jwilzewske: Boston Cecilia: The Curious Incident of Brahms in the Night-Time

B rahms, a musical ‘wonder-worker’, was a great symphonist, of course. But he also loved the human voice, alone and in varied combinations. And I believe there is no chorus better equipped to reveal the intensity of feeling he brought to this repertoire than the Boston Cecilia.”
— Donald Teeters, Cecilia Music Director.

T he Boston Cecilia and mezzo-soprano, Krista River, gave a wonderful performance of “nocturnal” art-songs by Brahms last night, at First Church in Cambridge.

Motet ‘O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf!’ (O, Savior, open Thy Heaven! Rip it Open!)
Waldesnacht, Op. 62 No.3
Der Abend, Op. 64 No.2
Nächtens, Op. 112 No2
Abendständchen, Op. 42 No.1
O, schöne Nacht, Op. 92 No.1
Abendlied, Op. 92 No. 3
Alto Rhapsody, Op.53 (Krista River)
Botschaft, Op. 47 No.1 (Krista River)
An die Nachtigall, Op. 46 No. 4 (Krista River)
von Ewiger Liebe, Op. 43 No. 1 (Krista River)
Die Mainacht, Op. 43 No. 2 (Krista River)
Wie Melodien zieht es mir, Op. 105 No.1 (Krista River)
Ständchen, Op. 106 No. 1 (Krista River)
Liebes lieder, Op. 52 (mixed chorus and four-hands piano (Barbara Bruns, Keith Glavash))

T he texts for Op. 52 are really over-the-top, on many levels:

Rede, Mädchen, allzu liebes (Tell me, dear, who rouses my ardor, may I come now?)
Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut (Against the ‘rocks’ the ‘torrent’ rushes.)
O, die Frauen (Without women I would long ago have become a monk.)
Wie des Abends schöne Röte (If I could glow like the sunset and please but one person…)
Die grüne Hopfenranke (The green vine tendril.)
Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel (Like an itsy, bitsy bird caught in a thicket, I long to be freed.)
Wohl schön bewandt war es (Once my lover’s gaze could penetrate.)
Wenn so lind dein Aug emir (Your loving eyes banish my troubles.)
Am Donaustrande (On the Danube beach… Ten locks protect my love; I’ll now smash them like glass.)
Schlosser auf, und mache Schlösser! (Locksmith, make me many locks!)
O, wie sanft die Quelle! (How gently the stream flows!)
Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen! (No, my merriment is not mad, my quietude not love-sickness!)
Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft (Like a little bird rushes through the air.)
Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar (See the moonlight on the clear water! My love, love me now!)
Nactigall, sie singt so schön (The nightingale sweetly sings, so embrace me, my love, in the dark here.)
Ein dunkeler Schacht is Liebe (What a dark pit is Love.)
Nich wandle, mein Licht (Stray not, my love, in the watery meadow.)
Es bebet das Gesträuche (My shrub quivers with desire when I think of you.)

B rahms was in love, sort of, but with whom, in what way, and to what end? (Man, oh, man! Clara Schumann had her ‘hands full’ with brilliant-but-problematic men in her life!)

T his final concert of the group’s 133rd season was entitled ‘Bring on Brahms’, with a “nocturnal” theme. But beyond that superficial ‘thread’ linking these pieces together, the program provided an extraordinary glimpse into the depths of Brahms’s loneliness and dependency.

T he music is gorgeous. But many of the texts are troubling, not least of these the Alto Rhapsody, Op 53, for alto, male chorus, and orchestra, written in 1869 as a wedding gift for Robert and Clara Schumann’s daughter, Julie.

P eter Ostwald, in his essay in Walter Frisch’s edited volume (link below; see page 30), gives some evidence that the Rhapsody was composed by Brahms a few days before the wedding and gifted by Brahms to the bride, in a fit of unjustified pique. Correspondence in preceding months between Johannes and Clara indicates the scope of his teasing Clara about ‘marrying one of your daughters’.

B ut he never earnestly made any moves in that direction, no physical intimacy and no known expressions of intent by Brahms. The Italian Count Marmorito swept Julie off her feet. And so now Julie is getting married and Brahms works himself up into a righteous snit? What the?

S o this is no sublimated, futile Brahmsian love-letter! If it is, it’s a grotesque, way-tardy, imploding bomb of a love-letter.

O r a socially inappropriate continuation of his not-so-cryptic communications with Clara, disguised as a wedding present for Julie? Maybe… Co-opting the odd misanthropic text, taken from Goethe’s ‘Harzreise in Winter’, wrapping it up with a bow. Just great. Wandering and chromatically dense... wandering, dour C minor: perfect for the Goethe misanthrope.

B ut then we get the second section aria, which actually does obfuscate Brahms’s personal motivations/social pains. And then we have the genuinely tender, reverential conclusion, not at all like the aggressive beginning.

W hy does this guy deserve analgesia? Doesn’t he need to find Truth the hard way, through experiencing the painful consequences of his own self-absorption? Wish we had the real back-story to this weird gift! Not a sublimated love-letter, but instead a thinly-veiled, morose, awkward confession/apology by 36-year-old bachelor Brahms, to Julie or to Clara?

N obody makes art like this anymore! Deeply, inadvertently revelatory—with nostalgic, tragic, narcissistic, fatalistic themes all mixed-up, launched by Brahms to suit his own obscure, would-be exploitive but frustrated ends. Wish we could read Julie's ‘thank-you’ letter to Brahms for this wedding gift...

T he last movement of the Rhapsody redeems the weirdness of the first parts. The lilting triplets are warm and benign; the kindly appoggiaturas in the men’s parts vow beneficence, not only toward the dedicatee (Julie Schumann) but toward Womankind in general; the plagal IV-to-I ‘amen’ cadence at the end.

L istening to the concert last night, I thought about Brahms’s extreme emotional sensitivity—whatever it was that led him to dwell, not just on his difficulties with intimacy, but on themes of justice and to sympathize with creatures and humans unnecessarily thwarted or punished. His afternoon walks, entering into trances so easily; driving his esthetic and emotional sensitivity into the nighttime—his capacity to so appreciate and identify with beauty and harmony in what he saw and did that he would become totally overcome by ecstasy and write these things. How wonderful that we have these pieces, revealing so much as they do, not only about Brahms but about the human realities of having existential ‘itches’ that you can’t (are too timid to—; oughtn’t to—) ‘scratch’! How great for the Boston Cecilia to put together this intense short-course, exploring Brahms’s psyche!

A ber abseits wer ist’s?
Im Gebüsch verliert sich sein Pfad;
hinter ihm schlagen die Sträuche zusammen,
das Gras steht wieder auf,
die Öde verschlingt ihn.

Ach, wer heilet die Schmerzen
dess, dem Balsam zu Gift ward?
Der sich Menschenhaß
aus der Fülle der Liebe trank!
Erst verachtet, nun ein Verächter,
zehrt er heimlich auf
seinen eigenen Wert
In ungenugender Selbstsucht.

Ist auf deinem Psalter,
Vater der Liebe, ein Ton
seinem Ohre vernehmlich,
so erquicke sein Herz!
Öffne den umwölkten Blick
über die tausend Quellen
neben dem Durstenden
in der Wüste!

[But who is that there?
His path vanishes in the underbrush;
behind him the thicket closes in;
the grass stands up again, revealing no trace;
the wasteland swallows him up.

Ah, who eases the pains
of him for whom sweet balsam became poison?
Who drank the hatred of Man
from the abundance of Love?
First scorned, now a scorner,
he secretly obsesses about
his own virtuousness—
wallows in unrewarding egotism.

If there is on your psaltery,
Father of Love, one note
his ear can be made to hear,
then refresh his heart now!
Open his clouded gaze
to the thousand springs
that are next to him who thirsts
in the wilderness!]”
— Goethe, Harzreise in Winter.

jwilzewske

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Boston Cecilia: The Curious Incident of Brahms in the Night-Time

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