Ex. 9-3: Mondnacht

This song is No. 5 of Schumann's Liederkreis (Song Cycle, Op. 39), twelve songs on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff. He wrote it in May 1840, at 29, while he and Clara Wieck were waiting for the end of the court case that would let them marry. That Easter they had stayed with Clara's mother in Berlin. A few weeks later he sent this song to her mother as a birthday present, and he wrote that it was an echo of those beautiful days.

Later Schumann tried to rewrite the end of the song, but he was not happy with it, and he wanted to go back to the first version. It seems that he no longer had it, because he had sent it to Clara's mother. Clara remembered it, and she wrote the end into his manuscript. So the last part of the manuscript is in Clara's handwriting.

Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857) was a poet who also worked as a government official. In this poem the night is so still and bright that the sky seems to have kissed the earth, and the singer's soul spreads its wings and flies home. When the two men met in Vienna in 1847, Clara wrote that Eichendorff loved Schumann's songs, and that he said Schumann had brought his poems to life. About 50 other composers set this poem, among them Brahms, at 20.

From the album Classical Barbra, sung by Barbra Streisand with Claus Ogerman, piano
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