"" ("Dream in the Twilight", literally "Dream through the twilight"), is both a German poem by Otto Julius Bierbaum and a (art song) by Richard Strauss, his Op. 29/1. The opening line is "" ("Broad meadows in grey dusk"). It is the first of three songs by Strauss based on love poems by Bierbaum, composed and published in Munich in 1895, and dedicated to Eugen Gura. The works were scored for medium voice and piano, and published by Universal Edition as (3 songs with piano accompaniment), later with English versions and orchestral arrangements.
Poem
"" first appeared in Berlin in 1892 in a collection known as ("Experienced Poems") by Bierbaum that was published by Verlag von Wilhelm Issleib ("Wilhelm Issleib's Publishing House). Bierbaum dedicated the 217 page collection, with Traum durch die Dämmerung on page 130, to Detlev von Liliencron as he expressed in the personal foreword. A second edition of the collection appeared a year later.
In his anthology (Poetry of Art Nouveau) Jost Hermand noted that the title is paradigmatic for the literature of the . The theme is a man going to meet a beloved woman, as in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1771 poem "" (Welcome and Farewell). In Bierbaum's poem, he speaks in the first person.
"" is in two stanzas, each comprising five lines. The first line, literally: "Wide meadows in twilight grey", was translated by Richard Stokes as "Broad meadows in grey dusk". The first line rhymes with lines 3 and 4, in both stanzas on "dark" vowels, and , with line 4 repeating line 1. Line 2 rhymes with line 5 on a light vowel, and . The term , a combination of (twilight) and (grey), repeated four times (in lines 1 and 4) contrasts with the final word (light). The third line of the poem describes the walk to meet the woman in first person, after detailing meadows, twilight, the sun and the stars: "" (Now I go to the most beautiful woman). The subject notes that he is not in a rush: "" (I do not go fast). She is not described, but their relationship imagined as a "" (soft, velvety band), drawing him to "" (the love land), reaching a state of "" (mild blue light).
Composition and publication
Strauss composed all three songs of Op. 29 on one day, 7 June 1895, the year after he married Pauline de Ahna and settled in Munich, the town of his birth.
Working as assistant conductor at the Munich court opera, he looked for a librettist for a possible opera project and contacted Bierbaum. While no opera came to pass, Strauss liked his poems and set several of them to music, among them the three songs of Op. 29 which he all wrote on 7 June. "" was followed by "" ("Longing Hearts" or "Beating Hearts") and "" (Nighttime Walk).
Strauss reportedly completed "" in the only 20 minutes his wife gave him before an errand. He scored the three songs, which all contemplate walking, for medium voice and piano, and dedicated them to Eugen Gura, a leading baritone of the court opera in Munich.
The songs were first published in Munich by Joseph Aibl. They were then published by Universal Edition. "" also appeared in English in a translation by John Bernhoff and Nelia Fabretto, in transpositions for low and high voice, and with an orchestral arrangement by Robert Heger. Strauss quoted the music, along with several other early works, in the fifth section of his tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), Op. 40, completed in 1898, which is usually considered autobiographical in tone.
Music
A typical performance takes around three minutes. In the version for medium voice, the music of "" begins in F-sharp major. It is in 2/4 time and marked "Sehr ruhig" (very calm). The two stanzas are through-composed, with two slight changes to the text: Strauss added the word "hin" to the third line and changed the order of the adjectives in the last line. The song is completed by a modified repeat of the last three lines, this time in Bierbaum's word order.