Frühling: Isasi Lieder

Heine & Isasi

Heine, Isasi, and the Divergent Muses

Few poets in world literature have succeeded in captivating the inspiration of so many composers as the German Heinrich Heine (Düsseldorf, 1797–Paris, 1856). In particular, the success of his Buch der Lieder (1827) not only catapulted the fame of the Rhenish poet, but also immediately attracted the attention of contemporary musicians such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann.

Despite such prestige, Heine’s figure has occupied an ambiguous position—at once canonical and heterodox—within Germanic culture. Recognised as the epitome of German Romanticism, for a long time he was rejected by his compatriots due to his condition as an apostate Jew and skeptic, a revolutionary democrat, and a Francophile cosmopolitan. Indeed, although he was always remembered above all for his love poetry, it is impossible to understand the complexity of his legacy without taking into account the caustic and subversive character of much of his production—often expurgated or softened by editors and translators.

More than half a century after his death, and barely a year before the young Andrés Isasi signed his collection of Lieder inspired by Heine’s verses, the Spanish journalist Julio Camba summed up the uncomfortable institutional and academic regard still surrounding the author:

Heine’s memory has triumphed in Prussia, despite official opposition. The people love the poet. I have seen his verses in the hands of Berlin’s seamstresses and, at times, have heard them from their lips. Those who do not love the poet are the lieutenants, the captains, the judges, the magistrates, the professors, the bankers, the great manufacturers, and other such folk—and it is only fair to say that they are right. As much as they may hate Heine, Heine has hated them far more.

Perhaps this divergent and, in a certain sense, marginal condition within the German Parnassus explains the particular interest his work has aroused among various non-Germanic musicians eager to approach, emulate, or assimilate the great Central European artistic tradition. Such was the case of the Hungarian Franz Liszt (1811–1886) and his pupils Ingeborg von Bronsart (1840–1913), born in Saint Petersburg to Scandinavian parents, and the Roman Giovanni Sgambatti (1841–1914), son of an English mother; as well as the Moldavian Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894), founder of the Russian piano school through his chair at the St Petersburg Conservatory; the Norwegians Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) and Agathe Backer-Grøndahl (1847–1907); the Americans Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) and Charles Ives (1874–1954); the Parisian Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979); and the Jewish-Italian, later naturalised American, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968). All of them are brought together in the programme of this album alongside the aforementioned Andrés Isasi (1890–1940), native of the Spanish Basque Country.

From their distinct sensibilities, each of the pages selected here reflects different facets of Heine’s multifaceted emotional world: from the sombre, legendary atmosphere of Die Loreley to the desolate melancholy of Was will die einsame Thräne?, passing through the pastoral idyll of Frühlingslied or Gruss, the mocking satire of Am Teetisch, the bitter resentment of Ich grolle nicht, or the tenderness of Du bist wie eine Blume, which Sgambatti dedicated to his wife. Nevertheless, it is Im Rhein, im schönen Strome that best reveals the disturbing potential of the irreverent Heine, turning into an object of erotic contemplation an image of “the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Queen of Angels,” as the poet himself explains in his Florentine Nights.