Classical Music | Tenor

Robert Schumann

Die alten, bösen Lieder, from Dichterliebe, Op.48  Play

Fritz Wunderlich Tenor
Hubert Giesen Piano

Recorded on 12/31/1969, uploaded on 06/20/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

With the last song, “Die alten, bösen Lieder” (“The old, angry songs”), Heine’s narrative comes to its fateful end. The poet now beckons a coffin to be brought, one larger than the cask at Heidelberg (“Der Sarg muß sein noch größer, / Wie's Heidelberger Faß”)—a reference to the famed Heidelberg Tun, the world’s largest wine barrel. Next, he calls for a death bier with planks longer than the bridge at Mainz (“Auch muß sie sein noch länger, / Als wie zu Mainz die Brück'”), a city on the Rhine River; then, for twelve giants stronger than St. Christopher at the Cologne Cathedral (“Die müssen noch stärker sein / Als wie der [heil'ge]3 Christoph”), who according to legend was over seven feet tall. He then instructs that the coffin be carried away and plunged into the sea (“Die sollen den Sarg forttragen, / Und senken ins Meer hinab”), since only it would be great enough to conceal the poet’s love and anguish. Schumann’s setting brings Heine’s narrative full circle with a dramatic introduction on a C-sharp minor chord, echoing the opening tone of the first song. Beneath the steady, determined vocal melody is a busy piano accompaniment depicting the assembly of the coffin, bier, and giants at the poet’s behest. Beginning with the second stanza, the next two end successively a tone higher as the key rises from E major, though F-sharp minor, to G-sharp minor. From this point, the beginning of the fifth stanza, the tonic key is regained. Yet, the music sinks fatefully downward as Schumann depicts the coffin being carried away into the sea. A dramatic pause occurs on the “hinab” (“down”) with the vocal melody sinking into a flattened dominant over a diminished seventh harmony. The final stanza, in which the poet rhetorically asks his audience why the coffin must be so large, the music turns introspective. Over a sustained dominant seventh in F-sharp minor, the vocal melody progresses towards its most heart-wrenching conclusion. Atop a D major chord which affects a deft modulation back into C-sharp minor, the vocalist gives a poignant appoggiatura on the word “Liebe” (“love”). Once again, Schumann lets the vocal melody trail off without reaching the tonic, as if he imagines the poet suddenly unable to no longer speak, while the piano takes center stage to close the cycle. Unwarranted by Heine’s text, yet providing an effective conclusion for the cycle, Schumann appends a lengthy coda in D-flat major which provides the cycle with a bittersweet ending.       Joseph DuBose

Recorded in Usher Hall, Edinburgh, August 4, 1966

courtesy of YouTube