Mozart, a name synonymous with operatic genius and symphonic brilliance, also crafted a rich collection of songs that often remain overshadowed by his larger works. These “Mozart Songs,” though diverse in genre, language, and ambition, offer a unique window into the composer’s versatility and melodic gift. From intimate recital pieces to more modest compositions, each song, even the seemingly casual ones, holds a spark of Mozart’s genius, inviting listeners and performers to delve into their often-overlooked beauty. This exploration aims to inspire both newcomers and seasoned enthusiasts to investigate—or re-investigate—the captivating world of Mozart’s vocal songs.
For aspiring singers, “mozart songs” present an invaluable training ground. They allow vocalists to explore the expressive emotions found in Mozart’s operatic characters but within a less vocally demanding format than full-scale arias. Unlike arias, songs offer the flexibility to be transposed to comfortable keys, making them accessible to a wider range of voices. Moreover, many of these songs, such as the delicate “Dans un bois solitaire” or the charming “Das Veilchen,” showcase the sophisticated and rewarding dialogue between voice and piano, essential for developing nuanced performance skills.
In a world that often feels like it’s declining, the realm of musical scholarship demonstrably improves, particularly in the availability of high-quality editions. The Bärenreiter new Mozart edition of the Complete Songs stands as a testament to this progress. Superseding earlier, often flawed editions, this collection incorporates the latest scholarly insights and presents the songs in chronological order. It rectifies the inaccuracies and editorial blemishes of older publications, includes songs previously unavailable elsewhere, and boasts an attractive and readable typography. Furthermore, contemporary printings thoughtfully include an appendix with literal English translations, enhancing accessibility for non-German speakers.
While the original “mozart songs” were composed in higher vocal keys, Bärenreiter also offers a medium voice transposition volume. While acknowledging the editor’s rationale for avoiding keys deemed atypical or unsuitable for a song’s mood, some transpositions feel somewhat extreme. For instance, lowering “Dans un bois solitaire” by a full fourth and labeling it “medium” stretches the definition. Consequently, mezzo-sopranos and baritones might find themselves in a familiar predicament: one volume too high, the other too low. Often, the most practical solution remains creating a custom transposition or relying on a pianist adept at sight transposition.
A minor point of clarification concerns the small notes found in some songs, identified as “emendations” in footnotes. This label is somewhat misleading. These notes are not corrections of errors but rather editorial completions of piano parts where Mozart provided only a bass line, trusting the performer to realize the full accompaniment.
Even Mozart’s earliest vocal compositions deserve attention. His setting of “An die Freude,” composed at the tender age of twelve, while simple, reveals a remarkably unique melodic sensibility. The tune exhibits coherence through rhythmic and contour repetition, yet each phrase maintains its distinctiveness. Although strophic songs traditionally involve multiple verses, the length of “An die Freude” allows for a complete performance with just a single verse, offering flexibility to the performer.
To accommodate a friend’s request, Mozart composed two charming ariettas in French. Tracing musical influences is a precarious endeavor, yet the flexible structure, abrupt tempo shifts, and orchestral textures of “Dans un bois solitaire” subtly echo the style of Gluck, who had by that point already composed the majority of his operatic works. In a spirit of affectionate parody, Mozart treats a whimsical subject—Cupid’s mischievous revenge—with operatic grandeur. Following a dramatic central allegro and presto, Cupid’s “revenge” unfolds in the gentle, sweet strains of the song’s opening, conveying a playful, rather than vengeful, sentiment.
“Sei du mein Trost” is a miniature masterpiece, a mere thirteen bars brimming with intensity and variety. Its opening, strikingly unconventional for the era, features a diminished seventh chord. The brief opening phrase, initiated by this arresting harmony, possesses an exclamatory character. Initially, the piano provides seemingly simple support, but at bar 6, voice and piano diverge, the piano pursuing the preceding melodic idea while the voice introduces a new one. The apparent simplicity of this song on paper belies its profound originality. “Ich würd’auf meinem Pfad,” composed around the same time, stands out for its passion and harmonic richness. Similar to Constanze’s “Traurigkeit” and Pamina’s aria, its dissonances, arising from numerous nonharmonic tones, are deeply expressive, demanding careful listening and precise vocal execution. These two contrasting gems would create a compelling pairing in performance.
Mozart infuses an informal, spontaneous air into the lighthearted “Die Zufriedenheit,” K. 473, the later of two songs with this title. He achieves this through phrases of unequal length—a five-bar phrase followed by a four-bar phrase, culminating in a three-bar postlude.
“Das Veilchen” is often lauded as the first true Lied. However, defining what constitutes a “real” Lied remains elusive. Is it through-composition rather than strophic form? If so, wouldn’t the strophic songs that bookend Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin qualify as “real” Lieder? Musical definitions often prove inadequate in practice. Nevertheless, “Das Veilchen” undeniably marks a significant development in Mozart’s German songs. The piano part achieves unprecedented richness and independence. In the piano prelude, a pause and sudden forte underscore the importance of the phrase that will frame the song: “es war ein herzigs Veilchen.” The piano vividly depicts the shepherdess’s light footsteps and, in an interlude, her carefree singing. Through a key change and accent, the piano poignantly narrates the miniature tragedy—the shepherdess inadvertently crushing the flower. The arpeggiated chord in bar 61 disrupts the tempo, subtly suggesting that “das arme Veilchen!” is a spontaneous exclamation of sorrow. For some, Mozart’s delicate setting might even redeem the poem’s questionable masochistic undertones.
On May 26, 1787, Mozart penned “Das Lied der Trennung (Song of Parting),” where a man implores his beloved not to forget him during their separation. A mere three days later, he composed “Als Luise,” in which a woman burns letters from a faithless lover. Intriguingly, despite different poets penning the texts, the earlier song is addressed to Luise, and the later song is sung by Luise. Could “Als Luise” be a bitter sequel to “Das Lied der Trennung,” where Luise discovers the insincerity of her lover’s protestations in his letters? Was the concise text of “Als Luise” perhaps hastily created for Mozart?
Regardless of its origins, this dramatic scena perfectly encapsulates Elvira’s dilemma in Don Giovanni. She recognizes Don Giovanni’s betrayal yet struggles to relinquish her attachment. A young singer not yet ready for Elvira’s complexities can powerfully express righteous indignation at infidelity through this song. In bar 4, the dotted rhythm of “geht zu Grunde!” mirrors the piano’s left-hand rhythm, demanding equal rhythmic strength in the vocal part. Here, rhythmic exaggeration—lengthening the dotted sixteenth and shortening the thirty-second note—is preferable to rhythmic looseness. This passage subtly recalls the pulse of Elvira’s “Ah, fuggi.” Similarly, the immediate juxtaposition of fury (“Ihr danket”) and yielding tenderness (“Denn, ach! … Doch ach!”) mirrors the “mi tradí” and “ma tradita” of Elvira’s “Mi tradí.”
“Abendempfindung” stands as an exceptional piece, not only within Mozart’s song oeuvre but within the Classical era as a whole. Many instrumental works of the time aimed for an improvisational quality, exemplified by Mozart’s own piano fantasies. However, “Abendempfindung”‘s free-flowing form is uniquely anomalous—a song that masterfully creates the illusion of improvisation. In setting the poem’s mood and meaning—a meditation on death anticipated without fear or regret—Mozart fundamentally subverts its meter and verse structure.
Instead of a structured poem, we experience a fluid stream of consciousness. We typically differentiate between recitative and cantabile styles. Recitative prioritizes textual clarity over lyricism, while cantabile emphasizes lyricism over precise word articulation. “Abendempfindung” invites us to explore the nuanced spectrum between these two. For instance, the opening phrase, “Abend ist’s,” suggests a simple statement of fact, leaning towards speech-like delivery. In contrast, “und der Mond,” a sweeping phrase evoking a poetic image, calls for greater vocal intensity. In the ecstatic climax beginning at bar 84, “O sie wird,” the elevated sentiment demands full legato, reinforced by Mozart’s melismatic setting. Melisma inherently prioritizes vocalism over textual clarity, leading to the text repetitions we encounter here for the first time in the song.
A potent erotic undercurrent permeates much of Mozart’s music—an early piano sonata movement even bears the unusual marking “andante amoroso”! Arias for characters like Tamino, Belmonte, and Cherubino all express longing. Regardless of the complete poem’s intended meaning, “An Chloe,” in the stanzas Mozart chose to set, transforms into a fervent love song, brimming with musical gestures the composer associates with passion. Notice the dotted rhythms appearing only once—to mimic the speaker’s racing heartbeat. The kiss in bar 18 leaves the speaker breathless, with the piano taking over the melody. The phrase depicting love rendering the speaker “weak” is fragmented into three-note motifs, connected by piano echoes. Conversely, the declaration of bliss in his beloved’s presence unfolds in a long, sweeping phrase. While convention permits women to sing male texts, a female performer of this song might playfully acknowledge a common sentiment: perhaps mother was right—all men are beasts!
Two performance cautions are worth noting. Firstly, it’s easy to overlook the subtle difference between half and whole steps in the melisma in bar 35, particularly as the subsequent melisma consists solely of half-steps. Secondly, Mozart sets the word “ermattet” with the final syllable as the highest note, requiring careful attention to stress the second, accented syllable. The passage beginning in bar 41 introduces a dark cloud overshadowing the lover’s happiness. While its meaning within the complete poem might be debated, in the context of Mozart’s song, it can be interpreted as the fear that such intense joy might be fleeting. In the phrase “den berauschten Blick,” the rests appear designed to convey breathless anxiety, suggesting they should be rendered with expressive freedom rather than strict rhythmic precision—the line should feel involuntarily interrupted.
The Bärenreiter volume includes a fascinating curiosity. Among Mozart’s “concert arias” for soprano, “Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!,” is renowned for its elaborate expressiveness and vocal brilliance. Composed for Mozart’s sister-in-law to insert into Pasquale Anfossi’s opera Il curioso indiscreto, another version, “Ah, spiegarti, oh Dio,” exists solely in Mozart’s piano score (perhaps a reduction or sketch) and is included in an appendix. While less compelling than “Vorrei,” it offers sopranos an opportunity to showcase their high range at the conclusion of a Mozart song group. Given the absence of orchestration and the composer’s own piano arrangement, no objections can be raised regarding its suitability for recital performance.
The familiar “Ridente la calma” is also relegated to the appendix. It turns out to be merely arranged by Mozart, the original melody attributed to Josef Myslivecek (according to New Grove). Did Mozart perhaps recall this graceful melody when composing Ferrando’s “Un’aura amorosa” roughly twenty years later? While not a direct quotation, a discernible resemblance exists. Performers should note that in the third bar, the thirty-second notes on the syllable “-nell” begin on the second half of the second beat. Any tardiness in their entry necessitates a slight rush—inconsistent with the character of “calma.”
And now, reflection leads to regret for the many “mozart songs” left undiscussed, a testament to the depth and breadth of this often-overlooked facet of Mozart’s genius.
