BRAHMS Four Songs Op. 17 for Female Choir, Horns and Harp - #4 “Gesang aus Fingal” - RIAS Kammerchor · Marcus Creed

Guest curator, Bob Lee

Brahms almost never employed the harp in his compositions. These four songs make me regret that. I chose the final one in the set because I adore the epic poems of the ancient Celtic bard Ossian, even though in reality they were forgeries written by plain old James Macpherson in the late 1750s, who claimed he had discovered them in a cave in misty north Scotland. Goethe loved Ossian and along with most of Europe (Samuel Johnson being a notable dissenter), bought the hoax completely. He has Werther quoting Ossian in The Sorrows of Young Werther; then in Massenet's opera on the novel, the quote becomes “Pourquoi me reveiller” which, for me, is one of the very greatest tenor arias in the standard operatic repertoire. Macpherson was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1796, four years before his fraud was uncovered.

Brahms sets a portion of Ossian’s epic Fingal where a maid of Innistore is lamenting the fall of the Celtic hero Trenar. The poetry may be fake but it is fantastic anyway and Brahms’ setting is as quintessentially romantic as anything I know.

– Bob Lee

Text and translation.