6 Lieder Op.48 (1884-89)

Gruss

Dereinst, Gedanke mein

Lauf der Welt

Die verschwiegene Nachtigall

Zur Rosenzeit

Ein Traum

Grieg’s first songs were settings of German poetry, not only in the German original but also in the German manner, written during or just after his student years at the Leipzig Conservatoire in the early 1860s. But once he had begun to develop his distinctive style through settings of words by Scandinavian poets – beginning with Hans Christan Andersen in Danish in 1864 and then going on to Norwegian contemporaries like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Hendrik Ibsen – he rarely set German verse again. In 1884, however, he made settings of Heine’s Gruss and Geibel’s Dereinst, Gedanke mein and five years later incorporated them in the Sechs Lieder Op.48 dedicated to the Swedish soprano Ellen Gulbranson, who had a taste for the German repertoire and was to become a prominent performer in Wagnerian roles.

While the Norwegian composer is still evident in these German songs – it could scarcely be otherwise – they are “more cosmopolitan,” as he described his style at that time, tending to avoid the strophic form natural to the Norwegian settings and the modal harmonies that go with them. Just about any competent German composer of the period could have written the exuberant opening and closing sections of Gruss, if not the middle section that so effectively offsets them. Dereinst, Gedenke mein is far more sophisticated in spite of its strophic construction. The harmonies are so liberated in their expressive flexibility and their extraordinary progression from G sharp minor to D sharp major that they have to be heard twice to be believed.

Uhland’s cheerful little Lauf der Welt is given a more folk-like treatment but in a German, perhaps even Schubertian, rather than Norwegian manner. Die verschwiegene Nachtigall is like a Brahms folksong setting, with just a little more charm perhaps. Constructed in much the same way as Gruss, Zur Rosenzeit is as superior to it as Goethe’s poem is to Heine’s. The syncopations and minor harmonies of the middle section are so much more meaningful and the melodic line of the outer sections, shared by voice and piano an octave apart, so much more eloquent. As for Ein Traum, which is just as often heard in the Norwegian version (En Drom) as in the German original, Grieg was clearly so enraptured by Bodenstedt’s text that he dropped his inhibitions so comprehensively as to include a couple of snatches of Norwegian birdsong in the piano part.