The trees of Schubert's and Schumann's

Lately I have been completely carried away by Schumann's Myrten, Op. 25 (Myrtles) - a song cycle presented to Clara as a wedding gift (myrtle is the German symbol of marriage). The cycle's strong sense of unity and the variety of emotions it contains have filled my mind's eyes (and ears) with wonder and pure joy. Some of the lieder have just been replaying themselves repeatedly in my head, uninvited.

Among the 26 lieder in the cycle, I am especially fond of Der Nussbaum (The Nut Tree). A humble maiden sleeps beside a nut tree, accompanied by gentle summer wind and the rustling leaves, dreaming of a possible marriage. It is interesting to see how the poet, Julius Mosen, introduces the maiden in third person, so as to convey the delicacy of the scene:

Paired together, [the blossoms] whisper,
Inclining,
Bending
Gracefully their delicate heads to kiss.

They whisper of a maiden who
Dreamed
All night
And all day of, alas, she knew not what.

They whisper - who can understand
So soft
A song?
Whisper of a bridegroom and next year.
[Trans. Richard Stokes; from booklet accompanying The Songs of Robert Schumann - Vol. 7 (Hyperion), pp. 38-9.]

In the very thorough CD booklet, Graham Johnson rightly points out that the persistent repetition of the opening motif in this lied conveys the maiden's (i.e., Clara's) obsession with her perhaps over-fantasized love (p. 41). While the delicacy of the music is quite obvious, I also hear a tinge of childishness along with purity when the soprano begins the melody with those repeated Bs, and when she rises later, in the same phrase, to the high B, echoing the opening motif from the piano. After all, Clara Wieck was still a child when Schumann composed this song in 1840.

Johnson also interestingly notes that Der Nussbaum, and also Schubert's Der Lindenbaum, were sung by many choral societies in the 19th century as patriotic part songs (p. 39). Why were the Germans so obsessed with tress as a music-cultural symbol of their own? (The Christmas song O Tannenbaum now comes to mind as well). Perhaps this may be related to another of their obsession: the idea of a lonely person wandering around. Were the German wanderers lonely and nostalgic to the point that they had to associate every tree in Die Schwarzwald with a painful memory in order to pass time?

Even though both Der Nussbaum and Der Lindenbaum are about romantic love, the two lieder are rather different in mood. Schumann's is delicate, feminine, and Schubert's, poignant, masculine. But in both, the tree is seen by the narrator as a source of hope. In the last stanza of Schumann's lied,

The maiden listens, the tree rustles;
Yearning,
Musing
She drifts smiling into sleep and dreams (p. 39).

The maiden must be dreaming of her husband she heard from the whisper among the blossoms of the nut tree! In Schubert's lied, the wanderer exclaims in the last stanza:

Now I have many hours
Spent far from yonder place,
Yet still I hear it rustling
"Here will you find your peace!"
[p. 50 of booklet accompanying Franz Schubert: Lieder - Vol. 3 (Fischer-Dieskau/Moore), Deutsche Grammophon].

Does the lime tree turn the wanderer's nap into an eternal sleep?