Wesendonck Lieder

The Wesendonck Lieder [A note on the spelling: Otto and Mathilde used the spelling 'Wesendonck'. Their son called himself Franz von Wesendonk--there were several German spelling "reforms" at the end of the 19th century. The forms 'Wesendonck' and 'Wesendonk' are found in roughly equal proportion in Wagner literature.] is a song-cycle composed by Richard Wagner while he was working on "Die Walküre". This, and the "Siegfried Idyll", are his only two non-operatic works that are still regularly performed.

The cycle is a setting of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of 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"), 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 of the first act of "Die Walküre" which Wagner was working on at the time, and the conceiving of a work based on the Tristan and Isolde stories; there is certainly an influence on Mathilde's poems as well.

The poems themselves are in a wistful, pathos-laden style influenced by Wilhelm Müller, the author of the poems used by Schubert earlier in the century. But the language is more rarefied and intense as the Romantic style had developed.

Wagner himself called two of the songs in the cycle "studies" for "Tristan und Isolde", using for the first time 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. The chromatic-harmonic style of "Tristan" pervades all five songs and pulls the cycle together.

Wagner initially wrote the songs for female voice and piano alone, but produced a fully orchestrated version of "Träume", to be performed by chamber orchestra under Mathilde's window on the occasion of her birthday, 23 December 1857. The cycle as a whole was first performed in public near Mainz on July 30, 1862 under the title "Five Songs for a Female Voice". "Träume" is sometimes sung by a male voice, as for instance in a pre-War HMV recording by Lauritz Melchior.

The orchestration of the whole cycle was completed for large orchestra by Felix Mottl, the Wagner conductor. In 1976, the German composer Hans Werner Henze produced a chamber version for the whole cycle. Each of the players has a separate part, with some very striking wind registration.

The songs

"Der Engel" (The Angel), composed November 1857

"Stehe still!" (Stand still!), composed February 1858

"Im Treibhaus - Studie zu Tristan und Isolde" (In the Greenhouse), composed May 1858

"Schmerzen" (Sorrows), composed December 1857

"Träume - Studie zu Tristan und Isolde" (Dreams), composed December 1857

Notes

External links

* [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wesendoncklieder Wesendonck Lieder Yahoo Group]
* [http://www.schubertline.co.uk/Scorchshop/cgi-bin/catdetail.pl?c=wagn Schubertline (digital) edition of the songs]
* [http://www.music.appstate.edu/faculty/greene/Wagner-Schmerzen-Mary-Gayle-Greene-www.marygaylegreene.tk.mp3 Live Recording of "Schmerzen" as orchestrated by Felix Mottl (performed by Mary Gayle Greene, mezzo-soprano)]