Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Songs Vol.2

Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD (1897-1957)

Songs Vol.2

Abschiedslieder (Songs of Farewell), Op. 14

3 Lieder Op. 18

Tomorrow, Op. 33

5 Lieder Op. 38

Sonett für Wien, Op. 41

Nachts

Der innere Scharm

Österreichischer Soldatenabschied

Ausser

Etwas ganz Persönliches (Arr. H. Fuhlbom & K. Simon for Voice & Piano Trio)

Die Gansleber im Hause Duschnitz

Quinquaginta-Foxtrott

Britta Stallmeister (soprano)

Klaus Simon (piano)

Uwe Schenker-Primus (baritone)

Phillip Roy (violin) 

Peter Franck (cello)

Sibylle Fischer (mezzo-soprano)

If Erich Wolfgang Korngold had been born some 30 years earlier and not in 1897, his music would have been exactly right for the times. Indeed, he might have become one of the most important composers of his generation, now represented by the names Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Hans Pfitzner. For he can be readily categorised as belonging to these late- and post-Romantic composers, and his compositional ability and musical imagination were in no way inferior to theirs. In the context of his own age, however, Korngold looks like a music-historical anachronism, someone arriving too late to the party who tried to make late-Romantic style blossom again just at the point when it was disappearing.

To that extent, Korngold’s biography has genuinely tragic features. The scion of an important Viennese-Jewish family and son of the notorious music critic Julius Korngold, Erich first elicited amazement and admiration as a child-prodigy composer with his perfectly crafted early works. Soon afterwards, as a young star composer, he scored a triumphant success with his opera Die tote Stadt. But as he became older, the career as a ‘serious’ composer that he and others might have expected, failed to materialise. Instead, he was sidelined into adapting operettas and later into writing film music. To this end he immigrated to the US, surviving the Nazi period and Second World War there, only to realise afterwards that no one at home wanted to give him a second chance. For although in his later years Korngold again produced absolute music displaying consummate skill, like his famous Violin Concerto, in post-war Europe his music seemed outdated and his habitual Romanticism met with incomprehension.

In his songs too, Korngold stuck to his characteristic style for the most part. His understanding of the genre was strictly based on the traditional Romantic ideal – an intimate but intense form with relatively simple, lyrical melodies and an artistry lying more in subtle detail than expansive gestures. The number of songs he composed already indicates that for Korngold, unlike Strauss and Pfitzner, the genre was not central to his output, but he did write regular contributions to the literature, and there are published sets of three to six songs dotted all through his catalogue of works, some conceived as cycles (Opp. 14, 18, 27 and 29) and some probably only brought together later. For sure, most of the songs are typical occasional pieces, but he nevertheless lavished considerable care and an enchanting inventiveness on their composition.

The Roaring Twenties: Lieder des Abschieds, Op. 14 and the ‘Kaltneker’ songs, Op. 18

Spoiler alert: as a composer Korngold was never really freewheeling and cutting-edge, let alone part of the avantgarde. Nevertheless, there was a time in the early 1920s when he very cautiously opened up to a few more modern trends and something entered his music that was, by his standards, experimental. Possibly the success of his opera Die tote Stadt gave Korngold, who was still a young composer, the self-confidence to distance himself slightly from the conservative views of his father, who had until then been the determining influence, and to at least register what was going on around him in contemporary music. Although he did not, of course, abandon his grounding in the late-Romantic style or his fundamental tonal orientation, the odd clashing harmony and complex layering of sound, even going as far as bitonality, points to the avant-garde (which had by now become part of the mainstream) as an additional influence.

In the Songs of Farewell, Op. 14, evidence of this influence is still very limited. The cycle, on poems by Christina Rossetti (in a translation by Alfred Kerr), Edith Ronsperger and Ernst Lothar, was written as a kind of rest-cure shortly after Korngold had completed Die tote Stadt. The cycle is about the loss of someone dear, and the ordering of the poems gives rise to a clear dramatic progression tracing the grieving process step by step. Korngold’s performance instructions, which are like mini character sketches, already make this clear. No. 1. Sterbelied (‘When I am dead, my dearest’), is still ‘very calm and composed, with suppressed deep feeling’, whereas in the second song, Dies eine kann mein Sehnen nimmer fassen (‘This one thing my longing can never grasp’), ‘intense pain’ forces its way to the surface. This pain becomes transfigured as ‘the deepest sad calm’ in No. 3. Mond, so gehst du wieder auf (‘So, moon, are you again rising’), and as almost cheerful acceptance, ‘amiable, cheerful, tender-hearted expression’, in the final song Gefaßter Abschied (‘A Composed Farewell’). This final song is based on an earlier, slightly simpler one, the Österreichischer Soldatenabschied (‘An Austrian Soldier’s Farewell’), which Korngold wrote in 1915 in the shadow of the war – hence the implied drum patterns, which do not feature in Op. 14.

The second song in particular allows for quite a lot of harsh dissonance. Indeed, its sorrowful, despairing quality demands it. This is mostly achieved by the melody deviating from its harmonic foundation. Time and again the notes seem to abandon this foundation and get lost in chromatic diversions, before a clear major or minor chord restores a sense of direction, be it ever so precarious – like some straw to be clutched at. While the third song is somewhat gentler, the opalescent quality of the moon referred to here is reflected in the harmonies; right at the beginning, Korngold establishes a sonority based on layered thirds, which can be interpreted as a combination of two major chords (E and A) and which determines even the final chord. Such sonorities give the song a profound beauty that is already reminiscent of Alban Berg. The two outer songs feel relatively conventional by comparison, despite their sometimes bold changes of harmony and Korngold’s predilection in all the songs for very large, expressive intervals.

What was only tentatively suggested in Op. 14 becomes obvious in the Three Songs, Op. 18 composed in 1924 on poems by Hans Kaltneker. Here Korngold goes further than ever before in cutting his ties with tonality and experimenting with bitonal structures. He himself described these songs as ‘character studies’ for his most radical stage work, the opera Das Wunder der Heliane. Already in the first song, In meine innige Nacht (‘I am entering my innermost night’), the piano disseminates a kind of harmonic mist of pitches with no discernible tonal centre; the voice wanders through this mist like a questing wanderer. As if to compensate, the song is fairly straightforward rhythmically and melodically, the overall impression is perfectly smooth, if enigmatic. The second song, Tu ab den Schmerz (‘Lay aside your pain’), is more dramatic, with extreme leaps and dissonant tone clusters used to evoke passion. Yet here the tonal basis of the harmonies becomes more obvious, mostly by virtue of triads in the bass, above which the upper voices literally roam free or simply lay down a different triad. The return of tonality in the third song, Versuchung (‘Temptation’), which comes storming along ‘with fervour and rapture’, is really celebrated. Here too there are quite a few tone clusters disrupting the harmony, but pure triads repeatedly break through powerfully, literally sweeping the dissonances to one side, and conclude the song in a limpid E flat major. Maybe the foray into contemporary music was only a phase after all, on which Korngold now consciously calls time.

Hollywood and dark Viennese humour: Morgen, Op. 33, the Five Songs, Op. 38 and Sonett für Wien, Op. 41

With 20 great film scores, five Oscar nominations and two Oscars for best film score, Korngold was undoubtedly one of the main players in Hollywood film music. His broad symphonic late-Romantic Viennese style was highly successful there and had a lasting influence on many later film composers. Conversely, the demands of the medium influenced the way Korngold composed for it. The music had to be accessible for a wide audience, so it couldn’t be overly complex. It needed memorable tunes, resounding fanfares, lush harmonies and clearly delineated emotions. Korngold was able and willing to deliver all this. He now definitively abandoned any trace of modernism he might still have exhibited in the Twenties and concentrated on a lush Romanticism such as would not have been out of place in operetta.

This is why the contrast between Op. 18 and the late songs written during the 1940s could hardly be greater. Most of the seven songs Korngold wrote during this period would not be out of place in a Viennese operetta or a Broadway musical – or indeed as a film song, like Morgen (‘Tomorrow’) which is indeed taken from the film The Constant Nymph. It is recorded here for the first time in the version for voice and piano trio reconstructed by Klaus Simon. Opulent and sentimental though the song seems, there is an enchanting wealth of telling and subtle detail that avoids the kitschiness of many other film songs and set high standards for the industry.

The Five Songs, Op. 38 are also written in this relatively simple but skilful manner. Although Korngold set some material by German poets (Dehmel and Eichendorff), the whole cycle is in English and was written to satisfy the demands of his American audience. This is especially noticeable in the second and third songs, Wings and Old Spanish Song, both of which are based on earlier songs (Andenken and Das Mädchen, cf. Vol. 1, 8.572027). While Wings has retained the chromatic figures and occasional harmonic dissonance of the earlier version, Old Spanish Song only uses the main motif, creating a much simpler and (still) more memorable song. The rapturous first and last numbers I wish you bliss and My mistress’ eyes, and the lively Old English Song, which is reminiscent of an old English folk song, also aim to be catchy.

Korngold’s final 1953 song Sonett für Wien (‘Sonnet for Vienna’) is a late declaration of love addressed to his old home city, where he would have liked to re-establish himself. But although Hans Kaltneker’s text lauds Vienna to the skies and Korngold deploys his most beautiful and full-blooded tunes, he had no success with it. Vienna didn’t want Korngold any more.

A song for every occasion: posthumous songs

Alongside his main compositional activity Korngold, like many composers, wrote small occasional pieces, mainly songs, as presents or to mark special occasions. These reveal a humour that is sometimes subtle and sometimes crude, especially when he wrote the lyrics as well. Five such occasional songs have survived, all dating from his early years and written for the Korngold family or their circle of friends. No less than three songs are birthday presents for Erich’s mother: Der innere Scharm (‘Inward Charm’), Ausser (‘Unless’) and Quinquaginta-Foxtrott (‘Quinquaginta Foxtrot’), written for her 42nd, 43rd and 50th birthdays respectively. The jocular texts don’t just celebrate the birthday girl, their subject matter also includes ironic references to the young composer’s circumstances, and musically they are mini parodies of contemporary operettas and hit songs. (In Ausser this is very explicit.) Still more amusing is Die Gansleber im Hause Duschnitz (‘Goose Liver at the Duschnitz’s House’), a true Viennese delicacy that Korngold wrote in 1919 for Herr and Frau Duschnitz’s 40th wedding anniversary. Their son Rudolf was a good friend of Erich’s, and since the Korngolds were rather strapped for cash after the war, young Erich was often invited to his friend’s considerably wealthier family to visit.

Etwas ganz Persönliches (‘Something Very Personal’) is a dedication that was put in with a Christmas present for ‘Mitzi’ (Maria Kolisch, sister of violinist Rudolf Kolisch) in 1917, she being the object of Korngold’s affections at the time. (Nothing came of it.) For this recording, Hans Fulbohm and Klaus Simon harmonised the short melody (which was all Korngold wrote) for piano trio and rounded it off by adding a prelude and postlude – a ‘compositional interpretation’ entirely in keeping with Korngold’s style.

Two further songs belong to Korngold’s ‘serious’ works but were not published during his lifetime. One is Soldatenabschied, mentioned above, the other, Nachts (‘During the Night’), was written as early as 1913. It belongs with the Op. 9 songs but was not included for publication, even though it was conceived as a companion-piece to Sommer, which does form part of the collection. One is struck by the clear Impressionist echoes in this song with its whole-tone scales and shimmering alternating chords. The passionate conclusion, where the hitherto unstable tonality is given an unmistakable C sharp minor resolution, is positively shocking. This once again shows what an imaginative and inventive composer the young Korngold already was.

Cornelius Bauer