Schumann's Sechs Gesänge (Op. 89) were composed between May 10 and May 18, 1850, and published the same year. Schumann dedicated the volume to the famed Swedish soprano, Jenny Lind (1820-1887), who befriended the Schumanns in 1845 and performed with them on several occasions. The poems are all by Wielfried von der Neun—the pen name of F.W.T. Schöpff—and, in all fairness, are not the finest literary examples among the composer's song texts.

The first of the set, Es stürmet am Abendhimmel (The Stormy Evening Sky), equates love with changing clouds during an evening storm. At first purple and dramatic, the storm cloud eventually turns gray. Octave tremolos in the right hand suggests stormy weather, the violence of which comes out in the wide leaps in the voice part, as well as the active, yet halting, melody.

Heimliches Verschwinden (Secret Disappearance) describes the silent, imperceptible disappearance of spring as it gives way to the "tyranny" of summer without saying goodbye. Triplet arpeggios plummet downward around a voice part that becomes increasingly chromatic and recitative-like in the middle of the song. The rapid accompaniment, played mostly piano, lends an ephemeral atmosphere to the song.

Purple again makes an appearance in Herbstlied (Autumn Song), in which the narrator regrets the coming of Autumn. Again Schumann uses a tremolo pattern in the piano part to fill out the harmony and give a sense of forward motion. The song is in two parts, the second of which shifts from the minor to the major mode and features swirling arpeggios supporting the voice part, which becomes more confident as the narrator describes the distant purple mountains.

A traveler reluctantly bids farewell to the sounds of the forest in Abschied vom Walde (Parting from the Forest). Schumann's setting is through-composed, with a leaping, restless melody. The traveler's unsettled spirit comes through at the end of the voice part, which closes on the tonic of (B flat), but is harmonized with an inconclusive chord.

Thick, block chords propel In's Freie (Outdoors), a celebration of being out in open spaces away from the city. Schumann cast the song in B flat major and in ternary form with a quiet, transparent middle section. Both text and music of the opening return to close the song, which ends firmly after some text repetition.

In Röselein, röselein (Rosebud, Rosebud), the narrator falls asleep near a stream and has a dream of plucking and smelling a wonderful rose without thorns. When he awakes, he sees about him only thorny roses and hears the stream laugh at him, saying, "remember, all roses have thorns." Schumann's brief introduction to this A major song is in A minor, but it returns at the end in the major. The minor mode appears again as the dreamer confronts a disappointing, thorny reality.

© John Palmer, Rovi

6.Röselein

In the elegant, charming Röselein, Röselein!, Op. 89/6 (Little Rose), Robert Schumann used through-composed style to bring great meaning to this setting of von der Neun's poem. The protagonist questions a rose's nature and retells his dream of a thornless rose and of his disappointment and embarrassment of the waking truth. Using key change as a means of expression, the composer set the recollection of the dream in A minor and its relative major, and the majority of the rest of the work in the tonic major of A major. The vocalist opens the piece with a four-bar recitative, minimally supported by the accompaniment. Immediately following, the piano presents the song's only theme in two bars; the roll and flutter of these sixteenth notes varies in their numerous reappearances throughout the tune. Although at times the piece interpretively challenges the vocalist, it primarily showcases the pianist's ability to fluidly execute the delicate figuration. The composer dedicated the work and its preceding songs of the Sechs Gesänge, Op. 89, cycle to Jenny Lind.

© Meredith Gailey, Rovi