Vokal'nye socineniia v soprovozhdenii fortepiano - Moskva: Muzyka, 1977
or 78-80. Several locations (OCLC #8017772, #25579701)
1st line of poem: Ein Reiter durch das Bergtal zieht (Go
to text)
Source of poem: Buch der Lieder: Junge Leiden: Romanzen, Nr.2
Date of composition: -
Nationality of composer: Russian
Language(s) of text: 1920 ed.: Russian, German
Tempo marking: Andantino con moto
Key: B minor
Time signature: 2/4
No. of measures: 60
Approximate duration: 3 min.
Form: highly modified strophic
Vocal range: B to d' [b to d"]
Vocal tessitura: medium low (Go
to chart)
Vocal rhythms: most phrases use variable combinations of repeated
eighth and/or sixteenth notes, dotted eighths and sixteenths, and syncopated
sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth patterns
Vocal intervals: motion mostly stepwise and by third; a few
fourths and fifths
Vocal comments: because of the thickly textured and chromatically
complex piano part finding starting pitches may be a little tricky
Textual variants, etc.: -
Instrumental part(s): nearly constant sixteenth-note duplets
alternate between hands, descending in the left hand and rising in the
right; the second sixteenth is usually a two- or three-voice chord; the
thumbs create an gradually more complex inner counter-melody against the
vocal part; the texture becomes very complex rhythmically and harmonically
in the middle stanza and its associated interludes
Summary: This is the most songful of all settings reviewed,
and instead of a dramatic tale it is instead a hauntingly lyrical meditation
on the inevitability of death. Although each of the three stanzas follows
the same general outline in the vocal part, each differs in subtle and
deceptive ways from the others, e.g. each successive stanza starts a major
second higher, but ends a major second lower. Unlike any other setting
of this text, the "Bergstimme" always echoes the "Reitersmann" exactly
in pitch and rhythm, but this is not made obvious. As is to be expected
with Medtner, the very late Romantic harmonies become quite convoluted
and dissonant in the pathos-filled middle section and its extended piano
interlude, but calm is reasserted at the end. This setting, like Medtner's
other two Heine settings, truly deserves far wider recognition and performance.
Like a rose-bush, its harmonic and rhythmic thorns cannot be separated
from its gorgeously blooming melody.
Go to other settings of this poem
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Copyright © 2000, Peter W. Shea
