Dichterliebe
Encyclopedia
Dichterliebe, 'The Poet's Love' (composed 1840), is the best-known song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...

 of Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

 (Op. 48). The texts for the 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo of Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...

, composed 1822–1823, published as part of the poet's Das Buch der Lieder. Following the song-cycles of Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

 (Die schöne Müllerin
Die schöne Müllerin
Die schöne Müllerin , is a song cycle by Franz Schubert on poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the earliest extended song cycle to be widely performed. The work is considered one of Schubert's most important, and it is widely performed and recorded....

and Winterreise
Winterreise
Winterreise is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert , a setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the second of Schubert's two great song cycles on Müller's poems, the earlier being Die schöne Müllerin...

), those of Schumann constitute part of the central core of the genre in musical literature.

The source: Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo

Author of the sarcastic Die Romantische Schule, Heine was a vocal critic of German romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

. In some of his poetry, and notably in Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen of 1844, the romantic lyrical conventions are used as vessels to deploy content of biting, satirical nature. Schumann's Dichterliebe was composed before Heine's Deutschland and does not appear to portray this ironic dimension: scholarship is divided as to what extent Schumann intended to express it.

Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo consists of a verse Prologue and 65 poems. The Prologue (Es war 'mal ein Ritter trübselig und stumm - There once was a Knight, woeful and silent..) tells of the sorrowful knight that sits gloomily in his house all day, but by night is visited by his fairy (nixie) bride, and dances with her until daylight returns him to his little poet's room (Poeten-stübchen). The 65 poems follow, of which the 16 of the Dichterliebe are a selection. The conclusion of it all is that he is going to put the old bad songs and dreams, all his sorrowful love and suffering into a huge coffin, which twelve giants will throw into the sea. This catastrophe is slightly reminiscent of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, in which the hero ends by drowning himself in the brook which he has followed through the cycle.

The song-cycle

Das Buch der Lieder was given its second edition, with preface from Paris, in 1837, the songs were composed in 1840, and the first edition of Dichterliebe was published in two volumes by Peters, in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, 1844. Though Schumann originally set 20 songs to Heine's poems, only 16 of the 20 compositions were included in the first edition. (Dein Angesicht (Heine no 5) is one of the omitted items. Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, On Wings of Song (Heine no 9), is best known from a setting of Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

's).

The very natural, almost hyper-sensitive poetical affections of the poems are beautifully mirrored in Schumann's settings, with their miniaturist chromaticism and suspensions. The poet's love is a hothouse of nuanced responses to the delicate language of flowers, dreams and fairy-tales. Schumann adapts the words of the poems to his needs for the songs, sometimes repeating phrases and often rewording a line to supply the desired cadence. Dichterliebe is therefore an integral artistic work apart from the Lyrisches Intermezzo, though derived from it and inspired by it. Schubert's selection of lyrics for his own Heine songs had sought different themes.

Although frequently associated with the male voice, the work was dedicated to the great soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, born Wilhelmine Schröder , was a German operatic soprano. As a singer she combined a rare quality of tone with dramatic intensity of expression, which was as remarkable on the concert platform as in opera.- Biography :Schröder was born in Hamburg, the daughter of the...

, so that the precedent for performance by a female voice is primary. The first complete public recital of the work in London was given by Harry Plunket Greene
Harry Plunket Greene
Harry Plunket Greene was an Irish baritone singer who was most famous in the formal concert and oratorio repertoire. He made a great contribution to British musical life also by writing and lecturing upon his art, and in the field of competitions and examinations...

, accompanied from memory by Leonard Borwick
Leonard Borwick
Leonard Borwick was an English concert pianist especially associated with the music of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.- Early training and debuts :...

, on 11 January 1895 at St James's Hall.

The songs or movements

(The synopses here are made from the Heine texts)
  1. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (Heine, Lyrical Intermezzo no 1). (In beautiful May, when the buds sprang, love sprang up in my heart: in beautiful May, when the birds all sang, I told you my suffering and longing.)
  2. Aus meinen Tränen sprießen (Heine no 2). (Many flowers spring up from my tears, and a nightingale choir from my sighs: If you love me, I'll pick them all for you, and the nightingale will sing at your window.)
  3. Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne (Heine no 3). (I used to love the rose, lily, dove and sun, joyfully: now I love only the little, the fine, the pure, the One: you yourself are the source of them all.)
  4. Wenn ich in deine Augen seh (Heine no 4). (When I look in your eyes all my pain and woe fades: when I kiss your mouth I become whole: when I recline on your breast I am filled with heavenly joy: and when you say, 'I love you', I weep bitterly.)
  5. Ich will meine Seele tauchen (Heine no 7). (I want to bathe my soul in the chalice of the lily, and the lily, ringing, will breathe a song of my beloved. The song will tremble and quiver, like the kiss of her mouth which in a wondrous moment she gave me.)
  6. Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome (Heine no 11). (In the Rhine, in the sacred stream, great holy Cologne with its great cathedral is reflected. In it there is a face painted on golden leather, which has shone into the confusion of my life. Flowers and cherubs float about Our Lady: the eyes, lips and cheeks are just like those of my beloved.)
  7. Ich grolle nicht (Heine no 18). (I do not chide you, though my heart breaks, love ever lost to me! Though you shine in a field of diamonds, no ray falls into your heart's darkness. I have long known it: I saw the night in your heart, I saw the serpent that devours it: I saw, my love, how empty you are.)
  8. Und wüßten's die Blumen, die kleinen (Heine no 22). (If the little flowers only knew how deeply my heart is wounded, they would weep with me to heal my suffering, and the nightingales would sing to cheer me, and even the starlets would drop from the sky to speak consolation to me: but they can't know, for only One knows, and it is she that has torn my heart asunder.)
  9. Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen (Heine no 20). (There is a playing of flutes and violins and trumpets, for they are dancing the wedding-dance of my best-beloved. There is a thunder and booming of kettle-drums and shawms. In between, you can hear the good cupids sobbing and moaning.)
  10. Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen (Heine no 40). (When I hear that song which my love once sang, my breast bursts with wild affliction. Dark longing drives me to the forest hills, where my too-great woe pours out in tears.)
  11. Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (Heine no 39). (A youth loved a maiden who chose another: the other loved another girl, and married her. The maiden married, from spite, the first and best man that she met with: the youth was sickened at it. It's the old story, and it's always new: and the one whom she turns aside, she breaks his heart in two.)
  12. Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen (Heine no 45). (On a sunny summer morning I went out into the garden: the flowers were talking and whispering, but I was silent. They looked at me with pity, and said, 'Don't be cruel to our sister, you sad, death-pale man.')
  13. Ich hab' im Traum geweinet (Heine no 55). (I wept in my dream, for I dreamt you were in your grave: I woke, and tears ran down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, thinking you had abandoned me: I woke, and cried long and bitterly. I wept in my dream, dreaming you were still good to me: I woke, and even then my floods of tears poured forth.)
  14. Allnächtlich im Traume (Heine no 56). (I see you every night in dreams, and see you greet me friendly, and crying out loudly I throw myself at your sweet feet. You look at me sorrowfully and shake your fair head: from your eyes trickle the pearly tear-drops. You say a gentle word to me and give me a sprig of cypress: I awake, and there is no sprig, and I have forgotten what the word was.)
  15. Aus alten Märchen winkt es (Heine no 43). (The old fairy tales tell of a magic land where great flowers shine in the golden evening light, where trees speak and sing like a choir, and springs make music to dance to, and songs of love are sung such as you have never heard, till wondrous sweet longing infatuates you! Oh, could I only go there, and free my heart, and let go of all pain, and be blessed! Ah! I often see that land of joys in dreams: then comes the morning sun, and it vanishes like smoke.)
  16. Die alten, bösen Lieder (Heine no 65). (The old bad songs, and the angry, bitter dreams, let us now bury them, bring a large coffin. I shall put very much therein, I shall not yet say what: the coffin must be bigger than the 'Tun' at Heidelberg
    Heidelberg
    -Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

    . And bring a bier of stout, thick planks, they must be longer than the Bridge at Mainz
    Mainz
    Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...

    . And bring me too twelve giants, who must be mightier than the Saint Christopher
    Saint Christopher
    .Saint Christopher is a saint venerated by Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, listed as a martyr killed in the reign of the 3rd century Roman Emperor Decius or alternatively under the Roman Emperor Maximinus II Dacian...

     in the cathedral at Cologne
    Cologne
    Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

    . They must carry the coffin and throw it in the sea, because a coffin that large needs a large grave to put it in. Do you know why the coffin must be so big and heavy? I will also put my love and my suffering into it.)


Texts of some in the Schumann form are displayed in Wikibooks

Recordings

These are some landmarks among the many recordings of Dichterliebe:
  • Suzanne Danco
    Suzanne Danco
    Suzanne Danco , was a celebrated Belgian soprano and mezzo-soprano.-Career:Suzanne Danco was born in Brussels and grew up in a Flemish background although French was her native language...

     with ---- Agosti, c 1950, (Decca 78rpm AK 2310-12).
  • Thom Denijs (tenor) with Enni Denijs-Kroyt, 1928 (First complete electric-microphone recording) (HMV 78rpm D2062-64).
  • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
    Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
    Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous lieder performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century"...

     with Alfred Brendel
    Alfred Brendel
    Alfred Brendel KBE is an Austrian pianist, born in Czechoslovakia and a resident of the United Kingdom. He is also a poet and author.-Biography:...

     (Philips CD Dig 416 352-2).
  • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Jörg Demus
    Jörg Demus
    Jörg Demus is an Austrian pianist.At the age of six, Demus received his first piano lessons. Five years later, at the age of 11, he entered the Vienna Academy of Music, studying piano and conducting. He graduated in 1945, then 17 years old...

    , EMG review Nov 1957 (DGG LPM 18370)
  • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Christoph Eschenbach
    Christoph Eschenbach
    Christoph Eschenbach , born February 20, 1940, Breslau, Germany is a German-born pianist and conductor. He currently holds positions in Washington, D.C. as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra and music director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.-Early...

     (1973–77) (DGG CD 439 417-2).
  • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Vladimir Horowitz
    Vladimir Horowitz
    Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz    was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Life and early...

     (live recording, 1976) (Sony Classical 074644674323).
  • Wolfgang Holzmair
    Wolfgang Holzmair
    Wolfgang Holzmair is an Austrian baritone.Holzmair studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won 2nd prize in the baritone class of the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in 1981, and a year later 1st prize in the Musikverein International Lieder Competition,...

     with Imogen Cooper
    Imogen Cooper
    Imogen Cooper, CBE is an English pianist.Born in London, she is the daughter of the musicologist Martin Cooper. She studied piano in London with Kathleen Long, in Paris with Jacques Février and Yvonne Lefébure, and in Vienna with Alfred Brendel, Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda...

     (Philips Dig 446 086-2).
  • Gerhard Hüsch
    Gerhard Hüsch
    Gerhard Heinrich Wilhelm Fritz Hüsch was one of the most important German singers of modern times. A lyric baritone, he specialized in Lieder but also sang, to a lesser extent, German and Italian opera.-Career:...

     with Hanns Udo Müller (1930s) (HMV 78rpm).
  • Lotte Lehmann
    Lotte Lehmann
    Charlotte "Lotte" Lehmann was a German soprano who was especially associated with German repertory. She gave memorable performances in the operas of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Puccini, Mozart and Massenet. The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier was considered her greatest...

     with Bruno Walter
    Bruno Walter
    Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...

     (1940s), (Philips Minigroove LP ABL 3166, Columbia 10" LP 33C1020).
  • Walther Ludwig
    Walther Ludwig
    Walther Ludwig was a German operatic lyric tenor, particularly associated with Mozart roles and Schubert lieder....

     with Michael Raucheisen
    Michael Raucheisen
    Translated from German WikipediaMichael Raucheisen was a German pianist and song accompanist....

    , EMG review April 1955 (DGG LP 16029)
  • Charles Panzéra
    Charles Panzéra
    Charles [Auguste Louis] Panzéra was a Swiss operatic and concert baritone.-Overview:Panzéra's studies at the Paris Conservatory under the tuition of Amédée-Louis Hettich were interrupted by his volunteering into the French Army during World War I...

     (baritone) with Alfred Cortot
    Alfred Cortot
    Alfred Denis Cortot was a Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor. He is one of the most renowned 20th-century classical musicians, especially valued for his poetic insight in Romantic period piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann.-Early life and education:Born in Nyon, Vaud, in the...

     (HMV DB 4987-89).
  • Ian Partridge
    Ian Partridge
    Ian Partridge CBE is a retired English lyric tenor, whose repertoire ranged from Monteverdi, Bach and Handel, the Elizabethan lute songs, German, French and English songs, through to Schoenberg, Weill and Britten, and on to contemporary works. He formed a renowned vocal-piano duo with his sister...

     with Jennifer Partridge, 1974 (CfP CD CFP 4651)
  • Peter Pears
    Peter Pears
    Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....

     with Benjamin Britten
    Benjamin Britten
    Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

  • Aksel Schiøtz
    Aksel Schiøtz
    Aksel Schiøtz was a Danish tenor who was considered one of Europe's leading Lieder singer of post World War II, and later baritone....

     with Gerald Moore
    Gerald Moore
    Gerald Moore CBE was an English pianist best known for his career as one of the most in-demand accompanists of his day, accompanying many of the world's most famous musicians...

     (1946), (HMV 78rpm DB 6270-72, HMV BLP 1064).
  • Peter Schreier
    Peter Schreier
    Peter Schreier is a German tenor and conductor.-Early life:Schreier was born in Meissen, Saxony, and spent his first years in the small village of Gauernitz, near Meissen, where his father was a teacher, cantor and organist...

     with Norman Shetler
    Norman Shetler
    Norman Shetler is a pianist, puppeteer and puppett constructor, and piano professor with Austrian nationality and American origin.-Life and career:...

     (issued 1972) (DGG LP 2530 353).
  • Gérard Souzay
    Gérard Souzay
    Gérard Souzay was a French baritone singer, regarded as one of the very finest interpreters of mélodie in the generation after Charles Panzéra and Pierre Bernac.-Background and education:...

     with Dalton Baldwin
    Dalton Baldwin
    Dalton Baldwin is an American collaborative pianist. He has made over 100 recordings and has won numerous prizes working with Elly Ameling and Gérard Souzay.-External links:*...

    , 1962 (Philips CD 442 741-2).
  • Gérard Souzay with Jacqueline Bonneau, 1953 (Decca CD 440 065-2)
  • Gérard Souzay with Alfred Cortot
    Alfred Cortot
    Alfred Denis Cortot was a Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor. He is one of the most renowned 20th-century classical musicians, especially valued for his poetic insight in Romantic period piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann.-Early life and education:Born in Nyon, Vaud, in the...

     (Live, Paris 1956), (Italian Cetra LP LO 501).
  • José van Dam
    José van Dam
    Joseph, Baron van Damme , known as José van Dam, is a Belgian bass-baritone.At the age of 17, he entered the Brussels Royal Conservatory and studied with Frederic Anspach. A year later, he graduated with diplomas and first prizes in voice and opera performance...

     with Dalton Baldwin
    Dalton Baldwin
    Dalton Baldwin is an American collaborative pianist. He has made over 100 recordings and has won numerous prizes working with Elly Ameling and Gérard Souzay.-External links:*...

     (Kerner lieder and Dichterliebe), (Forlane CD B0000541 FL).
  • Fritz Wunderlich
    Fritz Wunderlich
    Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35...

     with Hubert Giesen, (DGG CD 449 7472).


See also Keith Falkner
Keith Falkner
Sir Keith Falkner was a distinguished English bass-baritone singer especially associated with oratorio and concert recital, who later became Director of the Royal College of Music in London.- Childhood and youth :...

 with John Hunt (unissued), acetates, Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

.

Dichterliebe in literature

  • Dichterliebe is prominently featured in Jon Marans' play Old Wicked Songs
    Old Wicked Songs
    Old Wicked Songs is a two character play written by Jon Marans whose work received a nomination for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Other works by Marans include A Strange and Separate People, Jumping for Joy, Legacy of the Dragonslayers and the musical Irrationals, .Old Wicked Songs was first...

    . In the play, a young American pianist travels to Europe to overcome an artistic block that threatens his career. Through his work with a renowned Viennese
    Music of Vienna
    Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria, and has long been one of the major centers for cultural development in central Europe.Music organizations in Vienna include the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, which has been promoting musical development in the city since 1812...

     musician with a chequered past the two explore the nature of meaning and artistry through Schumann's music. The play takes its name from the final composition in the cycle.
  • The first movement, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, also plays a key role in Julio Cortázar
    Julio Cortázar
    Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

    's short story "The Secret Weapons
    Las armas secretas
    Las armas secretas is a book of 5 short stories written by Julio Cortázar. Four of the stories appear in translation in the volume Blow-up and Other Stories ; one story, "Cartas de Mamá," has never been translated into English.-Stories:*Letters from Mom: a...

    ".
  • In Michael Nyman
    Michael Nyman
    Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...

    's chamber opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera)
    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman to an English-language libretto by Christopher Rawlence, adapted from the case study of the same name by Oliver Sacks by Nyman, Rawlence, and Michael Morris...

    one of the protagonists sings "Ich grolle nicht".

External links

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