A hoarfrost fell in the spring night (song)

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A hoarfrost fell in the spring night , also called blue flowers , is a German folk song.

history

The text was first published in 1825 by Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio , who claims it was recorded by Anna Maria Lützenkirchen in the Bergisches Land , more precisely in Wiesdorf (now in Leverkusen ). Folk song researchers consider it more likely that it is an original poem by Zuccalmaglio, who repeatedly tried to pass his own texts off as folk good. Friedrich Karl von Erlach published the text sent in by Zuccalmaglio in 1835, Andreas Kretzschmer in 1838. As early as 1829 Heinrich Heine quoted a three-verse, somewhat different text version in his three-part poem Tragedy . Whether Heine really heard the text himself in the Rhineland, as he stated, or had Zuccalmaglio's text as a template, can no longer be clarified. In 1854 the text was reprinted in the supplementary volume to Des Knaben Wunderhorn published by Ludwig Erk . When and how the text ended up in Achim von Arnim's estate, as the title of this supplementary volume suggests, is not known. In the footnote, however, reference is made to Heine's publication, which makes it unlikely that this publication can be traced back to another source.

The melody originally published by Zuccalmaglio has become unusable. Ludwig Erk backed the text in 1856 in the first edition of the Deutsches Liederhort der Weise of the Alsatian folk song recorded in 1807. A trucker drove across the Rhine , which has similarities to the original melody. Since then, this version has generally been printed in books of folk songs. Engelbert Humperdinck made this melody the leitmotif of his opera Königskinder in 1911 .

Franz Magnus Böhme stated in 1893: "Up to the present day the people do not sing this song, only choral societies sing Heine's text version of Mendelssohn's 'Drei Volkslieder' No. 2, published in 1836". Little seems to have changed in this assessment of the popularity of the song to this day, even if the song was recorded and changed. a. experienced a certain spread in the Zupfgeigenhansl . In 1983 the song was not included in a list of the 100 best-known German folk songs determined for the ZDF through opinion polls. The best-known setting of the text remains the version for mixed choir that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy published in 1836. Other settings, mostly based on Heiner's text version, come from a. by Clara Schumann (1840), Robert Schumann , August Söderman , Charles Villiers Stanford , Frank Van der Stucken , Armin Knab and Richard Trunk .

Content and imagery

The song tells the simple story of a young couple whose love does not get their parents' approval and who therefore leave their homeland, but ultimately fall into misery and die. - The " blue flowers " quoted in the text are reminiscent of the " blue flower ", a central symbol of romanticism . Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio tried to give a botanical explanation:

“Which flower does this mean? I thought about the forget-me-not for a long time . But this does not bloom in the spring night, only in midsummer, so there is no risk of freezing to death. Last I discovered: that the »scylla bifolia« ( two-leaved sea onion ) in the Siebengebirge is called blue flowers and blooms there on the Drachenfels , as the northernmost point of view as far as I know , in the Rhineland. Its flowering time falls in April, often in February, so that I remember having seen this beautiful flower withered from maturity. "

- Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio : Letter to Hermann Kestner , quoted from Erk-Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort , p. 589.

text

1. A frost fell in the spring night.
He fell on the delicate blue flowers,
they are withered, withered.

2. A boy loved a girl,
they even fled away secretly from home,
neither father nor mother knew.

3. They wandered back and forth,
they were neither lucky nor starred,
they were corrupt, they died.

4. Blue flowers bloom on her grave,
entwine themselves tenderly as they do in the grave,
the hoar frost does not wither or wither them.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Wiora : The Rhenish-Bergische Melodies in Zuccalmaglio and Brahms: Old songs in a romantic color (= contributions to Rhenish music history. 7). Voggenreiter, Bad Godesberg 1953, p. 120 ( urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-20140224836 ; limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Rhenish flora. Leaves for life, art, knowledge and traffic. No. 15 of January 25, 1825, ZDB -ID 602865-2 , quoted from Gudrun Demski (2012), p. 5.
  3. ↑ Friedrich Karl von Erlach: Die Volkslieder der Deutschen: a complete collection of excellent German folk songs from the middle of the fifteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. Volume 4. Hoff, Mannheim 1835, p. 602 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  4. ↑ Andreas Kretzschmer: German folk songs with their original ways. First part (in 8 booklets). Vereins-Buchhandlung, Berlin 1838–1840, in one volume 1840, p. 148 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  5. ^ Poems by H. Heine. In: Pocket book for women. To the year 1829. Cotta, Stuttgart and Tübingen 1829, p. 65 f. ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  6. ^ Heinrich Heine: Tragedy on Wikisource
  7. ↑ Ludwig Erk (Ed.) Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Old German songs. Fourth volume. Berlin, Arnim 1854, p. 71 f. ( Digitized version ).
  8. ↑ Ludwig Erk (ed.): Deutscher Liederhort. Th. Chr. Fr. Enslin, Berlin 1856, page 218 f. ( online at Wikisource ).
  9. ↑ Ludwig Erk , Franz Magnus Böhme (Ed.): Deutscher Liederhort . Volume 1. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893, pp. 587-589, here p. 589 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ Hans Breuer (ed.): Der Zupfgeigenhansl. 90th edition. Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig 1920, p. 78 f. ( Digitized version ).
  11. ↑ Norbert Linke (Ed.): No beautiful country. The big book of our most popular folk songs. Falken, Niedernhausen 1983, ISBN 3-8068-4150-0 (see foreword p. 5 and table of contents).
  12. ↑ Singing 6 songs in the open air, Op. 41 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
  13. ↑ Sheet music in the public domain of A frost fell in the spring night (song) in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
  14. ^ Bernhard R. Appel: Life drama in a cold spring night: Robert Schumann's orchestral version of "Tragedy" by Heinrich Heine. In: New magazine for music. Vol. 153, 1992, No. 11, pp. 13-17, JSTOR 23986161 .