Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a German composer,
pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born
in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his
professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped
with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as
one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally
made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von
Bülow. He composed for symphony orchestra, chamber
ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso
pianist, he pre...(+)
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a German composer,
pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born
in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his
professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped
with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as
one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally
made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von
Bülow. He composed for symphony orchestra, chamber
ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso
pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked
with leading performers of his time, including the
pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim
(the three were close friends). Many of his works have
become staples of the modern concert repertoire.
Brahms has been considered both a traditionalist and an
innovator, by his contemporaries and by later writers.
His music is rooted in the structures and compositional
techniques of the Classical masters. Embedded within
those structures are deeply Romantic motifs. While some
contemporaries found his music to be overly academic,
his contribution and craftsmanship were admired by
subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and
Edward Elgar. The detailed construction of Brahms's
works was a starting point and an inspiration for a
generation of composers.
'Fünf Lieder' (Op. 94), united by its tonalities for
low voice, and with texts that can, and should, be sung
by one singer, is one of the composer’s published
groupings that repays performance as a whole, or even
as a kind of mini-cycle. Brahms’s friend, the surgeon
Billroth, clearly perceived it is a kind of equivalent
to Schubert’s Winterreise, although he saw the songs
as being equally linked with autumn. Certainly, in the
first song, the imagery of taking up the wanderer’s
walking staff with renewed energy as the narrator makes
his way to his final destination, is strongly
reminiscent of the closing sentiments of Das Wirtshaus
from Schubert’s great cycle.
"Sapphische Ode" is a German secular lied composed by
Johannes Brahms in 1884. The poem's lyricist is Hans
Schmidt (1856–1923). The piece is orchestrated for
singing with an orchestra, but can also be composed for
a single voice with accompaniment on piano. The poem is
about the marriage of nature and God, spirit and water.
The first stanza of the poem describes the scent of
roses and the dew that showers the picker. The second
stanza describes the fragrance of kisses and tears that
fall over lovers.
SHEET MUSIC