Scroll down the page for 'Poet's Love' and 'Songs of a Wayfarer'

Beethoven An die ferne Geliebte - To the distant beloved

With the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte Beethoven made a significant formal contribution to the literature of German art-song. When he set the six poems of Alois Jeitteles he created the form - Liederkreis, as he called it.

This duo-sonata for voice and piano was revolutionary in that the poems are linked by transitional piano passages which hold the attention throughout. This continuity, however, was not adopted by any of the major song-composers.

The unceremonious modulations of rhythm, tonality and tempo in the first three songs are beautifully formed. For example, the melodic line of the first song is shaped in such a manner that it would be appropriate to all five verses. In the following song the bold treatment of the second stanza in which the singer muses abstractedly on a single note as to 'where he would rather be' is wonderfully inventive. The final song incorporates the evocative opening theme relating to nature and the joys of youth. Schumann was so taken by the work that he wove the melody of the sixth song into the first movement of his C maior Fantaisie which he dedicated to Clara Wieck.

Schumann Dichterliebe - Poet's Love

Schumann's vocal masterpiece Dichterliebe (Poet's Love), composed in the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck in 1840 to texts by the nineteenth century poet Heine has always been a vehicle for singers wishing to display their prowess on the art of singing and word communication.

Schumann's approach to song-writing was strongly coloured by the literary background of his youth, and equally important is the fact that he intended to become a pianist, not a composer. His response to poetry made him more fastidious than some of his predecessors in the details of word-setting, especially in connection with repetition, and his love for the piano made him particularly eager to give it a generous share of musical material.

This is perhaps the reason why the cycle has always attracted pianists as well as singers. Many of the songs have so much of the melody interpolated in the piano parts that they could, at the drop of a hat be transformed into lyrical Sehumanneske piano pieces. The blending of the voice and piano parts is sheer genius, worthy of Schubert at his greatest.

In the first song 'How Lovely is the month of May' Schumann doubles the voice and piano lines only in the first four bars then breaks away to new fields ever exploring the musical idiom in relation to the text. The Intimate interconnection of voice and piano can be seen in the way in which the piano is sometimes left to complete the vocal line. Sometimes the piano part alone suggests the mystery beneath the poem's surface, and the only time we meet with a repeated chord in the accompaniment comes in the song 'I Bear No Grudge'. Of all the beautiful songs contained in the cycle I would personally place 'Alone on a Summer Morning' among the greatest miniatures in the whole of music. Schumann's rich sentiment and Heine's biting terseness act as correctives to each other providing a balance between voice and piano which is perfectly maintained throughout the sixteen songs. After the bitterness of the final song the extended piano postlude with its beautiful slowly rippling arpeggios, makes an overwhelming, haunting effect. Had he composed no other songs future generations can hardly fail to count him among the greatest of German song-writers.

SCHUMANN - POET'S LOVE

1. How lovely is the month of May

2. Where'er my tears are falling

3. The rose and the lily

4. I gaze into your tender eyes

5. I plunge my soul in the lily’s petals

6. The Rhine's Holy River

7. I bear no grudge

8. If only the tiniest flowers

9. The flutes and fiddles are playing

10. If little songs remind me

11. A boy once loved a maiden

12. Alone on a summer morning

13. I wept as I lay dreaming

14. At nightfall I see you

15. Old fairy tales

16. The bad old songs are gone

Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen - Songs of a Wayfarer

Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen covers a wide range of emotions through unorthodox tonality, falling fourths and so on. One might say that this wayfaring lad is a nephew of the wanderer in Schubert's Winter Journey'. Both wayfarers were forsaken by their loved ones which plunged them into despair. In Mahler's case the cycle re-echoes his unhappy love affair with the actress Johanne Richter. Furthermore, unlike the cycles of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, the poems were written by Mahler himself.

In the first song the cheerful music which will enliven the wedding party soon takes on a gloomy atmosphere as the dejected lover tries to console himself with the beauties of nature by imitating the song of the birds as does young Siegfried in Wagner's opera of that name. But there is a sense of grief in the soft-footed piano accompaniment which brings into reality this self-deception.

The steady rhythm in the piano part of the next song, which fluctuates between staccato and legato, seems to say that for the moment the youth is happy to share in spring's jubilation. In the last line of the song we come to realise that his yearning is all in vein.

The fortissimo chords which herald in the voice in an outburst of despair in the following song has a suicidal ring to it. Here, the agony is so unbearable it seems as if a dagger has been plunged into his breast. His cries of bitter resentment to the pain that never rests is mirrored in the piano part.

In the last, and most beautiful of the songs, the blue eyes of the young girl are the only consolation as the traveller sets out on his lonely journey with love and sorrow as his only companions. The tranquil movement of the song is akin to the 'Brook's Lullaby' with which Schubert brings his cycle Die schone Mullerin to a close.

C. Philip Rodden

MAHLER - THE WAYFARER SONGS

1. On my sweetheart's wedding day

2. Walking in the fields today

3. I have a burning dagger in my heart

4. These two blue eyes

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