Das Veilchen Song for voice and clavier
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Das Veilchen Song for voice and clavier
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On June 8, 1785, Mozart entered the song Das Veilchen (The Violet), KV 476 into his own handwritten catalog of works. The text stems from a singspiel, Erwin und Elmire, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774). The poem deals with a small flower that is in love with a charming shepherdess. The love remains unfulfilled because the flower fails to arouse the girl’s attention; rather, she accidentally steps on it. Nevertheless, the dying violets expresses its joy since it suffered death from its beloved. The through-composed song was published in Vienna in 1789 together with the song Abendempfindung (Evening Sentiment), KV 523, as a pair of German arias to be sung with keyboard accompaniment.
Did you know that Mozart had a humorous sense of interfering with the texts he set to music? In the song Das Veilchen (The Violet), KV 476 Mozart repeated the final line “es war ein herzigs Veilchen” (“it was a sweet little violet”) from the first stanza at the end of the song after a freely invented exclamation “Das arme Veilchen…” (“The poor violet…”), which adds a certain irony to this little tragedy.
The surviving songs mostly date from Mozart’s years in Vienna and were composed for his circle of friends. According to his sister, Mozart wrote only a few songs during his years in Salzburg. A typical song is a short setting of a strophic poem with piano accompaniment, using the same music for each stanza of text. Mozart also composed several through-composed songs, which at the time were usually referred to as *German arias* rather than *songs*. The most famous of these is Das Veilchen, K. 476, set to a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The songs used in Masonic celebrations lie somewhere between solo songs and part songs, as the final lines of the text are sung or repeated by a male chorus.
Autograph, 1785
Partitur: 2 Bl.
Erstdruck, 1789
Zwey Deutsche Arien/ zum Singen beym Clavier/ in Musick gesetzt/ von Herrn Kapellmeister/ W. A. Mozart/ II-ter Theil./ [links:] In Wien bey Artaria Comp. [rechts:] 30. X-r/ 240-270
Partitur
Abschrift, 1798
IV. Deutsche Lieder mit Clavier–Begleitung, von Wolfgango Amadeo/ Mozart. No 54
Partitur