Five Songs without Words

in A flat major Op.38 No.6 “Duetto” [1836)

in G major Op.62 No.1 [1844]

in C major Op.67 No.4 “Spinnerlied” [1845]

in F sharp minor Op.67 No.2 [1845]

in D major Op.85 No.4 [1845]

“If we could be satisfied today with a simple beauty that raises no questions and does not attempt to puzzle us, these pieces would resume their old place in the repertoire,” says Charles Rosen in the one, short paragraph he devotes to Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words in his “The Romantic Generation.” “They are not insipid,” he goes on to say, “but they might as well be.” That is just words without a song. As Clara Schumann acknowledged, by making herself one of their most fervent champions, the Songs without Words combine authentically romantic inspiration with the ready accessibility that she missed even in her husband’s music.

While Clara no doubt enjoyed the last number of Op.38 set for the intimacy of its exchanges between female and male voices, Robert Schumann admired it for the textural enrichment resulting from its “Duetto” concept. The Op.62 set, including the famous “Spring Song” presented by Mendelssohn to Clara on her birthday in 1839, was written specifically for her. The first piece in that set, an Andante espressivo in G major - spuriously and unhelpfully entitled “May Breezes” in some editions - would surely have appealed to her for its lyrical poignancy and its stylistic poise in the area where Schubert and Schumann overlap. The fourth number of the next set, a Presto in C major,bears one of the few descriptive titles invented by Mendelssohn himself - not “The Bee’s Wedding,” which vulgarity it does not deserve, but “Spinning Song,” which is a discreet acknowledgement of its debt to the spinning chorus in Wagner’s recently published Flying Dutchman. The Allegro leggiero in F sharp minor from the same set is a delightful and entirely characteristic study in staccato arpeggios in both hands allied to a tenderly expressive melodic line. The most visionary of the twelve Songs without Words published after Mendelssohn’s death, the Andante sostenuto in D major Op.85 No.4, sees beyond Chopin and Schumann to the Fauré of the 1880s.