Though he lived a short life, Franz Schubert was fortunate indeed to have been born into an era ripe for his particular literary and musical genius. The turn of the 19th century saw an explosion of German poetry as the Romantic movement captivated its first generations. Schubert himself moved in an artistic circle that included far more poets than musicians, and he even tried his own hand at poetry. Along with the famous evenings when he played his music for his friends, he also experienced the white-hot intensity of the writers’ creative efforts, as poets like Johann Mayrhofer and Franz von Schober read aloud their latest verses.
Although Schubert happily set his friends’ poems to music, he revered above all others Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the father of German Romantic poetry whose verses inspired some 70 Schubert songs. Another prominent writer he admired was Friedrich von Schlegel, the younger of the two Schlegel brothers who founded an important German literary journal, Athenaeum. Schlegel was a member of Schubert’s artistic circle, though it is unknown if the composer actually met him.
Schubert has been accused of lacking artistic discrimination in that he was willing to set poems of such wildly different quality. The quality of the poetry, however, did not seem to affect the quality of the resulting song; modest verse seemed to inspire him as much as the most celebrated. He was aided in this by an uncanny psychological insight that allowed him to detect and express the conflicting motivations and emotional turmoil lying behind seemingly simple words. As Schubert scholar Maurice J. E. Brown wrote, “One of his glories is that he lifted inferior verse and sentiment to the heights of his genius, and gave to mild thoughts mildly expressed a universality and power that the poet never dreamed of.”
Such is the case with “Viola” (“Violet”) from 1823, which sets verse by Schubert’s friend, the wealthy dilettante Schober, who provided the composer with a comfortable haven in his mansion during the most difficult periods of his life. (Others in Schubert’s circle considered the rakish Schober a bad influence and blamed him for Schubert’s case of syphilis.) Spun out at leisurely length, this is an episodic song in which Schober tells a sentimental story of a little violet who responds too early to the bell-like calls of the snow drops heralding the arrival of spring. The poem is much ado about very little, but Schubert’s music turns it into pure enchantment. It opens with uncanny, widely spaced, pianissimo chords conjuring the bells of the snow drops. Leading to a lovely, simple melody for the singer, this forms a touching refrain that returns periodically to bind together this otherwise through-composed music. Running through constantly changing episodes in different tempos and keys, “Viola” showcases an imaginative, ever-changing piano part, lofting the little story to greatness.
Composed in January 1819, “Die Gebüsche” (“The Bushes”) is a rarely encountered song that almost didn’t make it into the official edition of Schubert’s collected songs, yet its text by Schlegel epitomizes the Romantic doctrine of the unity of all nature and the quiet, euphonious voice of God that animates it. Over ecstatic arpeggios, this rapt, through-composed song wanders through many modulations as it seeks to express the wonder of this vast concept.
One of Schubert’s most charming songs is the effervescent “Der Musensohn” (“The Son of the Muses”), set in 1822 to verse by Goethe but not published until 1828, the last year of Schubert’s life. Drawing on classical mythology, this song portrays the tireless servant of the muses dancing around the countryside to proclaim the beauties of flowering nature. In John Reed’s words, “The song’s magic lies in the complementary nature of the alternating strophes, the tunes so closely matched … that each verse sounds like a new beginning.” The forward drive of this music never falters—a perfect expression of unstoppable, joyous energy.
As a songwriter, Richard Strauss somewhat resembled Schubert in that he was not highly selective about the poetry he set to music (although he was far choosier about his opera librettos). He spent little time analyzing the words and their exact declamation and meaning; instead, he sought to convey the overall emotional mood of each poem. In a sense, he wrote songs because of his incessant need to compose. As he described it, “Musical ideas have prepared themselves in me—God knows why—and when, as it were, the barrel is full, a song appears in the twinkling of an eye as soon as I come across a poem more or less corresponding to the subject of the imaginary song.”
Written in 1888 when Strauss was 23 and about to compose his first orchestral triumph, Don Juan, Mädchenblumen, Op. 22, comprises four of his most rarely heard songs, perhaps because they require a very high voice to sustain their tessitura. The rather sentimental texts are by Felix Dahn, a poet and professor in Munich where Strauss was raised; the poems link four flowers—the cornflower, poppy, ivy flower, and water lily—with corresponding types of beautiful women. Strauss paints four charmingly contrasting musical portraits. He portrays the modest, blue-eyed cornflower maiden with music of gentle, intimate lyricism. Her opposite is the vivacious, playful poppy who hides a heart of passionate fire; Strauss’s music captures her capricious nature with trills and unexpected harmonies. Years later, in his opera Ariadne auf Naxos, he would immortalize her type in the character of Zerbinetta. “Efeu,” the languishing ivy maiden, clings faithfully to one love; Dahn’s verse says they “are born to entwine themselves / Lovingly around another life.” The piano’s triplet arpeggios cling sympathetically to this shy maiden who only blooms once. The longest and loveliest of the songs, “Wasserrose” salutes the exotic, nocturnal water lily, whose elusive nature is expressed by a sensuously chromatic melody swaying over an ethereal accompaniment—both mirroring the flower floating on the water.
A slightly earlier song from 1887, “Ständchen,” Op. 17, No. 2, is another treasure for very high voice. With its shimmering piano accompaniment and sensuous vocal lines constantly vaulting to high notes, this is a nocturnal serenade summoning the lover to a moonlit meeting.
During the mid–20th century, when there was pressure on composers to adopt 12-tone serialism or chance techniques, Dominick Argento was a successful rebel who chose his own path of musical expression. Critics derided him as too conservative, but audiences loved his music, which was unashamedly melodic and still rooted, though freely, in tonality. Argento was—and still is—especially esteemed for his vocal music: art songs, choral works, and especially his 13 operas. In 1975, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, created for the famed British mezzo-soprano Janet Baker. To escape the avant-garde musical world of New York City, he opted to base his career in the Twin Cities, where he taught at the University of Minnesota for nearly 40 years and co-founded the thriving Minnesota Opera.
Argento’s involvement with opera began early; his first opera The Boor, based on Chekhov, was composed and premiered in 1957 while he was earning his PhD at the Eastman School of Music. Upon graduation, Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships enabled him to spend a year studying in Florence, and it was there that the Six Elizabethan Songs were born. Argento remembers: “Around Christmas [1957], we had a letter from Nicholas DiVirgilio, a friend and fellow student at Eastman who had sung the tenor role in the premiere of The Boor. He wanted me to write some songs for his graduation recital. I went to the bookstore on via Tornabuoni, and from the limited number of volumes of English poetry they had, I bought a copy of Francis Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury and chose a group of six poems of the Elizabethan era to set.” Argento also recalled that his Florentine apartment had no heat, so “that winter I wore mittens at the piano and could see my breath as I tried out the phrases of these songs.”
Argento wrote a brief introduction to his song sextet: “The songs are called ‘Elizabethan’ because the lyrics are drawn from that rich period in literature, while the music is in the spirit (if not the manner) of the great English composer, singer-lutenist John Dowland. The main concern is the paramount importance of the poetry and the primacy of the vocal line over a relatively simple and supportive accompaniment.”
The six poems Argento chose include two songs from Shakespeare’s comedies and another by the great Ben Jonson, also featured in a play. The three other poets are less well-known: Thomas Nashe, Samuel Daniel (a colleague of Shakespeare’s whom the Bard much admired), and Henry Constable. All were born within a decade of each other, between 1562 and 1572.
The songs follow a pattern of alternating fast and slow tempos. To Nashe’s bucolic verse, “Spring” greets this longed-for season with joyous leaps upward to the tonic and fleet imitations of different songbirds. Marked lentamente, “Sleep” sets a rather complex poem by Daniel that touches on past troubles in the poet’s life, which return to him in nightmares. Capturing its opposing elements, Argento combines soothing, subtle outer sections with an agitated middle section, led by the piano’s tormented triplets, to express the lines “And let the day be time enough to mourn / The shipwreck of my ill-adventur’d youth.” This is one of the cycle’s most finely wrought songs.
The next two songs set verse by Shakespeare. “Winter” is a song from Act V of his early comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost, and it portrays that season in its merriest guise. While the milk may be freezing in the pail, life indoors is warm and lusty, especially in the busy kitchen. Argento gives it a vivaciously humorous treatment with a sparkling, scherzo-like piano part. Shakespeare’s famous poem “Come away, Death” comes from Twelfth Night, where it’s sung by Duke Orsino’s clown to accompany the nobleman’s melancholy lovesickness. Argento gave his song the title “Dirge” and filled both the vocal and piano lines with haunting, dissonant tritone intervals that perfectly capture the troubling mood.
Marked allegro brillante, “Diaphenia” is an impetuous, high-speed song expressing the poet’s all-consuming love for a beautiful woman bearing that name. Praise likening her to the beauty of flowers issues in unstoppable torrents from the singer, pushed along by a whirling perpetual-motion piano part. Midway, the music slows for a beautiful passage about Diaphenia’s resemblance to the life-giving sun that animates both nature and the poet himself. The final song, “Hymn,” sets a superb poem by the playwright Jonson, found in his 1601 play Cynthia’s Revels, which has inspired many other composers. It is an ode to the goddess Diana, “Queen and huntress, chaste and fair.” Here she is also associated with the moon illuminating the night. The static, chordal accompaniment in the piano lends hymn-like majesty while the singer—who frequently begins her phrases off the beat—has the freedom to twist and soar in great arcs above. This song provides a magnificent conclusion to Argento’s early lyric masterpiece.
Frank Bridge was a fascinating British composer of chamber music, orchestral tone poems, and songs—but today, unfortunately, he is known more for his stellar composition pupil, Benjamin Britten, than for his own valuable music. Born in the seaside resort town of Brighton, he went to the Royal College of Music in London to study violin and piano. In 1899, he began taking composition lessons from the dean of turn-of-the-century British pedagogues, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, who imprinted him with his own conservative style. A musician of many accomplishments, Bridge was a fine professional violinist and violist who performed with many esteemed chamber ensembles. He was also a solid pianist, able to accompany many of his song performances; a conductor; and a revered teacher of the instruments he played. Britten was his only composition student and relied on his guidance until Bridge’s death in 1941. In his well-loved orchestral work Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Britten expressed his gratitude.
World War I provoked a major change in the pacifist Bridge’s musical style. At the war’s end, he left the hallowed Stanford harmonic rules behind and, influenced by Alban Berg, began to write in a freer, more dissonant style. But the songs heard tonight—even those composed in 1916 and after—are more conventional and designed to show off both the voice and piano. This is the case with the opening song, “Golden Hair” from 1925, which sets a charming poem by James Joyce. The piano, even more than the vocal lines, creates a wonderful atmosphere of fresh air and rapture.
A sadder poem by another Irish poet, the famous Padraic Colum (1881–1972), “Mantle of Blue” from 1918 describes a tender moment in the life of an Irish farming family. The returning field workers are told to hush their noise because the boy, Mavourneen, “is going / From me and from you.” When Colum was later asked about the meaning of this poem—whether the child is supposed to be dying—he gave an ambiguous answer. He said that when he wrote it, it was intended to be a simple lullaby, but now he was not so sure. In this hauntingly beautiful song, however, it seems clear which interpretation Bridge has chosen. A blue robe is associated with Mary, the Holy Mother.
Garlanded with flowery arpeggios, “Isobel” is a question-and-answer song in the Romantic salon style. The opening strophe suggests a sorrowful song, but the second builds to a declaration of love and a beautiful pianissimo on the name “Isobel.”
Bridge wrote more instrumental works than songs, and he specialized in chamber music. The next piece we hear, “Berceuse,” was originally composed for violin and piano in 1901; in 1929, Bridge arranged it for piano alone. Since this gentle lullaby with its tenderly lovely melody became very popular, the composer also re-scored it for cello and viola.
The final two songs were great favorites in their day and in our own as well. To words by Alfred Tennyson, “Go not, happy day” comes from 1903, a period when Bridge was busy creating one wonderful song after another. Its buoyant love song is lent nervous agitation by a whirling ostinato in the piano, conflicting rhythmically with the singer’s straightforward lines. With its stunning galloping accompaniment, “Love went a-riding” of 1914 (set to verse by Mary Coleridge) remains one of the most beloved of all English concert songs. A brilliant showcase for high soprano and pianist, it is an ideal song to end a concert.
—Janet E. Bedell