Last week we had an Italienisches Liederbuch in Barcelona, and this must be celebrated. Above all, we should celebrate the fact that we can hear Hugo Wolfs collection relatively often and with naturalness. How will it be celebrated? Listening to a song, of course.
Most of the poems that Wolf set to music in the German version of Paul Heyse are rispetti, a poetic form that was born among the noble quills of Florence in the Middle Ages and was adopted by the people over the centuries. It is worth mentioning that, sometimes, with disrespectful contents. Many of the poems, however, retain the original concept of a short poem written to the beloved as a greeting and declaration of love.
The verses typically employ hyperbolas to convey the depth of romantic sentiments. However, I believe that none is as extreme as the Lied Heut' nacht erhob ich mich um Mitternacht, the 41st of the collection, which Wolf composed in April 1896. The fact that a poetic voice addresses its heart is frequent; that the heart responds and a dialogue is established is more unusual. But that the heart secretedly slips away to see its beloved, benefiting from the fact that its... owner? is asleep, that doesn't happen every day. In the 21st century, we have seen so many films of all kinds that it is easy for us to imagine a heart with a rounded shape, a nice face, and thin legs and arms. However, the poetic image remains surprising.
The original Italian poem, which follows, is found in the songbook Heyse translates with the title Serenata. Consider a lover beneath the beloved's balcony; his argument for being there is unappealing: if his heart has decided to leave alone, he should follow him!
Trovai 'l mio cuore che dal petto usciva;
E io gli dissi: cor, dove ne vai?
Mi disse: A veder voi che ne veniva.
Mira, il mi' core se non ti vuol bene!
Esce dal petto e a vedere ti viene.
Don't think I ruined this song with the image of the naughty heart; I wouldn't do that. The song that Wolf wrote from these verses is so exquisite, so intense and so sincere that the poetic figure sounds natural and inevitable, and the addressee must feel moved. And we all are together with her. It is one of the most emotional songs in the collection, being intimate and contemplative.
Although a serenade always involves a man who sings, the German version of the poem does not have a gender mark, so it is one of those songs of the Italian Songbook that is not predetermined, and we find it sung by both men and women. With the serenade in mind, I chose a performance by a baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the man of the year. Three recordings by him are preserved: with pianist Herta Klust, with whom he recorded sixteen songs from the collection in 1951; with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Gerald Moore, with whom he recorded the complete collection in 1961; and with Christa Ludwig and Daniel Barenboim, also a complete recording, from 1975. There is still another complete recording with Irmgard Seefried and Erik Werba from 1959, but in this case, the soprano sings the song.
From these versions of Heut' nacht erhob ich mich um Mitternacht I suggest that we listen to the first one, with Herta Klust, which is my favourite. I hope you will enjoy it.
Da war mein Herz mir heimlich fortgeschlichen.
Ich frug: Herz, wohin stürmst du so mit Macht?
Es sprach: Nur Euch zu sehn, sei es entwichen.
Nun sieh, wie muß es um mein Lieben stehn:
Mein Herz entweicht der Brust, um dich zu sehn!
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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.
What song should I sing to you?
I love Wolf very much and, however, I don't often talk about him! Maybe I get carried away by his reputation as "difficult", as if we had not heard more “difficult” composers than him. Wolf is so original and so different from his contemporaries and neighbours Brahms and Mahler, not to mention Strauss, that his songs could sound peculiar the first time we listen to them. But, if we insist just a little, the prize is great; the sentence “to know him is to love him” becomes true when talking about Wolf and when talking about the work I'm introducing today (a promise that I made last summer). Because the Italienisches Liederbuch is a wonderful collection of songs.
Rispetto
A rispetto is a Tuscan poetic form, usually composed of six or eight hendecasyllabic verses, although the extension may vary between four and ten lines. A Rispetto talks about love, it's a respectful greeting (hence the name) to the loved one. The form spread during the thirteenth century and reached its peak during the second half of the fifteenth century, when it was widely cultivated by Angelo Poliziano and, to a lesser extent, by Lorenzo de' Medici.
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