If we're musical-lark-harking, we really need to count the number of: (1) "hark"s and (2) stanzas ["finally" (?) updated version]

[SUNDAY'S ORIGINAL "CONSTRUCTION-ZONE" NOTE: Proceed at your own risk. (It's the usual thing. I've gotta, and I mean just gotta, be able to see 'n' hear this thing with the audio clips in place.)]

[MONDAY "FINALLY (?) UPDATED VERSION" NOTE: With all those elements in place, I'm content to leave this post more or less as-was, with occasional added comments -- plus the promise of a follow-up focusing on the Schubert "Ständchen," even venturing into the totally unrelated but much better-known "Schubert Ständchen," the one from Schwanengesang. -- Ed.]

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Shakespeare, you'll recall, wrote just one stanza of "Hark, hark the lark" for Act II, Scene 3, of Cymbeline. We've already heard these two very different musical settings (in, admittedly, very different German translations), but not these performances. Let's listen just to this much.

"Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
and Phoebus 'gins arise,
his steeds to water at those springs
on chaliced flowers that lies;
and winking Mary-buds begin
to ope their golden eyes:
with every thing that pretty is,
my lady sweet, arise:
arise, arise!"

-- Cloten's song from Cymbeline, Act II, Scene 3

(1) "Hark, hark!" ("Hark" total = 2)

SCHUBERT: "Ständchen" (Serenade): "Horch, horch, die Lerch' im Ätherblau" ("Hark, hark, the lark in heaven's blue"), D. 889

[German translation by August Wilhelm von Schlegel]

Rolf Reinhardt, piano. Deutsche Schallplatten-Gemeinschaft, recorded 1962

(2) Just a single "Hark!" ("Hark" total = 1)

NICOLAI: The Merry Wives of Windsor: Act II, Scene 4: romance, Fenton, "Horch', die Lerche singt im Hain" ("Hark, the lark sings in the meadow")

[German translation by Ferdinand Mayerhofer]

Bavarian State Orchestra, Robert Heger, cond. EMI, recorded Feb.-Mar. 1963

Wait, what about the singer? Probably you recognized him right away. If not, better still! You're making the acquaintance of somebody really special -- we'll have full credits when we hear these performances in full. (You no doubt noticed that I cut them off once the stanza taken over from Shakespeare was done.)

by Ken

You may remember that last week, in writing about that fine English pianist Imogen Cooper's October 2022 choices for BBC Music Magazine's "Music that changed me" feature (choices that "not only genuinely did change her life but make glorious listening for us"), I mentioned that even as I was discovering in the magazine feature that Dame Imogen is the daughter of the distinguished English musicologist and critic Martin Cooper, I happened to be perusing her father's lengthy and informative booklet essay for the Decca recording of Otto Nicolai's opera The Merry Wives of Windsor conducted by Rafael Kubelik for yet another long-simmering Sunday Classics project.

Which is to say: a follow-up to the October 16 post, in which I wrote about a long-long-ago SC post gathering what I think of as the three great musical lark depictions: Haydn's Lark Quartet, Vaughan Williams's rhapsody for violin and orchestra The Lark Ascending, and the gorgeous "romance" from Nicolai's Merry Wives, "Horch', die Lerche singt im Hain" ("Hark, the lark is singing in the meadow," derived from Shakespeare's Cymbeline song "Hark, hark, the lark"), in which the hopelessly-love-besotted young Fenton sings a wake-up serenade to his adored Anna Reich.

I was angling to exhume the old "lark" post and restore it to working order, for which I started by making a pile of new audio clips, only to discover I couldn't figure out how to merge my "then" and "now" selves for such a rehab job. Instead what I set out to do was to spit the "lark" pile into instrumental larks (Haydn's and Vaughan Williams's) and "singing" larks (Nicolai's and a fourth musical lark I'd added to the mix: Schubert's "Ständchen" (Serenade), "Horch, horch, die Lerch' im Ätherblau" of -- yes! -- "Hark, hark, the lark."

In that Merry Wives introductory note, my eye stuck on Martin Cooper suggestion that Fenton's romance is "almost worthy of Schubert." As I think about it, I think this makes a good deal of sense, but what stopped me was the coincidence (?) that Schubert himself had actually done his own "Hark, hark, the lark" setting -- and it's nothing like Nicolai's. Which brings us to the question of how many "hark"s we can count in the Nicolai and Schubert settings.

And then came "Widmung"

In Clarence Brown's Song of Love (1947), Paul Henreid as Robert Schumann introduces the newly composed "Widmung" to Katharine Hepburn as Clara; later Henry Daniell as Liszt plays his version, and finally Clara has her turn with it. (All the piano-playing is by Arthur Rubinstein, whom we'll hear playing the Liszt version straight through in the click-through.)

by Ken

Among the great creative feats on record, I'm not sure that any surpasses what is often referred to as Robert Schumann's Year of Song, 1840, the year in which he married Clara Wieck, which we talked about back in April 2010. As Eric Sams has put it, "In the 12 months beginning 1 February 1 1840 he wrote over 160 vocal works, including at least 135 of the 246 solo songs in the complete Peters Edition."

Near the head of the list is the collection of 26 songs published as Schumann's Op. 25, Myrthen (myrtles -- "European evergreen shrubs with white or rosy flowers that are often used to make bridal wreaths"), which the composer presented to Clara as a wedding gift and of course dedicated to her. And at the head of Myrthen is "Widmung" ("Dedication"), the exhilarating song we previewed Friday night.

SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1


Baritone Hermann Prey, with pianist Leonard Hokanson (1975)

German text by Friedrich Rückert

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.

You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

AS I MENTIONED FRIDAY NIGHT, IT WAS A RECITAL
THIS WEEK BY PIANIST ANNE-MARIE McDERMOTT . . .