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Publication Date

11-6-2007

Year of Release

2007

Note(s)

Radford University, College of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Music

Donald George, tenor

Lucy Mauro, piano

Philip Sweet, translations, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

Ted McKosky, Jr., electronic imagery, College of Visual and Performing Arts

Special thanks to Mr. Bruce Rous and Mr. Skip Campbell for their help with this production.

Program Notes

In 1827, Heinrich Heine, one of the greatest German lyric poets – and one of the most controversial - collected his poetry into a volume entitled Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs). The 245 poems in this volume, his most famous collection, have been set to music nearly 5,000 times. In fact, one of the most popular poems, "Du bist wie eine Blume," has been set by over 400 composers, and although it seems to be a song about a beautiful child, Heine once asserted it was about a white pig about to be slaughtered.

In his works, Heine's use of paradox and irony are often a disguise for some underlying truth. His poems can seem naive and sentimental, yet the underlying themes are often sadness, desperation, rage, and death, and they generally end with a message contrary to the seemingly trite words and motions. His is a masterly combination, often copied yet rarely surpassed. On his death bed, when the priest asked if he expected forgiveness, he replied, "God will forgive me; it is his job." Heine remained ironic to the end.

Heinrich (Harry) Heine was born to Jewish parents in Düsseldorf December 13, 1797. He earned a degree in law, but in order to join the civil service he changed his name from Harry to Heinrich and converted to Protestantism; however, he neither practiced law nor worked for the government. Throughout his life, he corresponded and was friends with many of the revolutionaries of the times: La Fayette and St. Simon (both of the American Revolution) and Marx and Engels. For a time, he even contemplated immigrating to America. One of his most famous quotes, "Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings," is engraved at the site of the 1933 Nazi book burnings in Berlin. (This quote was in fact written about the burning of the Koran by the Spanish Inquisition.) An outspoken critic of the German government, Heine left for Paris in 1831, where he lived in exile, his works being banned throughout Germany. He spent the last several years of his life ill in his "mattress-grave" in a Paris apartment, in great pain possibly suffering from MS. He died in Paris in 1856 and is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre. In 1897, when an attempt was made to erect a monument to Heine in Düsseldorf, his birthplace, permission was refused on the grounds of Heine's anti-German statements. The monument was then given to the city of New York, where it stands today in Joyce Kilmer Park, known commonly as the Heine or Loreley Fountain. In the 1930s, his most famous poem, "The Loreley," set to music by Friedrich Silcher, was ordered by the Nazis to be called a "folk song," thus removing his name. As he said, "I may not deserve to be remembered as a poet, but surely as a soldier in the battle for human freedom."

Some of the many composers who took their inspiration from Heine's texts are represented in this concert. Robert Franz was one of the most gifted of German song writers, composing over 500 songs, mostly forgotten now. Richard Strauss, the Bavarian master, as is evident in this Alpine jewel of a song, composed only a few songs with texts by Heine. Johannes Brahms was a good friend of Heine and was the pianist for the first performance of Schumann's Dichterliebe. The Mendelssohns, brother and sister Felix and Fanny, were also friends of Heine. It being unseemly for a woman to compose, Fanny either never published her songs or they were published in her brother's name. (When Felix had his first audience with Queen Victoria, the Queen sang, in his honor, her favorite Felix Mendelssohn song, after which he had to tell her that it was composed by his sister. The Queen had good taste.) Charles Ives, the American, studied at Yale under the Munich-trained Horatio Parker; thus Ives was versed in the German music tradition. Obstinately, Ives inserts an apologia to his setting of Heine's "Ich grolle nicht" in his collection of songs: "The writer has been severely criticized for attempting to put music to texts of songs, which are masterpieces of great composers. The song above, and some of the others, were written primarily as studies. It should be unnecessary to say that they were not composed in the spirit of competition; neither Schumann, Brahms nor Franz will be the one to suffer by a comparison, another unnecessary statement. Moreover, they would probably be the last to claim a monopoly of anything-especially the right of man to the pleasure of trying to express in music whatever he wants to. These songs are inserted not so much in spite of the criticism as because of it."

Clara Schumann, Robert's wife, like Fanny Mendelssohn, did not publish much in her lifetime. She composed "Sie liebten sich beide" for Robert's birthday in 1842 with this dedication: "Not much, but with love to my good Robert…" The beautiful chromatic harmonies and rhythmic subtleties of this song can surely compare to any of the more famous songs of the period. Franz Schubert composed only six songs with texts by Heine. In January 1828, at the last gathering of Schubert and his friends, (now known as the Schubertiade), he was introduced to Heine's Buch der Lieder. Schubert brought the book home and in spite of his severe illness, set six of the poems before his death in November. "Der Atlas" is one of the most dramatic and tragic in the song literature. Franz Liszt was about seven or eight people rolled into one: piano virtuoso, composer, conductor, music teacher, author, man of the cloth, notorious lover, and all-around unforgettable character. He composed this slip of a song surely to a beautiful child and not to a white pig. Hugo Wolf's settings for all of his songs make use of colorful harmonies and key changes to express the underlying psychological moods. Tonight's song is in a revised English translation by Donald George. The original text was used as Heine's epitaph, carved on his tomb in Paris. Richard Wagner used Heine's The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski as his inspiration for his first masterpiece, The Flying Dutchman. Wagner's setting of "Les deux grenadiers" is in a French translation, in the style of the French Grand Opera. On tonight's program, the piece will be performed in the 19th century Melodram style, with a text (arranged here by Donald George) spoken over the music.

Robert Schumann is the composer most closely associated with Heine, having written many songs to his texts, including the brilliant cycle Dichterliebe. In this work, the sixteen songs are less a cycle about a poet's unrequited love than they are an exploration of the poet's fateful inability to love. A striking characteristic of Dichterliebe is the unforgettable integration of the piano, with its varying accompaniments, introductions, and postludes of never before heard length and brilliance. The astonishing epilogue on the piano seems to sum up the entire cycle, going through a variety of moods and emotions, as if in a dream, bringing this cycle of despairing and shattered love, "the old wicked songs," to an unsettled, melancholy conclusion.

Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love) paraphrased by Philip Sweet

I. "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai"

Like buds in May

My love unfolded.

Like birds in May

I told her of my longing.

II. "Aus meinen Trӓnen sprieϐen"

My tears, they sprout like the flowers;

My sighs, they sing like nightingales.

And if you do love me,

Then I will give to you:

A bouquet of all my tears

And a nightingale concert of sighs.

III. "Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube"

The rose and the lily, the dove and the sun:

I loved them once all, but now there's just one.

She's sweet, she's lovely, the source of all love.

She's my rose and my lily, my sun and my dove.

IV. "Wenn ich in deine Augen seh"

Your eyes - they wipe away my pa.in.

Your kiss - it makes me well again.

Your touch - a joy that's from on high.

Then you speak of love, and I just have to cry.

V. "Ich will meine Seele tauchen"

I'll clip my soul in the lily.

The lily breathes out love's song,

The song of her kiss, with ripples of awe

That once made my lips tremble.

VI "Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome"

The Rhine, the beautiful river,

Reflects a cathedral so grand.

Inside, there stands a picture

That brightened the wasteland in me.

Madonna - her eyes, lips and cheeks -

Resembles my girl to a tee.

VII. "Ich grolle nicht"

Though my heart breaks, though night engulfs your heart -

I don't hold a grudge.

In dreams I saw the snakes of night

Eat at your heart, your world -

I don't hold a grudge.

'Cause you, too, also suffer.

VIII. "Und wüßpten's die Blumen"

The flowers would cry to heal me

If they knew how she's wounded my heart.

The nightingales' songs would soothe me

If they knew I'm sad and hurt.

The stars would fall down to console me

If they knew she's caused me such harm.

Nightingales, flowers, and stars - all know nothing.

She, only, knows of the tear in my heart.

IX. "Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen"

The flutes and fiddles resound

At the wedding dance of my Jove.

Then the trumpets blare a round

To the moans and groans of the angels above.

X. "Hör' ich ein Liedchen klingen"

I hear the song they're singing -

Her song! I want to die.

To the peak the longing pulls me;

In pain there, I just cry.

XI. "Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mӓdcben"

Boy loves girl - girl loves another,

And he loves yet another girl.

The first girl marries out of wrath

The first boy coming down her path.

This tale is old, but for him it's new.

His heart will break in two.

XII. "Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen"

The flowers, they speak and they whisper,

The luminous flowers of summer.

But I - I walk through the garden in silence.

They speak: "Sad one, forgive her, our sister."

XIII. "Ich hab' im Traum geweinet"

In dreams you died, and next morning …

The tears - they still flowed from my cheek.

In dreams you left, and next morning

I cried long from the bitter hurt.

In dreams you stayed and you loved me.

Next morning still tea.rs did spurt.

XIV. "Allnӓchtlich im Traume"

You greet me gaily in nightly dreams,

But give me cause to mourn:

A melancholy gaze,

A shake of your blond locks -

And tears.

The word you softly say,

The cypress sprig you give:

They both are gone in the morning.

XV. "Aus alten Mӓrchen"

Old stories sing of magic lands,

Where flowers pine and gaze,

Where trees speak in a chorus

And springs break forth in dance.

The songs of love and longing –

With sweetness they beguile.

If only I could go there!

My heart's then glad and free.

But morning brings the sunshine.

My dream? It runs from me.

XVI. "Die alten bösen Lieder"

The old wicked songs - let's bury

Those awful scary dreams.

Go get a great big coffin,

I'll fill it up, you'll see.

The coffin must be bigger

Than a tun that's full of wine.

And make the bier much longer

Than a bridge across the Rhine.

We'll need twelve big strong giants

To bury it at sea.

No grave except the ocean

Is big enough for me.

Do you know why my coffin

Has got to be so vast?

Those old wicked songs were full of

My love and sorrow past.

With sweetness they beguile.

If only I could go there!

My heart's then glad and free.

But morning brings the sunshine.

My dream? It runs from me.

Notes from Heinrich Heine:

Oh, what lies there are in kisses.

Whatever tears you may shed, in the end you always blow your nose.

experience is a good school. But the fees are high.

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

The eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.

When words leave off, music begins.

Note

Smith Recital Hall

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Music | Music Performance

Marshall University Music Department Presents “The Old Wicked Songs

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