Beethoven’s WoO 118 is a Doppellied or double song: two songs with related or contrasting themes performed in tandem. The first song is a “Sigh of one who is unloved,” but with patience the second song heralds “Love returned,” and passion will be fanned into “a raging fire.”
The two poems that Beethoven set to music in WoO 118 are by Gottfried August Bürger, whose poems Beethoven also set in four other songs. The two WoO 118 poems were originally published separately in 1774 and 1775, but then brought together in books of Bürger’s poems.
In their combined length, complex structure, and dramatic arc, the two songs of Beethoven’s WoO 118 transcend the lieder form to become something more akin to a concert aria or even an opera scene. Barry Cooper calls WoO 118 “a miniature Italianate cantata.” (Beethoven p. 65)
#Beethoven250 Day 44
“Seufzer eines Ungeliebten” / “Gegenliebe” (WoO 118), 1794–95
A live performance by Peter Schreier, one of the few singers who included Beethoven lieder in their repertoire. Schreier died in December at the age of 84.
The “Gegenliebe” song of WoO 118 has the first version of a tune that Beethoven later used in his Choral Fantasy in 1808 and then more famously in the 9th Symphony finale in 1824. In “Gegenliebe” the tune accompanies words of romantic love rather than the fraternity of mankind.