Dear all, I’m on holiday. As ever, I've paid a visit to the music-postcard display where I’m staying, and there are so many and so beautiful... I’ve selected two, which you’ll receive on the last Wednesday in September and the first in October.
The first musical image is a landscape described in tandem by Richard Strauss and Otto Julius Bierbaum, in which we see a path leading to a white house through a meadow full of daisies. It’s the lied Freundliche Vision [Pleasant Vision], composed in 1900.
We know Bierbaum here on Liederabend as the poet of two other Strauss songs, Traum durch die Dämmerung and Nachtgang, both from 1895. All three poems speak, more or less, of the same thing: strolls through tranquil places, with the beloved or towards her, experienced in dreams or as if in dreams. Reflecting this state of bliss, the atmosphere of Strauss’s lieder is calm and introspective. In Freundliche Vision, the score bears the indication ‘ruhig’ [quiet], and towards the end of the poem (a single stanza of nine lines), two words stand out: ‘friede’ [peace] and ‘schönheit’ [beauty]. Significant, isn’t it?
But we soon discover that what Strauss really emphasises is what gives meaning to that peace and that beauty: the presence of the beloved. And he does this by closing the song with the repetition of one line, the sixth, just in case someone missed it: “und ich geh’ mit Einer, die mich lieb hat.” [And I walk with one who loves me].
I’ll leave you with the beautiful Freundliche Vision and an equally beautiful performance by Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch.
Greetings from…
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.
I saw it fair before me in the light of day:
A meadow full of daisies,
a white house deep in green bushes,
images of gods gleaming from the leaves.
And I walk with one who loves me,
in a peaceful mood in the coolness
of this white house, in which peace
awaits our arrival, full of beauty.
(translation by Emily Ezust)
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