I am a Folklorist and write about music history and related topics. This blog is a companion to my website JustAnotherTune. Songs and Their Histories
Please feel free to write comments or mail me at info[at]JustAnotherTune.com
Jürgen Kloss
Hennef, Germany
Dear Mr. Kloss, maybe you could help me with one very special topic.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Larissa Kirillina. I am a Beethoven scholar, studying at the moment the reception of Beethoven's personality and works in Russia.
The Russian memoirist Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset wrote about a certain "M-me Hirt", who played in the presence of Alexander Pushkin (so, it could had happened only before 1837) a song "Philomele", which M-me Hirt and Smirnova thought to be of Styrian origin, but set to music also by Beethoven. Smirnova quoted the first lines of the lyrics (in broken German):
"Das macht es hat die Nachtigale
Zu Tode sich gesungen,
Von all dem Lieder Schalle
Ist ihr das Herz zersprungen"
I know that there is a little poem by Luise von Plönnies, first published in 1851:
"Es hat die Nachtigall
Zu Tode sich gesungen
Von all dem Liederschall
Ist ihr das Herz zersprungen"
(Neue Gedichte. Darmstadt, 1851. S. 193).
It's also well known, that there is no songs with such lyrics neither among Beethoven's original composition, nor among his arrangements of folksongs.
But could the poem by Plönnies had been really based on a certain folklore tune? Which song about the nightingale with such or similar words could be played in Petersburg in the 1830-s before Pushkin?
My e-mail is: larissa_kir@mail.ru.