Ex. 2-6: Nachtwanderer

Fanny Mendelssohn composed this song in 1843, when she was 37. It was published in 1847 as the first of her Sechs Lieder (Six Songs), Op. 7.

The poem is by Joseph von Eichendorff, who called it “Nachts” (At Night). It appeared in 1826, in an appendix to two of his novels, as one of a group of poems called Nachtbilder (Night Pictures).

A man walks through the quiet night. The moon slips out from behind the clouds, a nightingale wakes somewhere in the valley, and then everything turns grey and still again. At the end he says that his own confused singing is only like a call out of a dream.

More than thirty composers set this poem, among them Robert Franz and Max Reger.

From the album F. Mendelssohn-Hensel: Lieder, Vol. 1 by Dorothea Craxton and Babette Dorn (2009)
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