He was 26, she was 20. He taught piano, she was his student; together they played 4-hand piano music. She asked him to write some songs for her to sing with her two sisters. More women came to the home, and soon, Brahms was conducting a chorus of 20 young women, in mostly his own music.

For their second concert he composed Four Songs for Women's Chorus, Harp, and Two Horns, Op. 17. Clara Schumann described them as "pearls" — four lovely gems unique in tonal color and beauty.

Some describe the songs as laments, but they are so much more than sad songs. Tinged with memories of past love, they exquisitely depict melancholy and despair, but also sweeter times. 

Here is a recording by the Kansas City Chorale.

From the beginning of his career until the final months, Brahms composed music for choirs, small groups, and solo singers. Some are utterly simple, like "Erlaube mir," and some wonderfully elaborate — "Waldesnacht." All of them speak to your soul.

At the age of 31 Brahms published two glorious sacred motets for 5-voiced choir. Both begin with a hymntune melody (chorale), then continue with an exhilarating fugue for voices. In Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz what follows is a thrilling contrapuntal setting of "Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." Psalm 51, the text of this motet, is an earnest prayer, often sung in penitential times, but here penitence is rewarded with joy.

Rich and famous and living in Vienna, the 55-year-old composer walked every day to the Red Hedgehog for lunch, because he loved the music. The house band, Hungarian musicians — playing violin, cimbalom, tambourine, guitar — called it "Gypsy" music. The exciting rhythms and thrilling melodies inspired him to write his Hungarian Dances, first for piano and then for orchestra, and then a set of 11 songs for quartet or chorus and piano. His friends loved to sing them, and we do, too.