-Composer: Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856)
-Performers: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Baritone), Christoph Eschenbach (Piano)
Fünf Lieder {Five Songs} for Voice and Piano, op. 40, written in 1840
[00:04] - I. Märzveilchen
[01:33] - II. Muttertraum
[04:19] - III. Der Soldat
[07:11] - IV. Der Spielmann
**[10:19] - V. Verratene Liebe
Schumann wrote these songs to poems by Hans Christian Andersen, an author best known today for his fairy tales, and dedicated them to the poet, who had visited Robert and Clara Schumann earlier that year. The translations were by Adalbert von Chamisso, author of the texts for Frauenliebe und -leben, which Schumann wrote during the same period. They were in the same volume that Frauenliebe came from.
He noted in the letter that he sent with a presentation copy that Andersen may very well find the settings strange, as he himself found the texts strange at first. He continued to say that as he began to understand the poems and their strangeness more deeply, his music started to become increasingly strange as well.
While the situations depicted vary widely, the songs are still linked somewhat loosely by the keys, and considerably more strongly by their place in Schumann's ongoing tendency to explore changes in moods and feelings rather than to express and develop one single emotion, as well as by that element of strangeness.
Part of the strangeness lies in a certain emotional "compression"; in both "Muttertraum" and "Der Spielmann," Schumann compresses into one song the dramatic and emotional range that he unfolded over the course of a cycle in Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben, written around the same time.
Another part lies in an almost cinematic quality, such as in "Muttertraum," with its changing images: the theme suggesting the mother rocking the baby in her arms, the peaceful image in the vocal lines with the more ominous underlying piano, and the growing forcefulness of the darker mood as the song ends; in "Der Soldat," with the powerful scene painting from the imitation of the death march and the almost disturbingly vivid image in the postlude of the actual moment of death and the fall of the body; in "Der Spielmann," with the images of dancing and the "close-ups" of the fiddler's deterioration; and in "Verratene Liebe," as the gossip about the kiss spreads, at first quietly, and then thundering cheerfully all through the town.
[allmusic.com]
