Classical Music | Tenor

Recorded on 12/31/1969, uploaded on 06/20/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In “Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen” (“On a shining summer morning”), the poet, in resigned loneliness, wanders about his garden. Though he maintains pensive (“Ich aber wandle stumm”), the flowers pity his hapless state (“Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen, / und schaun mitleidig mich an”). Schumann’s entire setting passes by in hushed tones, and the quiet arpeggios convey the whispered murmurings of the flowers. It opens with an enharmonically spelt German augmented sixth chord in B-flat major, which Schumann later uses to briefly move the music into the distant key of B major on the word “Blumen.” With equal ease, Schumann promptly returns to B-flat major to close the first stanza. The move to B major, however, proves to be a foreshadowing of the second stanza’s closing. By means of another augmented sixth chord, Schumann sidesteps into the key of G major, with the melody ascending a semitone from B-flat to B-natural, on the flower’s sympathetic whispers: “Sei unserer Schwester nicht böse, / du trauriger, blasser Mann!” (“Do not be angry at our sister, you sad, pale man!”). These last words fall chromatically again as the stanza concludes on a half cadence in the tonic key. As with “Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen,” the coda is as equally important as the vocal melody. With a syncopated unease, the melody climbs through chromatic harmonies to the dominant before descending into the final tonic chord.      Joseph DuBose

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

courtesy of YouTube