Ex. 8-8: Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen

From Clara Schumann's Lieder (Op. 12), composed in 1841 to a poem by Friedrich Rückert. Clara's Op. 12 contains three songs, all of which were also included in her husband Robert's song cycle Liebesfrühling (Love's Spring, Op. 37) — a joint publication by the couple.

The joint opus was a wedding-year project: Robert and Clara had married in September 1840, after years of opposition from Clara's father that they finally had to settle in court. Both were composing songs intensively during this period. The songs were printed without marking who wrote which one. Robert wanted it that way — he hoped that later generations would see the couple as "one heart and one soul."

Clara wrote her three songs as a gift for Robert's birthday on 8 June 1841. Composing did not come easily to her. Two years earlier she had written in her diary, "A woman must not desire to compose; there has never yet been one able to do it." Now, in the couple's shared diary, she admitted that her work was getting nowhere. She was expecting their first child at the time. Robert later had the songs published and gave the finished volume back to Clara as a surprise on her own birthday that September — less than two weeks after their daughter Marie was born.

"He comes in storm and rain — my heart beats anxiously toward him. How could I foresee that his path would join mine? He boldly took my heart. Did he take mine? Or did I take his? The two hearts drew toward each other. Now spring's blessing has come. My friend travels on, and I watch serenely — for he is mine on every road."

From the album Robert & Clara Schumann: Lieder - Frauenliebe und Leben by Barbara Bonney and Vladimir Ashkenazy (1997)
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