Helen. Currier & Ives, c1855. Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress.

from Four Poems, op. 15 (1905) by Charles Martin Loeffler

Near the beginning of the twentieth century, Charles Martin Loeffler showed an increased interest in the poetry of English and American authors. Having earlier composed songs to French texts, Loeffler chose, in the summer of 1905, to set two poems by Edgar Allan Poe, and one each by George Cabot Lodge (son of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, for voice and piano. The four songs, published collectively by G. Schirmer as Four Poems, op. 15, were debuted in Boston on 10 April 1906, by soprano Susan Metcalfe and pianist Heinrich Gebhard.

Unlike Loeffler's works from the previous decade that were morbid and macabre in character, Four Poems features songs that contain hints of nostalgia, tenderness, and sadness. "To Helen," one of Loeffler's two Poe settings in this collection, is perhaps his most famous song. The poem, written by Poe in 1831 when he was twenty-two years old, is considered to be one of the poet's best verses. Similarly, Loeffler captured Poe's elegant text in what has been described as an "expressive simplicity," making "To Helen" one of the composer's most beautiful song settings.