Brahms: Complete Songs, Vol. 2

Brahms was opposed to the Lied cultivated by the ‘New German’ circle of composers around Franz Liszt who developed it into a highly artificial art form. In the books of the 49 Deutsche Volkslieder Brahms discovered a repository of dialogue songs, narrative ballads, laments, and songs of disputation and love, some tragic, others comic, that appealed to his need for authenticity. (Naxos)