The Schicksalslied (Song of fate) is a short powerful composition for chorus and orchestra written by Johannes Brahms between 1868 and 1871, based on Friedrich Hölderlin's poem "Hyperions Schicksalslied," originally part of the novel Hyperion.
Brahms discovered the text in a book owned by his friend Albert Dietrich. Although he immediately began sketches for the song, it then took him a long time to work out the structure of the piece. The poem has only three stanzas, the first two describing the bliss of the gods and the last one the suffering of mankind, "plunging blindly into the abyss." Brahms initially wanted to create a three-part work, with a reprise of the first stanza. However, he felt that in doing so he would go too much against Hölderlin's original, more tragic vision. The work does return to the music of the first strophe in the coda, but only instrumentally, without the text. The piece was premiered in Karlsruhe on October 18, 1871, conducted by Johannes Brahms himself.
Here is the German text of the three stanzas:
Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Auf weichem Boden, selige Genien!
Glänzende Götterlüfte
Rühren euch leicht,
Wie die Finger der Künstlerin
Heilige Saiten.
Schicksallos, wie der schlafende
Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen;
Keusch bewahrt
In bescheidener Knospe,
Blühet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller
Ewiger Klarheit.
Doch uns ist gegeben,
Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn,
Es schwinden, es fallen
Die leidenden Menschen
Blindlings von einer
Stunde zur andern,
Wie Wasser von Klippe
Zu Klippe geworfen,
Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab.
In its dualistic structure, the poem separates the realm of divine ideality in the first two stanzas from the cruel reality of man in the final stanza. Already in the epics attributed to Homer - especially the Odyssey - the fundamental differences between the serene, carefree, and eternal life of the gods and the toilsome and limited existence of humans are repeatedly illuminated. The Odyssey depicts the sorrowful and perilous journey of Odysseus during his ten-year journey home to Ithaca. In the sixth canto of the translation by Johann Heinrich Voß, praised by Friedrich Schiller, the "high Olympos, the eternal abode of the gods" is mentioned. This sphere is "never shaken by hurricanes, never flooded by rain / Never besieged by snow, the cloudless brightness / reigns calmly around and covers it with shimmering splendor: / There rejoices eternally the host of the blessed gods."
Brahms drastically emphasizes the contrast between the two worlds through rhythmic and dynamic means, although he also lets his work end on a consoling note and thus seems to distance himself from the hopelessness of the last stanza.
Listen to: Radio Filharmonisch Orkest & Groot Omroepkoor conducted by Karina Canellakis.
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