Description
Publisher: Suzanne Summerville
Instrumentation: voice S/A with piano
Edition: score
Difficulty: advanced
The Poetry
Goethe’s poems März, April, and Mai were published in the journal Über Kunst und Altertum of September 1820. They appeared with two others, Juni and Frühling übers Jahr. Although the live poems were titled after months and a season of the year, they were written at different times.
März came into being after a snowfall on the beautiful spring Saturday, 5 March 1817. Goethe based the poem on two verses of a folk song. In the second strophe he plays on the old adage, “One swallow does not a summer make.” That leads to the humorous statement in the third verse — when the poet and the swallow each arrive with his “Pärchen” summer will have come.
April was first published in 1820 with the other poems, but because of its similarities to the songs of the West-östlichen Divan, some Goethe scholars feel that it was probably written before 1815. Goethe may have chosen to include April in the group in Über Kunst und Altertum because of its allusion to the beginning of a love affair. This theme was continued in the poems which followed and was suggested in the preceding poem März.
Although Goethe’s poem Mai describes with exceeding tenderness the freshness of a spring breeze, it was written on the 2nd of January 1816. Fanny set two of Goethe’s three nine line strophes
