Classical Music | Mezzo-Soprano

Recorded on 08/11/2011, uploaded on 09/26/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Though Hugo Wolf today is lauded as one of the most greatest composers of German Lied during the late 19^th century (so much so that he is known almost exclusively for his songs), he struggled in vain during his lifetime to shed his reputation as a mere songwriter. His ultimate goal was to follow in the footsteps of his great idol, Richard Wagner, and become a successful opera composer. During his final days, before the ravaging effects of syphilis stripped away the last of his sanity, he worked frantically on an opera entitled Manuel Venegas, but managed only to complete fifty pages. Despite his failure at opera, Wolf did succeed at another type of large-scale composition, the Liederbuch, or songbook, of which he produced several during his career. Beginning in 1888, a violent outburst of creativity brought forth three of these collections before the end of the succeeding year. The Mörike-Lieder came first, followed by the Eichendorff-Lieder. On October 27, 1888, he began setting a collection of fifty-one poems by Goethe. Wolf composed at a breakneck pace, sometimes completing two songs a day. With the exception of “Die Spröde” which would be recomposed nearly a year later on October 21, 1889, the Goethe-Lieder was completed on February 12. It was published a year later in Vienna.

“Als ich auf dem Euphrat schiffte” (“When I was sailing on the Euphrates”) comes from Goethe’s West-östlicher Diwan (West-Eastern Diwan), a collection of lyrical poems written between 1814 and 1819, and more specifically, from the Suleika-Nameh, or Book of Zuleika. In the poem, Zuleika dreams that the golden ring she received from her lover falls off her finger into the Euphrates River. Awakened from the dream, she implores from him its meaning. In Wolf’s setting of this brief two-stanza poem, the gentle flow of the Euphrates is depicted by the broken chords in the treble of the piano accompaniment and the steadily moving bass line. The song begins in A major, yet the vocal melody leads the music seamlessly into A-flat major by the start of the third line. The music turns towards the minor mode as Zuleika reveals that losing the ring was but a dream. As effortlessly as before, Wolf returns to the tonic key of A major as she entreats her lover for the meaning of her dream. Without answer, the song ends questioning on a C-sharp major chord.    Joseph DuBose