Schicksalslied (“Song of Destiny”), Opus 54 

Composition and premiere: Brahms began Schicksalslied in summer 1868 and completed it in May 1871. Hermann Levi led the premiere on  October 18, 1871, in Karlsruhe. First BSO performance: February 4, 1893, Arthur Nikisch conducting, with “The Boston Symphony Chorus.” First Tanglewood performance: August 25, 1968, Erich Leinsdorf conducting, with Tanglewood Choir and Berkshire Chorus, Charles Wilson, director, John Oliver, assistant director. 

Late in the summer of 1868, having taken his father to Switzerland for a mountain holiday, Brahms visited his friends the Dietrichs in Oldenburg. While there, he specifically asked if they could visit the great shipbuilding works at Wilhelmshaven (curiously, though he could rarely be induced to board a ship, Brahms was fascinated with them). On the morning scheduled for the visit, rising before the rest of the family, Brahms started reading the poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1825), which he found amidst the Dietrich family’s books. He told his hosts that he had been deeply moved by a poem entitled “Hyperion’s Song of Fate.” Years later, in a memoir recalling his friendship with Brahms, Dietrich wrote: 

When, later in the day, after having wandered about and seen everything of interest, we sat down by the sea to rest, we discovered Brahms at a great distance, sitting alone on the beach and writing. These were the first sketches for the Schicksalslied. 

The text, re-enacting the Classical fatalism of the Greeks, spoke to some central element in the composer’s own soul; yet despite the immediate reaction to the poem and the instant musical sketch, he was unable to bring the work to completion until May 1871. The problem may have lain in the structure of Hölderlin’s grim text: the poem is in two parts, the first depicting the tranquil, eternal bliss of the gods in their abode of light, the second contrasting it with the torments of humanity, driven by a blind destiny. Brahms did not want to end the music in such a negative mood. He considered simply repeating the opening words at the end, but was dissuaded from that course by the conductor Hermann Levi. Instead he concluded the piece with a tranquil orchestral statement of the opening music, thus rounding it off musically with a hint of consolation, while retaining the text’s original form. The music of the gods is luminous, sharply contrasted to the hard-driven torments of mankind, especially the dramatic depiction of “water thrown from crag to crag,” followed by a sudden silence. The chorus ends on a note of resignation, but again—as in the Alto Rhapsody—a shift from C minor to C major brings reconciliation. 

STEVEN LEDBETTER 

Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer and lecturer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.