Walter Meyer wrote:

>The original text, by Jens Peter Jacobsen was in Danish, but I don't
>know how Jacobsen spelled it.  I have a revised translation ("revidierte
>Uebersetzung") by Mathilde Mann and E.  v. Mendelssohn in which the title
>indeed appears as "Gurrelieder".  The German libretto to Schoenberg's work,
>which differs markedly from the Mann/Mendelssohn  translation, was written
>by Robert Franz Arnold and also uses the title "Gurrelieder".

I have found one site in Danish which states that:

   Jacobsen blev dyrket naermest kultisk, og R.F.  Arnolds tyske
   oversaettelse af "Gurresange" (1899) er ikke vanskelig at bringe
   i sammenhaeng med et senromantisk univers af wagnersk tilsnit.
   Schoenbergs symfoniske kantate motiverer da de sider af digtet, der
   kan afpasses med tidens optagethed af dels orkesterlieden, dels
   musikdramaet.

ByJorn Erslev Andersen

Quoted from:

http://www.sb.aau.dk/Standart/98-4/SkovduenIrmelinRoseFennimoreogGerda.html

I must say my Danish isn't that great but it's close enough to German
that I can guess they are talking about Schoenberg's musical setting of the
1899 translation of the "Gurresange" as a 'symphonic cantata' steeped in
the universe of Wagnerian late-Romantic musical language, with partly the
character of orchestral Lieder and partly that of music drama.  However in
his book "The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg" (University of California
Press, 1993) Walter Frisch writes that Simon Trezise established in his PhD
thesis that Schoenberg used Franz Arnold's original unrevised translation
rather than the revised translation which was finally published as part of
a three-volume German edition in 1898.

Obviously the original Danish is "Gurresange", for which a literal German
translation would be "Gurregesaenge", but when translated into the forum
of the German art song (albeit orchestral art song) becomes "Gurrelieder".
I still wonder if it weren't for somebody wanting to follow the original
Danish "Gurresange", the natural inclination of most German language
speakers might have been to Germanicise the spelling more as Gurre-Lieder
or even "Gurrer Lieder".  In fact my study version of the score has on the
cover just that:  Gurre-Lieder.

Still I think it's fine by me to preserve the Danish spelling "Gurresange"
by translating it as "Gurrelieder".  So unless some list member has a
better argument as far as I'm concerned "Gurrelieder" it is!!

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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