ABOUT THE FOUR SONGS OMITTED FROM THE REVISED DICHTERLIEBE
ABOUT THE FOUR SONGS OMITTED FROM THE REVISED DICHTERLIEBE

Summary/Abstract: At the end of May 1840 Robert Schumann composed 20 songs from Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo under the title 20 Lieder und Gesänge aus dem Lyrischen Intermezzo. The se- ries was published in 1844, containing only 16 songs and was entitled as Dichterliebe. The four omitted songs were also published later on – but what was the reason for omitting them? We can perhaps never come to know that, though we are able to find possible an- swers, revising the cycle of the poems and the music itself. The “evidences” could be the following:– The selection: reduce the 1+ 65 poems to 20 (and at last 16) songs.– The attenuation of the “death atmosphere”.– The concentration of the “dream poems” to the end of the cycle.– The diminution of the power of “chivalric love”.– And finally: improving the tonal structure.Schumann could really take into consideration this important structural aspect in the last stage of his work: the well-known Dichterliebe might have been realized in this wa

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