This poem is part of a six-poem sequence entitled Episteln, purporting to be letters sent by one Andreas to his beloved Anna. (That Anna and Agnes are both duo-syllabic names beginning in ‘A’ would not have been lost on Schumann.) Only in the sixth poem is Anna herself given a voice after Andreas has been killed on the battlefield (in the fifth poem, see An Anna II later on this disc). As a final twist it emerges that Anna herself is dead (and probably has been from the beginning of the sequence); in the rather ghoulish conclusion she awaits her bridegroom as his pale bride on the other side of the great divide. Kerner chose not to reprint the Episteln in the 1834 edition of his Dichtungen. Schumann is of course much more interested in a living woman than a dead one. He cuts Kerner’s first two strophes; the poem begins ‘Liebes Mädchen’ – an unsuitable address to Agnes, a married woman. The theme is of waiting at a distance for some sign from the beloved, and all in vain. Some of the information contained in the two strophes not set to music is useful in setting the scene: from his vantage point on the high mountain Andreas fancies that he can see Anna’s house in the valley below, and that she can see him; in the second verse he imagines that he sees Anna coming towards him, but no, he has been deceived by a white flower waving in the distance. In waiting for a sign from the beloved’s window, at the same time as having some of the characteristics of an obsessive stalker, this character has something in common with the young miller in Morgengruss from Die schöne Müllerin. ‘I have waited so long’ says the aching Schumann/Kerner, and throughout this beautiful and original song we sense the lack of a resolution of the story, as well as of the relationship (or nonrelationship) between the young composer and his singer. Schumann is prepared to let the text waft the music whichever way it may, and it is this waywardness which must have worried Professor Wiedebein, the music’s first critic. The song is like a long improvisation, and in this music we can sense, perhaps better than in any other song by Schumann, what it must have been like to sit in the twilight and listen to him musing at the keyboard – perhaps embroidering his piano playing with a vocal line crooned in his voix de compositeur.
The comparison that comes to mind here is not Schubertian, but rather with Schumann himself. Twenty-one years later (in 1849) he was to compose Meine Rose to a poem of Lenau (Hyperion Schumann Edition, Volume 1). This is a much more compact song than An Anna, but the two works have much in common. Both are in a languid compound time where the piano leads off with a cantabile melody, while the voice sings in unpredictable descant, now taking on the characteristics of an aria, now running words together in the manner of recitative. Both songs are tenderly addressed to women with whom the singer is in love in a hopelessly adoring way.
An Anna has rather more of a planned shape than it may seem: each of the five strophes initiates a subtly different mood, sometimes associated with a change of tempo. One is tempted to think that Schumann’s formal model here was Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte – a cycle of six linked songs, diverse yet unified.
1: ‘Schwärmerisch’ (Rapturous). The key is B major, but characteristically Schumann begins in E major, not allowing the song to reach the tonic key until the beginning of the second verse. This is deliberately unsettling. It is as if the singer is on tiptoe scanning the horizon for any sign of reciprocation, and reacting accordingly. The sudden opening of Anna’s window occasions a quickening of the heartbeat, and thus a quickening of the vocal line. Moments that need to be savoured are correspondingly elongated: the poet’s ‘stehst du’ is shamelessly changed to ‘stehest du’ and repeated in a rising sequence of ecstatic quavers. After this the line ‘Berg und Tale ein stiller Friedensengel’ takes on a dream-like quality (‘träumerisch’) resolving into the peaceful serenity and purity of C major. This is followed by a single bar of interlude which leads via F sharp7 into B major.
2: ‘Bewegter’ (Faster). At last we find ourselves in the tonic key. Suddenly the tension and uncertainty yield to a slow dance, an idyll of nature. That this music has an element of delusion and derangement (cf Schubert’s Täuschung from Winterreise) is also somehow evident. The lilting accompaniment hops and skips like the prancing of birds on pliant branches. The voice takes on a new energy. As the transfixed Andreas scans that distant window (or what he takes to be Anna’s window at any rate) the moon appears. The separated quavers that have continued through the accompaniment now represent pinpricks of the stars.
3: There is no change of tempo here, but all sharps are cancelled by naturals and the music moves into the minor mode as the poet realises his helplessness. The opening line of this verse ‘Steh’ ich einsam in der Ferne’ retains its dance rhythm despite the change of harmonic colour. (It is worthy of note that Kerner’s repetitions of ‘einsam’ are not taken up by Schumann; it is usually the composer who repeats words, not the poet!) The first line of the verse is, very unusually, repeated by the poet at the close of this third stanza. This gives rise to a strangely transfixed vocal line in longer note values which recalls the writing in oscillating sixths of Der Fischer. (Schubert sometimes achieves a magical effect – a suspension in the passage of time – using similarly otherworldly alternations of tessitura, as at the end of the song Memnon.) Schumann is second to none in making of his protagonists victims who attract our sympathy– he was to do this most successfully in Heine’s Dichterliebe. The narrator of An Anna strikes us as a handsome poet who deserves better of the woman with whom he is in love. One must remember that most of this song’s listeners would have no idea of its broader context, and that Anna is unable to respond because she is already dead.
4: Langsamer (Slower). This section is a sequence of blessings on the distant beloved. The second beat (in falling triplets) of the introductory prelude contains the cadential phrase from Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (bars 8, 18, 28, 38 of that work, and passim) which is often to be found in Schumann’s later songs, including Mit Myrthen und Rosen (track 22) on this disc. The vocal phrases in semiquavers take on a fervent quality, and the introduction of trills in the piano writing is marvellously effective – they somehow raise the level of tension as if the singer were walking on an emotional tightrope. This too is a Beethovenian characteristic.
5: ‘Solenne’ (Solemn) Schumann changes Kerner’s ‘Sprachen’ to ‘Sprechen’. Two bars of arioso culminate with a sudden break in the musical thread. This ‘Weh! O weh!’ signifies a sudden realisation that all his efforts and prayers are hopelessly in vain. The last two bars of the song are marked ‘Largo’. There is a solemn return to B major and the right-hand piano writing anticipates the vocal line with a cantabile phrase worthy of a Bellini mad-scene sung by Callas. Poor Andreas has done so much to attract Anna’s attention, he has sent so many messages, he has waited for so long and with such patience, and yet she has not noticed, she has not heard. In modern parlance, she just hasn’t got it. We can somehow imagine Schumann writing out the final phrase of this song for Agnes Carus and thinking ‘Du hast es nicht vernommen’ – ‘After all these songs you still haven’t realised what I feel for you’. And if Agnes was unable to understand these messages, perhaps it meant that she was unable to feel for him, or his music. (Criticism of her singing in his diaries is not long in coming!) It is notable that this realisation does not occasion a minor-key rant. The eloquence of the final trill in the lower reaches of the piano has a haunting power. There is nothing quite like this even in the lieder of Schumann’s maturity. The adoring Andreas does not turn away in bitter disappointment; ever faithful, he is doomed to keep watch on that distant window across the valley for the rest of time.
from notes by Graham Johnson © 2003