Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (Hülshoff, near Münster, 1797 – Meersburg, 1848) was a German poet and composer. Coming from a family with a love of music, she studied piano and singing before beginning to compose around 1820. Her musical output never achieved the renown of her written work.

Her interest in folk song came above all through her brother-in-law Lassberg, and led her to collect old songs and to collaborate with Ludwig Uhland and August Haxthausen. It culminated in her arrangement of the Lochamer Liederbuch for voice and piano, made around 1836. She also composed lieder to texts by Goethe, Brentano and Byron. In 1845 Robert Schumann, through Clara, asked her for an opera libretto; she began several operas, but none was ever completed.

Her style, simpler than that of her contemporaries, reveals the imprint of folk song, and the voice tends to dominate the piano. Some songs have an almost recitative-like texture; others display melodic dissonances and rough-hewn harmonic crossings.

Although she regarded composition as more important than poetry, today her legacy is remembered chiefly as a literary one, as she is considered one of the leading German Romantic poets. Her way of fusing poetry and music may perhaps be understood as a kind of Romantic individualism.