Lyse Naetter

Dreamy Nights

DCW 99
RT V/13
DCE 18a

Composer: Frederick Delius
Author: Holger Drachmann
Translator: Frederick Delius

Delius returned to this text for inspiration on several occasions, thus it exists not only in two versions in manuscript, but as an orchestral song ('Summer Nights', DCW 62) and a sketched but never fully realised symphonic poem (DCW A 9). The song is a setting of Drachmann's poem from Ungdom i Digt og Sang (1879). The first version of the song, 'Paa Stranden' for voice and piano exists only in an incomplete sketch in GB-Lbl MS Mus. 1745/1/36, so it is the second version, which reached its final manifestion in DCW 62, that is described here.

Is related to:

Summer Nights (On the Sea Shore)

Composition: 1891.

Instrumentation: pf.
Soloist: voice

Text incipit: 'Paa Stranden skælver ej det mindste Blad'
'On shore how still, all nature seems asleep'

Musical incipit for this work

Sources

Autograph score

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, score]

This manuscript contains various versions of the song, with Danish, English and French words, autograph with some folios in the hand of a copyist. The relationship between the different versions is complex, but Lowe's analysis is the most detailed. She speculates that the variations may have arisen partly from Delius's musical sensitivity to the musical requirements of the different language versions. Certainly, they are testament to Delius's struggle over the setting rather than the existence of several, distinct musical interpretations. See RL, 123-7.

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/1/36. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Copyist's score

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, copy, fair copy]

Manuscript copy, probably in the hand of Jutta Bell, signed 'Paris 1903'.

Carl S. Swisher Library, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

Published score

[Classification: notated music, print, score, first edition, complete]

Galliard: Stainer & Bell, London 1973.

Published in Ten Songs as no. 2 of 'Five Songs from the Danish', with English text only. This edition is incorporated in vol. 18a of the Collected Edition: Twenty-two Songs.

Last changed 2020-10-26T14:16:57+00:00