I made a post that included Aksel Schiølz in 2018. I decided to post him again after I listened to his Messiah and the Dichterliebe. Before his surgery (see below), he was a tenor with a beautiful, resonant voice. His singing is just marvelous, and I hope that you enjoy him.
Comfort Ye . . . Every Valley Shall Be Exalted
From The Messiah by Hädel
Dichterliebe is a long song cycle by Robert Schumann. Schiøtz sings the entire cycle, but I am only giving a translation for the first three Lieder. Of course, you can listen to the whole cycle, but I cannot give translations for every Lied in the cycle.
Im wunderschonen Monat Mai
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Knospen sprangen,
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe aufgegangen.
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Vögel sangen,
Da hab’ ich ihr gestanden
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen.
In the wonderful month of May
In the wonderful month of May,
When all the buds sprang into bloom,
Then it was that in my heart
Love began to open.
In the wonderful month of May,
When all the birds were singing,
Then it was I confessed to her
My longing and desire.
Aus meinen Tränen sprießen
Aus meinen Tränen spriessen
Viel blühende Blumen hervor,
Und meine Seufzer werden
Ein Nachtigallenchor.
Und wenn du mich lieb hast, Kindchen,
Schenk’ ich dir die Blumen all’,
Und vor deinem Fenster soll klingen
Das Lied der Nachtigall.
From my tears spring
From my tears spring
Many blooming flowers,
And my sighs will be
A choir of nightingales.
And if you love me, little child,
I’ll give you all the flowers,
And at your window shall sound
The nightingale’s song.
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne,
Die liebt’ ich einst alle in Liebeswonne.
Ich lieb’ sie nicht mehr, ich liebe alleine
Die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die Eine;
Sie selber, aller Liebe Wonne,
Ist Rose und Lilie und Taube und Sonne.
The Rose, The Lily, The Dove, The Sun
The rose, the lily, the dove, the sun,
I loved them all once in the bliss of love.
I love them no more, I only love
She who is small, fine, pure, rare;
She, most blissful of all loves,
Is rose and lily and dove and sun.
Dichterliebe, Op. 48, Robert Schumann
Dichterliebe is a song cycle that Schumann composed in 1840. The cycle is made up of 16 songs, and the lyrics come from Heinrich Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo. Clara Wieck, and the struggle to win her hand in marriage, was Schumann’s inspiration in composing Dichterliebe. The temptation to explain poems by connecting them directly to the poet’s relationship with women is something derived from Goethe scholarship where such matches are possible in many instances. This led scholars to assume that Heine’s poetry also arose from personal experience, but for the last fifty years this assumption has been discredited. Must we assume that the ‘I’ of the narrator’s voice is also the ‘I’ of the poet? In this case apparently not. Although there was a side to Heine himself which fostered the connection between his poetry and his life, at other times he debunked such theses. William Rose’s study of 1962 demonstrates that Heine could not possibly have written this poetry at the same time as he was allegedly enamoured of his cousins. The poet’s amorous adventures were more frequent (as were Schumann’s) than we shall ever know. Both men paid the price with venereal disease. To this extent there was a poisoning of the well of love; in Heine’s case there was also an ongoing difficulty in terms of his relationships with women until he found satisfaction of sorts in a marriage with a French woman who shared neither his intellect nor his interests. Even if the poet constructed these lyrics from real memories, dreams and so on, it seems likely that the original female cast of characters was a large one, and it is this array which was probably reduced to the archetype of the faithless woman in the Buch der Lieder. Thus, although the earlier scholars ask us to believe in one, at the most two, beloveds (Amalie and Therese), Heine’s words and moods vary enough to suggest a broad range of emotional confrontations over a number of years. And this is apart from the distinct possibility that much of this work is derived from the poet’s fantasy and imagination.
Schumann could not have known these theories about Heine’s cousins. But his composer’s instincts would have told him that he had to reduce and focus the many and various impressions of the Lyrisches Intermezzo to make the listener believe in a Dichterliebe where the poet—his admired Heinrich Heine—could play the part of a hero, dignified even in grief. As the figure of the beloved appears in, and is met with, so many different moods in the poems, it would be best to keep her in the background, an elusive and mysterious figure in the poet’s memory.
Aksel Schiøtz
September 1, 1906 – April 19, 1975
Aksel Schiøtz was a Danish tenor and later baritone, who was considered one of Europe’s leading lieder singers of the post-World War II period.
Schiøtz was born in Roskilde, Denmark, but grew up in Hellerup near Copenhagen. He studied singing with John Forsell. Having obtained an M.A. in Danish and English in 1930, he taught at various schools in Roskilde and Copenhagen until 1938, when he gave up teaching. In October 1936, he gave his first lieder recital, and he made his opera début at the Royal Danish Theatre, Copenhagen, in Mozart’s Così fan tutte in 1939. In 1940, he made a legendary recording of the tenor aria from Handel’s Messiah.
In 1946, he underwent operation for tumor acousticus (a noncancerous and usually slow-growing tumor that develops on the main (vestibular) nerve leading from the inner ear to the brain).In “Our Schubert”, David Schroeder writes that the surgery “should have put an end to his career in 1945, since it left him paralyzed on one side of his face and neck; but with the encouragement of friends and loved ones he relearned how to sing, becoming a baritone instead of a tenor.” His wife Gerd particularly motivated him.
At the Glyndebourne Festival in 1946, he alternated with Peter Pears in the part of ‘Male Chorus’ in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. More than as an opera singer, however, Schiøtz is remembered for his interpretation of Danish songs and Schubert’s and Schumann’s lieder, as well as songs by Carl Michael Bellman. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark (1940–1945), he achieved great popularity for his recording of traditional Danish songs of the 19th and early 20th centuries. During the occupation there was a strong rise in Danish nationalism. Aksel Schiøtz’s lyrical and sensitive interpretation of Danish songs and his perfect command of the Danish language resulted in an everlasting gift to the Danish people.
From 1955 to 1958 he served as professor of music at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, later in Toronto by invitation of Boyd Neel, and finally at the University of Colorado, Boulder. From 1968 he was professor in Copenhagen. After retiring, he wrote The Singer and His Art (Hamish Hamilton, 1971).
Schiøtz died in Copenhagen in 1975, aged 68.
-From Wikipedia