"I'm not complaining"

"Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht ..." Actually the singer of that song is complaining, a good deal. The thumping repeated chords in the right hand of the accompaniment assert his misery, after the girl in the poem has married another chap who has made her "radiant with the magnificence of diamonds". The poet was Heinrich Heine, in real life hopelessly in love with his unobtainable cousin. 

Amelie Heine

The composer was Robert Schumann, who did get his girl, a long story that didn't finish very well, because after a few years of happiness with her, he threw himself in the Rhine feeling inferior, and after being fished out, he survived, only to be taken into an asylum, where he died. The link in that last sentence takes you to a website in German, but look at the pictures of her. She was devoted to her husband, but probably ought to have married Brahms instead, who did most of the housework in their shared ménage (especially when Clara went abroad on concert tours as a much sought-after pianist, to make ends meet) and looked after the children. 

Clara Schumann, aged 59

Clara Wieck-Schumann was born 100 years before my mother, by the way.

We have just tried singing  / playing Robert Schumann's famous song in two unfamiliar keys. The top note is psychological; Chris' voice collapses if he attempts top G. However, if you transpose the piece into A, you have to deal with double sharps. Played in A-flat, another option, it doesn't lie under the fingers very well, and the piano keyboard runs out of notes for the left hand; there's no bottom A-flat at that end. We have been singing and playing Ich grolle nicht in B-flat for a good 30 years, though the original key was C, with a top A, heaven forbid. The late tenor Fritz Wunderlich [in the YouTube video above] could sing that note effortlessly. It seems to me we'll have a better chance of mastering the song transposed down, but in which key?

When our son was a sensitive teenager, he used to put his hands over his ears while his parents practised this song. One day when we were out, he took a pencil and wrote ppp over the first bar of the sheet music as a broad hint to us to tone it down. I have never erased that suggestion.

We're currently working on Schumann's Dicherliebe once more, encouraged online, on Tuesdays, by our singing / piano teacher Gavan, who made a special study of this song cycle while working on his Master's music degree, analysing the harmonic modulations and performing it himself, so we gather, at the original pitch. I too studied this music in my youth, in my case in high school aged 15 or 16, for the British GCE exam, taught by my father who was the music master. My father could play all the accompaniments without much of a struggle. I wish I could.

So when the poet wrote "Ich sah, mein' Lieb', wie sehr du elend bist ..." (= I saw, my love, how wretched you are!), did he feel heart-broken sympathy for someone forced into marriage against her will, or was he being ironic and bitter, angry with her? The music seems to imply the latter interpretation, but I have never been sure.