Blessed be he

I've been looking back over my notes about the Italienisches Liederbuch by Hugo Wolf these last few days because I'm preparing a talk about this work. And I realized that we had not listened to a song from this work for a long time, almost three years. I'm afraid that it's something that happens to me often, I forget the great works once introduced. It seems that 52 weeks a year are not so many... I can say in my defence that we usually listen to Wolf.

I apologize for letting aside the Italian Songbook for so long. Here it is again. This collection (rather than a cycle) which I presented in this article, consists of forty-six songs (forty-six miniatures, in fact, the whole piece lasts a little more than an hour). Its literary origin is Paul Heyse's work of the same name, which contains over three hundred translations of anonymous poems from various parts of Italy. The poems Wolf selected are love poems, and the collection presents us with a mosaic of love scenes, a broad, and open dialogue between a man and a woman (or, if you prefer, between men and women). Wolf loved what he called “his young friends from the south” very much, and we appreciate that in his songs.

This week, I propose that we listen to the fourth song in the collection, Gesegnet sei, durch den die Welt entstund [Blessed be he, who created the world]. The poem, like most of them, is a rispetto, a short form very common in Tuscany between the 13th and 15th centuries; in it, the poet respectfully greets his beloved. In this case, the poet praises the Creator for all the wonders he has accomplished.

Wolf writes the first two verses as a recitative, which sounds almost like a fanfare. Immediately after this solemn warning, the voice begins to enumerate the things created; the verses follow a regular structure, which Wolf follows with his music as well, by writing a little higher ever new musical phrase. First we hear, in piano, that the poet talks about the sea; then he talks about ships and then, about Paradise. He mentions Paradise with a crescendo in his voice, which seems to lead us to the climax of the song, the last verse, in which the poet speaks of the beloved. But then the voice suddenly starts singing in pianissimo, and instead of starting a second higher than the previous one, it starts a seventh higher, and this note is repeated almost throughout the whole verse. This sudden change has the effect of a barely contained emotion, a declaration of love that one would like to shout to the four winds, but must be muffled.

When considering such details, considering the mastery with which Wolf conveys tenderness and devotion, I bow. If you ask me why I love Wolf music so much, here is an answer. I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do; we are listening to it in the version by Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch.

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Song of the week: Wie lange schon war immer mein Verlangen (H. Wolf) - D. Upshaw, H. Deutsch

 

Here one more letter in my Liederabend's alphabet, H is for humour. Yes, you’ve read that right, humour, sense of humour. I know, most of the songs we usually hear here are sad, or very sad, or rapturous, or solemn; Romantics didn't have much of a sense of humour, and poets were engaged in serious, deep thoughts. But even they couldn't occasionally help laughing! Also, we’ve often listened to an English or French song, and they usually make us laugh more than a German song. So today we're stopping to go over those fun songs that cheered us up among so much darkness.

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Song of the week: Auch kleine Dinge (H. Wolf) - M. Erdmann, G. Hubert

 

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Counterserenade

Song of the week: Schweig einmal still, dub garts'ger Schwätzer dort! (H. Wolf) - M. Erdmann, G. Huber

 

I had another song from another composer planned for this week, but I left the article half-written and I will finish it some other day. It's Wolf's fault; he has been the star of Lied during the last days. You know, Jonas Kaufmann, Diana Damrau and Helmut Deutsch have been performing his Italienisches Liederbuch and their tour finished in Barcelona last Saturday. If my head is full of Wolf's music I can hardly concentrate on another composer so today, with this excuse, we're listening one more song from this collection that I love so much.