Schumann:
Dichterliebe Op. 48
Dein Angesicht
Die Lotusblume
Du bist wie eine Blume
Mein Wagen rollet langsam
Mit Myrten und Rosen

Bartholdy:
Auf Flügeln des Gesanges

Schumann:
Sie liebten sich Beide
Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen

Schubert:
Der Atlas
Ihr Bild
Das Fischermädchen
Die Stadt
Am Meer
Der Doppelgänger

“A young man loved a girl who loved another man; this other man loved yet another girl and married her. The first girl, out of spite, then married the next good man who came along.” So runs the beginning of a sorrowful love poem written by the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) in 1822. It is his own story, as Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen is one of many poems that was inspired by his unrequited love for his cousin Amalie. As we begin to read his poetry, we are struck by the way he describes events: he tells the story as a matter-of-fact account without using Romantic metaphors. Heine reveals with much irony how he dealt with the situation, as he never indulged in excessive pathos in his poetry. His style was very different: he wished to puncture the Romantic illusion, so at times he exaggerated and at others he wrote down the opposite of what he meant. Heine was very much aware that it was precisely this that made his poems so attractive for composers searching for song texts; it was for this reason that he described his Buch der Lieder, his most important collection of poems written between 1817 to 1827, as “Humorous songs in folk style”. The contents of the Buch der Lieder, however, are anything but humorous. Indeed, the collection’s Prologue describes love as a dream, whilst reality itself is much bleaker. Although the majority of the poems in the Buch der Lieder are about Heine’s love for Amalie, the emphasis on love itself gradually shifts to feelings of fear and pain as can be seen in Die Lotosblume ängstigt sich vor der Sonne Pracht: “the lotus flower fears the sun’s splendour”. The later poems are characterised by autumnal moods, with darkness, dreams of death and thoughts of suicide, as in the opening lines of Die alten, bösen Lieder: “The old, cruel songs, those angry and evil dreams we shall now bury them, bring a large coffin”. Reactions in Germany to the appearance of the Buch der Lieder in 1827 were not initially positive. Heine was often confronted with anti-Semitism and it also did not help that he openly adhered to the ideals of the French Revolution; the Prussian authorities finally issued a warrant for his arrest, with the result that he fled Germany in 1831 and based himself in Paris. It was irony at the highest level that public interest in his work grew massively once his books were banned; the Buch der Lieder increased in popularity from the 1830s onwards and became the greatest literary success of the 19th century. Over the space of one hundred year, a crowd of composers wrote close to eight thousand songs that made use of Heine’s poetry.