Ex. 14-16: Viel tausend Blümlein auf der Au'

Clara Faisst (1872–1948) was a composer, pianist and poet from Karlsruhe. This song is No. 3 of her 4 Lieder (4 Songs, Op. 1), her first published work. It came out in Mannheim in 1894, when she was 21 or 22 and still a student. A music trade journal of April 1894 lists the four songs for sale separately, at half a German mark each.

The poem is by Albert Traeger (1830–1912), a writer who also sat for many years in the German parliament. Thousands of little flowers in a field dry up and die, with no drop of dew and no one to care for them. In the same way, many hearts in the world fade out in longing, because they stand alone and find no love. So if you see a flower blooming by the road, bend down to it, and if you see a heart glowing with love, love it faithfully in return. Faisst sets the first two stanzas in A minor and turns to A major for the third. The poem was popular with composers of the time, and at least ten others set it to music.

Faisst grew up in Karlsruhe, where Brahms had written "Die Mainacht" six years before she was born. (Ex. 14-9: Die Mainacht by Johannes Brahms) Her father died when she was one. From the age of seven she studied harmony with Carl Will, concertmaster of the court theatre, as his youngest pupil. In the 1890s she went to the Royal Academy of Music in Berlin. Her teachers there included Max Bruch for composition and Woldemar Bargiel, who was Clara Schumann's half-brother, for counterpoint. Her piano teacher, Ernst Rudorff, had himself taken lessons from Clara Schumann. Faisst kept in touch with Bruch after her studies: she dedicated her 5 Lieder (Op. 3) to him, and a card he wrote to her in 1917 still survives.

After a concert tour of Germany and Switzerland with her own works, she settled in Karlsruhe around 1900 and earned her living as a piano teacher. She never married. She wrote more than 100 songs, and later turned mostly to piano and chamber music. Among her friends was the theologian and organist Albert Schweitzer, to whom she wrote from 1922 until her death. In a letter of March 1939 she recalled an evening when he came to her room late and she played and sang many of her songs to him. When he left, he asked for a volume of them, which she remembered as a great encouragement and honour. In the same letter she wrote that she had read from his book on Bach to a circle of music friends and played the Italian Concerto, and asked whether anyone could believe the piece was 200 years old.

Much of what we know about her survives by chance. In the early 1990s a linen folder with her manuscripts, printed scores, concert programmes and photographs was put out with the bulk rubbish in Karlsruhe. A passer-by found it and rescued it. It had belonged to her friend Grete Pohl, who had shared a house with her in her last years, and in 1993 it went to the Baden State Library, which has since put her music online.

IMSLP