Stefan Laska and Wiebke Hoogklimmer
Gypsy songs
La cosa interessante è che Schumann era interessato agli aspetti politici della zingari come gruppo etnico discriminato, Brahms trascrive cose folcloristiche sull’amore zingaro. Dvorák interpreta la libertà zingara nelle sue melodie “zingari”. Liszt ci dà una risposta più precisa nella sua versione del poema di Lenau “i tre zingari ” con un borghese che viaggiava sulla sua carrozza, guardando con invidia a tre zingari sdraiati pigramente e distrattamente sul ciglio della strada.
(Zigeunerlieder)
by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Robert Schumann (1810-1856),
Peter Tschaikowsky (1840-1893), Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904)
and Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
“Gypsy songs”, “little gypsy songs”, and “gypsy melodies” are some of the numerous titles which romantic composers like Schumann, Brahms, Dvorák, Tschaikowsky and Liszt have used for transcription of 19th century literature.
Why were “gypsies” and their music so fascinating during the 19th century?
Romanticism consciously detached itself from classicism and is full of the feelings of longing. Longing for the “blue flower” (Novalis), bordering transgression, the world of legends and fairytales, the mystery of death, longing for others, the truth and something better and other forms, etc.
Within this romantic longing gypsies epitomize complete freedom, love without the refines of society, intensive attachment of the self to nature and the longing for love entwained with death.
What’s interesting is that Schumann was interested in the political aspects of the gypsies as a harrassed ethnic group, Brahms transcribed folkloric texts on gypsy love. Dvorák exposes the free gypsy in his “Gypsy melodies”. Liszt gives us the clearest answer in his version of Lenau’s poem “the three gypsies” about a travelling bourgeois in his coach, looking out enviously at three gypsies lying idly and carelessly at the wayside.