Unlocking Late Schumann A guide to late works in the …torch.ox.ac.uk/sites/torch/files/publications/Unlocking...Unlocking Late Schumann A guide to late works in the Oxford Lieder

Unlocking Late Schumann

A guide to late works in the Oxford Lieder Festival (14-29th October 2016)

By Frankie Perry

See the festival’s website, www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/events/forthcoming, for

information about other pieces in the programmes and concert venues.

Join the fun on Twitter by following @OxfordLieder and @RSchumanntweets

n.b. This guide aims to include late music featured in the festival across all genres

from 1849—this year was chosen as it marked Schumann’s fervent return to lied

composition. There will inevitably be omissions, for which apologies.

Friday 14th October, 7.30pm (opening recital)

Christian Gerhaher, baritone

Gerold Huber, piano

Drei Gesänge, Op. 83

March-April 1850.

Texts by various authors, listed below. The provenance of the first song’s poem is

disputed, with its author labelled only ‘J.B.’ in the manuscript. It has been attributed

by many to Julius Buddeus, despite no published volume of his poetry existing.

Schumann’s autograph specifies that the songs were written for soprano voice—an

indication rare among Schumann’s lieder. It opens with a meditation upon unrequited

love, with yearning lines and changing textures that echo the poem’s mix of emotions:

hope, longing, and resignation. A song from the perspective of the ‘flower of

resignation’ follows, which, in contrast, has an immediate lyricism: its memorable

vocal melody is underpinned by a delicate accompaniment coloured with occasional

chromaticism. The concluding song brings another textural change, with a chordal

piano part that roughly follows the vocal line. This D minor song ends unexpectedly

in F major, which heightens the interest of the set’s overarching harmonic logic (D-

http://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/events/forthcoming

flat A d F).

i. Resignation (‘J.B.’, attr. Julius Buddeus)

ii. Die Blume der Ergebung (Friedrich Rückert)

iii. Der Einsiedler (Joseph von Eichendorff)

Sechs Gedichte von N. Lenau und Requiem, Op. 90

August 1850.

Texts by Nikolaus Lenau, except the closing ‘Requiem’, which is a translation of an

anonymous medieval Latin text, supposedly Heloise’s lament for Abelard. Schumann

wrote the songs believing Lenau to have recently died, but news arrived of the poet’s

actual death just before the songs were first performed. Clara noted that the news

added to the bitter tone of the cycle to ‘put us all in a melancholy mood’. Schumann

requested that the publisher, Kistner, should include on the title page emblems of

mourning—‘a funeral bouquet and a star showing behind it’. The cycle begins with a

blacksmith’s song in a resolutely lively E-flat major, but this optimism soon fades.

The rose of the second song is wilting, dying—the music’s prized melody and

tumbling piano figures cannot save it. The trajectory of despair continues to the final,

bitter Lenau setting, ‘Der schwere Abend’, which brings rhythmic and melodic

evocations of the tearful dreams of an earlier poetic persona; while G-flat major is

clung onto in this earlier song (‘Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet’ from Dichterliebe,

1840), it is its relative E-flat minor—the flattest key there is—that prevails here. The

requiem offers hope of redemption in its return to vocal and pianistic lyricism, and it

ends the cycle back in E-flat major.

i. Lied eines Schmiedes

ii. Meine Rose

iii. Kommen und Scheiden

iv. Die Sennin

v. Einsamkeit

vi. Der schwere Abend

vii. Requiem

Saturday 15th October, 7.30pm

Sophie Karthäuser, soprano

Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano

Eugene Asti, piano

Sechs Gedichte von N. Lenau und Requiem, Op. 90 August 1850.

Text: Nikolaus Lenau. These songs are introduced in the 14th October listing above,

and are split here between the soprano and mezzo soprano voices of Karthäuser and

Connolly.

‘An den Abendstern’, from Mädchenlieder, Op. 103/iv

May-June 1851.

Text: Elisabeth Kulmann. The cycle is more fully listed under 18th October; this

gentle song to an evening star is the last of Schumann’s duet settings of Kulmann’s

verse.

‘Sommerruh’, WoO. 7

November 1849.

Text by Christian Schad. This little-known duet was written near the end of

Schumann’s ‘second year of song’ (1849), and is a simple paean to the loveliness of

summer. It was prepared for publication by Brahms, appearing in 1893, alongside a

handful of Schumann’s youthful lieder of the late 1820s.

Sunday 16th October, 7.30pm

Christopher Maltman

Graham Johnson, piano

‘Ballade des Harfners’, Op.98a/ii

May-June 1849.

Text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; for an introduction to the Lieder und Gesänge

aus Wilhelm Meister, see the complete cycle’s listing on 23rd October. This is the

second song of the cycle, which has been viewed as the furthest removed from

Schumann’s 1840 style. The Harper’s Ballad introduces this famously enigmatic and

troubled character, reflected in the music by frequent and significant shifts in melody,

harmony, and accompaniment. Every page of the score looks completely different, as

the opening’s arpeggiated harp-like chords give way to creeping chromatic quavers

and, eventually, rapid semiquaver motion. Some abrupt texture changes also bring

harmonic shifts: from the B-flat major beginning, we find ourselves suddenly hearing

G-flat, D-flat, and C-flat sonorities in tonal pivots that might bring Schubert to mind.

Der Handschuh, Op. 87

c. 1849.

Text by Friedrich Schiller. The overtly dramatic setting of Schiller’s famous ballad

certainly makes up for its relative brevity; Schumann displays his powers of depiction

by, for instance, subtly changing the musical direction as different large cats (a lion, a

tiger, two leopards) enter the tale. Graham Johnson suggests the composer had

‘clearly closely observed the behavior of the domesticated cat’.

Vier Husarenlieder von Nikolaus Lenau, Op. 117 March 1851.

Texts by Nikolaus Lenau. The military poems go between wild bravado, revelling in

‘women, wine and song’, to dark accounts of bloodshed. The music reflects this, pre-

figuring in many ways the sinister soldiers’ tales found in Mahler’s Des knaben

Wunderhorn. Thematic and musical resonances can also be heard between these

songs and ‘Der Soldat’ from Schumann’s 1840 settings of Hans Christian Andersen

(Op. 40), which is also on the programme.

i. Der Husar, trara!

ii. Der leidige Frieden

iii. Den grünen Zeigern

iv. Da liegt der Feinde gestreckte Schar

Monday 17th October, 1.10pm

Mhairi Lawson, soprano

Stephan Loges, bass baritone

Eugene Asti, piano

Excerpts from Lieder-Album für die Jugend, Op. 79

April-June 1849.

Texts by various authors, detailed below. The Lieder-Album is split across festival

performances; a complete list of its songs and an introductory note can be found at the

end of this guide.

xiii. Marienwürmchen (Anon.)

xxii. Des Sennen Abschied (Friedrich Schiller)

xii. Der Sandmann (Hermann Kletke)

xxi. Kinderwacht (Melchior von Diepenbrock)

xxvi. Schneeglöckchen (Friedrich Rückert)

xxvii. Lied Lynceus des Türmers (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

xvii. Die wandelnde Glocke (Goethe)

Sieben Lieder von Elisabeth Kulmann, Op. 104

May-June 1851.

Texts by Elisabeth Kulmann. The figure of the ill-fated Kulmann, allegedly a literary

prodigy who penned over one thousand poems before her death aged 17, certainly

captured Schumann’s imagination, as he dedicated these settings ‘to the memory of a

girl who ceased to linger among us long ago’, who ‘may have been one of those

wonderfully gifted beings who appear but rarely at infrequent intervals on earth’. The

texts and their settings are tinged at times with sadness, optimism, and naivety.

i. Mond, meiner Seele Liebling

ii. Viel Glück zur Reise, Schwalben!

iii Du nennst mich armes Mädchen

iv. Der Zeisig

v. Reich mir die Hand, o Wolke

vi. Die letzten Blumen starben

vii. Gekämpft hat meine Barke

The songs are followed by a short verbal postscript (‘Nachschrift’) written by

Schumann.

Monday 17th October, 7.30pm Joan Rodgers, soprano

Dietrich Henschel, baritone

Sholto Kynoch, piano


April-June 1849.



end of this guide.

vi. Sonntag (August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben)

xiv. Die Waise (Fallersleben)

xvi. Weihnachtslied (Hermann Kletke)

xv. Das Glück (Christian Friedrich Hebbel)

xx. Die Schwalben (Auguste von Pattberg)

Tuesday 18th October, 1.10pm Gemma Lois Summerfield, soprano

Soraya Mafir, soprano

Ian Tindale, piano

Mädchenlieder, Op. 103

May-June 1851.

Texts by Elisabeth Kulmann, who is introduced in the listing for 17th October; 24

hours after hearing the Sieben Lieder Op. 104, this concert features Schumann’s four

remaining Kulmann settings, for two female voices, published as Op. 103.

Schumann’s records do list twelve settings of her poetry, but only eleven are extant

today. Again, the poems are entrenched in the imagery of nature, and Schumann’s

settings reflect this youthful love for the world.

i. Mailied

ii. Frühlingslied

iii. An die Nachtigall

iv. An den Abendstern

Drei Gesänge aus Lord Byrons Hebräischen Gesängen, Op. 95

December 1849.

Texts by Lord Byron. Schumann had set single songs from Byron’s Hebrew Melodies

before, including a notable example included in Myrthen, Op. 25 (1840). These three

settings use a German translation of the poems, by Julius Körner, but Schumann

deviates from Körner’s version at multiple points; Jon Finson suggests that his

alterations enhance certain original sentiments that were lost in translation. The songs

were originally written for voice with harp accompaniment, with the score noting that

the piano could be used as an alternative. Traces of the original instrumentation can

be heard through spread chords and through the idiomatic treatment of chromatic

passages.

i. Die Tochter Jepthas

ii. An den Mond

iii. Dem Helden

‘Liedchen von Marie und Papa’, WoO. 26/iii

12 September 1852.

Text by Marie Schumann, who was then 11. The short duet for two voices was first

performed the day after its composition, on the occasion of Clara’s 33rd birthday; it

offers a glimpse into both Schumann’s two-part invention and the family’s domestic

music making.

Wednesday 19th October, 1.10pm Katherine Watson, soprano

William Dazeley, baritone


Vier Gesänge, Op. 142

May and November 1840.

Texts by various authors, listed below. Despite the late opus number, these songs

were composed in 1840. ‘Trost im Gesang’ was composed to be part of the Kerner-

Lieder Op. 35, while the two Heine settings were destined for Dichterliebe. The four

were published together by Clara after her husband’s death.

i. Trost im Gesang (Justinus Kerner)

ii. Lehn’ deine Wang’ an meine Wang’ (Heinrich Heine)

iii. Mädchen-Schwermut (likely Lily Bernhard)

iv. Mein Wagen rollet langsam (Heinrich Heine)


April-June 1849.



end of this guide.

xxiii. Er ist’s (Eduard Mörike)

xviii. Frühlingslied (August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben)

vix. Mailied (Christian Adolf Overbeck von Lübeck)

ii. Schmetterling (Fallersleben)

iii. Frühlingsbotschaft (Fallersleben)

iv. Frühlingsgruss (Fallersleben)

xi. Hinaus ins Freie (Fallersleben)

xix. Frühlings Ankunft (Fallersleben)

Wednesday 19th October, 7.30pm Bryony Williams, soprano

John Mark Ainsley, tenor

David Owen Norris, piano

Vier Duette, Op. 78

July-August 1849.

Texts by Friedrich Rückert, Justinus Kerner, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christian

Friedrich Hebbel. This set is more fully listed under 28th October.

Thursday 20th October, 11.30am Raphaela Papadakis, soprano

Gildas String Quartet

Aribert Reimann, Sechs Gesänge von Robert Schumann, Op. 107

1994

Texts by various authors; the Op. 107 songs are introduced under the listing for 26th

October. Aribert Reimann’s orchestrations and reinventions of Romantic lieder by

Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, fall into a tradition of timbral

adaptation that extends back to, for instance, Brahms orchestrating Schubert’s lieder.

The Ophelia song ‘Herzeleid’ connects the Op. 107 set with the other songs on the

programme: Brahms’s Ophelia-Lieder, also arranged for string quartet and soprano.

Along similar lines, Robin Holloway’s reworking of the Heine Liederkreis, Op. 24,

can be heard on 28th October.

Thursday 20th October, 1.10pm

Benjamin Appl, baritone

Gary Matthewman, piano

Zwei Balladen, Op. 122

June 1852 (ii); September 1853 (i).

Texts by Christian Friedrich Hebbel, and Percy Bysshe Shelley in translation. This is

a rare opportunity to hear two of Schumann’s declamation ballads for speaker and

piano — a genre he had first explored in ‘Schön Hedwig’. The musical emphasis is on

creating an atmosphere that reflects the supernatural literary themes; the pieces

demonstrate the far reaches of Schumann’s exploration of genre, timbre, and text-

setting in the later 1840s. The composer described them as a ‘kind of composition that

arguably does not yet exist’, although precedents to some aspects of the writing can

be found, for instance, in his melodramatic music for Byron’s Manfred.

i. Ballade vom Heideknaben (Hebbel)

ii. Die Flüchtlinge (Shelley)

Sechs Gesänge, Op. 107 January and September 1851; January 1852.

Texts by various authors; for an introduction to this cycle, see the listing on 26th

October.

Thursday 20th Oct, 7.30pm

Rowan Pierce, soprano

Ann Murray, mezzo-soprano

Timothy Langston, tenor

Sir Thomas Allen, baritone

Malcolm Martineau, piano

Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74

March 1849.

Spanish poems by various authors, translated into German by Emanuel Geibel (1815-

1884). This is the first of Schumann’s Liederspiele to be heard in the festival; the

Spanisches Liebeslieder and the Minnespiel can be heard in the closing concert on 29th

October. Liederspiele, or ‘song plays’, are collections of songs in various

configurations of four singers and piano, from solos to quartets. They are an example

of Schumann’s vocal collections aimed for domestic markets: amateur musicians

would play through the songs around a piano at social gatherings. In this capacity,

they can be situated within a tradition of music written for enthusiastic bourgeoisie

that dated back to Schubert’s predecessors, such as Johann Friedrich Reichardt. It also

taps into the contemporary fashion for exoticism, with the imagined, idealised

‘Spanishness’ coming through in exaggerated rhythms and heightened melodic

simplicity and catchiness.

i. Erste Begegnung

ii. Intermezzo

iii. Liebesgram

iv. In der Nacht

v. Es ist verraten

vi. Melancholie

vii. Geständnis

viii. Botschaft

ix. Ich bin geliebt

x. Der Contrabandiste

Friday 21st October, 7.30pm Juliane Banse, soprano

Marcelo Amarai, piano

Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Op. 135

December 1852.

Texts collated and translated by Gisbert Vincke; while all were originally attributed to

Mary Stuart, the only one for which this remains even slightly credible is the third,

‘To Queen Elizabeth’. The songs were composed in the spirit of a wide-spread

sentimental fascination with the life and death of Mary Stuart that had swept across

Europe from the mid eighteenth century. Other examples include Donizetti’s opera

Maria Stuarda, and Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 play that dramatises Mary’s final days.

While described by Eric Sams as ‘dismal’, and as representing the end point in

Schumann’s creative decline, they demonstrate an acute sensitivity to dramatic

characterisation in their use of stark chords and almost recitative-like vocal lines.

Textures from Schumann’s earlier song-writing styles also make an appearance, with

the flowing semiquavers and lyrical vocal melody of the first song evoking the

opening of the 1840 Eichendorff Liederkreis.

i. Abschied von Frankreich

ii. Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes

iii. An die Königin Elisabeth

iv. Abschied von der Welt

v. Gebet

Requiem, from Sechs Gedichte von N. Lenau und Requiem, Op. 90

August 1850.

Text translated from a medieval lament. As an appendage to the Lenau songs, the

Requiem is often performed apart from the preceding six songs. Its themes are

universal: transcendence, peace, (and the beautiful harps of angels). If both the Prayer

that ends the Maria Stuart songs and the Requiem are untransposed in this

performance, a semitonal shift downwards will occur between the pessimistic E minor

close of the former and the gentle E-flat major that begins the latter. For more

information on the Lenau cycle, see the 14th October listing.

Sunday 23rd October, 7.30pm

Bo Skovhus, baritone

Matti Hirvonen, piano

Des Sängers Fluch, Op. 139

January (iv) and July (vii) 1852.

Text: Richard Pohl’s adaptation of a ballad by Johann Ludwig Uhland. This large-

scale work for five soloists, chorus and orchestra was an experiment in genre and

dedicated to Brahms. Two excerpts are performed here, for voice and piano.

‘Provenzalisches Lied’ tells a tale of troubadour song and courtly love; aspects of the

simple, yet still somewhat operatic, song, along with the orchestral version’s reliance

of a basic repeated harp accompaniment, are curiously reminiscent of the songs sung

by Wagner’s Meistersingers, written over a decade later. The ‘Provenzalisches Lied’

is sung by the younger man of the story, while the more stately ‘Ballade’ is sung by

the older Harper, recounting another historical tale, this time of the Harper’s three

songs.

iv. Provenzalisches Lied

vii. Ballade

Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, Op. 98a

May, June, and July 1849.

Text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Written in three short bursts across May, June,

and July 1849, John Daverio has described these songs as Schumann’s ‘most

emotionally charged song cycle’. They have been widely considered to be the furthest

removed in terms of style and coherence from the 1840 cycles, and, as Jon Finson

suggests, demonstrate a ‘conscious transposition of the lied from the home to the

concert hall’. These are difficult songs, aimed for professional performers, and show

his powerful commitment to precise and sensitive characterisation. Mignon and the

Harper are two troubled and enigmatic characters from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister,

whose strange songs have appealed to many composers including, notably, Schubert

and Wolf. Schumann’s music reflects the dark intrigue of the characters, with

creeping chromatic lines, abrupt shifts in texture, unexpected harmonic trajectories,

and melodies that are often strangely hard to grasp.

i. Mignon, “Kennst du das Land?”

ii. Ballade des Harfners

iii. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

iv. Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass

v. Heiss’ mich nicht reden

vi. Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt

vii. Singet nicht in Trauertönen

viii. An die Türen will ich schleichen

ix. So lasst mich scheinen

Monday 24th October, 4.15pm Schola Cantorum of Oxford

James Burton, director

Two settings of ‘John Anderson’, from Romanzen und Balladen für Chor i, Op.

67/v, and iii, Op. 145/iv

1849.

Text by Robert Burns. Schumann’s regular engagement with the Dresden Chorverein

in the late 1840s led to him composing choral works of many configurations. John

Daverio suggests that in his four sets of Romanzen und Balladen composed in 1849,

he ‘convincingly transforms the lyric-epic ‘I’ into a lyric-epic ‘we’’, thus creating

‘unaccompanied choral lieder’ that have the same immediacy of expression as his

songs for voice and piano. The two settings of the same poem by Robert Burns are not

unalike; in different keys, they share their understated atmosphere and relaxed triple

metre. John Anderson was a carpenter and close friend of Burns.

Two pieces from Vier doppelchörige Gesänge, Op. 141

1849.

Texts by Friedrich Rückert and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe’s ‘Talismane’

was first set by Schumann as a lied in Myrthen, Op. 25; removing the piano and

adding a whole host of extra voices conveys the text in a very different way, with the

interplay between the halves of the double choir demonstrating Schumann’s endless

capacity for invention and reinvention. Rückert’s poem is given a more serene setting,

reflecting the repeated sentiments of the stanzas: the heavenly stars offer hope, peace,

happiness, and dreams.

i. An die Sterne (Rückert)

iv. Talismane (Goethe)

Tuesday 25th October, 7.30pm Mark Padmore, tenor

Simon Lepper, piano

Fünf Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 127

1840 (i, iii, iii, v); 1850 (iv).

Texts by various authors, detailed below. The Op. 127 and Op. 142 sets were among

the last songs that occupied Schumann, in late 1853; however, almost all of them had

been written in 1840. He returned to them over a decade later, but struggled to find

publishers who would take his newly collated sets; each constituted of songs he had

removed from the Kerner-Lieder and Dichterliebe. Clara eventually had them

published, with these five appearing first, as Op. 127 in 1854, and the Op. 142 set

emerging later, after the composer’s death.

i. Sängers Trost (Justinus Kerner)

ii. Dein Angesicht (Heinrich Heine)

iii. Es leuchtet meine Liebe (Heinrich Heine)

iv. Mein altes Ross (Mortiz von Strachwitz)

v. Schlusslied des Narren (William Shakespeare, trans. Schlegel)

Wednesday 26th October, 1.10pm Felicity Lott, soprano

Eugene Asti, piano

Sechs Gesänge, Op. 107 January and September 1851; January 1852.

Texts by various authors, detailed below. Written in two loosely-connected sets of

three, but published as one, this collection was dedicated to the mezzo soprano Sophie

Schloss, with whom Clara performed the Mörike setting ‘Der Gärtner’ in a Düsseldorf

concert in March 1851. Female personas emerge in multiple songs (‘Herzeleid’, ‘Die

Fenterscheibe’, ‘Die Spinnerin’), acting as disparate foretellers of the more sustained

explorations of feminine subjects in the Kulmann songs, written later in 1851, and the

Maria Stuart lieder of 1852. ‘Herzeleid’ is Schumann’s contribution to a cross-century

canon of Ophelia songs: his setting is of Titus Ulrich’s adaptation of Queen

Gertrude’s lament. The song ends with a lamenting repeat of ‘Ophelia’; it is a

subdued setting, quite as full of melancholy and delicacy as those of Brahms, Berlioz,

Rihm, Abrahamsen, and others. ‘Die Spinnerin’ was Schumann’s first setting of Paul

Heyse, who was born in 1830 and would later be set more extensively by Brahms. As

may be expected, the piano’s right hand plays constant semiquavers yet, unlike

Schubert’s Gretchen, the spinning girl spins with complacency rather than dramatic

urgency, as the monotony of her task illuminates the disappointments of life and love.

i. Herzeleid (Titus Ulrich)

ii. Die Fensterscheibe (Titus Ulrich)

iii. Der Gärtner (Eduard Mörike)

iv. Die Spinnerin (Paul Heyse)

v. Im Wald (Wilhelm Müller)

vi. Abendlied (Johann Gottfried Kinkel)

Wednesday 26th October, 7.30pm Christina Gansch, soprano

Bethan Langford, mezzo-soprano

Ben Johnson, tenor

Mark Stone, baritone

Robert Holl, bass


Lieder für drei Frauenstimmen, Op. 114

1853.

Texts by various authors, listed below. This little-performed set was written late in

Schumann’s life and reflects his ongoing explorations of the possibilities and confines

of genre; the three settings lie somewhere between lied and part-song. The first song

pointedly nods to choral writing in its ceremonial, chorale-like lamentation on the

death of a bird. The second places the three voices in close harmony, while the third

uses an intricate and chromatic contrapuntal figuration: the voices enter canonically

with a wandering melodic line, underpinned by the piano, before coming together for

a simple conclusion in F major.

i. Nänie (Ludwig Bechstein)

ii. Triolett (Christian L’Egru)

iii. Spruch (Friedrich Rückert)

‘Meine Rose’ and ‘Einsamkeit’ from Sechs Gedichte von N. Lenau, Op. 90

August 1850.

Texts by Nikolaus Lenau. The complete cycle is described under the 14th October

listing. The two songs here are the second and fifth in the cycle, and present very

different examples of Schumann’s late lieder. ‘Meine Rose’ recalls the immediate

melodic beauty and lyricism of Schumann’s 1840 style, and perhaps for that reason is

one of Schumann’s best known and loved late songs. ‘Einsamkeit’ is based on

wandering lines akin to those first heard in the 1840 songs ‘Zwielicht’ (Op. 39) and

‘Muttertraum’ (1840): sparse, chromatic, linear and quasi-contrapuntal piano writing

became a much more frequently employed textural device among Schumann’s later

songs. Susan Youens describes this, beautifully, as his ‘propensity to begin with a

single line of pitches and then have subsequent countermelodies branch off from the

main stem like leafless branches on one of Caspar David Friedrich’s trees in winter’.

Deklamation ‘Schön Hedwig’, Op. 106

December 1849.

Text by Christian Friedrich Hebbel. Schumann first had the idea of writing for

spoken, rather than sung, voice in 1845, but it was the end of 1849 before he

completed his first foray into the genre. Kistner, who published the Lenau songs Op.

90 among others, abruptly rejected the setting in 1852; it was accepted instead by

Barthold Senff, who suggested it was something ‘completely new’ that he hoped

would ‘pleasantly surprise the musical world’. With the voice deprived of sung lines,

different manners of dramatic expression are explored, as is demonstrated by the

highly active piano part.

Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, Op. 112

1851

Text by Moritz Horn. The Pilgrimage of the Rose is another work situated between

genres. More usually performed in its version for orchestra, soloists and choruses,

where it is thought of as a fairy-tale cantata, here it is heard in its original version for

piano accompaniment. Schumann insisted that both versions were suitable for

performance. A story unfolds of a rose who longs to experience human emotion; she

becomes Rosa, and does exactly that. Richard Wigmore has described the work as

‘German Romanticism at its most sickly sweet’, and Schumann’s music certainly

reflects Horn’s imaginative world.

i. Die Frühlingslüfte bringen

ii. Johannis war gekommen

iii. Elfenreigen: Wir tanzen, wir tanzen

iv. Und wie sie sangen

v. So sangen sie, da dammert's schon

vi. Bin ein armes Waisenkind

vii. Es war der Rose erster Schmerz!

viii. Wie Blätter am Baum

ix. Die letze Scholl' hinunter rollt

x. Gebet: Dank, Herr, dir dort im Sternenland

xi. Ins Haus des Totengräbers

xii. Zwischen grünen Bäumen

xiii. Von dem Greis geleitet

xiv. Bald hat das neue Töchterlein

xv. Bist du im Wald gewandelt

xvi. Im Wald, gelehnt am Stamme

xvii. Der Abendschlummer

xviii. O sel'ge Zeit

xix. Wer kommt am Sonntagsmorgen

xx. Ei Mühle, liebe Mühle

xxi. Was klingen denn die Hörner

xxii. Im Hause des Müllers

xxiii. Und wie ein Jahr verronnen ist

xxiv. Röslein!

Thursday 27th October, 1.30pm Sophie Daneman, soprano

Mark Stone, baritone



April-June 1849.



end of this guide.


xiii. Marienwürmchen (Anon.)


x. Käuzlein (Anon.)

i. Der Abendstern (August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben)

v. Vom Schlaraffenland (Fallersleben)

viii. Des Knaben Berglied (Johann Ludwig Uhland)

xxv. Des Buben Schützenlied (Friedrich Schiller)

ix. Mailied (Christian Adolf Overbeck von Lübeck)


Thursday 27th October, 7.30pm

James Gilchrist, tenor

Anna Tilbrook, piano

Sechs Gesänge von Wilfried von der Neun, Op. 89

May 1850.

Texts by Wilfried von der Neun. These songs were written at the request of a young

and unknown poet, Friedrich Wilhelm Schöpff (von der Neun being his pseudonym),

who sent his poems to Schumann in the hope that they may be elevated to higher

planes by the addition of music. Schumann obliged, but, in Jon Finson’s words, ‘it

should come as no surprise that op. 89 does not stand as his most inspired group of

lieder’, as he ‘typically wrote his best songs to verse of high quality’. The sixth song

is perhaps the best-known, opening with the singer alone: ‘Röselein, Röselein!’; the

piano moves between off-beat accompaniment figures and upward flourishes, and the

general air is one of a distorted dance, somewhere between Schubert’s

‘Heidenröslein’ and the more serious ‘Meine Rose’ that Schumann would compose in

his next collection of songs. It ends with the reminder that all roses are thorned.

i. Es stürmet am Abendhimmel

ii. Heimliches Verschwinden

iii. Herbstlied

iv. Abschied vom Walde

v. Ins Freie

vi. Röselein, Röselein!

Friday 28th October, 1.10pm Johnny Herford, baritone

Aoife Miskelly, soprano

William Vann, piano

Drei Gedichte aus den Waldliedern von Pfarrius, Op. 119

September 1851.

Texts by Gustav Pfarrius. Rustic themes abound in this set of three forest-songs by the

little-known Pfarrius. Schumann’s long standing appreciation for both the idyllic and

supernatural capacities of the forest in the Romantic imagination is displayed here,

with the two outer settings, both in G major, displaying a folkloric optimism and

simple musical style. The central ‘Warnung’, in the relative B minor, is more

ominous, full of a foreboding similar to that of ‘Zwielicht’ from the Eichendorff

Liederkreis (Op. 39, 1840); both songs enact a marked change of mood within their

respective sets. Susan Youens hears hints of ‘post-revolutionary disillusionment’ both

in Pfarrius’s poem and in the ‘acerbic clashes’ of Schumann’s setting.

i. Die Hütte

ii. Warnung

iii. Der Bräutigam und die Birke

Fünf heitere Gesänge, Op. 125

June-July 1850 (i, ii, iii, v); January 1851 (iv).

Texts by various authors, detailed below. Schumann’s final collection of mis-matched

songs to texts by various poets was promptly accepted by its publisher, who

responded well to Schumann’s suggestion that he should produce a set of ‘cheerful

songs’. The elusive poet ‘Buddeus’, first encountered in Op. 83, makes another

appearance here. The first and third are playful settings, while the final two present

more complicated, and perhaps more nuanced, interpretations of their folk-based

texts.

i. Frühlingslied (Frédéric Ferdinand Braun)

ii. Frühlingslust (Paul Heyse)

iii. Die Meerfee (attr. Julius Buddeus)

iv. Jung Volkers Lied (Eduard Mörike)

v. Husarenabzug (Carl August Candidus)

Friday 28th October, 5.30pm

Bengt Forsberg, piano

Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133

October 1853.

Schumann’s wordless Songs of Dawn, for piano, were described by Clara as being

‘completely original pieces as always, but difficult to grasp, for a completely original

tone resides therein’. That Schumann called these pieces Gesänge—songs—calls to

mind both his large body of works for voice and piano, and the intimacy of expression

associated with the lied. Yet, sung words are absent, so we have no extra-musical or

poetic frame from which to begin interpreting these short pieces and their complex,

irregular structures. This elusiveness continues in the work’s dedication to the

mysterious Diotima, who appeared in an early version of the title (Gesänge der

Frühe, An Diotima). Musically, the movements display some thematic connections

but inhabit quite different expressive spheres. The first and last are chorale-like and

sombre, the second and fourth use chromatic lines familiar from his earlier piano

writing, and the third is propelled by a persistent dotted rhythm.

i. Im ruhigen Tempo

ii. Belebt, nicht zu rasch

iii. Lebhaft

iv. Bewegt

v. Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes Tempo

Geistervariationen, WoO. 24

February 1854.

Reaching the very end of Schumann’s creative output, the Ghost Variations were

written around the time of his suicide attempt. In E-flat major, like the Rhenish

Symphony, legend has it that after being rescued from the river, he rushed back to his

desk to compose the most turbulent variation. Schumann claimed that these variations

had been dictated to him by, variously, angels, and the spirits of Schubert and

Mendelssohn. Today they are rarely performed or recorded, but they are full of lyrical

melody and harmonic adventure.

i. Leise, innig

ii. Variation 1

ii. Variation 2 - Canonisch

iii. Variation 3 - Etwas belebter

iv. Variation 4

v. Variation 5

Friday 28th October, 7.30pm

Kate Royal, soprano

Johannes Kammler, baritone

Roger Vignoles, piano

Lieder und Gesänge (III), Op. 77

May 1840 (i); April-July 1850 (ii-v)

Texts by various authors, listed below. As with many of the later collections,

Schumann struggled to find publishers willing to take these songs; many promptly

rejected his scores for not being simple and melodious enough to appeal to their

market. The publisher André, in this case, named ‘op. 42 and even the new op. 89’ as

suitable songs. The opening Eichendorff setting originally appeared in place of ‘Im

der Fremde’ at the beginning of the op. 39 Liederkreis; before Schumann revised the

cycle, early performances used the two interchangeably. The stylistic jump between

this song (written in 1840) and the following four (1850) is marked, as is the shift in

character. Between the upbeat march of the Eichendorff setting—alluding, it has been

suggested, to the opening of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin—and a similarly lively

(albeit restlessly so) final song, the three central numbers are variously bitter,

contemplative and melancholic. Through a striking melodic similarity in its central

section, the third song ‘Geisternähe’ seems to evoke the spirit of ‘Sehnsuct nach dem

Walde’, an 1840 setting of Kerner (Op. 35/v).

i. Der frohe Wandersmann (Joseph von Eichendorff)

ii. Mein Garten (August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben)

iii. Geisternähe (Friedrich Halm)

iv. Stiller Vorwurf (Oskar Ludwig Wolff)

v. Aufträge (Christian L’Egru)

Lieder und Gesänge (IV), Op. 96

July 1850.

Texts by various authors, listed below. This set comprises an unusual concoction of

poets: from the revered Goethe, to a humble ‘anon’, to Schumann’s only setting of

August von Platen. Goethe’s ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ was, and remains, one of the best

known examples of German lyric poetry, and its gentle meditation on universal

themes of nature and eventual eternal rest are reflected in the slow and careful

musical atmosphere. Schumann’s second snowdrop setting (‘Schneeglöckchen’)

begins in A-flat major, enacting a submediant shift between songs that follows

seamlessly from the subtle harmonic sleights-of-hand of ‘Nachtlied’. This song is

more complex both poetically and musically than the Rückert setting about the same

flower found in the Liederalbum für die Jugend, Op. 79; here, it represents ‘a strange

pale child’. A-flat major remains for the Platen song, and the first von der Neun

setting moves to an energetic C minor before the final song—‘heaven and earth’, to

complement the message of the opening ‘Nachtlied’—concludes the cycle in A-flat.

i. Nachtlied (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

ii. Schneeglöckchen (Anon.)

iii. Ihre Stimme (August Graf von Platen)

iv. Gesungen! (Wilfried von der Neun)

v. Himmel und Erde (Wilfried von der Neun)

Vier Duette, Op. 78

July-August 1849.

Texts by various authors, listed below. Each duet in this collection of four uses a text

by Schumann’s most frequently used poets. ‘Tanzlied’ is a leisurely waltz, in the

simple key of G major but slipping with ease into moments of B-flat and E-flat. The

second assumes E-flat as its tonic, with the singers taking on the characters ‘he’ and

‘she’, and is intensely lyrical, as the voices sing complementary stanzas before joining

together in a delicate duet. The Goethe setting continues in a similar vein, back in G

major, while the lullaby for a sick child begins in an unstable E minor coloured with

sharp dissonance, soon finding sanctuary in G major. A brief sink into the submediant

C major brings a further brief pivot into E-flat, as the singers—we assume now

parents—will their child to sleep; the tight-knit key relations here add to the sense that

these four songs present four snapshots in a couple’s life, not unlike the narratives that

drive Frauenliebe und –leben and the Maria Stuart lieder.

i. Tanzlied (Friedrich Rückert)

ii. Er und Sie (Justinus Kerner)

iii. Ich denke dein (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

iv. Wiegenlied am Lager eines kranken Kindes (Christian Friedrich Hebbel)

Friday 28th October, 10pm Mark van de Wiel, clarinet

Simon Tandree, viola


Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132

October 1853.

The Märchenerzählungen is the second of Schumann’s chamber works inspired by

fairy tales, the first being the Märchenbilder of 1851. Both are entirely instrumental

works, with no explicit clues left about what fairy tale narratives, if any, the

movements may represent. They demonstrate that Schumann’s literary impetus and

his love for the fantastical, which was so clear in his piano pieces of the 1830s,

remained important in the final stages of his life and career. Indeed, documents

suggest that Schumann had recently been assembling a new fictional league—a late

offshoot of the Davidsbund—that was headed up by Brahms. October 1853 saw

Brahms and Joachim make regular appearances in the Schumanns’ lives; many

associate the productivity of this time with the positivity of Brahms’s presence. The

movements are lively and whimsical, full of rustic dances and dream-like episodes.

i. Lebhaft, nicht zu schnell

ii. Lebhaft und sehr markiert

iii. Ruhiges Tempo, mit zartem Ausdruck

iv. Lebhaft, sehr markiert

Saturday 29th October, 4.30pm Rosalind Coad, soprano

Rozanna Madylus, mezzo-soprano

Josep-Ramon Olivé, baritone

Benjamin Nicholas, conductor

The Choir of Merton College, Oxford

Excerpts from Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, Op. 98a

1849.

Text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These songs are introduced in the listing for

Saturday 23rd October.

i. Mignon, “Kennst du das Land?”

iii. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

v. Heiss’ mich nicht reden

ix. So lasst mich scheinen

Requiem für Mignon, Op. 98b

1849.

Text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Schumann struggled to get his Op. 98

published, partly because, in addition to the 9 songs from Wilhelm Meister, he wished

to include as part of the same work this Requiem für Mignon, written in multiple

movements for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Two genres within one opus number

was practically unheard of, and demonstrates the importance of genre experimentation

and flexibility to Schumann’s response to texts in 1849. The eventual publisher Härtel

designated the songs Op. 98a, and the Requiem Op. 98b.

i. Wen bringt ihr uns zu stillen Gessellschaft?

ii. Ach! Wie ungern brachten wir ihn her!

iii. Seht die machtigen Fleugel doch an!

iv. Ich euch lebe die bildende Kraft

v. Kinder, kehret in’s Leben zuruck!

vi. Kinder, eilet in’s Leben hinan!

Requiem, Op. 148

April-May 1852. Schumann’s Requiem is rarely performed, certainly when

considered against the enormously popular ones of Mozart, Verdi, and many others.

His sacred choral music has posed some problems to scholars and critics: he planned

a large amount of sacred settings in the late 1840s and early 1850s, and in many cases

it is unclear whether they were intended for church or concert performance, and

whether they reflected anything of Schumann’s personal religious—or political—

leanings.

i. Introitus: Requiem aeternam

ii. Sanctus

iii. Benedictus

iv. Agnus Dei

Saturday 29th October, 7.30pm (closing concert)

Ailish Tynan, soprano

Kitty Whately, mezzo-soprano

James Gilchrist, tenor

Jacques Imbrailo, baritone



Minnespiel, Op. 101

May-June 1849.

Poems by Friedrich Rückert. The second of Schumann’s Liederspiele, composed

between the two Spanish collections and in the wake of the Dresden Uprising. Again,

the movements are written in a mix of configurations from solos to quartets. For

many, the musical highlight is the fourth song, ‘Mein schöner Stern!’, a declaration of

love sung to a yearning melody with delicate interplay between voice and piano. The

sixth song is, musically, a transformation of ‘Mein schöner Stern!’, echoing its

melodic contours and harmonic patterns, with a soprano responding to the tenor of the

earlier song. The collection is a celebration of love, expressed through declamations

of the related joys of, for instance, spring and friendship.

i. Meine Töne still und heiter

ii. Liebster, deine Worte stehlen

iii. Ich bin dein Baum

iv. Mein schöner Stern!

v. Schön ist das Fest des Lenzes

vi. O Freund, mein Schirm, mein Schutz!

vii. Die tausend Grüsse

viii. So wahr die Sonne scheinet

Spanisches Liebeslieder, Op. 138

November 1849.

Spanish poems by various authors, translated into German by Emanuel Geibel (1815-

1884). The social context for the Liebeslieder is largely the same as that of the

Spanisches Liederspiel: see information under the 20th October listing. One new

element here is the incorporation of piano duet, heard in the Prelude and foretelling

the popularity of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes.

i. Vorspiel

ii. Tief im Herzen trag ich Pein

iii. O wie lieblich ist das Mädchen

iv. Bedeckt mich mit Blumen

v. Flutenreicher Ebro

vi. Intermezzo

vii. Weh, wie zornig ist das Mädchen

viii. Hoch, hoch sind die Berge

ix. Blaue Augen hat das Mädchen

x. Dunkler Lichtglanz, blinder Blick

‘Bei Schenkung eines Flügels’, WoO. 26/iv

August 1853.

Text: Robert Schumann. One year after Clara was presented the ‘Liedchen von Marie

und Papa’ for her 33rd birthday, Schumann gave her a grand piano for her 34th (it also

marked the occasion of their thirteenth wedding anniversary). Along with it, he wrote

the text and music for this short song for SATB voices and piano: ‘The gift of a grand

piano’. The poem begins by describing the oranges and myrtles that adorn the lid of

the piano, and it is worth noting that myrtles—often found in wedding bouquets—had

been recurring flowers in Schumann’s songs. Thirteen years earlier, in 1840, myrtles

and roses adorned the book of songs bound for a distant lover in the Heine setting that

ends the Op. 24 Liederkreis, and Schumann gave his Op. 25 Myrthen collection to

Clara as a wedding present. The final lines of the awkwardly rhyming song are sadly

prophetic; this would be the last of Clara’s birthdays they would spend together, and

Schumann would not be at home for much longer.

And when I cannot always be with you,

Hasten then to your friend and think of me!

Yet I think that we shall always

Bear all joy and suffering together.

(Trans. Richard Stokes)

And one final large, late song collection that is split in performance

across the festival…

Lieder-Album für die Jugend, Op. 79

April-June 1849.

Texts by various authors, listed below. Schumann composed most of this large,

loosely-cyclic collection of songs for children in the month immediately before the

Dresden uprising. The texts are sourced widely, linked by themes of nature and

flowers, folk characters and animals. Musically, the settings are largely simple and

accessible, and they display a wide array of Schumann’s approaches to song

composition. The second half becomes more complex, as Schumann suggested the

collection as a whole should follow a progression towards maturity. The cycle ends

with ‘Kennst du das Land?’, the song of Goethe’s troubled, adolescence-nearing

character Mignon.

i. Der Abendstern (August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben)

ii. Schmetterling (Fallersleben)

iii. Frühlingsbotschaft (Fallersleben)

iv. Frühlingsgruss (Fallersleben)

v. Vom Schlaraffenland (Fallersleben)

vi. Sonntag (Fallersleben)

vii/1. Ziguenerliedchen 1 (Emmanuel von Geibel)

vii/2. Ziguenerliedchen 2 (Geibel)

viii. Des Knaben Berglied (Johann Ludwig Uhland)

ix. Mailied (Christian Adolf Overbeck von Lübeck)

x. Käuzlein (Anon)

xi. Hinaus ins Freie (Fallersleben)


xiii. Marienwürmchen (Anon)

xiv. Die Waise (Fallersleben)


xvi. Weihnachtslied (Kletke)

xvii. Die wandelnde Glocke (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

xviii. Frühlingslied (Fallersleben)

xix. Frühlings Ankunft (Fallersleben)

xx. Die Schwalben (Auguste von Pattberg)

xxi. Kinderwacht (Melchior von Diepenbrock)

xxii. Des Sennen Abschied (Friedrich Schiller)


xxiv. Spinnelied (Anon)

xxv. Des Buben Schützenlied (Schiller)

xxvi. Schneeglöckchen (Friedrich Rückert)

xxvii. Lied Lynceus des Türmers (Goethe)

xxviii. Mignon, “Kennst du das Land?” (Goethe)

Documents

Unlocking Late Schumann A guide to late works in the …torch.ox.ac.uk/sites/torch/files/publications/Unlocking...Unlocking Late Schumann A guide to late works in the Oxford Lieder