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Lady Lesbia was of a different temper. She loved ease and elegance, the gracious luxuries of life. She loved art and music, but not to labour hard at either. She played and sang a little excellently within that narrow compass which she had allotted to herself played Mendelssohn's 'Lieder' with finished touch and faultless phrasing, sang Heine's ballads with consummate expression.
That he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn's Lieder, and other favourites. When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. Leaning back in his arm-chair of an evening, he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly at the fiddle which was thrown across his knee.
The duration of Schumann's song-time was short, the greater part of his Lieder having been written in 1840. After this he gave himself up to oratorio, symphony, and chamber-music.
Hell has given me everything by halves. "O unhappy man, how true, how true it is! In the flower of your life you went to hell; into the evil jaws of destiny you threw the delusive present and yourself with it. O Kleist!" Suddenly, at Döbling, on 29 November, 1891, the stream of Wolf's genius flowed again, and he wrote fifteen Italian Lieder, sometimes several in one day.
Dramatic art is everywhere in Strauss's music, even in works that seem least adapted to it, such as his Lieder and compositions of pure music. It is most evident in his symphonic poems, which are the most important part of his work. I shall not say much about the four first works, where the mind and manner of the artist is taking shape.
I know not what it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finished style that reminds me of Mendelssohn. It would almost do for the words of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohne Worte": "DEAR MISS MARIA, I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your kind note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks.
Of course Heine is the approved route with a German girl. Gard borrowed from Fräulein an old copy of the "Buch der Lieder." Very obliging at times like the rest of the family in the business of improving his accent, she urged that if he would commit some of those little prized poems to heart, she would supervise his intonations.
There were humble people in the provinces who read his lieder and wrote to him, like old Schulz, and felt themselves one with him. There were poor artists, a composer among others, who had not, and could not attain, not only success, but self-expression, and it made them glad to have their ideas realized by Christophe.
I have named nearly all the good ones. They require any amount of work and experience with audiences. None of the singers I have named is a novice. Nor will you find novices who are able to sing Schumann and Franz lieder, although they may be blessed with well-nigh perfect vocal organs.
But nowhere is the beauty of the German song so marked as in those Lieder treating of love, deeds of arms, and the old mystic legends so dear to the German heart. Tieck writes of the "Minnesinger period:" "Believers sang of faith, lovers of love; knights described knightly actions and battles, and loving, believing knights were their chief audiences.
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