Hyperion Records

This is the least known of all the songs to texts by British poets. In the company of the great Scott songs, the Colley Cibber song Der blinde Knabe, and the three well-hnown Shakespeare settings, it is of no great consequence, but it is in John Reed's words 'a pretty trifle… but a well crafted one'. The predominant influence, as in Der Traum, is Papageno. Even the shape of the melody here is reminiscent of his 'Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja' from Die Zauberflöte. It is not hard to see why it has never caught on as a recital item as its tessitura makes it very hard to sing. It was written on an exceptional day, August 25th also saw the composidon of two vocal quartets with piano, a trio, one setting each by Baumberg, Tiedge and Matthisson, and two songs to anonymous texts, including Lilla an die Morgenröte. It seems that the composer's psyche (his guiding influence in his choice of texts) kept an unconscious balance between poems which placed love on a romantic pedestal, and those (such as this, in the hot summer days of 1815) which concentrate on pressing matters in hand.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1990