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February 26, 2016
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PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
(1840–1893)
As a born melodist, Tchaikovsky created instrumental themes that
seemed designed for singing. Yet he is far better known for his operas
than for the approximately 100 songs he wrote throughout his career.
As biographer David Brown has pointed out, it is not only the language
barrier that has stood in the way, but also the fact that Tchaikovsky
wrote in the style of the Russian romance, which Brown describes as “a
sentimental and soft-centered species [that] closely parallels the Victorian
drawing-room ballad.” Song romances were adored by 19th-century
Russians for their love-obsessed lyrics and intense emotions, but they
have generally not stood the test of time as well as classical lieder.
Tchaikovsky was less concerned with the artistic quality of the
verse he chose to set than whether it evoked a strong personal response
in him. Therefore, though he would set poems by great writers such as
Pushkin and Alexei Tolstoy, he also selected lesser verse by amateurs like
Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov. As Christian Wildhagen writes, a
striking feature of his songs “is the way in which the composer identifies
wholeheartedly with the message of the poems, with the result that many
of his songs are personal confessions.”
Setting verse from Alexei Tolstoy’s
John of Damascus
, “
I bless
you, forests
” is one of the great Russian songs for baritone or bass, and
also among the composer’s own personal favorites. It was composed in
1880 at Brailovo, the country estate of Tchaikovsky’s devoted patroness
Nadezhda von Meck, which became one of his most reliable creative
havens. With its fervent climactic embrace of nature and all humankind,
this noble song may reflect how much he loved this idyllic place.
Also set to verse by Tolstoy, “
Amid the din of the ball
” comes from
1878, the year Tchaikovsky completed
Eugene Onegin
. As we hear so
often in his ballets, the composer was a master of waltz music, and this
haunting
valse triste
describes the memory of a beautiful woman glimpsed
at a ball, whose image now revolves ceaselessly in the singer’s mind.
During the 1880s, Tchaikovsky met and became a close friend of
the young Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov, nephew of the tsar of
Russia. A deeply cultured man, Romanov was a skilled musician himself
as well as a talented amateur
poet. In 1886, he carried
word to the composer that
Tsarina Maria Feodorovna
greatly wished him to
dedicate a song to her. The
more than generous result
was the Twelve Romances,
Op. 60, from which we hear
“
The nightingale
,” which
sets Pushkin’s translation of
folk verse by Vuk Karadžić.
A poignant, downward-drooping phrase winds its way through both the
voice and piano parts, expressing the dejection of the broken-hearted
young lover in this wistful song with a strong folkloric flavor that suits
the naïve words.
In his Op. 63 songs of 1887, Tchaikovsky turned to the Grand
Duke’s own poetry. In the breathless pace of “
The first meeting
,” he
captures the overwhelming joy of two lovers reunited after an absence
filled with suffering.
RICHARD STRAUSS
(1864–1949)
Before turning his passion for the human voice to opera, Richard Strauss
was a prolific songwriter, composing his first song at age six. He recalled
that it was a Christmas carol, “for which I ‘painted’ the notes myself, but
my mother wrote the words below the notes since I could not then myself
write small enough.” In all, he created more than 200 lieder, and at his
death at age 85, a half-finished song lay on his writing desk.
Strauss spent little time analyzing the words he set; instead, he
sought to convey the overall emotional mood of each poem. And he
was a superb melodist, knowing exactly how to create melodic arches
that would exalt a singer’s voice. In a sense, he wrote songs because of
his incessant need to compose. As he described it, “Musical ideas have
prepared themselves in me… and when, as it were, the barrel is full, a
song appears in the twinkling of an eye as soon as I come across a poem
more or less corresponding to the subject of the imaginary song.”
Having already written more than 40 songs as a child and
adolescent, Strauss waited until 1885 when he was 21 to create his first
for publication: the nine songs of his Op. 10. The poet was Hermann
von Gilm, an Austrian civil servant who wrote verse of a sensitively lyrical
and often melancholy nature.
Strauss cannily chose the beautiful
“
Zueignung
” (“Dedication”) to
lead off his official lieder debut – a
song that, because of its elegant
lyricism and noble ascending
melodic line, underpinned by a
piano part that builds gradually
to a passionate outpouring, was to
become one of his most popular.
The Op. 10 set closes with another
of Strauss’s best-loved songs, “
Allerseelen
,” or “All Souls’ Day” – the
holiday on November 2 in the Catholic calendar that honors those who
have died. Although obviously indebted to Brahms, this song paints a
scene of mature love gazing nostalgically backward that is astonishing for
so young a composer.
“
Befreit
” (“Released”) from 1898 is a much more mature song –
one of Strauss’s greatest and most moving. The poet is Richard Dehmel,
famous as the author of the text of Schoenberg’s
Verklärte Nacht
. Here,
a magnificent piano part joins an exalted yet subtly inflected vocal line
to portray a deeply devoted couple soon to be parted by death. The
contradictory exclamation “O Glück!” (“Oh happiness!”), returning as a
refrain at the close of each stanza, expresses the singer’s conviction that
their love will triumph over death, but its last reiteration significantly
includes the aching half-step rise that has haunted the song and reveals
the underlying pain.
Scottish-born radical socialist John Henry Mackay, who spent most
of his life in Germany, was the author of the extraordinary “
Morgen
”
(“Tomorrow”). Since this poem seems to begin mid-thought and then
drift away without a true conclusion, Strauss artfully mirrors these
qualities in his music. The piano – not the voice – is given the radiant
melody, and the singer, as though too entranced by it to sing, only joins
later. Both singer and piano close on unresolved chords
Finally, we hear “
Cäcilie
,” composed by an eager Strauss on the eve
of his wedding. With its voluptuous arpeggios and surging vocal climax,
it is surely one of the most passionate love songs ever created.
© 2016 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
Having already written
more than 40 songs as
a child and adolescent,
Strauss waited until he
was 21 to create his
first for publication.
Tchaikovsky was less
concerned with the
artistic quality of the
verse he chose to set than
whether it evoked a strong
personal response in him.