Brahms and the folk ideal : his poets and his art song
Date
1987
Authors
Ingraham, Mary I.
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Abstract
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) composed solo songs (for voice with piano accompaniment) throughout his compositional career . His choice of texts for all of the songs is unusual. Many are by minor contemporary German poets, but the majority of Brahms's texts are folk texts. Of the texts from folk sources, some are traditional German, but a great many are translations from foreign folk texts. This thesis focuses only on Brahms's solo songs based on folk texts. These songs as a whole reveal Brahms's affinity for the folksong - - its text and music-- , yet scholarly research in the past has neglected to stress the importance of the folk influence on Brahms's Lieder.
This thesis, therefore, is an attempt to define Brahms's attraction to folk texts and music in order to emphasize his belief in a folk 'ideal'. Chapter I is a discussion of Brahms's reaction to the folk tradition and includes a general definition of folk characteristics (in text and in music). Chapter II is a discussion of the textual aspects of Brahms's Lieder with folk texts, and of specific folk 'poets' whose poetry Brahms used. Common folk elements in the text such as strophic design, a regular pattern of repetition and rhyme, and the nature of the subject matter (everyday concerns of the 'folk') are found throughout Brahms's Lieder texts.
Chapter III addresses the musical side of Brahms's Lieder through an analysis of four pairs of songs which share a common folk text. In each of these pairs of songs, one setting is taken from Brahms's 49 Deutsche Volkslieder collection, and therefore involves a traditional folk melody. The other setting is taken from his solo art songs, or Lieder, which are completely original compositions. This analysis reveals much about Brahms's style of composition in his Lieder, in that many elements of traditional folksong can be found in his original music. These elements, such as strophic settings, step-wise melody, small vocal range, melodic repetition, regular phrasing, etc., can be seen to pervade Brahms's Lieder.