The evocative power of the lullaby moves us, leading both young and old to that dreamlike, serene age, often lost. My thought is dedicated to all children and serves as a small contribution to help rediscover, when needed, a place—the place of childhood, with its magic, fears, and comforts, where monsters and angels, fairies and demons dwell without shame. It aims to be a bridge, reaching that hidden drop of honey in the depths of one’s past, where hope is nourished.
Stefania Redaelli © 2025
Thus does Stefania Redaelli introduce her recording project, now released in this Da Vinci Classics album. The idea of recording an entire CD of lullabies is doubtlessly original, and it also allows the listener to experience an ample palette of different, yet complementary, ways to understand the “lullaby”.
There are probably few things, and few musical genres, as universal as the lullaby. Contemporary studies about prenatal life reveal that the child in the mother’s womb “listens” very carefully to what comes from the outside world – even though this is filtered by the mother’s body. What constitutes a long and constant drone during the nine months before birth is the mother’s heartbeat, which accompanies the baby’s development throughout the adventure of pregnancy. The child also learns to distinguish the mother’s voice, and reacts to it; furthermore, if the mother is a keen listener of a specific musical work, or of a given musical style, the fetus will also be familiarized with this. Evidence demonstrates that these pieces constitute almost a “mother-by-proxy” for the baby. When children are born, the mother’s voice, the feeling of her body (and therefore of her heartbeat), but also her favourite music, are all elements easily recognized by the newborn, and they all have a calming, reassuring, comforting, and quieting effect on him or her.
If this all has been demonstrated by recent scientific studies, mothers have known this for ages. It is not by chance, as said, that all cultures know some form of lullaby; and that singing to a child is one of the most basic, commonest, and almost inescapable forms of musicianship.
Lullabies are transmitted from a generation to another. Mothers sing to their babies, regardless of how beautiful or in tune their voice may be. The child is no musical critic: babies only want to feel the presence of their mother through her voice and body (especially in the very early weeks of postnatal life, when the mother’s face is still seen rather unclearly by the baby). Lullabies are extremely simple, generally speaking. Their main qualities are repetitiveness (for this is another reassuring element for a child’s tranquility), subdued tone (for the baby should be lulled to sleep), a limited pitch range (for the mother’s voice must be entirely at ease, never strained, lest the calming effect be lost), and mainly evoking with the music the rocking movement of the mother’s arms on which the baby lies.
Frequently, there is no need for words. Often, mothers simply sing repeated syllables; one of the most frequently found is precisely la-la. Not by chance, this sound is one of the earliest that the baby will later learn to articulate. Not by chance, this is the Latin name of one of the notes – of the note which gives the pitch to the whole orchestra, indeed. Not by chance, the child’s first attempts at speaking are called lallation (musicians and music-lovers might recall the beautiful chorus Herrscher des Himmels, erhöre das Lallen from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, where the faithful’s maladroit but enthusiastic speech about the mystery of Incarnation is likened to a child’s repetition of senseless syllables). Not by chance, the very word lullaby evokes this sound. And not by chance, finally, many refrains of popular or folk songs are based on repeated la-la-la (this is found also in many Renaissance compositions, such as A lieta vita by Gian Giacomo Gastaldi, or So ben mi c’ha bon tempo by Orazio Vecchi).
The experience of motherhood and the tenderness evoked by the image of a mother rocking her baby, and singing a lullaby to make him or her sleep, are therefore universal. They arise feelings of nostalgia, sweetness, and familiarity when they are suggested to a listener. For this reason, many composers (and several males among them!) throughout music history have transformed the style, idea, and musical gestures of spontaneous lullabies into proper musical “works”. The very fact that the text of lullabies is normally rather superfluous – if it exists at all – makes instrumental lullabies very common.
But there is also another face of the coin. If a lullaby rocks a baby to sleep, sleep can also be a symbol for another reality, i.e. that of death. Particularly in the past, when child mortality was, alas, extremely common, it was possible to “play” on the ambiguity of this sleep to suggest other, much sadder, viewpoints. Visual art reinforced this perspective. The sculptural and pictorial “topos” of the Pietà (the Virgin Mary receiving the dead body of her Son) is powerfully evocative of a mother’s lulling of her newborn in her arms and by her womb. This and similar images are also suggested in several songs, especially in the past: for instance, Bach’s Bist du bei mir is a wonderful meditation on the “slumber of death”, sung with extreme serenity and almost with joy. Another famous and magnificent example is William Byrd’s Lullaby my sweet little babe, through which the composer, a staunch Catholic during the persecutions of the early seventeenth century, gave voice to the toll of death which Catholics had to undergo at his time. Indeed, there is also a deep connection between faith, religiosity, and lullabies. Most children used to receive the first rudiments of their religious education from their mothers; conversely, lullabies frequently mentioned God, or the Virgin Mary, or guardian angels, invoked as protectors of the child.
But, given the universality of lullaby-singing, another interesting phenomenon was that of young girls “playing mothers”, and singing lullabies to their younger siblings, or even to their dolls. In this Da Vinci Classics album, indeed, there are some pieces which suggest this tender and “educational” practice. For instance, Lyapunov’s Berceuse d’une poupée is a description of one such situation: another similar piece is found in Claude Debussy’s Children’s Corner, written for, and dedicated to, the composer’s daughter, Chouchou. And another composer and father, Robert Schumann, wrote many pieces for his children and for young pianists in general. His Album for the Young op. 68 is a masterpiece both under the profile of musical education, and of musical quality in general. There are no lullabies in it, but there is one in his Kinderszenen op. 15 (Kind im Einschlummern, just before the last piece), and there are two among his Albumblätter (“Album leaves”), op. 124, recorded here. Certainly, Schumann’s own experience as a father of a numerous family and the role of his beloved Clara – an exceptional musician herself – as a mother of his children will have encouraged him to portray these nursery scenes with particular tenderness.
Other works come from Eastern Europe: works by Russian composers such as Balakirev and Tchaikovsky are especially interesting since these two musicians represent the two competing sides of late-nineteenth-century Russian music. On the one side, Balakirev was a representative (the founder, indeed) of the Mighty Five, who were keenly focused on the national heritage of folk music; on the other, Tchaikovsky looked with particular interest to the West and to the forms of German music (here represented, among others, by Johannes Brahms, whose lullaby is one of the best known pieces he penned). Still other works come from other countries of Eastern Europe, such as the two Berceuses by Aleksandr Michałowski – whose Polish origins and his own reputation as an excellent interpreter of Chopin allow for a few references to Chopin’s own masterful Berceuse to resurface. Other similar suggestions are found also in the works by Maszynski, a pupil of Aleksandr Michałowski: his berceuse is delightfully simple in its colours and nuances, and manages to recreate a nursery-rhyme atmosphere.
The French world is also represented, for instance with two of the most important names found in this collection, i.e. Debussy and Cécile Chaminade. The latter, a female composer, one of the most important and appreciated of her time, conjures an innocent and yet touching portrayal of infantile heroism. The “little wounded soldier” may be a child who slightly injured himself during his games with his fellows; he recurs to his mother’s tender care, and the passing moment of drama (described with unexpected modulations) is the occasion for a new wave of cuddling to be represented by Chaminade’s music.
True, dramatic heroism is instead depicted and paid homage to in Debussy’s Berceuse héroïque. Debussy contributed this piece for an album titled King Albert’s Book: A Tribute to the Belgian King and People from Representative Men and Woman Throughout the World and intended to honour and appreciate the Belgians’ neutrality, which had been brutally attacked by the Germans. This precious document included works by Edward Elgar, Jack London, Maurice Maeterlinck and many others. The composer’s intention was, as he declared, to write a work which had no pretensions other than to offer an homage to so much patient suffering”.
Together, therefore, these pieces – and the many others which constitute this fascinating compilation – are a witness to the most universal feeling of all humankind, i.e. that of motherhood and of the protective care mothers provide to their children. It is a care which extends itself far beyond the age and time of lullabies, and which even adults recall frequently and with unique tenderness; it is an experience which music both represents and transfigures.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2025