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58 BRAHMS_COMPLETE SOLO PIANOWORKS
The Seven
Klavierstücke
op.116, also known as
Fantasien
(a title that in truth
corresponds only to the third piece, a northern ballade composed earlier),
are divided like op.76 into intermezzos and capriccios, and function like their
predecessors: the three capriccios convey a sentiment of tormented bursts
of energy, as if an adolescent heart imprisoned in the body of a sixty-year-
old were hammering on the locked door of the past; the four intermezzos,
by contrast, breathe a gentle melancholy that seems to be trying to console
exhaustion, yet without being able to console itself.
The Three Intermezzos op.117, for their part, are founded on a text, like the
Ballades op.10 (decidedly a persistent presence), and even on a text from
Scotland, again drawn from Herder’s
Stimmen der Völker
– a lament in the
form of a lullaby. Though once more nothing in these pieces is ever narrative
or descriptive, the voice of a mother lulling her child gives its inflection to
the style of the first piece. In the second, we again hear that voice doing
its utmost to rock the baby, yet at the same time hinting at the tone of a
woman betrayed. The third, bathed in the bitterness of intimate passions,
closes a triptych notable for its subdued character throughout.