The "Wechsel der Töne" in Brahms's "Schicksalslied"

Abstract

The nature of musical meaning in Brahms's Schicksalslied, op. 54, a setting of an interpolated lyric from Friedrich Hölderlin's epistolary novel Hyperion, has long puzzled students of the composer's works. Brahms's apparent contradiction of the message of the poem in an ethereal orchestral postlude is here considered in the light of Hölderlin's own poetic theory of "alternating tones" toward the end of demonstrating the composer's adherence to the spirit, if not the letter, of the poet's work. The Schicksalslied is further interpreted as the last instance of the Erlebnislyrik (lyric of personal experience) within Brahms's output, and hence as a telling prelude to the symphonic essays of the 1870s and 1880s.