Love in adversity was always a theme dear to Schumann (particularly in works composed in the months leading up to his marriage in September 1840). Here the composer returns to this subject that had haunted his past – the fear that Clara just might have married someone else. Long after this danger was over, he continued to respond to stories of the misfortunes of lovers abandoned by their girls. In 1850 he came across a newly-published set of eight wedding poems by the poet Halm whose plight – his beloved had married another man – seems to have reminded Schumann of his own fears over a decade earlier. Instead of setting the whole cycle, however, Schumann settled on the last poem (which hardly gives the flavour of the whole). For this reason, Geisternähe is a fragment without a story. It is hardly terror-stricken or dramatic like Der Spielmann, or even Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen from Dichterliebe. The protagonist, unlike those of the two former songs, is not even present at the wedding. But the setting is born of the same pathos, which seems at best a mannerism and at worst a type of helpless masochism with the self-limiting mute adoration that we find in such songs as Mein schöner Stern. On this disc it follows Frauenliebe und -leben, and its final un-set poem, as if to suggest the consolatory stirrings of remembered love from long ago. Indeed, without knowing the poem’s context, one would have thought this music was related to the yearning, but essentially optimistic, mood of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte.
The piano writing is, at first, delicately evocative; the curling triplet semiquavers waft chromatically through various keys and descend the stave in insinuating sequences; the delicacy of the rubato suggests the freedom of movement appropriate for perfumes of spring. This is a good start. The singer’s curiosity as to the nature of the breeze is reminiscent of the first of Schubert’s Suleika songs and the eponymous heroine’s questions to the East Wind. In this atmospheric meandering, Schumann is at his most characteristic. There is little in the first four bars to anchor us to any tonality; at ‘laue Frühlingsluft’ the music settles briefly into the home key of A major, and hovers beside the ghost of another spring song in that tonality – Er ist’s (Op 79, Mörike). At the end of the first strophe the words ‘wie süsser Rosenduft?’ occasion a temporary excursion to E major.
A shift back into the A major tonic would now seem to be obvious, but the second strophe initiates an interpolation into the subdominant, the better to make the final strophe in A major, when it at last arrives, the climax of the piece. For now, the easy rise of a tone in the vocal line (at ‘Es ist’) belies the slightly awkward shift sideways into the plagal (and thus rather reverential) reaches of D major. The singer answers the questions of the first strophe within a forte dynamic, as if in a state of exalted reassurance: yes, even if she has married another, she really loves me best – after all, it is her thoughts that circle my brow in caressing comfort. The triplet accompaniment denotes a full heart, supporting and amplifying the vocal line with passionate throbbings. This is something of a Schumann commonplace. We glimpse it in some of the Kerner songs, Op 35, but it is particularly typical of this late period. The same could be said for the harp music which begins on cue under ‘Und was wie Harfen klänge’ in the third strophe. This composer seems to have been much occupied with harp sonority in his later years, particularly as an accompanying device. The build-up of piano sonority (where the harp-writing seems anything but ethereal) seems counterproductive for the verbal imagery: the poet’s name is supposedly being whispered by the beloved – or so his hopeful fantasy informs him – but here it is sung to the rooftops. Another, rather more successful song in A major with an accompaniment in rolling demisemiquavers comes to mind – Aufträge (Volume 1), which is actually part of the same opus number.
The peroration, the final strophe, is in A major, and this finishes the song with almost operatic fervour. Any reference to soft, floating winds and spiritual whisperings is swept away by the forte dynamic and the piano writing churning with triplets and demisemiquavers. Such is the radiance and confidence of this music that any original sympathy we might have felt with the emotional plight of the singer seems misplaced. Perhaps Schumann intended this flood of unrealistic confidence to engender our pity, as if the young man were going off his head. (The determined and alarmingly misplaced confidence of Mein! from Die schöne Müllerin come to mind.) He claims that he is drawn back to her heart by these spiritual messages, but this is all pie-in-the-sky. As if to remind us of this, the postlude, fashioned from the introduction, is once again wistful and shy. The song ends humbly and crestfallen, and the final impression causes confusion: is the singer a winner or a loser? The song’s lyrical touches are individually effective, but they fail to come together to make an unforgettable song.
from notes by Graham Johnson © 1999