Josephine Lang

Josephine Lang was a gifted German composer, admired in her lifetime for a melodic sensitivity and emotional directness in her Lieder that rivaled Robert Schumann and Brahms. Her songs are characterized by vocal lines that tend towards the expansivity and drama of opera as well as sophisticated piano parts that deepen the poetic meaning in the manner of Schumann. Lang prefigured the magical melancholy and dark harmonic shifts of Brahms in songs like O sehntest du dich and Mignons Klage. Herbstgefühl, one of her mature compositions, has attracted attention in the 21st century due to the harmonic invention of the piano prologue and the Wagnerian combination of soaring vocal lines over prolonged dissonances. She counted Clara Schumann, Brahms, and the poet Justinus Kerner among her friends. Recordings of her songs have been made by Dana McKay, Heike Hallaschka, and Catriona Morison, who included several selections on the 2021 album The Dark Night Has Vanished. Lang was born in 1815 to a musical family who worked at the Munich court, and she showed great talent as a pianist in her early years. While just a teenager, she composed her first songs and caught the attention of Felix Mendelssohn in 1830. Mendelssohn tried to convince her family to provide her with composition lessons to hone her prodigious talent. Although Lang's family declined due to financial concerns, she went on to become a professional singer at the Munich court and established a reputation in the city's musical society for her many songs and small number of solo piano pieces. During her 16-year marriage, she was forced to pull back from composition but eventually resumed. Powerful friends including Clara Schumann and Ferdinand Hiller helped her to achieve greater recognition. Lang died in 1880. Musicologists Sharon Krebs and Martha Citroen have brought deserved attention to Lang's works in the 20th and 21st centuries. ~ Jane Harrison, Rovi