Schumann had already composed a motet for double male voice choir to a Rückert text (Verzweifle nicht im Schmerzenstal), Op 93. That had already displayed considerable ingenuity in his deployment of eight vocal parts (although one suspects that Schumann always struggled, as with the medium of the string quartet, to free himself from the left hand / right hand layout which is the sign of a composer who has been a lifelong pianist). In An die Sterne the addition of women’s voices adds a new radiance to Schumann’s writing for larger choral forces; the chordal spacing between the parts, and the distance between the vocal lines of male and female singers, particularly when the two choirs sing antiphonally, give the impression of singing under a heavenly, iridescent cupola. On first hearing, the female voices seem to be conceived as the shining heavenly paragons, the males as the aspiring earthbound observers – another version of Schumann’s reverence for the ewige Weibliche as exemplified by Clara. In fact, a glance at the score shows that the voices are not divided in this way; there are two choirs with a mixture of SATB in each. Although it is true to say that the sopranos of the first choir are stars slightly more highly-placed than their sisters in the second, the dialogue is not organised on sexist lines. There is a real spiritual quality in this musical conversation (as if between opposite earthly poles) reminiscent of Schubert when depicting natural beauty in all its unfathomable glory.

The music is shaped like a rondo with returns to the refrain of ‘Sterne’, an address which is reverentially shared in alternation between the two choirs. The harmonic world is as fluid and rich as the Milky Way. This chromatic meandering is not Schubertian; it belongs to a much younger and more experimental generation. The home key of G major is almost immediately invaded by an F natural which pulls the music into the plagal key of C major, a shift which prompts associations of the celestially reverberant acoustic of church music. Amidst various harmonic journeys, the image of the ‘Geisteraugen’ is interpreted with a shuddering harmonic dislocation, while later in the song the twin ideas of ‘Entzücken, Wonne’ are subjected to various tricks of emphasis and augmentation. The last time we hear the imploring words ‘Sterne, Sterne’ it is in a faster tempo where the music is undermined by doubt. The words ‘hoffend, glaubevoll!’ are first heard in a combination of solo voices in the second choir and then reflected back by the full forces of the first. The momentary vulnerability of hearing individual voices in strands rather than a choir, as if the loners were battling to retain their faith, is most affecting.

What had begun as an affirmative song of confidence and faith takes on some of the anguish of Schubert’s Mayrhofer setting Abendstern. The words ‘O, ihr holden schönen / Könnt ihr täuschen wohl?’ enshrine a desperate plea from those who seek confirmation that the stars, as much else in life, are a beguiling as first they seem. This is not the case of course. Rückert’s closing question, as cloaked in the dying fall of Schumann’s music, implies that disappointment and deception are an inevitable part of the human condition; there are no easy answers concerning the afterlife. Heaven is in the here and now, rather than something to be hoped for later. We hear this soft and clear in much of the Schumanns’ Op 37, a Rückert cycle which celebrates earthly love and devotion between husband and wife. The vast canvas of An die Sterne exceeds the parameters of these tender solo songs only in terms of its physical forces. The subtle, intimate world of Der Himmel hat eine Träne geweint from 1841 with its mixture of ardour and humility (the next song we hear on this disc) is somehow absolutely at one with the musical breadth and scope of An die Sterne. Both songs have an inner calm which is more the result of personal grace than of religious conviction. ‘Himmel’ is where the heart is, and one can be suffused with grace at the same time as being tortured by doubt. (This paradox is surely at the heart of the Schumannesque ambivalence.) The magic word uniting these different forms is of course ‘Rückert’; the two works have a similar spaciousness, grandeur and emotional perspective. Schumann was attuned, above all, to the power of verbal imagery and the beauty of words. The link between these two tracks is an illustration of how the work of an individual poet, if it has penetrated deeply enough in a composer’s mind, not only bridges all sorts of musical styles and forces, but also defines something of that composer’s very personality and his view of the world. When we read the texts of An die Sterne, or Der Himmel hat eine Träne geweint we imagine, in the mind’s eye, dear Robert Schumann, silently absorbed in his well-thumbed Rückert (he must have initially owned an edition from the 1830s, but his copy of the 1843 edition, in three volumes, is still to be seen in the museum at Zwickau). What we hear, however, is someone looking heavenwards with such rapture that we have no choice but to follow his gaze and share his vision.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2000