The Five Songs to Words from the collection Arabian Nights

Rikard Schwarz (1897 – 1941) conductor, composer and writer about music, was born in Zagreb on September 20, 1897, and came to a tragic end at the end of 1941 in the Jasenovac concentration camp. While in Vienna Rikard attended the lectures of Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Joseph Marx and studied piano with Franz Joseph Moser, as well as conducting. The Five Songs to Words from the collection Arabian Nights translated by Hans Bethge from Schwarz’s “Viennese period” is the most interesting part of Schwarz’s legacy. The five titles that Rikard Schwarz set to music derive from Bethge’s free translation of the collection The Arabian Nights. The poems Secret Love, Deserted, Reproach, Remembrance and Spring are short and subtle reflections on a theme that is very much to do with love. Following the rhythm of the verses in German, Schwarz composed a broken melody, built from smaller motifs interrupted with dramatic pauses that point up the thinking nature of the text.