6 Lieder Op.37 (1896-8)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

6 Lieder Op.37 (1896-8)

Glückes genug Liliencron dfd 1898

Ich liebe dich (Liliencron)dfd v1/32 1898 orch 1943

Meinem Kinde (Falke) fl v1/6 1897 orch 1897?

Mein Auge (Dehmel) fl 1898 1933

Herr Lenz (Bodman) dfd 1896

Hochzeitlich Lied (Lindner dfd v2 1898

On completing the 6 Lieder Op.37 in 1898 Strauss dedicated them “to my dear wife for 12th April” - which was the first birthday of their son Franz. Strangely, however, the one song that celebrates parenthood, Meinem Kinde, was written more than a year earlier, before the child was born. Much the most popular item in the set - it was one of the three “Mutterlieder” that the composer’s soprano wife frequently performed in her concerts - it is also, in its caressing piano part and its spontaneously inflected vocal line, the most inspired. The others are all love songs, as variable in quality as they are varied in manner. Of the two Liliencron settings, Glückes genug and Ich liebe dich, the former is saved from sentimentality by the harmonic and rhythmic anxiety at the beginning of the second stanza, the latter from grandiloquence by the chromaticisms and syncopations that intrude on the third and fifth stanzas. After Meinem Kinde, the Dehmel setting Mein Auge is surely, with its ecstatic melodic line and its radiant harmonies, the most distinctive song in the set. The playful Herr Lenz, the earliest song in the set, effectively offsets the seductively harmonised Hochzeitlich Lied.