Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Songs to Goethe’s poems

There can be no doubt that the song was a genre in any way favoured by Beethoven, that it constituted a path parallel to a highway. Yet a few masterpieces can be found among the more than 70 he wrote. His choice was meticulous, even if he was more interested in significant messages rather than in artistic perfection.
Beethoven thus took texts from Matthison and Metastasio, to Gellert, Lessing, Herder, Bürger and several minor poets, but, first and foremost, to Goethe. It is to the latter’s poetry that Beethoven produced some of his beautiful songs. He was inspired by the subject of tender, faithful, or wounded love. He was also inspired by images of nature – powerful yet compassionate. He was also a composer at a threshold of time. He united and clashed two discrete worlds: Classical clarity and Romantic shadows.

∙ Wonne der Wehmut (The Joy of Sadness). Goethe’s early lyrical poem, branded with sentimental tenderness, lost its verse form in Beethoven. It dissolved in endlessly repeated words, falling in a void, in silence. Yet the tenderness was elevated by the song to express feelings, to a cry, even, at the culminating high G note.

∙ Sehnsucht (Longing). The first four stanza pass away in a mood of indefinite longing for spring and for love. Only the final one, together with the shift from B minor to B major, brings joy and fulfilment.

∙ Freudvoll und Leidvoll (Joyful and Sorrowful). In a letter to one of the last possible pretenders to the title of “Immortal Beloved,” Beethoven once wrote: “We mortals, presented with immortal spirit, were born to joy and sorrow.” Thus Goethe’s words allowed Beethoven to express his own feelings. Yet in his song, the highest euphoria comes at the very end of the poem: “Happy alone is the soul that loves.”

∙ Kennst-du das Land? (Knowest thou where?). The list of composers fascinated by Goethe’s beautiful and lofty erotic poem is incredibly long. Beethoven was the first among them – at least, of those that count. His followers included Schubert and Moniuszko and Hugo Wolf. Beethoven maintained the division into stanzas yet processed it through variations in order not to fall foul of the text. Only the refrain, with its expression of “longing incurable,” is made to resound unchanged.

Mieczysław Tomaszewski