Malcolm Miller, ‘This Round of Songs’: Cyclic Coherence in the Wesendonck Lieder

November 2015, Volume 9, Number 3, 24–41.

'This round of songs has never been heard in its entirety in London, and was to many of us quite a revelation. We can only regret that the composer of Im Treibhaus and Träume has left us so few examples of his purely lyric productions; for these five short musical poems are worthy to set beside the Erl-King or Adelaide.'

The excitement expressed by the critic of The Meister at the London premiere of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, sung by the soprano Pauline Cramer at a Wagner Society Conversazione at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours on 16 July 1890, hints at a central aspect of the work, namely its cyclic qualities. This and other reviews indicate the while separate songs of the cycle were already well known to the public, hearing all five in a single group was an inspiring and novel experience.

Yet the premiere clearly also raised questioning responses, admiring as well as critical.