The energetic enthusiasm of the young soldier (which has been the mark of the previous song) is here counterpointed with the grim musings of a veteran who craves the glory of warfare. The composer’s marking of ‘Nicht schnell’ and a rather steady metronome mark emphasize the mirthless and determined mood of the music as the soldier regards the world with a baleful, rather than a gleaming, eye. That he is out of step with the rest of society is obvious from the title of the lyric alone. Schumann casts the accompaniment in a march rhythm which seems to prophesy the military manner of Gustav Mahler, whose enthusiasm for the soldier-boy lyrics of Des Knaben Wunderhorn led him to compose some of the darkest and most savage songs about army life ever written (Der Tambourg’sell, Revelge). Of course Schumann here lacks Mahler’s sense of symphonic depth and cataclysmic emotion, but the insistence on the dotted rhythms of the march throughout, as well as the sudden explosions of sound in the tiny interludes, would have been worthy of the later composer. Perhaps the song which this music most recalls is the last of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen which is not a war song at all but is fashioned into a dead march. One must also not forget that in 1840 Schumann had set the Andersen/Chamisso poem Der Soldat which chillingly depicts a deserter’s execution using the controlled and implacable rhythms of military music.
The pianistic means are rather simple throughout, and the mood strangely laconic. We detect flickers of emotion from the singer at rare moments – for example, the way the music slightly mellows and modulates into the major key at the mention of wine (obviously a favourite passion, even if not quite as satisfying as killing). Mention of sampling the vintages one by one is less the sign of a dedicated wine-taster than the poet’s means of describing the passage of time, years of peace when most people are grateful to concentrate on the making of wine rather than war. The most chilling aspect of the setting is the way that when war once again flares up (‘Ist endlich entglommen Der heisse Streit’) there is no trace of pleasure or relish in the music; indeed it continues to be marked piano. Here Schumann achieves, intentionally or not, a note of menacing depravity. Indeed this soldier has the reptilian patience of a professional hit-man, and his pleasure requires no display of youthful exuberance. (The vocal range required of him has a suitably Sparafucilian depth.) Also chilling is the laconic last line of the song (again marked piano) where the pleasure that the soldier feels is so great that his tongue cannot express it. The literal translation of Lenau’s line is that his throat ‘rusts over with joy’ – both things, the rust and the joy, sharing a reddish tinge. In this strophe the poet emphasizes the contrast of ‘du’ (the sword) and ‘mir’ (the narrator): the instrument of death, treated like some bloodthirsty pet at last allowed to gorge itself to the full, is nourished by blood, whereas the poet himself rusts with a hollow joy that can bring no happiness. This ironic contrast is ignored in Schumann’s setting, but the similarities between drinking wine and drinking blood are played upon in a way that suggests the taking of life has all the sacred earnestness of Holy Communion.
The music moves into slightly more excitable rhythms at ‘Im brausenden Moste, Mein durstiges Erz’; this is Schumann’s one concession to moving the action from the wine cellar to the battlefield. Eric Sams points out the felicitous setting of the word ‘hingst’ in the second verse; this verb, accompanied by hollow double octaves denoting loneliness, is suspended motionless across a bar line in a way which suggests a solitary sword hung on the wall. Such specific touches of detail are rare in a song somewhat in the popular style, and governed by blinkered obsession. The postlude contains some unusual jarring discords. We believe the song has ended in D major, but the return to G minor for the very last note, a staccato quaver, has the surprise of a sudden stab in the back – probably the fate of this sinister killjoy sooner or later.
from notes by Graham Johnson © 1998