About Sung Texts
← Back to the text you were reading
When you see Sung text for setting by [composer], you are looking at the words as they appear in that composer's score, but not necessarily as the text author wrote them. To read the text author's version, follow the See original link at the top of the text.
Why the two versions differ
Composers rarely treat a poem as untouchable. In setting one to music, a composer may:
- change a word or a line to fit the music or to suit their reading of the poem;
- leave out stanzas, or set only a few;
- reorder stanzas, repeat lines, or add words of their own.
We record these variations for 12,237 texts as numbered footnotes. In the past, reconstructing what a singer actually sings meant working through them by hand, but now you can go straight to the sung text.
The examples below open in a new tab.
Example: "Zueignung" by Strauss
Gilm's untitled poem beginning Ja, du weißt es, theure Seele contains two numbered footnotes for Strauss because in his song "Zueignung", he makes the following changes to the text:
| Line | Gilm's poem | Strauss's score |
|---|---|---|
| Stanza 2, line 1 | Hielt ich nicht, der Freiheit Zecher | Einst hielt ich, der Freiheit Zecher |
| Stanza 3, line 3 | Heilig an das Herz dir sank | Heilig, heilig an's Herz dir sank |
On the poem's page these appear as bracketed numbers. If we view Strauss's sung text the changes have been applied and the brackets are gone.
Example: "Vöglein Schwermut" by four composers
Morgenstern's Vöglein Schwermut is ten lines long and contains seven footnotes, because four composers each altered it in a different way:
| Composer | Changes in the score |
|---|---|
| Petersen | Cuts a whole line: Wer es hört, der hört nichts anderes mehr. |
| Wolff | Drops sich from ruht es sich aus; and ends the poem Und wieder fliegt's Vöglein über die Welt. |
| Zeisl | Three changes: keine Sonne becomes die Sonne nicht; streichelt's leis becomes streichelt es; and the final line opens Vögelein Schwermut fliegt. |
| Zemlinsky | Two changes: dem Finger becomes den Fingern; and both calls of Vögelein! become Vögelchen! |
Reading the poem's page, you would have to identify all seven footnotes and search by composer to arrive at any one of these versions. Following a composer's link gives you their sung text directly.
What you see depends on how you got here
| If you arrive from… | You see |
|---|---|
| An author's index | The author's text, with all footnotes |
| A composer's index | That composer's sung text |
| An opus or collection page | The sung text for each song |
| A text page | The author's text, plus a link to each available sung text |
A note on “original”
Where we have checked a poem against a primary source (a first edition, a manuscript, or a collected edition that was published independently of any musical settings), we call it the original. Where we have not yet been able to do that, it is a base text: our best current reading, open to correction.
Please note that footnotes may sometimes also record variants between the text author's own editions, not only changes made by composers.