GOLDEN YEAR OF SONG

Radio Record, 24 June 1938, Page 19

GOLDEN YEAR OF SONG

LOVE AFFAIR INSPIRED SCHUMANN-TO WRITE PERFECT SETTINGS

"Y SHOULD like to sing myself to death like a_ nightingale." So Schumann expressed himself, writing in the spring of 1840, iis "Song Year," .as he called. Never had Schumann been his battle for Clara was won and his work, always the fruit of spontaneity, flowed apace. "My whole life," he wrote at this time, "is joy and activity," and the result’ was ‘almost entirely: songs, those songs of which Schumann wrote so many, setting such love-poets as Heine, Burns and Moore perfectly. They were, in a way, a bridal-gift to his wife-to-be. ‘Since yesterday morning," he wrote on February 22, "I have written nearly twenty-seven pages of music, of which I can tell you no more than that [I laughed and cried for joy over it." This miracukous year for Schumann saw the birth of more than one hundred songs, including settings of the sixteen poems of Heinrich Heine which go to make up his song cycle "Dichterliebe" (The Poet’s Love). Up to 1840, Schumann had not considered songs sufficiently important music to be bothered with, and as being on a lower level than instrumental music. When he did start on

song composition he became over~ whelmed,.and-it was his love of Clara Weick that opened the flood gates; On Sunday afternoon, June 26, at 3YA, Thom Denijis, baritone, presents Schumann’s song eyele,. ‘‘Pichterliebe" . ("The Poet’s Love"). — , OO