Last week I told you about Korngold’s Nachtwanderer, and I mentioned that I had noted down two other songs composed from the same Eichendorff poem. Since it’s all still fresh in our minds, yours and mine, and I’m short on time this week, I suggest we listen to one of them: the one by Hanns Sommer.
Sommer was a composer with a rather unusual career; I wrote about him some time ago in a post so long that I had to split it in two — here are the first and the second parts. He was born in 1837, which means he was four years younger than Brahms, but he didn’t devote himself fully to composition until he was in his forties. On the other hand, he lived a long life, and he published his last collection of lieder in 1922, just a few weeks before his death.
He composed Nachtwanderer in 1885 and published it a couple of years later as part of Balladen und Romanzen, op. 8. The title of the collection already gives us an idea of what we’re about to hear: Sommer approaches the song as a ballad, and we should imagine a narrator telling us a tale (at least, that’s how I imagine it). The song gives the impression of being strophic, as it should, because each stanza begins with the same melody, but the vocal line adapts to the storytelling and builds suspense where the poem calls for it, while the accompaniment joins in expressively, never letting us forget that the protagonist of the story is a rider.
There are many details that make the song particularly interesting, but I’ll highlight just one. In the second stanza, the young maiden dressed in white is described with tenderness (and the score marks it so: sehr zart, and pp). The tenderness fades with her warning, when she cries out in fear (and the score indicates that the crescendo should reach ff), and after what would be a dramatic pause for a narrator, she says, in a mysterious tone, what she is afraid of: a creature.
I hope you enjoy this song by Hanns Sommer, performed here by Sebastian Noack and Manuel Lange.
Er reitet nachts auf einem braunen Roß,
Er reitet vorüber an manchem Schloß:
Schlaf droben, mein Kind, bis der Tag erscheint,
Die finstre Nacht ist des Menschen Feind!
Er reitet vorüber an einem Teich,
Da stehet ein schönes Mädchen bleich
Und singt, ihr Hemdlein flattert im Wind:
Vorüber, vorüber, mir graut vor dem Kind!
Er reitet vorüber an einem Fluß,
Da ruft ihm der Wassermann seinen Gruß,
Taucht wieder unter dann mit Gesaus,
Und stille wird's über dem kühlen Haus.
Wann Tag und Nacht im verworrnen Streit,
Schon Hähne krähen im Dorfe weit,
Da schauert sein Roß und wühlet hinab,
Scharret ihm schnaubend sein eigenes Grab.
Please follow this link if you need an English translation
