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Posted by Martin Walker
on February 20, 2012, 12:07 pm, in reply to "http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2012/Feb12/Wanderer_CC72518.htm"
92.78.179.18
I will try to answer my own question here: I have in the meantime heard a brief excerpt from this on Amazon where voice enters with the words: "Und die Welt hebt an..." I guessed that this is from what is possibly the most famously sibylline of German Romantic statements in verse, Eichendorff's Wünschelruthe, which goes as follows:
Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen,
Die da träumen fort und fort,
Und die Welt hebt an zu singen,
Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.
As far as I can see the Lied and Art-Song site does not give an English translation of this - probably as the setting by Karl Marx (not the one whose pen was his Capital!) is a 3-part canon for choir, not a Lied. Here is mine:
Divining rod
A song's asleep in everything -
All things dreaming long and well -
And the world begins to sing,
Can you but speak the magic spell.
It is of course likely that Schumann knew this text (circa 1835) and possible that his title The poet speaks for the last piece of Kinderszenen actually referred to it in the composer's mind, so the idea of doing this was rather appropriate, though I cannot say how effective it is, not having heard all of it.
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