Classical Music | Tenor

Recorded on 12/31/1969, uploaded on 06/07/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The deception of his beloved now revealed, the poet is faced with the reality of his unrequited love, and takes up a defiant tone in the seventh song, “Ich grolle nicht” (“I bear no grudge”). He accepts the coldness of his beloved’s heart (“Es fällt kein Strahl in deines Herzens Nacht”), and contrasts it with the outward radiance of her beauty (“Wie du auch strahlst in Diamantenpracht”). By the end of the poem, he even pities her (“Ich sah, mein Lieb, wie sehr du elend bist”). Yet, as the cycle progresses, this turns out to be only a manifestation of his fleeting resolve. In a firm C major, an expressive vocal melody unfolds against a steadfast accompaniment of repeated chords over an octave bass. Though Schumann set the two stanzas of Heine’s poem to similar music, and they certainly begin in the same manner, they are not identical. In the first stanza, the coldness of the woman’s heart is effected by a strikingly modulation from a modally inflected A minor into the remote key of B minor. In the corresponding section of the second stanza, the tonic key is maintained while the vocal melody leaps upward to form the song’s climax. Against the descending harmonies of this passage, Schumann brings the vocal melody to its conclusion, terminating it with two repetitions of the opening phrase (“Ich grolle nicht”). The latter defiantly descends from the dominant to the tonic, as the piano takes off with a short codetta of reiterated chords.    Joseph DuBose

Recorded live on August 19th of 1965 at the Salzburg Festival.

courtesy of YouTube