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Track(s) taken from CDJ33108

Die nächtliche Heerschau, WoO11 No 2

First line:
Nachts um die zwölfte Stunde
composer
25/26 September 1840; fragment, first published in the Peters Yearbook of 1897
author of text

Christopher Maltman (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: December 2002
All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: August 2003
Total duration: 1 minutes 47 seconds
 

Reviews

‘Recorded sound is impeccable and Johnson's notes are, as always, a joy in and of themselves. Necessary for collectors of this edition, and for the Schumann completist in general’ (American Record Guide)

‘This probing, absorbing account of Schumann's op.24 Liederkreis is as good as any you're ever likely to hear’ (Fanfare, USA)
This famous poem has ten further strophes with which Schumann, in abandoning the setting, chose not to engage. Like Heine’s Die beiden Grenadiere, the poem by Zedlitz depicts the fanatical and legendary loyalty of Napoleon’s troops. Hundreds of thousands of French soldiers were killed in Russia and in the retreat from the ravages of ‘General Winter’. There were also the fallen of many other campaigns. Napoleon had been exiled to the Atlantic island of Saint Helena, and died there in 1821. The poem supposes that these corpses and skeletons are awaiting a final call-to-arms in order to avenge their emperor. During his lifetime Napoleon was regarded as an uncontrollable prisoner who would thwart any attempts to contain him. As he had come back from Elba to the surprise of the allies; might he not return again?

The nineteen year-old poet had fought at the Battle of Wagram when the Austrians had lost 40,000 men, but he too is enthralled by his former enemy. Napoleon’s return was the worst nightmare of the European leaders, and Zedlitz here describes just such a scenario in terms of a supernatural thriller. Without actually naming the ghostly emperor, the poem describes him in his famous hat and in simple clothes; at the last stroke of midnight he emerges to review his troops, skeletons marshalled in all their glory. The generals gather around Napoleon, awaiting his orders; he whispers a single word, a destination which gradually resounds through the ranks – ‘France!’ – and the password is ‘Saint Helena’.

The music in C minor is in Schumann’s new ballad style. The piano writing is dominated by the dotted rhythms of the drummer (cf Hugo Wolf’s Der Tambour) who is the first to emerge from his grave. The vocal line avoids melody in favour of a dramatic fanfare-like figure; this proclaims the verse on the same note for an entire bar before plunging down the octave – a repetitive feature of this fragment. The strange sound of this drumming is painted by a discord in semitones at ‘Die Trommel klinget seltsam’. For the fourth strophe the music changes. At ‘Und die im tiefen Norden’ there is a shift into F minor, a subdominant modulation which introduces the pity of war as a contrast to its bellicose celebration. A note of pathos introduced by the D flat on ‘die’ (‘those who’) shows the composer’s sympathies with the tragic way that the soldiers lost their lives in Russia. The cold of those regions and the heat of Italy are not musically differentiated, but there is a shift of tessitura and a darkening of harmony for those who perished in the Egyptian campaign.

Schumann allows all these spirits to rise from their graves, weapons in hand, before abandoning the song with a final convulsive triplet. If he had continued with this setting, one of his problems would have been how to conjure an appropriately impressive climax with the minimal forces of voice and piano. His initial enthusiasm for the bracing imagery of the poem’s opening lines could no longer disguise that he had bitten off more than he could chew. It is clear that this music has nowhere else to go; we have had a welcome glimpse of this composer’s humanity, but he was defeated here by the limits of his ability with his chosen forces to martial a vast military parade.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2003

Une célèbre ballade napoléonienne, apparentée par son sujet à Die beiden Grenadiere. Schumann tente de mettre en musique le poème, mais n’en achève qu’un fragment.

extrait des notes rédigées par Graham Johnson © 2010
Français: Marie-Stella Pâris

Eine berühmte napoleonische Ballade mit thematischer Verwandtschaft zu Die beiden Grenadiere. Schumanns Versuch einer Vertonung bleibt ein Fragment.

aus dem Begleittext von Graham Johnson © 2010
Deutsch: Henning Weber

Other albums featuring this work

Schumann: The Complete Songs
CDS44441/5010CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
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