Ghost Story : Der Schildwache Nachtlied

Another ghost story from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection of Brentano and Arnim in the version adapted by Mahler for his song Der Schildwache Nachtlied.  The sentry is determined to do his duty because so many depend on his vigilance.  But he hears a mysterious voice :
 "Ich kann und mag nicht fröhlich sein;
Wenn alle Leute schlafen,
So muß ich wachen,
Muß traurig sein."

"Ach Knabe, du sollst nicht traurig sein,
Will deiner warten,
Im Rosengarten,
Im grünen Klee."

"Zum grünen Klee, da komm ich nicht,
zum Waffengarten
Voll Helleparten
Bin ich gestellt."

"Stehst du im Feld, so helf dir Gott,
An Gottes Segen
Ist alles gelegen,
Wer's glauben tut."

"Wer's glauben tut, ist weit davon,
Er ist ein König,
Er ist ein Kaiser,
Er führt den Krieg."

What's happening ? The sentry's doing his job even though he's not too happy about it. So what is this voice he's hearing ?  Is it a ghost, a memory or his subconscious? He's stuck in the "Garden of Weapons" and must deny the "Rose Garden" and the meadow of green clover, which might symbolize home, or freedom. The voice reminds him, though, that the Kaiser isn't all-powerful.  In the battlefield, anything can happen : only God decides.  But the sentry tries to blank out alternatives. Three times he repeats what controls him : King, Emperor, war.  Notice how Mahler uses major and minor to contrastb the voices, underlining the "military" with drumbeats and horns.But suddenly, something happens. Is the sentry confronted by an enemy ?  Or is the voice an expression of his subconcious longing for freedom ?  
Halt! Wer da? Rund! Bleib' mir vom Leib! 

Then a brief interlude.

"Wer sang es hier? Wer sang zur Stund'?
Verlorne Feldwacht
Sang es um Mitternacht.
Mitternacht! Feldwacht!"

Whatever has happened, the sentry is no longer among the living. He's gone.  As so often in Mahler, being dead isn't the end. What's left of the sentry is his ghostly song, echoing his worldly orders "Midnight ! Sentry! "

Requiem : The Pity of War - Bostridge Pappano

"Requiem: the Pity of War with Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano.  The inspiration came from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, which Bostridge has done numerous times. Britten's War Requiem," he writes "seems to express in art Winston Churchill's notion of the 1914-18 conflict as the initiator of the 20th century's own Thirty Years War" since it spans the First and Second World Wars, blending the poetry of Wilfred Owen, poet of the trenches and the spirit of reconciliation that motivated the commission marking the  rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. Thus the quotation from Owen, "My subject is War, and the Pity of War". "How might one reflect the experience and significance of the conflict" writes Bostridge "in a song recital ?". The answer might be this excellent programme, with interesting repertoire choices and approaches to more familiar material. Bostridge and Pappano, whose partnership is long and fruiful, are doing this recital live at the Barbican Hall on December 5th. The recording, from Warner Classics, is now available, well produced with good illustrations.

Bostridge and Pappano begin with George Butterworth's Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, perhaps th best known English song cycle with a connection to war, given that Butterworth  was killed in the Somme in August 1916.  Housman's poems were published in 1896 : the war they pertain to might  be the Boer War, or colonial wars, but the connotations are not specifically military. They deal with more generalized concepts of youth and death, impermanence and loss.  Even though Butterworth collected folk song, a quasi-folk song approach doesn't necessarily apply.  Bostridge and Pappano demonstrate an art song approach, which may at first seem unsettling, but works on a more esoteric level  In "When I was One and Twenty" the last words "'tis true, 'tis true" are held open ended, suggesting possibilities beyond text. If the dynamic lines in "Look not into mine Eyes" are more extreme than usual, this emphasizes the unease that lies behind the poem : the lad "that many loved in vain" does not reveal himself, to anyone. "A Jonquil, not a Grecian Lad". "Is my team ploughing" feels decidedly supernatural.

This disc is worth getting, though for a superlative performance of Rudi Stephan’s song cycle Ich will dir singen ein Hohelied. Stephan was an extremely promising composer as his best-known works, the two Musik für Orkester in einem Satz attest, his opera Der ersten Mensch being a prototype of Expressionist music theatre.  The six songs in this cycle, to poems by Gerda von Robertus (1873-1939) inhabit a world much closer to aesthetics of the period when exoticism was heightened  by an awareness of the dangers of the subconcious.  The poems are terse aphorisms, Stephan's settings concise. The nearest equivalent might be Alban Berg's Altenberg-Lieder, also from the same period (1911-12) In "Kythera", "Der Rosen Düfte liebeatmend schwingen in welchen Weilen" while the sound of aoelian harps drifts from afar. The setting floats gently, held sotto voce.  In "Pantherlied" the piano line ripples, suggesting pent-up animal energy.  The text in "Abendfrieden" is little more than a series of broken phrases which Stephan uses to create a song so delicate that it seems to hover in stillness. This oscillation occurs also in individual words like "Sonnenfeuer" which need careful shaping, but Bostridge captures the right vulnerabilty.  "In Nachbars Garten duftet" describes a linden tree, which shivers "dammerlauschig kühl". Yet this is no pastoral. Lovers embrace, but why do the poet's eyes "overflow in burning pain"?  The song is as magical as a song by Hugo Wolf, but with a kick in the tail.  The mood of secrecy continues in "Glück zu Zweien" where "in the hubbub of the crowd, we found the silence of shared feeling".  The vocal line stretches and curls, twining like "Zwei Könige wir, die finden das Reich ihrer Einsamkeiten". Throughout this cycle, tension has been building up, which finds release in the final song "Das Hohelied der Nacht". Yet again Stephan observes the fragmented nature of the phrases,  using them to proceed rapidly to the last line "Du küsst es mir vom Munde", which rises like a cry of sudden triumph.  These songs are miniature masterpieces and are done reasonably often, but Bostridge brings out the inner musical logic better than anyone else, with his intuitive feel for meaning and the curling, curving timbre of his voice.  Incidentally,  Stephan died in strange circumstances. The night before he died, he could not sleep, surrounded by the agonized cries of the wounded all around.  In the early hours of the morning, he stood upright in his trench at Tarnopol in Galicia on the Eastern Front, and shouted  "Ich halte es nicht aus!" and was promptly shot by a sniper.  He was barely 28.  

From the sophistication of Rudi Stephan to the relative straightforwardness of Kurt Weill's Four Walt Whitman Songs.  Bostridge varies the marching rhythms in "Beat ! Beat ! The Drums" with articulation that twists in protest. If  "Captain ! My captain !" is a strophic ballad, "Come up from the Fields, my Father, there's a letter" is dramatic, delivered here with appropriate portent.  The military antecedents of "The Dirge for Two Veterans" are impeccable. Gustav Holst set this text ("The Last Sunbeam") in 1914, and it was also set by Vaughan Williams (in Dona Nobis Pacem).  Weill wrote these songs after Pearl Harbor, when the United States joined the Second World War.  Like Britten's War Requiem, they help this Bostridge and Pappano programme bridge two World Wars.   
Three songs from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn conclude the programme. Again, these are not folk songs, but art songs.  Significantly, the songs chosen here are ghost songs, which suit a singer who is a superlative Peter Quint. In "Revelge", skeletons march through a town at night, and "Der Tambourg'sell" is a death knell, Pappano's piano "drumming" as Bostridge's voice rises to near-scream before descending to the low rumble of the refrain "Gute Nacht".  Best of all, though, is "Wo die Schöne Trompeten blasen" where Bostridge and Pappano capture the spookiness that pervades the song even before the girl knows what's going on. She, too, will die before the year is over.

Berio Sinfonia and Mahler Early Songs - Goerne.

A landmark new recording from Harmonia Mundi  of Luciano Berio's responses to Gustav Mahler, with Matthias Goerne, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Josep Pons, featuring  Berio's orchestrations of ten of Mahler's Early Songs with the Sinfonia, in which references to Mahler's Symphony no 2  provide, as Berio said "a generator of harmonic functions and the musical references they imply".

Berio describes the Sinfonia as an "internal monologue" which makes a "harmonic journey". It flows, like a river, sometimes in full flow, sometimes underground.  Mahler 2 is called the "Resurrection" because it's based on the idea that death isn't an end but a stage on a journey to eternal life.  In Sinfonia, there are quotes from at least 15 other composers, but specially significant  are references to Don, the first movement of Boulez's Pli selon Pli (which means fold upon fold, ie, endless layers and permutations).  Don means gift, so this is like a gift  from one composer to another. What has gone before shapes what is to come, but absolutely central is the idea that creativity never ends, but is reborn anew.  Stagnation is death. 

Berio's river in sound flows swiftly, bringing in its wake the streams and springs which have enriched it, adapting them and changing them, surging ever forwards towards the freedom of the ocean. It's filled with subtle references to many things: to Cythera, one of the cradles of Greek civilization and the home of the goddess of regeneration.  Sinfonia is truly a "symphony that contains the world" but it is by no means just collage.  Like a river it also symbolizes constant fertilization and renewal.

Every performance is unique.  This performance naturally names Pons as conductor, and Synergy Vocals by name, but is remarkably fresh and clean-sounding.  Nothing comes close to Boulez's recording, though Chailly and Eötvös are good challengers, but Pons sparkles. Over the years Synergy Vocals have done Sinfonia many times with different personnel, but present it with such a sense of wonder that it feels like new discovery. Which is what a good Sinfonia should be, bringing new detail to the surface, vibrantly dancing with energy like the fishes listening to the saint, but nonetheless going on in their individual ways. The BBCSO, for a band happy in the mainstream, sound like they're having a whale of a time being playful and contrary, for fun was very much part of the Berio mystique.  

"Down with Dogma!" another thread in Sinfonia is apt, since this recording places Sinfonia together with Berio's orchestrations of Mahler's songs for voice and piano.  Mahler himself worked from song to symphony, so, as Berio explained, "One of my aims was to use the orchestration as a respectful and loving instrument of investigation and transformation".  Berio's arrangements were premiered at the Mahler Musikwochen in Toblach where serious Mahler minds meet. The ten songs on this recording come from sets of  frühe Lieder Mahler wrote between 1880 and 1889, which Berio adapted in 1986/7. Thomas Hampson made the first recording in January 1992, with Berio himself conducting the Philharmonia, London.  Much as I love that recording, this new recording is even better. Although Goerne has not recorded much Mahler, Mahler has been central to his career. In 2000, he did a programme where the Early Songs and Des Knaben Wunderhorn were presented by theme, bringing out deeper ideas.  At other times, I've spotted him unobtrusively in concerts, listening with rapt attention.   Hampson's voice is elegant, even stately, but Goerne's more individualistic, which  suits the earthy irony in Wunderhorn.

All these texts come from Brentano and von Arnim's Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Though the songs themselves were written fairly early in Mahler's career, without Wunderhorn, Mahler would not have developed as he did.  The texts may be folksy but the sentiments are sophisticated.  They're not quaint for quaintness's sake, but, like fairy tales, operate like miniature morality fables in a pre-industrial oral tradition.  Thus the sense of non-judgemental wonder Goerne brings to songs like Ablösung im Sommer, Goerne sings the words "Kuckuck ist tod!" with genuine alarm. Although the nightingale will take over, the death of a humble cuckoo is something to be sad about.  Berio's version of Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz is magnificent.  Goerne sings the first words alone, for the protagonist is alone, awaiting execution. then we hear the Alphorn, calling across a vast chasm. This dialogue matters, for this song is about freedom. Die Gedanken sind Frei. Please read my analysis of the song here.  The depth of Goerne's voice suggests strength, not fear, yet also wistfulness. The soldier doesn't want to die but at least he'll be free.  Listen, too, to the tenderness Goerne brings to Nicht Wiedersehen. The poem might seem trite, but when Goerne sings "Meine Herzeallerliebste Schatz", his voice soars, emboldened by the sincerity of genuine grief. 

Berio's orchestration brings out the dance in Hans und Grete, Big sweeping arcs evoke "Ringel, ringel Reih'n"., the force of Nature that pulls together the two timid lovers. Peasants they may be but their love is such that it deserves the full force of a big orchestra.  Ich ging mit Lust is also greatly enhanced, connecting to the way the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesell'n connect to Mahler's Symphony no 1.  Dark-hued baritones don't do delicate easily, but Goerne's touch emphasizes the spring-like freshness in the song, and the warmth of summer to come.  This gentleness flows naturally into Frühlingsmorgen.the words "Steh' auf" charming yet assertive.  In Phantasie, Goerne alternates the top of his timbre with darker depths: the fisher girl cast nets into the sea, but her heart is cold.  On this recording the set ends with Scheiden und Meiden.  The orchestration is richly generous. "Ade "! Ade!" Goerne sings, expansively. "Ja, scheiden und meiden tut weh", but that's the way of the world.  Even babies grow up and change. Moving on isn't a bad thing. An utterly brilliant entree to the world of the Sinfonia.

Goerne is singing very well at the moment : Grab tickets to his Mahler Das Lied von der Erde with Joseph Pons at the Royal Festival Hall on 16th October. They've been touring with this a while,  so it should be good. 

Mahler Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz : its context

Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz, an early song by Gustav Mahler from Lieder und Gesänge, vol. 3: a song with an interesting background. The text comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Clemens and Brentano used the original title Der Schweizer, which is significant to meaning, since, in medieval times, Swiss peasants were so poor that men were forced to volunteer as mercenaries. To this day, the Pope is protected by Swiss soldiers in fancy Renaissance costumes. (Please see my article Arnold Schoenberg and the Swiss Guards)  Pageantry apart,  reality for most Swiss mercenaries was grim. Often living  under harsh conditions, they fought and died in distant lands, never to return home.  The term  Der Schweizer thus refers to a soldier who doesn't "belong", an outsider whose deepest loyalties  cannot be fulfilled, and one who cannot be trusted or integrated into the mainstream.   Not a "romantic" ditty.

The poem, which dates from at least the 17th century, sets the action in Strassburg, a fortress on a river, in territory disputed by French and Germans. In the Franco Prussian War, in the First World War and in the occupation that followed, exploited by Hitler, the people of Alsace-Lorraine  knew only too well what nationalist blustering could bring.  Never again, one hopes.  Strassburg is symbolic : It's the home of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, and the official home of the European Parliament being there shows that the EU is not centralized in Brussels. The photo above comes from a set illustrating each verse of the poem, amended with references to France and Prussia.  The sequence also emphasizes the religious context of the original poem, where the deserter is redeemed by his faith in God. (Read the verse above which is in Wunderhorn, but which Mahler did not set)

Mahler, being a composer,  was more influenced by the musical context.  The Swiss man's problems come to a head when "Das Alphorn hört ich drüben wohl anstimmen, Ins Vaterland mußt ich hinüber schwimmen"  Thus the magical introduction, which suggests an alpenhorn calling out over long distances. Perhaps thee soldier was hearing military trumpets, but his mind connected to the Alps, the source of the river which flows through the city of Strassburg.  Switzerland - so near and yet so far.  The voice rises from the word "Alpenhorn" as if the man is looking upwards, searching for distant peaks.  But notice how the piano line suggests drum rolls, and military ritual.  The man knows what's coming and the "drums" dominate. In the song, the short final line is repeated, like a hollow death knell.

But then the man thinks of his "brothers" his fellow mercenaries, who've become like brothers to him, and of "Der Hirtenbub ist doch nur Schuld daran, Das Alphorn hat mir solches angethan, Das klag ich an".  He's a simple shepherd boy, he can't help being mesmerized by the sound of an alpenhorn. Thus the piano sings,  trilling and elusive. A really good pianist (like Daniel Barenboim) can make the piano echo so the sounds hover in the air.  But then the music ends abruptly with two final chords. Like gunshot.

Please see also my other posts on Mahler, Lieder and Not Funny, Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt and especially Die Gedanken sind Frei  the background to Mahler's Lied des Verfolgten im Turm. 

Goerne Andsnes Mahler Shostakovich Wigmore Hall

At the Wigmore Hall, London, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes performed Mahler in a unique programme built around Shostakovich's  Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti op 145 (1974). Who but Goerne would dare such an eclectic juxtaposition, framing six songs from Shostakovich's eleven song cycle with songs drawn from Mahler's entire output, each of which presents formidable challenges? Most singers would pale at the very prospect of singing songs from the Rückert Lieder, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Kindertôtenlieder, and transcriptions from the symphonies, but by throwing Shostakovich into the mix, Goerne drew out new perspectives in both Mahler and Shostakovich. This was a daring, even shocking programme, and technically a formidable undertaking, but Goerne carried it off with conviction and superlative artistry.

The Mahler anniversary year brought forth Mahlerkugeln, commercially palatable but poisonous to art.  Goerne's Mahler isn't like that, but as uncompromising and demanding as the composer himself.  He's been singing Mahler for nearly 20 years, his interpretations enhanced with an intuitive appreciation of the music as a whole. I've seen him sneak into the audience after singing, and watched him listening intensely to the orchestra and conductor he'd just worked with playing symphonies with no vocal part. This in itself is an insight: song infuses all of Mahler's music and vice versa. Mahler's songs aren't really made for celebrity showcases, but for those who care about the idiom as a whole.

Hearing Mahler on equal terms with Shostakovich broadens the equation, shedding light on Shostakovich's admiration for Mahler. Goerne has made a speciality of  Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti  Here he did the piano and voice original with Andsnes, but the memory of the much richer, more complex orchestral version hung over it inaudibly, much in the way that knowing Mahler's orchestral music enhances appreciation of his songs.

The programme was divided in themes based around each of the Shostakovich songs. in Utro (Morning), the poet describes his lover's golden tresses, garlanded by flowers.  The mood is sensual, perfumed with the promise of love. Goerne began with the most delicate of Rückert songs Ich atmet' einen Linden Duft, where the music sways like an invisible fragrance. Melancholy infuses Shostakovich's song, as if in the moment of embrace he can foresee parting. Seamlessly, Goerne and Andsnes  flowed into Wo die schõnen Trompeten blasen, where the woman thinks her lover has returned. But he's an illusion, foretelling death.  These songs aren't to be taken at face values. Goerne's hushed tones suggested sadness, quietly understated.

The expansive long lines in Razluka (Separation) express distances, in time and in space. The poet cannot live without love, and dies, leaving the memory of his devotion as a pledge. Michelangelo, being an artist, lives eternally in the works he left behind. Goerne followed Razluka with Es sungen drei Engel einen súßen Gesang, the transcription for solo voice and piano of the Wunderhorn song that appears in Mahler's Symphony no 3. In the symphony, the youthful chorus sounds innocent, but the song deals with life after death. Similarly, in Das irdische Leben the child dies because its needs are unfulfilled. Goerne emphasized the word "Totenbahr" to drive home the point. Two songs from Kindertotenlieder followed, Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen and Wenn dien Mütterlein, where Rückert describes seeing the images of his dead children. Was dir nur Augen sind in diesen Tagen" sang Goerne,  purposefully, "in künft'gen Nächten sind es dir nur Sterne" Death is just one of those "separations" (Razluka) that will be overcome. Yet again, Goerne and Andsnes performed the piano/voice transcription of Urlicht from Mahler's Symphony no 2. We don't need to hear the mezzo and the choir, but we remember them and the part the song plays in the symphony.

In Noch, Michelangelo describes a marble angel that breathes, both a work of man and of God. Shostakovich wrote this cycle as he approached his own death, possibly anxious that once he was dead, the Soviets might suppress his music, so the connections to Rückert and to Mahler are clear. "Ich bin gestorben" sang Goerne with quiet dignity, rising to forceful rstraint "In meinem Himmel, in meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied". Ich bin der Welt Abhandedn gekommen as a song of protest? In this performance, totally convincing.

Hence Goerne and Andsnes launched without a break into Shostakovich Bessmertiye (Immortality).
with its defiant capriciousness. "No ya ne myortv, khot i opushchen v zemlyu" (I am not dead, though I lie in the earth). The critical line rises gloriously, agilely upward "I am alive in the hearts of all who love"  Andnes played the "shining" motif evoking a balalaika, a folk instrument that can't be suppressed, but in this performance, the Mahler images of light and "Urlicht" were more dominant than in performances with a true Russian bass like Dmitri Hvorostovsky. But deep basses can't quite manage the agility needed for Mahler.

In Dante, Shostakovich unleashed the pent-up savagery he must have felt, living in a repressed society. Dante's writings, the text reminds us,  were "regarded with scorn by the general mob", bur  Michelangelo would prefer to suffer than deny art. Ya b luchshey doli v mire ne zhelal!" sang "I could wish for no finer earthly life".  Goerne has spoken Russian since childhood. He was young enough to receive the benefits of a DDR education without suffering hardship, but any sensitive person can identify with the idea of art overcoming obstacles. One has only to think of Masur and the Leipziger Gewandhaus Orchester in the tense times of 1989. 

Hearing Mahler's Revelge in this context  makes the song much more pointed than a mere ghost story. The dead soldiers march through the town at night, singing "tralalee, tralalay, tralala" but the words were sung with a hollow mechanical edge. Entirely appropriate because in war, men are turned into machine fodder. The point might have been made even more savagely if Goerne and Andnes had included Shostakovich's Gnev (Anger) which specifically pins the blame on the abuse of  power. "For Rome is a forest full of murderers". However, I suspect that would have shifted the balance too far from Mahler.

Instead, we had Smert (Death), whose slow, sinking lines move in penitential procession. The strings of Andsnes's piano were suppressed to create a sense of hollowness, like footsteps treading implacably towards death. Shostakovich's full cycle ends on an upbeat, light motifs skipping into eternity. This performance ended with Mahler's Der Tamboursg'sell, where the drummer might seem unconcerned about his imminent execution. He says goodbye to the military, rank by rank, but we don't know what he's done to deserve being killed. Perhaps, to interpret this song, we need to consider other sources,the times and even the context. When we listen to anything, we hear more than what's immediately before us. This recital had such an impact on me that I was thinking about how Mahler and Shostakovich fitted into a wider musical scheme of things. Goerne and Andsnes sang Beethoven An die Hoffnung Op 94 for an encore, with the glorious, "O Hoffnung", glowing with hope and the references to angels, midnight and transcendence. I could almost visualize composers  moving in succession : Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Shostakovich and many more, and think of performers, performances and music other than song. The recital was over, but still having an impact on me. 

This article appears in Opera Today