4 Mignon Songs from Gedichte von Goethe(1888)

Heiss mich nicht reden

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

So lasst mich scheinen

Kennst du das Land?

Wolf was neither the first nor the last composer to be fascinated by the personality of Mignon in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, to be touched by her waif-like vulnerability, moved by her premature wisdom,

inspired by the beauty of the songs the author attributes to her. But he was probably the most serious. Bearing in mind Schubert’s ten-year long and highly fruitful obsession with Mignon – not to mention the achievements of Schumann and all the others from Zelter and Beethoven onwards – it might seem an extravagant claim. Wolf, however, was uncompromising in his search for the truth. Whereas Schubert’s setting of Heiss mich nicht reden, for example, is a song, Wolf’s is an anti-song, a refusal to betray Mignon into melodious self-expression when, as she says, it is her duty to conceal her innermost thoughts. In spite of the Tristanesque beginning, the piano harmonies respect her situation and are more inclined to insist on her self-denial than to tempt her into lyrical confidences.

Similarly, in Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt – unlike Schubert, say, or Tchaikovsky when setting the same text – Wolf resists the lyrical impulse, at least as far as the vocal part is concerned. The piano prelude introduces a melody which, aching rather than lyrical, is to reappear on the crucial lines, “Ach! Der mich liebt und kennt/ist in der Weite!” Such is Mignon’s depression, however, that the piano melody eludes her, her line slipping away from it in falling semitones. On the closing recall of the opening words, the piano acquiesces in her drooping line, adding a postlude so short and inconclusive as to offer no comfort and at the same time no resolution to the distressingly unsettled harmonies.

In So lasst mich scheinen Mignon is in a quite different situation. Dressed as an angel to distribute presents at a children’s charade, she both foresees her early death and is reconciled to it. She refuses to take off her winged costume, takes up her zither and gives voice to her presentiments without bitterness and with an angelic purity of line This is an occasion for melody, even if it is confined largely to the grave, gracefully drooping dance in the zither accompaniment, the drone harmonies and plucked articulation of which are suggested with exquisite discretion in the piano part.

The first of the four Mignon songs Wolf completed in a matter of days in December 1888 is also the most emotional. Simply constructed in a modified strophic form, Kennst du das Land? theoretically runs the risk of predictability. In fact, the piano’s explosion of passion just before “Kennst du es wohl?” and its rumbling response to Mignon’s cries of “Dahin! Dahin!” always come as a shock, not least on the last occasion where their dramatic effect is not so much reduced as enhanced by the vocal exclamation and the flood of piano figuration just before it.