Brahms published thirty-one volumes of solo Lieder (songs), six volumes of 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.

Brahms once wrote to Clara Schumann that the folk song is the ideal toward which the composer of songs must strive. By the release of the Songs, Op. 105, Brahms had distanced himself from the language of the folk song; however, some traces remain, such as the repetition of the last words of a verse and diminutive, if any, piano introductions.

Although he set many poems by Goethe and two by Schiller, Brahms showed a predilection for the work of second-rate poets, choosing texts for their musical potential.

Outbursts of creativity were often connected to relationship with a female musician such as Agathe von Siebold, a singer in Göttingen for whom he composed the Lieder, Opp. 14 and 19. The woman behind the Songs, Opp. 69-72 was most likely Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (née Stockhausen), while many of the late songs were probably inspired by Hermine Spies, a vocal student of von Herzogenberg whom Brahms met in 1883.

Composed in the summer of 1886 and published in 1889, the Songs, Op. 105, were written while Brahms was at Lake Thun, near Bern, Switzerland.

The message of a tear-filled eye is the subject of "Wie Melodien zieht es mir" (Melodies Draw it to Me), by Klaus Groth (1819-99). Before closing on A major, the song's three varied verses each end on a different harmony, showing Brahms' predilection for developing variation.

"Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer" (Ever Lighter is my Slumber), by Hermann Lingg, is given such an ethereal treatment by Brahms that the song resembles a mood painting. The narrator, whose lover has him left for another, wishes he were dead. While the narrator begs her to see him one last time, Brahms moves from C sharp minor to the major mode to close the varied strophic song, which remains one of the composer's most popular.

"Klage" (Lament) is a traditional Lower-Rhenish folksong Brahms found in a collection by Zuccalmaglio in which someone warns a girl not to trust a boy's pretty words, for they will, like leaves in autumn, wither and fall. Brahms chose to set this quaint poem in a simple strophic format in F major.

"Auf dem Kirchhofe" (In the Churchyard), by Detlev von Liliencron, ponders the meaning of death. In C minor, Brahms' setting shifts from 3/4 to 4/4 meter halfway through each of the two extremely varied strophes. For the second part of the second strophe Brahms interpolates a tiny segment of the Protestant chorale, "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" (O Sacred Head Now Wounded) into the melody of the last two lines.

"Verrat" (Betrayal), by Karl Lemcke, tells of a man who, outside his sweetheart's house, realizes she is seeing another. He hears her tell the strange man when to return, then waits for him and kills him. In B minor, the song is in ternary form with a central section, in which the man plans his revenge, on E flat minor. Brahms' familiarity with the folk song idiom is most clear in the occasional repetition of the last words at the end of a line.

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1.Wie Melodien zieht es mir

Brahms' surpassing eloquence in nostalgic utterance served him well in creating this masterpiece. The broad, unhurried melodies of Wie Melodien evoke a long-lost love, conjured by the words of poet Klaus Groth, in a mélange of lightly described images. The composer's subtle support and occasional underlining of a particular line give this song a fragrance to match the image itself, twice mentioned. Thoughts pass gently, the poet tells us, like melodies. Like springtime blooms, they blossom then drift away like a fragrance. When words form, capture them and bring them before the eye, however, they grow pale as a grayish mist and disappear like a breath. And surely, there still dwells within the rhyme a fragrance softly called out of the silent bloom by tear-dewed eyes. The poet's imagery here might be found cloyingly overripe were it not for the restraint and poise of Brahms' music. Like many other songs by Brahms, Wie Melodien was composed for low voice, clearly taking advantage of the richer palette of the singer's instrument and a deeper resonance for the accompaniment. The song's principal cadence is heard in more worked-out form in Brahms' Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major, Op. 100, composed the same year. The song is composed in 4/4 time and begins with a rising cadence constructed of quarter notes; the accompaniment moves through flowing eighth notes with each measure begun by a quarter note in the bass clef. The accompanist is admonished to play sempre dolce at subdued volume, never loudly, just twice subject to a slight rise and fall in emphasis, as well as a single, sustained diminuendo (at the first voicing of the final two lines). The singer's part is marked "Zart" (tenderly), indicating that the entire song should be delivered as though in a reverie. The subject of loss, once so painful, has eased with time's passage; it can now merely be regarded as the concluding portion of a love that can be recalled not with bitterness, but with the sweet scent of faded flowers. The very evenness with which Brahms pours out his melodies and accompaniment and his subtle harmonic variations assure a faithful realization of Groth's poem.

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2.Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer

Composed in 1886, Immer lieser wird mein Schlummer is the second of the Songs (5), Op. 105, published by Johannes Brahms in 1888 and the first of several settings by important composers (including Orff, Pfitzner, and Strauss) of Hermann Lingg's "Lied" ("My slumber ever lighter grows," from his 1857 collection Gedichte). The poem touches on a number of moods and themes that proliferate within Brahms' sizeable body of solo songs: a certain semantic conflation of death and lost love; a pervading sense of absence that leaves room for the piano to convey more subtle, unspoken sentiments; and an ambiguous feeling toward the beauty of nature. This mood is encapsulated in the opening melodic motive, with its short, stepwise descent that, instead of resolving downward to the home tone as it initially seems inclined, leaps plaintively upward to an unstable note (a gesture heard with similar effect in the second Intermezzo of Brahms' Op. 118). This habitual hovering just shy of harmonic repose, a hallmark of Brahms' mature chamber music, evokes the blurred, dreamlike mood of the first stanza and, in sharpening the contrast between the real and imaginary worlds, highlights the fractured mood of the text. Of course, Brahms' thematic structures interact in such an integrated manner with each other and with his chosen texts, the same melodic shape can convey startlingly distinct emotions when subjected to transformation and recontextualization. Brahms reuses the same melody figure described above, but poignantly drains it of its warmth, for example, when it later appears chromatically altered and within the more tense and dissonant surroundings in the song's second stanza; as the singer sinks further into utter hopelessness, the familiar motive ruefully depicts the word "cold" in the lines "Yes, I will surely die/Some other will you kiss/When I grow pale and cold." The poet's final glimmer of hope, suggested by the images of May breezes and songbirds in the forest, offers a brief musical respite as well, with brighter harmonies, a more lyrical melodic arc, and animated accompaniments. The spring's promise of renewal, however, is bittersweet; as the vocal line once again grows taut with chromatic angst, the singer cries out to the lost lover with a final plea sung with operatic ardor: "If you would see me ever again/Come, o come soon!"

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4.Auf dem Kirchhofe

Auf dem Kirchhofe, the fourth of the five songs Johannes Brahms published in 1888 as his Op. 105, presents in two brief stanzas an encapsulation of some of the most central obsessions of high Romanticism: a melancholy fascination with death, an outward projection onto the natural world of the inner turmoil of the soul, and an aesthetic based on conflict between opposites. Of course, Brahms himself is often thought of as a detached, classicist intellectual (opposite the emotive operatic indulgence of Wagner), and indeed, many of his numerous songs approach the emotional content of their texts somewhat indirectly. Taking its text from a poem by Detlev von Liliencron, Auf dem Kirchhofe (In the Churchyard Cemetery) reconciles Brahms' more circumspect expressive stance with the turbulence of the Romantic sublime by subsuming the violence of the world into the repose of the grave. The sense of conflict that gives the poem its impetus is pointed up musically in the clear opposition between C minor and C major and in the contrast between the rolled chords at the beginning of each stanza, with their chromatic sonorities and explosive upward gestures and the more tranquil textures that settle in later on. These contrasts highlight the polarities of the poem, which paints a picture of an old, overgrown church cemetery on a blustery, rain-swept day. The singer first describes, in dramatic, arcing lines, the violence of the storm, then grows more introspective as he looks upon the gravestones, with their ivy-covered faces, wilted bouquets, and weather-worn lettering. The musical surface grows turbulent again as the second strophe begins with the same words as the first, then turns its attention once again from the storm above to the graves below. Here the poet creates a profound play on words (which, unfortunately, retains only part of its meaning and poignancy in translation), one that correlates with a sudden calm in the weather. As if in the eye of the storm, the wind and rain seem to wane, while the graves speak two words: first "Gewesen," then "Genesen." The former speaks of death, literally "we were," while the latter, of rebirth or healing. The shift in musical mood and texture reinforces the poet's conceit: that it is life that is violent and death that is peaceful; as the storm rages on above, here in the churchyard the departed and forgotten lay undisturbed.

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