Brahms - The Vocal Music examines in detail the more than 150 choral works written by Johannes Brahms, considered one of the "greats" of choral music after his lieder were recorded by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. British musicologist A. Craig Bell brings to this third of his studies of musical giants his conviction that Brahms's work was not accorded its proper stature and was not frequently performed until his lieder were recorded by the famous lieder singer.

These recordings revealed the true stature of Brahms as a lieder composer who ranks with such greats as Schumann, Wolf, and Schubert.

Musically, Brahms's lieder are as varied and dramatic as the poetry they accompany. Bell employs his keen knowledge of the corpus of the composer's work to show how every musical phrase was inspired by the sentiments of the verse. He details the origin of each of the lieder poems, starting with the composer's first efforts and continuing to the disappointing Romanzen aus L. Tiecks Magelone and to the more eloquent and famous Wie bist du meine Konigin and later songs.

Brahms's creative output increased as his personal life became more complicated. Schumann had died in 1856, and his widow Clara, aware that Brahms's respect and affection were becoming more intense, left Dusseldorf, where they were both living, the following year. She quietly withdrew from his life, a separation that affected the composer deeply. In the summer of 1858, the composer met and fell in love with the soprano Agathe von Siebold, but this entanglement proved to be a messy one.

Bell proposes that because the composer's personal life was so disappointing, he poured all his frustration into setting to music poetry that provided him with sensuous, and even sensual, images. The result was love songs that shocked his friends.

1. As he matured, Brahms's compositions became more mature and consistent. Moved by his passion for another young singer, Herminie Spies, the composer once again wrote music that revealed the strength of his feelings, while backing away from her admiration. Julius Stockhausen, the famous singer and close friend of the composer, in a letter to him acknowledging the gift of the song "Immerleise wird mein Schlummer," confessed he was so moved by it that he broke down singing it.