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Mendelssohn S ON GS Wi TH O U/ T WORDS

SIDE 1

Band 1—Op. 19, No. 1— SWEET REMEMBRANCE Op. 19, No. 3——HUNTING SONG Op. 19, No. 6 — VENETIAN BOAT SONG No. 1

Band 2— Op. 19, No. 5— RESTLESSNESS Op. 30, No. 3 — CONSOLATION Op. 30, No. 6 — VENETIAN BOAT SONG No. 2

Band 3 — Op. 38, No. 5 — PASSION Op. 38, No. 6 — DUET Op. 62, No. 2—THE DEPARTURE Op. 67, No. 4— SPINNING SONG

SIDE 2

Band 1 —Op. 62, No. 6 — SPRING SONG Op. 53, No. 3— AGITATION Op. 62, No. 5— VENETIAN BOAT SONG No. 3 Op. 67, No. 2—LOST ILLUSIONS

Band 2— Op. 62, No. 1— MAY BREEZES Op. 62, No. 3—- FUNERAL MARCH Op. 85, No. 1— REVERIE

Band 3—Op. 102, No. 3— TARANTELLA Op. 85, No. 4— ELEGY Op. 102, No. 5—-THE JOYOUS PEASANT Op. 85, No. 6— SONG OF THE TRAVELER

Over a period of eighteen years, that is to say for almost

half of his tragically short life, Mendelssohn kept a

kind of musical diary. A repository of tender and whim-

sical and thoughtful jottings, it is that endearing col-

lection — eight collections, in fact — of piano pieces

called Songs Without Words. They are alone a revealing

and entrancing mirror of Mendelssohn the man, the

artist, the musician. We have greater things from Men-

delssohn’s hand — the symphonies, the oratorios, the concertos, the overtures, even greater music for the

piano in other forms, all expressive of a rich and diver-

sified endowment. Here in the Songs Without Words

we have that same Mendelssohn, but a Mendelssohn with

a difference. Here once more is the supremely meticu-

lous craftsman; here we glimpse the same sincere and

genuine artist at work, master of his medium, perhaps

over-dainty, at times, and perhaps a shade over-senti-

mental too. This, after all, is Mendelssohn, and whether

in art or life, le style c’est Vhomme. In its given province

the quality of his genius was unique.

Now this uniqueness appears in an intimate and

special form in these half-hundred vignettes for the

piano. These are truly “songs without words.” They

proclaim Mendelssohn the singer and melodist as even

his songs “with words” never quite do in the same

degree. Had Mendelssohn words or word-patterns in

mind for these “songs,” conscious or subconscious

phrases that welled up in his mind only to lose their

specific identity in music? Was there a program, word

by word, phrase by phrase, by which each of these forty-

nine pieces evolved its moment of drama of ecstasy or

reverie? The answer, of course, is no. “If I found that

words did suflice,” wrote Mendelssohn to Marc-André

AN. IA DOREIMAN. N, Pranast

oO 4

Souchay, who had inquired about the “meaning” of

some of these wordless Lieder piano, “I would have

nothing more to do with music.’

A strong statement, yet one is impressed by the logic

of his argument as he develops it. Words, he tells his

French correspondent, are ambiguous and vague as

compared to music. Words cannot reach the soul in the

“If you ask me what I

was thinking of when I| wrote it,” “T would

say: just the ‘Song’ as it stands. And if I happen to have

had certain words in mind for one or another of these

thousand ways that music does.

he goes on,

songs, | would never want to tell them to anyone because

the same words would never mean the same things to different people.”

To Mendelssohn only the wordless song could com-

municate the same message and stir the same feelings

in one person as in another— feelings, he was certain,

that were beyond the reach of ordinary concrete lan-

guage. In the end Mendelssohn had to admit to his cor-

respondent that, in searching for an adequate reply to

his query, he was himself at the mercy of the very

words he found so inadequate. The truth of the matter

is that the burden and beauty of these Songs Without

Words can only be transmitted through themselves.

Their living essence of communicative artistic speech

dissolves in any attempt to transmute them into words.

Mendelssohn was only twenty when he began to find

this medium ideally suited for a certain intimacy and

brevity of musical thought. Few, if any, composers sur-

pass him in this delicacy of touch in small matters. They

are a jewel box of fastidiously wrought gems. For more

than a century these have given quiet satis-

faction to keyboard amateur and professional alike.

“songs”

They are for the most part controlled, even restrained,

in their feeling, yet often deep and tender and moving.

There is none of the emotional stress one comes upon

"in even the smaller piano pieces of Chopin and Schu-

mann, none of their recurring agitation of the heart —

and soul. In this tidy and tranquil world of Mendels- sohn’s creating, we are far removed from the troubled

cosmos of his more impetuous contemporaries. Content

and form are beautifully co-ordinated here in a faultless

design for living. There is no suggestion of an over-

burdened structure. What it bears, it bears easily. There’

is neither too little nor too much in any of these pieces.

There is a beginning and an end, and the “Song” is the shortestdistance between the two points.

They are reminiscent moments of song — memories

of Venetian gondoliers and Austrian hunters, of small —

German country places. Here are hunting songs and

barcaroles, folk songs and spinning songs. Here are

childhood moments of fantasy and enchantment from

the fairyland Mendelssohn knew so well and immortal-

ized in the Midsummer Night’s Dream music. As he

grows older, the moods vary and deepen, and we are

not surprised to find Mendelssohn at one point musing

darkly in terms of a “Funeral March.” Most cherished

of all to Mendelssohn himself must have been the sixth

and last “Song” of the third book, an Allegro in A-flat.

Mendelssohn called it “Duetto,” the “ being

none other than Mendelssohn and the adoring and_

adorable Cécile Jeanrenaud who became his wife in

183%,

Many of the Songs Without Words were composed in England, and it was perhaps in England that they en-

joyed — along with their composer — their longest and

greatest success, though there, as elsewhere, in the years

following Mendelssohn’s death, their popularity has

moved in cycles. These “Songs” are the sort of artistic

experience each generation discovers for itself, and in

so doing discovers that the quality of distinction, in

music, as in all other arts, is imperishable.

singers”

Notes by Louis BIANCOLLI The complete Songs Without Words, as recorded by Mme.

Dorfmann for RCA Victor, are available as LM-6128.

© by Radio Corporation of America, 1957

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