Czech Chamber Music Society • Adam Plachetka

Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900), a generation younger, selected poems with lyrical verses about love for musical settings from among the Evening Songs that Hálek had placed among the first thirty poems in his collection. In Fibich’s rich legacy of songs, the Five Songs from “Evening Songs”, Op. 5, represent his first cycle of songs to Czech texts. He composed the cycle between July and November 1871 after arriving in Prague, and he dedicated it to the wife of his supporter Ludevít Procházka, the singer Marta Procházková. She apparently had a particular liking for the last song (Přilítlo jaro zdaleka – Spring came flying from afar), singing it repeatedly at chamber concerts. The song, “full of lofty sentiment“ and raising “hopes of great promise” in the young composer, was praised in equally lofty terms by the period press. By age 21, Fibich had written dozens of songs with German texts, and yet to come would be a more mature outpouring of vocal works inspired mainly by Růžena Hanušová, Fibich’s fiancée and future wife. The Five Songs were published by Emanuel Wetzler in 1872.

The poems titled Evening Songs by Vítězslav Hálek (1835–1874) are known as typical examples of the literary products of the “May School”. This popular, inspirational collection of love poetry was first published in 1859. Hálek dedicated the collection to his pupil and future wife Dorotka Horáčková, but the poems deal not only with happiness on a personal level, but also with Hálek’s love for his country, of which the poet becomes a “bard”, whether sought after, honoured, heroized, or the opposite.

Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) was Hálek’s friend and admirer. When he composed a cycle of five Evening Songs in 1879, he likewise dedicated the songs to his own wife (“to my wife Babeta” – Bettina Smetanová Ferdinandiová), and through his selection of verses, he emphasised the importance of the artist to the life of the nation. He put the songs Kdo v zlaté struny zahrát zná (He who can play the golden strings) and Nekamenujte proroky! (Do not stone the prophets!) at the very beginning of the cycle; through those songs, the theme of the artist and his nation comes across much more prominently than in the collection of poems, where they do not appear until towards the end. The imperative “Do not stone the prophets!” might be said to have followed Bedřich Smetana time after time and in many different contexts. The third song (Mně zdálo se – I had a dream) is usually characterised as “sorrowfully amorous”. Oscillating between parlando and a melodious cantilena, the song is innovative in the context of the works of Czech song composers of the latter half of the 19th century. After the contrasting fourth song Hej, jaká radost v kole (Hey, what joy in a circle), influenced by the polka, the whole cycle reaches its climax with the declaration of love Z svých písní trůn Ti udělám (From my songs, I shall make thee a throne). Smetana’s highly subjective Evening Songs where written when the composer was deaf, around the same time as the symphonic poem Blaník and the first sketches for the opera The Devil’s Wall. The songs (except for No. 3) were first heard at Žofín Palace on 4 January 1880 on a programme for the composer’s jubilee, performed by Marie Sittová, Josef Lev, and Emanuel Chvála. The cycle was issued in print that same year by the publisher F. A. Urbánek.

Among the works of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), we do not find many compositions for solo piano, but all of them exhibit an original approach to piano technique and expression. This is also the case with the cycle On an Overgrown Path, the oldest parts of which were already finished in 1900 and were originally for harmonium. They were first printed in volumes of Slavonic Melodies (1901 and 1902 in Ivančice) without the programmatic titles that first appeared in the complete edition of Series I in 1911 and are often connected with the milieu of Janáček’s childhood. No. 4, The Madonna of Frýdek, refers to the Church of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary in Frýdek, a destination for pilgrimage processions. The musical imagery depicts the mysterious atmosphere of the place, and Janáček uses dynamics to illustrate the gradual approach of the pilgrims towards their goal. According to the composer, They Chattered Like Swallows is based on “a curt motif of female chattering” that is extended into a protracted song, and the title Good Night! Is undoubtedly connected with the feeling when falling asleep and, as the composer added, with parting.

From its first performance, piano was designated as the instrument for performances of the cycle On an Overgrown Path. According to the catalogue of Janáček’s works, Jan Kunc premiered the work at a concert of the Moravian Teachers’ Association on 6 January 1905, but individual pieces had undoubtedly also appeared earlier on the programmes of cultural events in Moravia, such as in Bučovice in September 1904.

While Hálek’s Evening Songs evoke evenings full of love, the compositions that follow are more darkly coloured. Abendempfindung, K 523, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) reflects upon the passing of time and the inevitability of death and speaks of the tears of friends left behind and of graves. The sentimental text tends to be attributed to Joachim Heinrich Campe, a German writer, linguist, and translator of the Age of Enlightenment, but his authorship is not certain. A similar poem titled Abendempfindung an Lana (sic, recte: Laura) was published in 1781 in Vienna in an anthology of poetry of that era, compiled by Johann Friedrich Schink. Mozart composed Abendempfindung on 24 June 1787, at about the same time as the opera Don Giovanni and Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and he highlighted the composition’s calm restraint and contemplative mood by using a regular eight-note rhythm in the accompanimental piano arpeggios. In March 1789, the Viennese publisher Artaria published the song together with another, An Chloe, K 524, in an edition titled “Zwei deutsche Arien”.

Franz Schubert (1797–1828), the master of German Romantic Lieder, also composed songs on themes connected with the evening (in both the literal and the figurative sense). The song Im Abendroth, D 799, was written to a poem with the same title by Karl Gottlieb Lappe, whose verses were also set to music by such composers as Beethoven and Schumann. “Abendroth”, meaning “sunset”, tells of divine beauty, which Schubert envisions in amazement and with a trusting, intimate relationship to the Creator. The 1825 composition impresses listeners with simple modesty, but concealed under that simplicity are a compositional maturity and attention to detail. The song was not published until 1832, well after Schubert’s death. Nacht und Träume, D 827, to words by Matthäus von Collin, was published in 1825 as part of Op. 43 with its text incorrectly attributed Friedrich Schiller, but it is older, its second version dating from June 1823. The music moves quietly in pianissimo at a slow tempo with a flowing cantilena above sixteenth-note figures in the piano, evoking elusive dreams like moonlight. These Schubert songs have appeared in various arrangements including a version by Max Reger for voice and orchestra and a transcription for piano and strings.

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) composed songs all his long life, from attempts at composing during his childhood to his final compositions from 1948. He liked poetry, and he helped bring greater societal attention to poems for which he wrote musical settings. In songs selected from Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Otto Julius Bierbaum, Op. (No. 1 Traum durch die Dämmerung, No. 3 Nachtgang), we return to tender verses about love, to the mysterious mood of sunsets, and to the starry heavens; by 1895, when these Late-Romantic songs were written and published, Strauss was already enjoying his happy marriage to the soprano Pauline de Ahna. Originally intended for a medium voice and piano, the songs were later arranged for high and low voices as well and were given optional orchestral accompaniments. Strauss composed Die Nacht (Op. 10, No. 3 from the collection Acht Gedichte aus “Letzte Blätter”) in 1885 to a text by the Austrian poet Hermanna von Gilm. He even recorded it twice playing the piano part himself, for the second time in 1942 for a wartime radio broadcast from Vienna with the tenor Anton Dermota. Night—the thief of light, colour, and the souls of loved ones—thus gained a new and threatening context.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) turned to Hálek’s Evening Songs even before Bedřich Smetana did so. In all, he set twelve poems from the collection to music, but their dating is not entirely clear. The songs are divided between Op. 3, Op. 8, and Op. 31, and one of the songs, Tak jak ten měsíc (Like the Moon), remained in manuscript. The songs are usually assumed to date from 1876, having been composed between Dvořák’s second and third cycles of Moravian Duets, but they may be even older. Only Op. 31 was published with the title Evening Songs in an edition issued in Prague by F. A. Urbánek (1883) with a dedication to the baritone Josef Lev, who sang two of the songs at the premiere on 16 September 1882 with Dvořák at the piano. These strophic songs with their clear piano accompaniment cannot compete with Dvořák’s more mature opuses in the genre, but they represent an important moment in the composer’s artistic development. The piano piece Night Journey, serving on the programme like a respite along the way before the last songs, is from the cycle Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85. Dvořák composed it and had it published immediately in 1889, masterfully satisfying the demand of his publisher Simrock for smaller-scale pieces that would be enjoyable for performers and listeners alike.