August Klughardt

Born: November 30, 1847, Köthen (Anhalt), Germany
Died: August 3, 1902, Rosslau, Dessau-Rosslau, Germany

Schilflieder, Five Fantasy Pieces for Oboe, Viola and Piano, Op. 28

• Composed: 1872
  
• Premiere: Unknown
  
• Duration: approx. 19 minutes

German conductor and composer August Klughardt was born in Cöthen, 40 miles northeast of Berlin, where Johann Sebastian Bach held a position early in his career. Klughardt studied music as a youngster, and he had begun to compose by the time he made his debut as a pianist in Dessau at age 17. After graduating from preparatory school in 1866, he continued his music studies and began performing his compositions in Dresden. From 1867 to 1869, he held a series of jobs conducting and writing incidental music at theaters in Posen, Neustrelitz and Lübeck that garnered him sufficient notoriety to be appointed court music director at Weimar, where he formed a friendship with Franz Liszt, a predecessor in the position who had just returned to live and teach in the city. In 1873, Klughardt returned to Neustrelitz to become the theater’s music director; seven years later he was appointed its general manager. From 1882 to the end of his life 20 years later, he was director of music at the court in Dessau, where he brought the musical forces to sufficient competence to perform Wagner’s complete Ring cycle in 1892 and 1893. His prominence in German music was recognized with membership in the Berlin Academy of Arts, an honorary doctorate from the University of Erlangen, and an offer (not accepted) to direct the venerable Berlin Singakademie.

Klughardt’s compositions—four operas, two oratorios, five symphonies, concert overtures, concertos for cello, violin and oboe, chamber works, incidental music, songs and choral pieces—are in a 19th-century German idiom familiar from Schumann and Brahms and conditioned by some more daring harmonic elements influenced by Liszt and Wagner. Indeed, the Schilflieder of 1872 are dedicated to Liszt in innigster Verehrung (“with deepest respect”) and were influenced in both their elaborate piano part and their poetic inspiration by the works of that composer. The Schilflieder were inspired by a set of five poems that Nikolaus Lenau included in the section titled Sehnsucht (“Longing”) in his Gedichte: Erstes Buch (“Poems: First Book”), published in 1832. Lenau, born in Hungary in 1802, was possessed by a blazing romantic spirit fueled in part by a hopeless love for the wife of a friend, and, in a fit of idealism, in 1832 he came to America and settled on a homestead in Ohio for a few months. Disappointed with the New World, he returned to Europe, where he produced an epic on the Faust legend and then undertook a poetic drama based on Don Juan. Lenau left this latter work unfinished in 1844 when he lost his mind and was admitted to an asylum in the Viennese suburb of Oberdöbling, where he died six years later. (Richard Strauss’ 1888 tone poem was inspired by Lenau’s Don Juan.) 

Klughardt chose not to set Lenau’s Schilflieder as traditional songs for voice and accompaniment (though Berg, Griffes, Rheinberger, Bruch, Pfitzner, Schoeck, Mendelssohn and many others have), but as a wordless piece for chamber ensemble with the texts inscribed line-by-line into the score, the music’s rhythms and phrases sometimes matching the prosody of the verses, sometimes just suggesting their sentiments. Lenau’s sequence of poems is rooted in one of the core themes of German literary Romanticism—the contemplation of lost love amid scenes of nature. In Schilflieder, the protagonist voices his melancholy thoughts on the banks of a pond, and Klughardt’s music evokes his shifting emotional states—the odd-numbered movements generally contemplative, the even ones tempestuous. The first movement (Langsam, träumerisch—“Slow, dreamy”) depicts the protagonist in the “depth of desolation” standing at sunset by a pond that is overhung with willows, long a traditional symbol of grief. A lashing nighttime rainstorm in the next movement (Leidenschaftlich erregt—“Passionately excited”) mirrors his profound gloom. In Zart, in ruhiger Bewegung (“Delicate, quietly moving”), he weeps as he recalls the sound of his beloved’s voice, now “sunk into the pond without a trace.” In the fourth movement (Feurig—“Fiery”) he believes he sees her image in the storm’s lightning reflected in the pond’s surface. He finally finds solace in the closing movement (Sehr ruhig—“Very peaceful”), in which sweet memories of his beloved become “like a quiet evening prayer.”

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Schilflieder (“Songs of the Reeds”)
Nikolaus Lenau (1802–1850)

I.
Drüben geht die Sonne scheiden,
und der müde Tag entschlief;
nieder hangen hier die Weiden
in den Teich, so still, so tief.

Over there the sun is setting,
weary day sinks into sleep,
and the willows hang down low
to the pond, so calm, so deep.
And my love is lost forever,

Und ich muss mein Liebstes meiden:
quill, o Träne, quill hervor!
Traurig säuseln hier die Weiden,
und im Winde bebt das Rohr.

And my love is lost forever,
flow, oh tears, which no one heeds,
sad the wind through willows rustles,
weaving through the shivering reeds.

In mein stilles, tiefes Leiden
strahlst du, Ferne! hell und mild,
wie durch Binsen hier und Weiden
strahlt des Abendsternes Bild.

In the depth of desolation
you shine brightly from afar,
while through reeds and rushes brightly
shines the gentle evening star. 

II.

Trübe wird’s, die Wolken jagen, 
und der Regen niederbricht,
und die lauten Winde klagen:
“Teich, wo ist dein Sternenlicht?”

Waning light, the clouds are scurrying
and the rain falls like a stone,
and the noisy winds cry sadly:
“Pond, where has your starlight flown?”

Suchen den erlosch’nen Schimmer
tief im aufgewühlten See.
Deine Liebe lächelt nimmer
nieder in mein tiefes Weh!

Seeking for the light, extinguished
in the depth, whipped by the storm.
Never more your love will smile
on my heart’s profoundest gloom.

III.

Auf geheimem Waldespfade
schleich’ ich gern im Abendschein
an das öde Schilfgestade,
Mädchen, und gedenke Dein.

Oft on secret forest paths
I creep in the evening glow
to the lonely banks of rushes,
darling girl, and think of you.

Wenn sich dann der Busch verdüstert
rauscht das Rohr geheimnisvoll,
und es klaget und es flüstert,
dass ich weinen, weinen soll.

When the shrubs begin to darken
the reeds tell of mysteries deep,
and a plaintive, whispering voice
tells me I must weep, must weep.

Und ich mein’, ich höre wehen
leise Deiner Stimme Klang,
und im Weiher untergehen
Deinen lieblichen Gesang.

And I fancy I can hear
the gentle music of your voice
while your charming song is sinking
into the pond without a trace.

IV.

Sonnenuntergang;
schwarze Wolken zieh’n,
o wie schwül und bang
alle Winde flieh’n! 

The sun has gone down;
black clouds are drifting,
sultry and anxious
all the winds are fleeing!

Durch den Himmel wild
jagen Blitze bleich;
ihr vergänglich Bild
wandelt durch den Teich. 

Furiously across the sky
pallid lightning sears
and her transient image
in the pond appears.

Wie gewitterklar 
mein’ ich Dich zu seh’n
und Dein langes Haar
frei im Sturme weh’n! 

In the stormy light
I seem to see your form
and your loosened hair
blowing in the storm!

V.

Auf dem Teich, dem regungslosen, 
weilt des Mondes holder Glanz,
flechtend seine bleiche Rosen
in des Schilfes grünen Kranz. 

Motionless upon the pond
lies the moonlight’s gentle glow,
weaving her pallid roses
into the reed’s green wreath below.

Hirsche wandeln dort am Hügel,
blicken in die Nacht empor,
manchmal regt sich das Geflügel
träumerisch im tiefen Rohr. 

Stags, roving on the hills,
look up into the night,
sometimes the dreaming birds
stir in the depths of the reeds.

Weinend muss mein Blick sich senken;
durch die tiefste Seele geht
mir ein sü.es Deingedenken,
wie ein stilles Nachtgebet.

I drop my tearful gaze;
my soul is pierced to the core
by sweet memories of you,
like a quiet evening prayer.