Complete Songs for Solo Voice and Piano, Series II

by Johannes Brahms

"These songs are a source of endless delight, and when, as often happens, this beautifully polished musicianship is set alight with the glow of personal emotion, the results are of the highest and most lasting value." — Grove's Dictionary
Brahms's melodic gifts and genuine emotional response to poetry produced some of the finest German songs, equaling and occasionally surpassing Schubert in lyricism. Frequent performances and recordings of these songs continue to prove Brahms's lasting contributions to this domain, and create a need for authentic, accessible printed music. The finest complete musical transcript of Brahms, published by Breitkopf & Härtel (for whom Brahms worked as editor), is reproduced here — the authoritative texts with new translations of the lyrics.
This volume (Series II of the complete Dover Brahms songs, published in four volumes) contains Stanley Appelbaum's new literal prose translations of 58 songs first published between 1868 and 1964. Among these are the famous "Lullaby" ("Wiegenlied") and "Unbewegte laue Luft," called by Grove's Dictionary "one of Brahms's finest, full of richly glowing color." Brahms found inspiration mainly in the German poets (with an occasional translation of the Persian Hafiz or the French poet-king Thibault IV) but his rhythms and melodies most often reflect his own complex personality rather than the conventional German folk-song style advocated by his fellow "nationalistic" composers.
In addition to the song texts, a translation of the original editor's commentary has been included, plus new listings of titles, opening lines, and poets. With this edition one may appreciate, play, and sing Brahms's lieder from legible notation, printed with wide margins on opaque paper, bound for durability on the music stand. Nowhere else are the great songs of Brahms available to musicians, students, and classical music lovers, at the lowest price and highest quality of design and reproduction.

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1979

About the author

In 1833, Johannes Brahms was born in Germany. As a teenager playing for drunken sailors in a Hamburg bar, Brahms would prop up books of poetry to read as a diversion. His favorite poet was the anticlerical G.F. Daumer, described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as "an enemy of Christianity". Brahms' works were influenced by such writers as Hoffman, Friedrich Schiller and Robert Burns. He was well-read in philosophy and science, and was an avid hiker who took inspiration from nature. When asked by a conductor to add additional sectarian text to his German Requiem, Brahms responded, "As far as the text is concerned, I confess that I would gladly omit even the word German and instead use Human; also with my best knowledge and will I would dispense with passages like John 3:16." (Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography). A liberal, Brahms ardently opposed anti-Semitism, was approachable even at the height of his fame, and was always generous with his time and charity. Biographer Swafford writes of the young composer: "Though he was to be a freethinker in religion, Johannes pored over the Bible beyond the requirements for his Protestant confirmation." From then on, "Music was Brahms' religion." According to Swafford, Brahms was "a humanist and an agnostic." After nearly 64 years of near perfect health, never even enduring a headache, Brahms succumbed quickly to liver cancer. There was no deathbed conversion. D. 1897.

In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs". The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes...

http://www.johannesbrahms.org/

http://www.biography.com/people/johan...

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Brah...

http://www.ipl.org/div/mushist/rom/br...

http://www.naxos.com/person/Johannes_...

http://www.last.fm/music/Johannes+Brahms

http://www.classicalarchives.com/brah...

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/johann...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/educati...