Schön Schätzchen, ich wünsch dir ein‘ schöne gute Nacht (My dearest, I wish you good night) / Oh du mein grüner Haselstrauch (Oh you my green hazel bush)

Here we hear two examples of a genre also traditionally found in Bukovina: the folk song. The term Volkslied (popular song) was coined in 1773 by the German poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder in reference to the English “popular song”. Folk songs are disseminated within a social group by that group itself and are passed down through the ages by imitation, i.e., mainly through call and response singing with simple melodies and a limited range of tones.

Composers and writers of folk songs are in most cases unknown, and there are also often variations in titles, lyrics and melodies. They mostly describe everyday events and a wide range of emotional experiences, for example, love, longing, joy and sadness. Thus, a wide range of folk song genres developed, such as drinking songs, cradle songs, work songs, love songs, wedding songs, birthday songs, student songs, and hiking songs. 

The peculiarity of the Bukovinian folk song lies in the variety of influences from a number of different (colonist) groups living or immigrating to Bukovina. Armenians, Germans, Hutsuls, Jews, Romanians and Ukrainians each had their own songs and dances.

The first of the songs performed here a capella, Schön Schätzchen, ich wünsch dir ein' schöne gute Nacht (My dearest, I wish you good night), is characterized by a melancholy melody with an Eastern European touch. It describes the feelings and memories of a man who has to leave his beloved and thinks back to their time together in the “Russian country”.

In the second song, Oh du mein grüner Haselstrauch (Oh you my green hazel bush), a cheerful and innocent melody merges with a cryptic text. Gender roles and values of past times are sung about, with a wink: The “bad boys” have it in for the graceful girls in the inn, and their “honor” is now endangered...

Mia Jakob was born in Zagreb, Croatia, where she completed her master's degree in music education at the Academy of Music in 2014. In 2017, she began a master's degree in voice at the Leopold Mozart Center in Augsburg, Germany, graduating in 2021. In addition to her pedagogical work and artistic activities as an opera singer, her focus is on combining film with opera and song.
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English translation: William Connor