Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 8 Sir Bryn Terfel

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 10 Schubert – Selected Songs As its title suggests, “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” (“Scenes from Hades”), is not so much a song as a panorama. In three verses, poet Friedrich Schiller describes the torments of the damned, matched by Schubert’s bizarrely modulating harmony. Verse one gives us the sound, verse two the image. In verse three, “Ewigkeit” (Eternity) appears, breaking Saturn’s scythe with pounding chords. The song is a metaphor for melancholy, for, as Susan Youens writes in Schubert’s Late Lieder , in the cosmology of planetary symbolism, “Jupiter and the sanguine temperament were considered the happiest state, Saturn and the melancholy temperament the unhappiest.” Three of the songs in this set come from Schubert’s Schwanengesang (Swan Song) , a collection made by the publisher Haslinger shortly after the composer’s death. Half of the song texts are by Ludwig Rellstab, who had sent his poems to the dying Beethoven. “A few had been marked with pencil, in Beethoven’s own hand,” writes the poet in his memoirs, “those which he liked best and had then passed on to Schubert to set, since he himself felt too ill.” The brook in “Liebesbotschaft” (“Love’s Message”) is a clever thing, quick to echo the speaker’s words, and ready to offer a few riffs of its own. In October 1828 Schubert wrote to his publisher, Heinrich Albert Probst: “I have also set several songs by [Heinrich] Heine from Hamburg which were extraordinarily well-liked here.” That was perhaps a little disingenuous. One of Schubert’s circle, Franz Hartmann, spoke for the consensus: Heine’s poems contained “a good deal of wit and many wrong-headed views.” “Die Taubenpost” (“Pigeon Post”) is Schubert’s last love song. Schubert’s setting of his friend J. G. Seidl’s poem is a delightful meeting of the pictorial and the metaphorical. A young man blithely tells of the carrier pigeon in his employ, and one can hear the occasional flutter of wings. The bird’s name: “Sehnsucht” (“Longing”). “Auf dem Wasser zu singen” (“To Be Sung on the Water”) was composed in 1823, around the time of the Arpeggione Sonata and A-minor Quartet. Schubert translates into music the shimmering essence of water, that most ephemeral of substances. – © 2016 by David Evan Thomas “Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen” Among Schubert’s songs built on a quieter and more intimate scale, his “Litany for All Souls’ Day,” dating from 1816, is one of the most exquisitely lovely. In the poem by Johann Jacobi, the singer is able to intone a prayer for peace to everyone who has suffered. The mesmerizing effect of the song is achieved through the simplicity (both in the melodic line and the gentle accompaniment) that is the keynote of the song throughout. The lift in the voice toward the end of each stanza yields a series of heart-stopping moments in a song that has never lost its freshness or its power to move the listener. – Roger Pines Keel, Three Salt-Water Ballads In London a century ago, you might have taken a singing lesson from the English baritone Frederick Keel (1871-1954), who made many arrangements of folk songs, and transcribed Elizabethan songs from lute tablature. Keel set poems by John Masefield, best known for the oft-anthologized “Sea Fever.” To the British, Masefield was an enduring presence as the Poet Laureate of England from 1930–67, a post held before him by Dryden and Wordsworth. He also wrote novels and verse- plays, but it is the early sea poems he published as Salt - Water Ballads for which he is remembered. – © 2016 by David Evan Thomas Songs from the Celtic Isles One can trace the existence of Celts back as far as the seventh or eighth century B.C. It’s generally accepted that Celtic music was thriving beginning around 1600, accompanied by instruments as diverse as flute, fiddle, lute, and harp. In Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and the “Celtic isles” (Ireland and the Island of Man), as well as in Spain (Gaelicia) and France (Brittany), elements of Celtic folk music survive to this day, passed down through a diverse and vibrant oral tradition. The lyrics – usually incorporating a memorable refrain – place a particular emphasis on storytelling, as well as many of life’s most stressful experiences, often (but not always) with a tragic tone. A great many traditional Celtic songs in English have assumed a place among the world’s most beloved melodies. – Roger Pines Robert Schumann, “Belsatzar,” Opus 57; Zwei Venetianische Lieder , from Myrthen , Opus 25 On February 24, 1840, Robert Schumann wrote excitedly to his fiancée, Clara Wieck: “In the past few days I have fully completed a large, integrated cycle of Heine songs.” Heinrich Heine’s Book of Songs (1827) is a treasury of verse that would later inspire Schumann’s Dichterliebe . In his letter, Schumann also named Heine’s ballad “Belsatzar,” along with “a volume from Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan , a volume by Burns (an Englishman (sic), not often put to music)…altogether, seven volumes. Isn’t that quite a feat?” Much of this music would be published in Myrthen (Myrtles) , Opus 25. Program notes Dan Rest Sir Bryn Terfel in the title role/ Falstaff, Lyric, 1999|00 season.