An Laura, als sie Klopstocks Auferstehungslied sang, D 115

To Laura, when she sang Klopstock's Resurrection song

(Poet's title: An Laura, als sie Klopstocks Auferstehungslied sang)

All translations into English that appear on this website, unless otherwise stated, are by Malcolm Wren. You are free to use them on condition that you acknowledge Malcolm Wren as the translator and schubertsong.uk as the source. Unless otherwise stated, the comments and essays that appear after the texts and translations are by Malcolm Wren and are © Copyright.

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Matthisson’s text takes us from the physical (the first word is Herzen, hearts) to the spiritual dimension (the last word is Geist, spirit), via emotional, moral and aesthetic responses to Laura’s performance of the following text by Klopstock (now most familiar in Mahler’s setting of it in his second symphony):

Matthisson must have heard ‘Laura’ sing the soprano line in Karl Heinrich Graun’s a capella setting of Klopstock’s Auferstehung (Resurrection). Both the text and Graun’s choral version of it dated from the previous generation (1758), when the intensity of its religious Pietism was fuelling the beginnings of the cult of ‘Sensibility’ (Empfindsamkeit) and the Sturm und Drang movement.  Matthisson’s description of the effect of Laura’s singing fuses the spiritual and the aesthetic experience; the imagery of ecstasy and paradise refers both to the promise of salvation in Christ and to the experience of bliss while listening to her performance.

One is a foretaste of the other. The resurrection of Christ is seen as the first stage of a general resurrection (Klopstock’s text is a rephrasing of Paul’s passage in 1 Corinthians 15  about Christ as the ‘firstfruits of them that slept’: ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming.’). Similarly Laura’s singing is instrumental in lifting us to heaven. In her art she proclaims the coming of salvation (she is called Heilverkünderin, messenger of healing / salvation); it is as if she is an ambassador from the Kingdom of Heaven. However, her art is not valuable in itself; it needs the response of an open and sensitive spirit to respond to it. This is the world of Sensibility not Aestheticism.

We thus begin with the signs of her physical and emotional effect on the audience: beating hearts, throbbing tears and gentle sighs. The second stanza concentrates on the effect of Laura’s singing on the moral and spiritual level. Even angels and saints can be improved, but the assumption is that Matthisson’s readers will have more in common with the doubters and sinners who are moved to repent. Or perhaps we will identify with the fallen angel Abbadona (aka Apollyon). Matthisson is here alluding to another Klopstock text, the second song of Der Messias (The Messiah) (1748), in which Abbadona, one of the rebel angels, repents of his apostasy and tries to persuade Satan not to kill the Messiah.

In stanza three we lose sight of Klopstock’s words and pay more attention to the melody of Graun’s setting of the text and the reference to the dance of the stars evokes the harmony of the spheres. In a synaesthetic shift, music is part of the move from the darkness of the grave to the glow of enlightenment. The experience is all the more real for it being described in the past tense: as I listened to the song of triumph I saw the dance of the stars and my spirit wandered through the valley of paradise. What others may think of as a fantasy or a prediction was made real.

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Original Spelling

An Laura. Als sie Klopstocks Auferstehungslied sang

Herzen, die gen Himmel sich erheben,
Thränen, die dem Auge still entbeben,
Seufzer, die den Lippen leis' entfliehn,
Wangen, die mit Andachtsglut sich malen,
Trunck'ne Blicke, die Entzückung strahlen,
Danken dir, o Heilverkünderin!

Laura! Laura! horchend diesen Tönen,
Müssen Engelseelen sich verschönen,
Heilige den Himmel offen sehn,
Schwermuthsvolle Zweifler sanfter klagen,
Kalte Frevler an die Brust sich schlagen,
Und wie Seraph Abbadona flehn!

Mit den Tönen des Triumphsgesanges
Trank ich Vorgefühl des Ueberganges
Von der Grabnacht zum Verklärungsglanz!
Als vernähm' ich Engelmelodien
Wähnt' ich dir, o Erde, zu entfliehen,
Sah' schon unter mir der Sterne Tanz!

Schon umathmete mich des Himmelsmilde,
Schon begrüßt' ich jauchzend die Gefilde,
Wo des Lebens Strom durch Palmen fleußt!
Glänzend von der nähern Gottheit Strahle,
Wandelte durch Paradiesesthale
Wonneschauernd mein entschwebter Geist!

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Gedichte von Matthisson. Neueste verbesserte Auflage. Wien und Prag bey Franz Haas 1810.  page 155; with Gedichte von Friedrich Matthisson, Mannheim in der neuen Hof- und akademischen Buchhandlung, 1787, pages 17-18, and with Gedichte von Friedrich von Matthisson. Erster Theil. Tübingen, bei Cotta, 1811, pages 11-12.

First published in Musen-Almanach für 1785, herausgegeben von Voß und Goeking, Hamburg, bey Carl Ernst Bohn, pages 92-93.

The poem differs, particularly in the fourth stanza, in the editions as of 1811.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 155 [163 von 296] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ169509602