Adolf Jensen

• Lehn’ deine Wang’ and meine Wang’

• Murmelndes Lüftchen/Murmuring breeze

• O, lass dich halten, gold’ne Stunde!

The german composer, pianist and teacher Adolf Jensen (1837-1879) learned how to play the piano by himself before he studied at the academy in Berlin. He then went on to teach music and work as a conductor in Russia (one source says he did this in order to earn money to study with Schumann, but when he returned, Schumann was already dead). He studied instead with Niels Gade in Kopenhagen.

Jensen, who was a friend of Brahms‘, wrote very many songs, and was thought of his contemporaries to be „a second Schumann“. He had tuberculosis for fifteen years before he finally died of it in Baden-Baden, Germany, at the age of 42.