This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170 which it is meant to support and not replace.
If, as Benjamin suggests, translation liberates a work from the confines of its original language, then every act of rewriting Dichterliebe — linguistically, musically, or performatively — extends its ‘afterlife’ into new realms of meaning. Our own project, The Poet’s Love(r), is but one node in this expansive network. Here, we examine three further reinterpretations of Schumann’s cycle, not as mere appendices but as test cases for the theoretical claims central to this essay: that translation’s ‘failures’ are generative, that ‘pure language’ emerges through multiplicity, and that art song thrives when destabilized from its historical moorings.
The Erlkings’ folk-rock adaptation, Koen van Stade and Neal Peres Da Costa’s historically informed ‘reimagining,’ and Ambitus Extended’s experimental deconstruction each exemplify distinct facets of translation’s emancipatory potential. Like our AI-generated visuals, these projects interrogate the boundaries of fidelity, gender, and medium — not to fracture Dichterliebe’s identity but to prove its resilience as an ‘open work’ (Eco 1989). Collectively, they demonstrate how translation, in Benjamin’s sense, ‘serves language’ by revealing the cycle’s capacity to speak anew across centuries, genres, and cultures.
Crucially, these examples are not neutral. They respond to the same questions driving our research: How does translation amplify emotional accessibility? What happens when marginalized voices (feminine, non-classical, post-human) intervene in canonical works? And how might such interventions model a more ethical engagement with musical tradition? By placing these case studies in dialogue with our own practice, we underscore translation’s role not as a derivative act but as a vital, philosophical practice — one that ensures Dichterliebe remains a living, contested, and infinitely renewable artifact
I. The Erlkings
The Erlkings’ folk-rock Dichterliebe exemplifies Benjamin’s notion of translation as a ‘mode’ rather than a replica — where the ‘pure language’ of Heine’s poetry is not preserved but reactivated through contemporary sonic vernacular. By grafting Schumann’s Lied aesthetics onto guitar and drums, the ensemble emancipates the cycle from its nineteenth-century vessel, proving Eco’s claim that every translation is a negotiation with the present. Their process mirrors our own: a deliberate surrender of lexical fidelity to amplify emotional resonance, inviting audiences to hear Heine’s irony and Schumann’s longing through the prism of rock’s raw immediacy.
Image description: A black and white image shows the CD cover art for The Erlkings, Schumann, Dichterliebe op. 48 (image used with permission of Bryan Benner/The Erlkings, illustrations by André Breinbauer)
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178178 to see the image.
Schumann… Rock?
The Erlkings, self-described as a ‘bridge between today’s beloved genre of acoustic Singer Songwriters and the great Lied composers of the past’ (Muvac n.d.), recorded their rendition of Dichterliebe and released it in 2020 under Rocket Dog Records in a folk-rock, English language version performed by voice, guitar, cello, tuba and drums.
The endeavor, described by scholar Richard Stokes as ‘paving the way for a new generation’ and ‘offering a new perspective on a repertoire already prized by so many’ (Stokes n.d.) takes Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven songs and cycles and reworks them both linguistically and musically and sells out festivals and concert halls alike. In two separate interviews on 12 and 14 October 2022, Erlkings frontman (vocals, guitar) founder and translator Bryan Benner, cellist Ivan Turkalj, and percussionist Thomas Toppler spoke with VanderHart (in a mix of German and English) about their Dichterliebeproject, the ensemble, and what their translations processes have yielded for them. Selected clips from their interviews are made available below.
Audio descriptions:
Five audio files present sections of interviews with members of the Erlkings in English and German.
1) The Erlkings’ origin story (EN), Vienna, 14 Oct. 4’50’’
2) What is The Erlkings? (EN & DE), Vienna, 12 & 14 Oct. 2’42’’
3) On translating song & Heine (EN), Vienna, 14 Oct. 6’50’’
4) The Erlkings’ particular translation process (EN & DE), Vienna, 12 & 14 Oct. 4’18’’
5) On English as the ‘musical mother tongue’ in German speaking countries (EN & DE), Vienna, 12 & 14 Oct. 2’42’’
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178180 to listen to the recordings.
Video description: Dichterliebe Nr. 5; The Erlkings live (at home) 2019
A video presents the four musicians perfoming together, using an online video conferencing software.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178190 to watch the video.
II. Dichterliebe, Reimagined at the Sydney Conservatory of Music
Koen van Stade and Neal Peres Da Costa’s Historically Informed Performance Practice (HIPP) intervention aligns with Vermeer’s Skopos theory: Their translation is goal-oriented, seeking to ‘liberate’ (Benjamin) Dichterliebe from anachronistic performance traditions. By excavating nineteenth-century vocal techniques and pianism, they translate not just text but time itself — revealing how historical distance, like linguistic distance, demands creative reconstruction. Their work challenges the myth of an ‘original’ version, paralleling our project’s feminist interrogation of the cycle’s gendered assumptions through spoken-poetry interludes.
Image description: A colour photograph portrays the tenor Koen van Stade and pianist Neal Peres Da Costa (photo credit: Robert Catto)
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178240 to see the image.
Audio description: An audio file presents a recording of Dichterliebe, Reimagined by Koen van Stade and Neal Peres Da Costa.
Dichterliebe, Reimagined is the intellectual and artistic property of Koen van Stade and Neal Peres Da Costa and is published here with permission of Deux-Elles Classical Recordings. Producers Francis Greep and Nicolas Kennedy; audio and editing by Patrick Mullins; piano preparation: Terry Harper
It was recorded on the 12–14 December 2021 in Verbrugghen Hall at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music of the University of Sydney.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178245 to listen to the recording.
Pdf description: A pdf file outlines the concept for Dichterliebe Reimagined by Koen van Stade and Neal Peres Da Costa (2023); used with permission
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178239 to read the document.
Getting HIPP with it
Tenor Koen van Stade and pianist Neal Peres Da Costa have dug deep into the performance practice history of Dichterliebe, believing that studying the past offers new possibilities for performers today. Drawing on historical records of art song performance from the turn of the twentieth century and documentary evidence of shifts in vocal technique instruction, they have derived new performance practice evidence to inform their radically ‘new’ approach to Schumann’s cycle.
The duo will be releasing a full commercial recording with Deux-Elles Classical Recordings later in 2023 but have graciously allowed us to bang their drum here. Read the full PDF of their concept to the right and delve into their beautiful recording. The recording is an output of Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP1701011976) titled Deciphering 19th-Century Pianism: Invigorating Global Practices and project DP220101596 The Shock of the Old:Rediscovering the Sounds of Bel Canto 1700–1900.
III. Ambitus Extended and Dichterliebe Extended
Ambitus Extended’s Dichterliebe Extended radicalizes translation as a posthumanist practice. By fracturing the cycle into chamber reflections and commissioning new compositions, they treat Schumann’s work as a porous ‘assemblage’ (de Assis) — echoing our use of AI to generate visual ‘translations’. Here, the translator’s task (Benjamin) becomes a collaborative dismantling of hierarchies: between composer and performer, text and subtext, human and machine. Like The Poet’s Love(r), their project insists that translation is not about carrying across but breaking open.
Image description: A press photo for Dichterliebe Extended of Meredith Nicoll(ai), (photo credit: Sana Lis)
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178275 to see the image.
Audio descriptions:
Three audio files from 2023 present short interviews with Johanna Lacroix (Ambitus Extended musical director, violinist and concept), Chanda VanderHart (pianist and concept), and Meredith Nicoll (vocalist) in which they reflect on how they recall the project coming to be and what they appreciate about it, in German and English.
1) Meredith Nicoll (EN), Vienna, 26 May 1’28’’
2) Johanna Lacroix (DE), Hamburg, 28 May 4’35’’
3) Chanda VanderHart (EN), Vienna, 30 May 4’34’’
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3178170#tool-3178279 to listen to the recordings.
‘Classical’ updatings, musical and textual reflections
In 2017, the Vienna-based new music chamber ensemble Ambitus Extended (musical directors Johanna Lacroix and Silvia Kaniczki) approached VanderHart for a collaboration featuring the song cycle Dichterliebe to be performed in concert in a former pea-shucking factory turned into a concert hall in an outlying district of Vienna called Brick-5. The decision was made collaboratively to think about how Schumann’s musical ideas might be filtered through a modern, classical aesthetic both musically and textually, using a string ensemble (two violins and bass) as well as piano and voice.
In essence, the beginning and end of the cycle were left fairly untouched with the exception of the piano postlude, which was expanded by chamber music instrumentation. The inner songs in the cycle were also rescored for various chamber music combinations. In addition, composers including Sylvie Lacroix, Fritz Keil, Rudolf Hinterdorfer, Alexander Wagendristel, Rudolf Jungwirth, Jörg Ulrich Krah, Maria Gstättner, and Thomas Trsek were commissioned to compose ‘reflections’ on individual songs or texts: original compositions interspersed between numbers in concert, thereby extending Dichterliebe instrumentally, compositionally, and also temporally. Singer Meredith Nicoll (at the time Nicollai) was brought in, taking on what is broadly seen as a male role. For the second half of the evening, poets Andrea Heuser and Semier Insayif each penned a text based on Heine’s ‘Und wüssten’s die Blumen, die kleinen’, which became the basis for newly composed songs as well as original instrumental compositions.
In addition:
A short list of other Dichterliebe translations / interventions include:
- Spitalfields’ award-winning ‘Schumann Street’, where an English neighborhood was transformed for an evening in 2017 into a song cycle setting with each residence housing a single song, translated into the musical vernacular of that musician or ensemble, from rap to folk to banjo.
- CrossNova’s jazzy Dichterliebe for voice, piano, violin and bassoon, as performed by Markus Miesenberger and Heidemaria Oberthür, vocals; Sabine Nova, violin, vocals, and percussion; Leonard Eröd Fagott, vocals and percussion; Rainer Nova, piano.
- An additional English language translation by Jeremy Sams which Roderick Williams has been performing of late.
These eclectic adaptations — from rap to jazz — epitomize Eco’s ‘open work,’ where Dichterliebe’s meaning proliferates through cultural hybridity. Like our AI-generated imagery, they embrace translation’s subjectivity, proving that ‘fidelity’ to Schumann’s legacy lies not in replication but in reinvention. Each intervention, whether linguistic or musical, maps new coordinates for the cycle’s afterlife, expanding its emotional and ideological possibilities.
Translations of Dichterliebe can open up space for more kinds of musical voices to perform Schumann’s music and a multitude of perspectives to shine through the story. Translation can blur what we see as the limits or restrictions to performance and open up spaces and contexts for new audiences to appreciate music-poetic works. Translation can allow us to care more deeply for the characters and perhaps even feel or process something new ourselves.
As performers and researchers, experiencing Dichterliebe through all these modes has offered new layers of context to the work. Instead of focusing on the inevitable losses inherent in translation, today, when we experience standard performances of Dichterliebe in a concert hall, we now carry those additional layers of love and understanding with us. Having made the translation journey, we now appreciate the cycle — in all its forms — just that much more.