Spanisches Liebeslieder, Op. 138

After nearly a decade in which he composed no vocal music at all, Schumann made a striking return to genre in 1849 with the Spanisches Liebeslieder song collection. The immediate stimulus was likely his experience as founding director of the Verein für Chorgesang (Choral Society), which he formed after moving to Dresden in 1847. The Liebeslieder is actually the second set Schumann made on Spanish folksongs. Like the first collection, the Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74, it draws upon Emanuel Geibel’s German translations of mostly 16th-century Spanish texts. And as in Op. 74, Schumann nicely combines songs for solo voice with duets and quartets.
The only substantive difference with the Liebeslieder is the composer’s decision to use four-hand, as opposed to solo, piano accompaniment. That feature would be imitated later in the popular Liebeslieder Waltzes by Johannes Brahms, a friend and great admirer of Schumann. (You might have heard Brahms’ song set performed during the 2005 SMF season.) The role of the piano is further expanded through the inclusion of two purely instrumental movements which emphasize the Spanish flavor (especially the opening Prelude played “in Bolero tempo” and including minor mode color and occasional rhythmic jolts). The enhanced narrative role played by the piano stems from Schumann’s successful use of the piano for extended piano preludes, interludes, and postludes in his song cycles Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe.
The songs, however, do not overtly betray the texts’ Spanish origins with exotic musical cues. To be sure, the messages contained in these poems are hardly unique to Spain. For instance, the beautiful but wrathful shepherdess (no. 7) or the canny contradictions used to characterize love (no. 10) are stock motifs familiar from centuries of poetry. And Schumann responds by crafting musical settings that are genuine and broadly appealing. The first two songs, solos for soprano and tenor, mark out the set’s emotional range: from the intimacy of “Tief im Herzen trag’ ich Pein,” which continues the guitar-like strummed chords from the Prelude, to the strophic, animated spirit of “O wie lieblich” that shows no signs of darkening skies. The two duets, song 4 for women’s voices and song 9 for men’s, share similarities in homophonic texture and use of occasional close imitation for added intensity. Song 9, in particular, captures the self-assured style of “gemütlich Hausmusik” that must have pleased the Schumann’s musical guests. Schumann employs text painting well in the solo lieder nos. 7 and 8. In song 7 a dissonant, angular motif given forth in short fragments expresses the maiden’s scornful nature. Song 8 starts in the most serene and simple way with gently arpeggiated harmonies made all the sweeter by the impending agitation, which takes hold both of the music and the protagonist as she watches her beloved disappear into the hills. A deliberate pause at the bottom of the mezzo’s range, signaling the moment when she finally loses sight of him, dramatically opposes the poem’s references to the “proud mountain peaks.”
Oppositions are the guiding principle in the final poem, “Dunkler Lichtglanz, blinder Blick,” which Schumann has set as a vocal quartet (song no. 10). The piece is often pulled out of the larger set and performed on its own, and it has become one of the hallmarks of the German romantic choral tradition. Complete with touches of Bachian four-part harmony, piano duet textures as accompaniment, and moments of breakthrough for each voice as the poem’s subject, “Liebe” comes in for mention again and again, it more than fittingly concludes the collection. Indeed, if until now we have known Schumann only for his symphonies, piano solo works, or solo lieder, the chamber vocal repertoire (as represented in these Spanish Love Songs) and the smaller instrumental ensembles (such as the Märchenerzählungen) leave us a great deal still to discover in this remarkable musician.

(c) Jason Stell