# A "lied cycle" before Beethoven - Bilder und Träume von Herder (1798) by Christian Gottlob Neefe



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/b/be/IMSLP529759-PMLP856917-Bilder_und_Tra%C3%BCme_von_Herder_Neefe_Christian_btv1b9078754p.pdf#page=34


What do you think?


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Interesting find! Attractive music too, very simple but and "völkisch", one can see where early Schubert came from. It's this musical style that Goethe prefered for his poems - he (in)famously didn't like what mature Schubert did with his texts, "too complicated".
I wonder if it could be seen as a real song cycle. There's no indication that the songs are to be performed as a whole, but on the other hand, the index at the end of the volume lists the content in alphabetical order, not the order chosen by the composer - so one wonders if this order has some special meaning?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

One of the songs is titled "Das Glück", which is just about what I felt seeing this post.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I always thought that Beethoven's _An die ferne Geliebte_ was the very first lied cycle (but not song cycle), by any composer. It seems I was wrong. Look at this quote from book _German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century_:

"Commentators have recognized for some time the error of viewing Beethoven's _An die ferne Geliebte _Op. 98 (1815-1816) as an absolutely originary work, the first of an impressive line of nineteenth-century song cycles. Beethoven's celebrated work was preceded by a tradition of convivial music-making involving lieder, a practice that continued well into the nineteenth century...
(...)
Associative of affective links, on the other hand, impart a measure of poetic unity to the twenty brief songs of C.G. Neefe's _Bilder und Träume_ (1798) and to Ferdinand Ries's _Sechs Lieder von Goethe_ Op. 32 (1811). The latter work may well have served as model for Beethoven's _An die ferne Geliebte_.
(...)
It is in this aesthetic sense that Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte does mark a point of origin, or at least an orientation for the song cycle that would be of singular importance for the Romantics. 
(...)
Beethoven, at any rate, may well have been the first composer to stamp the song cycle as a high art form and at the same time to articulate it's chief compositional challenge: the fusion of art and apparent artlessness." - Source here.

I think it could still be said thought that _An die ferne Geliebte_ was the first song cycle created by a still famous composer.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

RobertJTh said:


> I wonder if it could be seen as a real song cycle. There's no indication that the songs are to be performed as a whole, but on the other hand, the index at the end of the volume lists the content in alphabetical order, not the order chosen by the composer - so one wonders if this order has some special meaning?


"He selected twenty songs by the poet Herder from a publication in 1787, selecting and reordering them as he saw fit. It is important to note that these poems were composed at least twenty years before their publication to be set for music."
"The poems of Bilder und Träume by Herder followed the Doctrine of Affections. Each were strophic with only one affect per poem. Neefe, however, did not follow the doctrines, because most of the poems were of the same category. They called for "gentle and placid vibrations" which usually were interpreted as long tones. Instead, Neefe sped up some of the settings in order to bring variety to his grouping. Many of the songs are very short, some of them are only single stanzas, which often leave barely enough time to generate any affect at all. In order to mitigate this, Neefe group poems of similar affect together by key. This helped to build emotional intensity throughout the twenty songs."
"Peake states: Neefe did not regress quite that much to accommodate Herder's poems, but he did return to a song style somewhat older than his own: that of J.A.P. Schulz or the so-called first Berlin Liederschüle. …This meant utter simplicity of form and melody, song in the folktone to be sung "at the piano" by one amateur performer, and not expressive of anything but the most general emotions. This statement is important because it indicates that Neefe intended his work for one performer instead of many, just like his student Beethoven intended in An die ferne Geliebte. This is in contrast to the later settings of Goethe’s poems by Gerson and Ries because they require multiple singers."


https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3515&context=thesesdissertations#page=43


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Xisten267 said:


> I think it could still be said thought that _An die ferne Geliebte_ was the first song cycle created by a still famous composer.


Sure. But also, I think the 18th century lied composers (who were "innovative" in the area in a way Haydn and Mozart weren't) are worth investigating (just for us to be correctly aware of the history). I also think the song cycle can be seen as a genre that branched off from the Liederspiel.
Consider Reichardt, for instance-
The progression at 2:44~2:53 somewhat reminds me of that of Mozart's C minor concerto that leads to the final variation. Notice how it leads to a tranquil section in C major (3:06) and then to a stormy section in C minor (4:54).




[Erwin und Elmire: Act II. Aria. Mit vollen Athemzügen saug' ich, natur aus dir]
"In 1791, Reichardt was given a three year 'sabbatical', which he used to travel to France. When he came back, he published his impressions, showing a strong sympathy for the French revolution. The political differences between Goethe and Reichardt didn't undermine their artistic cooperation though. For Goethe the perspective of his texts to be set to music by a composer of Reichardt's standing was too tempting. As far as we know only two concert performances took place in Berlin in 1793, and these were positively received by the audience."
[Erwin und Elmire: Act II. Aria. Welch ein Lispen, welch ein Schauer]
"Much of Reichardt's reputation as a composer rests on his Lieder that number about 1500, using texts by some 125 poets. Important among these are the settings of Goethe's texts, some of which were known to, and influenced, Schubert."
[Erwin und Elmire: Act II. Aria. Ihr verblühet, süße Rosen]
"Mendelssohn regarded Reichardt as a major figure in developing the lied, valuing him over his teacher Zelter, and even above Schubert, because he had written, after all, some 1,500 songs over his sixty-two years." < Beyond Fingal's Cave: Ossian in the Musical Imagination | James Porter | P. 143 >


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