"" ("The Secret Invitation" or "The Lovers; Pledge"), Op. 27, No. 3, is one of a set of four songs composed for voice and piano by Richard Strauss in 1894. The German conductor Robert Heger orchestrated it in 1929. The text is from a poem in German by John Henry Mackay.
Strauss composed the song on 22 May 1894 and gave it as a wedding present to his wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna. During their American tour in 1904, Pauline Strauss sang this song as the concluding piece in her Carnegie Hall debut on 1 March.
Strauss recorded the orchestral version in 1941 with Julius Patzak (tenor) and the Bavarian State Orchestra, and in 1944 the piano version with himself accompanying Alfred Poell (baritone).
The song is written with a time signature of time and in the key of G-flat major and several modulations (it has been transposed into several other key); the tempo indication is (lively). The vocal range is from B to E, an interval of an octave + a fourth. The music takes briefly a recitative character in two places ("Verachte sie nicht zu sehr" and "den Durst gestillt .. festfreudiges Bild"). The accompaniment is highly pianistic and Strauss himself never orchestrated it, unlike the other three songs of this cycle. Heger's orchestration has been described as "lacklustre".
Strauss altered three words slightly: the originals are in square brackets. The song describes a man wooing a woman amidst a crowd of drinking carousers and his invitation to a later tryst.
Orchestration by Heger: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, percussion, harp and string section
The other songs of Opus 27 are: