Four Preludes & Serious Songs

Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
4 Präludien und Ernste Gesange (4 Preludes and Serious Songs) (after Brahms Four Serious Songs, Op 121)
[arr Detlev Glanert (b. 1960)]

1. Prelude. Agitato;
2. Denn es gehet dem Menschen;
3. Prelude. Andante;
4. Ich wandte mich;
5. Prelude: Quasi allegretto;
6. O Tod, wie bitter bist du;
7. Prelude: Adagio;
8. Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete;
9. Postlude: Andante.

Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs) comprise his last major work. Ostensibly they are a response to the stroke that Clara Schumann suffered in May 1896, and which heralded her last illness. As he wrote to her daughter, Marie, “Some such words as these have long been in my mind", and he may well have begun mulling over a work on these lines sometime before Clara became ill. He was losing a number of other friends as well, and as his biographer Jan Swafford has tersely commented, he was “getting very experienced with letters of consolation.”

He chose his title carefully. As Jan Swafford has pointed out, it was typical of him to call them Serious (not Sacred) Songs. Brahms’s basic outlook was ethical rather than religious, and he articulates this view in these songs just as he had in the Requiem and his choral motets. Behind all these stands the Renaissance and baroque music from which he had drawn so much creative strength, Schütz and JS Bach particularly.

The first two songs set texts from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, writer and composer joining in stoical fortitude to face disillusion regarding the human condition. The third song, drawing on the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, confronts the contradictory views of death as a bitter blow in prosperity and a welcome release from adversity. The last song sets parts of the well-known passage on Love from St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. To begin with, they draw from Brahms the kind of energy - jaunty, verging on the defiant – that characterises parts of Schubert’s great song-cycle Winterreise. With his lyrical setting of the final words, culminating in “...but the greatest of these is Love”, Brahms closes the last work he published with an affirmation all the more touching for being so gently understated.

Detlev Glanert (born in Brahms’s own home city, Hamburg) made his expanded orchestral version of the songs in 2004 and 2005. He has suggested that the original piano part is “nearly out of the reach of a pianist’s fingers, and thus beyond the world of piano sound alone”, and has pointed out that Brahms himself considered the possibility of orchestrating them, and of linking them in some way, even making some sketches to this end. He has said that the material of his preludes and postlude comes mostly from Brahms, which he he has used to move between Brahms’s world and ours. The “angry waltz” of the third prelude refers “to the Hamburg Baroque tradition of the Totentanz (death dance), which Brahms knew very well”. He finally comments: “The best way to gain an understanding of what I tried to do in the Preludes is to have in mind the texts of the preceding and following song.”

1. Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh;
wie dies stirbt, so stirbt er auch;
und haben alle einerlei Odem;
und der Mensch hat nichts mehr denn das Vieh:
denn es ist alles eitel.

Es fährt alles an einem Ort;
es ist alles von Staub gemacht,
und wird wieder zu Staub.

Wer weiß, ob der Geist des Menschen
aufwärts fahre,
und der Odem des Viehes unterwärts unter
die Erde fahre?

Darum sahe ich, daß nichts bessers ist,
denn daß der Mensch fröhlich sei in seiner Arbeit,
denn das ist sein Teil.
Denn wer will ihn dahin bringen,
daß er sehe, was nach ihm geschehen wird?

Ecclesiastes iii.19–22
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so
dieth the other;
yea, they have all one breath;
so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

All go unto one place;
all are of the dust,
and all turn to dust again.

Who knoweth the spirit of man
that goeth upward,
and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to
the earth?

Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works;
for that is his portion:
for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

2. Ich wandte mich und sahe an Alle, die Unrecht leiden unter der Sonne;
Und siehe, da waren Tränen derer,
Die Unrecht litten und hatten keinen Tröster;
Und die ihnen Unrecht täten, waren zu mächtig,
Daß sie keinen Tröster haben konnten.

Da lobte ich die Toten,
Die schon gestorben waren
Mehr als die Lebendigen,
Die noch das Leben hatten;

Und der noch nicht ist, ist besser, als alle beide,
Und des Bösen nicht inne wird,
Das unter der Sonne geschieht.

Ecclesiastes iv.1–3
So I returned, and considered all the oppressions
that are done under the sun:
and behold the tears of such
as were oppressed, and they had no comforter;
and on the side of their oppressors there was
power; but they had no comforter.

Wherefore I praised the dead
which are already dead
more than the living
which are yet alive.

Yea, better is he than both they,
which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the
evil work that is done under the sun.

3. O Tod, wie bitter bist du,
Wenn an dich gedenket ein Mensch,
Der gute Tage und genug hat
Und ohne Sorge lebet;
Und dem es wohl geht in allen Dingen
Und 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 Tod, wie wohl tust du!

after Ecclesiasticus xli.1–2
O death, how bitter art thou,
When a man thinks on thee
that liveth at rest in his possessions,
and hath nothing to vex him,
and that hath prosperity in all things:
yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat!
O death, how bitter art thou.
O death, how well thou doest unto the needy,
whose strength faileth, that is now in the last age, and is vexed with all things,
and to him that despaireth,
and hath lost patience!
O death, how well thou doest!

4. Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete,
Und hätte der Liebe nicht,
So wär’ ich ein tönend Erz,
Oder eine klingende Schelle.

Und wenn ich weissagen könnte,
Und wüßte alle Geheimnisse
Und alle Erkenntnis,
Und hätte allen Glauben, also
Daß ich Berge versetzte,
Und hätte der Liebe nicht,
So wäre ich nichts.

Und wenn ich alle meine Habe den Armen gäbe,
Und ließe meinen Leib brennen,
Und hätte der Liebe nicht,
So wäre mir’s nichts nütze.

Wir sehen jetzt durch einen Spiegel
In einem dunkeln Worte;
Dann aber von Angesicht zu Angesichte.
Jetzt erkenne ich’s stückweise,
Dann aber werd ich’s erkennen,
Gleich wie ich erkennet bin.
Nun aber bleibet Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe,Diese drei;
Aber die Liebe ist die größeste unter ihnen.

1 Corinthians xiii.1–4, 12–13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels,
and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge;
and though I have all faith, so
that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity,
I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,
and have not charity,
it profiteth me nothing.

For now we see through a glass,
darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know
even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity,
these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.

© Mike Wheeler