Four serious chants

Johannes Brahms : posthumous portrait painted from a photograph

Four serious songs , op. 121, is a cycle of four songs for bass and piano by Johannes Brahms . He composed the work in Vienna in 1896 and dedicated it to Max Klinger .

history

As a young man, Brahms composed a German Requiem between 1865 and 1868 , based on a collection of biblical quotations from the Luther Bible, which addressed death. He wrote Four Serious Chants at the end of his life, again to words from the Bible. He also used sketches for a symphony that was no longer performed. His girlfriend Clara Schumann suffered a stroke on March 26, 1896. Brahms completed the composition of this song cycle, his last, on his birthday, May 7, 1896, in anticipation of her death.

The texts for the first three songs are taken from the Old Testament and deal with death and the transience of life. The text of the fourth song is taken from the New Testament and focuses on faith, hope and love. The titles of the four chants are:

For man is like cattle. Ecclesiastes Solomon, chap. 3
I turned and looked at Ecclesiastes Solomon, chap. 4th
O death, how bitter you are Jesus Sirach, chap. 41
When I address S. Pauli with the tongues of men and angels to Corinthians I, chap. 13

The biblical sources:

For it goes to man from Ecclesiastes Solomon 3,19-22 LUT

I turned and looked at Ecclesiastes Solomon 4: 1–3 KJV

O death, how bitter you are from Ecclesiasticus 41.1-2 LUT

When I talk to people from the 1st letter of Paul to Corinthians 13 : 1-3, 12-13 LUT

The songs were published in 1896 by the music publisher N. Simrock. Originally written for a low pitch, they have also been rewritten for a higher pitch. For orchestras, for example, they were arranged by Günter Raphael .

premiere

The premiere took place in Vienna on November 9, 1896 in the presence of the composer by two Dutch artists: the baritone Anton Sistermans and the twenty-year-old pianist Coenraad v. Bos. Brahms came backstage after the performance and thanked Sistermans and Bos for the performance, which, he said, fully realized his intentions. Two weeks later, Bos accompanied Raimund von Zur Mühlen to the four chants. Zur Mühlen could not achieve the final diminuendo , as it was noted in the score, so he instructed Bos to continue playing the crescendo after the end of the singing part and to write the work with fff instead of p , as Brahms had indicated, to end. Zur Mühlen later spoke to Brahms and said he hoped that he would not hold this deviation from the score offensive. Brahms replied that Zur Mühlen sang brilliantly and that he had not noticed anything wrong.

structure

In the table below, the key is that of the original composition, the tempo and time signature are also given. The links to the scores lead to the high pitch version.

No.	Beginning of the text	Tempo designation	key	Tact
1	Because it goes to man	Andante	D minor	4/4
2	I turned and looked	Andante	G minor	3/4
3	O death, how bitter you are	Grave	E minor	3/2
4th	When I'm with people	Andante with moto and anima	E flat major	4/4

Recordings (selection)

In 1947 Kathleen Ferrier recorded Four Serious Chants with the pianist Phyllis Spurr and in 1950 with John Newmark. In a live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall in 1949, she sang an orchestral version in English with the BBC Symphony Orchestra , conducted by Malcolm Sargent .

Hans Hotter recorded the chants in 1951 with the pianist Gerald Moore , along with other songs by Brahms and the Bach cantata I have enough .

There are several recordings of the chants by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau ; the first is on his first record for Deutsche Grammophon from 1949, he is accompanied by Hertha Klust. Anne Ozorio described the recording as “another significant moment in the history of the song. The singer was almost 24 years old, but he was already feeling the depth of Brahms' meditation on death. ”In March 1972 he recorded it with Daniel Barenboim and again with Jörg Demus . Christian Gerhaher and the pianist Gerold Huber recorded the chants in 2002.

literature

Whittall, A: The Four Serious Chants Op. 121: Enrichment and Uniformity . In: Pascall, Robert (Ed.): Brahms [1]: Biographical, Documentary and Analytical Studies . Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 978-0-521-24522-7 , pp. 191-207.
Beller-McKenna, D: Brahms on Schopenhauer: the Four Serious Songs , Op. 121, and Late Nineteenth-Century Pessimism . In: Brodbeck, David (Ed.): Brahms Studies, i . University of Nebraska Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-8032-1243-5 , pp. 170-188.
Anno Hellenbroich: Johannes Brahms' "Four Serious Songs" - An Introduction . The Schiller Institute. 2003. Retrieved December 28, 2012.
Church, L: Brahms's Late Spirituality / Hope in the Four Serious Songs, Op. 121 (PDF; 1.9 MB) The Florida State University College of Music. 2011. Retrieved December 28, 2012.

Web links

4 Serious Songs, Op. 121 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
Four serious songs Text and translations, recmusic.org
Four serious chants: for high bass with piano accompaniment WorldCat OCLC 37149386

Individual evidence

↑ Four Serious Songs for Bass Voice and Piano, Op. 121 . kellydeanhansen.com. Retrieved May 4, 2012.

↑ ^a ^b John Palmer: Vier Ernst Gesänge (4), for voice & piano (Four Serious Songs), Op. 121 . Allmusic. 2012. Retrieved April 21, 2012.

^ Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Volume 4. Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-517067-2 , pp. 200, 218, 226.

↑ ^a ^b Songs for a voice with piano accompaniment / Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897 . Indiana University. 2012. Retrieved April 21, 2012.

^ David Gardner: Four Serious Songs, Op 121 . Scottish Chamber Orchestra. 2012. Retrieved May 3, 2012.

↑ zeno.org . zeno.org. Retrieved May 29, 2012.

↑ Nederlands Muziek Instituut . Nederlandsmuziekinstituut.nl. Retrieved May 29, 2012.

↑ 401dutchdivas.nl . 401dutchdivas.nl. Retrieved May 29, 2012.

↑ Barbara Owen . In: The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms . Retrieved May 29, 2012.

↑ ^a ^b Coenraad V. Bos . In: The Well-Tempered Accompanist . 1949. Retrieved May 29, 2012. as quoted in Michael Musgrave, Bernard D. Sherman: Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style .

↑ For it goes to man , p. 137. on dlib.indiana.edu

↑ I turned and looked at , p. 143. on dlib.indiana.edu

↑ O death, how bitter you are , p. 146. on dlib.indiana.edu