Whistleth the wood out and in, where hath my sweetheart been?
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear.
Is it a Minnesinger? I wonder; for I can not place the poet who hymned the feathered minstrel so sweetly. My German friend the professor, who improvises in music as deftly as Heine improvised in verse, and to whom I repeated the lines the other day, was struck anew by their haunting melody. Seating himself at the piano, he immediately set them to this exquisite accompaniment. The music has been ringing in my ears ever since—a very echo of the songster, rising clear and jubilant from the shade of the wood. The words have been set to music before, a version being included in that melodious collection of national, student, and hunting songs entitled Deutscher Liederschatz. But this is commonplace compared to the rendition of my German friend. Try it those of you who have a voice to try; or let your sweetheart try it for you. You will then appreciate the consummate art of the music—the ascending scale of the second bar felicitously phrasing the whistle of the bird, and the falling inflection of the third happily portraying the cool, shadowy depths of the wood. And how like a silvery bird note of June the upper “g” in the seventh bar sounds the close of the refrain!
[Music:
Allegro mf. —— H. Ganzel.
Vögle im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell,