Drei Lieder, Op.29

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Drei Lieder, Op.29

Traum durch die Dämmerung

Schlagende Herzen

Nachtgang

Although the Munich poet Otto Julius Bierbaum was never able to supply Strauss with a libretto good enough to tempt him to make an opera of it, he did provide the texts for six of his most attractive songs. Strauss so much liked his setting of Traum durch die Dämmerung that he quoted it in the “Works of Peace” section of Ein Heldenleben three years later. Certainly, with its gently rocking accompaniment and its poetically placed modulations, it is a most seductive early-evening fantasy. Erotic anticipation is less patiently felt in the second of these three Bierbaum songs, Schlagende Herzen, which offers a timely and cheerfully sunlit contrast between the twilit scene of the previous song and the moonlit vision amid the harmonic shadows of Nachtgang. Beginning with Traum durch die Dämmerung, which he is said to have written in twenty minutes, Strauss completed all three songs of Op.29 in one day in July 1895.