Classical Music | Contralto

Recorded on 12/31/1969, uploaded on 04/05/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

... In the sixth song, the woman struggles to find the words (“wüßt ich nur mit Worten / wie ich's sagen soll”) to tell her husband that she is with child. Tears of happiness fill her eyes as her husband looks on with confused wonderment. In Chamisso’s poem, the woman’s pregnancy is revealed to the reader in the third stanza. Schumann, however, omits this stanza, dramatically shifting her revelation to the final stanza: the cradle will be by her bedside, and in the mornings, his likeness will look up at her (“kommen wird der Morgen…daraus dein Bildniss mir entgegen lacht”). During the first and second stanzas of Schumann’s settings, the listener can hear the woman’s forced composure, as she searches to find the right words to express the joyful news to her husband. Sustained harmonies supporting the sweet vocal melody are undermined by dissonances fraught with anticipation. The very motivic figure with which the accompaniment begins and the delayed resolution of the dominant seventh chord a whole measure after the tonic appears in the bass seem to embody all the woman’s attempts at self-control. All of which is, then, released in the third stanza. Modulating to the key of C major, the vocal melody at first is more fragmented, but then grows with an anxious energy and anticipation during its latter half (“Bleib an meinem Herzen / fühle dessen Schlag…”). The sustained harmonies of the accompaniment are replaced by restless, reiterated chords that slowly ascend chromatically. The stanza culminates in a tender sforzando as the woman finds comfort in embracing her husband (“daß ich fest und fester / nur dich drücken mag”). The fourth and final stanza returns to the music of first, after which the piano provides a brief postlude. On the final cadence, the voice reenters with a heartfelt and loving repetition of “dein Bildniss” (“your likeness”).     Joseph DuBose

recorded in 1950

courtesy of YouTube