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4 Brahms’s Mädchenlieder and Their Cultural Context Heather Platt Brahms’s attitude toward women has attracted the attention of writers since the nineteenth century.1 But although a number of scholars have convincingly demonstrated some of the ways in which women such as Clara Schumann and Elisabet von Herzogenberg influenced his works, the more general topic of the ways in which Brahms portrays the female characters in his lieder has been in large part neglected. More than twenty percent of his lieder have texts with a female narrative voice, including “Mädchenlied” (“Am jüngsten Tag,” op. 95, no. 6), “Klage” (op. 105, no. 3), and “Mädchenlied” (“Ach, und du mein kühles Wasser!,” op. 85, no. 3).2 I will explore the ways in which these three songs intertwine, in paradoxical and subtle ways, musical portrayals of nineteenthcentury societal expectations for women and the emotions of the songs’ female characters. While on one level Brahms coordinates sophisticated tonal structures with a panoply of other musical elements to convey the genuinely troubled emotions of the young women, on another he deploys stylistic elements associated with folksong (such as transparent textures, triadic melodies, and diatonic harmonies). These folk elements should not, however, be taken prima facie as traces of the Romantic veneration of folk traditions; rather, they are a musical analogue for the country settings that contemporary illustrations and literature employed to symbolize society’s understanding of the innocent, pure “fairer sex.” The female characters who “speak” in Brahms’s songs range from innocent young girls to wise women and mothers; from happy maidens full of hopeful dreams to lonely, dying invalids.3 Following Roland Barthes—and in acknowledgment of the nineteenth-century custom that lieder were performed by both male and female singers regardless of the character the music portrayed—many commentators interpret songs like these as expressions of universal ideas and emotions.4 But nineteenth-century documents, including letters by Brahms and his friends, clearly show that, irrespective of who performed them, his settings of poems with a female narrative voice were thought to represent a distinctly female mind-set. The clearest evidence of this female perspective appears in let- Brahms’s Mädchenlieder 81 ters concerning Brahms’s op. 69 lieder. Seven of the nine songs in this collection have texts presenting a young woman’s point of view. While preparing these works for publication, Brahms told Fritz Simrock that he considered naming the collection Mädchenlieder, and he suggested this term should be used in the related advertising.5 Although Brahms subsequently stepped away from these ideas, a letter from Theodor Billroth to the critic Eduard Hanslick demonstrates that this is precisely how the composer’s friends interpreted these songs. Billroth wrote: No. 4, an eighteen-year-old girl, blonde, finding the sensual note unconsciously through the necessity of nature. . . . No. 8, a rather original sixteen-year-old, black-eyed little girl, full of fun, full of spirits, very quick, with natural grace, and singing out with an overwhelming joviality. No. 9 . . . is a tremendously sensuous and passionate song; it must be sung with all that feeling, the czardas getting wilder and wilder. When that girl, after that song, meets her [man] she embraces him as if she would crack all his ribs!6 The texts of the three songs I discuss in this essay portray maidens of a similar age to those Billroth describes, but, unlike their passionate sisters, these young women lament their loneliness without a loved one. Along with the words of most of Brahms’s other songs employing a female narrative voice (including those of op. 69), these texts originated in folksongs: Siegfried Kapper translated the text of “Ach, und du mein kühles Wasser!” from a Serbian folksong; Paul Heyse translated “Am jüngsten Tag” from an Italian folksong; and the text of “Klage” was published as a folksong from the lower Rhine, even though it was probably written by Anton Zuccalmaglio, who was known for his ability to replicate texts in folk style. Brahms acknowledged the folk heritage of each of these songs through a musical setting comprising various combinations of triadic or stepwise melodies, predominantly diatonic harmonies, regular phrase structures , and relatively transparent textures. These folklike gestures are far more pronounced than those in op. 69, and the textures are simpler. Nevertheless, just as Billroth heard the female characters (and Brahms’s music) in the op. 69 songs as embodying passion and sensuality, so too I will...

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