Brahms's Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano , livre ebook

Brahms’s Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano

Brah’m Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano
A GUIDE WITH FULL TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

Lucien Stark
Indiana University Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
Frontispiece: Title-page drawing by Ludwig Richter (1803–1884) for Hausmusik , fifty settings by Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823–1897) of texts by German poets (Stuttgart and Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1855)
© 1998 by Lucien Stark
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stark, Lucien, date
  Brahms’s vocal duets and quartets with piano : a guide with full texts and translations / Lucien Stark.
   p.       cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–253–33402–0 (cloth : alk. paper)
   1. Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897—Vocal music. 2. Vocal ensembles with piano—Analysis, appreciation. I. Title. MT115.B73S7   1998 782.42168’092—dc21 97–45142
1   2   3   4   5       03   02   01   00   99   98 MN     
To Paul, Vida, Justin, and Elena
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
PREFACE
It hardly seems possible that within the oeuvre of so popular and so thoroughly studied a composer as Brahms most of an entire genre of works should sink into neglect, unperformed. Yet, of the duets and quartets for solo voices with piano, only the Liebeslieder and, to a lesser extent, the Neue Liebeslieder and Zigeunerlieder could currently be described as familiar. It is my sincere hope that this guide might help to remedy that situation.
Not surprisingly, there is only a small literature that treats specifically of the duets or quartets. Many of the works listed in the bibliography are therefore only tangentially relevant, but all have been helpful to some extent. Citations within the text are abbreviated.
Three resources have been indispensable:
(1) Brahms’s correspondence, particularly the two volumes in English of Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1853—1896 , edited by Berthold Litzmann and anonymously translated (New York: Vienna House, 1973; reprint of the 1927 London publication); Johannes Brahms: The Herzogenberg Correspondence , edited by Max Kalbeck, translated by Hannah Bryant (New York: Vienna House, 1971); and Johannes Brahms and Theodor Billroth: Letters from a Musical Friendship , edited and translated by Hans Barkan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957).
(2) Max Kalbeck’s four-volume biography, Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1904–1914; reprinted in 1974 by Schneider in Tutzing).
(3) Margit L. McCorkle and Donald M. McCorkle’s catalog of Brahms’s works, Johannes Brahms: thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1984).
Presuming that this book will be used principally for reference, I have tried to make each entry complete in itself; some redundancy has been the inevitable result.
It will be apparent too that much of the analysis assumes that a score will be accessible to the reader. A recommended edition is that of Eusebius Mandyczewski, [Johannes Brahms] Sämtliche Werke (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel [1926]; reprinted in 1949 by J. W. Edwards in Ann Arbor, Mich.). All of the quartets are found in volume 20, the duets in volume 22. In 1997 the Breitkopf & Härtel Liebeslieder, Neue Liebeslieder , and Op. 103 Zigeunerlieder were reprinted in one volume by Dover Publications, Inc. C. F. Peters publishes convenient, readable performing editions of all of the duets and quartets except Nos. 1 and 3 of the Op. 75 Ballads and Romances and the Little Wedding Cantata; I have been unable to locate any source other than the Sämtliche Werke for these three pieces, the relevant volumes of the Kalmus Miniature Study Scores being, regrettably, permanently out of print. The Op. 84 Romances and Lieder are published among the solo songs in volume 25 of the Breitkopf & Härtel edition, in Series III of the 1980 Dover reprint, and in volumes 1 (nos. 1, 2, and 4) and 4 (nos. 3 and 5) of the Max Friedländer edition for C. F. Peters.
The layout of the German poetry is that found in the second edition of Gustav Ophüls’s Brahms-Texte: vollständige Sammlung der von Johannes Brahms componirten und musikalisch bearbeiteten Dichtungen (Berlin: Verlag der Deutschen Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908); I have modernized the spelling. A recent edition of Brahms-Texte by Kristian Wachinger was published in 1983 by Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen bei München.
The English prose renderings of the song texts are mine, as are translations from sources not published in English. I am grateful to Professor Bernd Kratz of the University of Kentucky German Department for his help with an occasional archaism or opacity.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the administration and voice faculty of the University of Kentucky School of Music for their ongoing encouragement and support.
Brahms’s Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano
Introduction

With the publication in 1862 of the Op. 20 duets for soprano and alto, Brahms made his first contribution to the repertoire of Hausmusik —music intended for domestic, social use by amateurs.
The tradition of amateur music making was centuries old in German-speaking Europe. The desire of the middle classes to emulate the leisure activities of the aristocracy had led to the founding of the fellowships of mastersingers in the fifteenth century, the remarkable flowering of the part-song in the sixteenth, and the widespread establishment of collegia musica together with the increased popularity of domestic chamber-music playing in the seventeenth century. A typical eighteenth-century German family of some wealth and education enjoyed participating in musical performance at home, partly in order to distance itself from peasants and laborers; singing with one’s friends often benefited from instrumental support, and a keyboard instrument became the musical center of many a burgher household. Another outgrowth of the urge for social music making was the Männerchorvereine (men’s choral societies) that flourished in the early 1800s, followed in due course by mixed choirs and women’s choruses. It must be noted, however, that among the circumstances contributing to the popularity of choral singing was the inevitable decline in domestic chamber music as the number of truly competent amateur musicians decreased.
But in Brahms’s youth the tradition still flourished, and his first duets followed in the pathway already established by the Hausmusik of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann.
It became evident when the Op. 28 duets appeared a year later that ease of performance was not Brahms’s primary consideration but that he was beginning to see his music for concerted solo voices as a parallel to his Lieder composition, with the enhanced possibilities not only for sonority but also for drama and humor that additional voices offered. The emphasis seemed to be shifting from music suitable for amateurs to music intended for social use—there is, after all, a social aspect to the simple act of multiple singers’ gathering around the piano.
Though there was certainly still a market for domestic music when the Liebeslieder were printed in 1869, Brahms could hardly have been unaware of its erosion. One detects a certain wistfulness in his expression to Simrock of the hope that the waltzes “will become real Hausmusik , and will soon be sung a lot” (31 August 1869). It is telling that first performances of the work, both private and public, involved professional musicians. (The group of friends for whom Brahms wrote the Zigeunerlieder in the 1880s also included professional musicians.)
In addition to the relatively familiar cycles—the Liebeslieder, Neue Liebeslieder , and Zigeunerlieder —Brahms composed twenty independent duets, plus the five Romances and Lieder, Op. 84, for one or two voices (here also regarded as duets), and seventeen independent quartets, all for mixed voices. The compositions span the years 1852–1891, a period almost as long as