after Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875)
Das hässliche Entlein

Henri Duparc (1848–1933)
Romance de Mignon Op. 2 No. 3 (1869)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book II, Chapter 4

Hugo Wolf (1860–1903)
Mignon I "Heiß’ mich nicht reden" (1888–9)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book II, Chapter 4

Josephine Lang (1815–1880)
Mignons Klage Op. 10 No. 2 (c. 1840)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book II, Chapter 14

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Mignon Op. 75 No. 1 (1809)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book V, Chapter 16

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Lied der Mignon "So lasst mich scheinen" D 877 No. 3 (1826)

Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (1924–1942)
Märchen

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Herzeleid Op. 107 No. 1 (1851–2)

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3

Wolfgang Rihm (1952–2024)
Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine’s Day
from Ophelia Sings (2012)

Clemens Brentano (1778–1842)
Nachtigall

Roger Quilter (1877–1953)
How Should I Your True Love Know Op. 30 No. 3 (1927–33)

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
from Fünf Ophelia-Lieder WoO 22 (1873)
Wie erkenn’ ich dein Treulieb

Clemens Brentano
Nachtigall

Johannes Brahms
Sein Leichenhemd weiß

William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß Op. 67 No. 3 (1918)

William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
La Mort d’Ophélie (c. 1857)

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
Vom ertrunkenen Mädchen

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942)
Maria Stuart, Chapter 11

Robert Schumann
Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart Op. 135 (1852)

I. Abschied von Frankreich
II. Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes
III. An die Königin Elisabeth
IV. Abschied von der Welt
V. Gebet

Ricarda Huch (1864–1947)
Was für ein Feuer

Joachim Raff (1822–1882)
from Maria Stuart Op. 172 (1872)
Klage III

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805)
Maria Stuart, Act V, Scene 7

Joachim Raff
Klage IV

Friedrich Schiller
Maria Stuart, Act V, Scene 7

Joachim Raff
Klage I

Hilde Domin (1909–2006)
Magere Kost

Joachim Raff
Vor dem Gang zum Schafott

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Woher sind wir geboren?

Horatio Parker (1863–1919)
Lute Song
from Two Songs from Tennyson’s “Queen Mary” (1904)

No intermission

The Mysterious Condition of This Being
Songs of Mignon, Ophelia, and Mary Stuart

Kerstin Schüssler-Bach

“His eyes and his heart were irresistibly attracted by the mysterious condition of this being.” Mignon, the mysterious woman-child, enchants Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister with her androgynous appearance and pure spirit amidst an obscure milieu of artists. Later, when Wilhelm Meister stages Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the troupe of players, Mignon is enraptured by the play’s impact: “With her hair flying out behind her, with her head thrown back, and her limbs, as it were, cast into the air, she seemed like one of those antique Mænads, whose wild and all but impossible positions still, on classic monuments, often strike us with amazement.”

Thus, in Goethe’s coming-of-age novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, quoted here in Thomas Carlyle’s translation), the mesmerizing power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and Mignon’s role as a social outcast are conjoined. The recital program that Christiane Karg presents with Malcolm Martineau and Helmut Mooshammer binds both figures together even more closely: Mignon, who rejects the categories of femininity after a traumatic childhood, and Ophelia, Hamlet’s cast-out lover who escapes into madness. Vulnerability and strangeness, a search for identity, and the experience of death unite two characters that seem so different at first glance.

“The Mignon songs by Schubert and Wolf were central to my repertoire early on,” Christiane Karg says. “I encountered Ophelia somewhat later.” The Goethe and Shakespeare settings are combined with texts by various authors, from the Romantic Clemens Brentano to the Jewish poet Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, who perished in a labor camp. “Helmut Mooshammer, whom I first encountered as an actor in my native town of Feuchtwangen, is not only very musical,” Karg adds, “but we both love the combination of words and music in song recitals—it enables us to characterize the figures with many additional layers.” 

Mignon’s undefined longing finds touching expression in the song Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn. Goethe’s novel describes the moment when Wilhelm hears Mignon sing, accompanied by a zither: “The music and general expression of it pleased our friend extremely, though he could not understand all the words.” Mignon’s singing “appeared to entreat and implore, now to impel and persuade.” Wilhelm understands the words to refer to Italy, and Mignon asks him to take her there: “I am too cold here.” Her enchanting song is among those most frequently set to music in all of German poetry. 

Gazing Inward 

Henri Duparc composed his Romance de Mignon in 1868, setting a French translation by the Belgian Victor van Wilder with suspended chords in the accompaniment and an ethereal melody that reveals the influence of Wagner’s Lohengrin (which Wilder had also translated). Even if the catalogue of works that the highly self-critical Duparc left behind is small—consisting mainly of 16 songs composed before he was 35 years old—it forms an extraordinary contribution to the genre of the French mélodie. “Duparc’s setting of Mignon demands a wide vocal range and a fairly mature voice,” says Christiane Karg. “His interpretation is very grown-up, so to speak, even though the character of Mignon is very young. This is a challenge for the performer. I would like to make her as young as possible.” 

An entirely introverted personality and physical ailments curtailed Duparc’s creativity at an early age—a fate he shared with Hugo Wolf, one of the masters of German lied. The latter, of course, wrote more than 300 songs, his bursts of creative frenzy leading to states of ecstatic productivity. Among his 51 settings of Goethe poems, published in 1890, there are several verses from Wilhelm Meister, including three songs of Mignon. In all its brevity, Heiß’ mich nicht reden reflects the changing moods of the young girl: from the anticipatory ecstasy of the ascending line “Ich möchte dir mein ganzes Innre zeigen” (I long to reveal my whole soul to you) to the resigned “allein das Schicksal will es nicht” (But fate does not permit it). In Goethe’s novel, the poem “which Mignon had recited once or twice with great expressiveness” marks Wilhelm’s farewell to the troupe of actors. Her sadness, but also her hope for a helping god is captured by Wolf with psychological depth in the painful chromatics and the sudden switch to blissful calm. Karg explains: “Wolf too chose a very dramatic approach to the character of Mignon. She’s very fragile, a child, really, who is also ill. Vocally, Wolf makes her a grown woman. To me it’s very helpful to know the literary context of Goethe’s novel, and keep this discrepancy in mind. It helps my find my own approach.” 

An Icon of Romanticism 

Josephine Lang, the daughter of a court musician and a court singer in Munich, was considered a musical prodigy: she made a brilliant early debut as a pianist and was Felix Mendelssohn’s student for a while. Yet she shared the usual fate of women composers in the 19th century: her father forbade her to complete her education, and her marriage and family meant she had to give up her artistic career entirely. After the early death of her husband, she made a living for herself and her six children by giving piano and vocal lessons. Josephine Lang composed approximately 300 songs, a third of which she managed to publish during her lifetime. Mignons Klage, written in 1835 and published in 1841, is no emphatic sigh, but a darkly candescent, powerful expression of passion, culminating in the emphatically repeated verse “es brennt mein Eingeweide” (My vitals are aflame). “My songs are my diary”—Lang’s statement seems echoed here. Christiane Karg encountered her songs while still a student. “Researching this program, I came across her again. I consider this Mignon setting very important—it’s a new addition to my repertoire, as is the one by Beethoven.” 

The Mignon songs by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert in particular are among the best-known musical versions of these texts. The joyfully unrestrained refrain “Dahin, dahin” in Beethoven’s strophic song Kennst du das Land of 1810 is clearly differentiated from the yearning of the ascending, syncopated line of the beginning. Schubert’s So lasst mich scheinen is one of his “Songs of Mignon” composed in 1826, published one year later. He was enraptured by Goethe’s verse, composing six versions of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, two of Heiß’ mich nicht reden, and three of So lasst mich scheinen, in addition to the “Songs of the Harper” from Wilhelm Meister. We know that Goethe did not take note of Schubert’s settings. The last version of So lasst mich scheinen, written one year before Winterreise, has already attained that Schubertian otherworldliness: touchingly intimate, with an ineffably weightless halo of transfiguration. Mignon’s childlike innocence meets death: “Too soon I grew old with grief.” In her white dress, she appears in Goethe’s novel as an angelic figure, singing this song with “entirely incomparable charm.” As such, Mignon became an icon of Romanticism, a “divine bright spot” and one of the creatures “lending everything Romantic enchantment and music” (Friedrich Schlegel). 

Ill-fated Dreamer 

Shakespeare’s Ophelia, drowning herself in a brook while singing, enchanted the Romantics—especially in the interpretation as a siren-like water creature. For his Herzeleid, however, Robert Schumann chose not verses from Hamlet, but a poem by the Silesian poet and dramaturg Titus Ullrich. The well-read Schumann was a great admirer of Ullrich, whom he met several times in Berlin. Written in 1851, Herzeleid captures the last moments of Ophelia, that “ill-fated dreamer,” in the composer’s resigned, pensive late style. Wolfgang Rihm’s 2012 cycle Ophelia Sings may follow the psychopathological fin-de-siècle view of the character as a hysterical woman, but in Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine’s Day, the listener is caught by surprise by a cabaret-like tone, reminding us of the proximity of entertainment and drama in Shakespeare’s works. 

Roger Quilter wrote some of the most beautiful English art songs. His Shakespeare Songs of 1933 include a text from Hamlet as well: Ophelia’s How Should I Your True Love Know, the first of the five songs she sings in her state of madness. Johannes Brahms set the same text in a German translation as Wie erkenn ich dein Treulieb. His Ophelia-Lieder were written in 1873 as an occasional piece for the Austrian actress Olga Precheisen, who was appearing in Hamlet in Prague, and remained unpublished during the composer’s lifetime. The commission had come about through the actor Josef Lewinsky, a member of the Burgtheater ensemble, whom Brahms had met through Clara Schumann. Lewinsky asked Brahms explicitly for “parlando songs” for the young actress. Their unadorned style is reminiscent of Elizabethan airs with lute accompaniment. Brahms’s reticent musical portrait is far removed from the depiction of the character as a virtuoso of madness, which is still present in Richard Strauss’s Drei Lieder der Ophelia of 1918: Ophelia’s darkening mental state suddenly turns into a crazy waltz. For his La Mort d’Ophélie, Camille Saint- Saëns chose the same verses by the French playwright Ernest Legouvé that were also set by Berlioz. Legouvé was said to have particular empathy for female characters. Here, he employs the words of Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, who is recounting Ophelia’s death. Saint-Saëns’s 1850s setting is marked by restless movement in the piano part, reflecting the waves of the water and Ophelia’s anguished state. “Saint- Saëns’s version is the perfect implementation of the familiar image of Ophelia drifting along in the water,” says Karg. “Strauss, on the other hand, savors her madness. I’d like to bring that out by vocal means, for example with wan, pale colors, or straight tones without vibrato.” 

Glorified as a Martyr 

With Robert Schumann’s Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Christiane Karg and Malcolm Martineau turn to a third female figure beloved during the Romantic era. Schumann’s last song cycle has an air of sparse severity. Written in December 1852, the composition coincided with a period of increasing difficulties Schumann experienced as music director in Düsseldorf. His health was compromised, he reported a “low state of nerves.” With their talk of exile and fear of death, Mary Stuart’s poems may have struck a particular note in him. Schumann took them from an anthology published by the poet and Shakespeare scholar Gisbert von Vincke. Only two of the texts are directly attributable to the Queen of Scots, whose fate moved hearts and led to her glorification as a martyr: following the early death of her husband, Francis II, the young Mary took leave of France and returned to her Scottish homeland. Her new marriages, however, did not spare her from intrigues. She sought help from her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, despite the fact that she was also laying claim to Elizabeth’s throne. Elizabeth’s counselors had Mary incarcerated for 18 years and finally executed in 1587. The romantically idealized image and the piousness of the Catholic queen are reflected in Schumann’s chorale-like settings, as are her resignation at having to depart the world, her self-reflection careening between composure and desperation. The songs were only published in 1855, after Schumann had been confined to the mental asylum in Endenich. 

Vincke’s poetry anthology Rose und Distel: Poesien aus England und Schottland (“Rose and Thistle: Poetry from England and Scotland”) was also the source for Joachim Raff’s ten-part cycle Maria Stuart, written in 1872. Christiane Karg presents a selection of these songs, which offer ample evidence of the composer’s melodic talent. Born in Switzerland, Raff occupied an intermediate position between the New German School around Liszt and Wagner and the guardians of tradition going back to Mendelssohn. 

Juxtaposing the two versions illuminates different aspects of Mary, as Karg explains: “In Schumann’s songs, we see a mature woman looking back on her life. In fact, Mary Stuart was very young, she was widowed for the first time at the age of only 17, and at 25, her life had basically been lived. Raff shows us a young woman with great passions, a love bordering on madness, despite being involved in murder. She’s not merely a victim but strives for power and has blood on her hands. This idea of being torn is also a theme in the excerpts from Stefan Zweig’s biography of Mary Stuart, which Helmut Mooshammer will read.” 

Another Mary from English history is introduced by the American Horatio Parker in his Two Songs from Tennyson’s “Queen Mary” of 1904: this is the Tudor Queen Mary I, a half-sister of her successor Elizabeth I, also known as “Bloody Mary.” Alfred Lord Tennyson made her the subject of a play in 1875, inspiring not only Parker, but also Edward Elgar. The editor of the first German edition, however, got the Tudor monarch mixed up with Mary Stuart. The elegiac Lute Song, however, might refer just as easily to the executed Scottish queen: “O low, my lute! we fade and are forsaken.” 

Translation: Alexa Nieschlag

Dr. Kerstin Schüssler-Bach has worked as an opera and concert dramaturge in Cologne, Essen and Hamburg and has taught at the Hamburg Music Academy and the Cologne University. She is currently Head of Composer Management at the music publishers Boosey & Hawkes in Berlin. She regularly writes for the Berlin Philharmonic, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Lucerne Festival and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra. 2022 saw the publication of her book on the conductor Simone Young.