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Robert Schumann - “Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen“ (When I Hear the Song), song for voice & piano (Dichterliebe), Op. 48 No. 10, 1840. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone, live. “Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen“ Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen, Das einst die Liebste sang, So will mir die Brust zerspringen Vor wildem Schmerzendrang. Es treibt mich ein dunkles Sehnen Hinauf zur Waldeshöh', Dort löst sich auf in Tränen Mein übergroßes Weh'. Poem by Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856) “When I Hear the Song“ I hear the little song sounding that my beloved once sang, and my heart wants to shatter from savage pain's pressure. I am driven by a dark longing up to the wooded heights, there is dissolved in tears my supremely great pain. 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 The quiet dynamic level experiences no change until it is finally superseded by a crescendo during the stirring release of the poem's emotional intensity in the epilogue.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.
