Evert Jan Nagtegaal and the Art of Song. Brahms and Magelone.
Die Schöne Magelone op.33 –Johannes Brahms – text: Ludwig Tieck
1 to 7 baritone Udo Reinemann and pianist Noël Lee (LP Arion 38660 (1982)
8 to 15 baritone Bernard Kruysen and pianist Noël Lee (AUVIDIS V 4800 (1967/1997)
The fifteen ‘Magelone’ romances can seem incomprehensible to the uninitiated listener, if they are taken out of their context. That is to say, the context of ‘the love story of the beauty Magelone and count Peter of Provence’, which was published in the second part of Ludwig Tieck’s Volksmärchen in 1879. This curious love story of Magelone, daughter of the king of Naples, which was adapted and modernized by Tieck, first appeared in a 16th century book of folk tales.
Why did it have to be modernized? The awakening enthusiasm for folk tales and legends at the end of the 18th century, is an important characteristic of the romantic yearning for the afar, for an escape from the raw reality to the fantasy world of the idealized past. But it is also the expression of an aversion to the diktat of reason as propagated by the Enlightenment.
Another question: Why did Tieck intrinsically change the original? That also happened because of a desired adaptation due to the romantic spirit of the age. For starters, Tieck left out all religious aspects: After the mysterious disappearance of Peter, Magelone doesn’t go on a pilgrimage to Rome, but retreats in a simple shepherd’s hut, and Peter no longer is a decisive knight full of faith in God, but an introvert dreamer. The combination of feelings of love and nature is typically romantic also.
For instance, Magelone goes to sleep and thinks she is ‘in einem schönen und lustigen Garten…und wie von Harfensaiten tönte das Lied ihres Geliebten aus dem blauen Himmel herunter”. Thus, a relationship between the mysterious nature and human feelings is brought about. Lastly, it is also romantic of course, that all emotions have been encoded in a specific poetic form. Again and again Peter reaches for his lute and sings. Magelone reads Peter’s professions of love from an old parchment and expresses her feelings through elegiac singing. In the end, the love’s happiness of the retrieved couple is of course expressed through a song.
That’s why it is essential not to listen to these songs isolated, without the thoughts. The romances aren’t announcements of an ‘abstract self’, but personal messages which result from the situation at that particular moment. Only in this way the constant mood swings, which sometimes even occur within one single song, become obvious. Examples are the folk song character of no 4, the excessively rhapsodic character of no 5, the joy that is shown in no 6, the lullaby character from the most popular part no 9, but also the sad, depressed feeling of Magelone’s lament no 11, the coquettish, frivolous character of Sulima’s song no 13, and of course the festive mood when eternal faithfulness is sworn in no 15.
In der Provence
- Keinen hat es noch gerettet
Der Jüngling hörte still
- Traun! Bogen und Pfeil
Er kam nach vielen Tagereisen
- Sind es Schmerzen
In derselben Nacht war Magelone
- Liebe kam aus fernen Landen
Dieses Lied rührte Magelone
- So willst du des Armen
Der Ritter hoffte, von der Geliebten
- Wie soll ich die Freude
Jetzt war die Stunde gekommen
- War es dir, dem diese Lippen bebten
Peter hatte seine Geliebte
- Wir müssen uns trennen
Die Nacht war gekommen
- Ruhe, Süßliebchen
Peter sah über sich
- Verzweiflung ‘So tönet dann schåumende Wellen’
Magelone erwachte
- Wie schnell verschwindet
Peter erholt sich
- Muß es eine Trennung geben
Der Sultan habe eine Tochter
- Sulima ‘Geliebter, wo zaudert’
Peter erschrak im Herzen
- Wie froh and frisch
In der ferne segelte ein Schiff
- Treue Liebe dauert lange
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