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Programme

Haydn: Arianna a Naxos For all that Haydn’s quartets and symphonies are standard fare, his music for solo voice has generally been neglected. One of the few such works to establish a regular place in the repertoire is his cantata Arianna a Naxos, probably written in 1789; the author of the text remains anonymous. Haydn may have intended it for ‘Pepperl’, the daughter of his close friend Maria Anna Genzinger, like him a member of the Esterházy household (she was married to Prince Esterházy’s doctor); certainly, the music itself – limited to a range of a twelfth – points to its having been conceived for amateur performance (Haydn’s intention of scoring the keyboard part for orchestra was never realised).

Arianna a Naxos falls into four sections, two panels each of recitative and air. Haydn brings the piano into the action from the start, when it seems to be presenting Ariadne’s confused state as she awakens and finds herself alone – and the swelling textures after the first part of the recitative, leading to ‘Già sorge in ciel la rosea Aurora’ certainly seem to portray the rise of ‘the rose-coloured Dawn’. ‘Dove sei’, the words which open the first aria, a broad, harmonically unstable Largo, draw from Haydn a phrase that so closely resembles ‘Dove sono’, sung by the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (written three years previously) that it might be a fleeting homage from one great composer to the other – whether deliberate or not is another question. The darting moods of the second recitative mirror Ariadne’s conflicting thoughts as, from the top of the cliff (climbed with the aid of the piano) she sees Theseus on board his ship and realises she has been abandoned. The second aria begins, Larghetto, as she resigns herself to death – but the cantata ends with a Presto explosion of anger: Strauss’ Ariadne is saved by Bacchus, but Haydn’s is abandoned to her tragic fate.

Brahms: Seven Songs Brahms was an inveterate composer of songs – to an extent that will never be fully realised, since he was also an inveterate destroyer of fledgling compositions he didn’t feel were up to the mark. Among his very earliest works, for example, were some cycles of Eichendorff settings, but no one knows how much he slung out. The solo songs that did survive reach the staggering total of 203 original works. That’s not including the folksong settings (all German, but for one Neapolitan song) for voice and piano, which add another 85 to the total. The number climbs yet further when you add the eight solo-voice versions of the Zigeunerlieder, Op. 103, the two Gesänge, Op. 91, for voice, viola and piano, and Spruch (a canon for voice and viola), and the seven German folksongs for solo voice, chorus and piano – and that’s excluding the vocal duets and quartets.

‘Ständchen’, the first of the 5 Lieder, Op. 106, composed in 1886–8, sets an archetypically Romantic text by Franz Kugler, a Prussian bureaucrat and art-historian as well as a minor poet: its themes – the fountain, the moonlight, the students’ serenade, the sleeping maiden – were topoi that would feature again and again in Romantic poetry. ‘Da unten im Tale’, No. 6 from Book 1 of the 49 Deutsche Volkslieder published in 1894, uses another: the peasant girl resigned to the loss of her lover. The source of Brahms’ text in this instance was the anthology Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Original-Weisen (‘German Folksongs with their Original Tunes’) of 1838–40, assembled by August Kretzschmer and Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio – none too scrupulously: they filched material from earlier collections, straightened out some of the tunes to suit Romantic tastes and incorporated more recent songs, including some of their own, labelled ‘Altdeutsch’. Brahms first got to know the collection from a copy in Robert Schumann’s library, and was unfazed when Kretzschmer’s and von Zuccalmaglio’s suspect methods were exposed – their texts had served his purpose, as ‘Da unten im Tale’ beautifully proves.

Brahms often published his solo songs in groups, and ‘Nachtwandler’, to a text by his friend Max Kalbeck, and ‘Feldeinsamkeit’, setting a Herrmann Allmers poem, come from seventeen published in 1882 as Op. 84–86, although some of them existed in manuscript at least four years earlier; these two are the third and second of the 6 Lieder, Op. 86. In ‘Nachtwandler’ Brahms alternates major and minor chords to suggest the trance-like state of Kalbeck’s sleepwalker; ‘Feldeinsamkeit’ offers another primary Romantic topos – the identification of the poet with nature, the darker undercurrent supplied by the suggestion that this oneness might require the death of the poet. ‘Alte Liebe’ comes from another burst of songs, 22 published as Op. 69–72: it is the first of the 5 Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 72, the vocal line soaring above chromatic broken chords in the piano. The two songs which open the four Gesänge, Op. 43, similarly appeared in a what must have appeared to Brahms’ public as a something of a song-burst, although many of them had been written earlier: their publication in 1868 was followed in the same year by Op. 46, 47, 48 and 49–25 songs in all. At the climax of ‘Die Mainacht’, an 1866 setting of the short-lived Ludwig Hölty, there’s a clear pre-echo of a work Brahms was to begin two years later – the Rhapsodie for contralto, male chorus and orchestra.

This Brahms group ends with a song which is not simply one of the greatest he wrote – ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ is one of the greatest art-songs anybody wrote, the imminent betrayal suggested by the words (by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, not Joseph Wenzig, as all the printed editions claim) redeemed by music of such passionate and dignified intensity that makes a performance such as the one of this CD a profoundly moving experience.

Reynaldo Hahn: Five Songs Reynaldo Hahn was one of those characters whose lives invite disbelief. Born in Caracas in 1874 of a German-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish stock, the youngest of twelve children, Hahn moved to Paris with his family at age four; by sixteen he was a respected enough composer to have written the incidental music for Daudet’s play L’obstacle. He was also a fine light baritone, teacher, critic, conductor, soldier in the First World War (he volunteered for service, although he was over-age) and refugee from the occupying Nazis in the Second – and Marcel Proust’s lover.

The exquisite ‘À Chloris’, written in 1916, makes delightful use of the walking bass of Bach’s ‘Air on a G string’ in the piano part, the voice soaring almost prayerfully above it. In each of the three stanzas of ‘L’Enamourée’, a haunting 1892 setting of the popular Parnassian poet Théodore de Banville, the lyrical outburst of the text is the more effective for its emergence from an introspective introduction. In ‘Trois jours de vendange’, a Daudet setting from 1891, the folky charm of the opening is gradually transformed into deep sadness as the girl the poet has met sickens and dies – the loss underpinned by the ‘Dies Irae’ in the piano in the final stanza. ‘L’Heure exquise’ is the fifth of the seven Chansons grises – Verlaine settings written in 1887–90 while Hahn was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire and first performed chez Daudet in the presence of Verlaine himself. ‘L’Heure exquise’ was one of the handful of songs that kept its place in the repertoire before the revival of interest in Hahn’s music from the 1970s onwards. Finally, ‘Quand je fus pris au pavillon’ of 1899, which matches the text, by the mediaeval prince-poet Charles, Duc d’Orléans, with teasingly old-fashioned music. As in ‘À Chloris’, Hahn seems to impose the vocal line on a piano part which is already self-sufficient.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Four Songs Only twenty years ago modernist critics still looked down their noses at the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold – ‘more korn than gold’ was the tired cliché usually trotted out when his music was mentioned. Since then, with the rise in interest in the composers whose careers were blighted by the Nazis, Korngold’s star has been in the ascendant, and virtually all of his music has been recorded, some pieces many times over.

The four Abschiedslieder (‘Songs of Farewell’), Op. 14, Korngold’s finest song-cycle, were completed in 1920 and first performed by Maria Olszewska in Hamburg on 5 November 1921, with Korngold himself at the piano. The intense and long-breathed ‘Sterbelied’, No. 1, asks its singer to negotiate some operatically precipitous portamenti and there are some awkward intervals (elevenths and twelfths). The apparent optimism of ‘Gefasster Abschied’, the closing song of the cycle (the text specially written for Korngold in 1919 by the poet Ernst Lothar), is undermined by the chromatic twists in the piano part – this farewell is not as painless as the text suggests. Are the references to Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in the piano part also pointers to lost happiness?

Korngold, one of the most feted composers in Hollywood, turned to the music he had written for studios. “Gluckwunsch” uses the main theme from Devotion from 1943, and ‘Alt-Spanisch’ was re-written for The Sea Hawk in 1940, though the music itself reaches further back – its first form was as Das Mädchen, written in 1911, when Korngold was fourteen.

Kurt Weill: Two Songs Like Korngold in Hollywood, Kurt Weill took refuge from the Nazis in America – he on the East Coast, composing for the New York theatres. Weill’s Lost in the Stars, billed as ‘A Musical Tragedy’, was based on Alan Paton’s novel Cry the Beloved Country and was composed in the spring and summer of 1949, to a book and lyrics by Maxwell Perkins. In spite of the serious nature of the subject – the racial tensions of apartheid South Africa – Lost in the Stars was a considerable success: after its opening on 30 October 1949, it ran for no fewer than 273 performances.

One Touch of Venus was written six years earlier, in the summer of 1943; opening in New York on 7 October that year, it ran for an astonishing 567 performances. ‘Speak Low’ is one of the songs entrusted to the goddess Venus, brought to life from a statue when a ring is slipped over her fingers and pursues the barber who put it there.

Sarah Connolly sang two encores at her St John’s recital: John Ireland’s ‘Her Song’, the second of Three Songs to Poems by Thomas Hardy, published in 1925, and Benjamin Britten’s Walter de la Mare setting is the last of a set of five he composed between 1928 and 1931 (in his late teens), revising them in the summer of 1968 and publishing them as Tit for Tat.

Martin Anderson © 2005

Texts and Translations

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

[1] Arianna a Naxos

Teseo mio ben,
Ove sei tu?
Vicino d’averti mi parea
Ma un lusinghiero sogno fallace m’ingannò.
Già sorge in ciel la rosea Aurora
E l’erbe e i fior colora Febo
Uscendo dal mar col crine aurato.
Sposo adorato, dove guidasti il piè?
Forse le fere ad inseguir ti chiama il tuo nobile ardor.
Ah vieni, O caro
Ed offrirò più grata preda a tuoi lacci.
Il cor d’Arianna amante, che t’adora costante,
Stringi con nodo più tenace
E più bella la face splenda dal nostro amor.
Soffrir non posso
D’esser da te divisa un sol istante.
Ah di vederti, O caro, già mi strugge il desio.
Ti sospira il mio cuor.
Vieni, idol mio.

Aria: Largo

Dove sei, mio bel tesoro?
Chi t’invola a questo cor?
Se non vieni, io già mi moro,
Né resisto al mio dolor.
Se pietade avete, O Dei,
Secondate i voti miei;
A me torni il caro ben.
Dove sei? Teseo!

Recitative

Ma, a chi parlo?
Gli accenti eco ripete sol.
Teseo non m’ode,
Teseo non mi risponde,
E portano le voci e l’aure e l’onde
Poco da me lontano esser egli dovria.
Salgasi quello che più d’ogni altro s’alza alpestro scoglio:
Ivi lo scoprirò.
Che miro?
O stelle!
Misera me!
Quest’è l’argivo legno,
Greci son quelli.
Teseo!
Ei sulla prora!
Ah, m’inganassi almen ...
No no, non m’inganno.
Ei fugge,
Ei qui mi lascia in abbandono.
Più speranza non v’è, tradita io sono.
Teseo, Teseo, m’ascolta Teseo!
Ma oimè! Vaneggio.
I flutti e il vento lo involano per sempre agli occhi miei.
Ah, siete ingiusti, O Dei
Se l’empio non punite!
Ingrato! Perchè ti trassi dalla morte?
Dunque tu dovevi tradirmi?
E le promesse, e i giuramenti tuoi?
Spergiuro! Infido!
Hai cor di lasciarmi!
A chi mi volgo?
Da chi pietà sperar?
Già più non reggo:
Il piè vacilla,
E in così amaro istante
Sento mancarmi in sen l’alma tremante.

Theseus my beloved,
where are you?
I seem to have you near me,
but a flattering treacherous dream deceives me.
Already rose-coloured Dawn is rising in the sky
and Phoebus colours the grass and flowers
rising from the sea with his golden hair.
Adored husband, where have your footsteps led you?
Perhaps your noble ardour calls you to pursue wild beasts.
Ah come, my dearest
and I shall offer a more pleasing prey to your snares.,
Clasp Ariadne’s loving heart, which adores you faithfully,
with a firmer knot,
and let the torch of our love shine more beautifully.
I cannot bear
to be apart from you for a single moment.
Ah beloved, I am already consumed with longing to see you.
My heart sighs for you.
Come, my idol.

Aria: Largo

Where are you, my treasure?
Who stole you from this heart?
If you do not come, death is already mine,
nor do I resist my grief.
If you have pity, O Gods,
fulfil my desires;
return my dear beloved to me.
Where are you? Theseus!

Recitative

But to whom am I speaking?
Only echo repeats my words.
Theseus does not hear me,
Theseus does not answer me,
and my words are carried away by the wind and the waves.
He must not be far from me.
Let me climb the highest of these steep rocks:
I shall discover him thus.
What do I see?
O heavens!
What a wretch am I!
That is the wooden Argosy,
those men are Greeks.
Theseus!
He is on the prow!
O may I at least be mistaken ...
No, no, I am not mistaken.
He flees,
he leaves me abandoned here.
There is no longer any hope for me, I am betrayed.
Theseus, Theseus, listen to me Theseus!
But alas! I am raving.
The waves and the wind are stealing him from my eyes for ever.
Ah, you are unjust, O Gods
if you do not punish the infidel!
Ungrateful man! Why did I snatch you away from death?
So you had to betray me?
And your promises and your oaths?
Perjurer! Infidel!
Have you the heart to leave me?
To whom can I turn?
From whom can I hope for pity?
I can already bear no more:
my step falters,
and in so bitter a moment
I feel my trembling soul weaken.

Aria: Larghetto

Ah, che morir vorrei
In si fatal momento,
Ma al mio crudel tormento
Mi serba ingiusto il ciel.

Presto

Misera abbandonata
Non ho chi mi consola.
Chi tanto amai s’invola,
Barbaro ed infidel.

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

[2] Ständchen op. 106, no.1 (c.1888)

Der Mond steht über dem Berge,
So recht für verliebte Leut;
Im Garten rieselt ein Brunnen,
Sonst Stille weit und breit.

Neben der Mauer, im Schatten,
Da stehn der Studenten drei
Mit Flöt’ und Geig’ und Zither
Und singen und spielen dabei.

Die Klänge schleichen der Schönsten
Sacht in den Traum hinein,
Sie schaut den blonden Geliebten
Und lispelt: ‘Vergiß nicht mein!’
(Franz Kugler)

Aria: Larghetto

Ah, how I should like to die
in so fatal a moment,
but the heavens unjustly keep me
in my cruel torment.


Presto

Wretched and abandoned
I have no one to console me.
He whom I loved so much has fled,
barbarian and infidel.

Translation © Misha Donat.



Serenade

The moon shines over the mountain,
Just right for people in love;
A fountain purls in the garden –
Otherwise silence far and wide.

By the wall in the shadows,
Three students stand
With flute and fiddle and zither,
And sing and play.

The sounds steal softly into the dreams
Of the loveliest of girls,
She sees her fair-headed love
And whispers ‘Remember me!’

 

Da unten im Tale (Deutsche Volkslieder no.6) (1894)

Da unten im Tale
Läufts Wasser so trüb,
Und i kann dirs net sagen,
I hab di so lieb.

Sprichst allweil von Liebe,
Sprichst allweil von Treu,
Und a bissele Falschheit
Is auch wohl dabei.

Und wenn i dir’s zehnmal sag,
Daß i di lieb und mag,
Und du willst nit verstehn,
Muß i halt weiter gehn.

Für die Zeit, wo du g’liebt mi hast,
Da dank i dir schön,
Und i wünsch, daß dirs anderswo
Besser mag gehn.
(Anon)


Nachtwandler op. 86, no.3 (c.1877)

Störe nicht den leisen Schlummer
Deß, den lind ein Traum umfangen!
Laß ihm seinen süßen Kummer!
Ihm sein schmerzliches Verlangen!

Sorgen und Gefahren drohen,
Aber keine wird ihn schrecken,
Kommst du nicht, den Schlafesfrohen
Durch ein hartes Wort zu wecken.

Still in seinen Traum versunken,
Geht er über Abgrundtiefen,
Wie vom Licht des Vollmonds trunken,
Weh den Lippen, die ihn riefen!
(Max Kalbeck)


Feldeinsamkeit op. 86, no.2 (c.1879)

Ich ruhe still im hohen grünen Gras
Und sende lange meinen Blick nach oben,
Von Grillen rings umschwirrt ohn’ Unterlaß,
Von Himmelsbläue wundersam umwoben.

Die schönen weißen Wolken ziehn dahin
Durchs tiefe Blau, wie schöne stille Träume; –
Mir ist, als ob ich längst gestorben bin,
Und ziehe selig mit durch ew’ge Räume.
(Hermann Allmers)


Alte Liebe op. 72, no.1 (c.1876)

Es kehrt die dunkle Schwalbe
Aus fernem Land zurück,
Die frommen Störche kehren
Und bringen neues Glück.

An diesem Frühlingsmorgen,
So trüb verhängt und warm,
Ist mir, als fänd ich wieder
Den alten Liebesharm.

Es ist, als ob mich leise
Wer auf die Schulter schlug,
Als ob ich säuseln hörte,
Wie einer Taube Flug.
Es klopft an meine Türe
Und ist doch niemand draus;
Ich atme Jasmindüfte,
Und habe keinen Strauß.

Es ruft mir aus der Ferne,
Ein Auge sieht mich an,
Ein alter Traum erfaßt mich
Und führt mich seine Bahn.
(Karl Candidus)


Die Mainacht op. 43, no.2 (c.1866)

Wann der silberne Mond durch die Gesträuche blinkt

Und sein schlummerndes Licht über den Rasen streut,

Und die Nachtigall flötet,
Wandl’ ich traurig von Busch zu Busch.

Überhüllet vom Laub, girret ein Taubenpaar
Sein Entzücken mir vor; aber ich wende mich,
Suche dunklere Schatten,
Und die einsame Träne rinnt.

Wann, o lächelndes Bild, welches wie Morgenrot
Durch die Seele mir strahlt, find’ ich auf Erden dich?
Und die einsame Träne
Bebt mir heißer die Wang’ herab.
(Ludwig Hölty)

 

Down there in the valley

Down there in the valley
The water runs so bleakly,
And I cannot tell you
How much I love you.

You speak only of love,
Speak only of constancy
And a bit of falsehood
Goes with it too.

And if I tell you ten times
That I love you,
And you don’t understand –
I shall have to go on my way.

For the time that you loved me,
I thank you so much,
And wish that elsewhere
You might fare better.



Sleepwalker

Do not disturb the gentle slumber
Of one whom dreams softly embraced!
Leave him to his sweet grief!
To his painful longing!

Though cares and dangers threaten,
None of them will frighten him,
Unless you with harsh words
Rouse him from his happy sleep.
Silently immersed in his dream,
He passes over deep abysses,
As though drunk with the full moon’s light,
Woe to the lips that would call him!



Alone in fields

I rest at peace in tall green grass
And gaze steadily aloft,
Surrounded by unceasing crickets,
Wondrously interwoven with blue sky.

The lovely white clouds go drifting by
Through the deep blue, like lovely silent dreams;
I feel as if I have long been dead,
Drifting happily with them through eternal space.



Old Love

The dark swallow returns
From a distant land,
The pious storks return
And bring new happiness.

On this Spring morning,
So bleakly veiled and warm,
I seem to rediscover
Love’s grief of old.

It is as if someone
Tapped me on the shoulder,
As if I heard a whirring,
Like a dove in flight.
There’s a knock at my door,
Yet no one stands outside;
I breathe the scent of jasmine,
Yet have no bouquet.

Someone calls me from afar,
Eyes are watching me,
An old dream takes hold of me
And leads me on its path.



May Night

When the silvery moon gleams through the bushes,

And sheds its slumbering light on the grass,

And the nightingale is fluting,
I wander sadly from bush to bush.

Covered by leaves, a pair of doves
Coo to me their ecstasy; but I turn away,
Seek darker shadows,
And the lonely tear flows down.

When, O smiling vision, that shines through my soul
Like the red of dawn, shall I find you here on earth?
And the lonely tear
Quivers more ardently down my cheek.

 

Von ewiger Liebe op. 43, no.1 (1864)

Dunkel, wie dunkel in Wald und in Feld!
Abend schon ist es, nun schweiget die Welt!

Nirgend noch Licht und nirgend noch Rauch,
Ja, und die Lerche sie schweiget nun auch.

Kommt aus dem Dorfe der Bursche heraus,
Gibt das Geleit der Geliebten nach Haus,

Führt sie am Weidengebüsche vorbei,
Redet so viel und so mancherlei:

‘Leidest du Schmach und betrübest du dich,
Leidest du Schmach von andern um mich,

Werde die Liebe getrennt so geschwind,
Schnell wie wir früher vereiniget sind.

Scheide mit Regen und scheide mit Wind,
Schnell wie wir früher vereiniget sind.’

Spricht das Mägdelein, Mägdelein spricht:
‘Unsere Liebe, sie trennet sich nicht!

Fest ist der Stahl und das Eisen gar sehr,
Unsere Liebe ist fester noch mehr.

Eisen und Stahl, man schmiedet sie um,
Unsere Liebe, wer wandelt sie um?

Eisen und Stahl, sie können zergehn,
Unsere Liebe muß ewig bestehn!’
(Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersleben)

 

Of Eternal Love

Dark, how dark in forest and field!
Evening already, and the world is silent.

Nowhere a light and nowhere smoke,
And even the lark is silent now too.

Out of the village there comes a lad,
Escorting his sweetheart home,

He leads her past the willow-copse,
Talking so much and of so many things:

‘If you suffer sorrow and suffer shame,
Shame for what others think of me,

Then let our love be severed as swiftly,
As swiftly as once we two were plighted.

Let us depart in rain and depart in wind,
As swiftly as once we two were plighted.’

The girl speaks, the girl says:
‘Our love cannot be severed!

Steel is strong, and so is iron,
Our love is even stronger still.

Iron and steel can both be reforged,
But our love, who shall change it?

Iron and steel can be melted down,
Our love must endure for ever!’

Translations © Richard Stokes, from The Book of Lieder published in 2005 by
Faber and Faber Limited

Reynaldo Hahn (1875–1947)

À Chloris

S’il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m’aimes,
Mais j’entends que tu m’aimes bien,
Je ne crois pas que les rois mêmes
Aient un bonheur pareil au mien.
Que la mort serait importune
À venir changer ma fortune
Pour la félicité des cieux!
Tout ce qu’on dit de l’ambroisie
Ne touche point ma fantaisie
Au prix des grâce de tes yeux.
(Théophile de Viau)


L’Énamourée

Ils se disent, ma colombe,
Que tu rêves, morte encore,
Sous la pierre d’une tombe:
Mais pour l’âme qui t’adore,
Tu t’éveilles ranimée,
Ô pensive bien-aimée!

Par les blanches nuits d’étoiles,
Dans la brise qui murmure,
Je caresse tes longs voiles,
Ta mouvante chevelure,
Et tes ailes demi-closes
Qui voltigent sur les roses!

Ô délices! je respire
Tes divines tresses blondes!
Ta voix pure, cette lyre,
Suit la vague sur les ondes,
Et, suave, les effleure,
Comme un cygne qui se pleure!
(Théodore de Banville)

 

To Chloris

If it be true, Chloris, that you love me,
(And I’m told you love me dearly),
I do not believe that even kings
Can match the happiness I know.
Even death would be powerless
To alter my fortune
With the promise of heavenly bliss!
All that they say of ambrosia
Does not stir my imagination
Like the favour of your eyes!



The loved one

They say, my dove,
That, though dead, you dream
Beneath the headstone of a grave:
But for the soul that adores you,
You waken, restored to life,
O pensive beloved!

During sleepless, starlit nights,
In the murmuring breeze,
I caress your long veils,
Your billowing hair,
And your half-folded wings
That flutter over roses!

Oh delights! I inhale
Your divine blonde tresses!
Your pure voice, this lyre,
Follows the waves across the water,
And softly ripples them,
Like a lamenting swan!
 

Trois jours de vendange

Je l’ai recontrée un jour de vendange,
La jupe troussée et le pied mignon;
Point de guimpe jaune et point de chignon:
L’air d’une bacchante et les yeux d’un ange.

Suspendue an bras d’un doux compagnon,
Je l’ai recontrée aux champs d’Avignon,
Un jour de vendange.

Je l’ai recontrée un jour de vendange.
La plaine était morne et le ciel brûlant;
Elle marchait seule et d’un pas tremblant,
Son regard brillait d’une flamme étrange.

Je frissonne encore en me rappelant
Comme je te vis, cher fantôme blanc,
Un jour de vendange!

Je l’ai rencontrée un jour de vendange,
Et j’en rêve encor presque tous les jours.

Le cercueil était couvert en velours,
Le drap noir portait une double frange.
Les sœurs d’Avignon pleuraient tout autour…
La vigne avait trop de raisin; l’Amour
Avait fait la vendange.
(Alphonse Daudet)

 

Three days of vintaging

During the vintage I met her one day,
Skirt tucked in and dainty feet;
No yellow veil and no coiled-up hair:
A maenad with an angel’s eyes.

She was leaning on a sweet friend’s arm,
When I met her at Avignon in the fields,
During the vintage one day.

During the vintage I met her one day.
The plain was bleak and the sky ablaze;
She was walking alone and with faltering steps,
Her face was lit by a curious glow.

I still shudder as I remember
How I saw you, dear white spectre,
During the vintage one day!

During the vintage I met her one day,
And still almost daily I dream of it.

The coffin was draped in velvet,
The black shroud had a double fringe.
The Avignon nuns wept all around it…
The vine had too many grapes; Love
Had gathered its harvest.
 

L’Heure exquise

La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois;
De chaque branche
Part une voix
Sous la ramée…

Ô bien-aimée.

L’étang reflète,
Profond miroir,
La silhouette
Du saule noir
Où le vent pleure…

Rêvons, c’est l’heure.

Un vaste et tendre
Apaisement
Semble descendre
Du firmament
Que l’astre irise…

C’est l’heure exquise.
(Paul Verlaine)


Quand je fus pris au pavillon

Quand je fus pris au pavillon
De ma dame, très gente et belle,
Je me brûlay à la chandelle,
Ainsi que fait le papillon.

Je rougis comme vermillon,
À la clarté d’une étincelle,
Quand je fus pris au pavillon
De ma dame, très gente et belle.

Si j’eusse été esmerillon
Ou que j’eusse eu aussi bonne aile,
Je me fusse gardé de celle
Qui me bailla de l’aiguillon,
Quand je fus pris au pavillon.
(Charles d’Orléans)
 

The Exquisite hour

The white moon
Gleams in the woods;
From every branch
There comes a voice
Beneath the boughs…

O my beloved.

The pool reflects,
Deep mirror,
The silhouette
Of the black willow
Where the wind is weeping…

Let us dream, it is the hour.

A vast and tender
Consolation
Seems to fall
From the sky
The moon illumines…

The Exquisite hour.



When I was caught in the pavilion

When I was caught in the pavilion
Of my most beautiful and noble lady,
I burnt myself in the candle’s flame,
As the moth does.
I flushed crimson
In the brightness of a spark,
When I was caught in the pavilion
Of my most beautiful and noble lady.

If I had been a merlin
Or had wings as strong,
I should have shielded myself
From her who pierced me with her arrows,
When I was caught in the pavilion.

Translations © Richard Stokes, from A French Song Companion
(Johnson and Stokes) published in 2000 by Oxford University Press.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)

Glückwunsch op. 38, no.1 (1947)

Ich wünsche dir Glück.
Ich bring’ dir die Sonne in meinem Blick.
Ich fühle dein Herz in meiner Brust;
es wünscht dir mehr als eitel Lust.
Es fühlt und wünscht: die Sonne scheint,
auch wenn dein Blick zu brechen meint.
Es wünscht dir Blicke so sehnsuchtslos,
als trügest du die Welt im Schoß.
Es wünscht dir Blicke so voll Begehren,
als sei die Erde neu zu gebären.
Es wünscht dir Blicke voll der Kraft,
die aus Winter sich Frühling schafft.
Und täglich leuchte durch dein Haus
aller Liebe Blumenstrauß!
(Richard Dehmel)
 

Congratulation

I wish you happiness.
I bring you the sun in my gaze.
I feel your heart beat in my breast;
it wishes you more than mere pleasure.
It feels and hopes: the sun shines,
even when your eyes think to close in death.
It wishes your eyes to be as free of yearning,
as if you carried the world in your womb.
It wishes your eyes to be full of desire,
as if the earth were to be born again.
It wishes your eyes to be full of the strength
that fashions spring from winter.
And may your house be daily lit
By the gleaming bouquet of love!


 

Alt-Spanisch op. 38, no.3 (1940)

Steht ein Mädchen an dem Fenster,
in die Ferne schweift ihr Blick.
Blaß die Wangen, schwer ihr Herze,
singt sie von entschwundnem Glück:
‘Mein Lieb kehrt nicht zurück!’

Der Abend dämmert sacht,
ein Stern ersehnt die Nacht.
Und im Winde klinget leise
eine bange Traummusik.
Wie ein Echo tönt die Weise:
‘Mein Lieb kehrt nicht zurück!’
(Howard Koch)


Sterbelied op. 14, no.1

Laß, Liebste, wenn ich tot bin,
Laß du von Klagen ab.
Statt Rosen und Cypressen
Wächst Gras auf meinem Grab.

Ich schlafe still im Zwielichtschein
In schwerer Dämmernis.
Und wenn du willst, gedenke mein,
Und wenn du willst, vergiß.

Ich fühle nicht den Regen,
Ich seh’ nicht, ob es tagt,
Ich höre nicht die Nachtigall,
Die in den Bäumen klagt.

Vom Schlaf erweckt mich keiner,
Die Erdenwelt verblich.
Vielleicht gedenk ich deiner,
Vielleicht vergaß ich dich.
(Christina Rossetti trans. Alfred Kerr)

Old Spanish Song

A girl stands at her window,
Gazes sadly out to sea.
With pale cheeks and heavy heart,
She sings of vanished happiness:
‘My love does not return!’

Evening gently falls,
A star longs for night.
And in the wind there softly sounds
The timid music of dreams.
Like an echo the tune rings out:
‘My love does not return!’



Requiem

When I am dead, my dearest,
Do not lament.
Instead of roses and cypress,
Grass shall cover my grave.

I shall sleep quietly in the twilight,
In the heavy dusk.
And if you will, remember,
And if you will, forget.

I shall not feel the rain,
I shall not see the dawn
I shall not hear the nightingale
Lamenting in the trees.

No one shall ever wake me,
All the world has vanished.
Perhaps I shall remember you,
Perhaps I’ll have forgotten you.

Gefasster abschied op. 14, no.4

Weine nicht, daß ich jetzt gehe,
Heiter laß dich von mir küssen.
Blüht das Glück nicht aus der Nähe,
Von ferne wird’s dich keuscher grüßen.

Nimm diese Blumen, die ich pflückte,
Monatsrosen rot und Nelken,
Laß die Trauer, die dich drückte,
Herzens Blume kann nicht welken.

Lächle nicht mit bitter’m Lächeln,
Stoße mich nicht stumm zur Seite.
Linde Luft wird bald dich wieder fächeln,
Bald ist Liebe sein Geleite!

Gib deine Hand mir ohne Zittern,
Letztem Kuß gib alle Wonne.
Bang’ vor Sturm nicht: aus Gewittern
Geht strahlender auf die Sonne.

So schau zuletzt noch die schöne Linde,
Drunter uns kein Auge je erspähte.
Glaub, o glaub, daß ich dich wiederfinde,
Denn ernten wird, wer Liebe lächelnd säte.
(Ernst Lothar)
 

Resigned farewell

Do not weep that I am now going,
Be cheerful and let me kiss you.
If joy does not bloom when we are near,
It will greet you more chastely from afar.

Take these flowers that I have picked,
Red China roses and carnations,
Shake off the sorrow that oppressed you,
The heart’s blossom cannot wither.

Do not smile a bitter smile,
Do not push me aside in silence.
A soft breeze will soon fan you once more,
Love will soon escort you!

Give me your hand without trembling,
Give all your rapture to this last kiss.
Be not afraid of tempests: after storms
The sun rises more resplendently.

So, take one last look at the lovely lime-tree,
Beneath which no eye ever saw us.
Believe, O believe, I shall find you again,
For they who sowed love with a smile shall reaps its harvest.

Translations © Richard Stokes, from The Book of Lieder published in 2005
by Faber and Faber Limited

Kurt Weill (1900–1950)

Lost in the Stars (from Lost in the Stars)

Before Lord God made the sea and the land,
He held all the stars in the palm of his hand,
And they ran through his fingers like grains of sand,
And one little star fall alone.

Then the Lord God hunted through the wild night air
For the little dark star in the wind down there,
And he stated and promised he’d take special care
So it wouldn’t get lost again.

Now, man don’t mind if the stars grow dim,
And the clouds blow over and darken him.
So long as the Lord God’s watching over him,
Keeping track how it all goes on.

But I’ve been walking through the night and the day,
Till my eyes get weary and my hair turns grey,
And sometimes it seems maybe God’s gone away,
Forgetting the promise that we heard him say.

And we’re lost out here in the stars.
Little stars, big stars,
Blowing through the night.

And we’re lost out here in the stars.
Little stars, big stars,
Blowing through the night.

And we’re lost out here in the stars.
(Maxwell Anderson)



Speak Low (from One Touch of Venus)

Speak low when you speak, love.
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon.
Speak low when you speak, love.
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we’re swept apart, too soon.
Speak low, darling, speak low.
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon.
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon.
Time is so old and love so brief,
Love is pure gold and time a thief,
We’re late, darling, we’re late.
The curtain descends, ev’rything ends too soon, too soon,
I wait, darling, I wait,
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon.
(Ogden Nash)


John Ireland (1879–1962)

Her Song

I sang that song on Sunday,
To which an idle while,
I sang that song on Monday,
As fittest to beguile:
I sang it as the year outwore,
And the new slid in;
I thought not what might shape before
Another would begin.

I sang that song in summer,
All unforeknowingly,
To him as a new-comer
From regions strange to me:
I sang it when in afteryears
The shades stretched out,
And paths were faint; and flocking fears
Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.
Sings he that song on Sundays
In some dim land afar,
On Saturdays, or Mondays,
As when the evening star
Glimpsed in upon his bending face,
And my hanging hair,
And time untouched me with a trace
Of soul-smart or despair?
(Robert Hardy)


Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)

Tit for Tat

Have you been catching fish, Tom Noddy?
Have you snared a weeping hare?
Have you whistled “No Nunny” and gunned a poor bunny,
Or blinded a bird of the air?

Have you trod like a murderer through the green woods,
Through the dewy deep dingles and glooms,
While every small creature screamed shrill to Dame Nature
“He comes - and he comes!”?

Wonder I very much do, Tom Noddy,
If ever, when off you roam,
An ogre from space will stoop a lean face,
And lug you home:

Lug you home over his fence, Tom Noddy,
Of thorn-sticks nine yards high,
With your bent knees strung round his old iron gun
And your head a dan-dangling by:
And hung you up stiff on a hook, Tom Noddy,
From a stone-cold pantry shelf,
Whence your eyes will glare in an empty stare,
Till you are cooked yourself!
(Walter de la Mare)