Recording
- No. 3 of Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 — AndanteAdèle Bérard, soprano; Laura Lazayre, piano (duo Béla) · 22 January 2026, Amiens2:21
Eight of the sixteen lines of Heine’s Warum sind denn die Rosen so blass begin with “Warum”, and Fanny Hensel sets its four stanzas to two melodies, each heard twice. Adèle Bérard (soprano) and Laura Lazayre (piano), who perform as duo Béla, recorded the song in Amiens in January 2026.
Listening notes
- Composed 1837, published 1846
Hensel wrote this song in 1837. It appeared in 1846 as No. 3 of her Sechs Lieder, Op. 1, from Bote & Bock in Berlin. On 9 July of that year she told her brother Felix, who had opposed her publishing, that she had accepted Herr Bock’s terms.
- Second stanza in D minor
The second stanza starts marked f, in D minor, with a stepwise descent in the voice and running sixteenths in the piano. Near its end the left hand holds E for two bars, a dominant pedal. The first stanza’s melody then returns for the third stanza.
- Last line repeated, piano close
After the fourth stanza Hensel repeats the last line, with “warum” sung twice. The soprano sings the melody of the opening line, marked con espress. The piano then plays alone, dim. and rallent., and finishes pp on an A minor arpeggio rising to a high A under a fermata.