Gypsy Songs (I)

Cavall encabritant-se - Théodore Géricault

About a year and a half ago I wrote an introduction to Antonín Dvořák's Cigánské Melodie (or Zigeunerlieder, or Gypsy Songs). That introduction was necessarily brief, as it was for an article published in August about the Schubertiade concerts, and I thought I could spend this week and next talking a little more about the cycle and listening to two more songs from it.

When Dvořák composed the Gypsy Songs he was already a celebrated composer beyond the German-speaking world. In 1874 he had won an Austrian state composition grant for the first time, and won it again in 1876 and 1877; in addition to the money, always welcome, he gained the interest –and, in time, the friendship– of one of the jury members, Johannes Brahms, who recommended him to his publisher, Fritz Simrock. The publication in 1878 of the first collection of Slavonic Dances brought Dvořák great success and launched his international career.

It was in this context that tenor Gustav Walter, a regular at the Vienna Opera, commissioned some songs from Dvořák. I'll tell you more about Walter next week, though, because this week I'd like to focus on Adolf Heyduk, the poet whose work the composer set to music for the commission.

Heyduk was one of the members of the May School, as was Jan Neruda, with whom he was friends. Heyduk was also a friend of Dvořák, who had already set a couple of his poems to music previously. On this occasion, the composer chose –or the two of them chose together, I couldn't say– seven poems from the collection Cigánské Melodie, included the volume Básně (1858); Heyduk had spent the summer of 1854 with his brother in Slovakia and had drawn inspiration from the songs of the Romani people he encountered there.

Although the Romani had been part of Europe for centuries, their way of life, exotic in the eyes of bourgeois society, attracted readers, so while Heyduk's book did not win over the critics, it did win over the public, and several new editions were printed. The interest was admittedly rather superficial, but Heyduk did not fall into the trap and wrote his poems with respect and empathy. Moreover, for those willing to read between the lines, the frequent references to freedom could equally be applied to the Czech desire to free themselves from Austrian rule.

The sticking point came when both tenor Walter and publisher Simrock asked Dvořák to have the songs in German. Roma culture and Czech folklore may have interested German-speaking audiences, yes, but not enough for them to make the effort of listening to songs in that unfamiliar language.

So Heyduk had to translate the poems into German. He even had to watch as Robert Keller, one of Simrock's collaborators, added a stanza to the first song in the cycle –at the request of contralto Amalie Joachim. And so the cycle was published, in German only and with a poetic addition.

Whether the addition bothered anyone other than the composer and the poet I cannot say, but setting aside Czech, the original language of the poems, caused real hurt in Bohemia. Dvořák did manage, however, to secure a new edition the following year in Czech, German… and English. Perhaps Simrock was hoping the songs would sell well in England, now that the composer was so well known there?

Before returning to Gustav Walter next week, I'd like us to listen to the last song in the cycle, Dejte klec jestřábu (Give the Hawk its Cage). It is a song about freedom, with the hawk and the wild horse as symbols in the first two stanzas, before speaking of freedom as part of the very essence of the Roma people. The song has a more or less strophic structure in the vocal line, while the accompaniment adapts to the content of each stanza. The main difference in the vocal line comes in the last verse, with a rise to high notes that not only highlights the eternal bond with freedom but must have been a gift for the tenor.

Our singer will also be a tenor, Pavol Breslik, accompanied by pianist Robert Pechanec.

Dejte klec jestřábu