April 6, 2015.Schumann’s Frauenliebe.As far as composers’ birthdays go, several previous weeks were brimming with major talent but this one is pretty meager: Giuseppe Tartini ofDevil’s Trill fame being the most interesting of the bunch.So we’ll use it to publish a little essay Joe DuBose wrote about Robert Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben.To illustrate it, we’ll use the recording made by the great British contralto Kathleen Ferrier in 1950.Ferrier, the favorite singer of Bruno Walter and Benjamin Britten, died of breast cancer in 1953, just 41 year old.Fortunately, she left a number of recordings treasured by music lovers ever since.John Newmark is at the piano. ♫
The year 1840 saw at least 138 songs flow from the pen of Robert Schumann, which has since become known as his Liederjahr, or “Year of Song.” Until that year, Schumann had composed virtually exclusively for the piano. Yet, neither the sudden shift to vocal music, nor the abundance of this creative outpouring, was purely coincidental. It marked the culmination of his courtship of Clara Wieck, and their long-awaited and hard-won marriage.
Schumann first met Clara in March 1828, when both were invited to a musical evening in the home of Dr. Ernst Carus. Impressed with Clara’s skill at the piano, Schumann soon after began taking piano lessons from Clara’s father, Friedrich, during which time he lived in the Wieck’s household. Schumann and Clara quickly formed a close bond that would eventually blossom into a romantic, though clandestine, relationship. In 1837, on her 18th birthday, Schumann proposed, and Clara accepted. Friedrich, however, who had a rather unfavorable opinion of Schumann, refused to give the composer his permission to marry his daughter. The long courtship and Friedrich’s refusal was a great strain on the relationship. Clara and Schumann exchanged love letters, and were forced to meet in secret. Schumann would even wait for hours in a café just to catch a brief glimpse of Clara as she left one of her concerts. The couple sued Friedrich, and after a lengthy court battle, Clara was finally allowed to marry Schumann without her father’s consent. The wedding took place in 1840.
Frauenliebe und -leben (A Woman’s Love and Life) was one of the song cycles, along with the Liederkreis of Eichendorff and Heine’s Dichterliebe, composed during the intense creative episode surrounding Schumann’s marriage to Clara. The cycle of poems, written by the German poet and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso in 1830, describes events in the life of a woman—from her first meeting with her future husband, to their marriage, the birth of their child, and his seemingly untimely death. Adelbert’s cycle consists of nine poems. However, Schumann set only eight, omitting the poem, Traum der eignen Tage. His setting displays a departure from the Schubertian Lied, with the piano taking on an increasingly independent and important role in portraying the essence and mood of the text. Schumann’s sense of unity is also evident in the reprise of music from the first song as a postlude that concludes the last. While Schumann’s is the best known, two other notable settings of Adelbert’s cycle were composed by Carl Lowe and Franz Paul Lachner. (Continue)
The first song describes the psychological state of the woman after first seeing her beloved. His image appears always before her (“Wo ich hin nur blicke / seh' ich ihn allein”) as if in a dream, while everything else appears dark (“Sonst ist licht- und farblos / alles um mich her”). She believes herself blind, because all she can see is him (“Seit ich ihn gesehen / glaub' ich blind zu sein”). Driven to solitude, the company and frivolity of her sisters no longer interests her. Schumann sets the two-stanza poem in a straightforward strophic manner. It begins unassumingly with a simple accompanimental figure in B-flat major. This motif will appear again in the final measures, giving the entire song the sense of being a vision, passing with fleeting pleasure across the listener’s ears, much in the same way the face of the woman’s beloved passes wistfully before her eyes. On the lines “Wie im wachen Traume / schwebt sein Bild mir vor” (“As in a waking dream / his image hovers before me”), the music alternates between dominant and tonic harmonies. The vocal line, outlining a poignant ascending tritone, leaps up to its highest point, only to glide slowly back down to the note on which in began. The bass line, meanwhile, mimics the voice with a somewhat free reversion of the melody. In the final lines of the first stanza, “Taucht aus tiefstem Dunkel / heller nur empor” (“Emerging up from deepest darkness / brighter in ascent”), shadows momentarily pass over the music as it briefly touches upon the key of C minor, while suspensions obscure the otherwise chiefly diatonic harmonies. An expressive downward leap of a major seventh accompanies the word “tiefstem” (“deepest”). Later the surety of a definitive cadence is thwarted by the deceptive motion towards G minor of the piano.
In the next song, the woman praises the man she loves. She praises his temperament (“Wie so milde, wie so gut”), his appearance (“Holde Lippen, klares Auge”), and his intellect (“Heller Sinn und fester Mut”). To her, he is a bright and distant star in the heavens. Yet, melancholy creeps in among her admiration for him. Her wishes are only for his happiness (“mein stilles Beten / deinem Glücke nur geweiht”). Feeling herself unworthy of him, she then praises the one that will be (“Und ich will die Hohe segnen / viele tausendmal”), but then will weep for her own broken heart, as she rejoices in his happiness. An anxious accompaniment of repeated chords persists through nearly the entirety of Schumann’s setting. In the majestic key of E-flat major and with a fanfare-like manner, the beginning of the vocal melody (“Er, der Herrlichste von allen”) outlines the tones of the tonic triad on a regal, dotted rhythm. Schumann then proceeds setting the stanzas in a rondo form. The first two stanzas being set to near similar music, the third introduces a new melody. The woman’s anxiety, culminating in the line “Selig nur und traurig sein” (“to be blessed and sad”), is expressed in the gradually ascending vocal melody and its accompanying harmonies. Beginning with a brief suggestion of C minor in the first measure, the piano echoes the vocal melody a tone higher. The voice then responds with a new phrase, which is, in turn, imitated by the accompanist. The final line, given above, begins to move the music towards G minor, but a poignant chromatic descent, in both the vocal melody and accompaniment, captures the woman’s disquietude, while also effecting a transition back into the tonic key and a slightly altered reprise of the opening music for the fourth stanza. The fifth and last stanzas form the rondo’s second episode. Both stanzas are set to similar music, with the latter being a third lower. The conflict of the woman’s heart—praising at once the one who will make her beloved happy, yet weeping for her own broken heart—is borne out in the ambiguous tonality and the near consistent deceptive resolutions of the many seventh chords and their inversions that permeate the section. All the while, the restless vocal melody is punctuated by affecting “sighs” in the accompaniment. To complete the song’s rondo form, Schumann repeats the first stanza. This reprise begins at first in the key of C major, but Schumann quiet deftly reestablishes the tonic of E-flat major by the second measure. As the vocal melody ends, the repetitive chords of the accompaniment begin to wane and ultimately give way to an affectionate, contrapuntal passage that brings the song to a close.
Believing herself bewitched by some dream (“ein Traum mich berückt”), the woman, in the third song, is unable to believe that the man she has so distantly admired has chosen her among all others. She fears to wake from the dream at any moment, and hopes to die with such bliss, cradled upon his chest (“O laß im Traume mich sterben / gewieget an seiner Brust”). A simple, chordal accompaniment underpins the anxious vocal melody throughout the song. At first, in the key of C minor, the chords are staccato and the music is agitated. In the second stanza, where she believes that he has pledged himself eternally to her (“Ich bin auf ewig dein”), the key changes to the relative major, and Schumann achieves a remarkable dream-like state by the effortless change to legato chords and the introduction of augmented fifth and sixth harmonies. Schumann reprises the first stanza to give the song a ternary design. A further repetition of the first two lines, interwoven within the piano’s postlude brings about a final modulation into C major as the song ends.
A blissful, reverent tone pervades the fourth song of the cycle. The woman, now engaged to her beloved, muses on the golden ring on her finger. She presses it piously to her lips (“Ich drücke dich fromm an die Lippen”) and to her heart (“dich fromm an das Herze mein”). The dream of her childhood is fulfilled (“der Kindheit friedlich schönen Traum”)—she belongs to him. The affectionate vocal melody throughout much of the song is reinforced by the piano, and supported by a gentle accompaniment of broken chords and a sturdy bass in octaves. The music of the first stanza serves as a refrain, reappearing slightly altered during the third and fifth, which likewise begin with the line, “Du Ring an meinem Finger” (“You ring on my finger”). The second stanza, in which the woman reflects upon her childhood dream, maintains much of the character of the refrain, touching only briefly upon a moment of wistfulness towards its close, as a G-flat creeps into the otherwise major tonality. The fourth stanza, on the other hand, becomes more passionate. The vocal melody builds to its highest point, while the accompaniment adopts fervently, full-voiced repeated chords. Effortlessly, however, Schumann transitions back,without breaking the vocal melody, into the tender music of the opening for the last stanza.
The excitement of wedding-day preparations overcomes the fifth song of the cycle. The woman entreats her sisters to adorn her (“freundlich mich schmücken…windet geschäftig mir um die Stirne noch der blühenden Myrte Zier”), and to quell her growing anxiety (“Helft mir verscheuchen / eine törichte Bangigkeit”). An ostinato accompaniment, traversing up and down the tones of the tonic triad in B-flat major, provides the musical background for the vocal melody during the initial stanza. Like the previous song, this music serves as a refrain and reappears in the third and fifth stanzas. The second stanza, which still maintains the tonic key, is given a fuller accompaniment with eighth notes cradled between the melodic vocal line and a pedal bass on the dominant. At its conclusion, the excitement of the day can be heard as the bass suddenly rises, and climbs chromatically through a tritone back to the dominant. The fourth stanza, on the other hand, is accompanied by repeated chords and a firm bass centered once again about the dominant that forms an exciting lead up to the final stanza. The music of the final refrain is altered as the woman greets her sisters with melancholy, bidding them farewell (“Grüß ich mit Wehmut / freudig scheidend aus eurer Schar”).At the song’s conclusion, the fanfares of a wedding march are heard, and seem to fade away as the merry procession carries on.
In the sixth song, the woman struggles to find the words (“wüßt ich nur mit Worten / wie ich's sagen soll”) to tell her husband that she is with child. Tears of happiness fill her eyes as her husband looks on with confused wonderment. In Chamisso’s poem, the woman’s pregnancy is revealed to the reader in the third stanza. Schumann, however, omits this stanza, dramatically shifting her revelation to the final stanza: the cradle will be by her bedside, and in the mornings, his likeness will look up at her (“kommen wird der Morgen…daraus dein Bildniss mir entgegen lacht”). During the first and second stanzas of Schumann’s settings, the listener can hear the woman’s forced composure, as she searches to find the right words to express the joyful news to her husband. Sustained harmonies supporting the sweet vocal melody are undermined by dissonances fraught with anticipation. The very motivic figure with which the accompaniment begins and the delayed resolution of the dominant seventh chord a whole measure after the tonic appears in the bass seem to embody all the woman’s attempts at self-control. All of which is, then, released in the third stanza. Modulating to the key of C major, the vocal melody at first is more fragmented, but then grows with an anxious energy and anticipation during its latter half (“Bleib an meinem Herzen / fühle dessen Schlag…”). The sustained harmonies of the accompaniment are replaced by restless, reiterated chords that slowly ascend chromatically. The stanza culminates in a tender sforzando as the woman finds comfort in embracing her husband (“daß ich fest und fester / nur dich drücken mag”). The fourth and final stanza returns to the music of first, after which the piano provides a brief postlude. On the final cadence, the voice reenters with a heartfelt and loving repetition of “dein Bildniss” (“your likeness”).
The next song finds the woman nursing her newborn baby, in whom she has found a new, even greater happiness and love (“Hab überschwenglich mich geschätzt / bin überglücklich aber jetzt”). She muses on her love and pity’s those who know not her joy (“O, wie bedaur' ich doch den Mann / der Mutterglück nicht fühlen kann”). A lively accompaniment of broken chords in compound meter accompanies the joyful D major vocal melody. At the seventh couplet (“Du lieber, lieber Engel, du…”), Schumann replaces the arpeggios with staccato, block chords. Yet, to ensure that the joyful energy of the piece is not lost, he also gives the indication “Noch schneller” (“faster still”).
The tone of the cycle radically changes in the final song. From a joyous D major to a dismal and bleak D minor, the woman now grieves for her dead husband. For the first time, he has caused her pain (“Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan”). The world, now, is as dark and void as before their blissful life together. Yet, her memories live on (“Da hab ich dich und mein verlornes Glück”) as she withdraws into herself. Schumann’s setting could not provide a starker contrast. The vocal melody loses all of its melodic appeal. Often, it fixates itself on a single tone, as if lacking both the will and energy to move. When it does move, more often than not it is by stepwise motion. In the final stanza, it winds slowly about the tonic before an unresolved close on the supertonic. The accompaniment is equally bleak. Accented chords at first accompany the voice, but then give way to a dreary progression of chromatic harmonies. Attempting to provide the cycle with a sense of unity, Schumann transitions from the inconclusive dominant chord on which the vocal melody ends into a restatement of the opening music of the first song. While this extended postlude serves this structural purpose, most importantly it can be seen as the woman receding into her memories, reliving within her mind her once happy life.
Schumann’s Frauenliebe 2015
April 6, 2015. Schumann’s Frauenliebe. As far as composers’ birthdays go, several previous weeks were brimming with major talent but this one is pretty meager: Giuseppe Tartini of Devil’s Trill fame being the most interesting of the bunch. So we’ll use it to publish a little essay Joe DuBose wrote about Robert Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben. To illustrate it, we’ll use the recording made by the great British contralto Kathleen Ferrier in 1950. Ferrier, the favorite singer of Bruno Walter and Benjamin Britten, died of breast cancer in 1953, just 41 year old. Fortunately, she left a number of recordings treasured by music lovers ever since. John Newmark is at the piano. ♫
The year 1840 saw at least 138 songs flow from the pen of Robert Schumann, which has
since become known as his Liederjahr, or “Year of Song.” Until that year, Schumann had composed virtually exclusively for the piano. Yet, neither the sudden shift to vocal music, nor the abundance of this creative outpouring, was purely coincidental. It marked the culmination of his courtship of Clara Wieck, and their long-awaited and hard-won marriage.
Schumann first met Clara in March 1828, when both were invited to a musical evening in the home of Dr. Ernst Carus. Impressed with Clara’s skill at the piano, Schumann soon after began taking piano lessons from Clara’s father, Friedrich, during which time he lived in the Wieck’s household. Schumann and Clara quickly formed a close bond that would eventually blossom into a romantic, though clandestine, relationship. In 1837, on her 18th birthday, Schumann proposed, and Clara accepted. Friedrich, however, who had a rather unfavorable opinion of Schumann, refused to give the composer his permission to marry his daughter. The long courtship and Friedrich’s refusal was a great strain on the relationship. Clara and Schumann exchanged love letters, and were forced to meet in secret. Schumann would even wait for hours in a café just to catch a brief glimpse of Clara as she left one of her concerts. The couple sued Friedrich, and after a lengthy court battle, Clara was finally allowed to marry Schumann without her father’s consent. The wedding took place in 1840.
Frauenliebe und -leben (A Woman’s Love and Life) was one of the song cycles, along with the Liederkreis of Eichendorff and Heine’s Dichterliebe, composed during the intense creative episode surrounding Schumann’s marriage to Clara. The cycle of poems, written by the German poet and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso in 1830, describes events in the life of a woman—from her first meeting with her future husband, to their marriage, the birth of their child, and his seemingly untimely death. Adelbert’s cycle consists of nine poems. However, Schumann set only eight, omitting the poem, Traum der eignen Tage. His setting displays a departure from the Schubertian Lied, with the piano taking on an increasingly independent and important role in portraying the essence and mood of the text. Schumann’s sense of unity is also evident in the reprise of music from the first song as a postlude that concludes the last. While Schumann’s is the best known, two other notable settings of Adelbert’s cycle were composed by Carl Lowe and Franz Paul Lachner. (Continue)
The first song describes the psychological state of the woman after first seeing her beloved. His image appears always before her (“Wo ich hin nur blicke / seh' ich ihn allein”) as if in a dream, while everything else appears dark (“Sonst ist licht- und farblos / alles um mich her”). She believes herself blind, because all she can see is him (“Seit ich ihn gesehen / glaub' ich blind zu sein”). Driven to solitude, the company and frivolity of her sisters no longer interests her. Schumann sets the two-stanza poem in a straightforward strophic manner. It begins unassumingly with a simple accompanimental figure in B-flat major. This motif will appear again in the final measures, giving the entire song the sense of being a vision, passing with fleeting pleasure across the listener’s ears, much in the same way the face of the woman’s beloved passes wistfully before her eyes. On the lines “Wie im wachen Traume / schwebt sein Bild mir vor” (“As in a waking dream / his image hovers before me”), the music alternates between dominant and tonic harmonies. The vocal line, outlining a poignant ascending tritone, leaps up to its highest point, only to glide slowly back down to the note on which in began. The bass line, meanwhile, mimics the voice with a somewhat free reversion of the melody. In the final lines of the first stanza, “Taucht aus tiefstem Dunkel / heller nur empor” (“Emerging up from deepest darkness / brighter in ascent”), shadows momentarily pass over the music as it briefly touches upon the key of C minor, while suspensions obscure the otherwise chiefly diatonic harmonies. An expressive downward leap of a major seventh accompanies the word “tiefstem” (“deepest”). Later the surety of a definitive cadence is thwarted by the deceptive motion towards G minor of the piano.
In the next song, the woman praises the man she loves. She praises his temperament (“Wie so milde, wie so gut”), his appearance (“Holde Lippen, klares Auge”), and his intellect (“Heller Sinn und fester Mut”). To her, he is a bright and distant star in the heavens. Yet, melancholy creeps in among her admiration for him. Her wishes are only for his happiness (“mein stilles Beten / deinem Glücke nur geweiht”). Feeling herself unworthy of him, she then praises the one that will be (“Und ich will die Hohe segnen / viele tausendmal”), but then will weep for her own broken heart, as she rejoices in his happiness. An anxious accompaniment of repeated chords persists through nearly the entirety of Schumann’s setting. In the majestic key of E-flat major and with a fanfare-like manner, the beginning of the vocal melody (“Er, der Herrlichste von allen”) outlines the tones of the tonic triad on a regal, dotted rhythm. Schumann then proceeds setting the stanzas in a rondo form. The first two stanzas being set to near similar music, the third introduces a new melody. The woman’s anxiety, culminating in the line “Selig nur und traurig sein” (“to be blessed and sad”), is expressed in the gradually ascending vocal melody and its accompanying harmonies. Beginning with a brief suggestion of C minor in the first measure, the piano echoes the vocal melody a tone higher. The voice then responds with a new phrase, which is, in turn, imitated by the accompanist. The final line, given above, begins to move the music towards G minor, but a poignant chromatic descent, in both the vocal melody and accompaniment, captures the woman’s disquietude, while also effecting a transition back into the tonic key and a slightly altered reprise of the opening music for the fourth stanza. The fifth and last stanzas form the rondo’s second episode. Both stanzas are set to similar music, with the latter being a third lower. The conflict of the woman’s heart—praising at once the one who will make her beloved happy, yet weeping for her own broken heart—is borne out in the ambiguous tonality and the near consistent deceptive resolutions of the many seventh chords and their inversions that permeate the section. All the while, the restless vocal melody is punctuated by affecting “sighs” in the accompaniment. To complete the song’s rondo form, Schumann repeats the first stanza. This reprise begins at first in the key of C major, but Schumann quiet deftly reestablishes the tonic of E-flat major by the second measure. As the vocal melody ends, the repetitive chords of the accompaniment begin to wane and ultimately give way to an affectionate, contrapuntal passage that brings the song to a close.
Believing herself bewitched by some dream (“ein Traum mich berückt”), the woman, in the third song, is unable to believe that the man she has so distantly admired has chosen her among all others. She fears to wake from the dream at any moment, and hopes to die with such bliss, cradled upon his chest (“O laß im Traume mich sterben / gewieget an seiner Brust”). A simple, chordal accompaniment underpins the anxious vocal melody throughout the song. At first, in the key of C minor, the chords are staccato and the music is agitated. In the second stanza, where she believes that he has pledged himself eternally to her (“Ich bin auf ewig dein”), the key changes to the relative major, and Schumann achieves a remarkable dream-like state by the effortless change to legato chords and the introduction of augmented fifth and sixth harmonies. Schumann reprises the first stanza to give the song a ternary design. A further repetition of the first two lines, interwoven within the piano’s postlude brings about a final modulation into C major as the song ends.
A blissful, reverent tone pervades the fourth song of the cycle. The woman, now engaged to her beloved, muses on the golden ring on her finger. She presses it piously to her lips (“Ich drücke dich fromm an die Lippen”) and to her heart (“dich fromm an das Herze mein”). The dream of her childhood is fulfilled (“der Kindheit friedlich schönen Traum”)—she belongs to him. The affectionate vocal melody throughout much of the song is reinforced by the piano, and supported by a gentle accompaniment of broken chords and a sturdy bass in octaves. The music of the first stanza serves as a refrain, reappearing slightly altered during the third and fifth, which likewise begin with the line, “Du Ring an meinem Finger” (“You ring on my finger”). The second stanza, in which the woman reflects upon her childhood dream, maintains much of the character of the refrain, touching only briefly upon a moment of wistfulness towards its close, as a G-flat creeps into the otherwise major tonality. The fourth stanza, on the other hand, becomes more passionate. The vocal melody builds to its highest point, while the accompaniment adopts fervently, full-voiced repeated chords. Effortlessly, however, Schumann transitions back,without breaking the vocal melody, into the tender music of the opening for the last stanza.
The excitement of wedding-day preparations overcomes the fifth song of the cycle. The woman entreats her sisters to adorn her (“freundlich mich schmücken…windet geschäftig mir um die Stirne noch der blühenden Myrte Zier”), and to quell her growing anxiety (“Helft mir verscheuchen / eine törichte Bangigkeit”). An ostinato accompaniment, traversing up and down the tones of the tonic triad in B-flat major, provides the musical background for the vocal melody during the initial stanza. Like the previous song, this music serves as a refrain and reappears in the third and fifth stanzas. The second stanza, which still maintains the tonic key, is given a fuller accompaniment with eighth notes cradled between the melodic vocal line and a pedal bass on the dominant. At its conclusion, the excitement of the day can be heard as the bass suddenly rises, and climbs chromatically through a tritone back to the dominant. The fourth stanza, on the other hand, is accompanied by repeated chords and a firm bass centered once again about the dominant that forms an exciting lead up to the final stanza. The music of the final refrain is altered as the woman greets her sisters with melancholy, bidding them farewell (“Grüß ich mit Wehmut / freudig scheidend aus eurer Schar”). At the song’s conclusion, the fanfares of a wedding march are heard, and seem to fade away as the merry procession carries on.
In the sixth song, the woman struggles to find the words (“wüßt ich nur mit Worten / wie ich's sagen soll”) to tell her husband that she is with child. Tears of happiness fill her eyes as her husband looks on with confused wonderment. In Chamisso’s poem, the woman’s pregnancy is revealed to the reader in the third stanza. Schumann, however, omits this stanza, dramatically shifting her revelation to the final stanza: the cradle will be by her bedside, and in the mornings, his likeness will look up at her (“kommen wird der Morgen…daraus dein Bildniss mir entgegen lacht”). During the first and second stanzas of Schumann’s settings, the listener can hear the woman’s forced composure, as she searches to find the right words to express the joyful news to her husband. Sustained harmonies supporting the sweet vocal melody are undermined by dissonances fraught with anticipation. The very motivic figure with which the accompaniment begins and the delayed resolution of the dominant seventh chord a whole measure after the tonic appears in the bass seem to embody all the woman’s attempts at self-control. All of which is, then, released in the third stanza. Modulating to the key of C major, the vocal melody at first is more fragmented, but then grows with an anxious energy and anticipation during its latter half (“Bleib an meinem Herzen / fühle dessen Schlag…”). The sustained harmonies of the accompaniment are replaced by restless, reiterated chords that slowly ascend chromatically. The stanza culminates in a tender sforzando as the woman finds comfort in embracing her husband (“daß ich fest und fester / nur dich drücken mag”). The fourth and final stanza returns to the music of first, after which the piano provides a brief postlude. On the final cadence, the voice reenters with a heartfelt and loving repetition of “dein Bildniss” (“your likeness”).
The next song finds the woman nursing her newborn baby, in whom she has found a new, even greater happiness and love (“Hab überschwenglich mich geschätzt / bin überglücklich aber jetzt”). She muses on her love and pity’s those who know not her joy (“O, wie bedaur' ich doch den Mann / der Mutterglück nicht fühlen kann”). A lively accompaniment of broken chords in compound meter accompanies the joyful D major vocal melody. At the seventh couplet (“Du lieber, lieber Engel, du…”), Schumann replaces the arpeggios with staccato, block chords. Yet, to ensure that the joyful energy of the piece is not lost, he also gives the indication “Noch schneller” (“faster still”).
The tone of the cycle radically changes in the final song. From a joyous D major to a dismal and bleak D minor, the woman now grieves for her dead husband. For the first time, he has caused her pain (“Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan”). The world, now, is as dark and void as before their blissful life together. Yet, her memories live on (“Da hab ich dich und mein verlornes Glück”) as she withdraws into herself. Schumann’s setting could not provide a starker contrast. The vocal melody loses all of its melodic appeal. Often, it fixates itself on a single tone, as if lacking both the will and energy to move. When it does move, more often than not it is by stepwise motion. In the final stanza, it winds slowly about the tonic before an unresolved close on the supertonic. The accompaniment is equally bleak. Accented chords at first accompany the voice, but then give way to a dreary progression of chromatic harmonies. Attempting to provide the cycle with a sense of unity, Schumann transitions from the inconclusive dominant chord on which the vocal melody ends into a restatement of the opening music of the first song. While this extended postlude serves this structural purpose, most importantly it can be seen as the woman receding into her memories, reliving within her mind her once happy life.