Martin Katz & Friends

Martin Katz & Friends What’s in a Song? Hugo Wolf’s Complete Mörike Songs Martin Katz / Piano Sarah Shafer / Soprano Susan Platts / Mezzo-soprano Daniel McGrew / Tenor Jesse Blumberg / Baritone January 10 & 12, 2020 Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre Ann Arbor CONTENT Notes on the Programs 3 Part I Friday, January 10 7 Part II Sunday, January 12 15 Artists 20 MÖRIKE-LIEDER (1888) Hugo Wolf Born March 13, 1860 in Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia Died February 22, 1903 in Vienna Eduard Mörike Born September 8, 1804 in Ludwigsburg, Germany Died June 4, 1875 in Stuttgart, Germany On countless occasions, UMS has written two-dozen songs before the invited me to contribute notes to winter of 1888, including some to accompany performances in order to excellent poetry by Heine and Kerner, help audiences appreciate what they but no words had truly unlocked his would be hearing. Some of these genius. With his acquaintance of notes were for concerts when I was Eduard Mörike’s poetry, a miraculous on stage; others not so. I have always explosion of inspiration took place in been particularly eager to the composer, an explosion not communicate my excitement over any dissimilar to Robert Schumann’s year extraordinary features of that of song in 1840, when almost all the evening’s vocal repertoire. My Lieder we know and love were born. In musings have included Schubert’s only 238 days — a shorter period than Winterreise, written in the painful last two U-M semesters — Wolf fashioned years of his short life; Benjamin these “sung poems,” sometimes Britten’s Canticles, which create mini- creating three in a single day. Even staged dramas in a concert hall with more astounding, the Mörike barebone forces; the last speeches of manuscripts show few changes to his Ophelia, set to music by Strauss, who original ideas, with neat fair copies had to literally re-invent his musical rivaling those of Mozart. language to depict her insanity also Although he had little influence at come to mind. I could go on forever the time of the publication of these listing amazing musical and poetic songs, Wolf requested that the events, for they are inevitably the volume’s title page read: “Fifty-three stuff of the most thrilling vocal poems of Eduard Mörike, set to music concerts presented for us, many as by Hugo Wolf.” (Note the word part of the UMS Song Biennial, “poems”; nowhere does the word created just a few years ago. “song” appear.) The composer’s Hugo Wolf’s first important song stubborn insistence on this specific collection, the 53 gems of the Mörike- wording tells us almost everything we Lieder, deserves no less attention, no need to know about him, and certainly less admiration, and certainly merits validates Wolf’s being commonly inclusion in the Art Song Hall of Fame, called “The Poet’s Composer.” In even if it is not as well-known or comparing these Mörike songs with celebrated as other similarly colossal his previous efforts, Wolf now achievements. Wolf had already declared: “What I write now, I write for 3 posterity.” Lest you think from these preceding How did Wolf’s reverence for the paragraphs that Wolf is only about the text manifest itself in his strategies of scientifically setting text compositional technique? Native to music, let me hasten to add that the German speakers inevitably attest to composer only began the task of the fact that they hear the sung words creating a song with putting those precisely as they would hear them essentials in place. Then came the spoken by a narrator. Before putting challenge of creating the specific pen to paper, Wolf would recite the pictorial and emotional atmosphere poems aloud endlessly until he felt he for each and every poem. In fact, no had found the correct rhythms and two songs are alike, and the musical pitches for their inflected sentences. materials are changed for the Bear in mind that there is no rhythmic demands of each poem. notation which can perfectly capture One must say that Wolf was the rhythms of speech; Wolf’s fortunate indeed to live when and choices, however, come closer to the where he did. His illustrious true timing and inflection of speech predecessors, Schubert and than any other composer in the Schumann, had no access to Wagner’s German language. revolutionary techniques, and Of course there is some sacrificing although Brahms had heard Wagner’s to be made in order to achieve this operas, he professed no interest in verbal-musical fusion; one can’t have the new music-drama. Wagner had it all. With the Mörike-Lieder we do not created harmonies which redefined frequently find vocal melodies which our very notion of how emotions make instrumentalists envious as we sound. In addition, the Bavarian giant so often do in songs by Schubert and had invented a new relationship Brahms. And yet as purely musical between voice and accompaniment, creations, these Wolf songs do not one in which the orchestra provides lack beauty or integrity in any way. the scenery and the psychology inside These are not poems spoken with and around the words. It is no incidental music in the background. accident that Wolf has been dubbed What other composers had reserved the “Wagner of the Lied,” for voice exclusively for the singer is now and piano interact the same way in his shared by both performers, with the Lieder as Isolde and her orchestra do pianist often winning the day in terms in the Liebestod, for example. Finally, of melody. Ask any singers studying yet another lucky chronological Wolf songs — from this songbook or accident for Wolf was living in the era any others — and they will always of Sigmund Freud; the dawn of speak of confronting complications of psychoanalysis was only two years rhythm and pitch, and the necessity of before the Mörike songs were intense investigation which would not composed. If a composer wants to be required with simple symmetrical create a small music-drama of each melody and accompaniment. Fusion is song — as was clearly Wolf’s expensive technically and artistically, consistent goal — how amazing to but the reward chez Wolf is immense. have the subconscious and the new 4 appetite for intense emotional are high water marks of these laugh- investigation available at the same producing, slightly off-color time, and even in the same language! experiences. The dozen songs on Wolf, Wagner, and Freud…one might religious themes would seem to belie call it a kind of perfect storm for song Wolf’s lack of theistic commitment, composition in 1888. but we must remember that Wolf’s Although Wolf found his inspiration goal was to “become” the poem. One in Eduard Mörike’s texts, there were would never guess from “Karwoche,” vast differences in the lives and “Seufzer,” or “Wo find ich Trost?” that philosophies of the two men. The poet the composer was imitating a piety he was ultra-conservative and rather did not possess. rigid in his Catholic religious beliefs; In these concerts we are Wolf was a confirmed atheist. Mörike maintaining Wolf’s choices for first adored Mozart, with his strict musical and last songs of the set. Curiously, rules and regulations; Wolf’s heroes the song Wolf placed at the head of were Schumann and Wagner, both of the published volume of the Mörike- whom worked significant romantic Lieder was not the first to be changes upon vocal music. If the truth composed. That honor goes to “Der be told, Mörike, who died in 1875, had Tambour,” the portrait of the young not achieved much celebrity and was sentry on duty all night, missing both not widely read outside of academic mother and sweetheart, in that order. circles. Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder put a Instead, Wolf chose “Der Genesene an spotlight on his poetry which it had die Hoffnung,” to be the book’s never enjoyed previously. Today flagship, and it is the song with which Mörike is taught and respected in we begin these concerts. This can great part because of Wolf’s attention easily be seen as an autobiographical to him. choice, for in the poem, the cured one Wolf was attracted to many thanks the god of hope and begs recurring motifs in Mörike’s poetry. forgiveness for not acknowledging Ballads such as “Der Feurreiter” and him sooner. With these Mörike-Lieder “Die Geister am Mummelsee” gave Wolf felt “cured” of mediocrity and the composer huge canvases for paucity of inspiration and thanks his storytelling. Magic and mysticism are muse. This song had to be first. common themes too, and Wolf found He closes the opus with a hysterical perfect ways to portray this in music, revenge on his critics. Wolf had as in “Um Mitternacht” or the two worked as a music critic for three “Peregrina” songs. Both men were years before dedicating himself to fascinated by tiny things, and many of composition, and later endured harsh the best moments in the Mörike- words from the anti-Wagner camp in Lieder are populated by elves, fairies, Vienna, so he was personally well- butterflies, and the like. Parody and acquainted with criticism from both humor, even of a shocking sexual sides. Which of us would not enjoy nature, are easily found in the wreaking a bit of havoc on our own songbook too. “Nimmersatte Liebe,” critics? Kicking one down a staircase “Abschied,” and “Storchenbotschaft” and then indulging in a classic 5 Viennese waltz is Wolf’s vendetta of synthesis of a particular poem and his choice. Apart from these “bookend” music, one cannot imagine that text in songs, the remaining songs are any other musical clothing.

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