Another Song of the Day for Tree Huggers

Im Treibhaus - Studie zu Tristan und Isolde
(In the Greenhouse - Study for Tristan and Isolde)

High-arching leafy crowns,
canopies of emerald
you children of distant lands,
tell me, why do you lament?

Silently you incline your branches,
tracing signs in the air,
and, mute witness to your sorrows,
there rises a sweet perfume.

Wide in longing and desire
you spread your arms out
and embrace, in self-deception
barren emptiness, a fearful void.

Well I know it, poor plant!
We share the same fate.
Although the light shines brightly round us,
our home is not here!

And, as the sun gladly quits
day's empty brightness,
so he who truly suffers
wraps himself in the dark mantel of silence.

It grows quiet, an anxious rustling
fills the dark room;
I see the heavy drops hanging
from the leaves' green edges.


This was another piece performed by Adrianne Pieczonka at her Toronto recital this past spring. Mathilde Wesendonck wrote the words for these songs by Richard Wagner. Much can be read about Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and how they mirrored Wagner's and Wesendonck's relationship and anticipated his Tristan und Isolde.