The Nineteenth-Century Wanderlieder Cycle

Abstract

A lthough today Conradin Kreutzer's Lieder are all but forgotten, in his own time they were among the most popular and critically acclaimed works in the genre. In an account of a musical soiree held in 1830 at the home of Rahel von Varnhagen, hostess of the leading Berlin salon, her husband reported that the noble songs of Schubert, Beethoven, and Kreutzer were performed with utter purity of feeling to the great delight of all in attendance.1 Indeed, Kreutzer's 498 songs kept good company. If one singled out those songs that received the greatest praise, Kreutzer's setting of Ludwig Uhland's Neun Wanderlieder would place high on the list. Published as op. 34 in 1818, Kreutzer's Wanderlieder created a stir among music critics and composers alike.2 Judging by the published commentary of Kreutzer's contemporaries, in addition to the large number of Wanderlieder cycles that followed, it would be no exaggeration to state that his Wanderlieder initiated a vital tradition in nineteenth-century song-cycle composition. Schubert's Winterreise, Schumann's Kerner Liederreihe, and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are today the best known of the many cycles that comprise this tradition.