Distance and Disembodiment: Harps, Horns, and the Requiem ... · 2 Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), 683–710. Distance and ... (Charles Rosen’s

The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 22, Issue 1, pp. 47–89, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2005 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests forpermission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’sRights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

47

1 Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age” (New York: Oxford Univ.Press, 1997). Daverio’s work on Schumann’s choral music for English-language musicol-ogy is anticipated most notably in the German sphere by Ulrich Mahlert’s Fortschritt undKunstlied: Späte Lieder Robert Schumann im Licht der liedästhetischen Diskussion ab 1848,Freiburger Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft 13 (Munich: Katzbichler, 1983).

2 Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), 683–710.

Distance andDisembodiment: Harps,Horns, and the RequiemIdea in Schumann andBrahms

DANIEL BELLER-MCKENNA

Among the many accomplishments of JohnDaverio’s Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age was the rehabilita-tion of Schumann’s later works, a hitherto mostly neglected—or, morerightly, denigrated—repertoire.1 Most commentators who compareSchumann’s music from the mid 1840s onward with earlier composi-tions find the latter works lacking in coherence and melodic/harmonicimagination and generally overwhelmed by rhythmic obsession (CharlesRosen’s critique stands out in this regard)2. Conversely, Daverio findsmuch dramatic vigor and a compelling command of large-scale formsin Schumann’s later output. Perhaps his alternate reading of this musicstems from Daverio’s greater attention to Schumann’s choral works, to which the composer devoted ever increasing energy during his finaldecade. Schumann’s choral œuvre after 1846 runs the gamut from

the journal of musicology

Volk-imbued Männerchor Lieder, to sacred works (Missa Sacra, op. 147and Requiem, op. 148), to large-scale choral-orchestral anthems andoratorio-like compositions (Requiem für Mignon, op. 98b, Vom Pagen undder Königstochter, op. 140, etc.). Common to many of these works arethemes of redemption and consolation—what Daverio coined the “Requiem Idea.”3

Aside from providing a different angle from which to appreciate thelate works, Daverio’s familiarity with Schumann’s choral music allowedhim to draw previously unnoticed artistic connections between Schu-mann and Brahms that go beyond mere compositional style or overt al-lusion, deriving instead from similarities of “tone, character, and mood.“Indeed, the Requiem Idea permeated a large number of works by bothcomposers. In addition to the obvious comparisons between works with“Requiem” in their titles, such as Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45,and Schumann’s Requiem für Mignon, op. 98b, Daverio noted a broaderprogram of affirmation and redemption, especially in their large-scalechoral works. Daverio writes of Schumann: “Nearly all of his Requiemsettings are affirmative in tone, underscoring as they do the poeticthemes of redemption (Manfred, Faust), hope in the future (Requiemfür Mignon), and comfort (“Ruh’ von schmerzensreichen Mühen” andRequiem, op. 148)”; and of Brahms, “For [him] the essence of the Re-quiem idea lay not in maudlin lamentation but in the situation of deathin a cycle of dissolution and renewal.”4 Although Daverio approachesthis claim largely through choral-orchestral works by each composer, herightly looks beyond that medium to Lieder and even instrumentalworks. And it is this diffusion of an essentially religious topos (deathand redemption) into the domain of secular and non-texted musicalworks that reminds us how much both Schumann and Brahms werestriking a romantic pose towards music as a highly spiritual form ofartistic expression, a sonic bridge between earthly and heavenly realms.

Branching out from the works cited above by Daverio to a wider selection of (overtly or inferentially) death-related works by these twocomposers, a distinct sub-group emerges in which two musical instru-ments rich in romantic symbolism—primarily the harp and secondarilythe horn—are either employed literally as components of the ensembleor are evoked figuratively, be it through reference in a sung text orthrough the use of musical figures associated with one of these instru-ments but executed on another. While hardly a systematic program (nei-

48

3 Daverio, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (New York: Oxford Univ.Press, 2002), 185.

4 Ibid., 186.

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ther composer turned consistently to these instruments in their “re-quiem” works, nor did they reserve these instruments solely for suchpieces), the harp and horn figure prominently in enough works ondeath-related themes to warrant an examination of how their musicalsymbolism figured into Schumann’s and Brahms’s expression of conso-lation in response to death. Just as Daverio’s Requiem Idea refers less tospecific quotations, allusions, and the like, and more to general ideas(“tone, character, and mood”), the use of harps and horns takes manydisparate forms among the relevant works by the two composers. Never-theless, there are demonstrable underlying themes that unite this sub-repertoire and allow for a richer context in which to locate the Requiem Idea in Schumann and Brahms.

Remembrance forms a central component in the Requiem Idea.Memory is, after all, inherent in the process of mourning and consola-tion, and any requiem, be it memorial or redemptive in nature, mustpartake in an act of recollection. Both the harp and the horn fit com-fortably within this paradigm, as each has a particular capacity to sym-bolize memory, the past, and distance. Daverio referred to these two in-struments as “emblems of distance and disembodiment.”5 Both Brahmsand Schumann found myriad ways to evoke and allude to pastnessthrough their compositions, sometimes with specific personal and auto-biographical associations, other times more generally. But any allusiontraverses a “distance” of sorts and—abstractly at least—forces the know-ing listener to “recall” the object of allusion. Although instances of allu-sion will not play a major role in this study, it is nevertheless instructiveto begin with a clear and to my knowledge hitherto unnoted case of adirect quotation of Schumann by Brahms in one of his last works, theVier ernste Gesänge, op. 121. Brahms based these last four songs on bibli-cal texts that move from a pessimistic harangue on the futility of life in the first two songs (Ecclesiastes 3: 19–22) to a paean to Christianlove in the fourth (1 Corinthians 13: 1–3, 12–13).6 On the way, Brahmssets a verse from Ecclesiasticus (41: 1–2) that could stand as a motto forthe Requiem Idea:

49

5 Daverio, “Schumann’s Ossianic Manner,” 19th-Century Music 21 (1998): 259.6 A wealth of literature exists on the Vier ernste Gesänge. See, Arnold Whittall, “The

Vier ernste Gesänge Op. 121: Enrichment and Uniformity,” in Brahms: Biographical, Docu-mentary and Analytical Studies, ed. Robert Pascall (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,1983), 191–207; Cornelia Preißinger, Die Vier ernste Gesänge Op. 121: Vokale und instrumen-tale Gestaltungsprinzipien im Werk von Johannes Brahms (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,1994); and the author’s “Brahms on Schopenhauer: The Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121 andLate Nineteenth-Century Pessimism,” in Brahms Studies 1, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln:Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1994), 170–88.


To capture the decisive turn from bitterness in verse 1 to well-being(“wohl”) in verse 2, Brahms effects a modulation from E minor to theparallel major (E) at measure 18 ( Ex. 1). At the same time, the punc-tuated chordal texture of the accompaniment dissolves into gentlyrocking harmonies that slip through various suspensions as the chordsin the right hand fall into syncopation with those in the left. In measure23, as the singer approaches what should be the first cadence to themajor tonic, Brahms transforms the closing “bitter” motive from the mi-nor portion of the song (mm. 16–17) into a long-breathed deceptivecadence to the sub-mediant (vi) at the word “Dürftigen” (he withoutcomfort). Rather than moving directly from the dominant chord at theend of measure 23 to the relative (C �) minor harmony, Brahms insertsa chromatic passing harmony and bass note (B �), which only make theeffect that much sweeter. As if to emphasize the pathos of this passage,Brahms returns to it (in a highly altered form) at the end of the song(Ex. 2), twice repeating the melodic gesture to the words “wie wohl tustdu” (how welcome you are), initially over a similar chromatically filled-in deceptive cadence (mm. 33–35; see the inner-voice appropriation ofthe B–B �–C � ascent in m. 35) and again in measures 37–39, where themelodic phrase is transposed down a third to bring the song to a closeon the tonic. The final two-stage melodic sequence further recalls thesimilar transposed repetition of the closing “bitter” motive of measures16–17 (see Ex. 1), and thus assigns a central role to this melodic ideain the song.

But the phrase in question, especially as it appears in measures23–24, may not be an original inspiration, for it sounds strikingly like amoment in a late song of Robert Schumann’s that carries its own obvi-ous references to death. In his “Requiem (Altkatholisches Gedicht),”op. 90 no. 7 (1850), Schumann employs a similar phrase that forms

50

O Tod, wie bitter bist du,Wenn an dich gedenket ein Mensch,Der gute Tage und genug hatUnd ohne Sorge lebet;Und dem es wohl geht in allen DingenUnd noch wohl essen mag!O Tod, wie bitter bist du.

O Tod, wie wohl tust du dem Dürftigen,

Der da schwach und alt ist,Der in allen Sorgen steckt,Und nichts Bessers zu hoffen,Noch zu erwarten hat!

O death, how bitter you are,when one thinks of youwho has good days and has enough and lives without worry; and for whom all is welland can still eat well!O death, how bitter you are

O death, how welcome you are to himwithout comfort,

he who is old and weak,he who is afflicted by all worries and has nothing better to hope for,nor to expect!

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51

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example 1. Brahms, “O Tod,” op. 121 no. 3, mm. 16–24


the final vocal utterance in the song (Ex. 3). Although Schumann’s ca-dential escape differs from Brahms’s, there is no mistaking the strongmelodic and harmonic similarity between these instances. Similarly,there is a strong connection between the texts. Schumann based hissong on a pseudo-medieval Latin lament (in German translation):

52

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example 1. (continued)

Ruh’ von schmerzensreichen MühenAus und heißem Liebesglühen!Der nach seligem VereinTrug Verlangen,Ist gegangenZu des Heilands Wohnung ein.

Dem Gerechten leuchten helleSterne in des Grabes Zelle,Ihm, der selbst als Stern der Nacht

Wird erscheinen,Wenn er seinen Herrn erschaut inHimmelspracht.

Seid Fürsprecher, heil’ge Seelen!Heil’ger Geist, laß Trost nicht fehlen.Hörst du? Jubelsang erklingt,Feiertöne,Darein die schöneEngelsharfe singt:

Rest from painful effortand from love’s hot glow! He who longed to unite with the blessed has left for the dwelling of the Savior.

For him who is righteous, shine bright stars in the cell of the grave, for him, who is himself like a star in

the night will they shine, when he sees his Lord in heaven’s splendor.

Intercede, holy souls! Holy Ghost, let comfort not be lacking. Do you hear? A joyous song resounds,solemn tones, within which the beautiful angel’s harp sings:

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53

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/ . / . / .Ð ð ð¼ \ð ð ð ÐÐð ð ðð Ł Ł Ł

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Schumann chose this lament as a fitting epilogue to a cycle of six po-ems by Nikolaus Lenau. Daverio writes “At the heart of the Lenau cycle . . . are a series of lyrics on the theme of a lost love, over which thepoet’s grief steadily intensifies. As such, the poems unfold a kind ofKünstlerleben or ‘Artist’s Life’ that makes the cycle into a pendant toDichterliebe. The concluding Requiem, the ‘old Catholic poem’ attrib-uted to Heloïse, is at once a lament for the poet’s life and a celebrationof his transfiguration through death, his release from ‘feverish, burn-ing, love.’ ”7

Compared to Brahms’s more overt appropriation of a religioustrope through his Lied setting of a biblical text in op. 121 no. 3, Schu-mann’s “Requiem” makes its own overt religious references, not least ofall through its suggestive title, but also through the concluding verse asseen in Example 3, “[Der] ist gegangen zu des Heilands Wohnung ein”([He] has left for the dwelling of the Savior). Indeed the entire lament isimbued with New Testament doctrine on death as a joining of the soulwith the Lord. This is made manifest in the second stanza at the words“Wenn er seinen Herrn erschaut in Himmelspracht” (when he observesthe Lord in heaven’s splendor). Schumann’s willingness to employ suchovertly sacred language to conclude a purely amorous poetic dramastands slightly outside (or, more truly, beyond) the typical spiritually informed romantic lyric. A detail in the poetic text, however, helps toclaim the song for more contemporary romantic norms. The thirdstanza concludes with a conceit, “Hörst du? Jubelsang erklingt, Feiertönedarein die schöne Engelsharfe singt: [Ruh’ von schmerzensreichenMühen]” (Do you hear? A joyous song resounds, with festive tones, in

54

7 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 463. The origins of this text are murky at best. Thepoem almost certainly does not derive from the 12th century, but rather is more likely a 19th-century evocation of the middle ages. Schumann knew the poem from Lebrecht Dreves, Gedichte, ed. Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (Berlin: A. Duncker,1849), 548. Dreves, a religiously inclined Romantic, drew “Requiescat a labore” from Her-mann Adalbert Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus sive hymnorum canticorum sequentiarum(Leipzig, 1841–56) and included it among 19 Latin hymns with translations that he hadalready published in his Lieder der Kirche, deutsche Nachbildungen altlateinischer Originalen(Schaffhausen: F. Hurter, 1846). There Dreves rejects Daniel’s attribution of the poemto Heloise noting: “That Heloise is not the author of this [poem] requires no proof. Suchelegaic tone and such powerful [effectvolle] verses were not yet known by the poets ofthe twelfth century” (Lieder der Kirche, 483).

Ruh’ von schmerzenreichen MühenAus und heißem Liebesglühen!Der nach seligem VereinTrug VerlangenIst gegangenZu des Heilands Wohnung ein.

Rest from painful effortand from love’s hot glow! He who longed to unite with the blessedhas left for the dwelling of the Savior.

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55

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62


which the beautiful angel’s harp sings out: [Rest from painful effort])that merges seamlessly with a refrain-like repetition of the first stanza,as in a medieval rondeau. At these words Schumann’s setting reaches aclimax (Ex. 4), ushered in rhythmically by the momentary swirl of quin-tuplets in the accompaniment at measures 41–42 and underlined bythe dominant pedal of measures 41–45.

Schumann recognized the centrality of the harp in the text: Notonly did he place this verse at the musical climax, he also indicated inthe opening measure that the accompaniment be played “wie Harfen-ton.” Both at this critical turning point and throughout the song, then,the harp plays a decisive part. But its role is not isolated to the song athand. Note that the harp (not the angels) “sings” the repeated openingverse (“Ruh’ von schmerzensreichen Mühen”) as a concluding refrain.By investing the tones of the harp with speech, the poet—and, by ex-tension, Schumann—taps into a romantic depiction of the harp as amediator between worldly and heavenly realms. Whereas the harp hasenjoyed a symbolic association with the divine in Western thought go-ing back to both the Bible and Greek mythology, it took on a romanticaura in the 18th century as the instrument of the bard, most notablyMacPherson’s Ossian but also shadowy figures like the Harper inGoethe’s Wilhelm Meister. Also in the late 18th century, according to Pe-ter Tenhaef, the harp became a symbol of feeling and the heart, and itis in this intersection (heavenly-mysterious-sentimental) that the instru-ment assumed its romantic role as a spiritual mediator.8 Not only didarch-romantics like Tieck, Wackenroder, and Hoffmann associate theharp with the heavenly realm, Tenhaef argues, but they also saw in theharp the “heavenly lyre,” a metaphor for the murky union of inner feel-ing and sublime infinity: “As the harp allows music to resound throughdark miraculous signs of the human heart and thereby to be known toit according to Tieck and Wackenroder, music opens up to the heart,according to Hoffmann, ‘the entire mystery of one’s own being,’ if onesurrenders to the inconceivable and ‘inexpressible.’ ’’9

The religious underpinnings of Romanticism come into play inTenhaef ’s assessment of harp symbolism just as they do in Daverio’s Re-quiem Idea: romantic faith in music as an expression of the infinite

56

8 Tenhaef, “Die Harfe und die absolute Musik,” Musikforschung 46 (1993): 391–411.Tenhaef points to the “romantic connection of the old ‘objective’ harp symbolism of the music of heaven with sentimental-subjective symbolism, which takes music to be the‘langage du cœur’ ” (392).

9 Ibid., 396. The Hoffmann passage in question is from “The Poet and the Com-poser.” See David Charlton, ed. E.T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings (Cambridge: Cam-bridge Univ. Press, 1989), 196. The connection to the harp is entirely Tenhaef’s, notHoffmann’s.

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example 4. Robert Schumann, “Requiem (Altkatholisches Gedicht),”op. 90 no. 7, mm. 37–46


sublimated the theological background of the movement (many of theseminal German romantic writers began their studies as theologians).In any event, elevating the harp to a pivotal role between heaven andearth can be found earlier in the 18th century, notably in the poetry ofKlopstock. In numerous paeans to the Almighty, Klopstock evokes theharp as a vehicle for singing praises to God. In the opening stanza of“Dem Unendlichen” of 1764, however, Klopstock provides loaded im-agery that would be encountered again in romantic rhetoric a genera-tion later, and for Tenhaef, Klopstock’s poem connects the kernel of romantic harp imagery—infinity and the heart—with the familiar ro-mantic coupling of night and death:

58

Wie erhebt sich das Herz, wenn esdich,

Unendlicher, denkt! wie sinkt es,Wenns auf sich herunterschaut!Elend schauts wehklagend dann, undNacht und Tod!

How the heart soars, when it thinks ofyou,

Infinite One! how it sinks when it looks down on itself ! Then it looks woefully lamenting, andnight and death!

Then, in the third of the poem’s five stanzas, Klopstock evokes theharp as a catalyst for the stirrings of the heart, and also as a mediumfor singing praises to God.

Weht, Bäume des Lebens, ins Harfengetön!Rausche mit ihnen ins Harfengetön,

kristallner Strom!Ihr lispelt, und rauscht, und, Harfen,

ihr töntNie es ganz! Gott ist es, den ihr preist!

Blow, trees of life, in the tones of harps! Rustle with them in the sound of

harps, / crystal stream! You whisper and rustle, and, harps,

youresoundNever fully! It is God whom you

praise!

It is here that the harp assumes its place between heaven and earth, be-tween man and God. This fulcrum is a place of privilege both for Chris-tian dogma and for romantic mystery. In New Testament rhetoric, Godis unknowable to mortals. Only in death does the soul break throughthe spiritual plane to come to know the Divine. As that knowledge isunattainable to the living, the religious concept of completion throughdeath forms a rich background for the generalized infinite longing ofromanticism.

Longing for eternal union with the divine was one of the most eas-ily assimilated features of Christianity for the Romantics. It is thereforeno surprise that composers of Brahms’s and Schumann’s cultural lin-

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eage would have been drawn to such connections in their requiemprojects, and that the harp would figure into many of them. But as isthe case in Schumann’s setting of “Ruh’ von schmerzensreichenMühen,” one could evoke the symbolic power of the harp without actu-ally employing the instrument itself. Schumann’s performance indica-tion “wie Harfenton” still assumes a piano accompaniment. But theidea of harp accompaniment was clearly appealing to Schumann. Thenext set of his songs to be published, Drei Gesänge, op. 95, on Byron’sHebrew Melodies, is set for piano or harp. In any event, as noted above,Schumann, like Brahms, was as apt to make use of the harp’s romanticsymbolism by evoking the instrument as by employing it.

In fact, Schumann used the harp sparingly, even in orchestral mu-sic, and then only in works with voices. Schumann often took his cuesfrom the setting of the story in the text, which more often than not ex-pressed tales of nobility mixed with mythical, mystical creatures as toldthrough an old bard. Like MacPherson’s Ossian, these figures are oftendepicted playing the harp, so that Schumann was thus prompted to add the instrument to his orchestra. So, for example, shortly before the Merman in Ballade III of Vom Pagen und der Königstochter “strikes theharp up and down,” Schumann obliges by introducing the harp for thefirst time in the piece (m. 62) and assigning it forte, punctuating chordsagainst the prevailing pianissimo dolcissimo music in the rest of the or-chestra.10 The harp only returns briefly for eight measures (151–58) inthe concluding Ballade IV, when the Merman sings, “Hei leise! FeinesSchloß am Meer, horch auf des Meermann’s Harfen!” (Hey, be quiet!Noble castle by the sea, listen to the Merman’s harp!).

But in the context of the story, conveyed as a series of four balladesby Emmanuel Geibel, the role of the harp is not so unrelated to its “re-quiem” use: that is, as a mediator between the worlds of the dead andthe living. In Geibel’s tale, as Daverio summarizes, a “young page is putto death after his tryst with the king’s daughter is discovered. His body,hurled into the sea by the king’s henchmen, is claimed by a chorus ofwater nymphs who convince a ‘Meermann’ . . . to fashion the page’sbones and golden hair into the frame and strings of a harp.” As theMerman plays the harp “aus der Ferne” (as indicated in the score), theprincess stands at the alter awaiting her marriage to a nobleman shedoes not love. She hears the strains of the harp as the voice of the deadpage, her sweetheart, and drops dead on the spot. After the king quitsthe palace in horror, the choir concludes the piece (mm. 241–51). “Der

59

10 Schumann’s text beginning in m. 67 has the Merman himself singing “Nun tönedie Harfe wohl auf und ab” (Now sound the harp fully up and down), whereas Geibel’soriginal poem delivers this line as a narrative that refers to the Merman: “Nun schlägt erdie Harfe wohl auf und ab.”


Morgen trüb in die Fenster graut, des Meermann’s Harf ist verklungen”(Morning dawned grey in the window, the Merman’s harp faded away).Once again, then, the harp fulfills its romantic role by forming a bridgebetween the worlds of the dead and the living, now following a morechivalric than biblical trope.

If the harp evokes distance for Schumann in this work (“aus derFerne”), it is the horn that conveys disembodiment. As the Merman’ssong fills the palace, the women of the choir sing (mm. 174–93):

60

11 Daverio, Schumann, 437.12 In Goethe’s novel, the requiem service for Mignon occurs in an abbey and is

acted out by a two hidden choirs and four boys (Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, book 8, chap. 8).

Horch! Wie’s empor von dem Meere wallt!O süßes, trauriges Schallen,Es schleicht so sacht durch die NachtHerauf in die Hallen.Es schleicht so sacht in das Ohr der Braut;Ihr ist, als ob aus der Tiefe,Es ist als ob aus der Tiefe mit Allgewalt

Der lieblichste Buhle sie riefe.

Hear! How up from the Sea it surges! O sweet, sad sound, it creeps so softly through the NightUpwards to the hallsIt creeps so softly into the ear of the bride; to her it is as if out of the depths, it is as if out of the depths with

greatest effort the sweetest lover calls her.

Now, however, it is not the harp but rather a solo horn that carries thestrains of the disembodied (or, rightly, dismembered) page to theprincess. Perhaps the horn, more naturally a symbol of distance, con-veys the singing of the Merman. The harp, then, maintains its role asmediator, transmitting the voice of the page to the Merman.

Here one finds little of the consolation that colored Schumann’srequiem projects. Nevertheless, one may construe an element of re-demption for the young lovers who are now united in death and nightbefore the gloomy day breaks. Redemption for the main protagonists,however, comes only through death—a central theme through much ofSchumann’s late choral-orchestral music as epitomized by the Requiemfür Mignon, op 98b.11 Schumann composed this cantata-like work onthe romantic heroine of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister shortly after returningto Dresden in the summer of 1849 during a flurry of activity that in-cluded the companion Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, op. 98a,and the first four of the Scenen aus Goethe’s Faust, WoO 3. Of course theformer solo song “cycle” is closely connected to the Requiem for Mignon.That choral portion of Schumann’s Wilhelm Meister opus is notable forits relatively extensive use of the harp throughout. In a work that de-picts a heavenly procession and angel-like figures, the harp is partly apictorial prop.12 However, the Requiem für Mignon also focuses on con-

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solation like no other piece by Schumann, and in this respect we mighthear the harp acting as the romantic mediator between the deadMignon and the grieving children who deliver her to the spirit world,which they themselves cannot enter.

The harp’s heavenly status is presaged by the songs of op. 98a.Schumann drew the texts for this cycle from the lyrical interludes inGoethe’s novel, including four for Mignon herself and four from theHarper, a mysterious character who cuts a tragic figure in the tale. Ac-cording to Daverio, the songs chart “two simultaneously unfolding in-ner dramas,” in which “Mignon’s four Lieder traverse an affective arcextending from bittersweet longing and anxious yearning to awestruckmystery and transfigurative calm,” whereas the last three Harper songschronicle “an emotional journey that takes him from frustration bornof pain, through yearning for the solitude of the grave, and finally toabject resignation.”13 All of this sets the stage for Mignon’s “Requiem”to follow.

Not surprisingly, the Harper’s songs, although accompanied by piano, bear witness to his signature instrument. In op. 98a no.2, “Bal-lade des Harfners,” Schumann sets the various characters in the Harper’sstory (including the Harper himself) to music differentiated by key, fig-uration, and affect. Schumann clearly evokes the Harper in his bardicrole through the opening rolled chords, an emblem of his “chivalric”style as Jonathan Bellman has called it.14 But by his next song, “Wer niesein Brot mit tränen ass” (no. 4), the harp is merely implied througharpeggiated figuration. In the Harper’s third song, “Wer sich der Ein-samkeit ergibt,” the harp is even less consistently in evidence, althoughSchumann evokes it strongly just as the Harper points to the grave asthe only escape from the pain that pursues him (Ex. 5). In a song thathas teetered throughout between F minor and A � major, the dissonant,sweeping arpeggios of measures 35–38 give way not only to the rolledblock chords of measures 39–46, but also to a relatively straightforwardresolution in the major key (A �). The only obstacles to a clear cadenceon the tonic—the secondary dominants and the deceptive cadences towards and then to F minor (mm. 40–41 and 43–44 respectively)—cement the pious chorale-like quality of this passage, a wholly appropri-ate tone for the Harper’s weary glance to the grave as a respite from hiswoes.15 When the postlude begins in measure 47, the harp disappears,

61

13 Ibid., 429–31.14 Jonathan Bellman, “Aus alten Märchen: The Chivalric Style of Schumann and

Brahms,” Journal of Musicology 13 (1995): 117–35. (Bellman references op. 98a no.2 at p. 11n127.)

15 The rising fourth followed by a stepwise descent in the melody at measure 39,along with the underlying harmonic progression, adumbrates Brahms’s later and simi-larly vague suggestion of the “Passion” chorale (Paul Gerhardt’s “O Haupt voll Blut undWunden”) in the song “Auf dem Kirchhofe,” op. 105 no.4 (mm. 27–29).


as if the Harper had transcended his bardic constraints. Indeed, as Dav-erio notes, there is finally no intimation of the harp at all in theHarper’s last song, “An die Türen will ich schleichen,” no. 8.

In keeping with with Daverio’s view of two intertwined trajectoriesin op. 98a, it is not surprising that Mignon’s final song (“So laßt michscheinen, bis ich werde,” no. 9) also settles into a major key (G) afterwavering between that key and its relative minor earlier in the song.More importantly, Mignon’s lyric speaks directly to her death and as-cension, the very subject of her requiem in op. 98b:

62

So laßt mich scheinen, bis ich werde,Zieht mir das weiße Kleid nicht aus!Ich eile von der schönen Erde

Hinab in jenes feste Haus.

Dort ruh’ ich eine kleine Stille,Dann öffnet sich der frische Blick;Ich laße dann die reine Hülle,

Den Gürtel und den Kranz zurück.

Und jene himmlischen GestaltenSie fragen nicht nach Mann und

Weib,Und keine Kleider, keine Falten

Umgeben den verklärten Leib.

Zwar lebt’ ich ohne Sorg’ und Mühe,

Doch fühlt’ ich tiefen Schmerz genug.

Vor Kummer altert’ ich zu frühe;Macht mich auf ewig wieder jung!

So let me appear, until I become so; take me not out of the white dress! I am hurrying from the beautiful

earth down to that hard house.

There I [shall] rest in a bit of peace, then a fresh vision will open up; I will leave behind then the pure

covering, the girdle and the wreath.

And those heavenly figures,they do not concern themselves with

man and woman, / and no clothes, no

robes cover the transfigured body.

True, I have lived without trouble andtoil,

yet I have felt enough deep pain.

From sorrow I have aged too soon;Make me eternally young again!

Specifically, Mignon’s “weiße Kleid” is echoed in the Requiem für Mignonby the hidden choir who tells the boys presenting Mignon, “seht die le-ichte reine Gewand!” And when she sings in op. 98a no. 9 that those inheaven “fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib,” Mignon looks forward tothe choir’s insistence to her in op. 98b, “Dir folge kein Knabe, keinMädchen nach!”

In the Requiem für Mignon, Schumann first employs the harp in no. 3,largely against solo boys’ voices as they despair over Mignon’s inani-mate state while the hidden choir encourages them to look instead at Mignon’s mighty wings, pure robe, and golden fillet. The harp drops

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out entirely with the sudden change of character at the beginning ofno. 4 where once again, as in the Harper’s “Wer sich der Einsamkeitergibt,” consolation is delivered in slow, steady, chordal fashion with ac-companying brass and bassoons (now more generically hymn-like thanspecifically chorale-like) with the words “In euch lebe die bildendeKraft, die das Schönste, das Höchste hinauf, über die Sterne das Lebenträgt (May there live within you the creative power that carries life, themost beautiful, the highest over the stars).16 Daverio cites this momentin the Requiem für Mignon to summarize: “This work is not a moroselament for the dead but rather an exhortation to the living to ceasemourning and cultivate their innate abilities instead.”17 Now, instead of evoking the harp from an earthly perspective (as the Harper had) to

64

16 The distinction between “hymn” and “chorale” is a matter of generality versusspecificity. Chorale settings, epitomized then as now by Bach’s 371 four-part harmoniza-tions, are characterized by familiar rhythmic regularity, continuity, and cadential phras-ing. While chorales are technically hymns of the Protestant church, a hymn could morebroadly mean any solemn song. By the later 19th century, hymns could be defined as “vo-cal works of various forms, mostly, however, referring to works with grand effect, for largechoir with brass accompaniment, on sacred as well as secular subjects.” See Musik-Lexikonvon Dr. Hugo Riemann (Leipzig: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1882), 409–10.

17 Daverio, Crossing Paths, 186.

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deliver such solemn tones, it is in the absence of the harp that the dis-embodied choir delivers its lines. Perhaps when seen from a heavenlyperspective, the harp falls silent or is subsumed in the spirituality of thescene. That would explain Schumann’s reintroduction of the harp fromthe etwas schneller portion of no. 5 (“Auf! Wir kehren ins Leben zurück”)through no. 6, where its punctuating block chords are nearly superflu-ous against the generally forte tutti forces of the rest of the orchestra.

Brahms was well acquainted with the Requiem für Mignon, as he waswith all the large-scale choral-orchestral efforts from Schumann’s lastdecade. He conducted the Viennese premiere of Schumann’s op. 98bduring his single season with the Vienna Singakademie (1863–64), and a decade later he programmed Schumann’s Des Sängers Fluch andmusic for Manfred as director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde’sSingverein. Moreover, Brahms maintained a deep admiration for Schu-mann’s Faust Scenes throughout his adult life. From all these works, as already mentioned, Brahms adopted Schumann’s romantically in-formed consolatory stance towards death, but with key distinctions. Inhis brief 1996 article “Brahms and Schumann’s Dramatic Choral Mu-sic,” Daverio hones in on the different approaches of the two com-posers: “The theme of redemption figures prominently in Schumann’schoral-orchestral works. . . . While a redemptive strain is not absent inBrahms’s choice and treatment of his texts, the younger composer dis-played a marked interest in poetry dealing with the gulf between divin-ity and humanity.” As one example, he points out that in “the pertinentfragment from [Goethe’s] Harzreise, the “Father of Love” is invoked torefresh the soul of a self-absorbed misanthrope.”18 Daverio refers hereto the closing section of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, op. 53 (1869), his firsttrue, large-scale interaction with the poetry of Goethe. He had alreadyset Goethe’s Rinaldo in 1863, but that work is a modernized adaptationof Tarquino Tasso’s 1581 poetic epic, Gerusalemme liberata. By contrast,the Alto Rhapsody sets three stanzas from Goethe’s Harzreise im Winter(1777), a highly personal statement on a different sort of redemptionthan one finds in a requiem.

At the outset Brahms depicts Goethe’s “Verächter”—the lonely andembittered misanthrope—through some of the most anguished musiche ever composed, replete with prominent half-step clashes, tortuousmelodic contours, and outbursts as in the repeated word “Menschen-hass.” The redemptive transformation comes at the prayer that thishateful figure may recognize the good in others that lies so close byhim: “Öffne den umwölkten Blick / Über die tausend Quellen / Neben

65

18 Daverio, “Brahms and Schumann’s Dramatic Choral Music: Giving Musical Shapeto ‘Deeply Intellectual Poetry,’ ” American Brahms Society Newsletter 14/1 (Spring 1996): 2.


dem Durstenden / In der Wüste” (Open his clouded gaze to the thou-sand fountains alongside him, as he thirsts in the wilderness). Goethe’sprayer transcends the utterly human setting that precedes it partly byevoking a god-figure, the “Father of Love,” but also by seeking redemp-tion through typically biblical imagery: the psaltery, or harp. Brahms re-sponds not by using an actual harp but by depicting one with pizzicatostrings in measures 120–31 (Ex. 6). It would have been easy enough forBrahms to employ a harp for only the last third of the Rhapsody; hehad no compunction about including a harp in just three out of theseven movements in the German Requiem, completed the year before.Reverting to an imaginary harp places the instrument in an ideal realm,as in the “wie Harfenton” piano accompaniment of Schumann’s “Ruh’von schmerzensreichen Mühen,” where the harp also was presented asa manifest agent in the text. The harp itself becomes “disembodied” inthese instances, and is thus rendered more pure than if visibly presentin performance.

Purity also marks the move to the setting of the prayer in the AltoRhapsody, the third part of the tripartite form in the piece. Whereas theopening two sections move disjointedly through and around C minor,the closing prayer section is solidly in C major, notwithstanding its brieffeints towards mediant related keys (E � and A �) at measures 132 and162. Progressing from C minor to C major was of course a loaded movein the 19th century: This particular modal transformation stood apartfrom all others after its iconic use at the opening of Haydn’s Creationand in the transition to the last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Sym-phony. In a study of just this feature in the Alto Rhapsody, James Websterfirmly places op. 53 as the first of Brahms’s works to partake of the C minor-major trope, although he differentiates Brahms’s use of it inthe Alto Rhapsody from Haydn’s religious sublime and Beethoven’s ro-mantic sublime. Instead, Webster labels the change of mode in op. 53as a personal and psychological resolution: “The entry of C major inthe Alto Rhapsody . . . is quiet rather than explosive; the heartfelt emo-tion is innig rather than demonstrative or triumphant.”19 But that distinction does not preclude his hearing the arrival of C major interms that are compatible with the redemptive nature of the variousSchumann “harp” evocations discussed thus far. Later Webster writes,

66

19 Webster, “The Alto Rhapsody: Psychology, Intertextuality, and Brahms’s Artistic De-velopment,” in Brahms Studies 3, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press,2001), 26.

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This work is deeply, one could almost say intimately, integrated; . . .the concluding section in C major does not merely follow on the pre-ceding ones, it resolves them. But the character of this resolution is utterly different from any earlier important examples of the minor-to-major topos: not sublime, as in the creation of light, or triumphantas in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or Schumann’s Second, but also nota conventional climax, as in so many other nineteenth century works.On the contrary, the resolution is personal: not in the sense of makingprivate matters public, but intimate, consolatory.20

Whereas private inwardness may well be opposed to the spiritual con-notations of the sublime, the harp, as noted earlier, formed a bridge forthe romantics between the heart and the heavens. Brahms’s mysticalevocation of the harp in the Alto Rhapsody connects the personal re-demption of the Verächter with the religious aura that informed the movefrom C minor to C major in the first place, be it overt as in Haydn’s ora-torio or implicit as in Beethoven’s Fifth.21 And to the extent that thegesture towards the Verächter is “consolatory” (as Webster contends), theAlto Rhapsody can be subsumed under the Brahms/Schumann RequiemIdea.

Perhaps Brahms’s most famous (and stereotypical) adoption of theC minor-to-C major idea comes in the slow introduction to the finale ofhis First Symphony at the famous “alphorn” theme (played on a C horn).No harps are to be heard here (nor in any of Brahms’s other purely or-chestral works, for that matter), but the presence of the horn is signifi-cant. The “alphorn” theme is one of the most discussed moments in allof Brahms’s output. Almost as often mentioned is the first appearanceof the theme, on a postcard that Brahms sent from Switzerland to ClaraSchumann in Baden-Baden on her 49th birthday (12 September 1868).Brahms wrote “Thus blew the alphorn today,” under which he notatedthe now-famous melody that he inscribed with the following text (seeEx. 7): “Hoch auf’m Berg, tief im Thal, grüß’ ich dich viel tausendmal!”(High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you several thousandtimes!)22 Rarely considered, however, is the context for this birthdaygreeting, nor a possible (albeit oblique) allusion to one of Brahms’sown pieces for horn. Schumann was angry with Brahms over his sugges-tion in February of 1868 that she might be past her prime as a performer

69

20 Ibid., 44.21 The best discussion of the religious and political connotations behind Beetho-

ven’s sublime and contemporary reactions to it (especially by E. T. A. Hoffmann) is of-fered by Stephen Rumph, “A Kingdom not of this World: The Political Context of E. T. A.Hoffmann’s Beethoven Criticism,” 19th-Century Music 19 (1995): 50–67.

22 The postcard is reproduced in several places, most recently in David Brodbeck,Brahms: Symphony No.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 15, and Styra Avins,ed., Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 368.


and should give up touring, and the rift between them reached acrescendo in a series of letters from mid August through early Septem-ber. Brahms’s birthday postcard, then, was part of a peace offering thatseems to have worked: The two correspondents resumed their friendlyrelationship by October, although from that point on Schumann wasmore reserved in her letters.23 Perhaps Brahms thought a musicalgreeting would be an especially good ice-breaker.

It might also be significant that the words he chose closely resem-bled the end of the first stanza of Joseph von Eichendorff ’s “Der Gärt-ner,” which Brahms had set nine years earlier (1859) as the third of hisFour Songs for Women’s Chorus, op. 17, with harp and two horns:

Wohin ich geh’ und schaue, Wherever I go and look,In Feld und Wald und Tal, in field and forest and plain,Vom Berg hinab in die Aue; the hill to the mead;Viel schöne, hohe Fraue, most beautiful noble lady,Grüß ich dich tausendmal. I greet you a thousand times.

Not only is the final verse (“Grüß ich dich tausendmal”) echoed inBrahms’s birthday greeting of 1868, so too is the scene in which the poetlooks downward from the mountain (“Vom Berg hinab”) reminiscent ofBrahms’s “Hoch auf ’m Berg, tief im Thal.” Perhaps most importantly,Schumann knew the op. 17 choruses quite well; she corresponded withBrahms several times concerning their conception, genesis, and publi-cation. Brahms composed the pieces early in 1860 for the HamburgWomen’s Chorus which he conducted from 1858 to 1861, and he must

70

23 Nancy Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.Press, 1985), 206. The letter exchange may be found in Clara Schumann-Johannes Brahms:Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896, vol. 1, Berthold Litzmann, ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Här-tel, 1927), 575–97. See also Avins, Life and Letters, 363–68. The very fact that Brahms senta birthday note may have been a special case. It is one of only a few such letters that havesurvived. But since Brahms destroyed all the letters that Clara Schumann returned to himin an agreed upon exchange in 1886, it is difficult to know whether there were in factothers (the surviving letters from him to her were selectively withheld by Schumann). Ifthey existed, they presumably could not have been more than perfunctory, or Schumannwould have kept them as well.

example 7. Brahms’s “Alphorn Theme” on a postcard to Clara Schu-mann, 12 September 1868

Š Ðq ð ý Ł Ł ý Ð ð ýý Ł� Ð ð ý Ł² Ð Ð ð ýý Ł� Ð�Adagio

Hoch auf’m Berg, tief im Thal, gruß’ ich dich viel tau - send - mal!

beller-mckenna

have informed Schumann about them sometime before she wrote in aletter of 3 March 1860, “How did you come up with harp and horns? Ican’t give myself any idea of how these two instruments sound together,but it will be completely idiosyncratic.” And having later received themanuscript from Brahms, she returned it on 22 August with the re-mark, “If I could only find the right way to say, how these songs moveme to my core (Innerste).” She liked them enough to arrange a privateperformance of them in her home in early December, and it was onone of her own concerts that the works were publicly premiered 15 Jan-uary 1861 with the Hamburg Women’s Chorus as guest artists.24

It is unlikely that Brahms intended any specific “hidden” messageby evoking the “Harfenlieder” (as Schumann called them) in his birth-day greeting eight years later. Rather the connection probably speaks to the general capacity of the horn—especially the natural horn—toevoke distance for Brahms, Schumann, and their contemporaries. Inthis context distance can be understood on several levels. WithinBrahms’s birthday note, the notion of the “Alphorn” points out the dis-tance of physical separation between friends (Brahms in the Swiss Alps,Schumann in Baden-Baden) and likewise the traversing of space by the Alphorn that plays atop the mountain and is heard below in the val-ley. But the horn also captures the separation implied by the division in their friendship.25 Again, one can only speculate as to Brahms’s mo-tives, but reference to a horn with words that recall a piece for horns(and harp) seems to invite the reader (i.e. Schumann) to look back to ahappier moment in the relationship as something in their romanticizedpersonal history, a call from the past that could be evoked in no betterway than through the romantic aura of the horn.

As Schumann could have predicted, Brahms’s op. 17 is mostlynoted for its “completely idiosyncratic” scoring. There is little prece-dent for the combination of harp, horns, and women’s chorus, and it isas likely that Brahms chose the instruments as much for their romanticimplications as for the effect of their combined sound.26 One couldsurmise that the first song, a setting of “Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang”

71

24 Sophie Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses (Marion, Penn.: Masurgia,1952), 66–68.

25 The two even adopted language along these lines as they worked out their differ-ences. Brahms wrote of a preceding letter from Schumann, “I see it as a great wall be-tween us” (Schumann-Brahms: Briefe, 595), to which she responded “That letter is not thewall that stands between us. . . . In any case we don’t need to tear down any wall, only a lit-tle more friendliness and only a little more control over feelings” (Schumann-Brahms:Briefe, 598).

26 The vocal forces were probably a given; the songs were copied into the part-books of the Hamburg Women’s Chorus. See Margit L. McCorkle, Brahms: Thematisch-Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Munich: Henle, 1984), 566–67.


by the relatively obscure Friedrich Ruperti, was the impetus for the set,or at least for the inclusion of the harp.

72

Es tönt ein voller Harfenklangden Lieb’ und Sehnsucht schwellen,er dringt zum Herzen tief und bang

und läßt das Auge quellen.

O rinnet, Tränen, nur herab,o schlage Herz, mit Beben!Es sanken Lieb’ und Glück ins Grab,

verloren ist das Leben!

The full sound of harps rings out,love and yearning swell;it pierces one to the heart, deeply and

anxiously,and leaves the eyes welling.

O run, tears, only down;o pound, heart, with quivering!Love and Happiness are buried in the

grave;life is lost!

Brahms captures the open-ended sense of yearning in the text by begin-ning and ending the C major setting off of the tonic. Indeed, the veryopening gesture by the low C horn, rising from G through C and D toG an octave above, is tonally ambiguous (see Ex. 8). Whether it is heardas two adjacent rising fourths (G–C, D–G) or overlapping fifths (G–D,C–G), the gesture implies an admixture of tonic and dominant har-monies. Brahms does not clarify the key until about half way throughthe ten-measure instrumental prelude, but even from that point on hemaintains disequilibrium by consistently interjecting the tonic note Cin every dominant harmony until the concluding measure 31. This is aquintessentially romantic metaphor; the object we have been yearningfor (the pure dominant harmony, freed of the note C) proves only tobe an illusory goal that fails to achieve closure when it does not ca-dence to the tonic. Brahms also distinguishes between the roles of the harp and the solo horn through most of the song by leaving thehorn within the pure diatonic realm even as the harp slides downwardthrough a variety of dissonant and modally mixed chords, whose chro-matic inflections are all contained in middle or lower voices—held be-neath the surface, as it were. Distance, the domain of the horn, showsthe object of yearning in a rosier light than the harp, which in keepingwith its romantic image captures the rawer, more dissonant emotion ofthe heart.

Whereas the presence of the harp is telegraphed by the openingverse of the poem, the tonal imbalance in op. 17 no. 1 may also be con-nected to the harp symbolism I have outlined above. Mediating be-tween heavenly and earthly realms (thus between the dead and the liv-ing), the harp and the work’s tonal instability are connected throughthe final two verses “Es sanken Lieb’ und Glück ins Grab, verloren ist

beller-mckenna

das Leben!” (Love and Happiness are buried in the grave; life is lost!)The yearning announced in the first stanza is now identified within thegrave. At this point the distant purity signaled by the horn in the intro-duction melts away to the present anticipation of death as the originaldescending diatonic line is filled in with chromatic passing tones byboth horn and harp (see Ex. 9). Brahms’s poignant depiction of the

73

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grave at the end of the first, schwärmerisch chorus signals the directionof the remaining three songs. Even the mostly cheery, previously dis-cussed third chorus, “Der Gärtner,” ends with the following stanza:

Ich schein’ wohl froher Dinge I appear full of glad thingsUnd schaffe auf und ab, and work to and fro,Und ob das Herz zerspringe, and, even if my heart should burst,Ich grabe fort und singe, I dig on and sing,Und grab mir bald mein Grab. and soon I dig my grave.

And the title of the ensuing “Komm herbei, Tod!” (from Shakespeare’sTwelfth Night as translated by August Wilhelm Schlegel) firmly definesdeath as a central theme. Each of these two middle choruses maintainsthe strophic setting of the first, although here there is less emphasis onpreludes and postludes. There is also less idiomatic writing for the ac-companying instruments.

Accordingly, it is the first and (especially) the last song in op. 17that have received the most critical praise and attention, richer as theseare in texture and harmonic invention. The concluding “Gesang ausFingal” sets Herder’s translation of a passage from the first book ofJames MacPherson’s Fingal, an Epic Poem of Ossian. Whereas Ruperti’stext in the first song invokes the harp directly, the very figure of Ossianalluded to by the “Fingal” in the title conjures up the harp in its roman-tic bardic guise. The brief vignette on the dead warrior Trenar and his lover, the “Mädchen von Inistore,” brings the op. 17 songs from thegeneral theme of death into the realm of the consolatory RequiemIdea, for here the text is delivered not in the first-person voice of oneseeking death, but rather as Ossian’s third-person address to the surviv-ing mistress.

74

Wein’ an den Felsen, der brausenden Winde, weine, o Mädchen von Inistore!Beug’ über die Wogen dein schönes

Haupt, lieblicher du als der Geist der Berge,wenn er um Mittag in einem

Sonnenstrahl über das Schweigen von Morven fährt.Er ist gefallen, dein Jüngling liegt darnieder,bleich sank er unter Cuthullins

Schwert. Nimmer wird Mut deinen Liebling

mehr reizen,

Weep on the rocks where the storm winds are raging,weep, O maiden of Inistore!Bend over the waters thy lovely head,

you fairer than the mountain spirit,when at noon on a sunbeam it moves

over the silence of Morven’s height.or he is fallen, thy true love lies fallen,slain by the might of Cuthullin’s

sword.Never again will his valor inspire your

dear,

beller-mckenna

Like many surrounding elegies in MacPherson’s text, the memorialstanza on Trenar is one part eulogy for a brave soldier and one part romantic nature-imagery as in the opening verses. In fact it follows directly on a tribute to Sithàllin (“Mourn, ye sons of song, mourn thedeath of the noble Sithàllin”) who along with Trenar was killed in battleagainst the Druid Cathullin. These two passages are presented byMacPherson as songs sung by bards of the invading army: “As the lastpeal of thunder in heaven, such is the din of war! Though Cormac’shundred bards were there to give the fight to song; feeble was the voiceof a hundred bards to send the deaths to future times!”27 Of the twolaments, only the recipient of the latter, the maiden of Inistore, is af-forded a rapturous romantic depiction. And it is precisely this focus onthe recipient (she who survives the dead) that allows Brahms’s settingto represent consolation.

Brahms pulls out all the stops to produce an “Ossianic” effect here(see Ex. 10). The low C horns enter with a dactyl rhythmic figure (long,short-short), producing an especially dark effect through the unusual

75

27 James MacPherson, The Poems of Ossian, ed. Malcolm Lang, vol. 1 (Edinburgh,1805; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1974), 35–36.

das Blut von Königen zu vergießen.Trenar, der liebliche Trenar starbO Mädchen von Inistore!Seine grauen Hunde heulen daheim,sie sehn seinen Geist vorüberziehn.Sein Bogen hängt ungespannt in der

Halle,nichts regt sich auf der Haide der

Rehe.

To pour the blood of princes.Trenar, the fair Trenar is dead!o maiden of Inistore!His growling hounds howl in his hall;they see his ghost walk go past.His bow hangs in the hall unstrung.

Nothing stirs on the heath of thedeer.

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number of stopped chromatic notes (E � and B � for the C crook).28

When the three-part choir enters, the second sopranos follow the hornsto a C pedal in measures 9–12, effectively rendering the choir a tersetwo-voice unit that compounds the tension of the repetitive rhythmthroughout. Although the harp’s entrance in measure 17 signals aslightly increased harmonic range and an eventual loosening of therhythm through triplet figuration (m. 41), the entire opening periodremains dominated by the funereal feel of the first measure. The harp’sentrance is also subtly associated with descending gestures that accentu-ate the dark mood of the entire C minor section. Both the phrase inwhich the harp first enters (m. 17, “Über die Wogen”) and its repeti-tion (m. 33, “Er ist gefallen”) effect a two-step sequence, each stage ofwhich emphasizes a melodic step-wise descent (G–D and C–G; see Ex.11). That tetrachord is finally transferred to the bass in measures 42 to43 during the climactic phrase of the opening section, where the open-ing strain is given its fullest and loudest ( forte) presentation. It is herethat the harp’s figuration becomes more excited and disjointed, fre-quently leaping in measures 33–40 from deep octaves to mid-rangechords in the left hand, and then accelerating to triplets at measure 41.In fact, the moment that follows, the loudest in the piece (or the entireop. 17 cycle for that matter), goes beyond the bard’s capacity for ex-pression: It is given over entirely to the horns and the fortissimo harp inmeasure 49.

Sandwiched between this initial C minor dirge and its abbreviatedcoda-like reprise that closes the piece (only setting the opening line,“Wein’ an den Felsen,” etc.), Brahms sets the verse “Trenar, der lieblicheTrenar starb, o Mädchen von Inistore!” to a more lyrical A � majormelody in measures 69–78 (see Ex. 12). Throughout this middle sec-tion he alternates between variants of this phrase and two statements of an ominous cadential formula (mm. 78–86 and 96–104) that setsthe text “Seine grauen Hunde heulen daheim, sie sehn seinen Geistvorüberziehn” (His growling hounds howl in his hall; they see his ghostgo past). As the lyrical strain surrounds these dissonant interludes, itenvelops the foreboding tones of the howling dogs with the simple an-nouncement of Trenar’s death. Unlike every other phrase in the cho-rus, the A � melody holds steadfastly to its major key and avoids therhythmic-motivic saturation of either the dactyls in the C minor sectionor the seasick half-step rising and falling of the nearby dissonant caden-tial figure.

76

28 I thank my colleague Keith Polk for advising me on the particular qualities of thecrooks called for in op. 17 and op. 40.

beller-mckenna

Conspicuously absent from most of the song’s middle section is theharp. To be sure, the a cappella entrance of the choir at measure 69,now divided into four rather than three voices, strongly marks this mu-sic as separate from what immediately precedes it, a distinction height-ened by the previously discussed major-mode and lyrical character ofthese measures. But the absence of the harp has deeper implicationshere. Thus far the fallen hero has only been mentioned indirectly or by his relation to the maiden (“Er ist gefallen, dein Jüngling,” “dein[er]Liebling”). Now he is named: “Trenar, der liebliche Trenar starb!”Nothing in the text suggests consolation here, yet everything about themusic does. The sudden lyricism, simple diatonic harmony (brokenonly by the syncopated G � interjection on “starb”), and sparse texturesoften the blow of the preceding tumult. Such purity is indicative of thetranscendent mode of expression that was already implied by the dis-appearance of the chorus (i.e. “voice”) in measures 49–57. And as inother examples discussed above (Robert Schumann’s Vom Pagen und derKönigstochter, op. 140, and Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, op. 53), the real

77

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beller-mckenna

triplets from the climactic phrases of measures 41–56, the harp nowplays the simplest of three-note arpeggios. Thus Brahms provides a gentle return to consciousness in preparation for C minor reprise/codaof measures 131–66.

Still to consider are the ominous cadential figures of measures78–86 and 96–104. These are the first instances of a cadential typeBrahms was to use on more than one future occasion. Most notably—given their accompaniment by horns only in op. 17—these cadences

79


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closely resemble an oft repeated motive in the first movement ofBrahms’s Trio for Piano, Violin, and Natural Horn, op. 40. The motiveas it first appears in the Horn Trio (mm. 16–20) is presented in Exam-ple 13, where it may be compared to the initial appearance of the simi-lar figure in op. 17 no. 4 (Ex. 12; mm. 78–82). Observing the appear-ance of this cadence in these two works does not imply a substantiveconnection between them; there is certainly no case to be made for aprogrammatic allusion in op. 40 to op. 17. And yet it is tempting todraw a general comparison in light of the traditional understanding ofop. 40 as an elegiac work. The popular conception that Brahms com-posed op. 40 in memory of his mother is based more on circumstancesthan record. Max Kalbeck initiated this reading of the Horn Trio a cen-tury ago in his influential Brahms biography, tying together the use ofthe natural horn, a supposed quotation of a popular folk song, and the

80


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fact that Brahms composed the piece in the summer of 1865 to con-clude that the composer was referencing memories of his childhood ina nostalgic memorial to his mother who had died the previous winter.29

There is, however, no corroborating evidence on this point. Moreover,Peter Jost has demonstrated through a close look at Brahms’s revisionsin the manuscript copy of the score that op. 40 likely was originally con-ceived more generically for horn, and only later altered in spots to bet-ter fit the natural horn—the specific instrument that Kalbeck ties toBrahms’s childhood.30 Finally, even the folksong “quotation” is hardlyconvincing. Kalbeck hears the theme of the Horn Trio’s finale and its“preview” near the end of the preceding movement as an allusion tothe Rhenish folksong “Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus,” as Brahmswas to set it years later in the Six Lieder, op. 97 (see Ex. 14 a and b). Infact, an arch shape and a downward move towards scale degree 6 isabout all that connects these two melodies. In any event, Brahms morefrequently set the minor mode version of “Dort in den Weiden,” whichbears even less resemblance to the main theme of the Horn Trio’s fi-nale (Ex. 13c).31

81

29 Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft,1921; repr. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976), 186–87.

30 Jost, “Klang, Harmonik, und Form in Brahms’ Horntrio Op. 40,” in Interna-tionaler Brahms-Kongress Gmunden 1997: Kongreßbericht, ed. Ingrid Fuchs (Tutzing: HansSchneider, 2001), 59–71.

31 In addition to the solo setting of WoO 33 no. 31, presented in Ex. 13c, Brahmsalso arranged a solo setting in WoO 31 and two choral settings, one for mixed chorus asWoO 35 no. 8 and for women’s chorus as WoO 38, no. 3. The mixed chorus arrangementwas probably made for the Vienna Singakademie in 1863–64, whereas the women’s

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All this second guessing of Brahms’s memorial intentions may besuperfluous, since the Horn Trio does not fit well within the scheme ofthe Requiem Idea anyway. Not that an instrumental piece could not im-ply consolation; Daverio proved this point in his insightful analysis ofthe Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 23 forpiano four-hands. Daverio showed that by using the last musical ideaSchumann had composed before his attempted suicide in 1854,Brahms effected “an elegy for Schumann and a rechannelling of Schu-mann’s late work toward new expressive ends” by recalling the sametexture and key with which Schumann set that very theme in his nearlycontemporaneous Violin Concerto in D Minor, WoO 23 (1853).32

82

chorus arrangement is found in the part books of the Hamburg Women’s Chorus. SeeMcCorkle, Brahms: Thematisch-Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, 603, 607. On the samepages cited above, Kalbeck also compares the Horn Trio finale theme to the chorale “Wernur der lieben Gott läßt walten,” which is more often cited as a background melodic ideato Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45.

32 Daverio, Crossing Paths, 189.

example 14. Possible folksong allusion in Brahms, Horn Trio, op. 40

a. Brahms, “Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus,” Op. 97 no. 4, mm.1–4

b. Brahms, Horn Trio, op. 40/iii, mm. 59–61

c. Brahms, “Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus,” WoO 33 no. 31, mm. 1–4

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beller-mckenna

Brahms’s Horn Trio does not present any such devices or formal para-digms. It is, however, pregnant with funereal overtones. Thus it mightserve our present purposes by providing an example whereby we candistinguish between the merely mournful and the Schumann/BrahmsRequiem Idea.

While the andante opening movement of op. 40 strikes a melan-choly tone, it is the third movement that carries a true sense of mourn-ing. Kalbeck rightly compared its Adagio mesto third movement to themuch later Andante mesto intermezzo op. 118, no.6: “Not only in its key(E � minor) does the Adagio allude to the hero’s lament from the last ofthe Piano Pieces op. 118, it is the same eerie sound, as if communicat-ing with the spirits.”33 One might even speak of an E � minor mood in acluster of pieces from op. 40 onward, works that deal with death in itsmost purely romantic sense, as an unattainable respite from the sultrylanguor of life. The lied “Schwermut,” op. 58 no. 5 on a poem by CarlCandidus, provides a strong case in point:

Mir ist so weh ums Herz, My heart is so heavy,Mir ist, als ob ich weinen möchte It is as if I want to weepVor Schmerz! from pain!Gedankensatt Full of thoughtUnd lebensmatt and weary of life,Möcht’ ich das Haupt hinlegen I would like to lay down my headin die Nacht der Nächte! in the night of nights!

Set “Sehr langsam” in E � minor with plodding block chords in the pi-ano, the song markedly changes character at the words “Möcht’ ich dasHaupt hinlegen” (I would like to lay down my head), modulating evermore through major keys and ending in an epiphanous German-sixthto tonic cadence on E � major at the final words “Nacht der Nächte!”One is vaguely reminded of Brahms’s celebrated Heine setting, “DerTod, das ist die kühle Nacht,” op. 96 no. 1, which also moves throughsubtle, parallel shades of major and minor (though around C, not E �)to distinguish between the cool night and the sultry day. A less wellknown song of about the same time, “Steig auf geliebten Schatten,” op.94 no. 2, on a poem by Friedrich Halm, similarly assays the allure ofnocturnal death. Ira Braus argues that this song, another E � minor set-ting, alludes to the locus classicus of Day-Life/Night-Death rhetoric in19th-century music, Tristan und Isolde.34 Like Wagner’s opera, all of thesesongs move towards an acceptance of death and a sense of redemption.

83

33 Kalbeck, Brahms, 187.34 Braus, “Mit schauerndem Entzücken: Brahms’s Tristan Syndrome,” unpublished

manuscript.


But these works (including Wagner’s) all convey redemptionthrough some transcendence of the minor mode. The same can not besaid for the third movement of the Horn Trio or the Intermezzo, op.118 no. 6: Neither piece uses the obscure key of E � minor as a foil or adeparture point from which to transcend its grief. In the intermezzoBrahms merely allows his brooding to grow into to rage in the middlesection of the piece, where the newly marshaled resolve (expressed indotted march-like block chords) only climaxes to a fiery fortissimostatement of the laconic opening idea over a half diminished-seventhchord (Ex. 15 a and b).

Brahms is even less willing to let go of grief in the Adagio mesto ofthe Horn Trio. As in op. 118 no. 6, we are presented once again with adark opening idea that unfolds slowly through the movement (Ex.16a). But whereas ire rises up to confront despair in the Intermezzo,the middle section of the Adagio mesto third movement in op. 40 merelybroods: Brahms intellectualizes the main theme by turning it into afugue (Ex. 16b). Although the horn carries the potential to evoke a ro-mantic call from the distance in this context, Brahms purposefullynegates the possibility; this is one of driest and most arid sections ofcounterpoint in all of Brahms’s instrumental music. Not only does thehorn proceed for two excruciatingly lonely measures, but the windingmelodic path it takes places the very metrical identity of the openingtheme in doubt. When Brahms repeats the F–G�–F return figure ofmeasure 19 on D�–E�–D� across measure 20, the compound triple meter becomes vague. And when the horn adds a new repeated motive(D–E �–G �) against the violin’s answer, the meter nearly breaks down al-together. By the time the horn states the fugal theme in diminution ithardly matters that it begins on the final eighth note of measure 23;the three separate instruments are each lost in their individual soundworlds, caught up in their own thoughts, dwelling on their grief ratherthan finding consolation.

After a reprise of the opening idea (beginning in measure 43 andnow accompanied by the fugal theme as a countermelody), the so-calledfolksong quotation discussed previously brings two brief moments ofclarity and light to the end of the movement (Ex. 17). But once againneither the initial statement on E � major at measure 59 nor the evenbrighter entrance on F major in measure 63 is able to dislodge thegloom of the main theme, which each time is reiterated by the piano.One may hear these moments as adumbrations of the rollicking hunt tofollow in the last movement, but they do not transcend in the presentmoment, when it counts. This is not a consoling or redemptive gesture,then, but rather a peek at other, brighter times to come. Thus for all itssomber tone, the Horn Trio does not partake of the Requiem Idea.

84

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In the months immediately before Brahms composed this work hemade mention of what was to become his largest and most profound essay on the Requiem Idea, Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, and circulatedhis initial efforts to friends. Robert Schumann’s tragic end a decadeearlier looms large as the impetus for the German Requiem, but so too does the death of Christiane Brahms the previous year. Brahmsmade the elegy to his mother nearly explicit in the added fifth move-ment (“Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit”) with soprano soloist.35 Its supremely

86

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35 Discussions of consolation in the fifth movement of the Ein deutsches Requiem aretoo numerous to mention. Recent examples include: Michael Steinberg, Listening to Rea-

beller-mckenna

lyrical promise of comfort is in many ways the heart of op. 45 and cer-tainly the strongest marker of the Requiem Idea that Brahms inheritedfrom Robert Schumann. For both composers the Requiem Idea repre-sented the deep expression of a romantic world view, one in which the spiritual traditions of consolation could take secular form, and it is

87

son (Princeton. Princeton Univ. Press, 2004),163–92; Hans Christian Stekel, Sehnsuchtund Distanz: Theologische Aspekte in den wortgebundenen religiösen Kompositionen von JohannesBrahms (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997), 147–52; Daniel Beller-McKenna, Brahms and theGerman Spirit (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004), 65–75.

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fitting that Brahms fully embraced the Requiem Idea in a piece thattacitly memorialized Schumann.

ABSTRACT

In his final book, Crossing Paths, John Daverio identified a common“Requiem Idea” in the music of Robert Schumann and JohannesBrahms. Both composers, Daverio argued, focused more on the survivorsof the deceased than on the souls of the dead, and on consolation ratherthen grieving. Whereas works by Schumann and Brahms that represent

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example 17. Brahms, Horn Trio, op. 40/iii, mm. 59–65

beller-mckenna

Daverio’s Requiem Idea take many forms and fall into various genres, aconsiderable number of these pieces are united by their use (literally orfiguratively) of two distinctly romantic instruments—primarily the harpand secondarily the horn, instruments which Daverio labelled “emblemsof distance and disembodiment.” Borrowing on both the Osssianic/bardic tradition of the late 18th century and on the spiritually tingedassociations of the harp among German Romantics, Schumann, andlater Brahms, used this instrument to convey separation and mediationbetween the dead and the living, the underlying paradigm that informsthe consolatory nature of the Requiem Idea. Frequently allied with theharp in such situations is the horn, which carries its own associationswith distance and thereby separation.

89

Documents

Distance and Disembodiment: Harps, Horns, and the Requiem ... · 2 Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), 683–710. Distance and ... (Charles Rosen’s