The ‘Four Songs of Mirza Schaffy’ were published in 1903, with
translations from the German of Friedrich Bodenstedt by Walter
Creighton. They were re-issued, with the accompaniments somewhat
revised, and a new translation by R H Elkin, in 1911. Schaffy
(Mirza merely means ‘man of letters’) was a schoolmaster in
Tiflis, Georgia, with whom Bodenstedt studied languages. The
poems were published in 1851 as Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy ,
but in later years Bodenstedt confessed they were his own work.
It seems Quilter was not aware of this, since he later published
a song with the words ‘translated from the German of Mirza
Schaffy by the composer’. The poems were immensely popular,
reaching a twenty-sixth edition by 1869. Incidentally Bodenstedt
made the standard German translation of Shakespeare’s works,
used by Parry in his settings of four of the Sonnets. With these
songs Quilter was still trying to find his own voice. There are
naturally traces of romantic German lieder, so soon after his
study in Frankfurt, an