Spring Song

Grateful Dead

Three From The Vault, Grateful Dead, 2007

Notes

Only noodled by the Grateful Dead during tuning and delays.

The full title of the piece this tuning is based on is Lieder ohne Worte, op. 62, No. 6 A-dur (Songs Without Words, Opus 62, No 6 in A major). The Spring Song subtitle became associated with the piece after it's original publication. There are eight volumes of Mendelsshon's Songs Without Words. Six of these were published during his lifetime, between 1830 and 1845, the last two were published after his death. Each volume comprises 6 solo piano pieces. 'Spring Song' is the final piece of the fifth volume. Mendelssohn named only a small number of the pieces. Others, as with Spring Song, had named attached to them, usually by publishers, at a later date. On one occasion on being asked why the songs had no words Mendelsshon replied;

Even if, in one or other of them, I had a particular word or words in mind, I would not want to tell anyone, because the same word means different things to different people. Only the songs say the same thing, arouse the same feeling, in everyone - a feeling that can't be expressed in words.