Jonas Kaufmann & Helmut Deutsch

Schubert

鳟鱼 (The Troud, D. 550)

明亮的小河里面  有一条小鳟鱼   快活的游来游去  像箭儿一样
我站在小河岸旁  静静的朝它望   在清清的河水里面  它游得
多欢畅   在清清的河水里面  它游得多欢畅 

那渔夫带着钩竿  站在河岸旁  冷酷的看着它  想把鱼儿钓上
我心里这样期望  只要河水清又亮  他别想把小鳟鱼钓上岸
只要河水清又亮  他别想把小鳟鱼钓上岸 
  
但渔夫不愿久等  浪费时光   他赶忙搅浑河水  我还来不及想
把小鳟鱼钓上岸    我满怀激愤的心情看小鳟鱼上了当
我满怀激愤的心情看小鳟鱼上了当

菩提树 (The linden Tree from "Winter Journey")

Am brunnen vor dem tore da steht ein Lindenbaum; 
门前有棵菩提树,生长在古井边
ich traumt' in seinem Schatten so manchen suBen Traum. 
我做过无数美梦在它的绿荫间
Ich schnitt in seine Rinde so manches liebe Wort;
也曾在那树干上刻下甜蜜诗句
es zog in freud und Leide zu ihm mich immerfort
无论快乐和痛苦常在树下留连
Ich muBt auch heute wandern vorbei in tiefer Nacht,
今天像往日一样,我流浪到深夜
da hab ich noch im Dunkel die Augen zugemacht.
我在黑暗中行走,闭上了我的双眼
Und seinr Zweige rauschten,
好像听见那树叶
als riefen sie mir zu,
对我轻声呼唤
kommher zu mie,Geselle,hier findstdu deine Ruh!
同伴,回到我这里,来找寻平安!
Die kalten Winde bliesen mir grad ins Angesicht, 
凛冽的北风吹来,直扑上我的脸
der Hut flog mir vom Kopfe,ich wendetemich nicht.
把头上帽子吹落我仍坚定向前
Nun bin ich manche Stunde entfernt von jenem Ort,
如今我远离故乡,转眼有许多年
und immer horich's rauschen;
但仍常听见呼唤
du fandest ruhe dort!
到这里寻找平安!

春天的青春 (The Youth at the Spring, D. 300)

• http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=14248

Der Jüngling an der Quelle

Language: German (Deutsch)

Leise, rieselnder Quell, ihr wallenden, flispernden Pappeln,
Euer Schlummergeräusch wecket die Liebe nur auf.
Linderung sucht' ich bei euch, und sie zu vergessen, die Spröde;
Ach! und Blätter und Bach seufzen: [Elisa! mir zu.]1

The youth by the spring

Softly, trickling spring! Ye churning, rustling poplars!
The sounds of slumber you make will only awaken my love.
Balm was I seeking from you and to forget her indifference.
Ah, the brook and each tree sigh for my loved one, for thee.

缪斯的儿子 (The Son of the Muses, D. 764)

Der Musensohn

Durch Feld und Wald zu schweifen,
Mein Liedchen wegzupfeifen,
So gehts von Ort zu Ort!
Und nach dem Takte reget,
Und nach dem Maaß beweget
Sich alles an mir fort.

Ich kann sie kaum erwarten,
Die erste Blum' im Garten,
Die erste Blüt' am Baum.
Sie grüßen meine Lieder,
Und kommt der Winter wieder,
Sing' ich noch jenen Traum.

Ich sing' ihn in der Weite,
Auf Eises Läng' und Breite,
Da blüht der Winter schön!
Auch diese Blüte schwindet,
Und neue Freude findet
Sich auf bebauten Höhn.

Denn wie ich bei der Linde
Das junge Völkchen finde,
Sogleich erreg' ich sie.
Der stumpfe Bursche bläht sich,
Das steife Mädchen dreht sich
Nach meiner Melodie.

Ihr gebt den Sohlen Flügel
Und treibt, durch Thal und Hügel,
Den Liebling weit von Haus.
Ihr lieben holden Musen,
Wann ruh' ich ihr am Busen
Auch endlich wieder aus?

In field and wood a-roaming -- 
I pipe my tune a-blowing
And dart from hill to dale (2)
And with my rhythm beating -- 
The pulse of life repeating
A chorus and a dance (2) from morn to night enhance.
 
And I can hardly wait then - 
To see the blooming garden
The budding flowering trees -
My songs I play to greet them -
And though the winter meets them
My song comes from the dream (the dream) (2)
 
I sing around the hillsides -- 
Of winter's blooming kingdom
The beauty of her realm (2)
And then the ice is melted -- 
And joy, again, is felt there
Her bounty is alive ------ through all the countryside (2)
 
And when beneath the lime tree
The lads and lasses find me -- 
Their laughter fills the world.
The lads show off their feathers -- 
No matter what the weather
The lasses dance and twirl -- Oh, how they dance and whirl and twirl !

You spark my inspiration -- 
And nurture new creation
Your fav'rite far from home (2)
Oh, muses, dearest, kindest - 
Whenever will I find rest?
Oh, shall you bring me home? (2) And I, no more to roam.

Schumann

• https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDS44441/50

《十二首诗》节选，op.35 (Zwölf Gedichte von Justinus Kerner Op 35)

No.1：暴风雨之夜的快乐 (No 1: Lust der Sturmnacht)

The accompaniment rumbles between the hands in a way that recalls the oscillations of Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden from the Heine Liederkreis, Op 24. The tempo is faster of course because this is storm music where inn-sign and window rattle in the force of the wind. But the point of the song is that all this nasty weather is ‘draussen’ (outside) and that the narrator of the poem is cradled safely within the bosom of the family. Those with fortunate childhoods remember a sense of warm security as they were tucked up in bed, protected from the howling rain and wind. This poem translates childlike cosiness into adult exultation – a mood typical of Kerner, and of Schumann in 1840; the forces of nature are enlisted as supporting players in the poet’s ecstatic celebration of his domestic happiness. The ups and downs of the external storm only emphasize the warmth and stability of what lies safely within. So the song is not really what it appears to be at first glance or first hearing – a romanticized lowering landscape in the manner of the Eichendorff songs. Instead it attempts to depict something more abstract – the calm centre of the storm where the poet’s mental and physical rapture as a husband are counterbalances to the huffings and puffings of external influences. It was an apt poem for a newly married composer to choose to begin a cycle. The key signature of E flat major shows us that Schumann symbolically discounts the grim weather from the outset. At the beginning (and for much of the song) the music, thanks to a slew of bristling accidentals, blusters in E flat minor. It would have been simple enough to preface the whole song with the six flats which signify this key, but this would have implied the victory of the forces of darkness over those of light. With only three flats at the core of the song the composer tells us that however violent the storm outside, his own state of mind remains calmly fixed in the radiance of the major key. The difficulty of Lust der Sturmnacht – particularly for the interpreters – is that the music gives out two messages at once, and it is usually the first and most obvious, the angry, stormy mood, which prevails. The vocal line is demanding and, as it curves to the top of its first phrase, high-lying and dramatic. The vitality of the piano writing encourages the pianist to launch into displays of temperament to mirror the vicissitudes of the weather which can easily seem furious rather than exultant.

After two lines of music (the poem’s first verse) we are led into the song’s inner sanctum: there is a significant change of mood as the veil of gloom lifts almost literally. Instead of growling left-hand fifths and octaves, the whole texture of the song lightens as the bass line ascends the stave and changes character completely. With these notes a curtain rises as if pulled upwards by the pianist’s left hand, revealing a bright and cosy scene of happiness. It is a scene such as this which the winter traveller glimpses through the window in Täuschung (Schubert’s Winterreise). ‘Ruht es sich so süss hier innen’ suddenly becomes bathed in a glow of F7 leading to B flat major, a gentle sighing tune which is repeated after a short piano interlude. Further musing excursions into E flat7 and A flat major at ‘all der goldne Himmelsschimmer’ restate the warmth and inner glow of a life where heaven is in the here-and-now of domestic happiness. For the poem’s third strophe the music becomes even more ethereal; now the sense of rapture has become so heady that the bass line floats further upward and takes shelter in the treble clef directly under the right-hand chords. The move into A flat major (the subdominant of the home key) has already led us into a musical region of intimacy and radiance, but as the accompaniment becomes further etiolated we are spirited beyond the living-room into the intimacy of the bedroom cushioned with the softest linen and the purest love (‘Halt’ mich fest in linden Armen!’).

It is time now for the song to change direction and return to the mood of the opening. Schumann uses the closing lines of the third strophe as a bridge passage back to the storm music. So strong is the magic of the human warmth surrounding the poet that he imagines spring in winter, the actual season an irrelevance to his mood. In his domestic happiness he experiences something like Goethe’s ‘Frühling übers Jahr’, spring the whole year through. Staccato semiquavers alternate between the hands with a flurry of activity suggestive of tiny buds pricking their way though the soil. First single A flats in the left hand tentatively exchange greetings with right-hand thirds; the right hand then descends and crosses over the left following the vocal line (‘Lenzesblumen aufwärts dringen’) in a courtship dance of delight. The voice then flirtatiously suddenly changes direction and moves up the scale (‘Wölklein ziehn und Vöglein singen’). With such a chase, and the rising of the vocal sap, more insistent pianistic left-hand octaves stampede in the opposite direction. Thus spring’s return is painted in an ever broader and richer spectrum of colour and movement. No sooner are we in the key of B flat at ‘Vöglein singen’ than we are off again, this time plunging back to E flat minor for a repeat of the song’s opening melody. Schumann parades the conflicting imageries of spring and winter before us side-by-side.

Once again we hear the stirring music of the opening and the poet seems to stand before us in all his glory. (It was always Schumann’s ability to somehow build up a portrait of his poets through his songs, and here we are introduced to Kerner in no uncertain terms.) Although the whole point of the song is that the poet is indoors when he sings it, there is something majestic about his utterance which reminds us of King Lear’s outdoor ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drowned the cocks!’ Kerner is no dethroned king, but as one of Germany’s early exponents of natural medicine and other holistic therapies, he is an outsider, a free-thinking pioneer ahead of his time, well placed to defy the external elements as well as those elements in society which would accuse him of madness. Schumann’s uses a vocal trill, a device rare for him, on ‘Himmels helle’ (we hear this phrase twice) to mark the sheer delight which Kerner feels in the eye of the storm, and also his delight in the paradox which his poem describes. The major-key elation of the virtuosic final bars (one of Schumann’s more difficult postludes) unites the energy of the storm with the leaping heartbeat of personal exultation. Nature’s forces, no matter how forbidding their external manifestation, are harnessed to celebrate the joys of a fulfilled inner life.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1998

Wenn durch Berg und Tale draussen
Regen schauert, Stürme brausen,
Schild und Fenster hell erklirren,
Und in Nacht die Wandrer irren,
Ruht es sich so süss hier innen,
Aufgelöst in selges Minnen;
All der goldne Himmelsschimmer
Flieht herein ins stille Zimmer:

Reiches Leben, hab’ Erbarmen!
Halt’ mich fest in linden Armen!
Lenzesblumen aufwärts dringen,
Wölklein ziehn und Vöglein singen.

Ende nie, du Sturmnacht, wilde!
Klirrt, ihr Fenster, schwankt, ihr Schilde,
Bäumt euch, Wälder, braus’, o Welle,
Mich umfängt des Himmels helle!

Justinus Kerner (1786-1862)

When, outside, over hill and vale
rain streams and tempests rage,
house-emblem, window, rattle loud
and in the darkness travellers stray,
here inside it is so sweet to rest
and give oneself to blissful love;
the whole of Heaven’s golden gleam
flees hither to this quiet room:

have compassion, O abundant life,
hold me fast with gentle arm.
The flowers of spring thrust up,
clouds are scudding and birds sing.

Never end, wild night of storm,
rattle, house-emblems and windows,
rear up, forests. Roar, O wave.
Locked am I in Heaven’s bright embrace!

English: Richard Stokes © 1998

No.4：第一抹绿色 (No 4: Erstes Grün)

This is certainly the most famous of all the Kerner settings and the most frequently encountered in recitals. It is not hard to see why. The song is something of a tonic, and was conceived as such by both composer and poet. Even the piano interludes ‘perk up’ in an enchanting way. The original title of the lyric was Frühlingskur (the concept of the ‘cure’ is alive and well today in a Germany where many are still addicted to ‘taking the waters’) and springtime is here presented as a great healer. This is made even clearer by Frühlingsmorgen, the poem which precedes this in Kerner’s Dichtungen (1834). In that poem, the season of gambolling lambs and singing larks is said to make the sickest heart blossom in the midst of its withering, giving it reason to sing with joy. Here are early signs of a Green Party; the poet shuns mankind in favour of nature’s awakening power, an ability to heal both psychically and physically. And by implication this also applies to the purity of what one eats, and of the herbal remedies scorned by conventional medicine. The marking ‘Einfach’ (‘simple’) implies that Schumann sees Kerner as connected to the source of nature and, as such, the music associated with his healing powers should be free of artificial flavourings. The first signs of spring’s arrival are to be seen in the fledgling green of newly emerging grass. The key is G major and one recalls that the Andersen setting Märzveilchen (Op 40 No 1) is in this tonality. A feature common to the two songs is the interplay between the hands in the accompaniment: sighing quavers phrased away in the left hand, and panting little semiquavers pulsating off the beat. These pinpricks of sound represent the audacious act of flowers or plants making tiny holes in the earth’s surface in order to emerge into daylight. (Mendelssohn, in his G major duet Maiglöckchen und die Blümelein (1844), seems to have been influenced by Schumann.) Erstes Grün is utterly strophic, so we hear the same melody three times; the vocal line is always in G minor (representing winter gloom and depression) and the delicious interlude, which suggests a springtime roundelay, is in the major key.

Kerner’s words are set to music which, like so much else in Schumann’s nature mode, suggests folksong. It is the accompaniment which enriches and fills out the picture. A heart racing with feelings of fear and presentiment, certainly a heart unsettled by the winter blues, is suggested by the insistent chords off the beat which shadow the vocal melody almost throughout. The little fragmentary march on ‘Das von des Winters Schnee erkrankt’ (voice and piano suddenly coming together) provides a fleeting moment of connection with the march of awakening springtime in Schubert’s Trockne Blumen from Die schöne Müllerin. The following interlude (we hear it three times in all, including its appearance as the song’s postlude) is something new and original. It is partly rueful, partly celebratory. Traditionally, it is subject to pianists’ whimsical rubato where the tempo picks up in the manner of a spring lamb, at first slightly unsteady on its feet and then, as it gets into its stride, gaining confidence to hop and skip with impunity. This suggests the stirring of something long dormant, the rising of the sap perhaps, a half-forgotten sense of childlike delight awakened by the first blade of grass and the first ray of sunshine – winter’s chloroform negated by springtime’s chlorophyll. The interlude pivots around chromatically rising basses, but it begins in an innocent G major, and ends there too, high in the treble. This tonality is then immediately countermanded by the return of a G minor chord in the right hand, again followed by an accented D in the left – the knell of spring’s hopes which reminds us that, as yet, the new season is only a fantasy, and that winter still reigns.

The second and third verses of the poem perhaps suit the same music less well. Kerner’s poem was designed to reflect an increasing sense of delight in the second strophe, and Schumann forgoes this subtle change of mood in the interest of simplicity. There is, however, a sense of conspiracy and suspense on the second verse’s ‘Hier in des Waldes stillem Grund’. It seems that the music stems, so to speak, from that ground: voice and piano come together in prayer-like communion for the extraordinary ceremony of pressing the first green shoots ‘an Herz und Mund’. As he picks, and even tastes, the new green growth, Kerner reminds us that he was a naturopath. Once again the G major interlude – prancing plucked basses, starting slightly under tempo, then turning into a cheeky miniature czárdás. The last strophe seems both metaphorically eloquent as well as a practical comment on the efficacy of natural remedies for mankind’s ailments – in this case the stopping of palpitations. The interlude may here be shaped slightly differently by the pianist, less skittishly and more calmly to mirror the words ‘Macht, dass mein Herze stiller schlägt’. A sense of frustrated impatience and longing has been replaced by the glow of gentle fulfilment. This is reflected in the dreamy nature of the final cadence. At the crucial moment where the music has shifted back to G minor in earlier strophes, the piano dwells lovingly on a moment of suspended chromaticism before dropping with the utmost tenderness to three perfectly placed chords in G major. A gentle smile in music.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1998

Du junges Grün, du frisches Gras!
Wie manches Herz durch dich genas,
Das von des Winters Schnee erkrankt,
O wie mein Herz nach dir verlangt!
Schon wächst du aus der Erde Nacht,
Wie dir mein Aug’ entgegen lacht!
Hier in des Waldes stillem Grund
Drück ich dich, Grün, an Herz und Mund.

Wie treibt’s mich von den Menschen fort!
Mein Leid das hebt kein Menschenwort,
Nur junges Grün, ans Herz gelegt
Macht, dass mein Herze stiller schlägt.

Justinus Kerner (1786-1862)

Young green, fresh grass,
how many a heart you have healed
that fell ill from winter’s snow,
how great my heart’s desire for you!
Already from earth’s night you grow,
how my eye laughs to greet you!
Here, in the forest’s silent depths,
you, green, I press to heart, to lips.

How great my urge to quit humankind!
No human word will lift my grief,
only green grass, put to my heart,
will make my heart beat calmer.

English: Richard Stokes © 1998

No.7：流浪汉 (No 7: Wanderung)

This song, with its lilting 6/8 rhythm, is a very close relative of Der Knabe mit dem Wunderhorn heard earlier on this disc. Like Aus alten Märchen from Dichterliebe, it belongs to that list of songs of magic-carpet enchantment which Schumann of all the great Lieder composers seems to have been best qualified to conjure. He has a quixotic strain of sheer whimsy, and the ability to pursue it, with childlike curiosity, to the point of exact musical expression. This is quite simply a matchless quality, and one that we cherish. On the other hand Schumann could sometimes go into this fairytale mode almost too automatically, and so it seems here. Kerner’s poem is deeper and more demanding than either Geibel’s salute to the youth of Des Knaben Wunderhorn or Heine’s vision of a rocking-horse land of dreams and fantasies. Kerner’s poem is not as great as Heine’s perhaps, but it asks for things other than a magic-carpet ride through the landscape. Unlike the Cupid-like putto of the Geibel setting, the narrator here remains a real person on the printed page of poetry. In the first strophe we hear of severed bonds (‘Zerissen, ach zerissen Ist manches teure Band’); this occasions a brief dalliance with G minor, but this twinge of musical regret seems brief to the point of being glib. In Schumann’s music he sounds relieved to be rid of old ties. In the second verse Kerner describes how he has often prostrated himself at wayside shrines; and in the last he rejoices in the strength of his relationship, declaring himself to be close to all earth and heaven as a result. Perhaps embarrassed by this strain of Swabian devoutness, Schumann simply misses the deeper import of this lyric; for once, he forgets to keep the poet in mind and we have to stretch our imaginations to believe that this light-hearted song (enchanting though it is in its own terms) refers to the same man whose love for his wife and family has given rise to Lust der Sturmnacht. In short, the music lacks the gravitas we have come to expect from the Kerner songbook.

This having been said, there is much to admire. One can scarcely blame Schumann, the artful arranger and shuffler of moods, for engineering a change of pace in his Liederreihe after the portentous strains of the Trinkglas song. And we have the relief of that change in full measure. The music dances and floats with cheeky insouciance; the composer instructs the accompanist to keep his piano part light and gentle. The ‘scoring’ of the song suggests pizzicato strings limned with the perky woodwind gallantry of bassoons. The key of the song is B flat major. In the second strophe there is a shift to F7 which colours the music of remembered prayer with a gently rueful hue and smoother rhythms; this is capped by a shift to A flat7 for ‘Ihr Bäume, ach, ihr Hügel’ where a note of longing and nostalgia temporarily casts a shadow over the landscape – although to no very serious effect.

And then it is back to the first rollicking melody despite the fact that the world is asleep, and another composer might have attempted something like the mood of Schubert’s Wandrers Nachtlied. Despite their silence in the poem, the birds are made to twitter merrily in the light staccato accompaniment. The composer is perhaps at his best in the next few lines which allow him to express a deliriously joyous sense of inner happiness and satisfaction which, together with the marking of ‘Bewegter’ (‘faster’) brims over into exultingly prancing triplets pushing the voice into a higher and more heroic tessitura. Schumann seems to have taken the word ‘Pfand’ in an archaic way as if the singer is carrying the colours of his fair lady at a joust. This may account for the piano writing here which, in the way the performers approach the heights as if they were hurdles or jumps, suggests the exhilaration and rough-and-tumble of a tournament. Indeed the whole thing may be taken to be a self-consciously medieval evocation of ancient minstrelsy; Die schöne Magelone of Brahms comes instantly to mind. In Schumann’s imagination Kerner is playing the part of a gallant lover rather than being himself. The postlude is infectious in its gaiety and energy: the twin worlds of sky and earth are depicted by a dancing B flat figuration that is first heard in the treble, and echoed an octave lower. The song always brings a smile, for it is, in truth, a cocky scherzo of almost irresistible charm. Like Heine’s Aus alten Märchen it vanishes like a drift of foam (‘Zerflieht’s wie eitel Schaum’); but we cannot chide Schumann too long for being superficial when he goes so deep elsewhere in the cycle.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1998

Wohlauf und frisch gewandert
Ins unbekannte Land!
Zerrissen, ach zerrissen,
Ist manches teure Band.
Ihr heimatlichen Kreuze,
Wo ich oft betend lag,
Ihr Bäume, ach, ihr Hügel,
O blickt mir segnend nach.

Noch schläft die weite Erde,
Kein Vogel weckt den Hain,
Doch bin ich nicht verlassen,
Doch bin ich nicht allein,

Denn, ach, auf meinem Herzen
Trag’ ich ihr teures Pfand,
Ich fühl’s, und Erd und Himmel
Sind innig mir verwandt.

Justinus Kerner (1786-1862)

Come, briskly tramp
to the unknown land!
Severed, ah severed
is many a true bond.
Homely crucifixes,
where often I lay in prayer,
you trees, ah, you hills,
gaze after me and bless me.

Still the wide world sleeps,
no bird wakes the wood,
yet I am not forsaken,
yet I am not alone,

for, ah, upon my heart
I wear her precious pledge,
I feel it, and earth and sky
are kith and kin to me.

English: Richard Stokes © 1998

No.9：问题 (No 9: Frage)

This is a poem which contains Kerner’s entire credo in a single strophe. It is a catalogue of the poet’s reason for living, and when read on the printed page of the Dichtungen, it seems a joyful paean to the restorative powers of nature and of poetry (it is not clear here whether ‘Lied’ means ‘word’, ‘tone’ or both). Of course it is unthinkable that any of the things that Kerner names (apart from song which needs the human touch) should not exist, unless a nuclear catastrophe or environmental disaster (a silent spring devoid of birdsong – unimaginable to the nineteenth century) should devastate the planet. The questions are thus almost entirely rhetorical, and quite different from the more usual sort of poetic fancy which imagines the barrenness of a life devoid of love and its personal embodiment. Each of the poet’s lines is followed by an exclamation, and if we were to have heard Kerner read this poem he would almost certainly have adopted a bracing tone; even if he thought of this as a hymn, it was a rousing hymn of gratitude. This is quite different from the tentative and dreamy mood which Schumann chooses for his setting. The composer’s own temperament, his rueful smile and uncommunicative silences – even with Clara – somehow take musical shape here: there is something plaintive and helpless about the final cadence which tells us that were the dark clouds of depression to descend on Schumann’s personal life, all of these wonders of nature, as well as song itself, would be little consolation. There is also a gloomy prophecy in these words: a life without song would mean, in the case of Schumann, a life without the ability to compose music, and this was eventually to be his sad fate at the asylum in Endenich. The difficulties of this song are not immediately apparent. It seems a simple enough single page of music, but singers are challenged by its lack of breathing space – the thoughts keep on coming, unpunctuated by a moment’s rest. No doubt Schumann was concerned to keep the music on the move because the whole poem is after all a single sentence governed by a succession of subjunctive clauses which pile up in an ever more urgent need to find a final verb. Schumann finds a melody which is touching in its humility; appoggiatura-like, it leans on many a bar line with all the pathos of a supplicant, but it is driven for ever forward by the words. The beseeching tone is varied with various melodic inflections which derive from the text: the vocal line suddenly jumps a starry octave for ‘sternerhellte Nacht’, and even higher for the mountain-climbing ‘Und du Gebirg’ voll ernster Pracht!’ (this little corner is one of the most awkward in the cycle from a vocal point of view). The setting of ‘Du Lied aus voller Menschenbrust’ is extraordinary – there is a ritardando during the word which is further complicated by ties and syncopations, piano doubling voice, as the music drops down the stave in thirds. This seems a perfect means of illustrating an emotional block, the off-beat stumbling over the word a metaphor for someone tongue-tied and confused. The last four bars of the song are marked ‘adagio’ and it is clear that the song was consciously conceived as a bridge-passage to Stille Tränen; perhaps this is one of the reasons why the brevity of the poem appealed to Schumann. The final question hangs in the air unanswered, and the music ends in the dominant of the relative minor. Schumann’s lack of knowledge about vocal practicalities is illustrated by the fact that from the point of view of the words the phrase ‘ach, was füllte noch In arger Zeit ein Herz mit Lust?’ should be sung in one breath. But the composer has set the words in such a way (the upturn of the final phrase for an elongated final ‘Lust’) that this is all but impossible. One would also think that Frage was the song least able to stand on its own in the cycle, ending as it does on an inconclusive note; but the Schumanns seem to have been very fond of it, and the composer had no qualms about writing out a separate copy of it as a present for Pauline Viardot in 1847.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1998

Wärst du nicht, heil’ger Abendschein!
Wärst du nicht, sternerhellte Nacht!
Du Blütenschmuck! Du üpp’ger Hain!
Und du, Gebirg’ voll ernster Pracht!
Du Vogelsang aus Himmeln hoch!
Du Lied aus voller Menschenbrust,
Wärst du nicht, ach, was füllte noch
In arger Zeit ein Herz mit Lust?
Justinus Kerner (1786-1862)

If you, holy evening star, were not,
and you, star-illumined night,
adorning blossoms, luxuriant wood,
you, mountains, filled with solemn glory,
you, song of birds from heaven on high,
you, song from a full human heart,
if you were not, ah, what still would fill
a heart with joy in adversity?
English: Richard Stokes © 1998

No.10：沉默的眼泪 (No 10: Stille Tränen)

This is nothing less than an epic song, a real blockbuster. Schumann was proud enough of it to publish it as supplement to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1841. Many more people want to sing it than are able to, and for the wrong reasons. It is a song that does not benefit from being lifted out of its context in the cycle. An artist of operatic possibilities is tempted to bawl it at full tilt; this tends to be a moving experience for everyone except the listeners. Even the accompanist can easily lose his head and make of the piano writing something anachronistically luscious – the debt to Chopin is obvious enough here, but there have been performances of Stille Tränen where the hapless singer is pitted against pulsations which would not be out of place in a Rachmaninov piano concerto. If he had lived in modern times there seems no doubt that Schumann would have been able to mine a popular seam in his music and reach a wide audience. The panoramic breadth of this melody with its stirring sequences is proof enough of this. A film-music composer could orchestrate the tune just as it stands; someday this may happen, and thousands will hear Schumann’s music for the first time without realizing it. They will not learn of Kerner however, because the poem is dispensable to the music’s effect. Indeed, these words do not easily fit a musical conception which is easily rendered stirring and ecstatic rather than troubled and introverted. Lieder singers have to work particularly hard here in order to marry text and tone convincingly; it is simpler to relish the tune and forget the message behind it. Because Schumann wrote nothing else quite like it, it is a challenge to relate Stille Tränen to the rest of the composer’s song-writing oeuvre. One must remember that the song’s larger-than-life harmonic and melodic contours shelter a short poem entitled ‘Silent Tears’ – neither ‘Stirring Sobs’ nor ‘Joyous Paeans’ will do as a substitute. A great deal of the music is written within a piano dynamic and the song, very much a nocturne, ends on a hushed, rather than a triumphant, note.

Our grief comes out in dreams, despite attempts to hide it even from ourselves in the daylight hours. Kerner, as we have found elsewhere in this cycle, believes in the occult and the power of dreams, but he comes from a time more repressed and less self-aware than our own: his sleepers suppress and forget their dreams rather than interpreting them. Only the tears on their pillow are evidence of deep-seated and unresolved pain. We can see why the poem appealed to Schumann, not quite understanding his own depressions, convinced that ominous forces were ticking away slowly in his mind and body, undermining his chances of happiness. Who was to know his melancholy secret that he had contracted syphilis at the age of twenty-one? And how can any of us know the tortured hidden sadnesses of those who present a seemingly happy face to the world? This music should simmer from within, as if contained in a cauldron which is slow to come to the boil – the heat should not be turned up too soon. But it is this gradually building head of emotional steam which drives the music forward and gives the music its epic quality. (Despite the superscription ‘Sehr langsam’, the music is written alla breve and should never be allowed to become too slow.) Schumann, in an expansive mood not at all typical of his way with exquisite miniatures, seems to have been thinking of the collective sorrows of all mankind when he wrote it. This accounts for the unusually ambitious sweep of the music.

At the same time the healing and calming power of night and sleep has also to be given its due in order to calm the song down and keep it within the Lieder frame. Stille Tränen is, in some ways, Schubert’s Nacht und Träume writ large: similar long-breathed melodic lines, broad and starry, highly arched as the night sky, are spun over a piano ostinato which unfolds in the same register of the instrument in both songs. Also common to both settings is the slow-moving harmony; it is this which suggests the long span of sleep over many hours. The progress of the music from one sumptuous cluster of chords to another suggests a stately galleon cruising the vast oceans of the unconscious, taking soundings as it goes, and plumbing the infinitely resonant depths. It is these chords which both support, and sometimes rock, the raft of dreams; sometimes they signify the agonizing undercurrents, hidden and dark as slime. (The basses are effulgent and booming in the original key, even more cavernous in transposition.)

At the beginning the first thing we hear is three bars of C major. We roll through the plains of sleep, dallying in F (the subdominant), D minor–G7 and back to C major. The second strophe begins in the A flat, the key of the so-called Neapolitan sixth; the second half of the strophe shifts up a minor third to C flat major; with this bold modulation the song becomes truly thrilling in terms of its tessitura and grandeur of utterance. A shift to F7 enables the verse to end in B flat major. This introduces another stirring change – into the key of E flat major for the third strophe where the opening melody makes a reappearance a minor third higher. Schumann does not shy away from the consequences of turning the screw of tension tighter than he normally dares – the resulting high B flat on ‘Schmerz’ is ill-advised for most, but riveting when vocally possible. The harmonic twists of this strophe are adapted to end in C major, and this gives rise to one of the most thrilling of all Schumann’s interludes for piano. The epic tune emerges as a solo – as powerfully as the weak middle register of the piano will allow. The bass stave is awash with a remarkable left-hand trill – a Schubertian device to mirror the ominous; here it is as if the very mud of the ocean floor is bubbling, sending tidal waves to the surface (a stormy right-hand trill appears two bars later).

The composer decides to repeat the poem’s last two lines in a mood of mighty peroration. The interlude leads us into F major from where we can return to C major (via a massive 6–4/V cadence as hackneyed as it is effective). But the final word of the song ‘Herz’ is not harmonized in C major; there is instead a marvellous interrupted cadence on the second inversion of D7. It is here that Chopin’s fervid influence on Schumann’s piano writing is very apparent: the independence of the part-writing is particularly impressive (eloquent quavers erupt in the bass and then catch fire in the tenor register). All this is marked piano however and, unless the markings are ignored, this marvellous piano postlude is a sad let-down for those who seek to finish a blockbuster aria with a loud and triumphant orchestral tutti. An interplay of quintuplets between the soprano line and bass suggests a dialogue (between night and day? dreams and reality? the forces of good and evil? Robert and Clara?) and the song comes to rest in an unlikely way – an adagio bar, piano and resignedly calm. It is a quaver quintuplet deep in the bass that has the last word. The introverted wistfulness of this ending is the key to the whole. It encourages the serious Lieder performers’ attempts to keep the scale of the song within the confines of the Schumannian Lied. There is no doubt that the dividing lines between song and aria are strained here, but with care and taste they need not be demolished.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1998

Du bist vom Schlaf erstanden
Und wandelst durch die Au’,
Da liegt ob allen Landen
Der Himmel wunderblau.
So lang du ohne Sorgen
Geschlummert schmerzenlos,
Der Himmel bis zum Morgen
Viel Tränen niedergoss.

In stillen Nächten weinet
Oft mancher aus den Schmerz,
Und morgens dann ihr meinet,
Stets fröhlich sei sein Herz.

Justinus Kerner (1786-1862)

From sleep you have risen
and walk through the meadow.
Everywhere lies
Heaven’s wondrous blue.
As long as, free of care, you have
been slumbering, free of pain,
Heaven has, till morning,
poured down many tears.

Often on silent nights
many a man weeps his grief away,
and in the morning you imagine
his heart is ever happy.

English: Richard Stokes © 1998

Henri Duparc

• https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA66323

航行的邀请 (L'invitation au voyage)

This is one of the most famous mélodies of all time, composed around 1870. It was Duparc’s special role in the history of French song to introduce a note of depth and seriousness into a genre that had been notably lacking such qualities during the Second Empire. The inspiration with this composer was Wagnerian (Duparc heard Rheingold in 1869) but his music distils Wagner’s visionary qualities into works of art of great concision and translucence. In this unquestionably French music there is no trace of the megalomania and pomposity that repelled Godard and other French anti-Wagnerians. Duparc embraced the Christian ideals typical of the César Franck circle as a whole; perhaps that is why the pagan resonances of Baudelaire’s ‘Luxe, calme et volupté’ are turned into music of unbelievable refinement—here is purity as well as decadence, rigour and sensuality. With Baudelaire and Duparc we traverse the landscapes of the Dutch East Indies; as in all such journeys, where imagination plays the largest part, we find ourselves flying beyond operatic sets of wood and canvas towards realms previously inaccessible to the French duo of singer and pianist. Decades earlier Schubert and Schumann had discovered those regions where the intimate fusion of great words and music worthy of them represents a special flowering of creative opportunity; with L’invitation au voyage French song comes of age and joins the German lied as something separate yet equal.

Mon enfant, ma sœur,
Songe à la douceur
D’aller là-bas vivre ensemble.
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.
La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté!

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l’humeur est vagabonde;
C’est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde.
Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D’hyacinthe et d’or;
Le monde s’endort
Dans une chaude lumière

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté!

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

My child, my sister,
think of the sweetness
of going to live there together.
To love at leisure;
to love and to die
in the land which resembles you.
The watery suns
of those hazy skies
have, for me, the charms,
so mysterious,
of your treacherous eyes
shining through their tears.
There, all is naught but order and beauty,
comfort, peace and pleasure.

See, on those waterways,
how the ships slumber,
though wanderers by nature;
it is to satisfy
your smallest desire
that they come from the ends of the earth.
The setting suns
clothe the fields,
the waters, all the town,
in hyacinth and gold;
the world falls asleep
in a warm light.

There, all is naught but order and beauty,
comfort, peace and pleasure.

English: Richard Stokes © 2006

罗斯蒙德的庄园 (Le manoir de Rosemonde)

De sa dent soudaine et vorace,
Comme un chien l’amour m’a mordu …
En suivant mon sang répandu,
Va, tu pourras suivre ma trace …
Prends un cheval de bonne race,
Pars, et suis mon chemin ardu,
Fondrière ou sentier perdu,
Si la course ne te harasse!

En passant par où j’ai passé
Tu verras que seul et blessé
J’ai parcouru ce triste monde,
Et qu’ainsi je m’en fus mourir
Bien loin, bien loin, sans découvrir
Le bleu manoir de Rosemonde.

Robert de Bonnières (1850-1905)

With its sudden, voracious fangs,
love, like a dog, has bitten me …
Following my spilled blood,
come, you will be able to retrace my path …
Take a horse of good breed,
set out, and follow my arduous road,
—marsh, or lost pathway—
if the journey does not exhaust you!

Passing where I have passed,
you will see that, alone and wounded,
I have traversed this sorry world,
and that I thus went off to die
far, far away, without discovering
the blue domain of Rosemonde.

悲伤的歌 (Lamento)

Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe
Où flotte avec un son plaintif
L’ombre d’un if?
Sur l’if une pâle colombe,
Triste et seule au soleil couchant,
Chante son chant.
On dirait que l’âme éveillée
Pleure sous terre à l’unisson
De la chanson,
Et du malheur d’être oubliée
Se plaint dans un roucoulement,
Bien doucement.

Ah! Jamais plus près de la tombe,
Je n’irai, quand descend le soir
Au manteau noir,
Écouter la pâle colombe
Chanter, sur la branche de l’if
Son chant plaintif!

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)

Do you know the white tomb
where, with plaintive sound,
waves the shadow of a yew tree?
Upon the yew a pale dove,
sad and lonely in the setting sun,
sings its song.
One feels as if the awakened soul
weeps beneath the ground
in unison with the song,
and with unhappiness at being forgotten
laments, with a cooing sound,
very softly.

Ah, never again
shall I go near the tomb,
when the black-mantled evening falls,
to listen to the pale dove sing,
on the yew tree’s branch,
its plaintive song!

菲迪莱 (Phidylé)

L’herbe est molle au sommeil sous les frais peupliers,
Aux pentes des sources moussues
Qui dans les prés en fleurs germant par mille issues,
Se perdent sous les noirs halliers.
Repose, ô Phidylé.
Midi sur les feuillages
Rayonne, et t’invite au sommeil.

Par le trèfle et le thym, seules, un plein soleil,
Chantent les abeilles volages;
Un chaud parfum circule au détour des sentiers,
La rouge fleur des blés s’incline,
Et les oiseaux, rasant de l’aile la colline,
Cherchent l’ombre des églantiers.
Repose, ô Phidylé.

Mais quand l’Astre incliné sur sa courbe éclatante,
Verra ses ardeurs s’apaiser,
Que ton plus beau sourire et ton meilleur baiser
Me récompensent de l’attente!

Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894)

The grass is soft to sleep on beneath the cool poplars,
On the slopes of mossy springs
Which, in the flowery meadows, rise by a thousand outlets
And are lost beneath the dark thickets.
Rest, oh Phidylé.
The midday sun shines through the leaves
and invites you to sleep—

Alone amid the clover and the thyme
in the sun’s full light where the humming bees hover.
A warm fragrance pervades the winding paths;
the red flowers in the corn droop their heads,
and the birds, skimming the hillside with their wings,
seek the shade of the wild rose bushes.
Rest, oh Phidylé.

But when the sun, low on his shining curve,
sees his brilliance dimmed,
let your loveliest smile and most ardent kiss
reward my waiting!

中场休息

Liszt：裴特拉克的三首十四行诗 S.270

• https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67782
• https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67956

Tre sonetti di Petrarca S270 First version

The Tre sonetti di Petrarca were the direct result of Liszt’s sojourn in Italy during 1838–9; we learn that he and Marie d’Agoult read Petrarch and Dante together. The origins of the poetry are legendary: on Good Friday, 6 April, 1327, the great fourteenth-century poet Petrarch saw a woman named Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon, and his passion for her is celebrated in the 366 poems of his Rime sparse (Scattered rhymes, later known as Il Canzoniere / The Songbook). The songs—arias in all but name—exist in both a pre-Weimar version for tenor and a later revision for mezzo-soprano or baritone; we hear the virtuosic first version on this disc. The first sonnet, ‘Pace non trovo’, is packed with Petrarch’s characteristic oxymorons, antitheses, and dichotomies (staring without eyes, crying without voice, burning and freezing alike) that bespeak the paradoxes of love. For such imagery, Liszt begins with an agitated succession of his most advanced harmonies followed by extreme contrasts between dramatic-operatic outbursts and ecstatic lyricism, twice bidding the tenor reach for the D flat above high C. In ‘Benedetto sia ’l giorno’, Petrarch calls for multiple blessings on his first sight of Laura, his love for her, and his own thoughts and verses about her. Liszt moves from key to key, benediction to benediction, in his trademark restless, innovative way. ‘I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi’ tells of heavenly angels on earth and earth-shattering beauty in the person of Laura, whose harmonious being fills the air with sweetness. This celestial song, with its breathtaking harmonic shift just before the invocation of ‘Love! wisdom! valour, pity and grief’, ends quietly and reverently.

from notes by Susan Youens © 2010

Tre sonetti di Petrarca S270 Second version

When Liszt and his mistress Marie d’Agoult travelled through Italy in 1837–9 (a fraught journey en route to the breach in their relationship after their son Daniel’s birth), they read Dante and Petrarch together. One result of Liszt’s immersion in Petrarch’s Rime sparse (Scattered rhymes, later known as Il Canzoniere / The Songbook) was the set of Tre sonetti di Petrarca, sketched in Italy and completed in their first version between 1842 and 1846 for publication in Vienna. The second version we hear in the present recording was recomposed for mezzo-soprano or baritone and had a long, post-Weimar gestation over nearly twenty years, before publication in 1883. Reversing the order of the first two songs from their original sequence, Liszt begins the set with ‘Benedetto sia ’l giorno’, in which Petrarch multiply blesses the memory of first seeing his muse Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon, his love for her, and his own poetry to her. Whether or not she actually existed is a matter of debate, with little evidence to go on, but his poetry brought a new sensibility into being, one that combines symbolic complexity, perfected form, elegance and allusiveness; these poems are among the richest portraits of the psychology of the lover in world literature. Liszt’s first version began with a lush piano introduction, followed by an aria in all but name; while the second version is more spare on its surface, it is filled with longing-drenched appoggiaturas and suspensions, with Liszt’s trademark tonal shifts as we move from one blessing to the next. Rich, even futuristic harmonies were Liszt’s wont from the beginning to the end of his life, and they are in evidence here. The prayerful harmonies at the end breathe blessing. ‘Pace non trovo’ is one of Petrarch’s most justly famed explorations of the paradoxical effects of love, the sonnet replete with oxymorons and antitheses: no peace but no war, freezing and burning simultaneously, flying and yet earthbound, staring without eyes, shrieking without voice, laughing and crying, life and death. The agitated beginning of the virtuosic first version returns, transposed and slightly varied, and so does the expressive melodic motif for the key-words ‘Pace non trovo’ (I find no peace), with its affective ‘drop’ at the verb. In both versions, we encounter Liszt the emancipator of the augmented triad, the composer who put its dissonant intensity and symmetrical structure to new uses. At the culmination of the sonnet, the persona tells Laura that he is in this tortured-rhapsodic state because of her: in the first version, these words unleashed harp-like arpeggiations and a melody that repeatedly soars to high A flat (in an ossia for the final phrase, a high D flat is called for), but the second time around Liszt avoids the sweet and settled cadence from before. Instead, he creates extreme attenuation and indeterminacy at the ‘end’. This state of being, the music says, will go on and on; if there is rapture in it, there is also fear, doubt and tension.

‘I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi’ is a complex variation on the traditional analogy of the beloved to angels in the heavens; her weeping and her words make the very heavens cease moving. The litany of Laura’s qualities—love, duty, courage, piety and sorrow—unleashed ecstasy in the first version, while here chords waft down from the treble register, darkening as they descend. When the heavens and the trees fall silent to listen to the music of Laura’s words, Liszt makes the piano fall silent, while the lush, offbeat sighs of longing in the earlier postlude become—typically for late Liszt—something far more spare.

from notes by Susan Youens © 2015

值得祝福的日子 (Benedetto sia 'l giorno)

Benedetto sia ’l giorno, e ’l mese, e l’anno,
E la stagione, e ’l tempo, e l’ora, e ’l punto
E ’l bel paese e ’l loco, ov’io fui giunto
Da’duo begli occhi che legato m’ànno;
E benedetto il primo dolce affanno
Ch’i’ ebbi ad esser con Amor congiunto,
E l’arco e la saette ond’ i’ fui punto,
E le piaghe, ch’infino al cor mi vanno.

Benedette le voci tante, ch’io
Chiamando il nome di mia Donna ho sparte,
E i sospiri e le lagrime e ’l desio.

E benedette sian tutte le carte
Ov’io fama le acquisto, e il pensier mio,
Ch’è sol di lei, si, ch’altra non v’ha parte.

Petrarch (1304-1374)

Blessed be the day, the month, the year,
And the season, and the time, and the hour, and the moment,
And the lovely landscape, and the spot where I was enthralled
By two lovely eyes that have enslaved me.
And blessed be the first sweet pang I suffered,
When Love overwhelmed me,
The bow and the arrows which stung me,
And the wounds which penetrate my heart.

Blessed be the many voices that have echoed
When I have called my Lady’s name,
And the sighs and the tears, and the longing,

And blessed be all those writings,
In which I have spread her fame, and my thoughts,
Which stem from her alone.

English: Richard Stokes © 2015

无法安宁，也不愿争斗 (Pace non trovo)

Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra,
E temo, e spero, ed ardo, e son un ghiaccio:
E volo sopra ’l cielo, e giaccio in terra;
E nulla stringo, e tutto ’l mondo abbraccio.
Tal m’ha in priggion, che non m’apre, né serra,
Né per suo mi ritien, né scioglie il laccio,
E non m’accide Amor, e non mi sferra;
Né mi vuol vivo, né mi trahe d’impaccio.

Veggio senz’occhi; e non ho lingua e grido;
E bramo di perir, e cheggio aita;
Ed ho in odio me stesso, ed amo altrui:

Pascomi di dolor; piangendo io rido;
Egualmente mi spiace morte e vita.
In questo stato son, Donna, per voi.

Petrarch (1304-1374)

I find no peace, and am not inclined for war;
And I fear, and I hope, and burn, and am turned to ice,
And I soar in the air, and lie upon the ground;
And I hold nothing, though I embrace the world.
Love has me in a prison, which he neither opens nor locks;
He neither claims me for his own, nor loosens my halter;
And Love neither slays me, nor unshackles me;
He would not have me live, yet he torments me.

I see without eyes; and cry without a tongue;
I long to perish, and plead for help;
I hate myself and love another:

I feed on grief; weeping I laugh;
Death, like life, repels me.
You have reduced me, my Lady, to this state.

English: Richard Stokes © 2015

我在大地之上看到天使般的美德 (I' vidi in terra angelici costumi)

I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi,
E celesti bellezze al mondo sole;
Tal che di rimembrar mi giova, e dole:
Che quant’io miro, par sogni, ombre, e fumi.
E vidi lagrimar que’ duo bei lumi,
Ch’han fatto mille volte invidia al sole;
Ed udì’ sospirando dir parole
Che farian gir i monti, e stare i fiumi.

Amor! senno! valor, pietate, e doglia
Facean piangendo un più dolce concento
D’ogni altro, che nel mondo udir si soglia.

Ed era ’l cielo all’armonia s’intento
Che non si vedea in ramo mover foglia.
Tanta dolcezza avea pien l’aer e ’l vento.

Petrarch (1304-1374)

I beheld on earth angelic grace
And heavenly beauty unmatched in this world,
Such as rejoice and pain my memory,
Which is clouded with dreams, shadows, mists.
And I beheld tears spring from those lovely eyes,
Which many a time have put the sun to shame.
And I heard words uttered with such sighs,
That mountains would be moved and rivers halted.

Love! wisdom! valour, pity and grief
Created in that lament a sweeter concert
Than any other to be heard on earth.

And heaven was so intent on that harmony,
That not a leaf was seen to move on the bough;
Such sweetness had filled the air and the wind.

English: Richard Stokes © 2015

Richard Strauss

秘密邀请 (Heimliche Aufforderung, op. 27, no. 3)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimliche_Aufforderung

Heimliche Aufforderung

Auf, hebe die funkelnde Schale empor zum Mund,
Und trinke beim Freudenmahle dein Herz gesund.
Und wenn du sie hebst, so winke mir heimlich zu,
Dann lächle ich und dann trinke ich still wie du...

Und still gleich mir betrachte um uns das Heer
Der trunknen Zecher [Schwätzer] - verachte sie nicht zu sehr.
Nein, hebe die blinkende Schale, gefüllt mit Wein,
Und laß beim lärmenden Mahle sie glücklich sein.

Doch hast du das Mahl genossen, den Durst gestillt,
Dann verlasse der lauten Genossen festfreudiges Bild,
Und wandle hinaus in den Garten zum Rosenstrauch,
Dort will ich dich dann erwarten nach altem Brauch,

Und will an die Brust dir sinken, eh du's gehofft [erhofft],
Und deine Küsse trinken, wie ehmals oft,
Und flechten in deine Haare der Rose Pracht.
O komm [komme], du wunderbare, ersehnte Nacht!

John Henry Mackay (1864 - 1933)

The Lover's Pledge

Up, raise the sparkling cup to your lips,
And drink your heart's fill at the joyous feast.
And when you raise it, so wink secretly at me,
Then I'll smile and drink quietly, as you...

And quietly as I, look around at the crowd
Of drunken revelers -- don't think too ill of them.
No, lift the twinkling cup, filled with wine,
And let them be happy at the noisy meal.

But when you've savored the meal, your thirst quenched,
Then quit the loud gathering's joyful fest,
And wander out into the garden, to the rosebush,
There shall I await you, as often of old.

And ere you know it shall I sink upon your breast,
And drink your kisses, as so often before,
And twine the rose's splendour into your hair.
Oh, come, you wondrous, longed-for night!

Translation: John Bernhoff (1912)[5]

少女，这有什么用 (Wozu noch, Mädchen, soll es frommen (No 1 of Sechs Lieder aus Lotusblättern, Op 19))

The initial interplay of piano and voice perfectly establishes a mood of affectionate banter. A delicious step to A major (‘daß du liebst!’) launches us into the heart of the matter, interweaved with a figure suggestive of Der Rosenkavalier (or is it an echo of Till Eulenspiegel?) and gently mocking chords that anticipate the Falcon’s theme in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Already in this tiny song the mature opera composer can be heard.

from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2008

Wozu noch, Mädchen, soll es frommen,
Daß du vor mir Verstellung übst?
Heiß froh das neue Glück willkommen
Und sag es offen, daß du liebst!
An deines Busens höherm Schwellen,
Dem Wangenrot, das kommt und geht,
Ward dein Geheimnis von den Quellen,
Den Blumengeistern längst erspäht.

Die Wogen murmelns in den Grotten,
Es flüsterts leis der Abendwind,
Wo du vorbei gehst, hörst du’s spotten:
Wir wissen es seit lange, Kind!

Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815-1894)

What is the purpose, my sweet,
Of trying to deceive me?
Bid your new bliss a joyful welcome
And say openly that you’re in love!
The quickened stirring of your breast,
The way your blushes come and go,
Have long since revealed your secret
To fountains and flower-sprites.

The waves murmur it in caverns,
The evening breezes whisper it,
Wherever you go, you hear them mocking:
We’ve known it a long time, child!

English: Richard Stokes

蔓延在我头上的黑发 (Spread over my head your black hair, op. 19, no. 2)

Breit' über mein Haupt (No 2 of Sechs Lieder aus Lotusblättern, Op 19)

In his next three sets of songs, Strauss concentrated – with the exception of one song to a translation of Michelangelo – on verses by the well known Munich poet Graf Adolf Friedrich von Schack. Breit’ über mein Haupt is distinguished by its high arching phrases, illustrative of the imagined spread of the beloved’s hair above the poet’s head, and the solemn and splendid harmonies with which they are underpinned.

from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2005

Breit’ über mein Haupt dein schwarzes Haar,
Neig’ zu mir dein Angesicht,
Da strömt in die Seele so hell und klar
Mir deiner Augen Licht.
Ich will nicht droben der Sonne Pracht,
Noch der Sterne leuchtenden Kranz,
Ich will nur deiner Locken Nacht
Und deiner Blicke Glanz.

Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815-1894)

Unbind your black hair right over my head,
Incline to me your face!
Then clearly and brightly into my soul
The light of your eyes will stream.
I want neither the glory of the sun above
Nor the gleaming garland of stars,
All I want are your black tresses
And the radiance of your eyes.

English: Richard Stokes © 2005

我爱你 (I love you, op. 37, no. 2)

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Ich liebe dich Vier adlige Rosse (No 2 of Sechs Lieder, Op 37)

Composed in the same year as Ein Heldenleben, this enjoyably extravagant song shares with the tone poem the suitably heroic key of E flat, and is liberally supplied with fanfares and flourishes. In the piano version Strauss dispenses with an introduction, having the singer enter unaccompanied, as though summoning the piano’s orchestral forces by sheer strength of will (not to say vocal power). This dramatic stroke is, however, dispensed with in the orchestral version, for which Strauss added a brief prelude on wind and brass. The song has all the ardent momentum of an operatic scena, introducing a wide-sweeping new melody for the second section at ‘Steht silberbeschlagen’, later reprised in the piano’s lengthy postlude, a triumphant gallop into the jaws of death.

from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2005

Vier adlige Rosse
Voran unserm Wagen,
Wir wohnen im Schlosse
In stolzem Behagen.
Die Frühlichterwellen
Und nächtens der Blitz,
Was all sie erhellen,
Ist unser Besitz.
Und irrst du verlassen,
Verbannt durch die Lande;
Mit dir durch die Gassen
In Armut und Schande!
Es bluten die Hände,
Die Füße sind wund,
Vier trostlose Wände,
Es kennt uns kein Hund.

Steht silberbeschlagen
Dein Sarg am Altar,
Sie sollen mich tragen
Zu dir auf die Bahr,
Und fern auf der Heide
Und stirbst du in Not,
Den Dolch aus der Scheide,
Dir nach in den Tod!

Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909)

Four noble horses
Draw our carriage,
We live in the castle
Proud and content.
The rays of dawn
And the lightning at night,
All that they shine on
Belongs to us.
And though you roam the land,
Abandoned and banished:
I’ll walk through the streets with you
In poverty and shame!
Our hands will bleed,
Our feet be sore,
Four pitiless walls,
Not a dog to know us.

When your silver-edged coffin
Stands at the altar,
They must lay me
Beside you on the bie
r. Whether you die on the heath
Or die in distress,
I’ll draw my dagger
And join you in death!

English: Richard Stokes © 2005

弗里德 (Freed, op. 39. 4)

Befreit Du wirst nicht weinen. Leise, leise (No 4 of Fünf Lieder, Op 39)

Dehmel, not necessarily a good judge, expressed himself unsatisfied by Strauss’s setting of Befreit. But he did subsequently provide a clue to the question often raised as to the exact situation depicted by the poem. Apparently he had in his mind the image of a man speaking to his dying wife, but he also allowed for the possibility of a different interpretation involving the parting of two lovers. Whatever the case, Befreit is one of the greatest of Strauss’s songs, already in its piano part evoking the sonorous weight and emotional sweep of the Straussian orchestra, with its undertow of triplets and the figure of repeated brass-like chords that occasionally interrupts them. Continually anticipating the entry of the voice with a syncopated sforzato, like a momentary shudder in the earth’s foundations, this motif adds to the sense of impending change already established in the opening bars by the semitonal shift on the words ‘Du wirst nicht weinen’ and later with even greater effect at ‘Es wird sehr bald sein’. The long arching curves of the climax are worthy of the closing scene of an opera, and it is not surprising that the repeated phrase accompanying the words ‘O Glück!’ was later quoted by Strauss in Ein Heldenleben.

from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2005

Du wirst nicht weinen. Leise, leise
wirst du lächeln und wie zur Reise
geb’ ich dir Blick und Kuß zurück.
Unsre lieben vier Wände, du hast sie bereitet,
ich habe sie dir zur Welt geweitet;
O Glück!
Dann wirst du heiß meine Hände fassen
und wirst mir deine Seele lassen,
läßt unsern Kindern mich zurück.
Du schenktest mir dein ganzes Leben,
ich will es ihnen wieder geben;
O Glück!

Es wird sehr bald sein, wir wissen’s beide,
wir haben einander befreit vom Leide,
so gab’ ich dich der Welt zurück!
Dann wirst du mir nur noch im Traum erscheinen
und mich segnen und mit mir weinen;
O Glück!

Richard Dehmel (1863-1920)

You will not weep. Gently, gently
you will smile; and as before a journey
I shall return your gaze and kiss.
You have cared for the room we love!
I have widened these four walls for you into a world –
O happiness!
Then ardently you will seize my hands
and you will leave me your soul,
leave me to care for our children.
You gave your whole life to me,
I shall give it back to them –
O happiness!

It will be very soon, we both know it,
we have released each other from suffering,
so I returned you to the world.
Then you’ll appear to me only in dreams,
and you will bless me and weep with me –
O happiness!

English: Richard Stokes © 2005

一个愉快的愿景 (A pleasant vision, op. 48, no. 1)

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This justly famous song has much in common with the equally celebrated Traum durch die Dämmerung: a gently moving ostinato in the piano part, a companionable walk à deux through the landscape, and—a favourite device of Strauss’s—beginning in a different tonality from that in which he means to continue. In this case, the keyshift perfectly illustrates the contrast between sleeping and waking, and the step into the daylight, with the sharp key of D major again ideal for the densely foliated landscape here described. In a final magical touch Strauss chooses to repeat the two lines beginning at ‘Und ich geh’ mit Einer, die mich lieb hat’. Over a tonic pedal, to the same rhythmic pattern that has accompanied every bar of the song, the lovers walk hand in hand out of sight, and into the ensuing silence.

from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2008

Nicht im Schlafe hab ich das geträumt,
Hell am Tage sah ich’s schön vor mir:
Eine Wiese voller Margeritten;
Tief ein weißes Haus in grünen Büschen;
Götterbilder leuchten aus dem Laube.
Und ich geh’ mit Einer, die mich lieb hat
Ruhigen Gemütes in die Kühle
Dieses weißen Hauses, in den Frieden,
Der voll Schönheit wartet, daß wir kommen.
Otto Julius Bierbaum (1865-1910)

I did not dream it in my sleep,
In broad daylight I saw it fair before me:
A meadow full of daisies;
A white house deep in green bushes;
Statues of gods gleaming from the foliage.
And I walk with one who loves me,
My heart at peace, into the coolness
Of this white house, into the peace,
Brimming with beauty, that awaits our coming.
English: Richard Stokes

塞西莉 (Cäcilie Op.27 No.2)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A4cilie_(Strauss)

Cäcilie

Wenn du es wüßtest,
Was träumen heißt von brennenden Küssen,
Von wandern und ruhen mit der Geliebten,
Aug in Auge,
Und kosend und plaudernd,
Wenn du es wüßtest,
Du neigtest dein Herz!

Wenn du es wüßtest,
Was bangen heißt in einsamen Nächten,
Umschauert vom Sturm, da niemand tröstet
Milden Mundes die kampfmüde Seele,
Wenn du es wüßtest,
Du kämest[6] zu mir.

Wenn du es wüßtest,
Was leben heißt, umhaucht von der Gottheit
weltschaffendem Atem,
Zu schweben empor, lichtgetragen,
Zu seligen Höhn,[7]
Wenn du es wüßtest, wenn du es wüßtest,
Du lebtest mit mir.

Cecilia

If you but knew, sweet,
what ‘tis to dream of fond, burning kisses,
of wand’ring and resting with the belov’d one;
gazing fondly
caressing and chatting,
could I but tell you,
your heart would assent.

If you but knew, sweet,
the anguish of waking thro' nights long and lonely
 and rocked by the storm when no-one is near
to soothe and comfort the strife weary spirit.
Could I but tell you,
you’d come, sweet, to me.

If you but knew, sweet,
what living is, in the creative breath of
God, Lord and Maker
to hover, upborne on dove-like pinions
to regions of light,
if you but knew it, could I but tell you,
you’d dwell, sweet, with me.