Le Colibri

Singing is one of the most widespread activities of the human being, found virtually in all known cultures. And it has always been closely connected with creating songs, i.e. combining words and music (even though St Augustine claimed that the highpoint of the human being’s musicianship was wordless singing, i.e. “jubilation”, since it expressed the ineffable).
Songs exist in all kinds and all forms. Children’s songs frequently make little sense, as concerns their verbal content, and love to play with the sound of words rather than with their meaning. But the same applies also to some masterpieces of classical music, such as two arias from Mozart’s Zauberflöte (Papageno’s Hm, hm, hm and his duet with Papagena, Pa-pa-pa). In other cases, there is a disproportion in objective quality as concerns a song’s words and its music; there are songs with splendid music setting mediocre lyrics, and other cases where trivial music attempts to match the level of extraordinary poems.
In most of the pieces recorded in this Da Vinci Classics album, there is a felicitous convergence between high poetry (some of the greatest authors of all times are featured here) and sublime music.
This is doubtlessly the case with Franz Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade. If one measures the greatness of an enfant prodige by the absolute quality of his or her works (rather than considering them in proportion to his or her age), then doubtlessly Schubert and Mendelssohn (possibly along with Britten) are among the greatest of all times. Schubert was not yet eighteen when he penned Gretchen am Spinnrade, and the extraordinary aspect of this endeavour is that his music fully meets the standard set by Goethe’s poetry. The lyrics of Gretchen are excerpted from Goethe’s Faust, one of the absolute milestones of world literature of all times. It might seem slightly presumptuous for a teenager to embark in the enterprise of providing music to such a masterpiece; and indeed it would be with any other teenager. But Schubert was evidently ripe for that. His version of Gretchen (which, indeed, has and had to compete with a plethora of rival versions, since that poem is in fact one of the most beloved in German literature) not only sets a standard, but actually defines a genre, creates a new style, marks a “before” and an “after” in the history of songs for accompanied voice. Schubert’s version is iconic under at least three viewpoints. First, he establishes an atmosphere and describes a setting. The module of the piano’s obsessive accompaniment formula is powerfully evocative of Gretchen’s spinning wheel, of the monotony of her work, and of how her movements – mechanic movements, almost unconsciously repeated, until their interruption becomes exceedingly meaningful – constitute a drone to the train of her thoughts. Through Schubert’s setting, we are drawn inside Gretchen’s home, within her daily routine; we are immediately admitted to the recesses of her room, and therefore of her intimacy. Entering the threshold of her house, where she is busy working, in a typically female fashion, becomes a powerful symbol for the possibility of feeling as her confidants. A girl like Gretchen would not have gone on spinning in the presence of foreigners; if she keeps doing her task, this means that we are no strangers to her, we are her close, her closest friends, and she is opening her heart to us.
Secondly, there is Schubert’s masterly treatment of the verbal language’s intonation and structure. Without mimicking too closely the “gesture” of spoken words, he nonetheless reproduces it, in terms of pitch, of rhythm, of pauses and breaths. Music amplifies and beautifies speech, without overturning its natural pace and shape. Last but not least, the harmonic and melodic structure of the piece are perfectly tailored to Goethe’s poetry, creating tensions and distensions, building up and releasing the expressive intensity of the song. Schubert manages to obtain the most effective result with the most economic means; minimal changes in the texture or in the chordal/tonal organization produce extremely poignant results. Briefly, Gretchen am Spinnrade is not a teenager’s prodigious masterpiece, it is a prodigious masterpiece tout court.
Schubert’s lesson would become paradigmatic and inescapable for all musicians who wrote art songs after him. This album comprises another work written by a teenager, and even though it is not in the same class as Gretchen – it would be really extraordinary to have two such masterpieces written by two teenagers! – it is still a vibrant testimony to its composer’s genius. The words “Richard Strauss” and “Alphorn” make a suggestive combination, since one of Strauss’ most celebrated symphonic poems is his Alpensymphonie, dating from the other end of his compositional life. At the time when he wrote Alphorn, Strauss was just fourteen, and his youthful age is revealed by the relatively simpler harmonic writing he adopts, in comparison with the audacious and daring chordal sequences of his later life. The lyrics, by Justinus Kerner, are typically and quintessentially Romantic, since they involve some of the most foundational topoi of the Romantic spirit and of Romantic literature. There is nature, revered and contemplated by the Romantics; there are love and loss, an almost inseparable pair in the Romantic era; there are yearning and desire, another crucial element of the Romantic imagination.
The other Schubert song featured here is, in turn, representative of the last moments of its composer’s career, although it should be remembered that Schubert died prematurely at the age of 31. His Auf der Strom was written in 1828 and received its first performance in March of the same year, on the occasion of a concert commemorating the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death. It is highly meaningful to consider that this was to be the first public concert whose programme was made entirely of works by Schubert; as said, it took place only a few months before his death. The many saddening considerations elicited by this fact are only slightly tempered by our comforting knowledge that that concert met with rapturous applause and was also an economic success.
The song’s scoring, with tenor voice, horn, and piano, is – as far as we know – a unique occurrence in Schubert’s catalogue; the hundreds of Lieder he wrote are in the majority set for voice and piano. The occasion of Beethoven’s death anniversary seems to have influenced some traits of Schubert’s scoring; furthermore, the song contains a direct quote from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – written to commemorate a “great man” by another great man who was being commemorated in turn. Rellstab’s poem, although not originally intended to pay homage to Beethoven, provided Schubert with many suggestive allusions to Beethoven’s personality.
Interaction with a second instrument – again a melodic one – appears also in the two songs by Johannes Brahms (in turn a great admirer of Schubert) recorded here. The Zwei Gesänge, setting to music lyrics by Friedrich Rückert and Emanuel Geibel (after Lope de Vega) respectively, were dedicated to Brahms’ close friend, Joseph Joachim, and to his wife Amalie. Joachim was one of the greatest violinists of his time, but he frequently played also the viola (an instrument which inspired Brahms in a very special fashion, and which he perhaps considered as more suitable than the violin for expressing intimacy and tenderness). Amalie was a professional alto singer, and therefore the songs’ scoring explains itself easily. The first song to be composed was Geistliches Wiegenlied, sent by Brahms to the couple on the occasion of the baptism of their firstborn, who was to be Christened as Johannes as a homage to the composer. The second song came approximately twenty years later, and both settings were premiered in 1885 at the Singverein: Brahms was at the piano, but neither of the dedicatees performed with him. The lullaby speaks of the Virgin Mary’s tenderness in contemplating her Child, and incorporates a quote from a medieval Christmas carol; Gestillte Sehnsucht rehearses once more the favourite subjects of Romanticism – nature, longing, the silence of night.
Other kinds of night, or rather of evening, are at the core of the two songs by Debussy recorded here. In Beau soir, the difference between the Romantic and the symbolist/Impressionist soul is evident – until the very last lines. It seems, in fact, that Paul Bourget’s poem limits itself to the description of “impressions” from a natural setting, without telling a story in the same fashion as Romantic poetry did. However, here too the night is taken as a symbol for death: just as the river’s stream ends in the sea, so does human life end in the grave. Debussy’s masterly treatment of harmony (see the unexpected modulation on “roses”), provides the poet’s lines with unforgettable nuances of sound.
Baudelaire’s Harmonie de soir is one of the most iconic poems of French symbolism, and it inspired Debussy’ fourth piano Prélude along with this song. Dating from a few years before Beau soir, it bears witness of Debussy’s experience in Bayreuth, where Wagner’s music deeply impressed him – although their aesthetical worlds were markedly different. This song, along with the four others which compose Debussy’s cycle on poems by Baudelaire, was premiered privately at Ernest Chausson’s place in 1890. The numerous musical references found in Baudelaire’s lines are faithfully – if discreetly – mirrored by Debussy’s music.
Chausson’s own Le colibri was written some years earlier, and in turn reflects Wagner’s influence. It also bears more than a trace of the exoticism which veined the French culture of the time; it manages to blend the innocence and lightness of the colibri with shades of seduction and desire, whereby the bird’s “kiss” of the flower’s corolla becomes a symbol for a lover’s yearning for his beloved. Chausson’s setting, with its intense chromaticism, suits the poem’s content perfectly.
Finally, Massenet’s Élégie is one of its composer’s most beloved songs; here too the result obtained with a striking paucity of musical means is impressive. Originally written for solo piano, its first version was in turn the work of a Massenet still in his student years; however, the musical maturity demonstrated by this song, on lyrics by Louis Gallet, is evident.
Together, these beautiful songs bear witness to the versatility of the human voice, to the fruitfulness of the combination of words and music, and to the touching intensity of their composers’ inspiration.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2025