Frauen-Liebe Und Leben

''Frauen-Liebe und Leben'' (''A Woman's Love and Life'') is a cycle of poems by Adelbert von Chamisso, written in 1830. They describe the course of a woman's love for her man, from her point of view, from first meeting through marriage to his death, and after. Selections were set to music as a song-cycle by masters of German Lied, namely Carl Loewe (1836), Franz Lachner (c1839), and Robert Schumann (1840). The setting by Schumann (his opus 42) is now the most widely known.

Chamisso's poems

There are nine lyrics in the cycle, to which Chamisso gave the title ''Frauen-Liebe und Leben''. It was first published in 1830, and twice in 1831 in the first editions of his poetry, and of his complete works.

Schumann in his cycle did not set the final stanza of No. 2 ('Er, der Herrlichste von allen') with its sudden change of mood. He also left out the last poem, No. 9 'Traum der eignen Tage', which is addressed to the now aged protagonist's granddaughter ("''Tochter meiner Tochter''"). Loewe set all nine poems in full, although only the first seven were published together.

Nomenclature

The original published titles of the poem-cycle and the song-cycles are:
* Chamisso (1830): ''Frauen-Liebe und Leben''
* Loewe (1836): ''Frauenliebe''
* Lachner (c1839): ''Frauenliebe und -leben''
* Schumann (1840): ''Frauenliebe und Leben''

The Schumann work has been edited and published several times since 1840, and all the current reliable music publishers still use the original 1840 published title, ''Frauenliebe und Leben'', as do a majority of secondary sources discussing Schumann's song cycle.See this article's talk page. However, ''Frauenliebe und -leben'' has been used in a minority (approximately one third) of recently published secondary sources, and also on some LP and CD covers. This latter spelling is a 'correct' style of written German using the ''ergänzungsstrich'' (i.e. suspended or hanging dash in a list of things), although it does not accurately reflect the work's published title.

Schumann's setting

Schumann composed his setting, ''Frauenliebe und Leben'' in 1840, his "year of song" in which he wrote numerous lieder and three other complete song cycles: ''Liederkreis'', Op. 24, ''Liederkreis'', Op. 39 and ''Dichterliebe'', Op. 48. There are eight poems in his cycle, together telling a story from the protagonist's first meeting her love, through their marriage, to his death. They are:

#'Seit ich ihn gesehen' ("Since I saw him")
#'Er, der Herrlichste von allen' ("He, the noblest of all")
#'Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben' ("I cannot grasp or believe it")
#'Du Ring an meinem Finger' ("You ring upon my finger")
#'Helft mir, ihr Schwestern' ("Help me, sisters")
#'Süßer Freund, du blickest mich verwundert an' ("Sweet friend, you gaze")
#'An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust' ("At my heart, at my breast")
#'Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan' ("Now you have caused me pain for the first time")

Schumann's choice of text was very probably inspired in part by events in his personal life. He had been courting Clara Wieck, but had failed to get her father's permission to marry her. In 1840, after a legal battle to make such permission unnecessary, he finally married her.

The songs in this cycle are notable for the fact that the piano has a remarkable independence from the voice. Breaking away from the Schubertian ideal, Schumann has the piano contain the mood of the song in its totality. Another notable characteristic is the cycle's circular structure, in which the last movement repeats the theme of the first.

The composer's initial MS sketches, dated 11 July 1840, are still extant. They mostly outline the voice part on single staves, with just a few bars of piano postlude at the very end of No. 8.

Recordings

There have been many recordings of Schumann's setting.

Possibly the first was that of
*Julia Culp, with Otto Bake at the piano, for Odeon Records in Berlin in 1909: she later recorded it a second time.
During the 1930s the principal versions were those of
*Lotte Lehmann (with salon orchestra accompaniment) (Parlophone-Odeon),
*Germaine Martinelli accompanied by Jean Doyen in French, ( Columbia Records), and
* Emmy Bettendorf made a Parlophone Records set omitting two titles.
*Lotte Lehmann made a later (wartime) recording with Bruno Walter at the piano (issued on LP by Philips Records as Minigroove ABL 3166).
*Elena Gerhardt made a recording with Gerald Moore in 1947-1948, which was privately published on White Label HMV, six sides, 12", 78rpm.
Recordings by
*Astra Desmond (Decca 78rpm AK 1566-68) (with Phyllis Spurr, piano) and by
*Elisabeth Schumann with Gerald Moore. (HMV)
are noticed in 1951.
*Kathleen Ferrier's version with John Newmark was issued on Decca Medium Play LW 5089.
*Kathleen Ferrier's live recording with Bruno Walter at the Edinburgh Festival 1949, broadcast by the BBC
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