3 Lieder

Richard Struass (1864-1949)

3 Lieder

Ich schwebe Op.48 No.2 (1900)

Morgen Op.27 No.4 (1894)

Zueignung Op.10 No.1 (1885)

Never a composer to duck a challenge, Richard Strauss was clearly not put off Karl Henckell’s Ich schwebe by its allusion to “the sweetest of melodies.” He turned to the sketches for his unfinished Kythere ballet and pulled out a plum of a Viennese waltz tune which, attractively presented in sixths in the piano part and deflected into an intriguing harmonic diversion at the crucial point in the last stanza, is by no means unworthy of the poet’s fantasy. The challenge in Morgen was the risky business of entrusting to the linear sustaining power of the piano the blissfully arching but slow-moving melody that so touchingly and so significantly evades the vocal line. As for Zueignung, by achieving such expressive fervour in the first of his published songs Strauss was setting himself a challenging standard. He rarely fell short of it in the following 60 years of song composition.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

3 Lieder

Die Nacht Op.10 No.3 (1885)

Du meines Herzens Krönelein Op.21 No.2 (1888)

Für fünfzehn Pfennige Op.36 No.2 (1897)

Strauss had been composing songs for 14 years – he began at the age of 6 – before he completed the Acht Gedichte aus Letzte Blätter Op.10. Even so, it is astonishing that this, his first published set of Lieder, contains three examples, Zueignung, Die Nacht and Allerseelen, which are among the most performed of his songs even now. His particular genius for writing for the soprano voice is immediately apparent in Die Nacht, not in any showy way but in a sotto voce melodic line where every note, not only those at the top, is perfectly placed for the necessary expressive colouring required. The piano part might seem unambitious but the worrying changes of harmony are all the more effective for its una corda restraint. Written three years later for Schlichte Weisen, Strauss’s fifth set of songs, Du meines Herzens Krönelein is more outwardly demonstrative, both the voice and the piano regularly contrasting a caressing legato with more detached figuration to highlight the return of the tender phrasing at the end.

In Für fünfzehn Pfennige the voice is an instrumentn not so much of love as of caricature. Set to words from Des Knaben Wunderhorn – which might legitimately have tempted a lesser composer to repeats the same material from stanza to stanza – it changes its tune with every change of situation, adding witty and even coarse comments from a jocular piano.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

3 Lieder

Schlechtes Wetter Op.69 No.5 (1918)

Ach, Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden Op.21 No.3 (1887-8)

Lied der Frauen Op.68 No.6 (1918)

Comic character observation like that of Verdi’s Stornello is more likely to be found in the Lieder of Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss than in Italian song. Strauss’s Schlechtes Wetter offers a choice example. Heine’s irony is first matched by stormy imagery in the piano part, as the fond mother ventures out in the foul weather, and is then, on turning to her spoilt daughter reclining at home, excelled in a luxuriant waltz coloured by harmonies which, had they been written ten years later, could be described as jazzy.

After the relative calm of the folk-song-style Ach, Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden, where the pain of loss is internalised, there is another, but in this case seriously fierce, storm in Lied der Frauen. One of the most challenging of all Strauss’s songs, Lied der Frauen is positively operatic in the vocal part and dauntingly symphonic in the piano part – which is why it is so rarely performed. Beginning in C minor, the storm rages through four stanzas as the fisherman’s wife, the shepherd’s wife, the miner’s wife and the soldier’s wife each gives near-hysterical voice to her fears for the life of her husband. Even as the weather clears and the lark sings of victory the frantic figuration is retained and it is only gradually, after the key changes to C major at the beginning of the last stanza, that, with encouragement from the Book of Job, peace is secured.