The linden trees at the Rambla

Last week, I was going down Rambla Catalunya (in Barcelona) to get to a meeting when a scent stopped me. Was it the limes? Have they already begun to bloom? When I raised my head, I saw that indeed, the weak and mistreated trees were beginning to bloom. As usual, I thanked them that, despite we don't take care of them, they continue to grow and give us their scent, while in my mind songs about linden began to sound.

In this short post, given my busy schedule, I'm sharing a beautiful one, in which the poetic voice hopes that the lime tree she sees in the valley will help her in her sorrow because she has lost her love. In the second stanza she will hope for help from a bird on a fence and, in the third, from a fountain on the plain. The song, Es steht ein Lind, is No. 41 from the Deutsche Volkslieder, WoO 33, a collection that Brahms published in 1894 after having been working on it for forty years.

To make his version, the composer studied three different sources. Two were contemporary: a collection of songs from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries published in 1872 by Wilhelm Tappert, and another collection of traditional songs by Friedrich Wilhelm Arnold, whose first volume was published in 1864, the year of the author's death. The third collection, the oldest, had been published in Nuremberg in 1550.

Brahms's song, of course, is strophic, but note that the third stanza varies slightly, and reinforces the feeling of loss of the inconsolable lover. The version that I have chosen to share may not be the most faithful to the popular spirit and may be a little slow, yet Lucia Popp sings it with such charm... This is a live recording made during the 1980 Edinburgh Festival, with Geoffrey Parsons accompanying the soprano. If you feel like listening to other interpretations, try, for example, Andreas Schmidt and Helmut Deutsch or Maximilian Schmitt and Gerold Huber.

Don't forget to enjoy the blooming and special scent of lime trees by strolling wherever you can find them.