The same poem, one more song (XXIV)

Last week we closed the regular Liederabend season with Robert Schumann's Muttertraum, and today, the first of July, we open the summer season, with shorter entries. As we have done in recent years, throughout this month we will have five entries in the series "Same poem, another song", with poems and songs I have been jotting down in my notebook since September. And during August, also as usual, we will take a look at the Schubertíada recital programmes.

The poem we return to this week begins with the line "Nun hast du mich den ersten Schmerz getan" and is the penultimate poem of Frauenliebe und -leben. In this cycle, written between the end of 1829 and the beginning of 1830 by Adalbert von Chamisso, the poet tells a love story from the moment the couple meets until the man's death, with a final poem addressed to his granddaughter that serves as an epilogue. Although the verses reflect the life of a woman devoted entirely to her family, a perspective that makes us uncomfortable today if we take it as the highest and only aspiration for women, the collection has two features that were quite novel for its time: the narrative voice is a woman's own, speaking in the first person, a and the marriage is not one of convenience but of love.

Robert Schumann set the first eight poems (leaving aside the epilogue) as his song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, the best-known musical setting of Chamisso's text. But he was not the first: there are three documented earlier settings, and this week we will listen to Nun hast du mich den ersten Schmerz getan in the version by Carl Loewe.

Loewe devoted himself primarily to ballads and composed very few cycles, only six. One of them is Frauenliebe, op. 60, composed in 1836 (four years before Schumann's). The composer described his work as a Liederkranz, which might be translated as a garland of songs (a concept similar to the Liederkreis, circle of songs, that Schumann used). Unlike Schumann, Loewe set all nine poems to music, so his Nun hast du mich den ersten Schmerz getan is the penultimate in the set. In a restrained tone, the woman bids farewell to the man she has loved so deeply, who in dying has caused her pain for the first time; her serenity is deeply moving.

As you know, this series is not about making better/worse comparisons, but about listening to how different composers have been inspired by the same poem. If you know Schumann's cycle very well, Loewe's song may take some getting used to, but I think the effort will be well worth it. I leave you with the recording by Brigitte Fassbaender and Cord Garben, And, who knows, you may well end up listening to the whole cycle.