There is a great sense of purpose about Strauss's 1882–3 song 'Zueignung'. Fittingly it opened his first publication as a song composer. Strauss had written many songs before the Op. 10 set, yet it was with this particular Lied that he felt confident enough to launch his career as a songsmith. It fuses a strophic structure with something more rhapsodic, building, in the final verse, to a particularly stirring climax. This is accentuated rather than diminished by the song's sense of structural repetition. Indeed, Strauss's life reflected Hermann von Gilm zu Rosenegg's text as he dedicated himself to the art of song over the next 20 years, of which this tenders an august beginning.
Click here to listen to Lucia Popp's performance with Wolfgang Sawallisch.
The painting is 'Blick ins Unendliche' by Ferdinand Hodler.
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