Frauenliebe und Leben: Chamisso's Poems and Schumann's Songs

Description

Rufus Hallmark's book explores Robert Schumann's beloved yet controversial song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben and the poems of Adelbert von Chamisso on which it is based, setting them in the context of the challenges and social expectations faced by women in early nineteenth-century Germany. Hallmark provides the most extensive English-language study of Chamisso, a poet little known today outside Germany, including a biographical sketch and excerpts from his other poetry. He examines a range of poems about women, by Chamisso and others, and discusses the reception of the poetic and musical cycles, including illustrated editions, contemporary reviews, and other musical settings. Based on new studies of Schumann's manuscript sources and on comparative analyses of his songs and settings by Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, Franz Lachner and others, Hallmark provides fresh musical and interpretive insights into each song.

Rufus Hallmark is a Professor in the Department of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is the editor of Schumann's song cycles Dichterliebe and Frauenleibe und Leben for the new critical edition of the composer's works. He is also the author of The Genesis of Dichterliebe: A Source Study (1976), German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century (1996, revised 2010), and numerous articles on the songs of Schumann, Schubert, and Vaughan Williams, published in journals and international conference reports. In 2011 he won the American Musicological Society's Thomas Hampson Prize for work on classic song. A member of the American Musicological Society, the Schumann, Ruckert, and Chamisso Gesellschafte, he was Secretary of the Board of the American Musicological Society from 2001 to 2007.