2024 – My Journey with Schubert, Byron and Schumann
Plans are afoot for an exploration of the songs of Schubert and Schumann in 2024, as I return to many of the songs I first encountered over 40 years ago at the Guildhall School of Music. In addition, I will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the tragic death of Lord Byron, one of Scotland’s most famous poets, whose works, along with the English Romantic poets, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, so integral to a mid-20th century education, are now somewhat out of fashion.
In a series of concerts, beginning in late January, I plan to sing Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ with Derek Clark, a celebration of Byron, with Beth Taylor and John Kitchen in late February, and an Edinburgh Festival recital, in early August, with Beth Taylor again and Hamish Brown, of Schumann’s ‘Dichterliebe’, when Beth will also sing Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’.
I have written at length for EMR about ‘Winterreise’, so today, let’s have a look at ‘Dichterliebe’ and Robert Schumann. 1840 was Schumann’s famous ‘Year of Song’, when he produced over 130 Lieder, and also was the year he married his beloved Clara Wieck. The two factors are not unrelated, although the disastrous love affair described in ‘Dichterliebe’ (a poet’s love) is a far cry from his passionate relationship with Clara. The author of the poems in ‘Dichterliebe’ was Heinrich Heine, an extraordinary figure in literature, born in 1787 in Düsseldorf. From a successful Jewish family, it soon became clear that the young Heine was unsuited to either business or the law, as his family hoped, but his education at various universities, especially Berlin, opened his eyes to both politics and literature. He was a radical all his life, and was clearly quite an abrasive fellow (he was always falling out with people, and kept getting into duels, although fortunately more successfully than that other literary duellist Pushkin, who, having written about a tragic duel in ‘Eugene Onegin’, proceeded to get himself killed in one. In later life, most of which was spent in Paris, he became famous as a satirist, but it was his early selection of poetry, the ‘Lyrisches Intermezzo’, that caught Schumann’s attention. This volume, consisting of a Prologue and 65 poems, tells of a gloomy knight, who broods in his room by day, but at night is visited by a fairy bride with whom he dances until morning, returning sadly to his poet’s attic at daybreak, where he writes his sad poems. Schumann selected sixteen of these poems, ending with the final one, in which all the bad and sad songs are put into an enormous coffin, which is thrown into the sea by twelve giants.
When I last sang ‘Dichterliebe’, in the Queen’s Hall over 30 years ago, I remember feeling at the time that it didn’t sit particularly well for a bass, but coming back to it now, I think I have more idea how to sing it, and I am looking forward to getting to grips with it again. I’m delighted that we have the excellent Hamish Brown playing again. He played for Beth’s and my recital in 2021, when we sang some of Tom Cunningham’s ‘Songs of Edinburgh’, as well as some Mahler, and I was very impressed. He works often with Beth, and his pianistic skills will be much appreciated, as ‘Dichterliebe’ is a cycle where the piano is very important and plays an intrinsic role in the performance. This is often the case in Schumann’s songs, whether through the influence of Clara I don’t know. She had been a child prodigy on the piano and continued to astonish audiences throughout her life with her technical virtuosity and her expressive understanding. As a composer in her own right, she knew about piano playing from the inside, as it were, and I can’t believe that she didn’t influence her new husband in his writing for piano in that first year of their marriage, and thereafter.
When Robert tried to kill himself in 1854 by throwing himself off a bridge into the Rhine, he was rescued by a boatman, but insisted he must be lodged in a sanatorium for the insane near Bonn. He spent the last two years of his life there, dying in July 1856. Unbelievably, Clara was prohibited from visiting her husband until two days before he died. For the rest of her life she dedicated herself to promoting her husband’s music, and in 1867, she played concerts in Glasgow and Edinburgh, along with the virtuoso violinist, Joseph Joachim. It was reported of the Edinburgh concert that Clara Schumann was “received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore!”
Like so many composers of the 19th century, Schumann’s life was relatively short, but, like many, he was prolific, and we are indeed lucky that he wrote so many songs. I confess that as a younger man, I found his songs less interesting than Schubert’s, the great master, but as I have grown older, and maybe wiser, I have come to appreciate their beauty and emotional depth and look forward to exploring some of them in 2024.
In my concert with Beth in February in the Portrait Gallery, we shall sing a selection of songs from his collection, ‘Myrthen’, where he set various poets, including our own Robert Burns, and of course, Byron. The Byron song comes from his collection of ‘Hebrew Melodies’, originally written to go with melodies composed or discovered by the Jewish composer, Isaac Nathan, a marvellous character who first approached Sir Walter Scott with these melodies which he claimed came down from ancient times, and then, having been rejected by Scott, got in touch with Byron. The poet was fascinated by the idea, and with his famous sympathy for the down-trodden and despised, sent a whole bunch of poems off to Nathan, who put them together in a collection and had them published. Beth and I will be singing some of these songs by Byron and Nathan in the same concert, but the Schumann setting is in another league musically. Its astounding chromatic introduction on the piano takes the listener to a very deep place, as Byron’s anguished verses are matched by music of extraordinary profundity. The next song, ‘Rätsel’ used to be thought to be by Byron, but is actually by Catherine Fanshaw, and is a riddle with the answer ‘H’. We also include two Venetian songs from ‘Myrthen’, which are settings of Byron’s friend, Thomas Moore, so there are definite Byronic connections, and we reckon that’s enough justification for singing lots of Schumann. I will also be singing Mussorgsky’s brilliant ‘Tsar Saul’, a Russian setting of parts of Byron’s poem, ‘Saul’.
‘Dichterliebe’, on August 7th, 2024 in St Michael’s Church, Slateford Road, promises to be quite a concert, particularly as Beth, finalist in this year’s Cardiff Singer of the World, will be singing Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’.
‘A Poet’s Love’ is a selection of songs drawn from Heine’s ‘Lyrisches Intermezzo’ as I have said, and it’s worth having a look at this masterpiece, from the angle of a singer, rather than a musical historian. It starts langsam (slowly) with a piano introduction redolent of a spring morning, speckled with sunshine, as the poet addresses his lover - ‘In the loveliest month of May, as all the buds burst open, then did my heart also break forth, and, as all the birds sang out, so did I confess my love for her.’ It’s a gorgeously languorous opening, both for piano and voice, full of hope and ardour, but each stanza asks a question rather than gives an answer, thus introducing, at the earliest possible stage, a hint of the tragedy soon to unfold. In full Romantic style, the second song speaks of tears and sighs producing blossoms and birdsong; if she would but love him. The third song interrupts all this poetic schmaltz with an almost obsessive patter song, as the poet ticks off all his likes – the rose, the lily, the dove and the sun – which he says he loves no more, as everything is distilled down to the little one, the fine one, the pure one and the only one; she is all that matters now! After this breathless interlude, Schumann plants a soft major chord in the piano, above which the singer can take his time to tell his love that when he looks into her eyes, all his troubles melt away, and when he kisses her mouth, he is whole and well once more; when he leans on her breast, it is like all the joy of heaven has descended on him, and yet, when she says: ‘I love you’, then he must weep bitter tears.
This is the first indication in the cycle of any problem, but it is a body blow, as it hints at the major fly in the ointment, the huge spoke in the wheel – he can’t trust what she says! The fifth song restores some sense of equilibrium as he wants to plunge his soul in the cup of the lily, which in turn will breathe out a song reminiscent of his lover’s kiss, which she gave him once in a magical hour (not very recently?). He now imagines himself in the cathedral of the great city of Cologne, beside the Rhine. Inside, there is a beautiful picture, painted on golden leather, of the Virgin Mary, which has imprinted its image on his heart. Surrounded by flowers and angels, she floats into his consciousness, but in a troublingly erotic fashion – her eyes, her lips, her lips again, and her cheeks, all these remind him of his lover (no virgin she?) and, as he thinks about her, the piano plunges on alone in ever descending phrases, taking him into a well of jealousy and rage, which breaks out in the next song, the great ‘Ich grolle nicht’ (I bear no grudge). The old Scottish put-down, ’Yeah, right,’ is the only answer to this great helpless cry of pain, when the poet says the exact opposite of what he feels, and sarcastically berates his love for her perceived infidelity.
The next song speaks of the flowers, the birds and the stars which could all help ease his heart, but the only one who really knows how he feels is the one who has broken his heart. In ‘Da ist ein Flöten und Geigen’, we find out the cause of all this angst. There is a jolly wedding feast, with music, dancing and singing, but she is marrying someone else! The tenth song has a wonderful piano introduction which seems to resemble tears welling up and dropping down, as he hears again the song that she used to sing; he stumbles up into the woods and pours out his woe. He sings a ditty that sounds like a nursery rhyme about a youth who loves a girl who loves another, and so forth. It’s an old tale, he says, but when you’re in the middle of it, it breaks your heart in two. This is a brilliant song, starting all jolly and jaunty, and yet, as it rolls along, it gets faster and scarier, the final declamation sending the piano in a desperate race to oblivion. Peace takes over, as the poet wanders in a sunny garden, and imagines the flowers speaking gently to him; ‘don’t be angry with our sister, you sad pale man.’
The 13th song is unusual in that the piano part is very staccato and dry, while the poet sings, often unaccompanied, of his sad dreams. The two come together, as the poet wakes, realising there is no hope. The accompaniment becomes more chromatic, and the voice cries out in pain. But there is no consolation.
In his dreams, he sees her, talks to her, sees her tears too. She gives him a bouquet, but of cypress, the mourning flower, and whispers a loving word. He wakes up, the wreath is gone, and he has forgotten the word. It’s all done in staccato phrases, there’s no loving legato; it’s clearly hopeless.
The penultimate song sets off with a jovial piano tune, and the poet describes how he loves a fairy tale which takes him to a distant land of magic and joy, where everything is bright and shiny. If only he could go there, how happy he would be. He sees it often in his dreams, and yet, when he wakes, it has melted away like mere foam. The sounds of the merry land drift away on the breeze too, as reality brings us to the final song, the song to end all songs. He imagines that all the bad songs and the sad dreams must be buried in a huge coffin, bigger than the largest beer barrel in Heidelberg, longer than the Rhine bridge at Mainz, carried by twelve giants stronger than the sculpture of St Christopher in Cologne Cathedral. They must take it away and throw it into the sea, a fitting resting place for its contents. And what is inside this huge coffin? Why, all his love and all his pain! The piano part takes over from the voice in a slow unfolding of the story, unparalleled in musical history, describing, in mournful melody, what words can no longer express.
Thus ends ‘Dichterliebe’, a masterpiece of poetry and music, a high point of German Romanticism, and a wonderful experience both to sing, and also to listen to. I hope I can do it justice next August, and I hope many of you can come along to St Michael’s Church to hear it. Unbelievably, you will also hear one of the world’s finest young mezzo-sopranos, Beth Taylor, singing Schumann’s epic ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’. What excitement!
Pictured: Beth Taylor
