Das Reh, Op. 26, No. 5

Niels Wilhelm Gade, a prominent Danish composer of the Romantic era, wrote this charming four-part song for male voices (TTBB) in German. The text paints a pastoral scene, beginning with a hunter pursuing a deer through woods and meadows. The mood shifts as the hunter seems to forget his chase, distracted by a maiden glimpsed in a garden hedge. The song muses on the well-being of the horse and the hunter, and the deer continues its flight, a strangely anxious creature. The piece evokes a sense of gentle melancholy and picturesque nature, characteristic of 19th-century German Lieder and folksong traditions.