Text

Translations

Die Loreley      

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Text by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) 

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
 
Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.
 
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.
 
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Lied dabei,
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewalt’ge Melodei.
 
Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’.
 
Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei getan.

The Loreley

Translation by Richard Stokes

I do not know what it means
That I should feel so sad;
There is a tale from olden times
I cannot get out of my mind.
 
 The air is cool, and twilight falls,
 And the Rhine flows quietly by;
 The summit of the mountains glitters
 In the evening sun.
 
 The fairest maiden is sitting
 In wondrous beauty up there,
 Her golden jewels are sparkling,
 She combs her golden hair.
 
 She combs it with a golden comb
 And sings a song the while;
 It has an awe-inspiring,
 Powerful melody.
 
 It seizes the boatman in his skiff
 With wildly aching pain;
 He does not see the rocky reefs,
 He only looks up to the heights.
 
 I think at last the waves swallow
 The boatman and his boat;
 And that, with her singing,
 The Loreley has done.

Adelaide 

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) 

German source: Friedrich von Matthison
 
Einsam wandelt dein Freund im Frühlingsgarten,

Mild vom lieblichen Zauberlicht umflossen,
Das durch wankende Blütenzweige zittert,

Adelaide!
 
In der spiegelnden Flut, im Schnee der Alpen,
In des sinkenden Tages Goldgewölken, Im Gefilde der Sterne strahlt dein Bildnis,
Adelaide!
 
Abendlüfte im zarten Laube flüstern,
Silberglöckchen des Mais im Grase säuseln,
Wellen rauschen und Nachtigallen flöten:
Adelaide!
 
Einst, o Wunder! entblüht auf meinem Grabe
Eine Blume der Asche meines Herzens;
Deutlich schimmert auf jedem Purpurblättchen:

Adelaide!

Adelaide
English translation by Richard Stokes
 

Your friend wanders lonely in the spring garden,
Gently bathed in the magical sweet light
That shimmers through swaying boughs in bloom,
Adelaide!
 
In the mirroring waves, in the Alpine snows,
In the golden clouds of the dying day,
In the fields of stars your image shines,
Adelaide!

Evening breezes whisper in the tender leaves,

The silvery bells of May rustle in the grass,
Waves murmur and nightingales sing:

Adelaide!

​

One day, O miracle! there shall bloom on my grave
A flower from the ashes of my heart;
On every purple leaf shall clearly shimmer:

Adelaide!

La Dame d’André  

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) 

Text by Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969) 

André ne connaît pas la dame
Qu’il prend aujourd’hui par la main.
A-t-elle un coeur à lendemains
Et pour le soir a-t-elle une âme?
Au retour d’un bal campagnard
S’en allait-elle en robe vague
Chercher dans le meules la bague
Des fiançailles du hasard?
A-t-elle eu peur, la nuit venue,
Guettée par les ombres d’hier,
Dans son jardin lorsque l’hiver
Entrait par la grande avenue?
Il l’a aimée pour sa couleur
Pour sa bonne humeur de Dimanche.
Pâlira-t-elle aux feuilles blanches
De son album des temps meilleurs?

André's girlfriend 

​

André doesn't know the lady
Whose hand he takes today.
Does she have a heart for the future?
Does she have a soul for the evening?
Returning from a country ball 
In her shapeless dress, did she
Search in the haystacks for the ring
Of a random betrothal?
Was she afraid as night came on,
Watched by shadows of yesterday
In her garden, as winter
Entered down the wide avenue?
He loved her for her color,
For her good Sunday mood.
Will she fade on the white pages
Of his album of better times?

Dans l’herbe

Je ne peux plus rien dire
Ni rien faire pour lui.
Il est mort de sa belle
Il est mort de sa mort belle
Dehors
Sous l’arbre de la Loi
En plein silence
En plein paysage
Dans l’herbe.
Il est mort inaperçu
Encriant son passage
En appelant, en m’appelant
Mais comme j’étais loin de lui
Et que sa voix ne portait plus
Il est mort seul dans les bois
Sous son arbre d’enfance

Et je ne peux plus rien dire

Ni rien faire pour lui

In the Grass

I can't say 
Or do anything more for him. 
He died for his lovely one
He died a beautiful death
Outside
Under the tree of Law
In absolute silence,
In open countryside,
In the grass.
He died, unheard,

Crying as he passed away--
Calling, calling me
But as I was far from him
and his voice carried no more,
He died alone in the forest,
Under his childhood tree

And I cannot say

Or do anything more for him. 

Il vole

En allant se coucher le soleil
Se reflète au vernis de ma table:
C’est le fromage rond de la fable
Au bec de mes ciseaux de vermeil.
– Mais où est le corbeau? – Il vole.
Je voudrais coudre mais un aimant
Attire à lui toutes mes aiguilles.
Sur la place les joueurs de quilles
De belle en belle passent le temps.
– Mais où est mon amant? – Il vole.
C’est un voleur que j’ai pour amant,
Le corbeau vole et mon amant vole,
Voleur de coeur manque à sa parole
Et voleur de fromage est absent.
– Mais où est le bonheur? – Il vole.
Je pleure sous le saule pleureur
Je mêle mes larmes à ses feuilles
Je pleure car je veux qu’on me veuille
Et je ne plais pas à mon voleur.
– Mais où donc est l’amour? – Il vole.
Trouvez la rime à ma déraison
Et par les routes du paysage
Ramenez-moi mon amant volage
Qui prend les coeurs et perd ma raison.
Je veux que mon voleur me vole.

In flight

The setting sun
Is reflected in my varnished table:
It is the round cheese from the fable
In the beak of my silvered scissors.
But where is the crow? In flight.
I would like to sew but a magnet
Draws away all my needles.
On the square, bowlers play
Game after game, passing time.
But where is my lover? In flight.
A flighty thief is my lover,
The crow flies away and my lover steals away,
The heart-thief breaks his word,
And the cheese-thief is absent.
But where is happiness? In flight.
I weep under the weeping willow
I mix my tears with his leaves
I weep because I want to be wanted
And my thief loves me not.
But where then is love? In flight.
Find the sense in my nonsense
And on the country paths
Return to me my flighty lover

Who steals hearts and makes me lose my mind.
I want my thief to steal me away.

Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant

 Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant
 Doux comme un gant de peau glacée
 Et mes prunelles effaces
 Font de mes yeux des cailloux blancs.
 Deux cailloux blancs dans mon visage,
 Dans le silence deux muets
 Ombrés encore d’un secret
 Et lourds du poids mort des images.
 Mes doigts tant de fois égarés
 Sont joints en attitude sainte
 Appuyés au creux de mes plaints
 Au noeud de mon coeur arrêté.
 Et mes deux pieds sont les montagnes,

Les deux derniers monts que j’ai vus
 À la minute où j’ai perdu
 La course que les années gagnent.
 Mon souvenir est ressemblant.
 Enfants emportez-le bien vite,
 Allez, allez, ma vie est dite.
 Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant. 

My corpse is as soft as a glove

My corpse is as soft as a glove
Soft like a glove of frozen skin
And my pupils, erased, 
Make white pebbles of my eyes.
Two white pebbles in my face,
In the silence, two mutes, 
Still darkened by a secret, 
Heavy with the dead weight of images.
My fingers, so many times lost wanderers,
Join now in a saintly posture, 
Pressed to the hollow of my sorrows
At the knot of my stopped heart.
And my two feet are mountains,

The two last peaks I saw
In the moment that I lost
The race that the years win.
My memory is true to life.
Children, take it quickly,
Away, away, my life is finished.
My corpse is soft like a glove.

Violon

Couple amoureux aus accents méconnus
Le violon et son joueur me plaisent.
Ah! j’aime ces gémissements tendus
Sur la corde des malaises.
Aux accords sur les cordes des pendus
À l’heure où les Lois se taisent
Le coeur en forme de fraise
S’offre à l’amour comme un fruit inconnu.

Violin

Loving pair of obscure sounds,
The violin and its player please me.
Ah! I love their long-held moans

Upon the complaining strings.
To the harmonies of hanged strings,
At the hour when Justice is silent,
The heart, in the form of a strawberry,
Gives itself up to love like an unknown fruit.

Fleurs

Fleurs promises, fleurs tenues dans tes bras,
Fleurs sorties des parenthèses d’un pas,
Qui t’apportait ces fleurs l’hiver Saupoudrés du sable des mers?
Sable de tes baisers, fleurs des amours fanées
Les beaux yeux sont de cendre et dans la cheminée
Un coeur enrubanné de plaints
Brûle avec ses images saintes.

Flowers

Promised flowers, flowers held in your arms,
Flowers from a step's parenthesis--
Who brought you these flowers in winter,
Powdered by the ocean's sands?
Sand of your kisses, flowers of withered loves,
Your beautiful eyes are ashes, and in the fireplace
A heart ribboned in sorrows
Burns with its sacred images.

​Fair House of Joy 

Roger Quilter (1877-1953) 

Text by Anonymous

Fain would I change that note 

To which fond Love hath charm’d me 

Long, long to sing by rote, 

Fancying that that harm’d me: 

Yet when this thought doth come 

‘Love is the perfect sum 

Of all delight’ 

I have no other choice 

Either for pen or voice 

To sing or write. 

O Love! They wrong thee much  

That say thy sweet is bitter, 

When thy rich fruit is such  

as nothing can be sweeter. 

Fair house of joy and bliss, 

Where truest pleasure is, 

I do adore thee: 

I know thee what thou art, 

I serve thee with my heart, 

And fall before thee. 

Silent Noon

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) 

Text by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)  

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,— 

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: 

Your eyes smile peace.  

The pasture gleams and glooms 

‘Neath billowing skies that scatter andamass. 

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, 

Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge 

Where the cow-parsely skirts the hawthorn hedge. 

‘Tis visible silence, still as the hourglass. 

Deep in the sunsearched growths the dragon-fly 

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:— 

So this winged hour is dropt to us from above. 

Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, 

This close-companioned inarticulate hour 

When twofold silence was the song of love. 

Nuvoletta, Op. 25 

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) 

Text by James Joyce (1882-1941) 

Nuvoletta in her light dress, spunn of sisteen shimmers,
was looking down on them, leaning over the bannistars and listening all she childishly could.
She was alone. All her nubied companions were asleeping with the squir'ls.
She tried all the winsome wonsome ways her four winds had taught her.
She tossed her sfumastelliacinous hair like _la princesse de la Petite Bretagne_
and she rounded her mignons arms like Mrs. Cornwallis-West
and she smiled over herself like the image of the pose of the daughter of the Emperour of Irelande
And she sighed after herself as were she born to bride with Tristis Tristior Tristissimus.
But, sweet madonine, she might fair as well have carried her daisy's worth to Florida...
 
Oh, how it was duusk. From Vallee Maraia to Grasya plaina, dormimust echo!
Ah dew! Ah dew! It was so duusk that the tears of night began to fall,
first by ones and twos, then by threes and fours, at last by fives and sixes of sevens,
for the tired ones were wecking; as we weep now with them.
O! O! O! Par la pluie! ...
 
Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life
and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one.
She cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars;
she gave a childy cloudy cry: Nuée! Nuée!
A light dress fluttered.
She was gone.

L’alba separa dalla luce l’ombra

Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) 

Text by Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) 

L'alba sepàra dalla luce l'ombra, 

E la mia voluttà dal mio desire. 

O dolce stelle, è l'ora di morire. 

​

Un più divino amor dal ciel vi sgombra. 

Pupille ardenti, O voi senza ritorno 

Stelle tristi, spegnetevi incorrotte! 

Morir debbo. Veder non voglio il giorno, 

Per amor del mio sogno e della notte. 

Chiudimi, O Notte, nel tuo sen materno, 

Mentre la terra pallida s'irrora. 

Ma che dal sangue mio nasca l'aurora 

E dal sogno mio breve il sole eterno! 

Translation by Anotonio Giuliano

The dawn divides the darkness from the light, 

And my sensual pleasure from my desire, 

O sweet stars, the hour of death is now at hand: 

A love more holy sweeps you from the skies. 

Gleaming eyes, O you who'll ne'er return, 

sad stars, snuff out your uncorrupted light! 

I must die, I do not want to see the day, 

For love of my own dream and of the night. 

Envelop me, O Night in your maternal breast, 

While the pale earth bathes itself in dew; 

But let the dawn rise from my blood 

And from my brief dream the eternal sun 

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)    

Text by Fedele Romani (1855-1910)

Mentí  a l'avviso. Eppur d'Ausena è  questa 

l'angusta valle, e qui fatal dimora 

mi presagiva la secreta voce 

che turba da piu' notti il mio riposo. 

Tu cui nomar non oso, 

funesta donna dall'avel risorta 

per mio supplizio un'altra volta ancora 

promettesti vedermi, e in rio momento. 

Ah! chi geme? M'inganno. E' l'onda e il vento. 

E' la notte che mi reca le sue larve, i suoi timori, 

che gli accenti punitori del rimorso udir mi fa. 

It was a false warning (It was a false alarm….), yet this is the narrow valley 

Of Ausena, and here that mysterious voice  

That has disturbed my sleep these recent nights 

​Spoke of a fatal resting place. 

​

Sinister woman whom I dare  

not name,  

You have risen from the grave at my pleas.  

You promised to see me once more, 

And at a fateful moment. 

Ah!  Who moans?  I’m deceived: ‘tis wave and wind. 

The night torments me with ghosts and fears. 

It causes me to imagine punishing blows of remorse.

Mattinata    
Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919) 
Text by composer
 
L'Aurora, di bianco vestita,
Già l'uscio dischiude al gran sol,
Di già con le rose sue dita
Carezza de' fiori lo stuol!
Commosso da un fremito arcano
Intorno il creato già par,
E tu non ti desti, ed invano
Mi sto qui dolente a cantar:
Metti anche tu la veste bianca
e schiudi l'uscio al tuo cantor!
Ove non sei la luce manca,
Ove tu sei nasce l'amor! etc.

The dawn, dressed in white,

has already opened the door to the sun,

and with pink fingers

caresses the myriads with flowers.

A mysterious trembling seems

to disturb all nature,

yet you will not get up, and vainly

I stand here sadly and sing.

Dress yourself, too, in white

and open the door to your serenader!

Where you are not, all is dark,

where you are, love is born! etc.

What Good Would the Moon Be?  

Kurt Weill (1900-1950) 

Lyrics by Langston Hughes (1901-1967) 

What good would the moon be

Unless the right one shared its beams?

What good would dreams come true be

If love wasn't in those dreams?

And a primrose path

What would be the fun

Of walking down a path like that

Without the right one?

What good would the night be

Without the right lips whispering low?

Kiss me, oh darling, kiss me

While evening stars still glow

No, it won't be a primrose path for me

No, it won't be diamonds and gold

But maybe it will be

Someone who'll love me

Someone who'll love just me

To have and to hold

Younger than Springtime

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) 

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (1985-1960) 

I touch your hand
And my arms grow strong,
Like a pair of birds
That burst with song.
My eyes look down
At your lovely face,
And I hold the world
In my embrace.

Younger than springtime are you,
Softer than starlight are you,
Warmer than winds of June
Are the gentle lips you gave me.

Gayer than laughter are you,
Sweeter than music are you,
 Angel and lover, heaven and earth
 Are you to me.
 And when your youth
 And joy invade my arms,
 And fill my heart as now they do,
 Then younger than springtime am I,
 Gayer than laughter am I,
 Angel and lover, heaven and earth
 Am I with you!

 
 Gayer than laughter are you,
 Sweeter than music are you,
 Angel and lover, heaven and earth
 Are you to me.
 And when your youth
 And joy invade my arms,
 And fill my heart as now they do,
 Then younger than springtime am I,
 Gayer than laughter am I,
 Angel and lover, heaven and earth
 Am I with you!

Stranger in Paradise

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)

Lyrics by George Forrest (1915-1999) and Robert Wright (1914-2005) 

Oh, why do the leaves of the mulberry tree whisper differently now?
And why is the nightingale singing at noon on the mulberry bough?
For some most mysterious reason, this isn't the garden I know...
No, it's paradise now that was only a garden a moment ago!
 
Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise,
All lost in a wonderland, a stranger in paradise,
If I stand starry-eyed, that's a danger in paradise
For mortals who stand beside an angel like you.
 
I saw your face and I ascended
Out of the commonplace into the rare!
Somewherе in space, I hang suspended
Until I know thеre's a chance that you care.
 
Won't you answer the fervent prayer of a stranger in paradise?
Don't send me in dark despair from all that I hunger for,
But open your angel's arms to the stranger in paradise
And tell him that he need be a stranger no more.

I saw your face and I ascended
Out of the commonplace into the rare!

Somewherе in space, I hang suspended
Until I know (till the moment I know) thеre's a chance that you care.

Won't you answer the fervent prayer of a stranger in paradise?
Don't send me in dark despair from all that I hunger for,
But open your angel's arms to the stranger in paradise
And tell me that I need be a stranger no more!