“The Maiden’s Wish,” the first of the two songs presented, is one of the
earliest and most popular, so far as known; a dainty, capricious little
mazurka song, half playful, half tender. The words embody the fond wish
of a merry, winsome maiden, whose life is touched to seriousness by the
shadow of first love upon her pathway, the wish that she were a sunbeam
to leave the high vault of Heaven and desert the flowers and streams of
earth to shine through her lover’s window and gladden him alone; or that
she were a bird to leave the fields and forests and fly on swift pinions
to his window at early dawn and wake him with a song of love.
The music accurately and closely reproduces the spirit of the words, in
all their warmth, archness, and grace. The short but continually
recurring trill, “ever on the self-same note,” in prelude and interlude,
suggests the thrill which the maiden feels at heart as she flits singing
about the house and garden, unconsciously keeping step to the rhythm of
the mazurka, the native dance of her province.