"Notturno" (translated as Nocturne), Opus 44, Number 1 (TrV 197), is an orchestral song written for low voice, which Richard Strauss composed in 1899 based on a poem Erscheinung (translated as Apparition) by the German poet Richard Dehmel (1863-1920).

[1] Strauss wrote two “large songs for low voice and orchestral accompaniment” (German Zwei Grosse Gesänge für tiefe Stimme mit Orchesterbegleitung): Notturno being the first and Nächtlicher Gang the second.

[2] Strauss, had only recently taken up his duties as chief conductor of the Berlin Royal Court Opera (where he served from 1898 to 1908), finishing the composition of the song at his home in Charlottenburg on 11 July 1899 and the full scoring two months later on 16 September.

As Del Mar commented, “if the omissions render the meaning of the verses as a whole more obscure, they add to the mystic quality”.

In the posthumous collection of his poems edited by his second wife (Ida Dehmel), the first verse and last line are also left out rendering it almost the same as the Strauss lyrics.

The major difference is in the omission of the first stanza, and the last line when the narrator awakes up from the dream "und seufzend bin ich aufgewach" (and sighing I awoke).

Da kam es her, wie einst so mild, so bang und sacht, aus ferner Nacht; so kummerschwer kam seiner Geige Hauch daher, und vor mir stand sein stilles Bild.

He who entwined me like a ribbon So that my youth did not fall apart, And that my heart might find the desire, The great aimless longing.

In his great melancholy And his tired sadness, He strode toward the goal - Loudly wailed the weeping song, Aching and flowing, And the lament of his strings cut, And his brow bled Weeping with my souls distress, As if I should hear a commandment, As if I should rejoice in my suffering, As if he wanted to feel my suffering Feel together all the guilt of all suffering And all the warm grace of life - And weeping, bleeding he turned away Into the bleak darkness and faded away.

And how tender, trembling The distant pleading of the long tones, I felt a cold breeze rustling And laden with dread I felt an ominous quiet in the air, And trembling, I wanted now to see him, To see him listening, He, who waited and sat with my misery, And I turned -- there lay empty The bleak field, silent and pale Death too vanished into the darkness.