Another spring song, delightful if rather slight. The marking ‘Sehr munter’ – very merry – seems almost too hearty for this etiolated evocation. The original key is A major, and one inevitably compares the piece with the pace and energy of Er ist’s, the Mörike setting in A major in the Liederalbum für die Jugend. This Frühlingslied is similarly deft and at first seems to suggest the touch of an earlier composing year. After closer acquaintance, one sees (and hears) the minimalism of the later style turned to the best advantage – these wisps of accompaniment, often discreetly doubled in octaves between the hands, are as light as spring breezes. This is music of suggestion (it is also suggestive) rather than emphatic statement.

The opening two bars offer a piquant note, a squeezed chord for bagpipe or Dudelsack. The suggested rustic drone is reminiscent of its more sophisticated use in Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen in Dichterliebe, and it promises a song more rustic, funny and clodhopping than actually materialises. But the suggestion of Dudelsack confirms that this is in Schumann’s Carmina Burana mood, a picture of old German ceremony and tradition. Like those shamelessly sensual old carmina, there is a strong sexual undertow to the words, a time-honoured element in many, if not most, spring songs. Schumann answers this call: the music is pervaded by a little arpeggio motif which cheekily climbs the octave as if to convey the rising of sap, or as if tracing the angle of priapic uplift. That the song encompasses an earthy note without a trace of coarseness is typical of Schumann’s classiness. There are two trills in the accompaniment (each lasting a whole bar) in each verse. The first of these takes over from the voice after the first line of poetry. It does very good service reflecting the spring of corn (verse 1), the humming of bees (verse 3) and the buzzing of gnats’ wings (verse 4). The jubilation at the end of each verse is beautifully reflected by the piano trill which takes over from the end of the vocal line, and then turns over into a descending cascade like a gurgling laugh of pure pleasure. This is especially appropriate for the implied sense of triumph in the last verse when the singer seems only too happy to find herself trapped. This is a warning given with a knowing wink.

There are some blunders as in most strophic songs (apart from those of the mature Schubert who finds miraculously versatile illustrations to fit the imagery of different strophes equally well). The worst casualty here is in verse 4 where the verb ‘liegt’ is separated from its subject – ‘es’ – to most curious effect. However, by the standards of much of Schumann’s music from the 1850s this song is not at all curious. It deserves to be more widely known and sung.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2000

It seems that Schumann was in the business, even late in his career, of discovering poets who would prove useful to later masters of the lied. Thus Husarenabzug is his only setting of Candidus, but Brahms was to go on to set seven poems by that poet. Similarly, Frühlingslust is Schumann’s only Heyse setting, but this was a poet who would not only be set by Brahms, and at even greater length by Hugo Wolf, but who was destined to live into the next century as a Nobel laureate.

There is nothing of that import to this lyric, or to this music. The song seems reminiscent of that other perfumed miniature Jasminenstrauch3, just as delicate, and over in a trice. The image of the butterfly is central to the cast of the weaving accompaniment. In the introduction we hear it alight on a dotted quaver before hesitating for the same length of time on a note a fourth higher. And then, all dallying over for the moment, we hear its darting flight in and out of various blossoming harmonies and clusters of tones.

All of this has much of the charm and freshness of the earlier music, but other things are more typical of the late style. For example, there is the strange cadence following ‘du hilfst dir nimmer heraus’ where the melodic and rhythmic inflexions of ‘nimmer heraus’ are imitated in the piano at a distance of a dotted crotchet. The intrusion of this sort of contrapuntal gesture is not unpleasant, one gets used to it and accepts it as a different Schumann style (or the style of a different Schumann) but it seems more worked-out, and not nearly as inevitable, as equivalent passages in the 1840 songs. On the other hand, the shape of the simply accompanied cadence at ‘ich musste vergehen vor Leid’ is utterly touching, and charming in its pathos; we can hear the singer die of pain – though not permanently of course. Before the line beginning ‘Die lustigen Lieder’ the piano has an opportunity to shine as his fingers curl around new semiquaver figurations – patterns which seem Mendelssohnian in their spring-song note-spinning. This helps to launch the heavenward flight of ‘fliegen bis in die Wipfel hinauf’ most effectively, the vocal line hesitating aptly on the first syllable of ‘Wipfel’ within a forte dynamic. The postlude, also derived from these weaving semiquavers, is trickier to play than it looks, and typical of a certain obfuscating aspect of the composer’s writing at this time. A glance at the score will confirm that the song ends, perversely, on the same staccato note, D, in both hands. It has been hard enough in this trickily meandering chromatic passage not to get one’s hands caught up with each other, but at the last moment the composer, as if laughing from a ringside seat, delights in engineering this collision in the narrow space of a single piano key. When not boxed in, the pianist floats like a butterfly, but now he is stung by a D (this is the original key; in a lower transposition it might have been a B).

Johannes Brahms set this poem for women’s chorus and optional pianoforte accompaniment as part of his the first of Vier Lieder aus dem Jungbrunnen, a subsection of 12 Lieder und Romanzen für Frauenchor Op 44 composed in 1859/60. Adolf Jensen set the text as a solo song (Rosenzeit Op 22 No 1) in 1864.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2000

This is an extraordinary little song which is not quite like any other in the composer’s output. The fairytale deftness of the Mendelssohnian scherzo style (cf the Heine setting Neue Liebe) is tempered by a rich chromaticism which is part of Schumann’s late style. The whole piece tinkles and shimmers if not quite in the same way as Wolf’s Nixe Binsefuss then at least in some ways prophetic of that masterpiece’s depiction of an ethereal water-sprite. There is a tiptoe delicacy about this music, though not perhaps very much indication of the fact that the scene takes place at sea. Schumann seems largely to have abandoned his all-purpose water arpeggios here in favour of mezzo-staccato quavers supplemented by cheeky acciaccaturas which make this Tinkerbell more naughty than nautical. The piano interlude just before ‘und der Knabe sieht es träumend an des Schiffes Bord’ as well as the short interlude after it are extraordinary; Sams goes as far as to say that ‘the lush chromatics at bars 28–33 have an expressive quality unique in Schumann’. These convey the drift of scent (after ‘Mast zum Kiel’) as well as the dreaming of the totally bewitched sailor-boy (‘Und der Knabe sieht es träumend’). For a moment we are all at sea and lose any sense of harmonic direction, and thus also, like the sailor, of time and place. It is one of the composer’s more successful uses of a deliberately disorientating chromaticsm. The postlude is built on the slightly cheeky introduction as a succession of semiquaver figures which suddenly appears and challenges the lower fingers of the right hand to darting dexterity, simple sounding, but very tricky to play. It is all in rather a muddy part of the piano for the effect that Schumann obviously desires. Hugo Wolf, who used the upper reaches of the piano unashamedly in Nixe Binsefuss, would have transposed it up the octave.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1996

The literary background to this poem is explained in the introductory section of this booklet, ‘Schumann and his poets’. In setting Mörike some five times, Schumann was once again a pioneer, clearing the musical pathway to a poet who was to be set with greater distinction by someone else – in this case Hugo Wolf whose Mörike Lieder of 1888 rank as one of the world’s great achievements in song. (Brahms was also a fine Mörike composer, as is evident in his An eine Äolsharfe).

This song and Der Gärtner1 are Schumann’s farewell to the poet, and we feel the composer has glimpsed something of the Swabian pastor’s talent (all credit to him for this) without grasping the depth of his genius. We pianists can only shudder at the devilish and virtuosic thing Wolf would have made out of Jung Volkers Lied if he had decided to include it in his Mörike songbook. (It is also the sort of poem that the young Liszt would have relished.) Volker, whose mother is a sorceress, believes himself to be sired by the wind, and anyone who has heard Wolf’s Lied vom Winde (also Mörike) can imagine how this imagery (cheerfully overlooked or underestimated by Schumann) would have been triumphantly undertaken by the later composer. In Schumann we find music that is hearty and jolly rather than tinged with any frisson of the supernatural.

Despite the marking of ‘Sehr lebhaft’ the music seems earthbound, stuck in the musical mud with stolid pomposo flourishes worthy of a drinking-song. The scale passages which Schumann intends to represent the throes of birth, or the rushing of the wind, are never reckless or precipitous enough. There is a measure of braggadocio and defiance about the mood certainly, but nothing that is as demonic as the poet intended. The bowdlerisation of the text is also no help: it is a surprise that Schumann was squeamish enough to replace the word for womb (‘Mutterleib’) with the ineffectual (and non-rhyming) ‘Mutterarm’. We sing the music here as Schumann printed it, but there is a good argument for restoring the original text. The coarseness and directness of Jung Volker’s speech betokens a wanted criminal, and Schumann has copped out and made him less arresting. In the last line of the poem a similar mention of the word ‘Schoss’ (also meaning womb) is coyly rewritten as printed above.

This attitude inevitably weakens the devil-may-care spirit which should flood the music. There are some effective passages: the dotted rhythms of ‘Sie scherzte nur und lachte laut’ have the right élan, and the mother’s suitors (or clients) are left standing (at ‘liess die Freier stehen’) with two chords, suitably transfixed and stationary. But the limp semiquavers in the inner voices of the accompaniment at ‘Da kam der Wind’ are a totally inadequate depiction of a wild force of nature, and one comes away with an impression of a musical bowdlerisation to match that of the text, something toned down to make it fit for a family man, or a teacher at a school for young ladies.

Eric Sams with his acute ear has traced the origins of the opening melody to that of another song in E major – the Eichendorff setting Mondnacht, at the words ‘Die Erde still geküsst’. One can only ponder what the links actually are. Mondnacht is about the marriage of the moonlit heavens and moon-kissed earth. Jung Volkers Lied is also about such a coupling between ying and yang: a sorceress and the wind conjoin in order to bring to birth the unruly Volker. Even when so much had changed and faded in his song-writing, it is amazing to see how Schumann’s brain still automatically reaches for the same tonal analogues in response to certain words and situations (in this case prompted by the word ‘Ehe’ – marriage). But in the grand old days of 1840 a song like this might have been very differently composed.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2000

Un tout petit Till Eulenspiegel en lied, un poème tiré de Maler Nolten de Mörike; le côté plaisantin de la musique peut facilement sembler étrangement lourd—comme une plaisanterie dont on a du mal à rire.

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

Ein winziger Till Eulenspiegel von einem Lied nach einem Gedicht aus Mörikes Maler Nolten; die scherzhafte Seite der Musik kann nur allzuleicht seltsam forciert wirken wie ein Witz mit schlechter Pointe.

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

The responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood left Schumann with almost no chance to indulge the ‘Florestan’ side of his nature as he retreated into his dreamy ‘Eusebius’ persona. Somehow the impetuous virtuoso, the daring star-crossed lover and the fearless musical innovator of earlier years had all got lost by 1850. Perhaps, in this context, Schumann’s enthusiasm for soldiers – and hussars in particular – is easier to understand. A fascination with men of action, when he himself was nothing of the kind, might have been a necessary release for stifled aggression. This is perhaps why the composer was interested in Lenau’s dark and bloodthirsty poems for the Husarenlieder2 Op 117 (a set which, despite the earlier opus number, was written in 1851) apart from the fact that one must also remember that Schumann grew up amidst the concluding echoes of the Napeoleonic war. Jerôme Bonaparte’s troops – 16,000 of them – had flooded Schumann’s home town of Zwickau just before his birth, and in 1813 the town was full of sad remnants from the Grande Armée, as well as an assortment of Prussians and Cossacks. (In this context the composer’s interest in Heine’s Die beiden Grenadiere makes perfect sense.)

Even if Schumann was not young enough to remember these things himself, there must have been many tales of heroism and hardship imported into the home from these visitors, and told and re-told around the family fire. The dates of the Napoleonic war were such – bridging the worlds of the Enlightenment and Romanticism – that many of the great creative figures of the time had similar childhood memories which romanticised (in every sense) war, and those who made it. It is obvious, for example, that the soldiers of Husarenabzug are off to have very exciting time. Eric Sams points out this work’s similarity (also in terms of its original tonality of B flat) to the Wielfried von der Neun setting Ins Freie, a song which promises a journey towards rejuvenation and joy.

Husarenabzug is the only military piece in Op 125 and thus an unwitting forerunner of the Lenau set, arguably weaker than any song in that menacing little collection, but at least jollier and better-hearted. These warriors are not really frightening; perhaps they are meant to be toy soldiers or soldiers for the enjoyment of children. (It is true that this song for a German equivalent of Christopher Robin – though nowhere near Buckingham Palace – would not have seemed out of place in the Op 79 Liederalbum für die Jugend). The rattle of drums and the clatter of advancing cavalry on the cobbles are illustrated by a deft little motif of oscillating Gs on the piano. Is it because there are more than one of these that there are G-Gs on the street? (Schumann, the master of code in his own language, would have enjoyed a pun from the English nursery, albeit one which works only when the song is sung in G, as here, and not the original B flat.) The accompaniment is an exercise in various methods and means of ceremonial fanfare: rolling octaves, triplets in thirds, demisemiquaver shudders, portentous octaves between the hands, and an all-purpose quasi-bolero rhythm (quaver + two semiquavers) to whip up the excitement in the wake of the departing troops. There is altogether much more huff and puff in this music (gusts of winds appropriately enter the last verse) than any real substance. The overall effect of this marching off is ‘much ado about nothing’.

There is an awkward angularity to this music (almost as if there is a conscious determination not to write anything too smooth or ingratiating) which is often to be found in Schumann’s music of this period. The voice is often allowed to sing unaccompanied, but the gaps in the piano part (written as bars’ rest) are negated by the resonances of the held pedal. The music is entirely strophic for three verses; the same little four-bar postlude – again more of a theatrical pose than real drama – concludes each verse in a strangely confused flurry of I – IV – V harmonies. The last five notes of the piece, a feminine cadence on swiftly oscillating chords of I and V in semiquaver alteration (the dominant in bare fifths) is perhaps the most unusual touch in a quirky little song typical of its maker at this troubled time in his life.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2000