Gypsy Songs Op.55 (1880)

My song resounds with love again

Hey, how wondrously my triangle does sound

And the wood’s silent all around

Songs my mother taught me

The strings are tuned, my lad

Wide sleeves and loose trousers

Give the proud hawk a cage of pur gold

What Dvorak found most interesting in Adolf Heyduk’s collection of Cigánské melodie seems to have been not so much the hardship of the gypsy way of life as the part played in it by music. As a composer selecting texts for a set of songs, he would naturally have made that kind of choice. Hardship is never far from the surface, however. My song resounds with love again sets the scene with a colourful gypsy-band ritornello but breathes defiance in its minor harmonies and meets adversity at the end. Hey, how wondrously my triangle does sound invests the triangle with a rather more serious function than we are used to and achieves its major ending only in the last two bars, just before the piano’s final ting. And the wood’s silent all around is pure melancholy in spite of its major harmonies and the consolation that is to be found in song. For all its melodic beauty Songs my mother taught me is the poignant epitome of mixed feelings. The mood changes with The strings are tuned, my lad andWide sleeves and loose trousers which are both dances, the second introducing the gypsy principles of democracy and freedom which are definitively celebrated in the closing Give the proud hawk a cage of pur gold.

The Gypsy Songs were written for a tenor at the Vienna Opera, Gustav Walther, for whom Heyduk translated them into German – which explains why, although there is a Czech version, they are frequently performed in German as Zigeunermelodien. On this occasion they will be sung in English.