Sange med klaver.
Christensen, Jean
The 226 songs by the Danish composer Peter Heise (1830-1879) comprise
a distinguished contribution to Scandinavian song and a repertory that
has been largely ignored. With the increased interest in regional
cultures, Heise's contribution to the unique attributes of the
Danish song tradition will, one hopes, engage the attention of scholars
and performers exploring nineteenth-century art song repertories, for
when the romantic movement arrived in Denmark from Germany, the Danish
romantics responded with works very different in form from their models.
It would be a mistake to assume that Heise's songs are third-rate,
German-styled lyrical effusions, for they are as distinctly Danish as
Gabriel Faure's songs are French.
Heise's work coincided with a critical time in the development
of the Danish national character in music. His first songs, published in
1852, were by no means his first compositions, and they were already a
step beyond the simple, unpretentious accompanied songs by C. E. F.
Weyse. Approaching Danish art song, these early songs are neither
provincial nor eclectic. Though Heise studied with Moritz Hauptmann for
a very short period from 1852 to 1853 in Leipzig - where he was most
impressed by Robert Schumann of all the German romantic composers, he
became interested in Giacomo Meyerbeer (whose influence can be found in
his operas), yet remained cool to Richard Wagner's music and art.
Nevertheless, Heise remained spontaneous and largely uninfluenced. In
keeping with the state of Danish culture, which at that time was
suspicious of novelty and held in check by literary tradition, Heise was
untouched by the extravagances of central-European romanticism. His
resilience affected the character of the romantic school in Denmark,
where the accent, aspirations, forms, and motives were to remain
essentially national. His lyricism prepared for the outpouring of Danish
song later in the century with Peter Lange-Muller and eventually the
generation of Carl Nielsen and Thomas Laub.
Heise spent the formative period of his life in the milieu of the
academic singing societies in Copenhagen. He was also well acquainted
with the social circles of older anti younger poets, whose texts he set.
Through these associations and later travels to the Continent, where he
frequented similar cultural circles, Heise cultivated the aspect of
Danish character that both nurtures impulses from abroad and emphasizes
Scandinavianism.
Now relatively unknown, Heise's songs (which constitute
approximately two-thirds of his works list) were widely published in
anthologies during his lifetime. But when a collection of Romancer og
sange sold out a year after his death, publications of Heise's
works ceased. Only two of his songs are included in the treasury of
national song, Folkehojskolens melodibog (Copenhagen: W. Hansen, 1958),
and the well-known Danish singer, Aksel Schiotz, did not even mention
Heise in a list of recommended Scandinavian composers in The Singer and
His Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). Heise's instrumental
compositions (chamber music and one symphony) and his works for the
stage (incidental music and ballet) likewise remain unknown. The only
exception is his dramatic opera, Drot og marsh (King and Marshall,
1878), which, bridging the national Singspiel tradition and newer trends
in nineteenth-century music drama, stands out as the most important
Danish opera of the century (and to this day remains a staple of the
Royal Danish Opera).
In this new critical edition of Heise's songs, the first three
volumes present the songs according to the years they were published:
nos. 1-59, 1852-60: nos. 60-116, 1862-71; and nos. 117-173, 1871-79 and
1896. The fourth volume, nos. 174-226, is a diverse assemblage of
previously unpublished songs, dramatic scenes, and selections from his
opera and cantatas.
The chronological arrangement of the edition makes it possible to
chart Heise's steady development as a song composer. Though the
character of his work is audible from the outset, his musical skills and
range of artistic expressiveness increase with each decade, while his
choice of poets reveals the expanding circles of his interest right up
to his final year. Heise's early point of departure was the
enclosed, private world of the singing societies: at this time he
composed some settings of German lyrics (Nikolaus Lenau's
Shilflieder in the original German and in Danish translation) and poems
written by the Danish poets whom he knew personally (Poems by Christian
Winther and Adam Oehlenslager, nos. 1-4: Love Songs by Winther, nos.
15-21: and, Mermaid's Songs by B.S. Ingemann, nos. 32-36). In the
early 1860s he abandoned German texts permanently and ventured beyond
the circle of personal poet acquaintances to, for instance, the work of
the Jutland poet Steen Steensen Blicher, who often wrote in dialect (two
such songs - gems of Danish literature - are included in the Romancer og
sange, nos. 82-89). Heise was also attracted to translations (by Edvard
Lembcke) of William Shakespeare (nos. 94-101). His reach expanded
continually, and in the last decade of his life, he set poetic
translations of folk songs from Finnish, English, and Mediterranean
sources, and translations of medieval lyrics and the poetry of the
English romantics, including Shelley, Lord Byron, and Tennyson.
As the poetry changed, the musical forms also evolved. Compared with
the early strophic songs in volume 1, the late ones in volume 3 treat
the texts in new and formally expressive ways. Heise varied and extended
strophic forms, while expanding ternary forms and narrative
ballade-types (to name a favorite: "The Nomad's Life").
His late songs often mixed forms to forge a musical chronicle reflecting
the narrative development in the text. They may be grouped around a
common theme (the "Mediterranean Songs," nos. 127-33); employ
texts by a single poet (Holger Drachmann's "Dyveke's
Songs," nos. 167-72); or, form a cycle, such as the six songs,
"Gudrun's Sorrow" (nos. 117-22), from H. G. Moller's
translation of the Elder Edda. In these songs, the tune used for the
first strophe becomes the refrain for the entire cycle. Heise's
most extended work for solo voice is the setting of Bjornstjerne
Bjornson's long poem Bergliot, heroine of the Icelandic sagas. It
is an extended scena, which lasts about one-half hour and explores a
frill range of emotions and musical expression.
Heise's melodic lines are lyrical and gently artful, but are
rarely "folksy." He is the acknowledged "singer" in
Danish music history, for his melodic lines balance between natural
speech and poetic reflection. He is always able to expand the melodic
contour to satisfy a growing dramatic expressivity without losing the
natural quality of melody or a sensitivity to his texts. Innuendo,
phrasing, declamation, and content in the poems shape both the vocal
lines and the accompaniment, so that his settings of one poet, the
Ossian songs by Steen Steensen Blicher (nos. 82-89), are distinct from
those of another, say the Erotic Poems of Emil Aarestrup (nos. 155-59).
Heise was not unacquainted with the musical developments of his age.
In numerous ways these songs are products of their time: the piano often
continues the melodic line of the voice and sometimes vice versa.
Characteristically, the patterns in the accompaniment change often, but
occasionally a figure will continue relentlessly if called for by the
emotional tenor of the poetic voice. The resonant harmony between words
and music is reminiscent of the early romantic composers.
From his earliest songs, Heise was fond of "black-note"
keys and unexpected harmonic shifts, although he was not given to
chromatic voice leading and preferred to modulate enharmonically or by a
common tone. Rather than exploring the psychological or emotional depths
of a poem, he treated the emotional and dramatic moments of the text
with unexpected turns of phrase, changes of mood, interesting detours
into obliquely related keys or subtle prolongation of an expressive
line. One hears an occasional echo of Schumann (in the phrasing) or of
Felix Mendelssohn (the sweet lyricism), but also occasionally a phrase
that anticipates Nielsen's freely lyrical melodic lifts.
Some of these songs require the interpretive sophistication of a
dramatic singer experienced in performing nineteenth-century texts with
now-forgotten historical or literary references. Others would suit the
young voice that does well with sweet and unpretentious strophic lyrics
("She Comes on Sunday Evening"). Most of the songs lie
somewhere in between these extremes. Many could be programmed profitably
by singers in all stages of development.
Knowing Danish is essential for appreciating in full the numerous
qualities of these songs. There is unfortunately only one window of
access for performers accustomed to singing German: Heise's
Shilflieder, settings of five poems by Lenau published here in both
Danish and German (nos. 67-71). Given the difficulty for most
non-Scandinavian musicians to perform these Danish-texted songs, it is
regrettable that no translations of any kind were provided in the
edition. A worthy project would be a publication of a judicious choice
of these songs, provided with good translations and transcriptions into
the International Phonetic Alphabet to facilitate performances outside
of Scandinavia in their original language. Perhaps this edition will at
least inspire some of the excellent singers and pianists in Denmark to
record selections on labels obtainable through international
distributors.
The critical edition of Heise's songs is meticulously prepared
by Niels Martin Jensen, Danish musicologist and Heise specialist, and
admirably meets the goal of being both practical and inspiring to use.
Wilhelm Hansen, the distinguished Danish music publishing house, has
bound the edition in brown linen that cloaks its scholarly elegance.
JEAN CHRISTENSEN University of Louisville
