Brahms Write Up

This piece was written to reflect the text of the poem, Wie Melodien zieht es mir.

This poem describes uses the relationships and effects of different senses to describe

an elusive and mysterious “it”. My first assumption was that “it” referred to love and the

frustratingly evasive feeling of unrequited love. However, after further discussion, I

believe that “it” refers instead to the creative process and the discouraging reality that

occurs when we try to bring our creative fantasies to life.

The poem describes this feeling through the medium of senses. It uses language

that brings intangible touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, and finally tangible touch in the

climax of the poem as with the emergence of tears. The music reflects both the feeling

of not being able to express exactly how you feel as well as utilize weak cadences to

build up to a final strong one which coincides with the tangible feeling.

One of the ways the music does this is with the form. This piece is an example of

strophic variation. All three strophs begin with the same harmonic line of I I6 IV ♭ II6. All

three also have the melodic contour of a period, but there is no strong cadence until the

very end. One characteristic of this piece that directly lends itself to the sense of

increasing tangibility is how the cadences progress. In the first stroph, the first idea

seems like it should end on a cadence, but it is only plagal motion and the second idea

appears to end on an extended half cadence that eventually leads to a PAC in the V. In

the second stroph, there is a cadence after the first idea, but it is an IAC and the second

idea attempts and then reattempts to cadence in the IV. In the final stroph, the first idea

cadences to an IAC in ♭ VI which provides tension as the text describes the fragrance of
“it”. Finally, at the end it cadences to a strong PAC in the home key, but we are left so

many times with the feeling that it was not quite what all that it could have been.