Composer: Crabtree, Leslie
Dates: 1941-
Song title: Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen
Opus, no., etc.: Nr.3
Music collection title: Lieder
Imprint(s): -
Analysis: The song begins as with a gentle rustling of leaves in the piano's pulsing syncopated quarters, while the bass starts its stepwise descent. The voice enters over this with its simple melody of narrow compass circling around b-flat, as one might hum to one's self while wandering dreamily through the woods. The second stanza is motivically and rhythmically similar, but gradually opens up expressively with larger and larger skips, as the poet's heartache becomes clearer to himself, and as he tells the birds to be quiet ("Schweigt still!) the melody soars upward a major ninth, only to descend through an octave to end on the mediant. Here a sudden enharmonic shift to D major ushers in the birds, who sing, (paradoxically?) in a somewhat lower tessitura and a slightly faster tempo, but accompanied by arpeggiated right-hand chords. With another sudden shift back to G-flat the final stanza restates the opening melody in shortened form and even narrower compass, as the poet retreats to huddle around his inner pain. The 6-measure postlude reprises the main vocal motive with broken-chord accompaniment.
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Copyright © 2000, Peter W. Shea