Two relative rarities for chorus and orchestra from Johannes Brahms form my subject matter today. The continuing, world-wide popularity of the masterly Deutsches Requiem has overshadowed the other works which Brahms composed for chorus and orchestra. During the LP era, the Schicksalslied and Nänie saw more circulation, since both were ideally suited to fill up an LP devoted to one Brahms symphony. The same was also true of the two concert overtures. The Alto Rhapsody also enjoyed wide circulation, thanks to the advocacy of many famous contraltos.
But that leaves out the last of the quartet of late choral masterpieces, the Gesang der Parzen, Op. 89 ("Song of the Fates"). This stern, granitic work did not find the favour which its three companions garnered, and remained mainly unperformed unless a choir undertook to sing all four of the late works as a kind of choral suite within a concert.
Out of those four short works, though, it's the Gesang der Parzen to which I return most often. This brief (12 minutes or so) cantata to a poem by Goethe is marked throughout most of its length by an unrelenting funeral march which begins in the orchestra, and then is taken up by the singers. The orchestral introduction's most noteworthy characteristic is the emphasis on descending lines and phrases, and the struggle with which the orchestra briefly achieves a rising phrase before resuming its fatal downward progress.
As the orchestral march dies away in the depths, we become aware of the plucked strings and timpani outlining an ominous rhythmic pattern -- amphibrachic metre, if you want the correct poetic term. (I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence). Here's what it looks like:
When the choir begins to sing, the eighth note followed by an eighth rest becomes in the voices a quarter note and then the amphibrachic rhythm is both clear and exact -- with the long note framed between two shorter ones, twice in each bar.
This doom-laden rhythmic ostinato continues through much of the piece, sometimes rising to a forte, but usually quiet. It's one of several features which ensures a predominantly dark colour to the music. Another is the inclusion of parts for alto, tenor, and bass trombones, along with tuba. Finally, there's the division of the choral altos and basses into two parts each, giving a six-part choir with the emphasis on the lower, darker voices.
All of these aspects faithfully echo the deeply pessimistic tone of Goethe's poem, which contrasts the blissful existence of the gods above with the sufferings of humanity when exposed to divine whims.
When the amphibrachic pulses are laid aside, we then hear two contrasting musical styles: a triumphant rising and falling theme representing the glory of the gods, and later a gracefully flowing, triple-time passage expressing the bliss in which the gods live. Between these two episodes, the amphibrachic march returns, as does the opening verse of the text. We hear one final reminiscence of that obsessive drumbeat before the ending dies quietly down into the deepest darkness, the last word a deep, dark chord of D minor in the orchestra.
The contrast is striking, to say the least, with the other three well-known short works. Each of the Alto Rhapsody, Nänie, and Schicksalslied achieves a kind of secular blessedness in its final bars. Not so this despairing vision of fate.
This work was such a rarity that I never succeeded in laying my hands on a recording until we were well into the age of the compact disc. Since then, it's been recorded seven or eight times that have come to my attention.
It was later still in the years that I discovered an astonishing early anticipation of the Gesang der Parzen. That same obsessive rhythmic pattern dominates the opening pages of the early Begräbnisgesang Op. 17 ("Burial Song"), which was composed a quarter of a century before the Gesang der Parzen. Interesting, too, is the fact that these two works stand as the first and last published examples of Brahms' output for chorus and orchestra. I admit, I am fudging the terms a bit here because the Begräbnisgesang is actually written for chorus and Harmonie or wind band. Yet the wind writing also contains uncanny anticipations of the later works, especially the Nänie and the Gesang der Parzen.
But the Begräbnisgesang also sounds eerily like a dress rehearsal for the second movement of the Deutsches Requiem (Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras), with the melody announced first in unison, low and quiet, and then building through an extended and ominous crescendo to a fortissimo outcry of the choir in full harmony. The choral reiteration of the opening lines is then accompanied by triplet figures very reminiscent of the drum rhythms in Denn alles Fleisch.
That hair-raising moment justifies the piece's continuing existence in the repertoire. The remainder of this early work is rather more pedestrian, rising to no convincing melodic statement which can balance the extraordinary power of the opening. That level of accomplishment still lay in the composer's future in 1858. But make no mistake, the Begräbnisgesang is well worth any time you care to invest in hearing it. And the experience of pairing it with the Gesang der Parzen shows that, even at the age of 25, Brahms had a gift of musical invention which, at its finest, could hardly be bettered by the mature composer in his fifties.
