Song without Words, Op. 19 No. 6 — Venetian Gondola Song

About this work

A boat moves without haste, but the water is never still. In the sixth of his Op. 19 Songs without Words, Mendelssohn evokes a Venetian gondolier’s song: compound metre supplies the sway, the bass traces the movement of the oar and the melody must remain free above this discreet mechanism.

At the piano, the chief difficulty is balancing the sound layers. The accompaniment repeats its pattern regularly; bring it to the foreground and the gondola acquires an engine. Isolate the singing line, then play the bass alone while feeling two broad beats in each bar. Combine them with a supple hand and pedal changes that follow the harmony.

Give each return of a phrase a slightly different course: a more inward opening, tension broadening and then receding. Avoid slowing at the end of every motif. The motion comes from the continuity of the sway; the melody can breathe within that stability.

What the document containsThe 2-page PDF contains this song alone, not the complete Op. 19 set. Mutopia Project record 1679 preserves the LilyPond engraving under the CC BY 3.0 licence. LesPartitions.info also provides the MIDI file for studying the sway and balance between sound layers.