Sonntag ("So hab ich doch die ganze Woche"), song for voice & piano, Op. 47/3

Brahms' Sonntag (Sunday) is a song of such straightforward radiance and affection (as opposed to affectation) that its like is not to be found among the works of any of the other great Lieder composers. Brahms frequently utilized folk music sources and here, set an anonymously written folk text edited by the much-admired Ludwig Uhland. In the process, he respected the essence of the work, even while updating the archaic spellings found in the Old German. The song retains the freshness of its folk origins, remaining throughout in its beginning key of F major. Only in the accompaniment did Brahms allow himself a few measures of harmonic intricacy and then only in the six-bar interlude separating the two strophes and in the nearly identical postlude. The song's effect is hearty and unabashed, the young narrator explaining why Sunday is so important -- it's the day he sees his sweetheart. "So I haven't seen my love all week," he says. "I last saw her on Sunday, standing before her door./Would God, I'd see her today./Still, I'll not forgo my laughter all week./I saw her going to church on Sunday, that thousand-times beautiful young girl./Would God I were with her today." In 3/4 meter, Sonntag moves energetically, not too slowly (Nicht zu langsam), in keeping with the lad's ebullient, but not to say impatient, feelings. Brahms calls for the singer and accompanist to control their volume, specifying piano at the beginning and permitting only a few mild crescendos to a mezzo forte, followed by a return to piano. Although the narrator is excited, his enthusiasm for his sweetheart is of the confiding sort. The rhythm is both jaunty and supple, the accompaniment primarily spun out in eighth notes while the singer unfolds his lines with a combination of eighth and quarter notes. The effect is one of breathless eagerness from the singer, while the accompanist alternately duplicates the vocal line and places accents in contrast to it. Although Brahms initially elected to follow the text as published by Uhland, he later inserted repeats of several emphatic lines to afford a more complete, more polished result. That result is a small masterwork loved by artists and audiences alike.