Ländliches Lied Op29 No1 (1840)

Lied der Suleika Op25 No9 (1840)

Dein Angesicht Op127 No2 (1840)

Liebesgarten Op34 No1 (1840)

Liebhabers Ständchen Op34 No2 (1840)

Unterm Fenster Op 34 No3 (1840)

Widmung Op25 No1 (1840)

Mein schöner Stern Op101 No4 (1849)

Er der Herrlichste von allen Op 42 No2 (1840)

Tanzlied Op 78 No.1 (1849)

Er und sie Op78 No2 (1849)

Ich denke dein Op 78 No3 (1849)

Schumann’s thirty or so vocal duets are essentially sociable in nature. So, while they have much in common with the solo songs - in that they draw on the same poets and that most of them were conceived in one or the other of the two great surges of lyrical in inspiration in 1840 and 1849 - they cover nothing like the same range of expression or subject matter. They do, on the other hand, have their own special qualities. Ländliches Lied, written (originally for two sopranos) in 1840, is a characteristically light-hearted example, an effortless charmer deftly interweaving and blending the two vocal lines and finally encouraging them, by way of a delicately articulated piano part, to add on their joint salutations to the merry month of May.

Schumann’s extraordinarily intense and immensely productive concentration on the Lied in 1840, when he wrote well over a hundred songs in ten months, is usually attributed to the anticipation, celebration and subsequent bliss of his marriage to Clara Wieck. There was actually more to it than that. But at least with the collection of Myrthen Op 25, which Schumannn arranged to have published on their wedding day, the source of inspiration is beyond dispute. The choice of Lied der Suleika from Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan is particularly significant - not because it is a small item in an extensive and complex tribute to the Divan of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz but because it is part of an exchange of poems between separated lovers, Hatem and Suleika or Goethe and Marianna von Willemer in their Persian disguise. It must have reminded Schumann of the time when he could communicate with Clara only in his piano music. Certainly, his setting of Lied der Suleika, Marianne’s reply to Goethe’s Abglanz, is actually a piano miniature which would lose nothing melodically or harmonically if the vocal line were omitted.

Dein Angesicht is an example of an 1840 song which has nothing to do with wedding celebrations or married bliss. A Heine setting originally intended for Dichterliebe, it was omitted from that collection, presumably because of its deathly imagery - it makes a reality of the underlying fears of a more familiar Heine song Du bist wie eine Blume - and was published only in 1854 as one of the Lieder und Gesänge Op 127. Widmung, on the other hand, represents Schumann in full-scale lover’s ecstasy, dedicating not only his Myrthen to Clara but also his life. The unprepared change of key for “Du bist die Ruh,” transforming the sentiment from jubilation to religious serenity, is a particularly effective harmonic inspiration.

Limited in scope though they might be, Schumann’s duets reveal aspects of his art that are not to be found anywhere else. The Vier Duette Op 34 for soprano and tenor has some choice examples. There is nothing very remarkable about Liebesgarten in itself - the two voices singing in tender parallel sixths to symbolise their simple contentment in the love they have for each other - but in its even-tempered uneventfulness it is a most effective foil to the two Burns serenades that follow in the same set. Liebhabers Ständchen is musically and dramatically so argumentative that, but for its modest folk-song dimensions, it could be a scene in a comic opera. Scarcely less witty but more conciliatory, Unterm Fenster goes some way to restoring the idyll (a prospect which is viewed with renewed confidence in Familien-Gemälde Op 34 No 4).

The second of the two sets of duets written specifically for soprano and tenor, the Vier Duette Op 78 of 1849, begins with a brilliant waltz-song - a precursor, surely, of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzer. The voices are related in Tanzlied in much the same spontaneously flexible way as in Ländliches Lied but with the additional interest of a clear distinction in character between the carefree soprano and the nervous tenor, with Rückert’s sensitive treatment of his two protagonists subtly reflected in the changing harmonies applied to the waltz tune.

There is no such difference in attitude in either of the texts chosen by Schumman for the next two items, the first of which might have been written for a duet setting while the other, we know, was not. Schumann certainly makes the most of the opportunities offered by Kerner’s Er und sie, introducing the tenor and soprano in turn, then interlinking them in counterpoint and finally uniting them in their mutual adoration. Goethe’s Ich denke dein (not to be confused with Matthison’s Ich denke dein set by Beethoven, Schubert and Wolf) was written for his favourite song composer Carl Friedrich Zelter. Perhaps because it was also set as a solo song by Schubert, Schumann chose to make a duet of it, one of the specially intimate kind where the voices are joined largely in parallel lines - as in the earlier Liebesgarten except that in this case the harmonies are more varied and the piano part is expressively integrated with the vocal texture.

Lied der Suleika Op25 No9 (1840)

Dein Angesicht Op127 No2 (1840)

Liebesgarten Op34 No1 (1840)

Liebhabers Ständchen Op34 No2 (1840)

Unterm Fenster Op 34 No3 (1840)

Widmung Op25 No1 (1840)

Mein schöner Stern Op101 No4 (1849)

Er der Herrlichste von allen Op 42 No2 (1840)

Tanzlied Op 78 No.1 (1849)

Er und sie Op78 No2 (1849)

Ich denke dein Op 78 No3 (1849)

Schumann’s thirty or so vocal duets are essentially sociable in nature. So, while they have much in common with the solo songs - in that they draw on the same poets and that most of them were conceived in one or the other of the two great surges of lyrical in inspiration in 1840 and 1849 - they cover nothing like the same range of expression or subject matter. They do, on the other hand, have their own special qualities. Ländliches Lied, written (originally for two sopranos) in 1840, is a characteristically light-hearted example, an effortless charmer deftly interweaving and blending the two vocal lines and finally encouraging them, by way of a delicately articulated piano part, to add on their joint salutations to the merry month of May.

Schumann’s extraordinarily intense and immensely productive concentration on the Lied in 1840, when he wrote well over a hundred songs in ten months, is usually attributed to the anticipation, celebration and subsequent bliss of his marriage to Clara Wieck. While that is obviously true, there was actually rather more to it. But at least with the collection of Myrthen Op 25, which Schumannn arranged to have published on their wedding day, the source of inspiration is beyond dispute. The choice of Lied der Suleika from Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan is particularly significant - not because it is a small item in an extensive and complex tribute to the Divan of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz but because it is part of an exchange of poems between separated lovers, Hatem and Suleika, or Goethe and Marianna von Willemer in their Persian disguise. It must have reminded Schumann of the time when he could communicate with Clara only in his piano music. Certainly, his setting of Lied der Suleika, Marianne’s reply to Goethe’s Abglanz, is actually a piano miniature which would lose nothing melodically or harmonically if the vocal line were omitted.

Dein Angesicht is an example of an 1840 song which has nothing to do with wedding celebrations or married bliss. A Heine setting originally intended for Dichterliebe, it was omitted from that collection, presumably because of its deathly imagery - it clearly visualises the secret fears underlying a more familiar Heine song, Du bist wie eine Blume, to which it is closely related - and was published only in 1854 as one of the Lieder und Gesänge Op 127. Widmung, on the other hand, represents Schumann in full-scale lover’s ecstasy, dedicating not only his Myrthen to Clara but also his life. The unprepared change of key on the characteristic Rückert line “Du bist die Ruh,” transforming the sentiment from fervour to religious serenity, is a particularly effective harmonic inspiration.

Widmung was Schumann’s first Rückert setting. He went on to write forty more, including the Minnespiel Op101 collection of four solo songs, two duets and two quartets in 1849. In Mein schöner Stern, which is allocated specifically to a solo tenor, he found an uncannily true reflection of his own troubled mental state and, one suspects, his reliance on Clara to get him through it. The pathos of its elusive harmonies and the pleading vocal line contrasts sadly with the heroic portrait of the husband - “heller Sinn und fester Mut” - so proudly presented in Er, der herrlichste von Allen (from Frauenliebe und -Leben) nine years earlier.

Limited in scope though they might be, Schumann’s duets reveal aspects of his art that are not to be found anywhere else. The Vier Duette Op 34 for soprano and tenor offer some choice examples. There is nothing very remarkable about Liebesgarten in itself - the two voices singing in tender parallel sixths to symbolize their simple contentment in the love they have for each other - but in its even-tempered uneventfulness it is a most effective foil to the two Burns serenades that follow in the same set. Liebhabers Ständchen is musically and dramatically so argumentative that, but for its modest folk-song dimensions, it could be a scene in a comic opera. Scarcely less witty but more conciliatory, Unterm Fenster goes some way to restoring the idyll (a prospect which is viewed with renewed confidence in Familien-Gemälde Op 34 No 4).

The second of the two sets of duets written specifically for soprano and tenor, the Vier Duette Op 78 of 1849, begins with a brilliant waltz-song - a precursor, surely, of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzer. The voices are related in Tanzlied in much the same spontaneously flexible way as in Ländliches Lied but with the additional interest of a clear distinction in character between the carefree soprano and the nervous tenor, with Rückert’s sensitive treatment of his two protagonists subtly reflected in the changing harmonies applied to the waltz tune.

There is no such difference in attitude in either of the texts chosen by Schumman for the next two items, the first of which might have been written for a duet setting while the other, we know, was not. Schumann certainly makes the most of the opportunities offered by Kerner’s Er und sie, introducing the tenor and soprano in turn, then interlinking them in counterpoint and finally uniting them in their mutual adoration. Goethe’s Ich denke dein (not to be confused with Matthison’s Ich denke dein set by Beethoven, Schubert and Wolf) was written for his favourite song composer Carl Friedrich Zelter. Perhaps because it was also set as a solo song by Schubert, Schumann chose to make a duet of it, one of the specially intimate kind where the voices are joined largely in parallel lines - as in the earlier Liebesgarten, except that in this case the harmonies are more varied and the piano part is expressively integrated with the vocal texture.