More than any other poet, Heinrich Heine has provided composers for almost two hundred years with texts for music: more than eight thousand compositions to date. Nineteenth-century composers were drawn in particular to a limited selection of Heine's early lyrical works from the Buch der Lieder and the Neue Gedichte for their songs; poems such as 'Du bist wie eine Blume', 'The sea hath its pearls' and 'Was will die einsame Träne' were set to music over and over again. In this book, Youens examines some of the reasons for Heine's popularity, especially the fact that composers in the second quarter of the nineteenth century were drawn to him for songs in radical styles, songs that redefined what Lied could be and do. Specific topics of this book include Schubert's fusion of reinvented song traditions with radical tonal procedures and the political meanings of poetry and song in Schumann's time.
Schubert's Late Lieder is a study of selected songs for voice and piano composed by Schubert between 1822 and his death on 19 November 1828. Circa late 1822, Schubert was diagnosed with syphilis, and many of the songs discussed in this book were written under the seal of impending death. It is possible to locate in these songs a 'late song style', full of elegiac references to Schubert's other death-haunted works and marked by distinctive variation techniques. The songs on poems by Schubert's Austrian contemporaries are less well known than they should be, and yet the backdrop to these works is often fascinating. In this book, Susan Youens introduces the poets Matthäus von Collin, Johann Ladislaus Pyrker, Carl Gottfried Ritter von Leitner, Johann Anton Friedrich Reil, Franz von Schlechta, and Johann Gabriel Seidl and discusses Schubert's songs to their poetry, revealing much about the poet and about Austrian history and culture.
The collaboration of Schubert and the poet Wilhelm Müller produced some of the best loved of nineteenth-century lieder - in particular the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. Professor Youens shows us how this archetypal tale of love and rejection, which has its origins in medieval romance, Minnesong and popular German legend, is reflected in the poet's own experience, the realms of art and life intertwining. Professor Youens considers other poets' explorations of the theme of a miller maid and her suitors, and looks at other musical settings of Müller's mill poems. But above all she examines Müller's permutation of the literary legends as an exploration of erotic obsession, delusion, frenzy, disillusionment and death and the way in which Schubert crucially altered Müller's vision when the poetic cycle became a musical text.
Viennese composer Hugo Wolf produced one of the most important song collections of the nineteenth century when he set to music fifty-three poems by the great German poet Eduard Mörike. Susan Youens reappraises this singular collaboration to shed new light on the sophisticated interplay between poetry and music in the songs. Wolf is customarily described as 'the Poet's Composer', someone who revered poetry and served it faithfully in his music. Yet, as Youens reveals, this cliché overlooks the rich terrain in which his songs are often at cross purposes with his chosen poetry. Although Wolf did much to draw the world's attention to the neglected Swabian poet, his musical interpretation of the poetry was also influenced by his own life, psychology and experiences. This book examines selected Mörike songs in detail, demonstrating that the poems and music each have their own distinctive stories which at times intersect but also diverge.
I like these songs better than all the rest, and someday you will too, Franz Schubert told the friends who were the first to hear his song cycle, Winterreise. These lieder have always found admiring a
This is a guide to both the music and the poetry of Schubert's much-loved song cycle, set to poems by the Prussian poet Wilhelm MUller. Composed in 1823, this work is one of the greatest masterpieces
Schubert's choice of poets has traditionally come under fire for the preponderance of mediocre talent, and yet many of these writers were highly esteemed in their day. The author has chosen four such
Winterreise is perhaps the greatest song cycle ever written. Franz Schubert set to music the evocative poetry of his contemporary, German lyricist Wilhelm Muller. It is a heart-rending portrayal of
