Songs My Mother Taught Me

Sometimes I think that there’s no such thing as an easy song. This chestnut by Dvorak ought be straightforward: two pages, nine phrases, not technically taxing, ever-popular. Listening to a dozen or so performances on YouTube changed my mind.

There’s the accompaniment, notated in 6/8 against the singer’s 2/4. Lots of three against two then, no problem, except that the LH of the piano is syncopated, there are integral grace notes and almost everyone uses lots of rubato. Too much of that and the song loses its pulse – Dvorak marks it andante con moto – and becomes a series of stop-starts. We have a tendency to feel phrases as working towards the middle and then away. but these have their weight at the end, and they mustn’t become lead boots.

Then there are the markings, which most people at least seem to have glanced at. There’s nothing to stop you interpreting, of course – no one right way – but it seems to me that the markings all indicate that Dvorak wanted a certain quality to the song -  think of it as confiding, inward. (If you don’t want to do it the composer’s way, at least be clear what you don’t want to do.) He directs the singer to start the first stanza piano and mezza voce and the second pp. Did I say there were no technical difficulties? Well, piano, mezza voce rising to a high G – that’s not so easy. Again almost everyone makes it simpler technically by opening out on the G, singing it more loudly than the rest of the phrase.

Then there is the question of how to treat the two added bars in the second stanza, that lovely expansion of the melody at the song’s climax. Do you attach them to the phrase before, or the phrase after? Where’s the breath? Do you reinforce the feeling con expressione or can you let the phrase expansion do that for you?

Published first as one of a set of Gypsy Songs, and first sung by a tenor, the song was designed for domestic, small-scale performance. It’s unfortunate that people choose it as as an encore with orchestra and still more unfortunate when they help out poor Dvorak by adding half a stanza.

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Netrebko would like to make an announcement.

In complete contrast, here’s the girl from Richmond, keeping those Gs and F#s right in line and observing the pp in the second stanza. Oddly, she doesn’t bother with the crescendos much.

Not much feeling there, though? – more of a demonstration.

If you’d like to sample the dozen, here’s the playlist. There’s a good version by Magdalena Kozena, a lovely, simple one by Kiri Te Kanawa and a heartfelt one from Sutherland, marred by a deeply unfortunate introduction and horror visuals. But the pick of the bunch, for me, is someone who sings the first stanza as Dvorak wrote it, and alone amongst my dozen, attaches the extra bars to the phrase before. Like Sutherland and Kiri, she brings to it the inwardness and tenderness the song requires.