Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics Vols. 642-645 MASTERSONGS BY GREAT COMPOSERS FRANZ LISZT TWELVE SONGS IN TW O VOL U M E S THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS BY DR. THEO. BAKER WITH A CRITICAL NOTE BY RICHARD ALDRICH PUBLISHED IN TW O EDITIONS FOR HIGH AND L O IV VOICE Nos. 642, 644 for High Voice Nos. 643, 645' for Low Voice NEW YORK : G. SCHIRMER Copyright, 1902, by G. Schirmer FRANZ LISZT A CRITICAL NOTE BY RICHARD ALDRICH Franz Liszt's marvellous career brought him into intimate relations with all sides of his art. It was a career of fascinating brilliancy, marked by strongly contrasted episodes; of invincible success in most things that the world counts as success; of changing and advancing ideals; of strivings that lifted him ever higher and higher toward nobler conceptions of the functions of an artist. We find him first a virtuoso of perhaps the highest genius that the world has ever seen; a composer of bravura pianoforte pieces that only his technical powers could approach. We see then a deeper influence gaining control over his activities, turning him to the most serious forms of composition, to a philosophic consideration of problems underlying the aesthetics of music, and to an effort to lead his art into new paths, to establish new forms and set up new ideals. There is something profoundly impressive in the spectacle of this man, at the climax of the most triumphant career that a musician ever had, suddenly renouncing all the worldly success it brought him, and withdrawing from its allurements to devote himself to preaching a new evangel of art. He established himself as conductor of the opera and orchestra at the Court theatre of Weimar, with the distinct purpose of becoming the advocate of the new school of music, of forwarding with the prestige of his great name and the resources of his position the claims of an unpopular and misunderstood group of composers, whose works had otherwise little chance of a hearing; and at the same time he enlisted with enthusiasm under this same banner as a composer, fired with the same enthusiasms and animated by the same views of the artistic ideal. The close of Liszt's career as a virtuoso and the beginning of his activity at Weimar occurred at the end of the year 1841 ; and from about the same period of his life is to be dated his concern with the higher functions of creative art, and the beginning of a long series of compositions that have had a marked influence on the development 15873, 15874. Ill Copyright, 1902, by G. Schirmer of music. Among the great mass of the works of these maturer years his songs hold an important place. It was distinctively "a German ideal that he followed in this later development of his genius. This fact is clearly visible in his songs. They number more than sixty ; with a very few exceptions they were conceived and composed on German soil, are settings of German poems, and, while essentially individual in their embodiment of Liszt's own genius, show plainly the influence of the German masters of song. In the late summer of 1841—he was then thirty years old—he took up his abode on the island of Nonnen-werth, iri the Rhine. It is significant of the influence always exerted upon him by his environment that his first composition during his communing with the sacred river of Germany should be a setting of Heine's poem, " Die Lorelei." He had hitherto published but one song, a setting of Italian verse to music, unmistakably Italian in its quality, "Angiolin dal biondo crin"—another hint of the receptivity of his nature—that he had composed during a sojourn at Rome. The " Lorelei" was followed by a series of songs to words by Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Rlickert, Geibel, Bodenstedt, Lenau, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, and other German poets. In 1842 he published a set of French songs chiefly to poems by Victor Hugo, which, according to his biographer, Fraulein Ramann, he had already conceived in Paris, and which bear in themselves traces of their French origin; but with this exception, the sixty odd songs that followed, written on his Rhine island and during his career at Weimar, are an endeavor to give voice to the German spirit and to interpret German ideals. These songs have not escaped the fate of Liszt's other compositions in becoming the subject of great debate and controversy. They belonged to the " path-breaking" productions of the young German composers, who were trying to revolutionize the art of music and enlarge its boundaries; and as such they came in for the general condemnation with which the conservatives fought the new movement. But since the smoke and noise of that conflict have in large measure passed away, Liszt's claims to recognition as a creative genius, as a composer, have been resisted even by ardent supporters of the cause he espoused. Only a small proportion of his works has found wide acceptance from 15873,15874. IV the musical public, and, with comparatively few exceptions, the songs are among the less known. Some of them, such as " Die Lorelei/' " Du bist wie eine Blume," and " Es muss ein Wunderbares sein," have gained a large measure of popularity. But it may be truly said of all of them that they are as entirely representative of the composer's aims, methods, and inspiration as any of his compositions, both in their melodic quality and in their form and structure. Most of these songs embody in the highest degree the dramatic idea—the abandonment of the purely strophic form of continuous melody in favor of a method of procedure that shall more accurately expound the changing sentiment of the text. Verse by verse, almost word by word, we find the music in them subordinated to the poem through changes of melodic motive, or the interruption of the melodic sequence with sudden breaks into declamatory passages; frequent differentiations of the tempo, shiftings of rhythm and of tonality, sometimes by adventurous modulations, sometimes by still bolder plunges into new keys without modulation ; and everywhere the elaboration of the pianoforte accompaniment as an essential factor in the musical development. There are constant reminders of Liszt's anxiety that exactly the right shade of meaning shall be given by the singer. Besides the fullest use of ordinary marks of expression, he gives directions in various languages as to the minutest details of performance. The half-spoken style is a favorite of Liszt's, as may be gathered from the frequent appearance on his pages of such hints as " decla-mirt," " gesprochen," and " fast gesprochen," " parlando," "parle;" he is frequently explaining just the dramatic nuance, accent, and vocal coloring he desires with such prescriptions as " mit halber Stimme," " bestimmt," " ernst," "duster," "schwungvoll," ''geheimnissvoll," "phlegmatisch," "hintraumend," "schwankend," "sehraccentuirt," "vibrato," "pronunziato assai," and so on. And, indeed, it is quite essential for the realization of the spirit in which Liszt conceived his songs that the singer should be guided by these directions to a perfectly free and dramatically flexible style of performance. Here we have reached, as the distinguished English critic, Dr. Hueffer, has said, the consistent carrying-out of the poetic principle in lyric music to its final consequences. 15873, 15874. V Liszt has freed himself entirely from any reverential feeling for the abstract sacredness of the musical form; "he is a poet and nothing but a poet." He has endeavored to embody in the smaller frame of the song the principle that Wagner laid down for the lyric drama ; that the means of expression, the music, should not be made the end; that the object of the expression, the drama—represented now by the poem— should not be made the means. The music must lend itself unreservedly and continuously to intensifying the emotional content of the text; the text must not be a mere peg upon which to hang a tune. Others before Liszt had found that a strict adherence to the strophic form in the art-song was often impossible, and the " durchcomponirtes Lied "— the song in which the whole musical tissue is more or less modified to suit the changing sentiment of the verse—had justified itself to Schubert and even to Beethoven. None, however, had ever carried the principle to so complete a working-out as Liszt. That there is danger to the essentials of artistic unity and consistent development of the musical element in the extent to which he carried it, has been admitted by even ardent admirers of Liszt's methods and ideals. There is danger that not only the musical beauty, but the rhythmic organism of the poem may be injured, as Dr. HuefFer has pointed out. Liszt himself found numerous occasions when such a course did not suggest itself to him, as is seen in his purely lyric settings, such as those of " Du bist wie eine Blume " and " Es muss ein Wunderbares sein." Whether or not he has sometimes passed beyond the boundaries that circumscribe the true limits of song, is still a question unsettled. We cannot do better in stating the position of his followers than to quote still further the opinion of the eminent English critic just referred to, who, in an analysis of the song, "Am Rhein," justifies Liszt in these words : " The perfect blending of the two arts strikes the hearer with a feeling of beauty and harmony of a higher order, because it arises from the mutual surrender of two divergent elements in one common effort. In works like this Liszt has brought the efficiency of music for poetical purposes to a pitch formerly unknown in lyrical compositions." Richard Aldrich. VI 15873, 15874. FRANZ LISZT Twelve Songs in Two Volumes CONTENTS OF VOL. I PAGE MIGNON'S LIED 1 'SONG OF MIGNON) ES.WAR EIN KONIG IN THULE 10 (THERE WAS A KING IN THULE) ES MUSS EIN WUNDERBARES SEIN 16 (IT MUST BE WONDERFUL, WITHAL) FREUDVOLL UND LEIDVOLL 18 (JOYFUL AND WOEFUL) DIE SCHLUSSELBLUMEN 20 (THE PRIMROSES) IN LIEBESLUST 24 (IN LOVE'S DELIGHT) 15873 15874 Mignorfs Lied. Song: of Migfnon. 1 Poem by Goethe. „Es war ein Konig in Thule" "There was a king in Thule" Original key F minor. Poem by Goethe. „Es muss ein Wunderbares sein" "It must be wonderful, withal" Original key E major. Poem by Redwitz. 16 „Freudvoll und leidvoll." "Joyful and Woeful." Original key E major. Poem by Goethe. Die Schlusselblumen. Aus „Mutter Gottes Strausslein zum Maimonate." Poem by Joseph Miiller. The Primroses. From "The Virgin Mary's Nosegay for the Month of May." Original key. „In Liebeslust." "In Love's Delight." Original key. Poem by Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics Vols. 642—645 MASTERSONGS BY GREAT COMPOSERS FRANZ LISZT TWELVE SONGS IN TW O VOLUMES THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS BY DR. THEO. BAKER WITH A CRITICAL NOTE BY RICHARD ALDRICH PUBLISHED IN T W O EDITIONS FOR HIGH AND L O W VOICE Nos. 642, 644 for High Voice Nos. 643, 645 for Low Voice NEW YORK : G. SCHIRMER Copyright, 1902, by G. Schirmer PAGE DIE LORELEY 2 (LORELEY) DU BIST WIE EINE BLUME 10 (AH, SWEET AS ANY FLOWER) OH! QUAKD JE DORS 12 (O, WHILE I SLEEP) S'lL EST UN CHARMANT GAZON 17 (IF THERE BE A CHARMING LAWN) KL1NG' LEISE, MEIN LIED 21 (BREATHE LIGHTLY, MY LAY) DIE DREI ZIGEUNER 28 (THE THREE GYPSIES) CONTENTS OF VOL. II FRANZ LISZT Twelve Songs in Two Volumes Poem by Heine. Die Loreley. Loreley. Original key. „ Du bist wie eine Blume" 'Ah, sweet as any flower." Original key. Poem by Heine. 10 "Oh! Quand je dors.» "O, while I sleep." Original key. Poem by Victor Hugo. 12 Poem by Victor Hugo. «S'iI est un charmant gazon.» "If there be a charming lawn." 17 Original key. „Kling' leise, mein Lied." "Breathe lightly, my lay." Original key. Poem by Nordmann. 21 Die drei Zigeuner. The Three Gypsies. Original key D minor. Poem by Lenau. English 'version by Philip J. Mosenthal. 28 Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics Vols. 238, 239 MASTERSONGS BY GREAT COMPOSERS FELIX MENDELSSOHN SIX SONGS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS BY DR. THEO. BAKER WITH A CRITICAL NOTE BY RICHARD ALDRICH No. 239 for Low Voice No 238 for High Voice NEW YORK : G. SCHIRMER Copyright, 1901 F. MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY A CRITICAL NOTE BY RICHARD ALDRICH Mendelssohn composed seventy-four songs. Of the seventy-nine contained in the complete editions of his works, five were written by his sister Fanny, and were published together with his own in the sets marked Opus 8 and 9. Mendelssohn himself appears to have laid no very great stress upon his songs or to have prized them as an especially significant or characteristic part of his work. They are not often referred to in his letters, in which he frequently mentions his occupation with compositions of a larger mould. They were naturally undertaken by him as a part of the output expected of a thoroughly trained and accomplished musician. The reader of his biographies cannot fail to be struck with the impartiality with which he paid tribute to all the different branches of musical art; like Mozart, he found all music his province, he felt himself especially at home in no one particular form of it. Yet Mendelssohn's songs are in a special manner a direct expression of his peculiarly lyric genius, and particularly of his intense and dominating feeling for perfection of form. Like the Songs without Words, those with words attained instantaneous popularity, especially in his native land, through their obvious charm and the immediate appeal of their sentiment, their clarity of form and their suavity of expression. It has been their fate to share with most of the composer's other work that undue neglect that has come in the last fifty years, with the great reaction from the overestimation in which Mendelssohn was held during his lifetime. They are not often heard in the concert room nowadays; but they are better worthy of a place there than much that is exploited before the public ; and the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. Mendelssohn's songs show the same finish of workmanship and elegance of style that mark everything he did. In them there is inexhaustible facility in his own characteristic melody, and an exquisite balance of structure. They are the 15622. product of a perfectly competent and trained workmanship. The vocal part is always purely vocal, fluent and limpid in quality, perfectly calculated to put the singer at his ease—the singer that knows how to sing. There is nothing rough, nothing erratic; there are none of the difficulties that often beset the singer of Schumann's and sometimes of Schubert's songs, and few of those that tax the accompanist in them. The accompaniments are always true accompaniments, always subordinated, never obtruded into prominence, never asserting the right for a moment of usurping any of the singer's function. Mendelssohn wrote his songs, as he did everything else, with sincerity; but he never strikes the listener as a song writer by the grace of God, or through any such irresistible impulse as drove Schumann and Schubert to this medium of expression. Scarcely one of them sounds a profound note of passion or of pathos; scarcely one of them touches the deepest recesses of the heart or rises to any height of exalted eloquence. They are full of delicate and touching sentiment, of grace, of vivacity, of humor, and in a strikingly large proportion of them the quality of the Volkslied is reproduced as few other composers have succeeded in doing it. This must be accounted an achievement of true genius. Hardly any other master's individuality is so constantly in evidence, unruffled, in his works as is Mendelssohn's in his songs. Each trait in them seems like a positive reflection of that amiable personality, and all have an unmistakable family likeness. This individuality is not extraordinarily rich or deep, but it is a cultivated and well-rounded one. And precisely because it is so definite, so constantly in evidence, does Mendelssohn take a place as a song writer so far removed from those occupied by Schumann and Schubert. They let their imaginations have free play in interpreting the verses they chose for musical setting; every shade of feeling and emotion summoned from their brains its own musical expression, carried to any extreme, even in conflict with preconceived notions of propriety. Mendelssohn's fancy is aroused by the poet, but he is not carried awa^by him ; he feels the latter's individuality always as strictly subordinated to his own. His musical treatment is, therefore, always subjective; his personality shines through it all. There is never a conflict in his songs between beauty of form, symmetry of structure on the one hand, and truth of expression and dramatic forceful- Richard Aldrjch. ness on the other. Such a conflict was quite excluded from his music by his nature and training. He had a full consciousness, a definite ideal of the beautiful, beyond which he never went. Form was at the bottom of it all, and by it all his musical ideas were shaped and determined. He was a perfect master of his material, and never squandered it with the recklessness of a Beethoven or a Schubert; this artistic economy is a part of the consciousness in which he carried on his work. So we find in his songs certain fixed and definite limitations that condition them all. We find him working, so to speak, always on the same lines* whether he is interpreting a lyric of Goethe's or of Heine's, verses of his friend Klingemann or true folk-songs and poems in the vein of the folk-song. Yet we must be struck by the great variety* of expression he could command within these limits and by the difference of character he could give to music always unmistakably Mendelssohnian in its melodic curve, its rhythms and its harmonic sequence. His simplest songs are often the best, those especially in which he sought and found the Volkston; but it may truly be said that in none of them did he go a great way from the general feeling and temper of the German people's songs. This is an attribute that he shares with the greatest masters of the Lied as it has been developed in Germany. Mendelssohn cannot, perhaps, be placed alongside of the greatest, but his songs have qualities that will keep them long alive. We shall find in them a narrower range of power, but a stronger feeling for impersonal beauty than exists in the work of some of the greater men; less impulse for dramatic effect and truth of expression, but a more purely subjective illumination of the content of the verses; less sweep of imagination and profundity of pathos, but an unfailing beauty of melody, sober, yet varied, harmony and a delicate charm of pianoforte figuration in the accompaniments. And we shall find in the best of them the spark of true genius that, in no manifestation of it, can the world afford to lose, or can lose without feeling the poorer for it. 15622, PAGE AUF FLUGELN DES GESANGES, Op. 34, No. 2 3 (ON WINGS OF SONG) SULEIKA, Op. 34, No. 4 6 (AH, HOW FAIN THY MOISTY PINIONS) VENETIANISCHES GONDELLIEI), Op. 57, No. 5 10 (ROW GENTLY HERE) FRUHLINGSLIED, Op. 71, No. 2 14 (SPRING SONG) DIE L1EBENDE SCHRE1BT, Op. 86, No. 3 20 (HER LOVE-LETTER) LIEBLINGSPLATZCHEN, Op. 99, No. 3 24 (THE FAVORITE SPOT) CONTENTS ' FELIX MENDELSSOHN SIX SONGS „Auf Fliigeln des Gesanges. "On wing's of song*." Poem by Heinrich Heine. Op.34,N9 2. Original key. Suleika. "Ah, how fain thy moisty pinions." Op.34,N9 4. Original key. Composed at Leipzig, 1837. Poem by Marianne von Willemer, ascribed to Goethe.* 6 * The original poem is usually ascribed to Goethe, and, in fact, is found in the Complete Edition of his works. In reality it is from the pen of Marianne von Willemer, an intimate friend and- correspondent of the poet during his later life. 15622 Poem by Thomas Moore. 10 Venetianisches Gondellied. "Row gently here." Op. 57? N9 5. Original key. Composed at Berlin. 1848. Allegretto non troppo. Poem by C. Klingemann. 14 Fruhlingslied. Spring Song. Op.71,N9 8. Original key. Composed at Frankfort, 1845. Die Liebende schreibt. Her Love-letter. Op. 86, N°3. Original k,ey. Composed at Untersee, 1881. Poem by W. von Goethe. 20 Poem hy Friederike Robert. Lieblingsplatzchen. The Favorite Spot. Op.99, N9 3. Original key. 24