Lyric Symphony
Related Artists/Companies
ZemlinskyPast Performances
About the Work
Lyric Symphony, Op. 18 (in seven songs after poems of Rabindranath Tagore)Alexander Zemlinksy
Alexander Zemlinsky—who had a romance with Alma Schindler before Gustav Mahler did and an artistic collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal before Richard Strauss did—was an important figure in Viennese musical circles around the turn of the last century. In 1911 he moved to Prague to take over the direction of the German Opera there. After years spent in Berlin, he fled to the United States and died there, yet he remained a Viennese through and through—a crucial link between Mahler, with whom he was friendly in later years, and Schoenberg, whom he taught and who became his brother-in-law (Schoenberg married Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde in 1901). His impassioned post-Romantic style, with its free treatment of dissonances, is audibly indebted to Mahler's late music, without quite crossing the thresholds of atonality and serialism that became his brother-in-law's life work. Zemlinsky's music, especially his operas, have been enjoying a spectacular revival in the last 20 years or so.
The Lyric Symphony is externally modelled on Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde: both are cycles of orchestral songs in which a male and a female soloist take turns singing colos (there are no duets). A further similarity is the Asian provenance of the texts which in each case underwent multiple translations: Mahler used Chinese poems which had been reworked in German after a version in French, while Zemlinsky worked with the Bengali poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, as translated into German from Tagore's own English version. Yet whereas Mahler's work proceeds from life to death in a linear scheme encompassing extreme contrasts, Zemlinsky adopts a circular form where the intense emotional pain expressed in the opening movement returns at the end. Also, the movements follow one another without any breaks, in a structure Antony Beaumont describes in his book on Zemlinsky as "operatic." Beaumont further explains: "The poems…outline a love drama, from the first stirrings of desire to the agony of farewell—a via crucis ["Way of the Cross"] in seven stations."
Tagore's The Gardener, from which the texts were taken, contains a total of 85 prose poems, from which Zemlinsky selected Nos. 5, 7, 30, 29, 48, 51, and 61. The symphony is motivically united by a motto theme, stated passionately in the introduction to the first song and repeated at important moments throughout the work. The man's restlessness and his unfulfilled longing for the unknown, expressed in the first song, set the tone for the entire symphony. His solitude is mirrored by that of the girl in the second song, whose love for the young prince goes unreturned. Commentator Andrew Huth has drawn attention to the clear motivic links between the two movements, showing the complementary nature of the two parallel desires. The stormy postlude of the second song rounds out the first unit of the symphony.
The baritone re-enters in the third song in a completely different mood: the outpouring of amorous feelings reveals that the two lonely souls have finally met. "You are my own, my own," he sings ecstatically. The soprano responds in what Huth describes as a "ravishingly beautiful evocation of nocturnal stillness." A solo violin and a solo cello sing an instrumental love duet that transcends the bounds of traditional keys just as the emotions expressed go beyond all limits. This is the central movement of the work, the peak of the lovers' short-lived happiness. The idyll is interrupted in movements 5 and 6—much shorter than the others—where the baritone wants to break free from a bond that he suddenly perceives to be stifling. A motif from the opening movement returns to signal that the hero is, once again, "restless." In the sixth song, the soprano resigns herself to the inevitable parting of the ways. The orchestra repeats the motto theme and then plays a postlude that sounds like a wordless epitaph for a defunct love. The baritone's final words ("let it not be a death but completeness") attempt to bring an element of consolation into the work's tragic ending, but it is impossible to escape the conclusion that Zemlinsky, through his choice and placement of the Tagore poems, was expressing a very pessimistic view about the possibility of lasting love between man and woman.
TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
Langsam (Slowly) — Baritone
Ich bin friedlos. O grosses Jenseits, Ich bin voll Verlangen und wachsam; O Ziel in Fernen, Ich bin ruhelos, Im sonnigen Nebel O fernstes Ende, O fernstes Ende, |
I am restless. O Great Beyond, I am eager and wakeful, O Far-to-seek, I am listless, O Farthest End, O Farthest End, |
Lebhaft (Lively) — Soprano
Mutter, der junge Prinz muss an unserer wie kann ich diesen Morgen auf meine Zeig mir, wie soll mein Haar Warum schaust du mich Aber der junge Prinz Mutter, der junge Prinz Aber der junge Prinz |
O mother, the young Prince Show me Why do you look at me amazed, But the young Prince O mother, the young Prince But the young Prince |
Sehr ruhig (Very quietly)- Baritone
Du bist die Abendwolke, Mit den Schatten meiner Leidenschaft |
You are the evening cloud Your feet are rosy-red With the shadow of my passion |
Langsam (Slowly) — Soprano
Sprich zu mir, Geliebter, |
Speak to me, my love! |
Feurig und kraftvoll
(Fiery and forceful) — Baritone
Befrei' Mich von den banden |
Free me from the bonds of your |
Sehr mässig Viertel (Andante) — Soprano
Vollende denn das letzte lied |
Then finish the last song |
Molto adagio (Very Slowly) — Baritone
Friede, mein Herz, |
Peace, my heart, |
