Dauernde Liebe: A Song History
"Dauernde Liebe" ("Lasting Love") is the title under which Ludwig Erk's Deutscher Liederschatz, in the C. F. Peters edition revised by Max Friedlaender, prints a German song sung to the minuet from Mozart's Don Giovanni, credited to Mozart and dated 1787.[1] On that account the melody began as opera music, not as a song: Don Giovanni, with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, was first performed at the Nostitz Theatre in Prague on 29 October 1787.[2] In the opera, a minuet is danced in the finale of Act I, at Don Giovanni's party, where three separate groups of players perform three different dances at once, each tied to a different social rank, with the minuet standing for the nobility.[3] By 1791 the opera had also been staged as a German Singspiel in nearly twenty theaters in Germany and Austria.[2]
Nicolas Lancret, Declaration of Love, oil on canvas, c. 1720. Shown for its lovers; it has no connection to the song.
None of the sources consulted here names the poet.[1][4] In the poem, a man traces his love for a girl named Lina from their schooldays through to their wedding and family life, and every verse closes on the same assurance of her affection.[1] Writing in 1869, Hoffmann von Fallersleben knew of no printing older than one in the appendix of Auswahl neuer Lieder (Hamburg, 1809), though he thought the song probably dated from the 1790s and pointed to an imitation already printed in a Berlin poetry almanac for 1793.[4] By his day, he remarked, the garment named in the first line was a forgotten fashion that nobody understood any longer, but the song was still sung, to the minuet from Mozart's opera.[4] A piece titled "Dauernde Liebe," credited to Mozart, appears in Shelley Stevens's Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer, a book of twenty-six intermediate classical pieces arranged for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, with tablature and standard notation, published by Fingers Of Steel.[5] Its link to the song described above rests only on that title and composer credit, which match Erk's.[1][5]
Sources
- Internet Archive (University of Toronto): Ludwig Erk, "Deutscher Liederschatz," Vol. 1, revised by Max Friedlaender (Leipzig: C. F. Peters), No. 8, "Dauernde Liebe".
- Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis: "KV 527 (1) – Il dissoluto punito o sia Il Don Giovanni".
- Glyndebourne: "Don Giovanni: The Music".
- Internet Archive (University of Toronto): Hoffmann von Fallersleben, "Unsere volksthümlichen Lieder" (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1869), No. 36.
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Nicolas Lancret, Declaration of Love, oil on canvas, c. 1720. The Cleveland Museum of Art.