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HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

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Heinrich Heine<br />

is Wordsworth's,' I should look at it and pass on;<br />

if they said it is Shakespeare's or Shelley's I should<br />

stroke it and if it was Shelley's kiss it, but I should<br />

lock it up in the drawer; but if it was Heine's I should<br />

carry it about with me wherever I went. I don't<br />

know why I love him so." ^^<br />

Heine's enduring popularity was aided by the<br />

unending stream of musical compositions based on<br />

his lyrics. He ranked first among all the poets as<br />

the inspirer of composers. In Germany alone there<br />

were until the year 1912 no fewer than 4259 musical<br />

settings of his poems as compared with 2660<br />

based on Goethe's poems. English composers could<br />

not vie successfully with Schubert and Schumann,<br />

Mendelssohn and Franz, Liszt, Rubinstein, and<br />

Brahms, but they made the attempt ever since the<br />

eighteen-forties. In 1888, John P. Anderson included,<br />

in the bibliography he appended to Sharp's<br />

Life of Heine, a formidable hst of English composers<br />

who set Heine-songs to music. Jenny Lind<br />

and Pauline Viardot in the mid-nineteenth century<br />

formed the vanguard of the great heder-singers<br />

who came to England on concert tours and familiarized<br />

English audiences with the melodious verses<br />

of Heine in the original tongue. Pauhne Viardot,<br />

who is today best remembered as the inspirer of the<br />

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