ABSTRACT
The chapter outlines the associations for the lyric that Goethe creates through the figure of Mignon, particularly the ideal of capturing the past in the present seen in ‘Kennst du das Land’. The poet clearly believed this ideal was helped by Reichardt’s musical setting of this poem, which he included in the first edition of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. This is compared with Beethoven’s setting, to show why Goethe found his way of dissecting Mignon’s poem so disturbing. Yet Beethoven’s approach to Mignon’s ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ suggests he took her figure extremely seriously. The chapter explores the significance of the extreme concision in Beethoven’s four settings of this poem. There is a song within a song that Beethoven can be said to create through intervallic reminiscences across the four settings. This way of listening – for intervallic echoes – is then applied to Beethoven’s setting of ‘Kennst du das Land’, to suggest the composer might have come closer to honouring Mignon than Goethe thought.
