During July 1850, Schumann produced a spate of songs, including Op. 77 Nos. 2 and 3, Op. 125 Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 5, Op. 127 No. 4, and all five songs of the Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 96. Just over a month later he would leave Dresden to become the city music director of Düsseldorf, after which he would compose very few songs. Op. 96, the fourth volume of Lieder und Gesänge, was published in 1851 by Whistling.

"Nachtlied," (Night Song) is Schumann's setting of the famous Wandrers Nachtlied, (Wanderer's Night Song), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). In this sigh of the weary traveler, the setting is slow and deliberate, the melody generally diatonic. Schumann's attention to the details of the prosody is evident at the line, "kaum einen Hauch" (hardly a breath). Here, Goethe disrupts the rhythm of the poem unexpectedly to reinforce the meaning of the text, and Schumann responds to this with a sudden push towards E major. The song continues to avoid its "home" key of C major until final word of the text.

As in most of Schumann's songs, the piano part of "Schneeglöckchen" (Snowdrops) is far simpler technically than are his works for solo piano. By an anonymous poet, the text tells of the snowdrop flowers' resistance to the onslaught of winter. In ternary form, the song begins in A flat major with a light accompaniment of arpeggios. In the middle of the central section, the harmony shifts to a bright A major as winter calls. To close the song, Schumann returns to A flat and a modified version of the music for the first verse, but supporting the narrator's final question, "Wo ist mein Vaterland?" (where is my homeland?) with an unsettling C major chord. Throughout, Schumann articulates the iambic pattern of the poem.

"Ihre Stimme" (Your Voice), by Graf von Platen, tells of the special voice that one's heart understands much more than it does the meaningless babble of the rest of the world. As in most of Schumann's songs, "Ihre Stimme" has a melody and harmony that are generally diatonic. The light accompaniment continues throughout the song, which is through-composed, but with reiterated thematic units.

In "Gesungen!" (Sung!), by Wilfried von der Neun, all things—rain, passion, violence, flames—are spoken of in terms of how we hear them. A harmonically colorful setting that begins in C minor and ends, without warning, in C major, Schumann's "Gesungen!" boasts a quirky melody appropriate for the odd rhythms of the verse.

"Himmel und Erde" (Heaven and Earth), also by Neun, ends the set in A flat major. Schumann departs from the rest of the songs in Op. 96 by employing a repeated-chord accompaniment completely independent of the voice part. The majestic solemnity of the song, conveying the grandeur of heaven and earth, continues through the B major central section, which addresses the blossoms of May.

© John Palmer, All Music Guide

1.Nachtlied

The song "Nachtlied," Op. 96/1 (Night song), exemplifies Robert Schumann's late stylistic change of attempting to allow music to speak for what words can not. In his undertaking, in this particular composition, he encountered difficulties in successfully aligning Goethe's text with the music, especially where semi-disruptive rests were placed within vocal phrases. High-pitched notes in the accompaniment suggest life in the upper branches of the forest and two modulations from the original key of C major, one to E minor and the other to A major, add an element of intrigue to the tune's predominantly peaceful mood. Performances of the work best capture the intended atmosphere when Schumann's metronomic mark is ignored and his Sehr langsam is followed. He later wrote a tune for chorus under the same title in Op. 108 using Hebbel's poetry. The present work's words were also set by Löwe and Liszt, and quite popularly by Schubert.

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3.Ihre Stimme

In "Ihre Stimme" (Her Voice), Op. 96/3, Robert Schumann commendably distracts attention away from Count August von Platen's weak text by creating a gracefully sweeping melody. Ideal for all but a light soprano voice, the vocal line moves firmly, yet freely, through its generous phrases. Perhaps implying the wave-like vibration of the voice and heart, as mentioned in the poem, the accompaniment is filled with legato sixteenth-note arpeggios that rock up and down in the treble above low quarter and half notes in the bass. The composition's main shortcoming is its placement of a repeated section of the first verse after the area where the piece begins to chromatically crumble.

Written in the key of A flat major, the tune is another one of the composer's soft works that is touched by a handful of crescendos, which swell simultaneously in both the vocal and piano lines.

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