Brahms published thirty-one volumes of solo Lieder (songs), six volumes of vocal duets and five of quartets. His settings up to 1860 are either strophic (each verse the same) or varied strophic. With the publication of the Songs, Op. 32, in 1864 we find Brahms' first through-composed settings, in which each verse is set differently. After 1877 through-composed songs nearly disappear and strophic settings find new life. Varied strophic forms appear at all points in Brahms' career.

Although he set many poems by Goethe and two by Schiller, Brahms showed a predilection for the work of second-rate poets. Brahms tended to choose texts for their musical potential; however, periods of increased song output in his life seem to coincide with the presence of a woman. For instance, twenty-one of Brahms' 196 solo songs are from 1877, the year Brahms was "re-acquainted" with Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (née Stockhausen). Brahms had met Ms. Stockhausen in Vienna in 1863, when she began to take lessons from him. He found her so attractive he could not talk around her, much less teach her anything, and suggested she study with Julius Epstein, who had the same problem with her. It was only after Stockhausen married Heinrich von Herzogenberg that Brahms was capable of being comfortable with the woman he affectionately called "Liesl."

By the release of the Nine Songs, Op. 69, Brahms had distanced himself from the language of the folk song. Some aspects, however, remain in his Four Songs, Op. 70, such as diatonic melodies, repetition of the last words of a verse, consistent rhythmic patterns and the lack of lengthy piano introductions. Poems by Lemcke, Candidus and Keller occupied Brahms' mind during 1876-77; they appear frequently in his songs, Opp. 69-72, all composed during the summers Brahms spent in Carinthia. The songs of Op. 70 were composed and published in 1877, except "Abendregen," which dates from 1875.

Brahms gives Karl Lemcke's "Im Garten am Seegestade" ("In the Garden at the Seashore") a highly modified strophic setting in G minor. Repeated voice parts receive altered accompaniments, and a brief modulation to the dominant in the first verse disappears in the second. Brahms' ethereal atmosphere suits the text, a rhapsody on the "music" created by the sounds of surf, wind and birds singing in ancient trees.

In "Lerchengesang" ("Song of the Larks") by Karl Candidus, the sound of singing larks stirs the heart of a listener, evoking memories on a spring evening. Featuring a broad, liquid melody built of quarter note triplets, Brahms' B major setting, although it sounds through composed, is really a varied strophic format. In the second verse, the melodic phrases retain their general shapes, but are modified in almost every detail. An exact correspondence between verses does not occur until "durchweht vom Frühlingshauche" ("pervaded by the breath of spring").

Goethe's "Serenade" asks why some people, yearning to be elsewhere, never find happiness where they are. Through-composed, the song is rounded off by the return of the first two phrases before closing on B major. Brahms' mot perpetuo sixteenth note accompaniment conveys the tendency of people to believe they can only find joy in another place.

Beginning in an ambivalent A major/minor, "Abendregen" ("Evening Rain") moves to C major and changes tempo before its midpoint. Furthermore, the C major portion explores E flat major. All of Brahms' tonal wandering is appropriate for the text, by Gottfried Keller, which tells of a gloomy traveler who feel raindrops on his brow. He knows that, because of the rain, there is a rainbow above him that he cannot see, but others can.



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