(pub. 1886)

Brahms originally intended to make this a set of four songs on Heine texts, but the fourth was so severely criticized by his friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg that he withdrew it and substituted a song based on a Daumer translation (the second of this Opus). In spite of this, these four songs are cohesive and uniform in their quality and relative seriousness.

1. Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht (Death is the Cool Night). This masterful song is in two sections. In the first death is compared to night as life is to day. Brahms illustrates this through a subtle shift of harmony. In the second half, the protagonist's preoccupation with unrequited love is compared to the song of the nightingale, which Brahms sensitively evokes in the lilting accompaniment.

2. Wir wandelten (We Wandered). Here, a couple walks silently along, afraid to voice their feelings. The gently undulating accompaniment is indicative of the walking, while subtle and complex counterpoint and harmonic nuances illustrate their unspoken feelings.

3. Es schauen die Blumen (The Flowers Look). This is an ironic poem that begins with images of flowers and the sea as metaphors for the protagonist's sweetheart. It is only in the last phrase that we learn he is immersed in tears and "mournful songs." Set in an appropriately ironic fast tempo, Brahms, at this last phrase of the text, cuts off the piano's rippling figuration to indicate the changed mood. An inconclusive final cadence suggests unresolved longing.

4. Meerfahrt (Sea Voyage). A couple in a small boat drift by the isle of the spirits and are enchanted by the music they hear wafting over the waves. In spite of this, they drift sadly on, into the open sea. Brahms illustrates the rocking of the boat with an arpeggiated accompaniment. At the mention of the dance music, it turns into an ironic "vamp" evoking a mystical waltz. As the boat drifts on and the music fades, the accompaniment likewise fades into the opening bare harmonies.



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2.Wir wandelten

The music of Johannes Brahms is often lent impetus by thoughts and ideas that remain unuttered—the chord progressions that perpetually hover within a breath of resolution, the subtle pauses punctuating melodic arcs. Indeed, within the genre of the art song in particular, Brahms is known for choosing texts with a certain open-endedness of expression that left room for musical commentary and insight. Wir wandelten, wir zwei zusammen, the second of the Songs (4) Brahms composed and published as his Op. 96 in 1886, precisely encapsulates this quality: its melodic vibrancy and expressive ardor derive from words left unspoken by the poet. Brahms encountered the text he would use in the song in Georg Friedrich Daumer's collection from 1855, Polydora, ein weltpoetisches Liederbuch. Although Daumer seems to have been one of Brahms' favored poets, this particular text was in fact taken from a Hungarian source and translated into German by Daumer for inclusion in the 1855 collection. The speaker in the poem recalls taking a walk with a lover, but recalls no scenery and even no dialogue, only the mood. "I was silent, and you were so still/What I wouldn't give to know/What thoughts then went through your head." The speaker continues, still divulging nothing in terms of narrative: "What I was thinking, I shall not say," the speaker coyly insists, continuing on to vividly describe the beauty of the daydreams without actually describing the dreams themselves. Brahms reads pure ardor into these omissions, lending his musical setting an expressive urgency that transcends the confines of the poem's deliberately vague narrative world. This is immediately heard in the arresting upward leap across the tonic chord, with which the voice enters, and later in similar ascending leaps inflected with chromatic color. The singer seems blissfully distracted, with melodies that drift in and out of unexpected key areas, as if wandering back and forth between addressing the outside world and pondering the inner one. Brahms weaves subtle word painting into the song as well, placing special expressive emphasis on references to the celestial and, in the last strophe, bringing to the forefront of the texture the accompaniment's reiterated inner voices (present in the wings since the beginning) to evoke "The thoughts in my mind/[ringing] like little golden bells...." Even the song's final gesture remains veiled, a cadence rendered with a pause and a soft, translucent voicing.

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1.Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht

While Brahms often chose poetry of lesser writers (usually those whose imagination paralleled his own, or who stirred some deep personal feeling), he could be remarkably apt in setting texts of finer quality. This deeply affecting song from the period of his full maturity is an example. Heinrich Heine's poem uses imagery both vivid and soothing. Death is the cool night; life is the stifling day. The narrator tells of feeling sleepy, wearied by the day. Over his bed, a tree holds a young nightingale who sings of pure love. The singer hears it, even in his dreams. The song, like the poem, exists in that place between waking and sleeping, between life and death. Encompassing more than an octave and a half, it rises from the dark realm of the first stanza to an ecstatic climax on "Liebe" before settling once more into a more contemplative mood, though one now suffused by the unquenchable longings newly awakened. Although the poem's beginnings might lead to the thought that slipping away into unending sleep is the desired end, the text celebrates something stronger than that. Although many have accused Brahms of taking his own musical pathway even when it ignored the text, he was capable of great appreciation for thoughtful words. Here, he supports the unfolding of Heine's lovely poem with understanding and sensitivity. Brahms' tendency to set his accompaniment well into the piano's lower, middle range lends the appropriate gravitas. Using 6/8 meter, Brahms established a pattern of eighth note/quarter note in the accompaniment, a rhythmic motif echoed by the voice as it enters. The vocal line comfortably rises as it tells of the cool nighttime, but descends to a point below the beginning notes when speaking of the oppressive day. At the start of the second stanza, the accompaniment breaks into arpeggiated figures, two to a measure, to under gird in flowing detail the singing of the nightingale. The vocal line rises in contained surges, cresting on "vor lauter Liebe" before repeating the phrase. The last three words of the final line ("sogar in Traum") are likewise longingly recalled as the accompaniment sounds a repeating octave deep below, signifying the inexorability of time.

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