Saturday, October 26, 2013

Abendbild (Evening Scene)

Abendbild

One of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s last Lieder, and one of my favorites, is a peaceful, yet very chromatic, setting of an uncharacteristically happy poem by her husband’s friend, Nikolaus Lenau.

Fanny only had one child, her son Sebastian, but she loved being an aunt. She sorely missed Felix and Cäcilie’s children when they moved back to Leipzig. Within the last two years of her life two little nieces were born, one to her sister Rebecka (the vocalist for most of her Lieder) and her brother-in-law Gustav Dirichlet, and the other to her brother Paul and his wife Albertina. Both little nieces were late in life children, and what in modern parlance would be called miracle babies. Perhaps one or both of these little nieces inspired Tante Fanny to compose this Lied.

Abendbild

Friedlicher Abend senkt sich aufs Gefilde;
Sanft entschlummert Natur, um ihre Züge
Schwebt der Dämmerung zarte Verhüllung, 
und sie lächelt die Holde;
Sie lächelt, die Holde.

Lächelt, ein schlummernd Kind in Vaters Armen,
Der voll Liebe zu ihr sich neigt, sein göttlich
Auge weilt auf ihr, und es weht sein Odem 
  Über ihr Antlitz.

Friedlicher Abend senkt sich aufs Gefilde;
Sanft entschlummert Natur, um ihre Züge
Schwebt der Dämmerung zarte Verhüllung, 
und sie lächelt die Holde;
Sie lächelt, die Holde.

Sie lächelt, die Holde.

~Nikolaus Lenau (alt. Fanny Hensel)

This very chromatic, yet completely coherent, Lied lilts gently all over the twelve tone scale. It is beautiful and unassuming, as is the scene that it portrays. The piano part has a rocking motion, which suggests that the baby is being lulled to sleep. Yet the singer of the lullaby is the mother, and the person holding the baby is the father.

The singer, I think, must be the mother. She and her husband have participated in God’s Creation, and she has brought this baby, a little girl, into the world, and she is finding joy in how much her husband loves the little daughter that she has given him.

The mother begins by singing about the peaceful evening which is settling on the natural world outside (the family is presumably inside), the soft slumbering of nature, and the tender veil of dusk. Her melody line here is gentle and folksong-like, but it wanders around the chromatic scale. What is happening in nature mirrors what is happening in the family circle. “She smiles, the beautiful one,” sings the mother, and then repeats the phrase with a short rest after lächelt emphasizing die Holde.

And then the mother sings about the scene inside, and her melody ascends to Kind and then descends to a chromatic note to emphasize the father‘s arms. “Softly slumbers a baby in her father’s arms, who, full of love for her, bends over her, and his breath wafts over her countenance.” As the father bends down towards the little girl, the mother’s melody also bends down, and then her melody ascends to an F to suggest the wafting of his breath, and then descends, using some chromatic intervals, on the word über, all the way down to a D (above middle C), on the end of the word Antlitz. It is as though the mother’s melody is also ascending and then descending to touch the countenance of her daughter. In describing her husband’s love for their child, she also expresses her own, but her focus is not on herself, but on her husband and daughter.

Then she, and the piano, pause for a moment, as if to reflect on the little miracle that is going on about them.

And then she returns to her song about the peaceful evening, the slumbering natural world, and the smiling little baby. The piano, rather than simply returning to its previous rocking, now follow’s the mother’s melody gently and sweetly.

“Und sie lächelt, die Holde, sie lächelt, die Holde.”

We do not know what small or great moments of struggle or chaos might have happened in the home of this family with a little newborn during the day, or what might happen later in the night, but at this moment all of Creation and the family are peaceful.

After the melody returns to the tonic note, Fanny repeats the final phrase again, this time with the mother's melody landing not on the tonic note, where a song would normally end, but on the mediant note. Somehow this rise to another high, extended note on lächelt followed not by the a resolution on the tonic note, but rather by one on the mediant gives the unassuming Wiegenlied a greater sense of tranquil, quiet awe.

The large world of Creation and the small world of the family are in gentle harmony.

“Sie lächelt, die Holde.”



Sadly, there are no recordings of this Lied on Youtube or any other internet site, but there is a very fine one in a collection of Fanny Hensel’s Lieder recorded by the soprano Susan Gritton. This CD may be purchased from Amazon.

If you wish to sing this Lied yourself, as I highly recommend that you do, you may download it for free from the International Music Library. You will find it at page eleven of the collection of Lieder, which was published shortly after her death, and which concludes with her final Lied, Bergeslust.

Fünf Lieder mit Begleitung des Pianoforte, componeirt von Fanny Cäcilie Hensel:
http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/0/0b/IMSLP100337-PMLP206034-Hensel_Fanny_Fuenf_Lieder_mit_Begleitung_des_Pianoforte_Op_10_Breitkopf.pdf