THREE "Als wahres volles Menschenbild": Brahms's Rinaldo and Autobiographical Allusion.

In the Brahms canon, Rinaldo, the cantata for tenor solo and male chorus (op.50), has generally been considered a curiosity, if not downright problematic. This assessment has prevailed at all stages of the work's history. Shortly after its completion in 1868 Clara Schumann bluntly asked Brahms if he believed Rinaldo to be a worthy successor to the German Requiem.(1) Almost uniformly negative reactions greeted the cantata's premiere (Vienna, 28 February 1869), at which Brahms conducted the three-hundred-voice Akademischer Gesangverein, the Hofoper orchestra, and the tenor soloist Gustav Walter.(2) With the exception of Theodor Billroth's qualified praise, commentary ranged between lukewarm and hostile, with critics emphasizing Rinaldo's "endless shades of gray," "excessive Baroque conceits," and lack of sensuality.(3)

Generally favorable notices for performances outside Vienna (Jena, 1870; Koblenz, 1872; Munich, 1873; Leipzig, 1874; Darmstadt, 1878) failed to establish Rinaldo securely in the repertory.(4) Nor did Werkkritiken by Brahms's supporters Hermann Deiters (1870) and Hermann Kretzschmar (1874) enhance the cantata's standing in Vienna.(5) A second performance there in 1883, reviewed by Eduard Hanslick, met with similar reservations.(6)

Subsequent criticism has also been mixed. An especially harsh assessment is that by Hans Gal, who charged that the music displays "more color than substance and a certain artificiality of perception."(7) Noting the cantata's hybrid character (Mannerchor style, fugato, recitative, and cavatina), later critics have called attention to the work's "incongruous features" and lack of "intellectual or musical unity ... neither achieved nor attempted."(8) More neutral commentators have tended to view Rinaldo as a repository of operatic or dramatic tendencies. In his discussion of the cantata's "stylistic relations to the world of opera," Michael Musgrave compares the "blurring" between aria and recitative in Rinaldo to that in Schubert's incompletely preserved oratorio Lazarus, while finding certain parallels with Fidelio, Der fliegende Hollander, and the "Warmth of feeling" of Italian opera. John Daverio, on the other hand, alludes to Brahms's "Mozartean ideal" as manifested in the formal disposition of Rinaldo's two "grand arias."(9) Still others have seen the work's operatic traits in a purely negative light. Although we can dismiss Robert Haven Schauffler's overheated assertions ("in Rinaldo Brahms strives vainly to be dramatic, but only revealed how fortunate it was that he never wasted his time in trying to compose opera"), such commentary nonetheless confirms the cantata's status as an unsuccessful foray into dramatic music.(10)

In trying to account for these reactions, several considerations come to mind. Surely the text, Goethe's free adaptation of the fourteenth canto of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, would have presented significant problems even for an experienced composer of dramatic music. Written expressly for a musical setting, Goethe's Rinaldo treats a romantic dalliance of the knight-errant Rinaldo, the leader of a Christian crusade.(11) Yet despite widespread familiarity in the mid-nineteenth century with chivalric tales (largely through their treatment in male choral genres), Goethe's "poem about a poem" was largely inaccessible to a public unacquainted with Tasso's original.(12) Indeed, doubting his audience's familiarity with the text, Brahms enclosed an excerpt from Tasso's original in the program book for the first performance:

 
   Siede in mezzo un giardin del labirinto, 
   Che par, che da ogni fronde amore spiri. 
   Quivi in grembo alia verde erba novella 
   Giacci il Cavaliero, e la Donzella 
 
   Ma come essa, lasciando il caro amante, 
   In altra parte il piede avra rivolto; 
   Vuo, che a lui vi scripiate, e d'adamante 
   Un scudo, chi'io daro, gli alziate al volto; 
   Si ch'egli vi si specchi, e'l suo sembiante 
   Veggia, e l'abito molle, onde, fu infolto: 
   Ch'a tal vista potra vergogna, e sdegno 
   Scacciar dal petto suo l'amor' indegno. 
   (Tasso, La Gerusalemme liberata, canto 14) 
 
   In the center of the maze 
   A spacious garden flings it radiance round, 
   Where not a light leaf shakes or zephyr strays, 
   But breathes out love; here, on the fresh green ground 
   in his fair lady's lap the warrior will be found. 
 
   But when th'Enchantress quits her darling's side, 
   And elsewhere turns her footsteps from the place, 
   Then, with the diamond shield which I provide, 
   Step forth and so present it for a space 
   That he may start at his reflected face, 
   His wanton weeds and ornaments survey: 
   The sight whereof, and sense of his disgrace, 
   Shall make him blush, and without delay 
   From his unworthy love indignant break away. 
   (English translation by Jeriamiah Holmes Wiffen 
 
   in Edwin Evans, Historical, 
   Descriptive, and Analytical Account of the Entire 
   Work of Johannes Brahms, vol. 1 
   [London: W. M. Reeves, 1912], 206-7) 
 
   Ein Garten liegt inmitten dieser Auen, 
   Wo Liebeshauch vonjedem Zweige sinnt, 
   Dort werdet ihr, im Schoss der grunen Auen, 
   Die Zauberin und ihren Ritter schauen. 
   Hat sie hernach ausjenem Lustgefilde? 
   Fern vom Geliebten, ihren Schritt gewandt: 
   Dann nahet ihm, bewaffnet mit dem Schilde, 
   Den ich euch gab aus hellem Diamant; 
   Dass er sich selber schau im Spiegelbilde, 
   Gehullt in welch unmannliches Gewand, 
   Voll Zorn und Scham wird er sich dann ermannen 
   Und schnode Lieb aus siener Brust verbannen. 
   (German version inserted in program at Viennese 
   premiere of Rinaldo) 

Another problem was the text's lack of "the dramatic element," a concern voiced even by commentators as cultivated and supportive of Brahms as Billroth and Hanslick.(13) The poem's most salient feature is its unabated emphasis on the inner turmoil of the protagonist, who, absorbed in his memories, vacillates between remaining with the siren Armida on her enchanted island and renouncing her in favor of his vocation. When his fellow knights try to deliver him from Armida's enticements, Rinaldo can only sing of the pleasures of love; when they show him a magical diamond shield that reflects his moral condition, he is pained by the sight of his degradation and vows to rejoin the regiment. Almost immediately, however, he succumbs to memories of Armida. Only when her supernatural wrath wreaks havoc over the island does Rinaldo's inner debate cease: renouncing the seductress, he sets forth on the open seas to roam the world once more, singing a victory chorus with the knights (the definitive version of which Brahms put off completing for nearly five years). Throughout, action and theatricality are minimized, owing to Goethe's emphasis on memory, nostalgia, and Rinaldo's obsessive introspection.

In setting Rinaldo Brahms also faced musical problems. Chief among these were the technical limitations of most Mannerchore. Since these ensembles were often composed of amateurs, much of their repertory relied on homophonic textures, predictable phrase structure, and simple harmonies (as occur in sections of Rinaldo). Given that Brahms had originally intended to enter Rinaldo in a contest sponsored by the Aachen Liedertafel (1863), the relatively low ranking of the Liedertafeln within the Mannerchore hierarchy is also relevant here.(14) As Carl Dahl haus has observed, "the expression `Liedertafeln style' came to signify shallow, sanctimonious music in which ... `noble simplicity' ... gradually degenerated into kitsch."(15) While this unflattering description need not be applied to Rinaldo, it gives an idea of the "horizon of expectation" for this subcategory of the male choral genres. Critical commentary about Rinaldo can also be seen in this context. When Walter Niemann, for example, evaluates the work as "too stately, intellectual, and restrained in expression" for the average Mannerchor, it is almost as if he were marking the cantata for failure by virtue of a basic incompatibility between the composer's lofty musical temperament and the chosen medium.(16)