Frauenliebe und -leben Op.42 (1840)

Seit ich ihn gesehen

Er, der Herrlichste von allen

Ich kann’s nicht fassen

Du Ring an meinem Finger

Helft mir, ihr Schwestern

Süsser Freund

An meinem Herzen

Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan

At the age of 40, some years before he wrote his Frauenliebe und -leben poems, the aristocratic Adalbert von Chamisso married the 18-year-old foster daughter of one of his friends - which might well explain the de-bas-en-haut attitude of his adoring wifely protagonist. Whether Schumann was aware of the poet’s matrimonial situation and so approached the texts from Chamisso’s point of view, we do not know. But it seems unlikely: the overwhelming likelihood is that he was projecting the poems into his own situation with Clara Wieck. But if that implies a husbandly attitude difficult to accept even in his own day, it is worth recalling that Clara, a formidable musician herself by the time of her marriage, had no problem with it.

While the sentiment of the text might be outdated - and it has been argued, to the contrrary, that it is actually feminist in intent - the setting is not. The musical characterisation, beginning in wondering modesty and progressively developing in maturity, is inspired throughout. The vocal line is fervently expressive but without aspiring far beyond its domestic context even in episodes of exaltation like Er, der Herrlichste von allen and An meinem herzen. The piano retains an intimate tone while setting a subtle harmonic agenda, most effectively all when it veers from the flat to the sharp side for the magical Süsser Freund. Unlike Carl Loewe, who had set the same texts four years earlier, Schumann spares his protagonist the experience of pathetic grandmotherhood in the ninth of Chamisso’s poems and, in a consoling piano postlude, reverts instead to the youthful modesty of Seit ich ihm gesehen. It is a cyclical strategy which, like the near quotation in Süsser Freund (“Bleib an meinem Herzen”), calls Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte to mind. Clara would certainly have appreciated that.