Four Lieder (Opp. 89, 96 & 107)

4 Lieder

Die Spinnerin Op.107 No.4 (1851)

Herzeleid Op.107 No.1 (1851)

Nachtlied Op.96 No.1 (1850)

Ins Freie Op.89 No.5 (1850)

The first two of these four songs selected from the late Dresden and early Düsseldorf periods are both girls’ laments. Just how serious the situation is in Die Spinneriin we cannot be sure. Brahms’s paradoxical harmonies in his treatment of the same words, in Mädchenlied Op.107 No.5, seem to derive from a more personally compassionate interpretation than Schumann’s setting which, while taking an authentic place in the tradition of spinning songs, has a generic inevitability about it. The allusion to Ophelia indicates that the situation in Herzeleid could scarcely be worse, as Schumann confirms in his weeping-willow piano figuration, set in a harmonically sensitive relationship with the voice, and the hint of a funeral-march rhythm in the closing bars.

There is probably no more poignant song from this troubled period in Schumann’s life than Nachtlied which, without attempting to emulate Schubert’s famous setting of the same words, comes so close to perfection in its contemplative demeanour. At the same time – in one or two instances of rhythmic unease but above all in the questioning rather than re-assuring upward seventh on the last two words – Schumann seems less than completely convinced that Goethe’s promise of peace actually applies to him. Even so, he seems to say in the bravely defiant Ins Freie (one of six von der Neuen settings dedicated to Jenny Lind), however constricted he feels the power of song releases him.