Schumann: Lied Edition, Vol. 2: Liederkreis, Op. 24 - Dichterliebe, Op. 48
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Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Liederkreis, Op. 24 Dichterliebe, Op. 48 Der arme Peter, Op. 53, No. 3 Belsazar, Op. 57 When the eighteen-year-old Robert...
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Liederkreis, Op. 24 Dichterliebe, Op. 48 Der arme Peter, Op. 53, No. 3 Belsazar, Op. 57
When the eighteen-year-old Robert Schumann had
completed his studies at the Zwickau Lyceum, he set out,
before his planned university law course, on a great
journey to South Germany. A letter of introduction secured
for him a meeting with the already famous Heinrich Heine,
who was then staying in Munich. Schumann had already
come to know Heine's Buch der Lieder, published the year
before, and had drawn his own conclusion from the poems
on the character of the poet: 'I imagined', Schumann's
report of the meeting goes, 'in Heine a sullen, misanthropic
man, who stood above men and life, rather than associate
closely with them. But I found him completely different ...
he met me in a friendly way, like a human, Greek
Anacreon, he pressed my hand ...; only on his mouth was
there a bitter, ironic smile ...'.
At this period it was not yet apparent that Schumann
would be counted one day among the ideal composers of
settings of Heine's poems, poems that completely suit the
cadences of folk-song, yet interrupted by disillusioning
changes of mood. In the foreground in Heine's poems are
often unhappy love affairs, but behind this long-familiar
motif lies more: modern world-weariness, and suffering at
the short-comings of contemporary society.
While he was at school Schumann had written some
romantic songs, but in the 1830s he only published piano
pieces, although he felt the form to be increasingly
restrictive. It may be that above all his love for Clara
Wieck and the prospect of his coming marriage removed
this creative block towards the end of the decade:
'...singing and playing makes me almost dead now; I
could die in it. Ah, Clara, what a happy thing it is to write
songs; I have missed it for a long time', Schumann writes
in a letter of 22nd February 1840 to his fiancee. The result
of inspiration was enormous: in Schumann's proverbial
Year of Song, 1840, he wrote almost 140 settings in a real
burst of creativity, more than half of the total number of his
songs.
An important source of inspiration for Schumann was
Heine's Buch der Lieder, from which over a quarter of the
songs written that year were taken. From the outset
Schumann created song cycles: the nine songs of the
Liederkreis, Op. 24, consisting of nine poems, form a
group in the Buch der Lieder. Later editions have omitted
some songs from the cycle and ignored the fact that
Schumann had written a sequence of songs in arch form,
each song related to another, and starting and finishing in
the ninth song Mit Myrten und Rosen (With myrtle and
roses) in the key of D major. Furthermore the range of
expression extends from the inner ecstasy of Ich wandelte
unter Baumen (I wandered among the trees) to the
dramatic excitement of Warte, warte, wilder Schiffmann
(Wait, wait, savage boatman) and the epigrammatic
brevity of Anfangs wollt ich fast verzagen (At first I would
almost despair), which is built on simple chord sequences
in the bass.
Still more popular is the cycle Schumann composed in
the space of a week at the end of May 1840, Dichterliebe,
Op. 48, settings from the Lyrisches Intermezzo of the Buch
der Lieder. From Heine's 66 (in later editions 65) poems
Schumann had originally marked an extensive group of 28
texts for setting, of which unfortunately only twenty songs
were written. Schumann omitted four of these from the
publication and first issued them years later as part of Opp.
127 and 142.
The title Dichterliebe (Poet's Love), which is
Schumann's, is a concise summary of its contents. The
person who speaks in the individual poems is identified
with the poet and at the same time the disappointed lover,
whose beloved has married another. The figure of the
woman remains shadowy, and at the centre stands the poet
in his moods of despair and anger, transfigured memories
and sadness.
Schumann's setting follows Heine's sequence with
minor changes, and offers a concentrated picture of the
Lyrisches Intermezzo. At the beginning come memories of
the start of the affair, yet doubt soon insinuates itself as to
the honesty of the beloved: 'Doch wenn du sprichst: ich
liebe dich! / So muss ich weinen bitterlich' (Yet when you
say; I love you! / I must weep bitterly) it says in the fourth
song. Despair changes to anger also in the seventh
placatory 'Ich grolle nicht' (I bear no grudge), which
Schumann rightly sets with a forceful piano part of
complaint and revolt against the declaration of the speaker.
The poet now gives in to his pain, but also finds alleviation
in the dream vision, and finally wins, through his
mourning, distance from what has happened in the
sixteenth song, Die alten, bosen Lieder (The old, bad
songs).
The exactly calculated sequence of original keys
corresponds to this arch of emotions. With the uncertain
swing between F sharp minor and A major in the first song
the cycle starts in the range of sharp keys and sinks down
into B flat; the crux is reached with the C major of Ich
grolle nicht. Through G minor, E flat major and B flat
major we reach the desperate E flat minor of Ich hab' im
Traum geweinet (I wept in my dream), where through the
enharmonic modulation (B major instead of C flat major)
in the fourteenth song there is a return to sharp keys.
Through E major we come in the final song to its relative C
sharp minor; the postlude, notated in D flat major, stands
for C sharp major, the dominant major of the initial F sharp
minor. The next unhappy love affair could follow the same
pattern, or, as Heine himself says, 'Es ist eine alte
Geschichte, doch passiert sie immer neu' (It is an old story,
but it always happens anew).
The cycle ends in a different way: the return to the
beginning is given not to the singer but to the pianist. In
none of the other song-cycles of Schumann is such an
independent rôle given to the piano. Not only do the
individual songs often have extended postludes, but the
final postlude has rather the independence of a separate
piece. It reflects and meditates on the whole cycle, and
notably picks up again the piano ending of the twelfth
song, Am leuchtended Sommermorgen (In the shining
summer morning). It also looks back again at the first song,
Im wunderschonen Monat Mai (In the wonderful month of
May), offering a contrast to the rising figures there and a
definitive return to tranquillity in its harmonically open
ending.
It has often been said that Schumann's Heine settings
lack the poet's characteristic irony. It is not true, however,
that Schumann had no feeling for this side of Heine's
poems. Certainly there is a distinction: Heine's irony lies in
the unexpected turn that the text takes; Schumann's irony,
where he develops it, is realised not as a musical point that
flares up in a single moment but as an over-all tension
between the vocal part and the piano accompaniment
throughout the song. In the eleventh song, for example, the
scornful liveliness of the piano part is in glaring contrast
with the breaking heart of which Heine speaks, and just as
unconcernedly in the ninth song the dance-music plays
away in the background while the poet suffers the sorrow
of love.
Schumann's Der arme Peter, Op. 53, No. 3 (Poor
Peter), first published in 1845 also comes in all probability
from 1840. Heine's basic theme of disappointed love is to
be found again in a group of three songs, or, rather,
dramatic scenes. Schumann's setting in the voice part and
the piano accompaniment emphasizes the simple folk-song
style. As in the ninth song of Dichterliebe we are first
brought to the scene of a ball, where the beloved dances
with the poet's rival. The second part, an arioso and in
recitative style, lets poor Peter express his despair, while
the final part sees him from a distance staggering towards
the grave, in the solemn rhythm of a Saraband.
Like Der arme Peter, Belsazar, Op. 57, is included by
Heine among his Romances. In this poem the biblical story
from the Book of Daniel is told, of the proud Babylonian
King Belshazzar who desecrated the sacred vessels of
Jehovah and to whom there appeared writing on the wall
that he could not understand: an ill omen for the one who
read it.
Schumann's setting of 1840, later published as a
Ballade, shows the wide range of his song settings from
the first. In accordance with the subject the vocal part is
declamatory rather than lyrical, yet Schumann at the same
time allows the pattern of varied strophic form to appear,
combining the 21 couplets of Heine into four large
sections. The last line is set as a distanced epilogue: the
tempo slows to an Adagio, in which, almost in recitative
over clear chords harmonically leading into the final
disclosure, Belshazzar's death by the hand of his own
servant is revealed.
Gerhard Dietel
English version by Keith Anderson
Liederkreis, Op. 24 (more info)
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Morgen steh' ich auf und frage - 1:19
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Es treibt mich hin, es treibt mich her - 1:16
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Ich wandelte unter den Baumen - 3:54
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Schone Wiege meiner Leiden - 4:15
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Lieb' Liebchen, leg's Handchen auf Herze mein - 0:48
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Warte, warte, wilder Schiffmann - 2:00
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Berg' und Burgen schaun herunter - 3:56
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Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen - 0:51
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Mit Myrten und Rosen - 3:54
Romanzen und Balladen, Book 3, Op. 53 (more info)
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Der arme Peter, Op. 53, No. 3 - 5:08
Belsatzar, Op. 57 (more info)
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Belsazar, Op. 57 - 4:20
Dichterliebe, Op. 48 (text by H. Heine) (more info)
Composed by:
Robert Schumann
Conducted by:
Bruno Walter
William Aide, piano
Andreas Post, tenor
Eugen Wangler, piano
Patrice Michaels Bedi, soprano
Deborah Sobol, piano
Anita Keller, piano
Stefan Laux, piano
Richard Tauber, tenor
Studio pianist, piano
Lotte Lehmann, soprano
Ulf Bastlein, baritone
Oliver Pohl, piano
Helmut Deutsch,
Hubert Giesen, piano
Jochen Kowalski, counter-tenor
Michael McMahon, piano
Roman Trekel, baritone
Sebastian Bluth, baritone
Tatjana Dravenau, piano
Thomas Bauer, baritone
Uta Hielscher, piano
Shelley Katz, piano
Josef Protschka, tenor
Fritz Wunderlich, tenor
Christian Elsner, tenor
James Schwabacher, tenor
Kevin McMillan, baritone
Lois Marshall, mezzo-soprano
Recording date: 1919 - 1926
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Im wunderschonen Monat Mai - 1:53
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Aus meinen Tranen spriessen - 0:55
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Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne - 0:38
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Wenn ich in deine Augen seh' - 2:05
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Ich will meine Seele tauchen - 0:57
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Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome - 2:29
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Ich grolle nicht - 1:34
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Und wussten's die Blumen, die kleinen - 1:19
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Das ist ein Floten und Geigen - 1:30
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Hor' ich das Liedchen klingen - 2:22
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Ein Jungling liebt ein Madchen - 1:15
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Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen - 2:51
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Ich hab' im Traum geweinet - 2:29
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Allnachtlich im Traume - 1:14
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Aus alten Marchen winkt es - 2:29
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Die alten bosen Lieder - 4:54