Heidenröslein: A Song History
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote "Heidenröslein" in 1771, while he was a law student at Strasbourg; the Schubert scholar Graham Johnson calls the poem "itself a parody of the folk style."[1] In the winter of 1770–71 the critic Johann Gottfried Herder was also in Strasbourg, and his interest in oral poetry led Goethe to gather folk songs from village women in the area and to try writing songs of his own.[2] Those months were also the time of Goethe's brief romance with Friederike Brion, a pastor's daughter in the village of Sessenheim.[1][2] The poem was printed in 1789, in the eighth volume of Goethe's collected Schriften, issued in Leipzig by the publisher Göschen.[3]
House of Fabergé, Flower Study of a Wild Rose, gold, silver, enamel, diamond, jade and rock crystal, c. 1885–1915. A wild rose, shown for the rose of Goethe's poem.
Franz Schubert set the poem on 19 August 1815 (D 257), on a day he set several other Goethe texts, and it was published in 1821 in his Opus 3.[1] In April 1816 he sent the song to Goethe as part of a collection.[1] Heinrich Werner (1800–1833), a composer, singer and music teacher in Braunschweig, is known for his own setting of the same poem.[4] Sources differ on its date: Johnson gives 1827, while an edition at the Mutopia Project dates it 1829.[1][5] Johnson counts Schubert's song among the few that German speakers came to sing as anonymous folk song, though he notes that Erk's Liederschatz, a compilation of the German folk songs most sung in the 1800s, favors Werner's setting.[1]
The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists recordings of Werner's setting from a 1906 Victor disc by the tenor Emil Muench through versions by soloists, a male chorus and vocal quartets into the mid-1920s.[6] Shelley Stevens includes "Heidenroslein," credited to Heinrich Werner, in Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer, a book of 26 intermediate classical arrangements for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]
Sources
- Hyperion Records: "Heidenröslein, D257 (Schubert)" (notes by Graham Johnson).
- Britannica: "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Sturm und Drang (1770–76)".
- Internet Archive (from the Bavarian State Library's digital collections): "Goethe's Schriften, vol. 8 (Leipzig: Göschen, 1789)".
- Niedersächsische Bibliographie: "Werner, Heinrich".
- The Mutopia Project: "Heidenröslein" (H. Werner).
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Heinrich Werner".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: House of Fabergé, Flower Study of a Wild Rose, gold, silver, enamel, diamond, jade and rock crystal, c. 1885–1915. The Cleveland Museum of Art.