Ex. 13-7: Nachtzauber

No. 8 of Hugo Wolf's Eichendorff-Lieder, a set of 20 songs on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff (published 1889 in Vienna). Wolf wrote it in 1887, the year before the sudden outpouring of songs that made him famous.

The poem describes a magical night in the forest. Springs run between stones and flowers, marble statues stand in the quiet, and nightingales sing as if calling back a beautiful past. At the end a voice calls, "Come, o come to the silent valley." The night is beautiful, but it also draws the listener in, like a spell.

Eichendorff's poems were already famous in song: Robert Schumann had set twelve of them in his Liederkreis (Op. 39, 1840). For his own Eichendorff songs, Wolf mostly chose poems that Schubert and Schumann had left alone — often lively poems about soldiers, students, and wandering musicians. Nachtzauber is one of the quieter exceptions — a still night-scene rather than a character poem.

From the album Mädchenherzen by Mirella Hagen and Kerstin Mörk (2016)
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