Tuesday, April 20, 2021

The setting of Robert Burns’ poem “I dream’d I lay where flow’rs were springing” is one of the few cases in which Beethoven agreed to revise a composition. George Thomson, the publisher, had objected that the introduction was too full of contrast and asked for something “more agreeable and cantabile”. Beethoven obliged with the following setting.

”I dream’d I lay where flow'rs were springing,

Gaily in the sunny beam;

I listen’d to the wild birds singing,

By a falling crystal stream.

At once the sky grew black and daring,

While through the woods the whirlwinds rave;

The trees with aged arms were warring,

Across the swelling drumlie wave.

“Such was my life's deceitful morning,

Such the pleasures I enjoy’d:

But long ere noon loud tempests storming,

All my flow’ry bliss destroy'd.

Though fickle fortune has deceiv'd me,

Promised fair, and perform'd but ill,

Of many a joy and hope bereav'd me,

I bear a heart shall support me still.”

This Sunday’s online concert by the Schiller Institute Chorus, on the theme “Believe in a World without War!” will truly be an event to remember! https://www.musae.me/sinycchorus/experiences/970/believe-in