Songs of the Clown Op.29 (1937)

Come away, death

O mistress mine

Adieu, good man devil

Hey, Robin

For the rain, it raineth every day

3 Lieder Op.18 (1924)

In meine innige Nacht

Tu ab den Schmerz

Versuchung

It would be difficult to argue that the best of Korngold is to be found in his songs since he wrote so few of them, probably no more than 30. Even so, the Songs of the Clown Op.29 and the 3 Lieder Op.18 – both sets written, like most of his songs, before he lost his sense of direction in Hollywood – are persuasive evidence. Although he was actually in Hollywood when he wrote the Songs of the Clown, they were not so much a film-studio product as a continuation of his collaboration with Max Reinhardt with whom he had been working since the end of the 1920s. Having furnished the score for Reinhardt’s film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1934, he was asked three years later to write songs and incidental music for a new Reinhardt project, Shakespeare’s Women, Clowns and Songs.

Although the Songs of the Clown were lost when the Nazis confiscated his property in Austria in 1938, Korngold was able to reconstruct them for a performance at the Workshop Theatre in Los Angeles in 1941. Set in the original language, they represent a refreshing alternative to the traditional English approach to the songs from Twelfth Night – from the Mahlerian Come away, death to the extravagant precipitation of For the rain, it raineth every day by way of the flirtatious if slightly glamourised O Mistress Mine, the exuberant Adieu, good man devil, and the nicely characterised Hey Robin.

The 3 Lieder Op.18 – to words by Hans Kaltneker who was to provide the libretto for Korngold’s last-but-one opera Das Wunder der Heliane – offer a fascinating glimpse of the sort of music Korngold might have produced if he had gone along with the progressive Viennese trends of the day. Indeed, they might almost have been created to demonstrate that he too could write like Berg. But, however dissonant the harmonies and however oblique or aggressive the piano part, the word setting is always truthful and unfailingly vivid. The last song achieves an erotic elation of such intensity that Messiaen (whose harmonnies are uncannily anticipated here) would have been proud to equal it.

Gerald Larner © 2008