Morgen!

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Morgen! ("Tomorrow!") is the last song in Richard Strauss’s 1894 set Opus 27, No. 4. The German words were written by John Henry Mackay. Strauss gave the song as a wedding present to his wife, Pauline de Ahna. It was first written for voice and piano, then arranged for orchestra in 1897 with a solo violin.

The orchestration uses muted strings, a harp, and three horns, with a very soft dynamic throughout; the final chord features a solo horn. The performance lasts about 3½ minutes.

The poem speaks of tomorrow: the sun will shine again, lovers will meet on a sunlit earth, and a quiet happiness will settle over them on a broad, blue shore.

Strauss recorded Morgen! himself several times: in 1919 with tenor Robert Hutt on piano, in 1941 conducting the orchestral version with tenor Julius Patzak, and in 1947 in a live radio broadcast with soprano Annette Brun. Today it remains one of his best-known and most frequently performed songs.