Chorlied

The most natural music of all ...

An audio journey through the wonderful world of Romantic choral song

Barbara Mohn

 

Singing in the open air

“It is the most natural music of all when four people go out together in the woods or in a rowing boat, and carry the music with them and inside them”, wrote Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy on 1 August 1839 to his friend Klingemann. The previous year Mendelssohn had published his first collection of Sechs Lieder für Sopran, Alt, Tenor und Bass op. 41 and added a postscript to these which made clear his intentions with regard to the choral songs: “Im Freien zu singen” („To sing in the open air“). With this he literally meant “under an open sky” in contrast to the concert hall; he was thinking of cultured social gatherings such as he had experienced in his parents’ park-like garden in Berlin or at a woodland fete near Frankfurt, where singers and listeners had enjoyed his songs, along with fruit, juice, and wine. The songs were intended to be in harmony with nature in their content and their style. Most of his songs for mixed choir are based on nature poetry; Mendelssohn particularly loved spring with all its connotations of renewal, awakening, song, and love. His second collection of choral songs op. 48 (1840) contains two magnificent spring songs – Frühlingsahnung and Frühlingsfeier after ­poems by Ludwig Uhland.

 


Mendelssohn: Frühlingsahnung, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius, CD Carus 83.287


Mendelssohn: Frühlingsfeier, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius, CD Carus 83.287

The forest stands programmatically at the beginning of the first song collection, here as a place of longing for the city dweller who envies the birds free in the forest; this is very similar to the famous Abschied vom Walde/O Täler weit, o Höhen, which has become a folk song.


Mendelssohn: Abschied vom Walde, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius, CD Carus 83.287

Mendelssohn’s choral songs are suffused with the ideal of the “most natural music”, to be equated with the aesthetic of “noble simplicity”. Hence the strophic song form, triadic melodies and avoidance of counterpoint play a major role; but at the same time the songs are full of fine artistic interior structures.

 

Ballads and romances

 

Mendelssohn’s friend Robert Schumann, undisputably one of the greatest masters of the solo song, also wrote numerous songs for choir which are surprisingly far too little known. Whereas lyric poetry played a major role in solo song, with choral songs Schumann concentrated more on narrative poetry. “With true passion I have begun to write a collection of ballads for choir; something which I believe does not yet exist”, he wrote in March 1848 to his publisher. Schumann laid claim to having created something new, probably specifically for the genre of songs for mixed choir. Narrative songs were already widespread for male voice choir, and of course in the solo songs of e.g. Carl Loewe. As early as the first of four collections of Romanzen und Balladen (op. 67) of 1849, Schumann demonstrated his varied approach to ballads: harmonically somber in the König von Thule, ironically-jokey and written in dialog in Schön-Rohtraut, and dramatic in Ungewitter.



Schumann: König von Thule, Calmus Ensemble, CD Carus 83.447


Schumann: Schön Rohtraut, Calmus Ensemble, CD Carus 83.447


Schumann: Ungewitter, Calmus Ensemble, CD Carus 83.447


The showpieces are Romanze vom spanischen Gänsebuben op. 145, no. 5 and Bänkelsänger Willi op. 146, no. 2. Here, Schumann used the term ‘romance’ instead of ‘ballad’ – the usual name for a verse genre from Romance languages based on old sagas or historical events, although he also included Scottish lyric poetry by Robert Burns. But despite the emphasis on rather folk-like narrative poetry in his choral writing, Schumann also drew on other kinds of poetry, e.g. in his Vier doppelchörige Gesänge op. 141 (1849) with the opening piece An die Sterne and Goethe’s Talismane as the conclusion.



Schumann: An die Sterne, Orpheus Vocalensemble, CD Carus 83.327


Schumann: Talismane, Orpheus Vocalensemble, CD Carus 83.327

With this harmonically audacious work, which does not use double-choir texture in a historicising manner and has nothing of the song-­like, Schumann once again embarked on “completely undeveloped terrain”, as he wrote to his publisher.

 

Music-making in the home

With the rapid rise of mixed-voice choral societies in the bourgeois era, choral song rapidly established itself as a genre and was enthusiastically cultivated by numerous composers. Although Mendelssohn had avoided using the piano as accompaniment in his choral songs, as for him it “tasted too much of the ­drawing room and the music cabinet”, an increasing number of secular songs with piano accompaniment were composed. Here, the composers did not always have the large concert hall in mind, but more especially musical evenings and entertainment in bourgeois households. From the 1860s onwards many quartets with piano were written; in this context Johannes Brahms’s vocal quartets with piano accompaniment (opp. 31, 92, 103, and 112), especially his op. 64 were influential.



Brahms: Der Abend, aus op. 64, Vocalensemble Rastatt, Holger Speck, CD Carus 83.448

The choral performance of such solo quartets was also customary with the Liebeslieder Waltzes op. 52 and the New Liebeslieder Waltzes op. 65 even during Brahms’s time, and was tolerated, albeit under protest, by the composer. The Brahms admirers Heinrich von Herzogenberg and Josef Gabriel Rheinberger also wrote magnificent quartets, and we can gain an impression of these from such works as Herzogenberg’s 4 Notturnos op. 22 ( no. 2: Die Nacht ist wie ein stilles Meer) or Rheinberger’s Die Wasserfee op. 21 of 1869.



Herzogenberg: Die Nacht ist wie ein stilles Meer op. 22,2, Ensemble cantissimo, Markus Utz, CD Carus 83.451


Rheinberger: Die Wasserfee, Solistenquartett, CD Carus 83.376

 

Folk song or “in folk style”

For the development of the choral song in the wake of Mendelssohn and Schumann the aesthetic consideration of folk song was significant; this was associated with the folk song collections of the 19th century in which primacy was always given to the authenticity of the texts and melodies collected and to their artistic treatment. Feelings ran high because Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio, in both his volumes Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Original-Weisen (1838/40), and the Tübingen composer Friedrich Silcher not only collected songs, but occasional­ly also recreated works in folk style. Johannes Brahms remained quite relaxed about this: “I can quite easily distance myself from this argument – authentic or inauthentic”, he wrote in 1894 to his friend Deiters, referring to his own folk song arrangements. For Brahms it was above all the quality of the text and the melody which counted, and he devoted himself from 1854 until shortly before his death to the arrangement of folk songs, including famous pieces such as Da unten im Tale or the modally-­influenced old song about Schnitter Tod.



Brahms: Da unten im Tale, Vocalensemble Rastatt, Holger Speck, CD Carus 83.448



Brahms: Schnitter Tod, Vocalensemble Rastatt, Holger Speck, CD Carus 83.448

However, Brahms published all his arrangements without opus numbers. Brahms’s admirer Heinrich von Herzogenberg was inspired to make numerous arrangements of sacred and secular folk songs by Böhme’s Altdeutsches Liederbuch (1877), in which he experimented with different approaches, even counterpoint. A beautiful example is All mein Gedanken die ich hab.

 


Herzogenberg: All mein Gedanken, die ich hab, Ensemble cantissimo, Markus Utz, CD Carus 83.024

 

Conversely Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, who had actually elevated the “natural” to a compositional principle and most definitely composed “in the folk style”, declined to arrange well-known folk songs. In his eyes folk songs were the realm of untrained singers; when they were sung by a “singer versed in art ... everything was without charm, all effect lost; it then sounded as if they were profaned – like a bloom without dew” (he wrote on 26 September 1900 to Henriette Hecker). Rheinberger’s preference was for nature poetry: “It lies above the silence of the forests, in the song of the birds, in the raging of the storm, in the depth of pain, in the idea of the greatest happiness and turns, consciously or unconsciously, time and time again to the eternal source of everything, to God”, he wrote in 1900. So above all it is nature poems which are found in his work, such as Dennoch singt die Nachtigall (op. 170, no. 5 of 1892) or Die Quelle from op. 170. With these nature poems and his spring songs and nocturnes he – late in the century – connects with Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms.



Rheinberger: Dennoch singt die Nachtigall, Freiburger Vokalensemble, Wolfgang Schäfer, CD Carus 83.177


Rheinberger: Die Quelle, Freiburger Vokalensemble, Wolfgang Schäfer, CD Carus 83.177