At the end of Chapter 11 of Book 4 of Goethe’s Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (“Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,” 1795–6), as the title character drifts off in a state of “dreamy longing,” Mignon and the Harper sing a “free duet.”
Here’s the German text::
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiß, was ich leide!
Allein und abgetrennt
Von aller Freude
Seh ich an's Firmament
Nach jener Seite.
Ach, der mich liebt und kennt,
Ist in der Weite.
Es schwindelt mir, es brennt
Mein Eingeweide.
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiß, was ich leide!
Goethe’s “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” (“Only those who know longing”) was set to music by numerous composers, including Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Hugo Wolf, and Tchaikovsky, whose rather gloppy version is known in English as “None but the Lonely Heart.”
(It’s Tchaikovsky’s version that perversely and anachronistically appears in both the 1933 and 1949 films of Little Women. In the novel, Professor Bhaer sings “Kennst du das Land,” another Mignon song from Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, also set by numerous composers.)
It is known that Beethoven owned a copy of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. In an 1810 letter he recommends the novel and offers to lend it to a young woman friend whose pet name might have been Elise. (Yes, that Elise.)
Early editions of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre included a rudimentary setting of “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” by German composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt. In the original 1795 German edition of Volume 2 (Books 3 and 4), the poem appears on page 265. Page back a bit to see the inserted music.
Reichardt seems to have interpreted the 12 lines of the poem as separated into two stanzas, and then set these stanzas strophically, a practice mistakenly imitated by later composers.
The first English translation of Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” was in 1824 by British writer and historian Thomas Carlyle, who offered a rather free but rhyming translation of “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt”:
You never long’d and lov’d,
You know not grief like mine:
Alone and far remov’d
From joys or hopes, I pine:
A foreign sky above,
And a foreign earth below me,
To the south I look all day;
For the hearts that love and know me
Are far, are far away.
I burn, I faint, I languish,
My heart is waste, and sick and sore;
Who has not long’d in baffled anguish
Cannot know what I deplore.
Here’s Hal Draper’s rhyming translation of “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” from Volume 9 of the Princeton Collected Works of Goethe (pp. 142–3):
Only they know my pain
Who know my yearning!
Parted and lone again,
All joy unlearning,
I scan all heaven’s demesne
For any turning.
Ah, but my love and swain —
Far he’s sojourning.
Hot is my spinning brain,
My insides burning.
Only they know my pain
Who know my yearning!
Paul Reid’s literal translation of “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” in the indispensable The Beethoven Song Companion follows:
Only one who knows longing
Knows what I am suffering!
Alone and cut off
From all joy,
I look thitherward
Up to the heavens.
Alas, he who loves and knows me
Is far away!
I grow dizzy, my bowels
Are aflame.
Only one who knows longing
Knows what I am suffering.
Perhaps inspired by the composers who had written multiple settings of “In Questa Tomba Oscura” (Day 206), Beethoven wrote four settings of “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt.” They were published together under the simple title “Senhsucht” (“Longing”).
The first three of Beethoven’s settings are strophic; the last is through-composed. The first is in 4/4 time, the third in 3/4, the others in 6/8.
Beethoven wrote in the margin of the manuscript “I didn’t have time to produce one good one, so here are several attempts.”
#Beethoven250 Day 210
“Sehnsucht” (WoO 134), 1807–08
Munich-based soprano Susanne Kapfer sings all four settings in a recital in Bonn.
#Beethoven250 Day 210
“Sehnsucht” (WoO 134), 1807–08
Despite the text that accompanies the video, this is the last of the four settings as sung by Sivan Keren for her graduation recital in Tel Aviv.
WoO 134 is not the only Beethoven song entitled “Sehnsucht.” In 1810 he wrote a song with that title to a completely different poem by Goethe (published as Opus 83 No. 2) and in 1815–16 he wrote a song “Sehnsucht” to a text by Christian Ludwig Reissig (WoO 146).