ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the words and music of Clara Schumann's Lied and also considers some aspects of the context surrounding its composition. The economy of material, allied with the intensity of its treatment; the music's sensitivity to the psychological implications of the poetic text; and the expressive structure of the musical setting, united with that of the poem all these contribute to the integrity of the composer's vision. The chapter reviews certain aspects of the critical literature. The more than 400 love poems of Rckert's Liebesfrhling collection have been recognized as possessing an intimate personal significance for the poet, specifically linked with his courtship of Luise Wiethaus, whom he married in 1821. It seems otiose to suggest that Robert's and Clara's settings of selected poems in their joint opus would inevitably have been linked by them to thoughts of their own courtship and marriage. Clara's Liebst du um Schnheit could be seen as responding emotionally to that recognition.
