Prometheus through Music- Brahms' Four Serious Songs

"The purpose of music is to perfect an insight into beauty- not to produce it." -Lyndon LaRouche

In my last article on “Prometheus through Music” we listened to two compositions, one by Hugo Wolf and one by Franz Schubert.  They were both set to the poem Prometheus by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Lyndon LaRouche thought that the poem itself did not adequately convey the profound concept of Prometheus. He thought that Johannes Brahms’ Four Serious Songs, set to excerpts of the Old and New Testament, came far closer to the Promethean concept.

Let’s explore that idea.

First, when exploring different musical settings, there are no right or wrong answers. Many times, profound ideas are built on discoveries made by others. For the individual discoverer, it is an exploration of ideas, and through the generation of those ideas we are attempting to improve our own abilities to communicate profound discoveries. As Lyndon LaRouche once said, “it is through that process that we lessen our own imperfections, and come closer to the Truth,” and it is on that path that we improve our ability to reach the soul of another human being.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms, a German composer, lived from 1833 to 1897. He was very close to the Schumann family and composed the Four Serious Songs just days after Clara Schumann’s death.

Brahms and the Schumanns worked closely together, to continue the Bach/Beethoven/Mozart tradition, a tradition grounded in the mission to compose all art forms that express the concept that Man is made in the living image of our Creator. They, and their friends, dedicated their lives to show that mankind is creative, and potentially immortal—ALL of MANKIND. And that all human beings have the potential to make profound and unique discoveries of universal principles. They believed that Man is not a beast.

These were critical concepts, needed to defeat the opposite concepts promoted by Wagner, Liszt, and their oligarchical sponsors. Wagner and Liszt promoted the idea that human beings are trapped in their circumstances, with no ability to improve, that life is basically hopeless. Brahms and his friends thought the opposite, that all is possible, especially the Good.

Here are several quotes from Brahms which provide irrefutable evidence as to his deeply held convictions on the Nature of Man and the role of Art:

• “To me, the greatest joy is creating something that speaks directly to the soul of another human being.”
• “True art is the bridge between heaven and earth, connecting the divine and the human.”
• “The power of art is to wash the dust of daily life off of our souls.”
• “To be a musician is to be a messenger of emotions, a conduit through which the invisible is made audible.”
• “When I compose, I am not creating something new, I am discovering something that has already existed.”
• “The greatest compositions are those that transcend time and place, speaking to the Universal emotions and Truths that connect us all.”

The Songs

For the Four Serious Songs, Brahms chose three verses from Ecclesiastes, from the Old Testament, and the fourth verse from 1 Corinthians 13, from the New Testament. With these four verses, Brahms takes us, and humanity, through the process of profound discovery, that man is different from the beast, that all human life is sacred and immortal, with generations of mankind making great discoveries of Universal Truth.

As you read the text translations of the Songs, I will point out one major flaw. The Bible was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word for Love is “Agape.”  There is no translation of Brahm’s Fourth Song into English, which I can find, that uses either world—Love or Agape—but instead they all use “Charity.”   Charity is a highly commendable virtue, but Christian Love or Agape does not have the same meaning as the word Charity. As you read the text for the fourth song, the only one from the New Testament, make sure that you insert Agape, or Love for Charity. Agape is unconditional and universal love of God and of Truth. With that understanding, you will get the full power of what Brahms is doing when he uses the New Testament, and 1 Corinthians 13, to express the true uniqueness of Man, made in the image of our Creator.

Before listening to the beautiful performance by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, think about what Lyndon LaRouche had to say about great musical performances in his introduction to the Music Manual published by the Schiller Institute,

“When two contradictory claims are juxtaposed to one another, a seemingly impossible contradiction appears. There is no symbolic meaning here; it is something much more profound, and, unlike symbolism, it is altogether real. [LaRouche elaborates this in the footnote immediately below]

“There, in that specific quality of circumstance, that specific quality of IRONY, lies the metaphor, just exactly as we encounter Classical metaphor in tragedy, poetry and in classical motivic thorough composition.

“In each medium—science, poetry, tragedy, and music—this relatively absolute degree of irony arises. In both cases, science and art, solutions depend upon mustering a special form of passion, that which Plato and the Apostle Paul identify by the term Agape. It is this special quality of emotion, which is required to summon the individual minds’ cognitive powers of discovery of a higher principle, and to sustain that summoned power of concentration, beyond the point in that problem solving process, at which a validatable form of discovered new principle has been generated.

Footnote: 

“For example, Hamlet’s Act III, scene 1 soliloquy: 

“. . . But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”

“This soliloquy, set in the context provided by the closing soliloquy of the preceding act, expresses Shakespeare’s central, motivic germ, upon which the derivation of the entirety of that play’s composition depends. This is to be compared with Schiller’s notion of this principle of composition of tragedy. The apparently unbridgeable distinction between the contending two, each ostensibly truthful principles, exemplifies the absolute degree of irony on which the composition of great Classical tragedy pivots; the inability of the Hamlets, is the lack of will to muster that specific quality of emotion, through which breakthroughs to a new, higher, resolving order of comprehension, may be secured.  That failure to force through an intellectual resolution of the conflict, through attaining a higher level of comprehension of the contradiction itself, is the defining, underlying subject-matter of all great Classical tragedy, from its root in the Homeric epics, through the compositions of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Schiller.”

Read the text of the Four Serious Songs several times and listen to the recording several times.

As you read and listen, ask yourself:  What are the paradoxes presented by Brahms, both in the four verses and the musical expression? And how does he guide you to make a universal discovery, going from the Old Testament to the New Testament?

In closing, consider that today we are on the edge of World War III; we are also facing a cultural degeneration that is unprecedented, and we have the most important Presidential election in American history just around the corner. So WHY, then, should we be spending our time discussing the finer qualities of classical music?

I am glad that you asked that question!

In Melania Trump’s loving tribute to her husband post-assassination attempt, she notes, among his beloved qualities, a love of music. He is a fan of classic opera. Although his pursuit of the common touch causes him to indulge in various other modes of music in our shattered culture, he cites classical music as a defining triumph of western civilization. He has cited classical musicians as typifying the creative work ethic which produces genius. He has talked on many occasions of restoring beauty to our bestialized culture, citing the historic classical beauty of Washington, D.C., now destroyed or under attack, as the inspiration from which great and new human discoveries proceed. He is intent on creating more Einsteins, more Beethovens, more Shakespeares, more Abraham Lincolns, with that path of opportunity open to every American.

This music allows us to find the higher humanity which exists in all of us, the creativity bequeathed to us by God. That quality, in turn, manifest once again in a large segment of our people, creates the path by which this nation can be once again saved while emerging on an ever higher plain. We will never be without problems to solve, but these compositions provide the emotional and intellectual power to solve them. In that new world we are building now, every human being is a precious gift to mankind, precisely because of this divine spark, ready to be trained and leap forth, in individual pursuit of the common good.