Composers › Robert Schumann › Programme note
Fünf Lieder, Op.40
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Vor meiner Wiege D.927 (1827-28)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
from Fünf Lieder Op.40 (1840)
Märzveilchen
Muttertraum
Der Soldat
Der Spielmann
Schumann’s Fünf Lieder Op.40 consists of four mainly grim songs to words by Hans Christian Andersen followed by a cheerful little Chamisso setting which, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, seems oddly out of place. One reason for its presence is that Schumann might not have discovered the Andersen poems without Chamisso, whose German translations he came across in the Chamisso volume that contains the words of Frauenliebe und -leben. Anyway, on this occasion the Chamisso song (Verratene Liebe) will be omitted and the four Andersen items will be preceded by Schubert’s Vor meiner Wiege - a song which, with its closing premonition of death, makes a not inappropriate introduction to Schumann’s Op.40.
The first of the Andersen settings, Märzveilchen, is a happy inspiration with just a hint of a warning in the last line. The atmosphere changes with the minor harmonies and the cool piano counterpoint to the voice in Muttertraum, which associates motherhood and death much as foreshadowed in Schubert’s Vor meiner Wiege. After echoing Bach in Muttertraum, the piano anticipates Mahler in the grotesquely coloured march-time accompaniment to Der Soldat. While the situation of a soldier who has to execute his best friend seems tragic enough, for Schumann nothing could be worse than the predicament of the fiddler in Der Spielmann who plays deranged waltz music at his beloved’s wedding and is driven to pray for protection from madness. No wonder Schumann, who was all too are of his vulnerability in this respect, turned to Chamisso for light relief in Verratene Liebe.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “040 Fünf Lieder”
Märzveilchen
Muttertraum
Der Soldat
Der Spielmann
Verratene Liebe
In the Chamisso volume he used when working on Frauenliebe und Leben in July 1840, Schumann also found a selection of his then favourite poet’s verse translations, including a group based on Danish originals by Hans Christian Andersen. He seems to have been particularly interested in three characteristically bleak examples - Muttertraum, Der Soldat and Der Spielmann - which certainly inspired some of his most remarkable songs when he set them to music along with two other Chamisso translations later in the same month of July.
It must have been the three central songs he had in mind when he when he wrote to Andersen with a presentation copy of Op.40. “Perhaps the settings will seem strange to you,” she said to the poet. “So at first did your poems to me. But as I grew to understand them better, my music took on a more unusual style.” In fact, they are well ahead of their time, two of them - Der Soldat in its grim march rhythms and dark military colouring, Der Spielmann with its frenzied dance music in a tragic situation - clearly anticipating Mahler. At this early stage in his song-writing career, however, Schumann evidently felt unable to present the macabre D minor vision of the three central songs unadorned and unconsoled. So before the ravens torment the adoring mother in Muttertraum he offers the delicate imagery of Märzveilchen in G major and he concludes the group with a charming setting of Verratene Liebe (translated by Chamisso from the modern Greek) also in G major. Bearing in mind Schumann’s later illness, the “poor musician’s” prayer for escape from D minor to G major, which he achieves in the numbed last stanza of Der Spielmann, is particularly moving.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “040/1 Märzveilchen”