Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 09/28/2011, uploaded on 03/22/2012

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

With the help of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Rienzi was staged in Dresden in 1842 and Richard Wagner made a triumphal return to his German fatherland. In the succeeding years, two more operas were staged: Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser. However, Wagner’s associations with radical socialists in Dresden eventually caused him to have to abandon the city. In the aftermath of the failed May Uprising, arrest warrants were issued for the rebels. Though Wagner had only played a minor role, he was forced to flee the city or be arrested. He traveled first to Paris, but ultimately made his way to Zurich. Eventually, he and his wife took up residence in a small cottage on the estate of Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck in 1857.

Safely away from those who would throw him in jail, and furthermore, his creditors, Wagner’s time with the Wesendonck’s became a critically important period for the composer. Mathilde was a poet and her poetry, if not her very self, became a source of inspiration for the composer. The extent of his friendship with Mathilde may never be known, and it is not impossible that the two may have carried on an affair, but either way her poetry served, in part, as a crucial element in the development of Wagner’s most revolutionary opera. From 1857 until 1860, Wagner worked intensely on Tristan und Isolde. During this time, he also set five of Mathilde’s poems to music, two of which he specifically designated as “studies” for the opera.

“Der Engel” (“The Angel”) was the first of the Wesendonck Lieder to be composed. It opens the collection with the image of angels, who leave their heavenly home to uplift a weary and desolate soul. In the final stanza, the poet finds her own soul borne heavenward by one of these angels. Wagner’s setting of Mathilde’s poem begins with rising arpeggios through the tonic chord of G major, depicting the angels of heaven, while the vocal melody soars as if borne upon their wings. As the focus turns upon Earth and the miseries of the poet in the second stanza, the vocal melody becomes more agitated and chromatic while the piano follows suit with an accompaniment of repetitive chords. However, the music returns to the ethereal arpeggios of the opening as the voice declares the angels floating down from heaven in the middle of the third stanza. Though similar to the beginning, Wagner utilizes more chromatic harmonies in the song’s final stanza as the poet gives voice to the joy of her uplifted soul.    Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.