Eduard Hanslick
Discovering Brahms (1862–72)
TRANSLATED, INTRODUCED, AND ANNOTATED BY KEVIN C. KARNES
These five short selections from the collected writings of Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) document the famous critic’s first experience of Brahms’s musicianship and his evolving appreciation for the composer’s work over the course of the decade that followed. Hanslick’s initial encounter with Brahms’s pianism occurred on November 29, 1862, when Brahms appeared in a recital of his own works and those of J. S. Bach and Robert Schumann at Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. At that time, Hanslick later recalled, “the general public knew of [Brahms] only from Schumann’s prophetic recommendation”—from Schumann’s essay “Neue Bahnen” (New Paths), published in the Leipzig Neue Zeitschrift für Music some nine years earlier.01 As the first of Hanslick’s essays below attests, Brahms’s Vienna debut was a great success, and a close and enduring friendship between composer and critic developed almost immediately. By the following summer, the two were on familiar and affectionate Du terms.02 And though Brahms occasionally griped about what he perceived to be Hanslick’s superficial musical understanding, the two remained trusted companions throughout the rest of Brahms’s life. As the composer wrote to Clara Schumann less than two years before his death, “I know of few people to whom I feel as sincerely drawn as to him.”03
The essays selected and translated here record Hanslick’s responses to a wide swath of Brahms’s music from the first two decades of the composer’s career, from the F-Minor Sonata and First Serenade to the German Requiem and Triumphlied. Together, they help to correct the persistent view of Hanslick (1825–1904) as an uncritical Brahms booster. Indeed, many of Hanslick’s impressions were far from positive, especially regarding what he characterized as Brahms’s overly pragmatic choice of thematic material. In addition to Hanslick’s perceptive remarks about Brahms’s music, these essays provide firsthand perspectives on Brahms’s piano playing and the reception of his often challenging compositions by contemporary audiences. They also testify to Hanslick’s sincere dedication to the notion that a critic must educate his public about the topics of his discourse (witness his lengthy detours into the genesis of Schumann’s Fantasie, op. 17, and the history of the serenade as a genre), and also to his considerable learnedness as a historian of the art, as attested by the numerous explanatory footnotes that the preparation of this translation has required.044
All five of the reviews translated below originally appeared on the pages of Vienna’s Neue freie Presse and were subsequently adapted by Hanslick for inclusion in what he called his “living history” of Viennese musical life: a series of volumes intended to narrate a history of recent musical events from the perspective of a listener.05 They are taken, in the latter form, from Aus dem Concertsaal. Kritiken und Schilderungen aus den letzten 20 Jahren des Wiener Musiklebens (Vienna, 1870), 255–58, 259–61, 426–27, 427–28; and Concerte, Componisten und Virtuosen der letzten fünfzehn Jahre. 1870–1885 (Berlin, 1886), 51–54. All endnotes are editorial.
Johannes Brahms (1862–63)
Johannes Brahms has now presented himself as composer and virtuoso before the public in a concert of his own.06 Brahms’s compositions do not number among those immediately understandable and captivating works that carry one along in their flight. Their esoteric character, nobly disavowing every sort of popular effect, combined with their significant technical difficulties, assures that a broad embrace of these works will be much longer in coming than Schumann delightedly prophesized for his darling as a parting blessing.07 In Vienna, none of Brahms’s larger compositions had previously been performed, and among his smaller works we had heard only a set of (unpublished) Hungarian Dances played by Clara Schumann.08 Thus the appearance before the Viennese public of this blond, St. John visage of a composer was indeed a novel thing.
At the present time, it would be a questionable undertaking to try to size up Brahms’s talent and effectiveness. Even for those who have made his works more completely their own than we have, it is by no means easy to orient oneself with respect to Brahms. It is not as if the composer were still working in the rush of first fermentation. Some time ago, mature creations already followed upon the heels of the best of his youthful works, whose wild genius drew us in at once irresistibly and forbiddingly. What progress has been made in the way of achieving a free and secure technical mastery, and what an increase of moderation and formal clarity can we observe when we compare the two frothy piano sonatas to the Variations in F-Sharp Minor and, more recently, to the two piano quartets, the Handel
Variations, and so forth!09 Thus no one can speak of him as a beginner. It’s just that Brahms’s recent works present us with question marks and riddles whose answers and solutions will only be found in his next creative period. And those answers will be decisive. Will Brahms’s originality of invention and melodic strength keep pace with the development of his harmonic and contrapuntal art? Will the natural freshness and youthful energy of his early works, such as we find contained in the precious vessels that Brahms has created thus far, continue to blossom in an untroubled way and open up even more beautifully and freely? Is the foggy miasma of brooding reflection that frequently clouds his latest creations the harbinger of a penetrating ray of sunshine to come, or of a still duskier, more inhospitable twilight?* The future—the near future—will provide the answers.
At the present moment, Brahms is a significant phenomenon—indeed, perhaps the most interesting phenomenon of all. With respect to the form and character of his music, he draws sustenance, first and foremost, from Schumann, though certainly more in the sense of an inner relatedness than of formal imitation. Only with the greatest of difficulty could a figure like Brahms resist the influence of the Schumannian spirit, which penetrates undeniably and decisively the musical atmosphere of the present†† Above all else, Brahms’s music shares with Schumann’s a sense of chastity, of inner nobility. There is no hint of vanity or preening affectation. Everything is sincere and true. But Brahms’s work also shares with Schumann’s a sovereign subjectivity bordering on esotericism, a brooding quality, a turning away from the outside world, a sensibility turned inward. In fullness and beauty of melodic invention, Schumann towers over Brahms. But Brahms frequently matches him in richness of a purely formal sort, and it is here that we encounter Brahms’s greatest strength. From Schumann he acquired the brilliant modernization of the canon and the fugue. But the common well from which they both have drawn is Sebastian Bach. Already in Brahms’s first set of variations—on a theme by Schumann—we encounter an extraordinary strength of formal invention at work. The variation sets that followed, on an original theme and on a Hungarian melody, stand at approximately the same level. But Brahms surpassed them all with his twenty-five variations on a theme by Handel.10
Thus far Brahms’s talent has found its most marvelous expression in variation sets; above all, they demand formal richness and a unity of mood—precisely Brahms’s most distinctive qualities. In Brahms’s concert, it was indeed the Handel Variations that elicited the liveliest applause. (I cannot stop thinking about the second and the twentieth, two exemplary studies in brilliant harmonization.)
The reception of the A-Major Piano Quartet was not as auspicious. In that work, the shadowy side of Brahms’s creativity comes distinctly to the fore. For one thing, its themes are insignificant. Brahms is fond of choosing his themes for their contrapuntal utility rather than for their inherent worth in and of itself. The themes in the quartet sound dry and bland. To be sure, he does explore, over the course of the piece, a plethora of inspired relationships between them. But overall effectiveness is impossible if one does not have meaningful themes. Furthermore, we fail to perceive any great, forward-striving train of development in the work. Instead, we witness an incessant joining together and taking apart, a sense of preparing for something without any goal in sight, of promise without fulfillment. In each movement we find motives well suited for episodic treatment, but nothing capable of carrying an entire piece. Having heard the quartet only once, we are naturally capable of registering only our initial impressions, not of describing the work itself. And there is no doubt that a more exacting study of this work, as with Brahms’s music in general, would bring many of its good qualities to light. But such a study would hardly do much to alter one’s impressions of the liveliness and effectiveness of the piece, for those things rely upon clear, plastic melodies and a powerful sense of intensification and development, of striving toward a single goal. Like other new works by Brahms, the Piano Quartet reminds us disturbingly of Schumann’s final period, just as Brahms’s earliest works remind us of Schumann’s first period. Only to the pure Schumann of the ripe, crystal-clear middle period has his favorite student offered us nothing comparable thus far.
Generally speaking, Brahms’s piano playing reveals the nature of his artistic personality accurately and in highly beautiful ways. He strives exclusively to serve the spirit of the composition, and he avoids almost shyly all appearances of self-important pageantry. Brahms has at his disposal a highly developed technique, which lacks only the final gleaming polish, the final energetic self-confidence that would permit us to call him a virtuoso. Brahms handles the most brilliant aspects of performance with a sort of casualness—as, for example, when he plays octave passages with such a loose wrist that the keys are grazed sideways rather than struck from above. It might seem like a compliment to say that he plays more like a composer than a virtuoso, but such praise is not entirely unqualified. Inspired by the desire to let compositions speak for themselves, Brahms neglects—especially in performance of his own works—much of what the player is obliged to do for the composer. His playing resembles that of the astringent Cordelia, who would rather conceal her innermost feelings than expose them to the public.11 Violence and distortion are, for this reason, absolute impossibilities in Brahms’s playing, determined as it is, in its sensible moderation, not even once to extract the fullest possible tone from the piano. But we would prefer not to make too much of these small shortcomings on the part of the pianist, given how insignificant they seem in comparison with the irresistible, soulful charm of his playing. This pleased us most profoundly in Schumann’s Fantasie, op. 17.
The fantastical magic of this work, one of the most remarkable from Schumann’s Sturm und Drang period, had never before been conjured in Vienna. Liszt, to whom the piece is dedicated, never performed it in public. (This is part of the great debt to Schumann of which Liszt cannot be absolved, and which he later acknowledged and regretted with admirable candor.) When composing the Fantasie, Schumann originally had in mind a contribution to the Beethoven monument in Bonn, intending to title its three movements “Ruins,” “Triumphal Arch,” and “Garland of Stars.” When he abandoned this idea, he denied his disciples a veritable feast for the interpretative “arts.”12 How uncannily would imaginative musicians have heard Beethoven’s entire biography in the work, which now, without such titles, stands silently before such attempts. On the other hand, the motto by Friedrich Schlegel that Schumann appended to his Fantasie seems highly characteristic, for it points, in an unintended way, to a musical point of departure for the work:
Durch alle Töne tönet im bunten Erdentraum
Ein leiser Ton gezogen, für den, der heimlich lauschet.13
This “tone” is the passionate motive that permeates the first movement above the peculiar buzzing and boozing of the bass, and that, aside from a few echoes, falls silent in the second movement, only to surface once again in the third, where it builds slowly from harplike strums to a soft transfiguration.
We cannot imagine a truer or more deeply affecting realization of this work than the one brought to us under Brahms’s hands. How contentedly we listen to Brahms’s playing! As soon as he touches the keys, we are overcome by the sense that here plays a true and genuine artist, a man of spirit and soul and unpretentious self-awareness. Brahms seemed to be in especially good form. In cannot be said that every passage glittered brilliantly and that every articulation was razor sharp. His technique is like a strong, well-bred man who strolls about somewhat carelessly dressed, who has more important things on his mind and in his heart than constantly tending to his outward appearance. But Brahms’s playing is always compelling and always moves the heart. How powerfully and finely he played Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Beethoven’s Variations, op. 35, on the E-flat-major theme from Prometheus that the composer later took up in the Eroica! Yet once again, Brahms handled his own works somewhat shabbily. His F-minor sonata, a composition so wondrously “sung to itself,” was played by Brahms more “to himself” than in a clearly and crisply presented manner. The outer movements, despite all their beautiful details, are too formless to make a distinct impression, and the listener is put off by the conspicuous reminiscence from Mendelssohn’s C-minor trio in the Scherzo. The Andante, however, belongs among the most intimate in the modern piano repertoire. Of greatest interest was Brahms’s performance of Schumann’s F-Minor Sonata, op. 14. It might well have been the first public performance of this work, which must be counted among the most passionate, most characteristic, and probably most obstinate fantasies of Schumann’s first period. It originally appeared, at the whim of a publisher, under the heading Concert sans orchestre, which accurately describes neither the substance nor the form of the piece. Conceived as a sonata from the start, the title was changed to Sonata in the second edition, and the previously suppressed Scherzo was reinstated.14
Serenade no. 1 in D Major, op. 11 (1862)
In Brahms’s serenade for large orchestra (D major), we became acquainted with one of the most delightful orchestral works of recent times. Here again, a reaching back to old, nearly vanished musical forms is attempted in the modern age. Lachner and Raff write “suites”; Brahms writes “serenades.” Serenades—also Cassationen, notturni, and divertimenti—belong among those musical character-pieces of the previous Century. During that period, every prince and wealthy nobleman had a small orchestra charged with playing music in the park on summer evenings. It was even more pleasant in the cities. In the time of Haydn and Mozart, the streets and squares of Vienna resounded at night with soft music commemorating the following morning’s name day celebration for someone’s beloved—or, if the lover had good sense, for the name-day of her stern mother. Mozart wrote many such serenades, some for winds and some for full orchestra. This was indeed occasional music, with the event at hand helping to determine the form and character of the piece, its orchestration, and so forth. Serenades consisted of six to eight movements, among which two or three were minuets. Spohr’s Notturno for winds may have been the last exemplar of this genre, which accompanied so humanely our grandfathers’ affairs of the heart. What led Brahms back to the serenade was certainly not some archaeological urge to restore an old form, but rather an attraction to—a feeling of affinity for—its poetic content. From out of this gilded serenade there drifts the scent of dried flowers, transporting us magically back to a beautiful time long passed. Brahms’s serenades—I will not deny that he composed them in a poetic atmosphere, in a gentle, happy mood—revive the sweet significance of this old night-music, only in modern music’s more profound guise.
The present serenade consists of six movements. In its dimensions, it surpasses the symphony. This expansion, however, is not grounded in some overly grandiose content like that which prompts some composers to explode the usual form of the symphony, such as we find with the five-movement symphony of a Berlioz.15 To be sure, the serenade strings together more movements than a symphony, yet those movements are not only shorter but also less demanding by nature—more monochromatic, more bourgeois, we might say. Indeed, it is precisely in this quality that we find justification for the serenade in the present day and the future. With Beethoven, one became accustomed to regarding, as the highest measure of a symphony, its content. It should be filled with passionate struggles and sublime pathos. Since Beethoven, we have lost touch with the notion of a symphony as a frame for modest images, as an asylum for pleasant states only touched upon lightly rather than churned up by struggles and passions. Today, whoever does not feel himself possessed by both Faust and Hamlet and whoever is not gripped by “the wailing of the whole of humanity” had better not become involved with a symphony. With his four symphonies and planned sinfonietta, Schumann hinted, ever so subtly, at the need to consider, alongside the great and impassioned symphony, its delightful counterpart, the “little symphony”16 We regard the serenade, whose construction can assume the most multifarious forms, as the playground of idyllic dreams, of beloved thoughts, of lightness and gaiety. It is the symphony of tranquility. Brahms conceived of it in this way, and he created it in the most charming manner.
A contented, evening calm is draped gently over the whole, moved only lightly by joyful hopes and sweet longing. The mood is not self-consuming or one of solitary brooding, but one sung forth in verse, as it were, and, with a certain festiveness, proffered to the Queen of Hearts.
The six movements of Brahms’s serenade are not of equal worth. Among the themes in the first movement, the first is more usable than original or meaningful, whereas the second makes a more distinct impression. The whole movement has a certain freshness, but also—in the development—a great deal that sounds forced and deliberate. Nonetheless, the poetic conclusion sets things right in the end. The Scherzo that follows, complete with trio, is perfectly splendid. The music streams forth in a soft, uninterrupted flow, magically illuminated by the colorful light of the orchestra. The Adagio is animated by a gentle, dreamy feeling which, though elaborated over a long period of time, never loses a sense of beautiful moderation. The first minuet (the second actually stands in for the trio, after which the first is repeated) is for us the pearl of the entire work, and perhaps the most beautiful thing that Brahms has written. The warm coloring—with only flute, clarinet, bassoon, and pizzicato cellos—and the naïve charm of the melody lend this movement, above all the others, the characteristic aura of night-music. This is a warm garden-serenade, full of moonlight and the scent of lilacs. The second scherzo is less meaningful and has more than the requisite similarity to the scherzo from Beethoven’s Second Symphony. We do not count ourselves among those dreadful reminiscence hunters who exclaim, with every D-minor chord, “Aha! Don Juan!” We do not fault Brahms for the echoes of Beethoven’s “Scene by the Brook” that one hears in the Adagio of his serenade.17 But the second scherzo’s lack of originality disturbs us enough to make us think that the movement would best be struck from the work. In a lively, marked rhythm, only without the proper buildup, a cheerful Rondo brings the serenade to a close.
German Requiem, op. 45 (1867)
The Gesellschaft concert also brought forth, again under Herbeck’s direction, a still-unpublished German Requiem for chorus and orchestra by Joh. Brahms. The entire six-movement composition was not performed, only its first half.18 The text consists of biblical passages that speak of the ephemeral nature of earthly things and of the hope for something beyond. The work is like a magnificent musical memorial service, intended more for the church than for the concert hall. The German Requiem is a work of extraordinary significance and great mastery. To us it seems like one of the ripest fruits to have grown in the style of Beethoven’s last contributions to the field of spiritual music. Since the requiem masses and mourning-cantatas of our classical composers, hardly any music has portrayed with such power the shudder of death and the solemnity of transience. Here, the harmonic and contrapuntal art that Brahms acquired in the school of Sebastian Bach and infuses with the breath of our time completely recedes, from the listener’s perspective, behind a powerful expressiveness that swells from touching lamentation to the crushing horror of death. How grippingly does the first movement, “Selig, die da Leid tragen” (Blessed Are They That Mourn), arise upon the wings of its soft and yet surprising harmonies, sometimes drawn from the deep cellos and trombones and other times wafting out quietly from the harp like an apparition. And yet, this is merely a prelude to the monumental tragedy of the second, B-minor movement, “Denn alles Fleisch ist wie Gras” (For All Flesh Is as Grass), in which the horror of decomposition is brightened only by the transfigured smile of a twinkling eye. This is the most substantial of the three movements, and it would have made an even greater impression upon us had it concluded with the final, resounding repetition of the principal theme in B minor. The B-major allegro appended to it, “Die Erlösten des Herrn” (The Ransomed of the Lord), seems more like a distinct addition than an organic conclusion.
The third movement does not measure up to the first two in terms of greatness of conception, yet it surpasses them both in terms of contrapuntal artistry. It does not, however, make such a clear, harmonious impression as the others. Indeed, it besieges the listener with impressions of a sometimes rather forced kind—a difficult position to assume after all the preceding excitement and exertion. The movement starts off with a baritone solo, “Herr, lehre mich doch, daß es ein Ende mit mir haben muß” (Lord, make me know mine end), which finds support—in a tone of deepest mourning—in the choir’s response. The D-minor Andante finally gives way to D major and a four-voice, figural passage, “Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand” (The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God), above a tonic pedal. This pedal has the merciless length of seventy-two common-time measures (tempo moderato), sustained by basses (tuned down to D), horns, trombones, and timpani articulating unbroken sextuplets rather than rolling.19 The passage indeed looks impressive in the score, but the composer misjudged its audible effect. At one point, the booming pedal becomes so entwined in the tangle of singers’ voices that one can no longer make it out. And the incessant hammering of the timpani puts the listener in a state of nervous agitation that throttles all aesthetic appreciation. One listener compared the effect of this pedal to the disconcerting feeling one gets when driving through a very long tunnel. On the other hand, if the pedal were sustained in the organ, then the passage would lose this alarming quality, which detracts so greatly from the success of the movement. Although the first two movements of the Requiem were, in spite of their dusky seriousness, received with unanimous applause, the fate of the third was quite dubious. Brahms need not worry about it; things can change with time. Moreover, it is understandable that such a difficult work, spun exclusively from thoughts of death, can expect to garner no popular success and will leave much of the public at a loss. But we believe that protestations must be mixed with appreciation for the greatness and seriousness of the composition, which surely demands respect. This seemed not to have been the case with the half-dozen gray-haired old-school fanatics who committed the sin of responding to the applauding majority and the bowing composer with sustained hissing. That such a requiem could inspire such a breakdown of decency and decorum in a Viennese concert hall was, for us, a most regrettable surprise.
Sextet no. 2 in G Major, op. 36 (1867)
Finally, in their seventh soirée, the Hellmesberger Quartet Society brought forth something new: a sextet for two violins, two violas, and two cellos (G major) by Johannes Brahms. The work was given a very respectable reception, even if it did not speak to us so directly and warmly as Brahms’s earlier B-flat-Major Sextet, whose clarity and blossoming freshness eclipse this new creation.20 This latter begins with an extremely beautiful theme, well suited to all the metamorphoses of development. The whole first movement (the most significant of the whole, as was the case in the B-flat-Major Sextet) deserves the title “a brilliant piece of work in true Beethovenian spirit.” The piece flows forth nobly, ernestly, and compellingly, infused with quiet yet deep emotion, flowing forward in a single lucid stream. A few harmonic rough patches toward the end could not disturb our joy. The Scherzo begins not with any distinctly original melody but with a little two-penny rhythmic figure, quietly and monotonously giving way to longer notes, just as we find so frequently with Schumann. But at just the right moment, a rushing trio in waltz tempo brings rhythmic life, sparkle, and brightness to the movement.
As products of brilliant, even profound combinatorial reasoning, the following two movements are no less significant than those that came before them. Only a musician possessing mastery over all the secrets of harmony and of art itself can exploit such relationships with this degree of sure-footedness. But in terms of their immediate impact upon the listener, who can derive only an exhausted kind of enjoyment from such musical thought work and reflection, both of these movements sound tired and cold. In the broadly spun-out Andante (a kind of free variation set without a theme), there arise individual, distinct figures with significant and captivating physiognomies—most notably in the first, chromatically descending variation. But as the piece progresses, the impression it makes becomes ever more colorless, nonsensical, and incomprehensible. In the finale, the warm, living pulse of the music is lost entirely, and in its place a kind of drab reflection hammers away, mechanically and tediously. This is an abstract sort of music making, with restless combinatorics and brooding [Combiniren und Grübeln] pursued until one’s head begins to ache. In its lack of sensuous beauty, rhythmic life, and melodic luster, the finale reminds us of many a truly unpleasant work from Schumann’s final period. We report our first impressions as we experience them. But our respect for Brahms is too great and sincere to let the first impression have the last word. It is quite possible that hearing this work again and having a look at the score (we could not get hold of one) would show the final two movements of the G-Major Sextet in a more proper, more favorable light.
Triumphlied, op. 55, and Schicksalslied, op. 54 (1872)
Along with the German Requiem, Brahms’s Triumphlied for eight-part choir, orchestra, and organ belongs among those magnificent works that place Brahms among the ranks of the great masters. In both, we find realized those wonderful effects that Schumann predicted “when Brahms waves his magic wand over the united forces of chorus and orchestra.”21 Here Brahms found his true footing, and he constructed such a tower upon that foundation that no living composer could follow him. In the area of spiritual music in the grandest sense, nothing has appeared since Bach’s Passions, Handel’s oratorios, and Beethoven’s Festmesse that stands so close to those works in magnificence of conception, sublimity of expression, and power of polyphonic composition as Brahms’s Requiem and Triumphlied. Influences of all three masters—of Bach, Handel, and Beethoven—are at play in Brahms. But they have been so dissolved within his blood and have reemerged as part of such a unique and independent individuality that one cannot derive Brahms from any of these three alone. One can only say that in him something of this tripartite spirit is resurrected in modern form.
Originally, the Triumphlied bore the subtitle “Auf den Sieg der deutschen Waffen” (To the victory of German arms), and this glorious occasion is clearly commemorated, for all time, within the work itself. It was not Brahms’s desire to declare any overt bias, but one cannot suppress it in a work whose text was written over a thousand years before the Battle of Sedan.22 The words are taken from Chapter 19 of the Book of Revelation. The first of the three movements for double choir that together comprise the Trimphlied sets the words “Hallelujah, Heil und Preis, Ehre und Kraft sei Gott unserm Herrn!” (Hallelujah, salvation and praise, honor and strength belong to our Lord God!), the principal motive of which repeats exactly the notes that set “Heil dir im Siegerkranz” (Salvation is yours in the circle of victors), but with a completely different rhythmic and harmonic setting. The rejoicing trumpet fanfare in D establishes the Handelian character of the piece from the start, fusing a healthy strength of expression to the highest art of composition.
“Lobet unsern Gott, alle seine Knechte und die ihn fürchten, Kleine und Große; denn der allmächtige Gott hat das Reich eingenommen” (Praise our God and all who work for him and fear him, small and great; for the almighty God has entered into the kingdom): these are the words upon which the second movement is built. Toward its end, the movement gives way to a rolling melody introduced by soft triplets, setting “Laßt uns freuen und fröhlich sein” (Let us rejoice and be happy)—a melody whose mild, blissful expressiveness is raised to the level of true transfiguration by the wonderful concluding piano. The third and final movement, which, after the lyricism of both preceding choruses, passes by in a dramatic and epic manner (though measured and quick), is introduced in an extraordinarily effective way. It begins with the baritone solo, “Und ich sah den Himmel aufgethan und siehe, ein weißes Pferd; der darauf saß” (And I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse; and he who sat upon it), after which soloists from both choirs chime in with “Der darauf saß, hieß Treu und Wahrhaftig und richtet und streitet mit Wahrhaftigkeit und Gerechtigkeit” (And he who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in truthfulness and righteousness he judges and makes war). “Und er tritt die Kelter des Weines,” it continues with wonderful power, “des grimmigen Zorns des allmächtigen Gottes” (And he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty). Then the soloist takes over again: “Und hat einen Namen geschrieben auf seinem Kleide und auf seiner Hüfte, der also lautet: Ein König aller Könige und ein Heer aller Herren!” (On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed: King of kings and Lord of lords!) After this, the “Hallelujah” enters again in a somewhat altered rhythmic guise. Swelling to an ever more powerful climax, this brings the entire work to a close in greatest rejoicing and glorious splendor.
Incidentally, we cannot count ourselves among those who place the Triumphlied at an equal or higher level than the German Requiem. To begin with, such a comparison is rendered nonsensical by the completely incomparable scope of the two works. The larger scale of the German Requiem goes hand in hand with greater stylistic diversity and vocal richness, and with an alternation between choir and soloists that provides for points of rest in an extremely effective way. In the Triumphlied, such resting places are almost completely lacking. Moreover, the melodies of the Requiem seem to pour forth more richly, clearly, and distinctly, which enables that work to make a more immediate and profound impression upon the uninitiated listener. To be sure, the Triumphlied also makes a marvelous impression, but it is more demanding and, in its combinatorial art, more difficult to grasp. It is best, however, to attempt no such comparisons. We are blessed to possess two such powerful works, two such towering contributions to our modern musical literature!
Brahms’s Schicksalslied for chorus and orchestra (op. 54) is another tone poem of profound content and evocative uniqueness. Admittedly, Hölderlin’s beautiful poem does not appear particularly well suited for a musical setting with respect to either its content or its versification. Indeed, it could only attract a composer as serious—and so consistently drawn to ideas of greatness and immortality—as Brahms. The first two strophes of the poem extol the blessed peace of the Olympian gods, who “droben im Licht schicksalslos athmen” (draw breath in the light above, free from care).23 The choir sings these strophes in a nobly and broadly resounding adagio (E-flat major, 
time). In contrast, the poem’s third strophe describes the pitiful lot of man, to whom it “gegeben ist, auf keiner Stätte zu ruh’n” (is allotted to rest at no abode). With deeply distressing eloquence, and without obscuring the monumental style of the work with genre-specific gestures, the composer sets this contrasting section in a gloomy allegro (C minor, 
time). How vividly and with what supremely simple means is the fall “von Klippe zu Klippe” (from crag to crag) portrayed! And how the voices’ long pause on the word Jahrlang (Year after year) bores into the listener! The poet concludes in this state of hopelessness, but not so the composer. In an extremely beautiful poetic turn that reveals to us the transfiguring power of music itself, Brahms turns back, after the choir’s final words, to the solemnly slow music of the beginning, and in a lengthy orchestral postlude dissolves the confused tribulation of human life into a blessed peace. In a touching manner understandable to all, Brahms realizes this turn through the means of pure instrumental music, without the addition of a single word. Thus instrumental music, in this instance, provides a sense of completion and expresses what words no longer can—a curious complement to the inverse process heard in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In style and mood as well as in its resonance, Brahms’s Schichalslied reminds us of his admirable German Requiem. It portrays the same Christian worldview, only in Greek form.
NOTES
bars in the edition, by Eusebius Mandyczewski, published inJohannes Brahms: Sämtliche Werke 17 (mm. 173–208). The tonic D is sustained by trombones, tuba, contrabassoon, timpani, cellos, and basses.