Page with a printed musical score and two illustrations: on the right a herm in black and white, on the left a colored representation of a landscape with a man lying on his back in a field under an expansive sky

“Feldeinsamkeit” from Max Klinger’s Brahms-Phantasie

Black-and-white photograph of Sarah Vaughan, Pearl Bailey, and Ella Fitzgerald singing on a stage, with an audience member seated at a table visible to the right

Milt Hinton’s photograph of Sarah Vaughan, Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald

Score with musical notation at right and an image of a partially robed woman emerging from the water

Max Klinger (1857–1920)
Brahms-Phantasie (Brahms Fantasy)
Etching with aquatint, 1894
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection

Brahms-Phantasie (Brahms Fantasy)

In his Brahms-Phantasie, the symbolist artist Max Klinger combines graphic images with musical scores inspired by the works of the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) to create a series of “fantasies.” Shown here is an image accompanying “Hyperion’s Song of Destiny” from Brahms’s piano-vocal score Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny). The lyrics to the music, written by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), allude to mankind’s insensitivity to the beauty that surrounds him, causing him to flounder and eventually vanish from sight. The accompanying image features a voluptuous woman who has thrown off her cloak and rises from waters that are teeming with figures struggling to stay afloat.

Holding Division: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Co…

Not currently on view

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