Jump to content

Wesendonck Lieder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 87.1.161.248 (talk) at 21:13, 8 May 2022 (→Versions). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Wesendonck Lieder
Lieder by Richard Wagner
Portrait of Mathilde Wesendonck (1850) by Karl Ferdinand Sohn
CatalogueWWV 91
TextPoems by Mathilde Wesendonck
LanguageGerman
Composed1857 (1857)–1858
Scoringvoice and piano

Wesendonck Lieder, WWV 91, is the common name of a set of five songs for female voice and piano by Richard Wagner, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (Five Poems for a Female Voice). He set five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck while he was working on his opera Tristan und Isolde. The songs, together with the Siegfried Idyll, are the two non-operatic works by Wagner most regularly performed.

History

Villa Wesendonck, Zürich

The songs are settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Richard Wagner's patrons. Wagner had become acquainted with Otto Wesendonck in Zürich, where he had fled on his escape from Saxony after the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. For a time Wagner and his wife Minna lived together in the Asyl (German for Asylum in the sense of "sanctuary"), a small cottage on the Wesendonck estate. It is sometimes claimed that Wagner and Mathilde had a love affair; in any case, the situation and mutual infatuation certainly contributed to the intensity in the conception of Tristan und Isolde.[1]

Wagner sold the settings to the publisher Schott in 1860 for 1000 francs.[2] The first published version (1862) was titled Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (Five poems for a female voice), and the first performance was given at the publisher's residence in Mainz, by the soprano Emilie Genast, accompanied by Hans von Bülow.[3] No name was given for the author of the texts at the first publication; it was not publicly revealed until after Mathilde's death (1902). The present order of the songs appears for the first time in the published version, and this has raised doubts as to whether the sequence is a genuine song cycle, or should be regarded simply as a collection of individual pieces.[4]

The songs

5. "Träume"
Orchestral version with Ernestine Schumann-Heink, 1911
Problems playing this file? See media help.
  1. "Der Engel" ("The Angel"), composed November 1857
  2. "Stehe still!" ("Be still!"), composed February 1858
  3. "Im Treibhaus – Studie zu Tristan und Isolde" ("In the Greenhouse"), composed May 1858
  4. "Schmerzen" ("Sorrows"), composed December 1857
  5. "Träume – Studie zu Tristan und Isolde" ("Dreams"), composed December 1857

Wagner himself called two of the songs "studies" for Tristan und Isolde, using for the first time certain musical ideas that are later developed in the opera. In "Träume" can be heard the roots of the love duet in Act 2, while "Im Treibhaus" (the last of the five to be composed) uses music later developed extensively for the prelude to Act 3.

Versions

Wagner initially wrote the songs for female voice and piano alone, but produced an orchestrated version of "Träume", to be performed by chamber orchestra (with violin playing the voice part)[4] beneath Mathilde's window on the occasion of her birthday, 23 December 1857.

Some male singers have sung some of the songs: Lauritz Melchior recorded "Schmerzen" and "Träume" for HMV in 1923, "Der Engel" has been recorded by tenors Franco Corelli (in French), Plácido Domingo, Jonas Kaufmann, Andrea Bocelli, and the bass Paata Burchuladze. A few have attempted the whole cycle in performance, including René Kollo.[5] Tenor Stuart Skelton recorded the entire cycle in 2018,[6] as did Christoph Prégardien in 2019.[7]

The orchestration of all five songs was completed for large orchestra by Felix Mottl, the Wagner conductor, on 3 August 1893.[8] In 1972 the Italian composer Vieri Tosatti entirely re-orchestrated the songs. In 1976 the German composer Hans Werner Henze produced a chamber version for the songs. Each of the players has a separate part, with some very unusual wind registration. French composer Christophe Looten wrote a transcription for voice and string quartet (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, March 2015). In 2013 (the bicentennial of Wagner's birth) the French composer Alain Bonardi released a new version for voice, piano, clarinet and cello, including instrumental interludes with oriental resonant percussions.[9] In the same year, the Chinese-British composer Jeffrey Ching premiered his Wesendonck Sonata, for voice, viola (or cello), and piano. Ching transposed Wagner's original songs so as to form a closed palindromic tonal sequence in the manner of a five-movement sonata, and also added an elaborate obbligato part for viola (or cello), which comments on the poems and adds harmonic and contrapuntal detail to Wagner's accompaniment.[10] A version of the lieder with the original piano accompaniment arranged for string orchestra by David Angell was premiered by the Bourbaki Ensemble in Sydney, Australia in January 2022.[11] Composer Paolo Fradiani arranged a version for chamber ensemble of 11 players.

Clytus Gottwald arranged "Im Treibhaus" and "Träume" for 16-voice choir a cappella in 2004 as Zwei Studien zu "Tristan und Isolde".

References

Notes

  1. ^ Newman (1976a), pp. 530–2; 540–557
  2. ^ Newman (1976b). p. 192
  3. ^ Millington (2001), p. 318.
  4. ^ a b Vazsonyi (2013), p. 715.
  5. ^ Gurewitsch, Matthew (6 November 2005). "Why Shouldn't Men Sing Romantic Drivel, Too?". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
  6. ^ Ashley, Tim. "Stuart Skelton: Shining Knight". Gramophone. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  7. ^ Prégardien, Christoph. "Schumann – Wagner". Retrieved 14 March 2020.
  8. ^ Miller, Malcolm Bernard Bela (1990). Wesendonck Lieder, An analytic study (PDF) (PhD). King's College London. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
  9. ^ "Wesendonck Träume" (in French). Alainbonardi.net. 2013-03-27. Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
  10. ^ "Jeffrey Ching concert at CCP - Cultural Center of the Philippines". culturalcenter.gov.ph.
  11. ^ "The Bourbaki Ensemble" (PDF).

Sources

  • Millington, Barry (ed.) (2001). "The Wagner Compendium". London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500282749
  • Newman, Ernest (1976a). "The Life of Richard Wagner. Volume II: 1848–1860". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29096-1
  • Newman, Ernest (1976b). "The Life of Richard Wagner. Volume III: 1859–1866". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29095-3
  • Vazsonyi, Nicholas (ed.) (2013). The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopaedia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107-00425-2
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wesendonck_Lieder&oldid=1086866924"