generation since its conception in 1723. Such notable arrangements were authored by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Busoni, W.T. Best and Joachim Raff and for this discussion, Brahms.

Throughout the first few approaches to this work, one of the largest challenges is whether to view and portray this as a work by Bach arranged by Brahms for left hand, (to essentially restrain the power of the keyboard to represent the violin and the limitations of music technology in Bach’s time), or to approach this work through the lens of 1870s Brahms’s style, elucidation, and especially with the 150 years of evolution of technology and capabilities, specifically of sustainment, of the piano.

Although ‘written for’ and dedicated to Clara Schumann, it seems Brahms had been looking forward to arranging the work in some way for quite some time. During his tenure with the Bach Gesellschaft, Brahms had naturally become fascinated by, some of the most major and difficult works in German/Austrian history, the works of J.S. Bach. He was quoted saying how inspired he was by the Chaconne’s “whole world of the deepest thoughts and the mightiest emotions. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”[2]  He also noted his amazement for the composition to be all under one staff, thus the arrangement for left hand alone, “in order to come close to the restrictive framework of the original.” It seems possible that when Clara had been injured, the piece had already been prepared. And she wrote “just think, on the day of my arrival, when I was opening a drawer I strained a muscle in my right hand, so you may imagine what a glorious refuge your Chaconne has been to me.” And so, Clara Schumann loved the arrangement. She publicly raved about the work and privately wrote to Brahms; “You alone could have accomplished such a thing…., however you came to think of it, it amazes me.”

There is quite a bit of recorded written interaction between Clara and Johannes over this work. Both in fascination of the genius of Bach, and in discussing the possibilities for expansion within a desire to limit the voicings. Brahms himself wrote: “There is only one way in which I can secure undiluted joy from the piece, though on a small and only approximate scale, and that is when I play it with the left hand alone…. The same difficulty, the nature of the technique, the rendering of the arpeggios, everything conspires to make me feel like a violinist!” Clara concurred, “The Chaconne is, in my opinion, one of the most wonderful and most incomprehensible pieces of music….  If one has no supremely great violinist at hand, the most exquisite of joys is probably simply to let the Chaconne ring in one’s mind. But the piece certainly inspires one to occupy oneself with it somehow….”

I discovered this work in 2020, meeting needs for both emotional relief for the changes in the world, and physical relief due to a right hand injury. Working with just the left hand allowed for a more in-depth analysis of technique. Study of the Chaconne provided an opportunity to understand the capabilities and limitations of both hands, while resting and recovering the right. The Chaconne quickly became a life-changing discovery and work that will be revisited often and incorporated into future performances and educational repertoire. Throughout my formal education, especially in graduate school, I’ve come to view performance practice and the concept of ‘form’ as essential and all-important in the interpretation of a work, so research and learning all I can about the conception of a work is pertinent. 

Brahms knew, as evident by the Gesellschaft and his editing of Bach’s work, the Bach partitas and how special this Chaconne was so he did not change notes (only set the entire work one octave lower) and harmonies drastically, but rather expanded certain voicings, below the low G string on violin of course, as well as with the allowance of pedal tones and legato suspensions. The end result, besides the setting of one octave lower on the piano than on the violin, is nearly a direct transcription, only a small number compared to the total being ‘new.’ When a composer is transcribing from one instrument to another, changes are not only allowed but necessary. Brahms uses these freedoms in an incredibly respectful way. He did not truly explore the full possibilities of the keyboard, as did Busoni, yet Brahms transcends the instruments of violin and piano and translates Bach’s intentions through a unique and new historical perspective.

The left hand arrangement brings forth a wide array of technical challenges for the pianist. From the expectation of accurate and consistent rolled chords spread across multiple octaves, to the sought after shimmering effect of the passage-work within such long moving sixteenth and thirty-second note sections. It holds options for fingerings and different approaches but it’s important to be consistent because several patterns return but are meant to emphasized differently. The most difficult aspects of the work are a combination of emotional intensity due to the sometimes seemingly never-ending growth of each melodic statement. On several occasions there are ‘sempre crescendos,’ requiring of the performer to control the gradual increase in dynamics throughout several passages. 

In terms of historical performance practice, I have come to approach the Chaconne with respect for the limitations of Bach’s violin as opposed to the capabilities of Brahms’s piano, which I have concluded was Brahms’s intention. Choosing not to use as much pedal as a romantic pianist might (Brahms often notates not to use pedal for certain passages), and to roll many chords in a way that the violin would (low string/note alone, top 3 strings/notes can be played together), which begs a musical decision from the performer right in the first full measure. Already there are 9ths and 10ths compounded with 4 notes. The largest ‘rolls,’ if you can still call them that, spread across two or more octaves and are generally used to express large cadences. Brahms incorporates the instrumental techniques of the violin and keyboard, and compositional technique such as counterpoint, melodic and harmonic development, as well as a broader more expanded level of orchestration (voicings) on the keyboard with the 150 years of musical evolution since Bach’s composition.

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue

For solo piano

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue has stood the test of time as a piece that has been arranged and revised many times as well. And as one of the first and most expensive commercially licensed works in music history. At its inception, Rhapsody in Blue was one of the most marketable and presentable works in American history, perhaps in music history. As surprising as it was to Gershwin, the commission and his association with Paul Whiteman and his band drew quite a bit of excitement in New York prior to its premiere, and in the American musical scene for quite some time thereafter. 

            Rhapsody In Blue is objectively one of the most legendary works in the canon. “The story of the actual construction of the Rhapsody grew in the telling and retelling,”[1] and the 5+ published versions, as well as the eventual acceptance of jazz ‘academically,’ and in mainstream music culture, give way to a variety of interpretations. Gershwin himself exaggerated the length, at times saying he composed the work in ten days, other times in three weeks. Several versions of the tales tell Gershwin as not having been prepared for the occasion. Ira Gershwin supposedly discovered the headline weeks before the premiere, while Gershwin either delayed it on purpose or had forgotten about any agreement with Whiteman. 

There have been suspicions that Gershwin was not yet proficient in the highly regarded skill of orchestration. Most broadway and popular music composers hired professional orchestrators. Gershwin, already considered by some to be more of a ‘serious’ composer than his colleagues on broadway, perhaps should have been expected to orchestrate his own work. Either due to this, or the time constraints from delaying the composition, Whiteman arranged for Frederick Grofé to orchestrate the Rhapsody in Blue. Accounts of Gershwin’s, Whiteman’s, and Grofé’s collaboration in the preparation of the Rhapsody’s premiere, tell Gershwin as still having input into the final instrumentation and orchestration. Even more likely, due to the fame and familiarity of Paul Whiteman’s band, Gershwin (and likely Grofé) cared not so much which instrument played, but who was playing that instrument. And so, the opening was set to Ross Gorman’s style of clarinet, the ‘wah-wah’ muted themes to famed trumpeter Henry Busse, and several themes to 2 players expected to play at least 5 instruments throughout the initial performances; Oboe, the 4 Saxophones (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, & Baritone), and Clarinet, a combination not expected of even the most skilled professional players in the world today.

The reach and influence of the Rhapsody in music history is evident in how much the work has changed and evolved since its inception. Part of a program titled “An Experiment in Modern Music,” the composers and musicians of this concert had so much versatility and ability to adapt to different styles. At its premiere in 1924, Rhapsody in Blue was programmed alongside works by Victor Herbert, and Ferde Grofé and performances by Dick Hyman and Zez Confrey. Within the range of these artists, along with the social inequality and diversity in the US during the 1920s, came the question of “what is American music?” Which coincidentally was the title of the article that reminded Ira & George Gershwin that George should’ve been busy composing instead of playing billiards.

As was Gershwin’s own background, the United States was not only becoming more diverse, but society was generally beginning to accept the characteristics of diversity and inclusion as strengths rather than a weaknesses. Rhapsody in Blue incorporates styles of early jazz and popular music rarely seen in concert halls at the time and includes sounds of the American Industrial Revolution, as many scholars have portrayed the isorhythm as a moving train, and the bustling sounds of a busy New York City. 

Throughout his career, Gershwin was seen in different lights by different artists. Having such variety and adaptability to other styles and genres, his contemporaries weren’t sure if he wanted to be a concert composer, a popular songwriter, or both. Thus the analysis by most ‘formal’ composers, concludes a general lack of form in Gershwin’s composing. Leonard Bernstein criticized the work, even though he helped champion the Rhapsody with modern orchestras, as not being a composition at all… but a “string of separate paragraphs stuck together-with thin paste of flour and water.” He concluded that “you can’t just put four tunes together, God-given though they may be, and call them a composition.”[2]

Gershwin did however write of his own intentions, possibly justifying any lack of structure:

“There had been so much chatter about the limitations of jazz, not to speak of the manifest misunderstanding of its function. Jazz, they said, has to be in strict time… I resolved, if possible, to kill that misconception with one sturdy blow. Inspired by this aim I set to work composing with unwonted rapidity. No set plan was in my mind – no structure to which my music would conform. The rhapsody, as you see, began as a purpose, not a plan.”

Nevertheless, composing “the famed Rhapsody in Blue, a jazz concerto constructed after Liszt,” earned Gershwin the front page title of Time Magazine. Gershwin soon became America’s premiere composer and one of the most sought after composers and pianists in the world. Although the work was met with praise and harsh criticism, Gershwin’s career exploded. 

Aside from the many debated upon and possible intentions of the work, Rhapsody in Blue has remained a principal work in orchestral and piano repertoire, in and out of the United States. The works use of the piano’s capabilities, musical styles, and compositional techniques combine to create unique challenges for the pianist. Gershwin composed the Rhapsody first for solo piano, and then began (prior to Ferde Grofé’s inclusion) to think of melodies and their corresponding instrumentation. However, with nearly 80 years of evolution and various interpretations, the most difficult aspect, from this pianist’s perspective, is to eliminate all preconceptions of it as an orchestral work. Rather than trying to make each ‘orchestral’ section louder than the ‘piano solo sections,’ it is essential to think of and portray these transitions more as stylistic, or character change, to prevent a competition between the so-called orchestra and piano, which in turn will prevent overbearing tension and an ease of creating more musically contrasting themes. 

The Rhapsody’s pianistic problems and technical challenges are consistent with Gershwin’s output and style. Similar to his piano works such as the Three Preludes, and the ‘other,’ more traditional, Concerto in F. Speed, stride, and virtuosic passagework is not unique to the Rhapsody compared to Gershwin’s playing professionally at the time, and his piano compositions. The first piano solo brings memorable repetitive motions that require the use of a double escapement technique, i.e. not allowing for the piano key to return to its initial position, or striking the key again before it reaches the top. To achieve the desired balance requires a strong understanding of Gershwin’s intent and the performer’s interpretation.

What stands out is Gershwin’s use of more archaic music forms and compositional techniques, such as the underlying isorhythm throughout the middle E major ‘love’ theme, and his combination of musical elements melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically. As well as his use of stretto, sequences, and melodic displacement.

J. Brahms - Op. 43 Vier Gesänge

            Opus 43 by Johannes Brahms is a very special and unique set of 4 songs. Published as a set in 1868, Brahms had written songs sparsely for several years. He chose not to incorporate songs into cycles like his predecessors, but rather to set them in smaller, more accessible sets. At first because he feared the songs wouldn’t meet his standard of mastery and craft (he continued to rework and revise the majority of his catalogue throughout his career, always striving for ‘perfection’ not ‘beauty’), and eventually for the purposes of providing Hausmusik for his audience, easier workloads for his publishers, and more music for his colleagues to perform. In Brahms’s lieder, “we find in the voice part the straightforward syllabic setting and simple rhythms of folk song, the piano accompaniment restrained, often within the capacity of amateurs who performed these songs at home,” or in more intimate settings. The Op. 43 set of four songs results in two that have the uniquely lyrical yet typical Brahmsian structure and sound that has ensured his legacy since, a third song which is archaic in form, reminiscent of a Bach chorale perhaps, and the fourth being one of Brahms’s few settings of ballad text and uses of a through-composed structure (disguised as strophic), however much less convincing than the first two songs.

            This set is amongst a slew of Opus numbers that are among Brahms’s main contribution to lieder. Johannes Brahms, being perhaps more involved with the publishing process than any composer before him, deliberately worked and composed what he felt would benefit his career at the time, as well as his close friends, who were almost in all cases, prominent musical performers, composers, and publishers, such as Joseph and Amalie Joachim, Julius Stockhausen, and Clara Schumann. After achieving widespread fame throughout Europe with pieces like his first Cello Sonata (Op. 38), the Horn Trio (Op. 40), Alto Rhapsody (op. 53) and finally Eines deutsches Requiem (Op. 45), Brahms was ready to finalize much of these smaller works and Hausmusik that had been sitting on his desk for quite some time. In the time from 1868 to 1873, Brahms published the 16 Waltzes of Op. 39 (‘dumbed-down’ for and dedicated to the most prominent music critic in Europe at the time: Eduard Hanslick, a move that cemented his legacy in the German and Austrian music scene) and several sets of lieder. Here listed with their Opus Number and number of songs (some include piano 4 hands and/or multiple vocal parts).

Op. 43.   4

Op. 46    4

Op. 47    5

Op. 48    7

Op. 49    5

Op. 57    8

Op. 58    8

Op. 59    8

            Brahms had several strings of extensive outputs in his contributions to lieder, with these publications in 1868-1872, and a similar batch of sets, from Op. 69 through 72 at an even quicker pace in the Spring of 1877. “Such ‘sets of sets’ became the norm thereafter.”

Brahms only attempting one cycle, Magelone, as well as never fully realizing his intentions for an opera are quite revealing in comparison to Schubert, Schumann, and of course Wagner, Liszt and Wolf. The endurance of dramaticism that is required of longer song cycles was not a forte of Brahms’s, and therefore not something he focused on in composing. Poetic details and the overall structure of the song was much more important than any single melodic phrase. “Overt pictorialism and passionate outbursts of emotion were not his style personally, nor his style of expressiveness in music.”

Brahms’s catalogue, with few exceptions, is directly at the forefront of the ‘battle’ between program and absolute music. Scholars, musicians, and music-lovers the same, rightfully assume that lieder is emblematic of program music, except in the case of Brahms contribution. “Brahms inhabits that hinterland of the lied where song borders on absolute music.” This separation, of absolute music and programmatic music, was once much more prevalent than it is today or realized historically. During the late 19th century, along with increasing political turmoil and the continual separation of the classes and cultures in Europe, the rise of nationalism and anti-Semitism had begun, all art forms were involved, and composers were very much aware of the political consequences of writing music that objected the norms of society, either with their lyrics, the structure, or what the music may or may not have been alluding to. In a most general sense, Brahms set vocal lines to follow poems syllable by syllable, “and in [each settings] formal divisions the music strictly reflects the poem’s stanzas. In songs, Brahms shapes thematic relationships as carefully as in his instrumental works…. the first considerations are form, melody, and bass, then the rest.” 

The first song in Op. 43, Von ewiger Liebe, is likely inspired by Ottilie Hauer, a periodic infatuation of Brahms’s, and talented singer. Brahms struggled mightily throughout his life with several instances that have been labeled as a sort of unrequited love, or an infatuation. Brahms separated himself from women in his profession as a composer, yet was so easily able to fall in love with talented singers, pianists, even with the relatives of famous composers, such as Clara and later on Julie Schumann. These infatuations as well as his lack of respect for female artists left some to believe he was quite misogynistic and likely would not have been able to maintain a long-term relationship or marriage anyway. This also negatively impacted several of his friendships and career moves. Brahms got almost as close to marriage with Ottilie as he did any woman in his life, even more so than Clara, only due to marriage with Clara Schumann being virtually out of the question. He had dealt with the failed engagement and severed relationship with Agathe Siebold, another matter that may have inspired other songs of Brahms’s, but during the Christmas season of 1863, Brahms had decided to ask for Ottilie to marry him. However, he had narrowly missed his window, and arrived after she had accepted the proposal of a Dr. Edward Ebner. Nevertheless, the friendship with Ottilie continued, and as the marriage likely “relieved [Brahms] of an ‘obsession,’” and Brahms befriended the good Doctor as well. 

As a result of the whole fiasco “Brahms got some songs out of the bargain when fate extracted him from Ottilie.” Brahms often received inspiration from his life events, whether they were the fault of his own or not. He gave Ottilie sixteen of his most prized song manuscripts, and was inspired to compose this masterpiece, “one of his most enduring, a particular favorite of his own, and a classic illustration of Brahmsian lieder design. Amplifying the song’s connection to Ottilie, Brahms based one of its themes on his rejected Brautgesang. As with almost all of his lieder, Brahms avoids subtleties or ambiguities in his lyrics and strives for “rather a simple situation with direct emotions, succinctly set forth.”

As a perfect example, Von ewiger liebe is set “without theatrical passion in the vocal line, it is like a folk song where stories of blood and thunder unfold in the placid repetitions of strophic form. [It] is not evoked in details of tone-painting but rather in the sound and feel of the opening two strophes-the low, murmuring B minor of the beginning,... The straightforward declamation of the melody is inflected in the piano by drifting chromatic harmonies, but they evolve with a linear logic that veils to the ear how Wagnerianly far-ranging they are.” Within each of the themes, each stanza is developed in nearly every way except for its melody. He wraps the song text “in a form that more subtly evokes the scene and feelings.” The accompaniment evolves with the storyline and the structure of the harmony, leaving the vocal melody almost identical throughout the first two stanzas. In its third statement, the accompaniment begins to develop rhythmically as well as harmonically and melodically in the vocal line, always providing a driving intensity for the singer to respond expressively and dramatically. Brahms’s typical use of 3 against 2 rhythms and contrary motion add to the intensity and create a dramatic buildup that is finally resolved and relieved in the transition from minor to major. This doubting and attempt at distancing the relationship in the text of the middle, passionate and contemplative section, the text of which comes from a Wendish folk text, is something that Brahms easily would have related too, given his personality and loneliness in life:

‘If you suffer sorrow and suffer shame, 

Shame for what others think of me,

Then let our love be severed as swiftly, 

As swiftly as once we two were plighted.

This change from B minor to the parallel B major and from ¾ to 6/8, with a new tempo marking Zeimlich langsam, is a tool to provide the woman’s acclamation of love with a triumphant and new harmony as well as a seamless transition of rhythm and meter to coincide with her realization, 

“Our love cannot be sundered!...

Iron and steel can disintegrate; 

our love must endure eternally!

But our love, who shall change it?

Iron and steel can be melted down, 

Our love must endure for ever!’

Now the music is “sweet and comforting,” the new rocking motion, which only occurs in the first half of each bar and pedal tone of the accompaniment, gives a feeling of being suspended, and allows opportunities for both singer and pianist to be even more expressive. This character will encompass the entire final section, also incorporating cross-rhythms that help develop into an “intensification that continues to a warm, full-hearted, and very satisfying climax.”[7]With all these factors, often using similar compositional techniques across his entire output, and labeling milestones or landmarks in the structure of the harmony and form of the work, Brahms, as was his abiding contribution to lieder and all of Western music, enlists a new expressive form rarely seen in music before, as contemporary, of afterwards. “In those respects Brahms was closer to Schubert than to Schumann as a lieder composer.”

The second song of Opus 43, Die Mainacht, is also a sublime work of Brahms’s, accessible by intellectuals and layman alike. The strikingly beautiful song, although not using text of unrequited love, rejection, or realization, instead uses nature and environment in seductive ways. The poem is written by Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty, who adheres to a famous German sect of poetry, Göttinger Hain, a group whose works were characterized by love of nature and the expression of patriotism. His poetry is often seen as the embodiment of North German and Prussian virtues and has been set by many European composers, notably in Mozart’s Magic Flute, much of the early German lieder of Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn(s). As Brahms also loved nature immensely, taking swims and hikes routinely into his 50s not only for pleasure but for inspiration as well, it’s easy to see why he would’ve been attracted to this text and others of Hölty’s.

No. 2 – Die Mainacht

When the silvery moon gleams through the bushes,

And sheds its slumbering light on the grass,

And the nightingale is fluting,

I wander sadly from bush to bush.

Covered by leaves, a pair of doves

Coo to me their ecstasy; but I turn away,

Seek darker shadows,

And the lonely tear flows down.

When, O smiling vision, that shines through my soul

Like the red of dawn, shall I find you here on earth?

And the lonely tear

Quivers more ardently down my cheek.

To match Hölty’s text, Brahms uses harmonic changes to bring tension to certain words and phrases. He uses the introduction to “establish a sense of restlessness and lack of direction.” A slow, lullaby like accompaniment stays through the A theme, enlisting noteworthy chromatic harmonies along the way, and using an Eb minor statement of the introduction as the transition into the B theme and seemingly unrelated key of B major. 

            In the second stanza of the song, Brahms omits Hölty’s second verse. With how straightforward and true to the literature his works usually are, it is quite remarkable that Brahms would omit this verse. Perhaps it would interrupt the highly imaginative ternary form which is not clear until the fusion of A and B themes that occurs later on in the piece. Although Brahms used Eb minor as the modulatory mechanism, this music in the second theme seems quite different. After close observation however, the B theme is essentially a statement of the A theme in the distant key of B major, yet ends with a dominant that doesn’t transition back to B major or into Eb just yet. This theme (at m. 15) is set in a much higher register, uses repetition as the main pattern in the accompaniment, contrasted nicely by leaps and suspensions in the right hand, and no longer continues the slow lullaby rhythm seen in the first theme. Out of the atmospheric chromatic nuances of the left, and the leaps of the right hand comes a surging intensity pushing ever forward in momentum. The key change in measure 20 suggests a coming return to E flat major. However, Brahms leaves much uncertainty and elongates this path back to E flat with several seemingly out-of-place harmonies that only make the final arrival of E flat major and return of the A theme all the more satisfying. During this development and transition, Brahms begins incorporating more triplet rhythms to keep the rhythmic momentum moving forward. The unstable motion in the return to Eb continues to become more disturbing and disruptive. Triplet arpeggios drive the rhythm of the left hand forward until it returns to the repeating chords that he began the B theme with. As the vocalist sings one of the most important vocal phrases of the song “und die einsame Träne rinnt” so begins the final transition of measures 26-32. Chromatic harmonies rise with both melody and accompaniment on the text “and the lonely ….” and cascade downward in thirds (another typical Brahmsian technique) on the text “tear flows down.” 

The piano interlude after “rinnt” allows a transition to return to the Eb major A theme. Here, at measure 33, the identical vocal melody receives a new kind of support in the piano accompaniment, the harmony is intact but the triplets, while maintaining the lullaby feeling, provide an emphasis on this syncopated rhythm. Next, on the reminiscent text of “und die einsame Träne” with a significantly new final word, bebt – trembling or quivering, also with a significantly new accompaniment. The triplet is now in chord form with a more prominent bass line on quarter notes now. 

“This is a wonderful example of [Brahms] allowing textual response to override musical form. What Brahms has essentially done here is to combine the material of the first two musical verses in the last one.”[10] An extraordinary case of organic unity and the fusion of melodic themes and harmonic concepts. This is complemented with unique harmonic shift to Fb to add to the drama one last time before an even finer resolution and final and longer piano postlude than the introduction or interludes. “The close, after such a fulfilling climax, is soft and slow (and ever slower), as at the song’s hushed beginning.”

            Op. 43, No. 3, titled Ich schell mein Horn ins Jammertal, translates as I Blow my Horn into the Vale of Tears. It is the simplest, yet most archaic of the four songs. Set in a simple strophic form, the accompaniment follows an unpretentious four-part harmony that comes from a previous choral setting of Brahms’s, Op. 41, No. 1, while the vocal part and the top line of the piano part play/sing the melody together. As Brahms used harmony, meter, and structure in profoundly new ways in Von ewiger liebe and Die Mainacht, he uses motet-like styles and forms that other composers of the time would have considered obsolete. In fact this type of song was likely long dead before Brahms began his career as composer, even Schubert or Schumann rarely would have attempted a song like this. 

            Perhaps Brahms chose this style to represent style and era the text came from. The text is derived from the famed collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, an extremely significant collection in all European music, used countlessly in works by every major composer. 

No. 3

I blow my horn into the vale of tears:

My joy has vanished.

I have hunted, but I must cease

For the deer runs beyond the hounds.

A noble beast in this field

I had selected;

It has fled me, as I sense well.

My hunt is lost.

Farewell, deer, find joy in the forest!

I will never frighten 

your snow-white breast with my hunting;

It is for another to awaken you

With hunter's calls and snapping hounds,

That you may not outrun:

Beware, my little beast!

With sorrow I bid this place adieu.

I cannot capture any noble game,

For which I often suffer,

Yet I constantly follow the hunter's paths,

and seldom does luck come to me.

If I am not honored with a noble deer,

Then let me be satisfied

With a hare; nothing more do I demand,

And it will not trouble me.

The first two lines are identical musically, only the text changes. Within the formal setting, Brahms enlists unique 11 measure phrases for the first statements. While stretching the final phrase into fourteen measures, over a beautiful melisma over 7 notes, Brahms uses the only quarter note of the piece used as a mechanism to, unlike the first 3 stanzas’, finish the verse/song with a perfect authentic cadence, notably not a standard cadence or method of finale at this time. 

Besides the texts tribute to nature and the pastorale feeling of this very concise song, several characteristics make this song sound as if it was written centuries before 1868. The piano plays the entire 4 part harmony from the choral setting of Op. 41, No. 1, again beckoning a Bach chorale. The piano is notated all within one staff, and the bass line is always playing the root of the chord allowing for incredibly pure, almost mystical harmonies. 

Ending the set is a song in which the text is also from Das Knaben Wunderhorn, however Brahms notes that this particular poem was a bit fresher to him and included in a more contemporary publication by Johann Ludwig Uhland. The 16th century ballad is about the dialogue between the Lord of Falkenstien and a ‘lowly’ maid who challenges the Lord to release his prisoner, her husband. The clearest storyline of the four songs, Brahms uses three basic musical strophes to represent narration, character, and intention, adding “variety to a long, basically strophic setting.”[12] The Lord’s verses are minor, dramatic, heavier, notated as staccato, and filled with leaps and skips and directly mirroring the accompaniment with even quarter notes. The maid’s music is similar, the text is more questioning, resulting in a more legato, dolce feeling. 

A 6 measure piano interlude returns often. In a clear C minor progression, “it features ‘sighing’ chords and rapid octave skips in the bass.” With each verse, the accompaniment changes slightly while the thematic material stays the same. The only symptomatic harmonic exploration in this song is Brahms’s use of the Db, or flat 2nd in the C minor key. Scholars suggest it as either a hint towards F minor (later modulating to the relative Ab major), or as would go with the archaic quality of songs No. 3 and 4, could have been Brahms utilizing the old Phrygian mode (minor with a flat 2nd scale degree). Either way, the recurring Db, usually part of a Db major or Bb minor harmony, solidifies Brahms’s masking of the C minor and Ab major harmonies for each of the verses. The transition into Ab major is not as pronounced and enthusiastic and the listener expects a new major key to be. Notated with dränged, urgently, these verse narrate the woman’s journey from Lord to her beloved. It is set again in a much higher register, but rather than continuing the leaps and heaviness of the C minor themes, is mostly step-wise or repetitive, remaining very smooth yet increasing in intensity while suggesting that if she does not soon see her beloved she will lose her mind. 

This change of verses, now switching to the part of the narrator, is now not separated by the piano interlude, instead abruptly returning to the C minor theme, but this time with maid singing in the heavy tone, more violently upon the text:

"Oh, if I were allowed to carry a sharp knife,

Like our lord's knights,

Then would I fight with the Lord of Falkenstein.

            Here, at measure 72, Brahms marks sehr lebhaft, very lively, to set the demeanor for the rest of the song. A return of the A theme occurs with the Lord conceding his sentence of the maid’s husband. Although banishing the couple, he also reunites them. However the woman does not want to leave, and says that even if forced, she will return, again challenging the Lord. The stark contrast from the intention and musical material of woman from the start of the song to the end, is outlined by the return of the C minor theme now in her perspective, at its quickest pace and completely filled texture of the accompaniment. The music reaches an unforeseen ending as it finishes without any harmonic development and closes with an oddly empty unison C across at least 4 octaves, not signifying C minor or major.

Between the rhythmic and structural explorations of the first two songs, and the backward-reaching harmony and traditional structure of the latter two songs, these sets, including and around Op. 43, show a maturity that Brahms had reached by this point in his development as the traditional ‘academician,’ yet innovative composer that Schoenberg would go on to dub as Brahms the Progressive.