Because Brahms’ songs represent the purely musical and formal, as well as the interpretive, they are one of the most valuable of studies for the advanced pupil. A singer’s art cannot be complete as long as the effective interpretation of Brahms’ songs remains a mystery to him. Not to attempt to understand and love them, because of the myth of dullness, is a sin against artistic open-mindedness which no music-lover should be guilty of. Indeed, if we can manage to escape for a time in our souls from the trend of the time toward the spectacular, the sensuous and the sensual, the easy and effective, we shall find in Brahms a song-writer like no other who ever lived, save only Schubert. Brahms has treated almost every kind of sentiment and emotion successfully. His melodies are lovely in the extreme, his accompaniments are an endless delight to the careful pianist; his musical procedure is never conventional yet always appropriate; his music has a wholesomeness and dignity unsurpassed in all song literature. Other song-writers surpass Brahms in certain qualities. But it is doubtful if any, except Schubert, can be regarded as his equal in the combining of such a large number of first-rate qualities and in the quantity of first-rate songs produced. II We may conveniently divide the Brahms songs into two classes--the ‘folk-songs,’ written usually to anonymous popular poems and preserving the simplicity and directness of the true folk-song; and the art-songs which make use of all the resources of elaboration and organization at the command of that master craftsman. Some of the opus numbers contain ‘folk-songs’ entirely or in large proportion. (Brahms wrote but one cycle in the strict sense, and usually followed no scheme of grouping.) But a folk-like song may appear anywhere in his song output. The type of folk-feeling in Brahms is almost exclusively German. There is scarcely the slightest attempt at ‘local color’ in the whole of Brahms’ music. Even the Gypsy songs, though they somehow attain an exotic flavor, make use of none of the conventional musical formulas of Hungarian music. Moreover, while the ‘folk-songs’ are distinctly German, they are also distinctly Brahms. The composer never lost his individuality in any single work. The accompaniments to these songs are usually simple, but they are never merely conventional. They show a nice adaptation of the style of the piano part to the character of the melody and of the song as a whole, and continually present unobtrusive elements of interest in detail.