Carmela Mackenna’s Enigmatic Lieder for Voice and Piano

Although Mackenna’s first work dates from 1909, it is her fourth composition, Lieder (1929), that is particularly significant. This is the first work to ensue from her relationship with German musicologist Hans Mersmann (1891-1971), with whom she had begun to study music composition three years earlier. Second, it also marks the beginning of a period of increasing compositional productivity that lasted until 1936. Although her relationship with Mersmann may explain why she designated the first movement of this work as opus no. 1, the numeration of the remaining movements is rather mystifying: While the second and third movements are designated as op. 2 and op. 3, respectively, the fourth movement is labeled as no. 4.¹⁾Raquel Bustos Valderrama, La mujer compositora y su aporte al desarrollo musical chileno. (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2012), 217. These designations are found only in the MS.

One of the most interesting features of this work is the division of its four songs into two distinct parts. The first three songs are markedly different from the last in both text and style. For instance, although derived from different sources, both anonymous and named, the lyrics for the first three movements are all traditionally associated with children’s hymns and songs; indeed, the text of the first song, written by Erasmus Alberus (c.1500-1553) begins with, “Steht auf, ihr Kinderlein!” (Stand up, you dear children!). The text of the second song, “Sub Rosa,” comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a collection of German folk poems that includes many children’s songs. The anonymous lullabylike text of the third, “Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär” (If I were a little bird), imagines someone bridging long distances between himself and a loved one.

In contrast to the first three texts, for the fourth movement Mackenna chose a brief poem by the expressionist writer Theodor Däubler (1876-1934) that was published in his collection titled Der sternhelle Weg (1915, The Starlit Road). Although the importance of this work within Däubler’s oeuvre has largely been eclipsed by his epic work Das Nordlicht (1910, rev. 1921, The Northern Lights), it has nevertheless received its share of mixed critical attention. In 1919, Kurt Bock praises the collection for its “fresh-packed force.”²⁾Kurt Bock, „Vom Wesen und Werden der Lyrik,“ Phaeton; Monatschrift für Lyrik und kleine Prosa (Stuttgart, Germany) VII (October 1919): 25. Three years later, Paul Colin—the Spanish poster artist who helped launch the career of Josephine Baker—finds the book to be “rather chaotic.”³⁾Paul Colin, “Letras alemanas – Theodor Daübler [sic],” La Pluma (Madrid, Spain) III/25 (June 1922): 367-370. However, in no case was Der sternhelle Weg considered anything less than a serious work; and because of this, it is clearly in a different category than the poetry that Mackenna selected for the first three songs of this composition. Her musical treatment of all four texts serves to underscore these differences.

For the first three songs, the syllabic settings of the texts are paralleled in the piano, which serves to provide a continuous and appropriate rhythmic movement to each one. Furthermore, in keeping with the non-repetitive nature of the texts, Mackenna relies on a through-composed form. However, this should not be understood to mean that she uses the same amount of each of the original poems or that they have been set in the same manner; rather, each text is handled differently.

For the first lied, Mackenna sets the first of its nine stanzas, making this the shortest of the three songs. She uses all six stanzas of the Das Knaben Wunderhorn poem in the second song and pairs these into groups of two. Each pair is sung to the same music, as if there were three verses instead of six. For the third song, Mackenna sets all three of the poem’s stanzas. However, the short breaks in the voice between each stanza are blurred not only by the seamless movement in the piano, but also by the manner in which these are accompanied by harmonic progressions that are moving in and out of secondary relationships (see example 1).

The musical setting of the fourth song appears superficially similar to that of the previous three movements. It is approximately the same length as the first three songs, and the textual setting is largely syllabic. Upon closer examination, however, this movement is structurally, stylistically and harmonically quite different.

Structurally, by imitating the first eighth note and the following six measures of the vocal line, Mackenna uses what I call a “recurring motive” (see example 2). This helps to define the ternary-like form that characterizes this movement. After the first imitation of this motive in the piano (mm. 8-14), the first section concludes and a second begins. Unlike the first section, by separating each line of text with at least two beats of rests, the melodic material of the middle section is more noticeably fragmented than before. However, this section concludes not when the voice has come to the end of a line of text; rather, when a root position imperfect authentic cadence unexpectedly pushes the song back into A minor. Several measures later, the recurring motive returns in the voice. In the piano, chord tones are again stripped away until only the dominant remains.

John L. Walker