Programme — Songs without Words (Lieder ohne Worte), in A major, Op.19, No.3 “The Hunt” (1830-1832], in E flat Op.53 No.2 …

7 Songs without Words (Lieder ohne Worte)

in E major, Op.19 No.1 (1830-1832)

in A major, Op.19, No.3 “The Hunt” (1830-1832]

in F sharp minor Op.30 No.6    “Venetian Gondola Song” (1833-1834)

in E flat Op.53 No.2

in C minor Op.38 No.2

in G major Op.62 No.1

in F sharp minor Op.67 No.2 (1845)

Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words have too long been victims of their Victorian success. It was inevitable that, having gathered so many drawing-room associations and sentimental accretions, they would lose their prominent place in the recital repertoire. But to continue to avoid them even now, when most of the audience is in a position to approach them without preconceptions, is not only to distort musical history but also to miss out on much lyrical beauty.

In the one, short paragraph he devotes to the Songs without Words in “The Romantic Generation” Charles Rosen says ,“They are not insipid but they might as well be.” That is just words without a song. The opening number in the early Op.19 set – first published in London as Original Melodies for the Pianoforte in 1832 – is pure romantic poetry. Schumann was clearly aware of that and, although there was still room for him to add an erotic frisson to the harmonies, he was happy enough to echo the gently descending melodic line on any number of tender occasions. Op.19 No.3 in A major known “The Hunt” as is another essential romantic image which, though obviously not Mendelssohn’s invention, is so exuberantly written as to stimulate echoes of its horn calls and galloping rhythms for decades to come.

Of the mere five (out of a total of forty-eight) Songs without Words to which the composer himself attached a title, three of them are called “Venetianisches Gondellied” (Venetian Gondola Song), a form he probably did invent. Certainly, he wrote some seductive examples and, in the closing number of the Op.30 set, anticipated Chopin in applying decorative keyboard figuration to a melodic line poised above a barcarolle rhythm in the left hand. Op.53 No.2 develops its teasingly contradictory three-against-two rhythms into a surprisingly passionate disagreement, with a particularly emphatic left hand, in the middle section. Op.38 No.2 in C minor with its syncopated accompaniment figure shared throughout between the hands is a song of loss which gathers a darker colour where it sinks by an octave in the middle section.

The Op.62 set of Songs without Words presented by Mendelssohn to Clara Wieck (later Clara Schumann) on her birthday in 1839, was written specifically for her. The first piece in that set, an Andante espressivo in G major would surely have appealed to her for its lyrical poignancy and its stylistic poise in the area where Schubert and Schumann overlap. The Allegro leggiero in F sharp minor from the op.67 set is a delightful and entirely characteristic study in staccato arpeggios in both hands allied to a tenderly expressive melodic line.