Ständchen Op 17 No.2

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Ständchen Op 17 No.2

Morgen Op.27 No.4

Das Rosenband Op.36 No.1

Zueignung Op.10 No.1

One reason why Richard Strauss was such a prolific song composer - he wrote as many as two hundred Lieder over a period of nearly eighty years - was that he was married to a highly accomplished soprano. Most of the eighty or so songs completed between 1887, when he first met Pauline de Ahna, and 1906, when he temporarily abandoned song to concentrate on opera, were written specifically for her. Many of them they performed together on the concert tours.

As it happens, the first song in this group Ständchen (Serenade) was written in 1887 just before Strauss met Pauline. One of Sechs Lieder Op.17 to words by Adolf von Schack and perhaps the most familiar of all his songs, it owes its popularity partly to the delicate activity of the piano part - which so aptly suggests the murmuring of the stream, the trembling of the leaves in the breeze, the elfin footsteps of the lovers as they might at night - and partly to the seductive vocal line. The scarcely less popular Morgen (Tomorrow), on the other hand, was written with Pauline very much in mind: it is one of a group of Vier Lieder Op.27 that he presented to her on their wedding day in 1894. In this case the melodic interest is in the piano part, in the expressively sustained line reflecting the erotic intensity of John Henry Mackay’s words, while the voice reacts to the rapture of the situation in quiet wonder. Das Rosenband (The band of roses), to words by Klopstock in memory of his wife, is inspired by a similar amorous situation. Iin this case, however, the eloquence is in the vocal line, above all in the closing cantilena on the word “Elysium” (Heaven) in which Pauline no doubt found particular pleasure when she first performed the song in 1897.

The last song in the group, like the first, dates from before Strauss met Pauline. Though written as early as 1882 or 1883 as the first of Acht Lieder Op.10 to fervent words by Hermann von Gilm, Zueignung (Dedication) is unmistakably characteristic Strauss in its irresistibly impulsive rhythms and soaring vocal line.