THE LIBRARY | SONGS

The opening section of this song is a quintessentially Brahmsian dirge.  Brahms puts the melodic line of the piano in the inner voices rather- a musical metaphor for being buried. It’s fitting, given the opening line is “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other.” 

The piano part also features an unrelenting repeated octave A for much of the opening texture. Composers often use repeated note ostinatos in art song to represent obsessive thoughts, in this case Brahms’ preoccupation with death.  In the second half of the song, Brahms makes an about face with a ferocious allegro section.  The question of this section is essentially, is there an afterlife, or is death the end.  The perpetually unresolved harmonies and rhythmic ambiguity of this section paint the tortuous frustration of being unable to know this fundamental question. 

When the text asks if man’s spirit “goes upward” or “downward” the musical texture becomes defined by sudden leaps in both the piano and vocal line. 

The opening dirge returns one more time, even with a moment of Major-key brightness at the line “a man should rejoice in his own works.” But the respite is fleeting as the allegro section returns for the coda of the song.  The final pages feature a written-out trill in the piano art- again an unsettled texture to represent the unsettling questions about mortality in the text.  The final, crashing chords perhaps give a grim answer.