4.Maigesang

Ludwig van Beethoven's solo songs have suffered from perpetual neglect, ever since they were composed. In fact, there is little indication that performers took interest in them at all during the composer's lifetime, and since then they have been overshadowed by Beethoven's monumental instrumental works—not to mention Schubert's later, larger, and more famous song collection. Maigesang, one of Beethoven's early efforts in the solo vocal genre, demonstrates at once the composer's admitted struggle with writing a clear melody unburdened by architectonics, as well as the kind of poignant expression that can arise from this struggle.

Maigesang is the fourth of eight songs on texts by various poets, published in 1805 as Beethoven's Op. 52. All the songs are thought to have been composed during the previous decade, however, and in fact the initial conception of the song under consideration here can be dated with some accuracy to around 1795. It was at that time that Beethoven had provided music for Michael Umlauff's Die schöne Schusterin, a singspiel premiered in 1796. An aria from that production, O welch ein Leben (published after the composer's death as half of the Arias (2), WoO 91), featured a theme that was later used in Maigesang.

Beethoven takes his text for this song (known in settings by other composers as "Mailied") from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur" (How brightly Nature gleams for me). The singsong shapes of Goethe's rhymed couplets are set to straightforward melodic contours that rise and fall predictably and cadence in concert with the words, reflecting the carefree, lovestruck tone of the poem's idyllic scene. What stands out is not so much any special dramatic flair or pictorial flourish, but rather the mixture of serenity and amorous anticipation lent to the vocal line by the piano's subtle undercurrent. The linkage of nature's springtime beauty and romantic bliss is a familiar trope, of course, but Beethoven uncovers something poignant in the simplicity of Goethe's text and conveys it largely through the piano's effervescent texture. This is especially apparent in the interludes between the song's three verses, where a sprightly falling third figure in the treble of the piano sends ripples across the transparent musical surface. When the two themes of the poem—nature and love—come together in the third verse, the figure briefly reappears to underscore the singer's bucolic final words.

© All Music Guide

7.Marmotte

Marmotte is the seventh of the eight songs in Beethoven's Op. 52, a collection published in the summer of 1805. The songs in the collection, however, are thought to have been composed sometime before, likely in the mid-1790s while the composer was still in Bonn, and revised or edited shortly before their publication about a decade later. The Op. 52 collection features songs on texts by various authors and treating various subjects. Marmotte is one of two songs in the collection based on texts by the preeminent German romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (the other being the sunny ode to nature and love, Maigesang, Op. 52/4). A consideration of Beethoven's setting of Marmotte reveals certain nuances of text setting and expression that are easy to overlook in a composer much less known for his intimate song stylings than his monumentally architectonic instrumental works.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Marmotte is its extreme brevity. In this regard, Beethoven seems to be attempting to beat the poet at his own game, for the poignancy in Goethe's poem (known also by its incipit, "Ich komme schon") derives largely from what it omits. It is cast in the voice of a wandering entertainer, perhaps a hurdy-gurdy player, who travels with a marmot as a companion and sidekick. As the phrase "with the marmot" is repeated in the refrain and throughout the text, the implication is clear that this means "and with no one else"—the speaker, projecting that particular pathos of the heartbroken and world-weary clown, is utterly alone. Beethoven conveys this by whittling down Goethe's three verses to one, compressing the song's loneliness into a lone strophe and refrain: "Through many a land have I passed/with the marmot/Always finding something to eat/with the marmot/Here with the marmot, there with the marmot/Everywhere, with the marmot."

This mood is emphasized by the overcast A minor key, as well as the slow inertia of the left hand's arpeggiated accompaniment. The vocal line moves almost exclusively in stepwise fashion, along simple rising and falling melodic contours, leaving little ringing in listeners' ears in terms of melody, but rather leaving them with a particular hue of expressive color. The piano's subtle elaboration of the melody in the short epilogue, with faint echoes at the octave, reinforces the mood of the speaker's long and lonely journey with the marmot.

© Jeremy Grimshaw, All Music Guide