The NouLou Chamber Players have Johannes Brahms slated for a Parlour Series concert Monday night at the Oxmoor Farm Library, and hearing the composer’s name brings an immediate smile and a treasured visage of Brahms: successor of Beethoven and faithful inheritor the classical music tradition, complete with kind eyes and flowing gray beard. The master composer. The grand old man of Vienna.
But it’s a younger Brahms who’ll be highlighted this time, with NouLou singers swinging into the Liebeslieder Waltzes: a popular collection of songs composed by a clean-shaven, 36-year-old Johannes Brahms. A handsome young man on his way up in the music business, making his way from the dockside saloons of Hamburg to the capital of the classical music world in Vienna.
In 1869, Brahms had just scored his first big success with "A German Requiem," a huge and serious work built for cathedrals. Now he switched musical gears to song — lieder is the German word — that everyday people could enjoy at home.
“They’re light-hearted songs,” says singer Laura Atkinson. “Love songs set in waltz music in waltz time.”
Brahms later arranged the Liebeslieder Waltzes for chorus and orchestra, but the NouLou singers are performing them in their original “hit” format, sung by four singers, accompanied by two pianists playing four-handed on one piano.
Atkinson, a professional singer (and afternoon radio host on 90.5 WUOL) says Brahms’ score doesn’t specify that the singers must be a soprano, alto, tenor and bass. These are songs to be sung with the singers you have.
“He did that to kind of open it up to amateurs to perform the songs in their homes,” she explains. “Salon music was popular at the time, and what was really popular were songs about love. And, of course, the waltz was really big.”
There was plenty of that kind of music being written, but Brahms had a special touch. If there’d been Top-40 radio in 1869, Brahms would have owned the airways, and listeners would have flocked to record shops to buy his chart-toppers.
Instead, fans flocked to purchase sheet music, and Brahms suddenly joined a very small number of musicians who actually made money.
“It was the thing that supported him for a long time,” says Atkinson. “Brahms wasn’t super proud of the music, but it made him money. And it also provided him notoriety in Viennese musical society.”
Singers joining Atkinson include Emily Black, Zachary Morris and Jason Steigerwalt. The pianists are Chris Brody and Andrew Fleischman – and they’re busy players. Working with four hands on one piano the pair can produce quite an accompanying orchestration. But it isn’t easy.
“The two pianists really have to negotiate, and it was fun watching them work that out in rehearsal,” says Atkinson. “They’re right next to each other. They’re sharing the same bench, sharing the same music. They have to negotiate whose hands cross over whose, at what point. Who turns the pages, and who sets the tempo.”
Brody and Fleishman are skilled NouLou Chamber Players, though. Should be all right.
An Answer Song
Of course, every great song needs an answer song, right? And the NouLou has one. On the program with Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, the singers will offer John Greer’s "Liebesleid-lieder," which turns the German spelling around somehow to make sorrow songs. Brahms’ Liebeslieder becomes Greer’s Liebesleider. (And if you think pronouncing those two is tough, try typing them!)
Probably the most famous “answer song” tandem is "My Guy" by Mary Wells, answered with "My Girl" by the Temptations. Those are both love songs. Closer to the Brahms-Greer pair might be the teen tragedy "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las, answered with "Leader of the Laundromat" by the Detergents. Greer’s title references the Fritz Kreisler standard "Liebesleider" (Love’s Sorrow).
And as Brahms set love lyrics from German poet Georg Friedrich Daumer, Greer gets his lines from witty American writer Dorothy Parker. Greer, who taught for a time at the University of Kentucky, also jumps from waltz to other dances, and the upbeat tempos kind of help the humor along.
The grand old man
Getting back to Brahms a bit, this younger period of his career included music of all varieties. The aforementioned "A German Requiem" is a huge choral work that was played all over Germany. Brahms borrowed text from the Bible for the Requiem, and it premiered in its final form in Bremen on Good Friday, 1868. “Never had the cathedral been so full,” wrote composer and conductor Albert Dietrich. “Never had the enthusiasm been so great. The effect was simply overwhelming and it at once became clear to the audience that A German Requiem ranked among the loftiest music ever given to the world.”
The Liebeslieder Waltzes came next, as Brahms took a breath. Then came two volumes of Hungarian Dances in 1870 written for two pianos. The dances are borrowed Roma tunes Brahms learned from Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi. Once again Brahms had created music musicians wished to play, and these Dances are Brahms’ all-time best seller. Variations on a Theme by Haydn, 1873, was Brahm’s first work for orchestra alone – and impresarios jumped at the chance for concert hall performances of it.
Johannes had hit his stride in popularity and on a tour in Poland was awarded an honorary degree at the University of Breslau – for which he thanked the school with the "Academic Festival Overture," and its famous graduation march. It was about that time that fans began dropping Brahms’ name in with Bach and Beethoven. The three great B’s.
Finally established and confident, and living in Vienna, Brahms began his latter years with his first symphony. He’d been hesitant. “You’ll never know how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like Beethoven behind us,” he said. He would end up with four symphonies to cap a career that finally came to a close with his death in Vienna in 1797.
What’s missing from all that musical story, of course, it the personal side of Johannes Brahms and especially the story of his friendship with Robert and Clara Schumann, which began in Dusseldorf in 1853. Brahms was there for his friends as Robert careened into mental illness, was institutionalized and died. Through the rest of their lives Johannes and Clara remained the closest and dearest of friends. Clara, also a composer, was a one of the finest touring pianists in Europe. They could have married, but did not, and their relationship remains one of the most absorbing human-interest topics among classical music fans.
Including Atkinson.
“Brahms and Clara, the way I understand it, they kind of thought about becoming something more,” says Atkinson. “They went away on some mysterious trip and they came back and then they never were. Clara just kind of remained loyal to her husband, even in widowhood.”
Brahms had chances with other women, but nothing stuck. He kept on composing and lived a quiet life in a cluttered apartment with old furniture. He loved to go for long walks into the countryside. Everywhere he went, in a café or concert hall, Brahms was beloved. The grand old man of Vienna.
NouLou Chamber Players perform "Songs of Sorrow & Love" at Oxmoor Farm, Monday, November 4th at 6:30 p.m.