9 Lieder from Myrten Op.25 (1840)

Widmung

Die Lotosblume

Aus den östlichen Rosen

Aufträge Op. 77 No.5 (1850)

Zigeunerliedchen Op.79 No.7 (1849)

Die Kartenlegerin Op.31 No.2 (1840)

While the remaining Schumann items might not be among the most profound of his Lieder, they are certainly among the most entertaining. The delightful if pianistically demanding Aufträge and the vividly contrasting pair of miniatures, Zigeunerliedchen, from the Lieder-Album für die Jugend are all strophic in construction and correspondingly unambitious in psychological terms. Die Kartenlegerin, on the other hand, is a finely detailed character study poised to fly off in any direction as the cards predict a variety of situations but held together by the little piano flourish with which it opens and which recurs three times, the last only after some nervous hesitation.

Widmung

Der Nussbaum

Jemand

Die Lotosblume

Die Hochländer-Witwe

Hochländisches Wiegenlied

Aus den hebräischen Gesängen

Aus den östlichen Rosen

Du bist wie eine blume

Between February 1840 and January 1841, having previously taken little interest in writing for the voice, Schumann completed no fewer than 125 songs - well over half the number he would produce in his whole career. The source of the inspiration for this “rich harvest,” as he so rightly called it, is not difficult to find. There were other factors - including his admiration of Mendelssohn’s recent Lieder and, not least, the fact that songs were easier to sell than complex piano works - but the initial stimulus was the composer’s blissful anticipation of his marriage to Clara Wieck.

That much is clear from the Heine Liederkreis Op.24, the first set of songs Schumann wrote in the exalted mood induced by his confidence that at last, as Clara approached her 21st birthday, their long-frustrated union would become a reality. It is confirmed by Myrten Op.25, which was intended as a wedding present for Clara - hence, myrtles being a traditional symbol for marriage, the title. Although it was one of the last to be written, Widmung, radiates the light in which the whole collection of 26 songs is to be seen. It represents the composer’s ecstatic dedication to Clara not only of his music but also of himself. In ternary form, with a simple but highly effective change of key and keyboard texture in the middle section, it ends with a discreetly adoring “Ave Maria” allusion in the piano postlude.

Julius Mosen’s Der Nussbaum is not the greatest poem selected by Schumann as material for his Lieder. But, set here as the first in a series of songs onto which he imagines Clara as the female protagonist, it could not have been better suited to his purpose. The reference to the “bridegroom” and “next year,” which is when the Schumann-Wieck wedding was to take place, must have been irresistible. Certainly, the poem inspired one of the most beautiful of all songs, the breeze gently animating the arpeggios in the piano part, the leaves whispering the dreaming melodic motif repeated in the right hand and taken up by the voice as they reveal their secret message.

Whether or not Schumann was aware of the historical context of Burns’s Jemand, the “somebody” Clara was meant to have in mind as she read through this progressively excitable little song was clearly Robert Schumann rather than Bonnie Prince Charlie. Robert puts in another proxy appearance in Die Lotosblume as the moon makes its lover’s entry on a magical modulation at the beginning of the erotically charged second stanza. Two more Burns settings (there are eight in all in the Myrten collection) project Clara into the roles of the widow and the mother respectively. Bereft of “the brawest man” in Die Hochländer-Witwe, she is inconsolably angered by the injustice of Culloden and its aftermath. In Hochländisches Wiegenlied, on the other hand, she sings a lullaby for a bandit child in a wittily ironic, pseudo-serious folk-song setting with gentle Scoth-snap syncopations and a bagpipe drone.

While My soul is dark from Byron’s Hebrew Melodies postulates Saul calling for David’s harp to relieve his melancholy, Schumann’s setting in Aus den hebräischen Gesängen surely reflects the agony inflicted on Robert and Clara by her father’s implacable resistance to their marriage and the solace they both found in music, at one time their only means of communication. The longest of the Myrten songs, it combines plaintive recitative with heart-easing melody. Although the major-key melody introduced over harp-like (or lute-like) figuration by the piano and taken up by the voice on “Kann noch mein Herz ein Hoffen nähren” reappears later in the minor, the pained chromatic harnonies that open the song are finally resolved in the major.

Aus den östlichen Rosen, a setting of lines from Rückert’s Östliche Rosen, finds an appropriate place here as a poignant reminder, in its delicately rose-scented harmonies, of the lovers’ separation before their marriage. Although it comes just before Aus den östlichen Rosen in the complete collection and, according to Brahms, was written before any of the others, Du bist wie eine Blume is surely the ultimate among the Myrten songs with a flower theme. Certainly, it was Clara’s favourite.