Those who criticize Robert Schumann for not grasping the depths of meaning in the poems he sets perhaps could be accused of engaging in a shallow reading of the lied composer's musico-poetic sensitivities. In fact, some scholars argue that Schumann's subtlety—his ability not only to render texts, or even interpret them, but also to comment on them with tones—is the very essence of his song style. When hearing his 1840 collection, Dichterliebe (The Poet's Love), one must not only look for correspondences between poetic image and musical figure, but artistic incongruities, as well—moments where Schumann steps back from the verse, takes a critical stance, and engages with the poet on equal and sometimes even contradictory ground.

Widely considered his best song cycle, Dichterliebe was composed within a matter of days—amazingly, during the same month as Schumann's Op. 24, Liederkreis. Dichterliebe takes for its texts 16 poems from the "Lyrisches Intermezzo," a section of Heinrich Heine's Buch der Lieder from 1827. (Originally, Schumann's cycle included 20 songs, but four were omitted when Dichterliebe was published as Op. 48 in 1844.) Heine's group follows a trajectory of increasing irony. The opening poems express an innocent hope that the speaker's love will be reciprocated; the first two selections, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (In the Wonderful Month of May) and Aus meinen Tränen spriessen (Springing From My Tears) both feature the optimistic imagery of springtime blossoms budding and birds singing. From the beginning, however, Schumann hints at a less favorable outcome. While it is not an uncommon device for Schumann to end the vocal line hanging on a dissonant chord, leaving the piano to carry out a song's conclusion, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai ends even more ambiguously. The song itself ends ethereally on an unresolved chord, suggesting that the singer's love may remain unrequited. By the fifth song in the cycle, the speaker's thoughts of his lover have already slipped into the past tense; the seventh song, Ich grolle nicht, takes on a decidedly ironic tone. A sturdy bass line supports a repeated chordal texture, while the singer's line assumes a regal, almost heroic air. The text, on the other hand, feigns austerity in order to veil its suffering: "I saw you in a dream/and saw the darkness trapped in your soul/and saw the serpent that gnaws at your heart./I saw, my love, how miserable you are." Schumann's overblown accompaniment makes it clear that it is the speaker, not his beloved, who is miserable. By the end of the collection, all pretense is gone, and the speaker's tone is jaded. Schumann's music is likewise plodding and unrelenting in its rhythm and figuration, and even more unrelenting in its dark parody. Triumphant ascending arpeggios break briefly into the major mode, only to find a sardonic answer in minor once again. Curiously, however, as the singer's final, sorrowful strains fade, a bittersweet piano postlude offers a sense of repose found nowhere in Heine's original.

© All Music Guide

1.Im wunderschönen Monat Mai

The swaying of breezy, springtime blossoms is implied by the graceful accompaniment of Robert Schumann's slow, tender Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, Op. 48/1 (In the Wondrous Month of May), the opening work of Dichterliebe, Op. 48. In this well-known, strophic setting of Heine's poetry, the protagonist recalls the month in which he confessed his affections to his beloved. Aside from a few expansions in volume, as indicated by the four crescendos at the most sensitive words, the vocal line is quiet throughout the duration of both brief verses, which are identical except in text. The accompaniment, essentially a mirror of the vocal line, shines when the voice is silent, revealing its potential as a solo piano piece. Written in F sharp minor, the tune drifts between this key and A major; its final chord, dissonant and extended by a fermata, reaches resolution in the subsequent song, Aus meinen Tränen spriessen, Op. 48/2.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

2.Aus meinen Tränen sprießen

Immediately following the tender, affectionate Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, Op. 48/1, is Aus meinen Tränen sprießen, Op. 48/2 (From My Tears), the first work in Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe, Op. 48, to introduce the cycle's conflict. The song is a poignant promise of affection: in exchange for much desired love the protagonist vows to give flowers blossomed from tears and nightingales bore of sighs. Regardless of the captivating words and the delicate vocal melody attention is easily drawn toward the piano's subtle chromatics descents. Offering balance to these diversions, the accompaniment enhances the voice in three separate pianissimo measures by completing the melodic phrase after the singer has paused. A sobbing motif helps to establish the composition's emotional depth and adds unity to the cycle when it reappears in Wenn ich in deine Augen seh', Op. 48/4, Und wüßten's die Blumen, die kleinen, Op. 48/8, Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen, Op. 48/10, Ich hab' im Traum geweinet, Op. 48/13, and Allnächtlich im Traume, Op. 48/14.

© Meredith Gailey, Rovi

3.Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne

Few of Robert Schumann's songs are capable of being artfully performed on a single breath; however, Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne, Op. 48/3 (The Rose, the Lily, the Dove, the Sun), the third work of Dichterliebe, Op. 48, qualifies as such. So tightly compressed are the notes of the vocal line that the singer has only one written pause—a sixteenth rest. In a little over 16 quick, animated measures, the protagonist delicately describes his newly found affections for a girl and her flowery characteristics. Singing mezzo-forte, the vocalist speeds along with no dynamic markings until reaching a ritardando in the 11th measure and another at the end of his last phrase. The tempo is propelled by the sixteenth notes of the right hand, each of which is interrupted by either an eighth or a sixteenth note in the left. Like the dove mentioned in Heine's text, the piano's sounds flap steadily through the majority of the tune until staccatos in the six-bar postlude create a dynamic conclusion.

© Meredith Gailey, Rovi

4.Wenn ich in deine Augen seh'

With calm tenderness, the protagonist of Wenn ich in deine Augen seh', Op. 48/4 (When I Look into Your Eyes), expresses to his sweetheart how she arouses in him feelings of comfort, renewal, and most sadly, mistrust and bitterness. Robert Schumann emphasized and supported the vocalist's recitative-like testimony by mirroring and echoing the vocal line in the piano treble. The vocalist leads the presentation of the melody, but the accompaniment is the most musical, especially at the plunging notes immediately following the words "doch wenn du sprichst" (but when you say). Overall, the postlude is the quietest section and it returns thrice to the tune's primary rhythmic pattern, which is merely one measure in length. If performed with all of the works of the Dichterliebe, Op. 48, the intense contrast between this song and Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne, Op. 48/3, is nicely introduced by a long silence between the two.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

5.Ich will meine Seele tauchen

"Ich will meine Seele tauchen," Op. 48/5 (I Want to Plunge My Soul) (1840), is an excellent illustration of how Dichterliebe, Op. 48, was unified through subject matter and musical material. The elusive nature of the song is musically reminiscent of "Die Rose, die Lilie," Op. 48/2, which also refers to affections for "the lily." Specifically, in the text of the second song Heine mentioned having loved the lily in rapture, whereas the fifth tune describes the desire to "plunge my soul into the chalice of the lily," which will produce a song reminiscent of a tender kiss from a beloved. This unsung song becomes the musical focus of the latter composition. Overall the voice part is commendable for its restraint and sheer tonal beauty, but it carries less melodic significance than the piano, which develops the real vocal line of the work once the text declamations have ceased. This passage is then immediately followed by the emerging and collapsing harmonies of the epilogue. Schumann's use of the piano as much more than a mere accompaniment to the voice later became a prevalent characteristic in the majority of his songs, but was still a rather new feature of song cycles in 1840. Recalling "Ich will meine Seele tauchen," flowers reappear in the text of the sixth, eighth, twelfth, and fifteenth songs of the cycle.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

6.Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome

At least double the length of any of its preceding songs in Dichterliebe, Op. 48, Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome, Op. 48/6 (In the Rhine, the Holy River), is one of several of Robert Schumann's vocal compositions that was structurally inspired by Bach. With each word, Heine's text more intimately focuses in on the romantic treasures of the Rhine area, first with Cologne and its cathedral, and then with a hanging portrait of the Virgin and her facial details, which are eventually compared to those possessed by the protagonist's lover. To illustrate this poetic depth, stately downward arpeggios weave through both of the accompaniment's staves above the organ-like line at the bottom of the bass. Initially quite loud, the vocal line is quickly reduced in volume at "Im Dom da steht ein Bildis" (In the cathedral there stands a portrait) and remains at this amplitude for the duration of the work. The song is linked to at least two other works as its text was also set by Schumann's successor, Robert Franz, and portions of its music were reused in the playfully affectionate Volksliedchen, Op. 51/2.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

7.Ich grolle nicht

The title words of Robert Schumann's Ich grolle nicht, Op. 48/7 (I Bear No Grudge), were included on six occasions in the song to emphasize the protagonist's ability to rise above offense; the other melancholic works of Dichterliebe, Op. 48, are ultimately overcome by grief. Using Heine's text, the vocalist directly renounces an unloving, serpentine vixen, supposedly detaching from previous affections. The accompaniment's relatively narrow dynamics and static chords (many of which are unresolved sevenths) suggest the frigidity of the woman's heart and the seriousness of the man's intentions; even so, the composition provides enough leeway for the two performers to establish a sense of malleability in the first four measures. With the application of thoughtful artistry, this tune is capable of exceptional expression, despite being set in the key of C major in common time. Culminating the intensification of the postlude, three final forte chords in the last two bars defiantly confirm the composition's mood and significance.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

10.Hör ich das Liedchen klingen

Hearing the familiar strains of a lover's tune, the protagonist of Robert Schumann's slow, sustained Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen, Op. 48/10 (When I Hear the Song), becomes tearful and retreats to the woods for comfort. The reminiscent air is suggested by a simple three-tone, seven-note melody that appears in the first two measures of the voice part. Throughout the work, the singer's notes are ghostly echoed by wafting, syncopated sixteenth notes that drop in groups of threes in the treble line of the accompaniment. The quiet dynamic level experiences no change until it is finally superseded by a crescendo during the stirring release of the poem's emotional intensity in the epilogue. This grief is eventually overcome in the last five measures, which chromatically climb downward. The song's text, by Heine, was also set by Meyerbeer in 1832, Robert Franz in 1843, and Edvard Grieg in the 1880s.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

13.Ich hab im Traum geweinet

In Robert Schumann's Ich hab' im Traum geweinet, Op. 48/13 (I Wept in My Dream), each of the protagonist's three bittersweet dreams contains a different premonition about his loved one, which in turn influences the degree of his weeping. These fluctuations are sensitively reflected by both the voice part and the piano's "response." In the work's first two verses, which are almost musically identical, the singer whispers a legato line with no support from the accompaniment; lightly played, dotted piano chords are only heard when the vocalist pauses. E flat minor chords, in specific, continuously evoke a feeling of death, among other sentiments. The climax of the final section is considered the greatest of Dichterliebe, Op. 48, for here the protagonist's weeping becomes an intense flood of relief and sadness, as expressed in the accompaniment. The song's words, written by Heine, were also set by Robert Franz, C. Löwe, and G. Huë.

© Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide