Wesendonck Lieder

Program Note:

German lieder may have attained a relative highpoint in the work of Franz Schubert, whose 600+ individual songs and organic song cycles deserve pride of place. However, those achievements must not overshadow the later evolution of the genre in the generations from Mendelssohn to Schoenberg. Great lieder are distinguished by psychological commentary provided by purely musical means, whereby details of range, harmony/chromaticism, and the role of the accompaniment provide deeper reflection on quite superficial love poetry. Such opportunities for richer exploration only increased in the late 19th century as poets—along with philosophers and psychologists—probed ever deeper into the human psyche. Two of the greatest practitioners of High Romantic art song were, not surprisingly, also exceptional opera composers: Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Richard Strauss (1864-1949). While the former cultivated all-encompassing music dramas to the near exclusion of everything else, the latter worked successfully in genres ranging from chamber music to grand symphonies.

Richard Wagner is considered today for the astounding music dramas he created: massive works that reshaped the very nature of opera, opera production, and symbolism in music. Apart from these works—which include Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tannhauser, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal among others—very little attention has been paid to Wagner’s non-staged music. The two exceptions both relate directly to another opera, Tristan und Isolde, which premiered in Munich in 1865. Siegfried’s Idyll and the five Wesendonck Lieder emerged from the same intoxicating brew that surrounded Tristan, bringing art into direct contact with life as Wagner sought love and inspiration from the wives of two devoted patrons.

While he wrote most of Tristan between 1857 and 1859, Wagner was ensconced in a private cottage with his wife Minna at the Zürich estate of Otto Wesendonck, a silk merchant and financial backer of the composer. Wagner planned to work on Der Ring, but various factors—not least being the alluring presence of Otto’s young wife, Mathilde—gave new urgency to a nascent project based on the 12th-century tale of Tristan und Isolde. Wagner clearly self-identified with the forbidden love and heroic abnegation that drives the emotional arc of Tristan. And in Mathilde he believed to have found his Isolde. He read daily updates on his Tristan libretto aloud to her, and she reciprocated by sharing five poems that she had recently penned. Wagner paused his work on Tristan in November 1857 to set Mathilde’s lyrics to music. He rarely set texts by anyone other than himself, so the very decision to do so betrays his infatuation with Frau Wesendonck. Her role in the process remained secret when the Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (Five Songs for Female Voice) were published in 1860; only later, after her death in 1902, did the set become conventionally known as the Wesendonck Lieder.
The collection opens with “Der Engel,” a rapturous ode about the salvation one person can bring to another. Wagner builds into G major (the original key) from a low D in the voice, but the emotional tone brightens quickly and powerfully through F major to land on E major. Functioning locally to prepare A major, the key center of E actually becomes a significant nexus for the entire song. Wagner’s peremptory move at the beginning on the word “Himmel” (heaven) foreshadows the eventual return of E/A as keys of transcendence—an effect one can also find in Schubert and Brahms.
The title of the second song, “Stehe Still,” expresses a wish rather than reality. Two stanzas sprint by restlessly before the third holds back to meditate on spiritual oneness, when “one soul sinks into another.” The voice carries the burden of expression here as the accompaniment withdraws. Ample pauses mimic the poem’s sentiment of “hushed lips,” of moments when words pale in comparison to gestures. And while Wagner labeled two of the Wesendonck Lieder (nos. 3 and 5) explicitly as sketches for material later incorporated into Tristan, the opera’s spirit also hovers over “Stehe Still.” From details of the orchestrated version (solo oboe, in particular) to the song’s general shape—slowly building via successive 7th chords to a resplendent C major outburst, followed by diminuendo to a tender final cadence—one can sense the nearness of Tristan and its ecstatic Liebestod.
“Im Treibhaus” forms the center of the collection both structurally and emotionally. Wagner clearly steps into the ominous world of Tristan und Isolde from the opening bar, which utilizes the “doubly dark” approach to tonic D: opening on the minor subdominant chord casts a pall over the song that cannot be lifted, despite the upwardly resolving dissonance and general rising action of the melodic line. The power of this gesture is captivating, all the more so as it embraces the poetic dichotomy expressed in the opening lines between drooping branches and rising fragrance. This was the last song of the five to be completed and features prominently in the Prelude to Act 3 of Tristan.
The fourth song, “Schmerzen,” contrasts strongly with its predecessor and features more conventional operatic gestures. The main theme descends stepwise over a major 9th interval, creating an expansive feeling big enough to embrace the prevailing dichotomies of the text: life out of death, bliss from anguish. Fraught sequences of chromatically-related harmonies unwind and elide with triumphal fanfares in a way familiar from Der Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal.
The set closes with “Dreams,” whose text recycles several of the themes touched on previously. Wagner obsesses on a repeated suspension figure, typically a 6-5 appoggiatura. Students of Schubert may recollect similar features in the slow movement of the Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664, which likewise builds a 6-5 suspension chain over plodding chordal support. But Wagner breaks free to reach vocal highpoints on key words like “Himmel” (cf. song 1) and “Duft” (cf. song 3). The sinking toward death at the end is not morbid, but rather serene. Both composer and poet interpreted their suppression of consummated love on earth to signify a more lasting union to come.

Imbibing a heady dose of Schopenhauer (which ties into Wagner’s own dualist notions between social duty and artistic freedom) and Mathilde’s own poetry, Wagner courted Frau Wesendonck rather openly in front both of their spouses. Minna retreated (or was sent away) to recover from the strain of life with her philandering husband; Otto, too, quickly removed his own wife from direct contact with the composer. That six months between summer 1857 and early 1858 was, according to the composer, “a veritable Hell” during which a distraught Minna attacked him for adultery (which he denied) and Matthilde was whisked away to Italy by her suitably wary husband. Whether or not she returned Wagner’s affections (and her poems argue strongly in the affirmative), there can be no denying the reality this relationship held for him.
Minna’s eventual discovery of a passionate letter from Richard to Mathilde sealed their estrangement, though he was not free to remarry until she died in 1866. By that time, his affections had settled on a new woman, Cosima von Bülow, the brilliant daughter of Franz Liszt and wife of the conductor who labored to premiere Tristan itself. For Cosima, Wagner penned the exquisite Siegfried’s Idyll—a symphonic poem named not for the opera Siegfried but rather in honor of the son born to Cosima in 1869. That, however, is a story for another occasion.

(c) Jason Stell