Suite, ' Water Music' Handel, arr. Hamilton Harty
SCHUMANN'S happy marriage at the age of thirty seems to have been a wonderful incentive to composition. In one form especially, in song, he poured out his emotions. Over a hundred songs were composed in that first year of married life. Among them was a cycle of sixteen songs, entitled The Poet's Lore (Dichterliebe, in German). The words are by Heine, the poet who. forbidden to live in his native land, spent some time in London and ended his days in France, in bodily suffering.
The songs to be sung are the First, Second,
Third. Fourth, Fifth and Seventh in the cycle.
The first five (all very short) tell of the growth of love in the poet's heart for ' the peerless, the rarest, the fairest, the dearest,' and (in the Fourth song) of his poignant memory of her declaration ' I love but thee,' that moves him to tears. The Fifth also recalls that wonderful sweet hour.'
In the Seventh song his love is lost to him.
The music tells of his pain, and the strength with which he meets it.