3 Lieder

Gruss Op.63 No.3 (1844)

Sonntagsmorgen Op.77 No.1 (1836)

Neue Liebe Op.19a No.4 (1833)

Herbstlied Op.63 No.4 (1844)

Venetianisches Gondellied Op.57 No.5 (1842)

Ich wollt’ meine Lieb’ ergösse Op.63 No.1 (1836)

Before Mendelssohn turned his attention to the medium, no great composer - not even convivial personalities like Mozart and Schubert - took much interest in writing songs for two voices. Perhaps they felt it was just a decorative inappropriate for the interpretation of serious poetry. Even Mendelssohn avoided sentiments that would be uncomfortable and vocal textures and harmonies that would be difficult to realise in pieces destined mainly for domestic consumption. Gruss, from his first set of duets, is characteristic examples of his unambitious but nontheless attractive scoring for the two voices. Without involving them in counterpoint, he has them moving mainly in the same rhythm, often in parallel lines, occasionally separating them so that one voice can echo a phrase introduced by the other. Sonntagsmorgen, which was written at much the same time as Gruss but published only after the composer’s death, retains its hymn-like simplicity throughout. The other duets from Op.63, Herbstlied and Ich wollt’ meine Lieb’ ergösse, are scored in much the same way as Gruss, with Herbstlied texturally the more adventurous and, carried by its impulsive rhythms, the more expressive of the two.

The two solo songs in this group both have close and possibly more familiar relations in Mendelssohn’s instrumental music. Neue Liebe is a delightful anticipation of the elfin Scherzo from the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream - although the latter encounters nothing like the doubts that intrude on the song just before it skips away at the end. Mendelssohn wrote no fewer than five Gondellieder (gondola songs) for piano, all of them highly melodious but none as seductive as his setting of a romantic tribute to Venice by Thomas Moore translated into German (by Ferdinand Freilgrath) as Venetianisches Gondellied.

Neue Liebe Op.19a No.4 (1830)

Die Liebende schreibt Op.86 No.3 (1831)

Suleika Op.34 No.4 (1837)

4 Lieder

Suleika Op.57 No.3 (1843)

Der Blumenstrauss Op.47 No.5 (1832)

Wenn sich zwei Herzen scheiden Op.99 No.5 (1845)

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges Op.34 No.2 (1835)

The piano part of Neue Liebe – a brilliant example of the delightfully eerie Mendelssohn minor-key scherzo – is so vivid that it seems scarcely to need Heine’s words. In the last two lines, however, the poet turns from his observation of the elfin cavalcade to ask himself what it means, bringing the song almost to a halt before the pianist takes up the miniature horns and bells again in the closing bars. The setting of Goethe‘s sonnet Die Liebende schreibt, on the other hand, is clearly inspired by reality, by a separation the composer felt so keenly as to reflect his sense of loss, not least through the increasingly expressive piano part, in one of the emotionally most liberated of all his Lieder. Another song of separation, Suleika (one of Marianne von Willemer’s contributions to Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan) floats sadly on the West wind’s minor arpeggios until a change of tempo, harmony and mood in the last stanza.

The Lieder ohne Worte were part of Robert and Clara Schumann’s shared musical experience from the beginning of their relationship and they were both, in their different ways, firm supporters of them. Clara’s frequent and no doubt insightful performances were rewarded in the best possible way by the dedication of what was to become the most famous of all, the so-called “Frülingslied” (or Spring Song) on her 26th birthday in 1845. Scarcely less famous and no less beautifully written for piano, Op.67 No.4 is known inevitably, because of its whiring figuration, as the “Spinnerlied” (or Spinning Song). Op.67 No.5 in B minor reverts in its melancholy way to the chorale type while anticipating Grieg in its use of a drone pedal point. Though compiled with less care than Mendelssohn himself exercised, the posthumous collections contain some high-quality pieces, like the wistful Op.85 No.4 in D – which is more effective on its own than when grouped with the too similar No.1 in F – the joyful Op.102 No.5 in A and, a last chorale, Op.102 No.6 in C which makes a fitting epilogue to the whole series .

Mendelssohn and Schubert set the same two Suleika poems but only one of them had the idea of quoting the earlier song in the later one, as Mendelssohn so cleverly and yet so discreetly does in the last stanza of the palpitating Op.57 No.3. While Klingemann’s verse in Blumenstrauss is far below the standard of the foregoing Goethe-Willemer examples, the composer did his friend a service, largely by way of the piano counterpoints applied to the vocal line, in making it sound more eloquent than it is. Emanuel Geibel’s Wenn sich zwei Herzen scheiden has at least the virtue of simplicity, as Mendelssohn acknowledges in a correspondingly unpretentious folk-like setting. It is one of the songs he included in an album he sent as a parting present to Jenny Lind, whom he clearly adored and who must have been the most influential voice of all in promoting Auf Flügeln des Gesanges – an effusion of amorous melody over an appropriately rippling accompaniment – to its iconic status in the repertoire of the Lied.