THE DEUTSCHE SCHUBERT-LIED-EDITION In 1816 Franz Schubert, together with his circle of friends, decided to publish a collection of all the songs which he...
THE DEUTSCHE SCHUBERT-LIED-EDITION
In 1816 Franz Schubert, together with his
circle of friends, decided to publish a collection of all the songs which he
had so far written. Joseph Spaun, whom Schubert had known since his school
days, tried his (and Schubert's) luck in a letter to the then unquestioned
Master of the German language, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
A selection
of German songs will constitute the beginning of this edition; it will consist
of eight volumes. The first two (the first of which, as an example, you will
find in our letter) contains poems written by your Excellency, the third,
poetry by Schiller, the fourth and fifth, works by Klopstock, the sixth by
Mathison, Holty, Salis etc., the seventh and eighth contain songs by Ossian,
whose works are quite exceptional.
The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition follows the
composer's original concept. All Schubert's Lieder,
over 700 songs, will be grouped according to the poets who inspired
him, or according to the circle of writers, contemporaries, members of certain
literary movements and so on, whose works Schubert chose to set to music.
Fragments and alternative settings, providing their length and quality make
them worth recording, and works for two or more voices with piano accompaniment
will also make up a part of the edition.
Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to
music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, his contemporaries,
and, of course, finally, poems by Heinrich Heine, although sadly the two never
met.
The entire edition is scheduled for completion
by 2005. Thanks to the Neue Schubert Ausgabe
(New Schubert Edition), published by Barenreiter, which uses primary
sources -autograph copies wherever possible -the performers have been able to
benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team. For the first
time, the listener and the interested reader can follow Schubert' s textual
alterations and can appreciate the importance the written word had for the
composer.
The project's Artistic Advisor is the pianist
Ulrich Eisenlohr, who has chosen those German-speaking singers who represent
the elite of today's young German Lieder singers, performers whose artistic contribution,
he believes, will stand the test of time.
Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) Settings of
poems by Schiller, Vol. 2
When in 1787 Friedrich Schiller first visited
Weimar, the residence of Duke Karl August and a place so important in German
cultural history, it was because of the 'three Weimar giants', Christoph Martin
Wieland, the elegant poet of the rococo, the court preacher Johann Gottfried
Herder, and, naturally, the youngest and most charismatic of these 'giants',
Goethe, who was then on his famous Italian journey. Today Goethe and Schiller
are the embodiment of the Weimar classical period.
Schiller was the son of an officer and was
born in 1759 at Marbach-am-Neckar, not far from the magnificent capital of
Württemberg at Ludwigsburg. From 1773 to 1780 he attended the strongly
disciplined military Pflanzschule, later the Hohe Karlsschule, an elite academy
established by Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg, who showed no compunction in
recruiting talented boys from his dukedom. Schiller next turned to the study of
law and then of medicine. Poetry in this academy so cut off from the outer
world was for him, with his love of freedom, a means of expressing his hatred
of tyranny and an important outlet. Here his first dramatic work took shape.
With the sensational first performance of Die
Rauber ('The Robbers') in Mannheim at the beginning of 1782, a work
that soon became a symbol of Sturm und Drang theatre, Schiller won fame
overnight, although he was for a long time unable t0 secure his material
position through his work as a poet.
Schiller had been forbidden by the Duke to
write and was obliged to escape by night to Mannheim in the Palatinate. There
followed years in the circle of Christian Gottfried Korner in Leipzig and
Dresden. Meanwhile Schiller had devoted himself to historical studies and in
these he became absorbed during his first period in Weimar. As a result in May
1789, when he was not yet thirty, he became, surely unusually, professor of
history at Jena. From 1794 he was in closer friendly communication with Goethe,
and in 1799 he returned to Weimar, not least, as he himself said, to have
'experience of the theatre', since these last years were important, above all,
in the continuation of his dramatic work. Schiller died on 9th May 1805.
Our second volume of Schiller songs offers the
possibility in two cases of comparing two Schubert settings of the same text.
Sehnsucht ('Longing') is the earliest work in the
present recording, composed by the sixteen-year-old Schubert in April 1813. In
spite of the characteristic strongly rhythmical pattern of the four eight-line
strophes of Schiller's late poem Schubert avoids a strophic lay-out. Certain
special features of the text may have proved 100 great a temptation for the
young composer to provide correspondingly specific music, as with the threat of
the stream (dotted fortissimo chords) or the rocking of the boat (agitated
semiquaver figuration). The first verse is formally interrupted in the middle, Dort erblick ich schone Hügel ('There I
glimpse fair hills') by the insertion of recitative. A much longer passage of
recitative is found with the heartfelt sigh at the beginning of the third
verse, and the passage that includes the last six lines of the poem is
contained in the form of an (aria-) stretta - an accelerated special coda. The
whole composition offers a noteworthy mixture of youthful genius, a free grasp
of the textual material and, in part, an unmistakable technical awkwardness, a
characteristic of many of Schubert's early songs.
When Schubert tackled the poem again in 1821,
he created what was certainly no true strophic song, but a rather more
song-like setting: it now avoids completely passages of recitative and yet the
first half of the third verse uses again the corresponding music from the
second verse (Schubert essentially look the rapid final passage from the
earlier version). Naturally here 100 the powerful images of the threatening
stream and the rocking boat are given corresponding music, yet they are, a very
characteristic tendency of the second setting, so far interwoven that the
pattern of figuration of the right hand in the keyboard part continues,
including both places. Masterly too are the prelude and interlude in the piano,
which stand almost as musical headings over the respective following poetic and
musical passages and not unimportant in their contribution to the expression of
tension between the dreary present situation and the desired ideal.
The three-strophe Hoffnung ('Hope') is arranged by Schubert in both versions
as a strophic song. Here too there is a handling of nuances that reveals the
later setting (c.1819) as a maturer work. The dark-sounding piano prelude and
interlude is important on this account (the simple first setting starts
immediately with the song). It is above all the confident, jaunty 6/8 metre
that makes the special character of the second version; in this way the basic
tone of the poem is exactly achieved. While in the first version (1815) the
closing lines are repeated as a whole, the second version divides those lines,
repeating respectively the two parts, which, with this double statement, is far
more eloquent.
Die
Bürgschaft ('The
Bond') (1798), set in ancient Sicily, a heroic song of unconditional male
fidelity, with its twenty seven-line verses, is one of the best known ballads
in literature. Less well known is Schubert's musical setting of 1815 The great
range of the vocal treatment can be seen as characteristic of such great ballad
settings. Thus, after the mood-painting opening bars of the piano, the first
lines are set as strict recitative The second verse, in contrast, that brings
the suppliant entreaties for a delay of three days, is in singing style,
deployed over a steady and uniform accompaniment. The gentle piano interlude,
which separates the fifth from the sixth verse, providing an example of how in
a composed ballad music can point a particular passage, suggests the wedding
celebration of the beloved sister, a moment that is not consciously represented
in the poem, but is only related after the celebration, since it serves only as
an accompanying circumstance for the central theme of the proof of true
friendship. Time and again it appears as a means of providing structure in the
musical course of the long ballad. When, with the end of the sixth verse, the
turbulent semiquaver patterns begin together their crescendi and many the urgency of the return of Moerus, hampered by many untoward
obstacles, is emphatically expressed in dramatic music that has not previously
been heard. Quite briefly the continuing tremolo stream is interrupted, when,
at the end of the sixth verse, he meets the first disaster to be overcome: the
rising power of the waters has destroyed the way across the bridge. For a long
while our hero wanders along the bank (and with him the piano tremolo grows
lighter) before he finally, at the beginning of the eighth verse, sinks down,
exhausted, 'weeps and begs'. At this point the tremolo completely ebbs away.
Other outstanding details may be mentioned: almost like a noëma in old vocal polyphony, the
prominence of the word 'God' in the last line of the ninth verse through the
extended high note and the fortissimo chord
of the piano, as well as the staccato octave ending before the twelfth verse,
in which one sees the robbers, who presented the second catastrophic threat,
escape. A new atmosphere is engendered through the comparatively moderate style
of the gently rippling semiquavers of the thirteenth verse Schubert here enters
into the bright silver waters of the living source, which obviates the third
disaster, as the man is nearly dying of thirst. Worthy of remark is also the
musical treatment of the course of the sun in the ballad: unmeasured in the
eighth verse, in unrhythmic tremolo in the twelfth, slowly in the fourteenth,
and in free recitative in the eighteenth, imperceptibly and even, in
consequence, threateningly, symbolizing the inexorable passing of time.
A shorter ballad is found in Ritter Toggenburg ('The Knight of
Toggenburg'), a poem of 1797 which tells of the immutable nature of unfulfilled
love. In the musical arrangement of the ten verses it can be easily understood
that Schubert, as a pupil of the Vienna Stadtkonvikt in 1811 had said
(according to Joseph von Spaun), that he 'could all day long revel' in the
compositions of Zumsteeg. The Swabian ballad and song composer Johann Rudolf
Zumsteeg (1760-1802), a contemporary of Schiller and a friend of his at the
Karlsschule, also set this medieval story. In the same place as his model,
after the fifth verse, Schubert, who set the text in 1816, goes from a free,
through-composed set ting to a strophic layout, in a slow triple metre,
exactly at the turning-point in the life of the knight. The little crusaders'
march before the third verse and the recitative break (forming a caesura) in
the fifth verse, with other details, also follow the example of Zumsteeg.
Schubert, however, goes beyond his model inasmuch as he provides a special
setting of the final verse, thereby linking up with the preceding minor-key verses
(6-9) in an effective major key brightening of tone, thus directly stressing
the transfiguration of the lover, unswerving until death (in Zumsteeg the six
th to the tenth verses are set in the same major key).
In a setting of 1823 Schubert provides the
late Schiller poem Der Pilgrim (1803)
with a perhaps still more ingenious musical arrangement of the nine simple
four-line verses. The life's journey of the still naïve young pilgrim starts
with a strong, regular crotchet beat; the chordal piano part and the variety of
vocal quaver pairs on many syllables suggest a cheerful 'Wanderchoral'. The first and second
verses make up a single longer musical verse, which is then repeated for the
third and fourth verses of the text. With the fifth verse the style of the
music changes slightly (but the phrasing and rhetorical structure are still
unaltered). Particularly striking is the repetition of one note in the lower
register in the vocal part, a repetition not found in the preceding verses,
here marking the first sign of weariness in the pilgrim, 'Abend war's' ('It was evening'). At the
same time, in the first bars of the fifth verse, the stepping bass-line
abandons its frequent leaps, replaced now with smaller intervals, sometimes
chromatic. Here too for the first time there is a serious change from the
opening key. The purposeful energy of the wanderer is gone, as the 'golden
gate' of paradise, promised in the fourth verse, so easily disappears, 'Aber immer blieb's verborgen, / Was ich suche, was ich will' (But ever
hidden lies / What I seek, what I will). In the sixth verse the pace becomes
noticeably heavier, achieved through the complex harmony (and the firmer
right-hand chords in the piano part). As the pilgrim builds his bridge 'über Schlünde' (over the abyss), Schubert
extends his harmonic range, by means of a more adventurous modulation bridge.
The situation is eased, seemingly, with the seventh verse, as the pilgrim, 'froh vertrauend' (happily trusting),
stops at a broadly eastward-flowing stream. Schubert takes up again the
(confident) vocal line of the first (and third) verse (with the piano
accompaniment now broken entirely into running quavers), but in such a way that
this melody, now in a remoter mediant key, indicates the loss of the right way.
This is explicit in the following verse. Here everything comes to a halt: with
the third line, 'vor mir liegt's in weiter
Leere' ("before me it lies in a wider void"), the right-hand in the
piano part changes its crotchet motion (to move into slower, wearier minims),
and now for the first time a line of the text is repeated. In the fourth line
finally, for the first time in this song, there is a break in the rhetorical
flow, in which the decisive denial, 'naher
bin ich nicht dem Ziel' ("nearer am I not to my goal"), takes up the
space of two crotchets (and thus the whole verse, up to this point consistent,
is broken into duple metre). From the gradual build-down of the passage, as it
continues, the consequence is reached for the final verse (of
resignation)" the measured march rhythm comes to an end, to be followed by
an entirely new rhythmic pattern. In the 'very slow' triple-time section that
follows the pilgrim, exhausted, sums up his situation. The end is doubly
broken: the conciliatory major-key brightening of tone in the last repetition
of the last half line is immediately brought to nothing by the final piano
chords.
In Gruppe
aus dem Tartarus ('Group from Tartarus'), published in the
'Anthology from the Year 1782', the young Schiller devised a description of the
Underworld, taken directly from a passage in Vergil's Aeneid, the great epic of Latin antiquity.
The suffering of the damned, by the river of tears, the Cocytus, provides the
central point of reference of that description (Tartarus is, in distinction to
Elysium, cf. Schiller-Lieder Vol. 1 [Naxos 8.554740], the place of punishment
in the mythical kingdom of the dead). In his forceful, really through-composed,
setting of 1817 Schubert devised music that was correspondingly dark. A long
tremolo in the lower register comes before the entry of the singer. Gradually
rising to a height, the musical character of the song is established further in
multiple waves of crescendo 'wie Murmeln des
emporten Meeres' (like the murmuring of the angry sea). When the
concentrated energy of the tremolo is finally released into that 'Ach', that marks the climax of the first
verse, Schubert creates an impressive musical analogy to Schiller's dramatic
construction - the poet first introduces the subject of his long sentence in the
final word of the verse. Time and again in the vocal part of this Schubertian
view of the Underworld are chromatically rising melodic lines that respectively
encompass a whole series of bars. Only in the closing part, the beginning of
which is marked by an arching, brilliant C major fortissimo chord, is the chromatic melodic line not in
evidence. It becomes an objective answer, so to speak, to the preceding
question the scythe of the god of time, Saturn, the Greek Chronos, can
accomplish nothing here in the timeless eternity of the suffering of hell. For
the closing section, however, chromaticism plays a leading rôle at the
structural level. Yet the last line of the text cadences first, in a strong
evasive movement, after the minor harmony a semitone above the final key,
before, twice, the final tonality is thus established (a escape from 'eternity'
is not really possible).
Des
Madchens Klage ('The
Maiden's Complaint'), a poem of 1798, appears as a finely nuanced strophic song
by the young Schubert in 1815. The sad feeling of the vocal line is largely
supported by an accompaniment with passing appoggiaturas; only in the
penultimate line of the poem, where the vocal part moves into the highest
register, is the phrase thickened with the continuing repetition of solid
chords. (A much earlier through composed and dramatically wild set ting of
this text, made in 1811 or 1812, D6, will be included in the third volume of
Schiller songs.)
In contrast the concise 1815 setting of Das Madchen aus der Fremde ('The Maiden
from a Foreign Land') is in folk-style. Noteworthy is the use of triplets in
the first half bar of the fourth line of the music of the strophic pattern; the
closing line consequently has a half bar less than the preceding lines. In
content Schiller's poem of 1796 gives expression to the contemporary riddle of
conscience. According to the now generally established interpretation, the
mysterious maiden, who every year at the start of spring seeks out a valley
peopled by poor shepherds, is a personification of poetry itself, the noble art
of the poet.
The strophic setting of Die vier Weltalter ('The Four Ages'), a
poem of 1802, is regular in form. Going through the whole song (1816), the
running semiquavers of the right hand of the piano part must be inspired by the
opening line of the twelve-verse poem, of which we hear only the first, third
and fifth verse.
In An Emma ('To
Emma'), written in 1796, Schubert, in 1814, treats the three-verse pattern
relatively freely. Over widely spaced chords the lover starts in rhapsodic,
meditative style, so to speak; first at the end of the second line a true piano
accompaniment gets under way. The graphic idea is brought out in the second
verse, which brings the forsaken lover only a certain comfort though the beloved
no longer lingered on earth, he would carry her in his heart; here and only
here the vocal line develops over accompanying chordal writing. To have her
alive but lost would give greater pain. Strangely aimless, as if empty-handed,
the piano postlude comes to an end.
Amalia, a four-verse song for the beginning of the
third act of Die Rauber ('The
Robbers') is handled formally but freely Amalia, the principal female figure of
the drama, here mourns Karl Moor, whom she believes dead. In spite of the
functional purpose of the text Schubert, in May 1815, gave his setting rather
the character of a small dramatic (operatic) scene than that of a true song. He
therefore composed the first verse as a formal hymn of love, then interrupted
the pattern to give emotional expression to the suffering of the middle verse,
in a manner typical of the 'Storm and Stress' phase of the young Schubert (with
sections of recitative). Here the composer would be free and capture the 'Flammen' (flames) through unexpected
series of chords, the 'Haifentone' (sounds
of the harp) through mysterious tremolo. The last verse appears as a slow
elegy.
Hektors
Abschied ('Hector's
Farewell') belongs in the dramatic context of Die
Rauber. In the second scene of the second act Amalia starts singing the
poem to the piano, after the first verse referring to the old Moor, that she
has of ten sung with Karl, 'together to the lute'. This suggests the dialogue
structure of the text, which has as its subject a - perhaps the - classical
farewell scene of a loving couple; with each verse the 'I' of the song changes.
The scene is from the Iliad, the
great ancient epic of Homer on the Trojan war. Hector, the noblest son of the
old King of Troy, Priam, and the greatest hero on the Trojan side, must part
from his wife, to join battle again. Andromache foresees her husband's fate: in
fact Achilles, the most feared hero with the Greeks, will later take revenge
for the death of his friend Patroclus. The Trojan, convinced of the necessity
of serving his country and defending his own city of Pergamum, finally tries to
comfort his wife with the idea that his love will not die in Lethe, the river
of the Underworld that should bring oblivion to the dead, and cannot be
conquered by death. In his setting of 1815 Schubert makes a clear distinction
in the various changes of speaker in the poem. Andromache's plaintive opening
verse is marked by a slowly trembling pattern of accompaniment; the entry of
Hector in the dialogue is indicated by a short section of recitative, before rapid,
fiery music underlining the hero's unbroken will for battle. Particularly
expressive is the transition from the third to the fourth verse: after the
extremely rhythmical slowing down (an extension of the text) together with the
diminution into pianissimo, through
which Andromache's fear that her husband's 'Lieb'
im Lethe stirbt' (love may die in Lethe), keeps the musical
symbolism (while here the music dies, as it were), the metrical strengthening
at the beginning of the fourth verse, which is offered with the continual
application of a (relatively peaceful) half-bar accompanying figure, offers
relief and, through the newly established key of D major, a degree of optimism.
On this music is based Hector's assurance of his 'undying' love.
Wolfgang Gersthofer English version by Keith
Anderson
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