Contemporary Implications of Performing Schubert Lieder in English Translation

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“Play your broken music to my broken song?” Contemporary Implications of Performing Schubert Lieder in English Translation

Lara Jane Dodds-Eden

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Musical Arts

Faculty of Music University of Toronto

“Play your broken music to my broken song?” Contemporary Implications of Performing Schubert Lieder in English Translation

Lara Dodds-Eden Doctorate of Musical Arts Faculty of Music, University of Toronto 2021

Abstract

This study uses the songs of Franz Schubert as a foundational example to consider the contemporary implications of performing Lieder in English translation. Over the last 150 years such translations have been written, published, performed, and rationalized in a variety of ways.

However, their “validity” is now broadly dismissed in both pedagogical and performance contexts. This begs the question: how did performance in the original language become an essential aspect of Lieder performance across the English-speaking world? In probing this question, my objective is to reimagine the possible role of such a translational approach in mediating, or even repairing something that is currently “broken” in Anglophone encounters with

Lieder.

To fulfil this objective, an initial discussion of ontologies of Lieder attempts to examine singing translations alongside other approaches that extend, transform or otherwise challenge the traditional boundaries of the genre, and the ways that these approaches aim to satisfy less dominant notions of “authenticity”. This is followed by an examination of the historical and contemporary debate and attempts to establish adequate translational methodologies amongst a range of aesthetic, nationalistic, and theoretical issues. In addition to this engagement with public documents (including translations, paratextual materials, articles and reviews), I have solicited

the views of a range of contemporary stakeholders on the implications of the practice and assembled a collection of thirty-three distinct singing translations of “Der Leiermann”, the final song of Schubert’s 1828 song cycle, Winterreise (D911, op. 89). This collection serves to demonstrate a plurality of translational approaches, the inevitable subjectivity of the translational role, the impossibility of a “definitive” translation, and new avenues of expression engendered by that lack of definition.

In considering “the English Lied”, this study has two aims: to provide insight into the complicated relationship we have with language and meaning in this repertoire, and to prompt a reconsideration of singing in translation: one that does not limit itself to concepts of fidelity and failure, but rather opens itself to the creative possibilities of interacting with the repertoire in this way.

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Acknowledgments

In approaching the completion of this DMA I have been very aware of how many wonderful people have carried me here, offering indispensable scholarly, musical and personal guidance along the way.

Without Prof. Lydia Wong I would never have come to Toronto. Her advocacy throughout my studies, belief in and encouragement of my piano playing and guidance in musical and other ways changed the course of my life and I am very grateful.

Dr. Jeff Packman has remained patient and encouraging throughout this process. Supervising this project, reading, editing, challenging and coaxing this performer into scholarship has been an

Everest, I know.

Prof. Steven Philcox has mentored me with contagious enthusiasm, fine listening and encouragement to explore, and Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt always kept a sparkly eye on me, brought structure and calm to my routine and a new appreciation for process.

Dr. Lindsay Jones joined my team this last year and has been essential to the project’s delivery whilst Eva Burke took time out of her other translation activities to help me converse with

Helmut Deutsch.

There were many people who shared their time and energy to respond to my queries for this project, and a number have generously consented to sharing their views in this dissertation.

Thank you to the many translators who have dared attempt to make their case.

I also wish to thank the many colleagues and friends I made at University of Toronto, and the donors of the scholarships and awards received to help fund my education, including Mr. James iv

Norcop, Dr. Doris and Dr. Sam Lau, Mr. Garth & Mrs. Marjorie Beckett, Joseph S Stauffer

Foundation, Prof. Lydia Wong, Ms. Che Anne Loewen, the estate of Alice Matheson and Ms.

Delia Moog.

Those who joined me in my three recitals, thank you for your gifts: Ilana Zarankin, Robin Dann,

Sheila Jaffé, Alex Samaras, Danika Lorén, Keith Hamm, Julie Hereish, Macmillan Singers, Dr.

Hilary Apfelstadt, Helen Becqué and Charles Sy.

The many colleagues and friends who know what this has been, but in particular those who have seen the process virtually from the start: Catherine, Stacie, Alex, Helen, Naomi.

My Mum made me believe all things are possible. My Dad supported these studies and he and his wife Iris have been unstinting in their belief that I could get it done. My sisters Katie and

Claire and their families have been great cheerleaders. Eva and Jonathan and their family have been incredibly supportive.

Ezra has been a true collaborative partner, and Noa appeared like a song in the middle of it all.

For all who stand in the cold unseen and unheard.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Table of Contents ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

A Collaborative Pianist’s Story ...... 1

Dominant Translation Strategies in Lied Performance ...... 5

Singing the Lied in Translation ...... 13

Broken Music? ...... 21

Purpose of the Study ...... 25

Methodology and Research Materials ...... 28

Qualitative Research ...... 29

Assembling the Translation Collection ...... 30

Chapter Outline ...... 32

My Contribution ...... 37

Ontologies of the Lied and Notions of Authenticity ...... 39

Why sing?...... 40

The Lied in Context ...... 42

The Lied Displaced ...... 45

Ontologies of the Lied ...... 47

The Desire for Objectivity ...... 51

Making Room for Subjectivity ...... 54

Multiple Authenticities ...... 61

Debates around “the English Lied ” ...... 67 vii

Lost in Translation ...... 68

“Hacks and Versifiers” ...... 80

Approaching Translation ...... 85

Found in Translation ...... 89

Singing, Playing, Listening, Translating ...... 102

Die Leierleute – The Hurdy-Gurdy People ...... 104

“Der Leiermann” ...... 108

Identifying the Collection ...... 121

Considering the Collection ...... 127

Translation and Repair ...... 146

Implications of the Project ...... 149

Bibliography ...... 154

Appendices ...... 170

A: Research Subject List ...... 171

B: Select Responses from Research Subjects ...... 177

B1. Iain Burnside ...... 177

B2. Helmut Deutsch (translations by Eva Burke) ...... 178

B3. Barbara Hannigan ...... 185

B4. Katy Hamilton ...... 186

B5. Graham Johnson ...... 188

B6. Martin Katz ...... 192

B7. Susan Youens ...... 194

B8. Rena Sharon ...... 195

B9. Kevin Stolz ...... 201

B10. Jeremy Sams ...... 202

B11. Roderick Williams ...... 208 viii

B12. Alex Samaras ...... 209

C: “Der Leiermann” Translation Collection ...... 211

Source documents: ...... 211

Translations: ...... 212

D: Feedback on singing translation workshop ...... 231

Willst zu meinen Liedern Deine Leier drehn?

Lyric excerpted from “Der Leiermann”, Song 24 of Winterreise D911, Op. 89 Text by Wilhelm Müller, set to music by Franz Schubert

Introduction A Collaborative Pianist’s Story

The first time I performed Franz Schubert’s Winterreise was in 2008, in a church in London, England. Whilst my colleague and I rehearsed beforehand a man sat resting in the pews. My assumption was that he was homeless, and though the church had been his home for a few hours, he moved to leave as we made preparations for the arrival of the Chelsea Schubert Festival’s paying audience. I was not quick enough, (nor did I know how), to invite him to stay for the concert. As we rehearsed, it occurred to me that this music was written for someone like him to hear, but I did not know at the time how to share that with him. Though I had not acknowledged his presence, I felt his absence in the concert.

Five years later, I had a very different experience with Winterreise whilst resident in the music department of the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. At the time I was working with visiting Faculty member David Pay, Artistic Director of Music on Main, a concert series in Vancouver. Part of our job was to facilitate collaborations between the participants in the residency, and many of our conversations focused on how to bring the pop and folk musicians in residence into meaningful musical engagement with their classical colleagues. There seemed to be many obstacles to this, both practical and aesthetic. We perceived that some of these lay in the language the musicians routinely utilised in their practices: both the specialised vocabularies of each genre and in language where it appeared in sung form. During one of these conversations David told me about a recent English translation of Schubert’s Winterreise by British poet Michael Symmons Roberts1. Music on Main, a concert series dedicated to offering “fresh formats for experiencing the classics”2 would be hosting a recital performance of this translation by Canadian baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist Erika Switzer later that year.3

1 “Libretti - Winterreise,” Michael Symmons Roberts - British Poet, Writer and Broadcaster, 2020, https://symmonsroberts.com/work/winterreise/.

2 “Home - Music on Main,” accessed November 27, 2020, https://www.musiconmain.ca/.

3 “Schubert’s Winterreise,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.musiconmain.ca/concerts/schuberts-winterreise/. 1

I was struck by the simplicity of the concept, and by the reconsideration it afforded to an approach I had always been taught to dismiss. To perform or hear Schubert in my own language seemed both transgressive and obvious all at once. Certainly, it seemed to offer a possible mode of access to the repertoire for artists and audiences who otherwise might be excluded. This dissertation is, in many ways, an attempt to critically engage with these issues. The following pages constitute a formal effort to examine this topic as a researcher: I will outline the history of this approach, survey the debates surrounding it, and present a case study as a means of facilitating that engagement.

As you will see, this project started with some clandestine and some public attempts at writing translations myself, for a wide range of art song repertoire (songs of Schubert, Poulenc, Korngold, and Hindemith amongst them). Like these experiments, my research also started with a consideration of English singing translations across the broader art song realm. However, as my research accumulated, it became clear to me that there was simply too much content to consider in detail. Different languages, different periods, and of course different individual composers could not be fairly examined with such a large lens. So, as the great majority of translations I found were of German Lieder, I thought that the natural genre to consider first. Also, as the great majority of translators seemed to have started their labors with Schubert’s Lieder, I decided to narrow my focus even further.

Examining the implications of translating Schubert’s Lieder alone made sense for several additional different reasons. Schubert is widely acknowledged to have consolidated the Romantic Lied as a genre, and if this dissertation is to be considered a foundational effort towards further work, it made sense to start with a consideration of foundational repertoire. In addition to that, the argument could be made that Schubert’s songs are perhaps some of the most “accessible” and well known of the genre. Schubert also tends to be invoked frequently as an exemplar composer (in a similar way to that in which Shakespeare might be invoked in the literary realm, for instance). It is also true that an examination of translations of songs by Wolf, Brahms or Strauss, for example, would have required different consideration than that required by Schubert, as their selection of and approaches to lyrical texts are very different. However, it is my hope that many of the issues I describe or examine with particular attention to Schubert are applicable well beyond his body of work.

Naturally, within Schubert’s over 600 songs, translators (and their publishers) have been drawn over and over to a select number of “hits”. And so, having discovered not only many historical examples but also an unusual number of contemporary examples of Winterreise in particular, I decided to make this cycle, and specifically, its final song “Der Leiermann”, the dissertation’s case study. The encounter it describes seemed to me to be potentially analogous to that between a translator and a composer, as I will detail later in the dissertation. However, it seems important to firstly situate this research within the context of my performing life as a collaborative pianist, and so I momentarily return to that epiphanic moment at Banff.

As I hinted earlier, having been made aware of at least one contemporary performance of Schubert in English I decided to embark upon some practical experimentation myself. This included a performance at Banff of “Der Leiermann” in an English version with pop musicians Luke Correia-Damude, (the lead singer of a Toronto-based band called Boys Who Say No), and Charles Spearin (a founding member of Canadian band Broken Social Scene).4 In trying to explain to these musicians why the dominant performance practice in the classical tradition was to sing this song in German, I was forced to re-consider that performance practice. I realised there was a strange disconnect that was not often acknowledged in my field: performers sing in a language they often do not speak to audiences who often do not understand it. In this respect, something in the communicative aspect of Lieder performance in Anglophone contexts might be understood to be, at its best, confused, and at its worst, broken in some way.

So, I made attempts to integrate a more active translational practice into my ensuing classical work in Toronto. I started to think very consciously about my approach to the German language I was involved in presenting. Out of curiosity, I began to look for other existing singing translations and attempted to write my own. Wary that I was translating from a language I did not speak well, and that in doing so I may be fundamentally transgressing against the tradition I treasured, I nevertheless persisted. I found that my attempts helped bring a certain scrutiny and indeed, clarity, to what could sometimes otherwise be quite a fragmented understanding of the German poetry.

4 In this performance I took the role of the left-hand drone on a small synthesizer, while Charles Spearin improvised upon the right-hand melodies on electric guitar. 3

The trickiness of writing such translations is easy to underestimate until you begin. Once you do, you are confronted immediately by the difficulties of reconciling the demands of the poetic structure with the musical structure. What do you do about rhymes? Or the differences in German and English sentence structures? How to manage syllabification and vocabulary choices? The challenge feels like a verbo-musical Rubiks cube5: impossible but also infuriatingly addictive. At the time, I thought it felt creative in a different way from playing the piano. It also became a lens through which I started to notice compositional choices, queried meanings and realised my own priorities in interpretation. The more translations I attempted, the more doing them came to feel like an obvious means to access this repertoire in a novel way. It felt meaningful to me and I wondered if it could also feel meaningful to others.

I was soon able to test this feeling in a public setting. Around this time, I met and began playing with Alex Samaras, a prominent Toronto-based singer with a jazz background but a catholic musical practise. We started with English-language songs by Barber and Britten before we tried my English versions of Schubert’s “Nacht und Träume” and “Abendstern”. These were songs that Alex would not otherwise have sung as he has not studied German lyric diction. When I was invited to curate an evening at the inaugural PianoFest of Toronto’s Burdock Music Hall I realised it may be an opportunity for Alex to sing these versions, so I programmed these and other Lieder in English alongside songs written originally in English. There was no other mediation: no programme texts or projected surtitles. In my welcoming remarks I made a reference to the Australian bowerbird, a creature who decorates its nest with blue found objects. By making this reference, I tried to draw a parallel between my own practise and the bird’s natural behaviour. It seemed to me that translation was one way to demonstrate how these songs all shared something of the same hue, but I was well aware that making that point involved quite

5 An impression I subsequently found echoed in comments by a number of translators. For examples, see: Herbert Peyser “as we gained a point in one direction we lost one or two in another, until the whole business took on the character of an operation in Chinese puzzles…” Herbert F Peyser, “Some Observations on Translation,” The Musical Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1922): 362; Calvin Brown “The translation of any poem is necessarily a sort of crossword puzzle because of the necessity of attempting to reproduce the form, the meaning, and the feeling of a work which was conceived in a different form. When the poem has been set to music in its original form the difficulty of matching syllables with the music and of making the right words come out on the right notes for the expressive values of the poem is added to the problems of meter, rhyme, sense, and atmosphere, and the problem becomes a sort of three-dimensional cross-word puzzle.” Anne E Rodda and Marilyn Gaddis Rose, “Translating for Music: The German Art Song,” in Translation Spectrum: Essays in Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 150, and Jeremy Sams, “this is like 3-dimensional chess sometimes”, (See Appendix B10), amongst others. 4

some engineering on my part.

As my professional life has been largely in the art song sphere, I was anxious that such translational engineering not be misunderstood. Lieder as a genre is often characterised in terms of its precarity, and as a result, many performers, including myself, feel tremendous responsibility to maintain and respect its tradition. I was concerned about the integrity of this activity, alarmed at the hubris of it, and curious about its potential impact on my professional future. At the same time, I wanted to pursue more of this kind of work in rehearsal and performance with singers who otherwise would take a more traditional approach. What exactly qualified me to attempt to “translate” these treasured masterpieces? What would Schubert make of what I had done? What would my mentors and teachers think? Was I alone in undertaking this presumptuous act? These questions, born out of my lived experience as a professional performer, continue to inform this scholarly project. Reframed away from their personal focus, they point more broadly to the need for consideration of the contemporary implications of the creation and performance of singing translations for Lieder. They also serve to highlight those priorities in contemporary Lieder performance that do not reconcile with translation in performance.

Dominant Translation Strategies in Lied Performance

In considering what it means to perform nineteenth-century Romantic songs written in German in English in a twenty-first-century Anglophone setting, I also must consider what it means to perform nineteenth-century German Romantic songs in German in twenty-first-century Anglophone settings. In my day-to-day work with singers, my job as a pianist is generally to find a compelling answer to the latter. Foundational to this task is at least a rudimentary ability to read a score and “interpret”6 musical signs. In addition to this, one might assume that singer and pianist both would also speak German. In the most idealised version of this situation, we might also assume that our audiences understand German as well. While these conditions may have been routinely satisfied in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria, I have found this to be the exception in the Anglophone settings where I have worked professionally, which include Australia, England, and North America. However, it should be noted that in many of these settings audiences might be very familiar with the repertoire and initiated in ways to manage this

6 Admittedly, a loaded term very much at the heart of the debates central to this project. 5

difficulty. Regardless, in these settings—and in many more in which Lieder are sung, including teaching studios, student recitals, master classes and in choral arrangements, for example—any encounter with a Lied is usually in some way dependent upon a strategy of translation for at least one of the parties involved. However, as I will explain, such strategies can be undertaken more passively than may be ideally desired, and it can be striking how little this dependence is acknowledged in some settings.

At this point I will take a moment to clarify terms. In Lieder performance, translations can be separated into three general types: translations to support the performer in performing in the original language (word-for-word or literal translations, and prose or poetic translations); translations to support the audience in understanding a performance in the original language (prose or poetic translations read aloud or printed in programmes or recording booklets, short précis’ or glosses read aloud or printed, or line-by-line or full text surtitles); and translations for performance (variously known as singing translations7; singable translations8; “music-linked translations”9; “equirhythmic[al]”, “vocal”, “synchronised”10 or “performable” translations; or as English “versions” or “adaptations” in preference to using the noun “translation” altogether.)

The latter strategy has existed since singers began to travel. It requires a successful dialogue between the new text and the musical setting, which it is usually agreed should not change substantially or at all. It is perhaps worth acknowledging at this point the potentially problematic use of the noun “translation” in this context. In both the musical and literary spheres, “translation” runs the risk of being misunderstood as offering direct equivalency between a source language and a target language. Though the impossibility of this in any context has been argued and established many times, the added constraints of translating to an existing contour, syllabic rhythm and an existing and hyper-local musical translation make holding such

7 Laura Tunbridge, “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars,” Representations 123, no. 1 (2013): 53–86.

8 Peter Low, “Singable Translations of Songs,” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 11, no. 2 (2003): 87–103.

9 Harai Golomb, “Music-Linked Translation (MLT) and Mozart’s Operas: Theoretical, Textual, and Practical Perspectives,” in Song and Significance, ed. Dinda L. Gorlée (New York: Rodopi, 2005), 121–61.

10 Golomb. 121, quoted in Ronnie Apter and Mark Herman, Translating For Singing: The Theory, Art and Craft of Translating Lyrics (Bloomsbury Advances in Translation), ed. Jeremy Munday (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 27. 6

expectations of a singing translation almost completely impossible. As such, authors of such translations operate within a largely self-determined set of parameters and determine for themselves what priorities in translation their work will reflect. Their work also takes the place of the original in performance (and, as we will see, this is also often the case in publication). This quality makes them more contentious than the two other categories of translation which are used to support Lieder performance in the original language.

The categories of translation that instead support original language performance would ideally be undertaken by performers themselves. In principle, an aspiring performer would start by creating a word-by-word and/or line-by-line crib of the text away from the influence of the musical score with the help of a dictionary to make sure specific words are understood in their specific musical context and follow this with an attempt at a more poetic version, which they may share with their audience in some way. These days, the work (and I would add, the risks and benefits) of preparing such translations is largely avoidable and deferrable, if desired or required. Singers and pianists are often trained in lyric diction and basic vocabulary and grammar as standard, but the focus of such training can prioritise sound over translational practice. Most trainee singers and pianists check their preliminary efforts against, (or defer their translational practice entirely to), those written by others. This is made easy when many translations are available online, including Emily Ezust’s enormous catalogue of crowd-sourced translations at www.lieder.net and others at sites including Hyperion Records and Oxford Lieder Festival. Others are available in collections such as Lois Phillips’ stalwart Lieder Line by Line or the more contemporary efforts of professional translators such as Richard Stokes11 or Richard Wigmore.12 Some translations also come alongside a contextualising guide by an expert such as pianist Graham Johnson13 or scholar

Susan Youens14 which help draw a developing comprehension of the poetic text into some

11 Richard Stokes, The Book of Lieder - The Original Texts of Over 1000 Songs (London: Faber and Faber, 2005); Graham Johnson and Richard Stokes, A French Song Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

12 Graham Johnson and Richard Wigmore, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

13 For example, Johnson’s complete Schubert Lieder recordings on the Hyperion label are accompanied by extensive programme notes that give historical and performing insight into each song.

14 For example, each chapter of Susan Youens's Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) includes a translation of the song alongside an essay on its context and creation. 7

relationship with its cultural context and the musical setting. Such resources attempt to help guard against the kind of trouble the eminent piano accompanist Gerald Moore enjoyed lampooning in his memoirs. Particularly memorable is his anecdote of alarm when an earnest pianist flung herself at the keyboard “with her teeth in a most vicious snarl” whilst performing Hugo Wolf’s “Bitt’ ihn, O mutter”. In doing so she revealed that she had misunderstood that the song referenced biting rather than begging!15 This is an extreme and comical example, but it should serve as a reminder of the potential pitfalls of performing in a language one does not speak well, as well as the importance of trustworthy sources.

As discussed, the function of these resources is to support Anglophones in maintaining an ongoing performance tradition in the original German language. They facilitate a compensatory strategy that mediates contemporary Lieder performance between artists who may not speak German fluently and audiences who may not understand it. The translations themselves are rarely prized as “art” on their own terms: instead, they are often seen as functional tools, might be poorly attributed when re-printed,16 or viewed by performers as raw material to piece together or edit to suit particular needs. This means that translations can be uneven in tone and quality, with translators themselves struggling to be visible or compensated.

The fact that much translational practice in Lieder performance is deferred to others or opaque in approach seems like a profound problem, especially in the contexts of more general debates about “authenticity” in performance and concerns about Lieder as a dying or irrelevant art. As the genre has become distinguished from German song more generally, the Lied has been identified and treasured specifically for its synthesis of language and musical gesture. This is exemplified perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the reputed declaration of Schubert’s close friend and collaborator Johann Michael Vogl to his students: “Wenn du mir nichts zu sagen hast, hast du mir nichts zu singen” (If you have nothing to say to me, you have nothing to sing to

15The title roughly translates to: “Beg him, O Mother”. This anecdote can be heard from 11.00-13.00 in the audiorecording of Gerald Moore’s memoir, read by the author, accessible at davidhertzberg, “Gerald Moore, 1955: The Unashamed Accompanist - Complete,” YouTube Video, 1:01:37, accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7iOdRe9nk.

16 Emily Ezust takes a great deal of care on her website to remind visitors that translations are the original works of her contributors and therefore under copyright. Where possible she provides contact details for visitors to seek permission for re-printing. www.lieder.net 8

me).17 I see a potential problem in not being able to say the things we sing: if the approach to text that I have described thus far is the predominant approach to the Lied in Anglophone settings, the communicative element of the genre would seem to be compromised in some fundamental way.

On the other hand, perhaps I am placing an undue emphasis on the importance of understanding every word. This possibility is perhaps more elusive than I hope in a medium which “always seems to be struggling against a latent impulse to dissolve its language away”18 in the distortions of melisma, tessitura and sustained pitches. There are many examples that demonstrate that this may be the case. The Anglo-American poet W.H.Auden relates the story of a Cambridge-based psychologist who:

once performed the experiment of having a Campion song sung with nonsense verses of equivalent syllabic value substituted for the original; only 6 per cent of his test audience noticed that something was wrong.19

Though this is not an example of a Lieder performance the point is perhaps even more pertinent as Campion wrote his music with English lyrics. The point is made that, even if a Lied is sung in English translation, an English-speaking audience will not necessarily notice or understand the sung language anyway! Elsewhere, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, a German speaker, gives an equivalent position from a German perspective, writing in 1912 that:

A few years ago I was deeply ashamed when I discovered in several Schubert songs, well-known to me, that I had absolutely no idea what was going on in the poems on which they were based. But when I had read the poems it became clear to me that I had gained absolutely nothing for the understanding of the songs thereby, since the poems did not make it necessary for me to change my conception of the musical interpretation in the slightest degree. On the contrary, it appeared that, without knowing the poem, I had grasped the content, the real

17An anecdote told by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in his book “Schubert’s Songs” and quoted by Frederic Kirchberger, Sing Them In English! Volume 1 : Nine Great German Song Cycles from Beethoven to Mahler in New Singable English Translations (Metuchen, N.J., and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1993). Preface, x.

18 Lawrence Kramer, Song Acts: Writings on Words and Music (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 1994), https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004342132, 8.

19 W.H. Auden, “Homage to Igor Stravinsky,” in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 473, quoted in Michael Irwin, “Opera Libretti and Songs: Translating into English,” in Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English Vol 2 M-Z, ed. Olive Classe (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), 1023. 9

content, perhaps even more profoundly than if I had clung to the surface of the mere thoughts expressed in words.20

Schoenberg downplays the importance of specific lyrical meaning in favour of more amorphous musical meanings in the Lied. The same kind of conviction can be seen a century later in the artist Lee Mingwei’s 2015 Sonic Blossom project at the Met Museum in New York. In this event, costumed singers roamed the gallery singing Schubert songs to patrons while accompanied by backing tracks. A breathless reviewer described the scene:

No texts, translations or explanations are provided, and since the typical museumgoer cannot be expected to understand German, be familiar with the individual songs or perhaps even know who Schubert was, it is just singer and listener, communing over a distance.21

The apparent sufficiency of the musical “communion” that can be seen in all three of these examples was observed in 2004 by British ethnomusicologist John Blacking. He says:

In music, satisfaction may be derived without absolute agreement about the meaning of the code; that is, the creator’s intention to mean can be offset by a performer’s or listener’s intention to make sense, without any of the absence of communication that would occur if a listener misunderstood a speaker’s intention to mean. In music, it is not essential for listeners or performers to understand the creator’s intended syntax or even the intended meaning, as long as they can find a syntax and their own meanings in the music.22

The pleasure in such private syntaxes and meanings was evident in the behaviour of the audience at a recent recital given by soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw at Toronto’s Koerner Hall. A teacher of mine remarked afterwards upon how few audience members he observed referring to the printed translations that were provided. Assuming that the majority were neither fluent in German nor had studied the texts in advance, he gathered that

20 David Gramit, “The Circulation of the Lied: The Double Life of an Artwork and a Commodity,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, ed. James Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 304.

21 James R. Oestreich, “In Lee Mingwei’s ‘Sonic Blossom’ at the Met, Schubert Is Intimate Installation Art,” The New York Times, November 1, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/arts/music/in-lee-mingweis-sonic- blossom-at-the-met-schubert-is-intimate-installation-art.html.

22 Blacking, John (2004) ‘“Let All the World Hear All the World’s Music”: Popular Music-Making and Music Education’, in Simon Frith (ed.) Popular Music. Volume IV. Music and Identity, Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies Series, London & New York: Routledge, 7-31. First published in 1987, A Common Sense View of All Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 121-49. Quoted in Sebnem Susam-Sarajeva, “Translation and Music: Changing Perspectives, Frameworks and Significance,” The Translator, Vol 14, Number 2, 2008, 192. 10

these audience members seemed content to appreciate the music without needing to know the specifics, surely convinced by Hannigan’s own conviction. In this case, the translations that somebody had deemed important enough to print and share with the audience seemed to be deemed by many of their recipients to be superfluous. At the next recital of the series, again an all-German recital given this time by baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake, I found myself to be one of those few listeners referring closely to the printed texts. I was surprised by those to either side of me who listened enraptured and, it seemed to me, unaware. In following the translations in the programme, I could at least attempt to tie the bravura, drama and tenderness embodied by Finley and Drake to the psychologies of defiant Prometheus, the terrifying Erlking and lusty Don Juan.23 However, in trying to appreciate both the rich semantic and musical meanings simultaneously, I found myself caught in a bittersweet predicament which did not seem to affect those around me. Ruefully dividing my attention between page and stage, I spent much of the recital wishing I could understand more and feeling painfully aware of all that I was missing. Peter Newmark, an English professor of translation at the University of Surrey, summarised the Anglophone listener’s problems (the same predicament I am describing):

The listener is in some respects in a most difﬁcult position. How do listeners interact and engage with performances of Lied? How do listeners and audience members understand the Lied, especially if it is sung in a language other than that in which they are familiar? Listeners have the choice of: (a) gazing bewitched at the singer, taking in both audio and visual components …; (b) shutting their eyes and listening to the song, in a private position; (c) listening while reading the original source text as set; (d) reading the text translation which has been provided in order to understand what is being sung. 24

In describing these conditions (with no specific mention of surtitles or dramatic aids), loss of some kind is implied for a non-native speaker in every option. Actual textual comprehension is implied only in option d). To me, this signals a certain resignation to the inevitability of semantic loss in the reception of such repertoire. Musicologist Katy Hamilton, wondering how English

23 Schubert – “Prometheus” D.674; “Erlkönig” D.328; Tchaikovsky – “Don Juan’s Serenade” Op.38 No.1. See programme here:“Gerald Finley with Julius Drake: Koerner Hall Recital Programme,” 2018, https://www.rcmusic.com/sites/default/files/Gerald Finley with Julius Drake.pdf.

24 Peter Newmark and Helen Julia Minors, “Art Song in Translation,” in Music, Text and Translation, ed. Helen Julia Minors (Bloomsbury, 2012), 67. 11

audiences from 1860 to the present have “understood that most highly-prized of elite musical genres, the German Lied”, summarised the problem in 2016:

simply put, from a linguistic perspective, a great many listeners don’t actually understand it at all. They listen, they follow the parallel translation in their programme, and afterwards they speak of its profound beauty, and how wonderful it is to let such inspired music simply wash over you. 25

While we can concede that the understanding of any intended text-based meaning is not essential to the experience of musical pleasure, to simply “let such inspired music…wash over you” does not marry well with fundamental notions of the identity of the Lied. The journalist and Schubertian scholar Richard Capell agreed back in 1957:

It is common to hear Schubert sung in German, some sort of German, when German is understood neither by singer nor audience. This is pedantry, which has done untold harm to music in England. It accounts for much tepid and accentless singing of Schubert’s songs, in which, if the music is to give up its full sense, the images evoked by the words should all the time be felt by the singer and his listeners—should be seen passing before their very eyes. 26

I cannot help but wonder if the admiration of the Koerner Hall audience for Hannigan and for Finley was prompted by attributes beyond the synthesis of word and music, as the possibility of the images “passing before their very eyes”, at least in any literary way, was precluded. Finley’s Promethean struggle should have filled us with existential dread; his Erlking with fear. Hamilton speaks to this too:

Erlkönig is not supposed to be beautiful, it’s supposed to be terrifying. If Gretchen had just let it all wash over her, she would have been lazing on a deckchair sipping a piña colada and musing on Faust’s manly features, not frantically spinning in a dim little closet whilst her head spun and her heart exploded in her chest.27

When Hamilton characterises Gretchen in this way she challenges what she calls the “magical element of linguistic distance” that usually keeps such intensities at bay in a Lieder performance.

25 Emphasis in the original: Katy Hamilton, “And in English...,” Katy Hamilton: Musician, Researcher, Presenter (blog), 2016, https://katyhamilton.co.uk/2016/07/31/and-in-english/.

26 Richard Capell, Schubert’s Style (Macmillan, 1957), 55.

27 Hamilton, “And in English...” 12

She describes, I think rightly, that such characters, given linguistic distance, “can be doing whatever they like.” 28 Words become musical, and Lieder become blank canvasses for an audience’s projections. Such an outcome seems hostile to the identity of the genre as a “text/tone symbiosis capable of activating synaesthetic cognition and powerful states of emotional, visceral, and ideational perception.”29 When a song loses the details of its verbal associations, I suggest it risks becoming a “half-song”, “merely” music: perhaps what Johann Kerner might have meant by his lyric “Wie der Vogel halb nur singet/Den von Baum und Blatt man schied” (Like the mere half-song of the bird/Parted from tree and leaf).30 If you permit me to borrow Kerner’s metaphor, I will suggest that translators who attempt to restore such “half-songs” through the creation of singing translations offer such “birds” new trees to sing from. However, the nature of these grafted arbours can be very troubling to the intimate relationship of the original text to the musical fabric. By exacerbating the tension between semantic and musical meanings and highlighting the competing “authorities” of the score, the performer, the composer, and the needs of the audience, such efforts begin to show how un-straightforward such restoration can be.

Singing the Lied in Translation

Nor is it possible for songs, however well they may be made, to be transferred from one tongue into another, without loss to their beauty and worth.

—Bede (672 – 735 AD), English Benedictine Monk Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, XXIV 31

...it reminds me of how the Mona Lisa is often seen with a beard or a winking eye…

—Pianist Rudolf Jansen describes Maarten Konigsberger and Roger Braun’s performance of “De Kraai”

28 Ibid.

29 Rena Sharon et al., “Breaking Traditions: Art Song Theatre Cognitive Shifts through Staged Modalities,” in International Symposium on Performance Science, ed. Aaron Williamon, Darryl Edwards, and Lee Bartel, 2011, 493–94, http://www.performancescience.org/ISPS2011/Proceedings/Rows/084Sharon.pdf.

30 This text by Justinus Kerner, set by Robert Schumann as “Sehnsucht nach der Waldgegend” and translated by Richard Stokes, The Book of Lieder - The Original Texts of Over 1000 Songs, 479.

31 Quoted in Nirmal Dass, Rebuilding Babel, The Translations of W.H. Auden (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 1-2: An unattributed translation from the Latin: “Neque enim possunt carmina, quamvisoptime composite, ex alia in aliamlinguam ad verbum sine detriment suidecoris ac dignitatis transferri”. 13

(“Die Krähe” from Jan Rot’s translation of Schubert’s Winterreise into Dutch) in a televised 2007 conversation with baritone Robert Holl and presenter Hans Flupsen.32

Though many editions of Lieder published in Anglophone countries carry English lyrics for singing they are almost universally deemed unsuitable for either performance or for supporting comprehension, at least certainly in the professional realm. “Ignore it”, [the singing translation], the author at www.singerreise.com insists, and “if you can’t ignore it, take a pen or marker and strike it out. If that doesn’t work, use white-out”: this instruction, and the epigraphs for this section (though they refer to translations into languages other than English) reveal something of the general contempt with which this practise is held, and the perceived irreconcilability of such translational practice. This is perhaps most clearly expressed by Kenneth Whitton in Lieder: An Introduction to German Song when he writes “it seems to me to be quite wrong to sing any 33 Schubert song in translation nowadays.” It is easy to agree with Whitton, to find problematic examples rife with unnatural juxtapositions, quaint expressions and rigid adherence to the rhyme scheme. Scholar Eric Sams wrote a series of reviews dismissing various efforts as “doggerel” and “drivel”,34 and “a serious embarrassment to all performers”.35 Harold Heiberg, a translator himself, critiques two attempts at Die schöne Müllerin: he teases his American predecessor Henry Drinker for his addition of a whole garden of violets, tulips, roses and daffodils in place of the starry blue flowers in “Des müllers Blumen”, and finds the Australian Sir Robert Garran’s use of similes throughout his version excessive (Garran does offer a wide variety where Müller does not, including descriptions of babbling, chattering, churning, gurgling, gushing, pattering, ringing, rippling, roaring, ruffling, rustling, singing, tinkling, tumbling and whirling).36 As we

32 Jan Rot, “Koningsberger over Winterreis Door Rot,” YouTube Video, 5:43, accessed March 21, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JX1AjQFq-8. (4:30 – 4:35) Translated from the Dutch by Helen Becqué: “Aan de Mona Lisa die ze vaak met een baard afbeelden of een knipoog.”

33 Kenneth Whitton, Lieder: An Introduction to German Song (New York: Franklin Watts; J. McRae: London 1984), 41.

34 Eric Sams, “Lied Texts: Schubert and Schumann: Songs and Translations by Robert Randolph Garran,” The Musical Times 114, no. 1566 (1973): doi:10.2307/957573, 797.

35 Eric Sams, “Schubert Englished: Franz Schubert Song Book, No. 1 by Basil Swift,” The Musical Times 120, no. 1631 (1979): doi:10.2307/957573, 49.

36 Harold Heiberg, “Schubert in Singable English: ‘The Miller’s Lovely Daughter,’” Journal of Singing - The Official Journal of the National Association of Teachers of Singing 62, no. 5 (2006): 515–517. 14

will see, many of the translators we will encounter in Chapter Three argue energetically that their work should not be discounted so summarily, nor dismissed on the basis of bad examples. Most contend that a craft, methodology, and community merely need to be established and encouraged to create translations worthy of performance.

In the favour of such advocacy is the fact that singing translations are the only translational strategy that possess the potential for direct mouth to ear communication. As Newmark points out, other strategies have the potential to take an audience out of the moment of performance, or at least distract them from what and how that material is being sung. Importantly, such strategies also add the dimension of “reading” to an otherwise aural and visual experience. Despite this advantage, songs performed in anything other than in their original language are broadly dismissed as unworthy of appearing on a concert stage or being used as a resource for performance preparation. Writing such translations is deemed to be a distorting, even detrimental exercise.

Many complex philosophical and practical issues arise when the lyrical texts in Lieder undergo a process of translation in order to be sung. Most obvious are the practical problems of fitting new words into an existing melodic contour, matching syllabification, choosing vocabulary (both range and period), matching word painting in the music with words in the text, and wrestling with differences in sentence construction—not to mention dealing with rhyme where it exists. A translator may also choose to either foreignize or domesticate the text,37 or attempt to convey other connotations and subtexts.

In addition to the inherent “imperfections” of translation, unavoidable given the fact that no two languages share the same phonology, syntactic structures, vocabulary, literary history nor prosody, it is important to remember that in a Lied the poem has already been transformed through being embedded in a musical structure. Music and translation scholar Anne Rodda explains that now that “[t]he conceptual aspects of the poem are […] combined with the abstract emotional qualities of the music” a Lied’s “sphere is now limited to the composer’s

37 For example, an English translator may decide to translate the noun der Lindenbaum directly to “the Linden tree” despite the lack of corresponding cultural associations in the target culture, or else conver it to an oak or an elm (or a maple!) in order to mimic something of the cultural relevance the original would hold for a German-speaking audience. 15

interpretation, and its meaning is now more established because of numerous musical elements which influence it. 38

Thus, any compositional setting of a poem privileges certain elements and amplifies certain meanings. It does this through musical characterisation and inevitably controls the pacing, structure, any repetitions or excisions, the audibility of rhymes, and the comprehensibility of text. Composers usually feel free to change words to accommodate vocal needs, cut verses and make other amendments. Whilst words such as “synthesis”, “symbiosis” and “alloy”39 imply a balanced relationship between music and text and are commonly employed in descriptions of the Lied, Kramer sees something closer to “assimilation”, “appropriation”, “incorporation”, and “transmemberment”40. He even goes so far as to suggest song composition could be conceived as a “refined form of erasure”,41 a characterisation that impugns any notion of balance in the interaction. George Steiner is more optimistic in his comparison to translation proper. He writes that “[t]he composer who sets a text to music is engaged in the same sequence of intuitive and technical motions” [as a literary translator], establishing “a new whole which neither devalues nor eclipses its linguistic source.”42 As we can see, the perceived fate of the source is of crucial importance when contemplating any additional transformations.

If we do conceptualise the composition of a Lied as a musical translation of a poetic work,43

38 Anne E Rodda and Marilyn Gaddis Rose, “Translating for Music: The German Art Song,” in Translation Spectrum: Essays in Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 149. 39 Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony (London: Faber, 1948), 76; quoted Kofi Agawu, “Theory and Practice in the Analysis of the Nineteenth-Century ‘Lied,’” Music Analysis 11, no. 1 (1992): 6, https://www.jstor.org/stable/854301. 40 A portmanteau of “transformation” and “dismemberment” coined by Hart Crane in “Voyages iii”: No carnage, but this single change:/Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn/The silken skilled transmemberment of song. Quoted by Lawrence Kramer, “Song,” in Song Acts (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 1994), 1–51.1

41 Kramer discusses these various adjectives at length in Lawrence Kramer, “Song,” in Song Acts (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 1994), 1-5.

42 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 415-416.

43 “The test of critical intelligence, of psychological responsiveness to which the composer submits himself when choosing and setting his lyric, is at all points concordant with that of the translator. […] The means at the composer’s disposal—key, register, tempo, rhythm, instrumentation, mode—correspond to the stylistic options open 16

(what translation theorist Roman Jakobson calls an intersemiotic translation),44 any additional interlingual translation of its lyrical content for singing should try to take into account the musical translation already in existence. Extending Jakobson’s categories we can perhaps describe such an additional process as an interlingual translation of an intersemiotic translation, or more straightforwardly, a translation of a translation.45 In the literary field, this type of translational process has some notoriety for distancing and distorting the source text from the target text, comparable to making “a poor copy of a copy, as in the Xerox effect where each successive passage through the photocopying process entails a loss of detail.”46 However, in the case of singing translations the Xerox metaphor becomes more complicated because of the intersemiotic dimension, and certainly the losses it entails are more difficult to ascertain. It is also not a simile that acknowledges what accrues in some a process.

As complicated as this may be, if a singing translation should theoretically try to communicate the effect of the original musical translation, some interesting challenges arise. Where the musical translation “misreads” the text,47 so must a singing translation. Where a musical translation sets a particular version of a text, a singing translation should reflect that particularity.48 But of course the complication does not end there. Contemporary performance practice often aspires to present Lieder as a pure transmission of the “original” song object as created by the poet/composer dyad, as conveyed via the autograph score, and otherwise unsullied

to the translator.” See George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 416.

44 Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”, 233.

45 This process is also known as indirect translation. It is perhaps worth noting that, like singing translations, indirect translations have both negative and positive connotations in the literary sphere.

46 Wikipedia, “Indirect Translation,” accessed June 22, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_translation.

47 As George Steiner alleges Schubert, Mozart and Schumann do: “In all his six settings of Heine, Schubert misconstrues the poet’s covert but mordant irony.”… “Mozart tacks on an extra verse to Goethe’s “Veilchen” … “In Schumann’s ops 90, the composer alters Lenau’s text, changing words, leaving out several, inserting some of his own.” Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 439.

48 This can be seen particularly in translations that “re-English” Shakespearian settings that have been set to music in German translation (as opposed to reverting to the original Shakespearian lyric). The new English texts are reminiscent of their English sources but also reflective of the intermediate German translation and its musical setting. Leslie Minchin makes his case for this in “The Problem of Re-Translation,” The Schubertian (The Schubert Institute UK, 1998). 17

by other parties or by the passage of time. When a translator attempts to mediate that object, the complexity of that aspiration is exposed, as is the Lied’s dependence upon and vulnerability to interpretive action. Translators bear the brunt of ill-feeling about their “intrusion” upon the text, though their motives and actions bear comparison to those of a host of other agents, including that of the composer, as well as publishers, editors, sound engineers, and performers. Though some of the translator’s choices are sometimes more extreme than those faced by these other agents, they must all decide how and why to bring a Lied into contemporary life and bear responsibility for those dimensions of the Lied that are occluded by their decisions.

One of the trickiest things about singing translations, particularly in performance, is that they stand in for the original. In doing so they can potentially eclipse access to their source text and their difference from the original may fail to be apprehended. Translation theorist Susan Bassnett describes how the trace of the original that every translation carries can lead readers to the assumption “that what they are reading is an original.”49 Thus, in the literary realm, one might claim to have read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky though one cannot read Russian; or in the musical, believe that one has sung, performed or heard Grieg’s “Ein Schwan” as Grieg conceived it (though it was originally written in Norwegian to Ibsen’s text as “En Svane” and Grieg is known to have actively disliked the German versions on offer).50 Such beliefs tacitly assert that a translation is substitutable for the original, which is potentially an ontological problem unless the intervention of a translator is made explicit. If a performer chooses to sing in translation, they take responsibility for how that text speaks for the work in the public sphere, as for some audiences their first encounter with a work may be in translation.

49 Susan Bassnett, Translation (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 3-4.

50 “That my songs…have found so little circulation abroad… lies without doubt partly in the difficulty of translation…If the Scandinavian poet, whose language the foreigner neither understands nor sings, is mutilated by the translation, not only he but also the composer suffers through this mutilation. Unfortunately, in my efforts to obtain good translations I have often had great bad luck. It is true that the task presupposes a versatility rarely to be found, since the translator must at the same time be poet, linguist and musically knowledgeable. In addition there is the sad fact that most publishers do not appreciate a good translation so much as – a cheap one. My Leipzig publisher, C. F. Peters, has certainly made an effort to obtain good ones. The result, however, is that even in favourable circumstances the translation is usually forced to fit the music and seems unnatural. I am a friend of good declamation. In my mother tongue I have always taken this into consideration. This is perhaps the main reason why my songs are sung all over Scandinavia. If, however, a rhythmically bad translation is also unpoetic and banal, than the poet’s meaning is downright distorted, as is so often the case in the German, English and French translations of my songs…” Edvard Grieg, in a letter to Finck in July 1900 - Beryl Foster, The Songs of Edvard Grieg (Boydell Press, 2007), 45. 18

Despite these manifold difficulties, and increasing censure, many people have been drawn towards interacting with the Lied in this way. Some of the most consistently made arguments for singing in translation have to do with increasing access to the Lieder archive, both for new performers and audiences. Such translations are also seen to have the potential to operate as a “gateway drug” for new audiences to the genre,51 as has been seen to be effective in the operatic realm.52 However, translators also translate Lieder in order to enable more expressive singing and playing; in order to interact with the song text in a creative way not limited to performance or to examine it more closely; to make money or to achieve fame (or notoriety); and even to fulfill an alternative understanding of the composer’s intention. Indirectly, such efforts are often connected with “saving” the genre from what is feared to be an increasing marginality and supposed irrelevance: concerns about the endangered status of the genre have almost always been endemic to the communities that cherish it. Importantly, it is this same concern that animates opposition to these efforts. It might even be suggested that such concern is a way of demonstrating true feeling for the genre: a feeling that, as we have seen, manifests in two dominant (and competing) ways. Though dominant performance practice in Anglophone settings is to perform this repertoire in the original language, as it is assumed the composer intended, much consideration has also been given to what the composer may have wished if apprised of contemporary contexts or even whether the composer’s wishes should be taken into account in the ongoing life of these artworks. The latter cases permit the possibility of alternative modes of conduction that attempt to account for both the genre’s Germanic tradition and its living expression in non-Germanic settings.

Evidence of these concerns can be seen in the resolutions formed by two recent gatherings of concerned stakeholders: a 2018 Seminar on the Future of Song Recitals held at the University of

51 This effect can be seen in the following review: “This recital has certainly given me the kick up the backside I need to listen to the cycle in German, with texts and translations, of course.” Mark Pullinger, “Shying Away from Schubert: A Wigmore Hall Winter Journey | Beckmesser’s Quill,” Beckmesser’s Quill, 2016, http://beckmessersquill.com/2016/11/06/schubert-winterreise-reflections-roderick-williams-christopher-glynn- wigmore-hall-winter-journey/.

52 As is demonstrated by the ongoing presence of the English National Opera in London, the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in Missouri and the Vienna Volksoper in Vienna for example. 19

Toronto53 and a 1997 presentation on The Art of the Vocal Recital co-hosted by the Marilyn Horne Foundation and the Juilliard School in New York. Amongst calls to “work actively to prevent the extinction of the song recital”,54 the Toronto group considered singing in translations as a strategy. Twenty-one years earlier, the New York group similarly considered singing translations in an attempt to shore up the perceived “floundering” of the genre.55 Though dwindling audience attendance, the impossibility of financial security for performers, the genre’s virtual exclusion from classical radio for being “too off-putting for casual listeners”,56 and the dominance of television were all identified as threats, “[i]f one common theme emerged… it was that songs are as much about words as they are about music, and that texts must be not just projected but also understood by singers and listeners.”57 As part of the proceedings, singing translations of Dvorak and Schubert were presented in a recital entitled “The Song Continues….in English”, alongside songs originally written in English by Barber, Britten and Vaughan Williams. Though panellists such as the German mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig apparently disparaged this idea, the New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini saw “people in the audience listening anew [in this case, to Schubert’s “Die Forelle”], sitting up, startled, as if to say, ‘So, that’s what this is about!’”58

With this observation in mind, I return for a moment to the personal anecdote with which I opened this chapter. It is tempting to wonder what would have happened that night in Chelsea had the man in the church been given an equivalent kind of opportunity. Imagine if he could have responded to our efforts in such a direct way? What would have happened if he had heard my colleague sing, in English, of his own strangeness and loneliness, his own exclusion from

53 This event was jointly sponsored by CASP (the Canadian Art Song Project), the Art Song Foundation of Canada, the Voice Studies Department at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, and N.A.T.S. Ontario.

54 Linda Hutcheon, “Seminar on the Future of Song Recitals,” Art Song Foundation of Canada, 2018, http://artsongfoundation.ca/about-us/seminar-on-the-future-of-song-recitals/.

55 Anthony Tommasini, “Critic’s Notebook: Devising an Experiment to Save the Song Recital,” The New York Times, January 18, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/18/arts/devising-an-experiment-to-save-the-song- recital.html.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid. 20

society (“I came here as a stranger, a stranger I depart”)? What effect might such linguistic immediacy have had on the audience had they been confronted with their beloved Schubertian wanderer dressed in English garments?59 Would that have meant acknowledging their own complicity in encounters like that inimitable final encounter of Winterreise, in which “no one seems to notice, no one seems to care”?60 The apparent revelation of “So, that’s what this is about!” makes a compelling case for the practise of singing in translation: however, the many realities of this multimodal genre make for a more complex story.

Broken Music?

The following characterisation of the Lieder audience in England in 2013 goes some way to illustrating that complexity. At the conclusion of her article “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars,”61 Laura Tunbridge turns to the legacy of the inter-world-war period on that contemporary audience, and that of London’s Wigmore Hall in particular. The priorities of this community,62 were, according to Tunbridge, such that “audience members cough or turn program pages at their peril, and no one would dare sing Schubert in English”.63 Such a comment reveals much about the expectations surrounding “authentic” Lied performance at the time, both for performers and audience members, and the hallowed experience at the hall. The Wigmore audience is instructed about best techniques for cough suppression in the opening pages of all programmes and asked to turn the pages of their translation booklets quietly between songs, with special emphasis on waiting until the conclusion of any piano postlude that may

59 Costume was a common early metaphor for translation, as can be seen in the dedicatory epistle to the anonymous translation of Boccaccio's Filocopo, "I do give unto you this Italian Disporte the which I have tourned out of his native attyre into this our English habite" or in Dymock’s dedicatory poem to his Pastor fido translation: "A silly hand hath fashioned up a sute/of English clothes unto a traveller." These examples come from Laura Macy, “The Due Decorum Kept: Elizabethan Translation and the Madrigals Englished of Nicholas Yonge and Thomas Watson,” Journal of Musicological Research 17, no. 1 (1997): 1–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/01411899708574736.

60 These quotes are taken from Jeremy Sam’s Winter Journey translations (songs I and XXIV), which can be found in full in the booklet that accompanies Christopher Glynn and Roderick Williams’ Signum Classics release: Franz Schubert and Jeremy Sams, “Winter Journey: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise D. 911 in an English Version by Jeremy Sams” (Signum Records, 2018), https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_SIGCD531.

61 Tunbridge, “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars”, 76.

62 A community which I had so recently been part of, having moved from England to Canada in 2013.

63 Ibid., 76. 21

follow the singer’s final tones. This is the atmosphere within which Tunbridge uses the word “dare”: a word which implies an orthodoxy around many aspects of Lieder performance. I invoke such religious language here deliberately, as many make comparisons between Wigmore Hall and more formally “sacred” spaces. The mood at a Wigmore recital can easily be described as reverent, and its audience resembles nothing more so than a congregation, one with many of the same emotional and protective feelings about the content and delivery of the sacred “word”. As Wigmore has been responsible for setting the tone for a great deal of contemporary art song performance culture—in Anglophone circles at least—since its inception as Bechstein Hall in 1901, Tunbridge’s observation reveals the extent of the conditioning that wider culture to certain performance modes and the exclusion of others. In 2013, on Tunbridge’s account, this exclusion included the practice of singing in translation.

Because the Wigmore audience desires “authenticity” in Lieder performance, and that concept of “authenticity” has become very wedded to performance in the original language, Tunbridge suggests that the Wigmore audience has been forced to translate itself.64 My understanding of this unusual formulation is that in acknowledging that a process of linguistic translation is necessary in any twenty-first-century Anglophone reception of Lieder, and in holding that it is fundamentally antithetical to sing that Lieder in translation, the audience has to “move its condition” 65 towards that of a nineteenth-century Teutonic audience. As we can assume that the creators of Lieder assumed their work would speak the living language of their audience, contemporary Anglophone audiences have had to learn to speak the “language” of those long- dead creators or be denied a degree of access to meaning. (Tunbridge tellingly closes her article with reference to a single exhalation of “Wunderbar” from an audience member after a recital in the hall by soprano Anne Schwanewilms).66 The contingency of this goes beyond just German vocabulary and grammar, but into the musical-poetic gesture of the musical genre, along with its many codes and layers that reward repeated listening and long association. Assuming that this is

64 Tunbridge, “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars”, 76.

65 “moving from one place or condition to another” from “Translate | Definition of Translate by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.Com Also Meaning of Translate,” accessed July 7, 2020, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/translate.

66 “The London audience has been translated […] but into a language that few understand.” Tunbridge, “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars”, 76. 22

a fair characterisation by Tunbridge of the Wigmore Hall audience, “authentic” engagement with this repertoire in a contemporary Anglophone setting involves the effacement—to some extent— of the contemporary Anglophone characteristics of its participants. Perhaps it is clearer to say that the aesthetic goal of this Wigmore community, and its satellites, is not to reveal its contemporary identity, and instead to pass convincingly as audience members at a nineteenth century Schubertiade. In the effort to convince Schubert himself, were he to appear, that they are not foreign or anachronistic guests, (it should be acknowledged that such effort has many rewards), this “translated” Wigmore audience risks alienating any newcomers to such a space, unless those newcomers are able to successfully follow the cues of their initiated colleagues.

Significantly, in the few years since Tunbridge’s article was published, several performances at Wigmore Hall have featured translations into English. Among these performances have been airings of Jeremy Sams’s new translations of all three major song cycles of Schubert67 and a late- night concert by The Erlkings68, a Vienna-based folk ensemble who perform their own English- language versions of Lieder, primarily those of Schubert. In the context of Tunbridge’s assessment, such “daring” demonstrates either heresy, a radical embrace of the needs of contemporary audiences or a radical change in the Wigmore audience, and certainly an extraordinary shift in the aesthetic atmosphere of the Hall. How did these actors convince this venue to take their efforts seriously? Do their translated performances genuinely function in this venue as a “gateway drug” for new audiences or do they fulfil a different role for existing audiences already well-versed in the repertoire (an “in-joke” of a kind)? Regardless, what implications might this shift have for my own practice and that of other performers interested in exploring the wider possibilities of Lied performance? And what do such performances reveal to us by transmitting this content through a vernacular lens?

The title of this dissertation actually stems from the final line of Jeremy Sams’s 2016 English translation of “Der Leiermann”, the final song of his version of Schubert’s 1828 cycle, Winter

67 Roderick Williams (Winter Journey), Sir John Tomlinson (Swan Song), and Toby Spence (The Fair Maid of the Mill), with pianist Christopher Glynn see “Christopher Glynn to Perform Schubert Cycles in a New English Translation at the Wigmore Hall,” Groves Artists, 2016, http://www.grovesartists.com/2016/10/christopher-glynn- perform-schubert-cycle-new-english-translation-wigmore-hall/. 68 “The Erlkings Folk Ensemble,” accessed March 21, 2020, https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/the-erlkings- 201805252200. 23

Journey. Sams entitles his version “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man”. Amongst the thirty-three different singing translations of this song that form the case study collection for this project, Jeremy Sams is the only translator to insert the concept of “brokenness” into Müller’s concluding lines, despite there being no corresponding adjective in the German text. Instead of asking “Willst zu meinen Liedern/Deine Leier drehn?” which translates word-for-word as “Will you to my songs your hurdy-gurdy turn?” or rather and perhaps more naturally as “Will you turn your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”, Sams’s wanderer approaches the barefoot musician and asks, “Play your broken music/to my broken song?”

What is an English-speaking audience to make of this qualified question, confronted as they are here by the added immediacy of it sung in their own language? What is the “broken-ness” that Sams reflects in this translational choice? Is it a verb of humility between two people who might themselves be described as “broken”, both living on the boundaries of society? Does it somehow acknowledge the hubris of a translator meddling with the word-setting of a long-dead composer, and judge its own translated nature as “broken”? Does it recognise the disjunct between a nineteenth-century German song and a twenty-first-century Anglophone setting, and cast an aspersion on a genre ill-at-ease in contemporary life?

Were Sams a less compelling figure in the musical realm—not only for his own diverse activities as pianist, composer, translator of both song and opera for scholarship and performance, but as the son of the seminal Lieder scholar Eric Sams—we might perhaps dismiss such an addition without considering its implications. Sams’s translation has, however, achieved remarkable prominence and been given widespread public consideration within a culture otherwise dominated by original-language performance. It seems therefore to be worth our while to examine what we can understand by this addition, both in terms of Schubert’s Winterreise and more broadly. We can also ask questions about what precisely is “broken”, how this has occurred, who is responsible, and who has the rights or appropriate expertise to attempt “repair” in the face of that brokenness.

Purpose of the Study

These questions can be summarized by asking “what’s really going on here?”, in the broader spirit of musicologist Christopher Small’s Musicking.69 Small encourages scholars to consider music as process rather than object, and to look toward aspects of musical practice that are commonly taken for granted or ignored altogether. Experiments with language in the Lied qualify, as they speak to the music’s relationship with its participants, they were both taken for granted initially as a necessary and expedient way of disseminating the repertoire, and are now broadly ignored. In taking Small’s lead, it is fascinating to consider singing translations with this question in mind: they problematize the perceived “authority” of the score, extend the practice of song-making in some cases far beyond the stage, and reveal something important about the cultural space Lieder occupies. In addition, singing translations have the capacity to demonstrate what the genre “means” to its practitioners and its audiences, at least in some senses. They make “meanings” concrete in a unique way and provoke consideration of how meanings are currently conveyed, how one might better convey such meanings, and even what “better” might mean in specific contexts.

We only need to consider the views of two contemporary stakeholders to understand these assertions. Even though American pianist Martin Katz70 believes that it is impossible to create a

“good enough” translation for performance, and conductor and soprano Barbara Hannigan71 believes that sacrificing sonic and syllabic elements for the sake of semantic transfer is a betrayal, such positions prompt fascinating questions: “good enough” for whom? A betrayal of what, exactly? Again, with Small’s imperative in mind, we can extend these questions: what do we do to a Lied when we assume that we can separate music and lyric? What do we do to a Lied when we re-write either of those separated parts? What do we do to a Lied when we presume the result is good enough for performance? We can also examine the converse position: what do we do to a Lied when we mime its communicative dimension? When we normalise not understanding semantic content? It is interesting to realise that the orthodoxy of singing in the

69 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998).

70 See Appendix B6.

71 See Appendix B3. 25

original language is predominant only in the Anglophone realm,72 an observation made by

Shirlee Emmons and Stanley Sonntag in The Art of the Song Recital 73 and queried by German pianist Helmut Deutsch, as will be shown.74 With this in mind, it seems worthwhile to ask questions, at the very least.

Considering the hailing of a “boom time”75 in contemporary literary translation fiction,76 and the increasing embrace of translation as an important activity and genre in and of itself, the Lied is surely amongst the last literary genres to resist wholeheartedly welcoming translators into its archive. As such, the conversation around singing Lieder in translation feels somewhat preliminary and exhibits a circular quality. This can be seen in the way that contemporary reviews laud and critique performances of translated songs in much the same fashion as early twentieth-century reviews did.77 The bulk of the discourse that I have examined appears to have been limited to considerations of fidelity and failure, a binary which cannot account for the

72 There is, for instance, a very healthy tradition in Japan of singing Schubert in Japanese translation (for example, see “Der Lindenbaum” performed in Japanese here: HiroandAkiko, “シューベルト：菩提樹（日本語歌唱）,” YouTube Video, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KDvNhVRA5g.hiro

73 “It is interesting to remember that England and America are the only countries to believe that songs must be done in the original language.” Shirlee Emmons and Stanley Sonntag, The Art of the Song Recital (New York: Schirmer Books, 1979). 292.

74 See Appendix B2.

75 Rachel Cooke, “The Subtle Art of Translating Foreign Fiction | Books | The Guardian,” The Guardian, July 24, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/24/subtle-art-of-translating-foreign-fiction-ferrante-knausgaard.

76 This has included the evolution of the Man Booker Prize into the Booker Prize for International Fiction (which honours both author and translator equally).

77 As example, compare the following two quotes: “The introduction of such exquisite lyrics into the drawing-rooms of amateurs, will do much towards the furtherance of real art in social circles; and we need scarcely add that were professional vocalists to employ their talents in making them known to the general public, even if some of the “popular” songs were to be banished from our concert-rooms in consequence, the benefit to singers and listeners would be mutual” From “Schumann’s Songs by Natalia Macfarren (Review),” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, 1873. “This English version should win new admirers for Schubert’s great cycle and may also encourage singers who may be daunted by the prospect of twenty-four songs in German to essay them in English.” From John Quinn, “SCHUBERT Winter Journey SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD531:Review,” MusicWeb-International, accessed July 16, 2020, http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Apr/Schubert_winter_SIGCD531.htm. 26

nuanced realities of singing, playing, listening and living with the works of others.78 In addition, there appears to be little community amongst translators: few translators seem to be aware of nor acknowledge the works of others,79 and where they do, they tend to be critical and dismissive whilst asserting their own effort as definitive.80 Like notions of fidelity and failure, the possibility of a “definitive” translation is an outmoded concept in broader translation studies. A few scholars and translators, including Peter Low, Mark Apter and Ronnie Herman, and Johan Franzon, have worked towards theorising best practise in song translation, building on or responding to the various criteria of earlier translators such as Frederic Kirchberger, Arthur Fox- Strangways and Henry Drinker. But a critical study of why and how these translators have tried to establish and authorise their practice and the implications that their efforts have for traditional modes of performance seems necessary in order to break away from the circularity in the conversation around Lieder translation.

In summary, through consideration of the boundaries of the Lied’s mutability, this project has several aims. I intend to bring the quality of contemporary Anglophone relationship with the Lied into scrutiny and prompt closer consideration of broader translational practice in Lieder performance. I also hope to highlight key assumptions around the genre’s twenty-first-century identity, query rationales for various performance practices, and, perhaps, bring attention to the fantasy of unmediated address. In grappling with these realities, this dissertation aims to question facile dismissals and endorsements. It also aims to problematize many of the assumptions that underpin them. These include the assumptions that as translations are interventions from parties not authorized by the composer or poet they are therefore illegitimate; that the constraints such

78 A paraphrase from the back cover of This Little Art by Kate Briggs, which describes translation practice as “reading, writing and living with the works of others.” See Kate Briggs, This Little Art, Kindle (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017). 79 A number of the translators discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 were not aware of the large body of translations already in existence: for example, the translator Thomas Beavitt shared with me via email that when he completed his English version of Winterreise in 2018 he was under the impression that he was the first person to do so.

80 For instance, Leslie Minchin tells Peter Pears in correspondence dated 26/6/1972 that “it sounds terribly conceited, but I’m being driven to the conclusion that my English versions are the best”, suggesting that most audiences “will only have heard the dreadful type of English version that none of us wants to defend!” Leslie Minchin, “A Letter to Peter Pears from Leslie Minchin Dated 18/6/80 from the Estate of Leslie Minchin” (Ref: PPA/Minchin.: Image provided by the Britten-Pears Foundation (www.brittenpears.org), 1980).

translations must navigate make them of questionable literary “faithfulness”; that the sonic losses that translations entail are unforgivable; that translations “appropriate” the work in obscuring the original language in performance; and that since they are not sung in German, they cease to even qualify as Lieder at all. These are but a few of the commonly voiced critiques. While some may be more valid than others and take on greater or less importance for some than others, all of them raise important issues, ranging from matters of ontology, musical meaning, and the importance of composer’s authority. With these issues in mind as a basis for critical reflection, this study will consider what might, in fact, be gained from creating, rehearsing, examining, and even performing Lieder in translation.

Methodology and Research Materials

As a Lied pianist with primary experience in Anglophone settings (Australia, England and Canada) my subjective position, my musical contributions, and my professional influence in those settings all bear upon my position as a researcher. Centring performance expertise and its vital role in the generation of knowledge about performances is a key tenet of the emerging discipline of Performance Studies: Cambridge University’s Professor of Musical Performance Studies John Rink comments that “Performance Studies as a discipline within Musicology will continue to thrive only to the extent that performers – as artists and artist-researchers – come to assume greater priority within the discipline.” 81 Empowering artists to examine and speak from their own perspective is a key priority of DMA programmes such as those at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music.

Therefore, throughout the dissertation, I will include observations from my own experiences as a teacher, coach, audience member, student, and professional musician where relevant. The reader should be aware as I process the various materials at my disposal that this is my particular and subjective lens and that this research will have significant impact on my own musical practise. I have also sought the views of other artists and artist-researchers as primary material for the project.

81 John Rink, “The State of Play in Performance Studies,” in The Music Practitioner: Research for the Music Performer, Teacher and Listener (Aldershot: Aldgate, 2004), 41 quoted by Mine Doğantan-Dack et al., “Practice-as- Research in Music Performance,” in The SAGE Handbook of Digital Dissertations and Theses (SAGE Publications, Inc., 2012), https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446201039.n16, 272. 28

Beyond these individual perspectives, the fields of translation studies, music and translation studies, musicology and music history and philosophy of music and language are all broadly relevant to this project. Within these realms, the research takes two main directions:

Documentary Collection and Analysis - Examination of the identity and ontologies of the Lied from its emergence to its presence in contemporary settings. - Discovery of Lied translations and analysis of the ways in which they are made visible. - Discovery of Lied translators, consideration of their biographies, potential biases and other activities and how that informs their translational approach, and analysis of their paratextual materials: essays, rationales, descriptions. - Tracing of the historical debate around the creation and performance of singing translations. - Discovery of contemporary debates around music and translation. - Identification of those writers who have tried to establish guidelines and criteria for best translational practice. - Assembly of a translation collection as a case study. - Identification of stakeholders in Lied performance. - Discovery of the views of contemporary stakeholders where already available.

Qualitative Research - Interviews with a range of stakeholders to assess contemporary implications. - Collection of interview material (both written and transcribed). - Content Analysis according to prominent themes.

Qualitative Research

Parallel to tracing the history of singing translations I spent time interviewing or collecting responses from significant stakeholders active in Lieder performance: amongst them prominent performers, composers, poets, artistic directors and curators, alongside music students and pedagogues. The full list can be found at Appendix A. I approached subjects mostly from the Anglophone art song community – both those who have engaged professionally with singing translations in some capacity and others who have not. After seeking consent from the subjects, I recorded many of the interviews, whether conducted in person or via video call, and transcribed 29

most of those recorded interviews. Some subjects preferred to communicate via email, and with their consent I have made select contributions available in full in Appendix B. The interactions took a wide variety of courses depending on the circumstances, time constraints and the specifics of their individual projects. Some respondents preferred to speak or write generally on the topic, others sought specific questions. Though much of the material from these interviews does not in the end appear in the final dissertation, it informed much of my thinking as I proceeded.

In addition to these interactions, I collected other documentary material related to these subjects, including programme notes, CD liner notes, scores with translator’s notes, and online materials including promotional interviews and articles, blog posts, critical reviews and social media activity. In considering these materials I have looked for commonalities and differences and tried to tease out the finer points of the debate while also acknowledging idiosyncratic and highly personal perspectives.

Assembling the Translation Collection

Many of the articles and other materials I found as I traced the historical debate referenced specific translations or translators. Many were difficult to find further evidence of, as singing translations and their creators can be peripheral, unacknowledged and sometimes unenduring in the published record. Bibliographic records do not always acknowledge the presence of a translation in a score, and publishers are not always transparent about who is responsible for these alternative singing texts. Initially I collected as many translations as possible from a range of sources (published editions, lyric collections and recordings), and where they were accompanied by “paratexts”, (prefatory remarks, translator’s notes, endorsements and other editorial preparations that attempt to establish the expertise and permission for the ensuing translation), I was given particular insight into the position of the translator in relation to their task. As my collection started to expand, I decided to focus on translations of the final song of Schubert’s Winterreise, “Der Leiermann”. The collection currently stands at thirty-three distinct translations (there are thirty-four publications in the list, but two translations are identical, and their authorship is not clear).

“Der Leiermann” makes an interesting case study for practical reasons. It has appeared in English translation frequently and consistently over the 150 years since it was composed, both as part of an edition of the complete cycle in translation and excerpted as a single song or amongst 30

other popular Lieder in assembled collections. In both contexts it has also appeared in recital and in recordings so there are an unusual number of examples to consider and compare, from a wide range of translators. Their efforts are predominantly nominated as “translations”, but they are also described as “Englished by”, “rendered into English”, “English version” and “adapted into English”. Some translations appear with the German title, others with English titles alone, others with both. As there can be no consensus on an English translation of the title “Der Leiermann”, examples were found under a range of titles, including, “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” and “The Organ Grinder”. The collection was sourced from scores, recordings and collections of translations through the catalogues of national libraries and other major collections in Canada, the USA, Australia and England, and online, on sites including www.lieder.net, digital streaming sites and YouTube. Where translations are printed in scores, some appear in bilingual editions with the German running in parallel to the new English words whilst some appear without the German present at all (indeed, one edition of Winterreise I found was bilingual in French and English). Some of the more contemporary translations leave a wider range of digital traces, including self-published materials, promotional videos, YouTube performances, social media posts or commercial releases. Of those translators for whom I could find biographical information, some included translation amongst a range of other musical activities, (there are a number of translators who were more prominent as publishers, educators, and ethnomusicologists); a few translators are performers themselves or involved closely in performing life, though by no means all come from the classical tradition; some are poets; some are devotees who clearly translated as a means to engage with this repertoire in lieu of performance; some are translators motivated to engage a broader audience with this repertoire; some are enthusiasts; and one is a famous pop star.

More importantly, I settled on this song because it details an encounter that I think bears symbolic relation to the topic of translation. The poem is relatively straightforward and simple, a mere five strophes, with an a,b,c,b rhyming scheme. Schubert set this strophically against a monotonous and harmonically unchanging left-hand drone that mimics the sound of a hurdy- gurdy. Despite this apparent simplicity, the song is momentous because, after twenty-three songs of isolation, the Winterreise protagonist encounters another person. Graham Johnson describes this figure as:

… poorly clothed, barefoot and frozen; his music is not good enough to interest, much less enrapture, the public or earn him any money; on the contrary, he is an embarrassment that nobody wants to see or hear. Even the dogs do not like the look of him. And yet he is a musician of sorts, even if terribly down on his luck. And any more successful professional musician who passes such a fellow 'artist' (for want of a less charitable word) cannot fail to feel a twinge of conscience: 'Why not me?' or ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.' The words of a Schumann song come to mind: 'Bin selber ein armer Musikant' ('I myself am a poor musician'). 82

It is this quality in the song that invites psychological projection from performers and listeners alike. When the wanderer asks this armer Musikant to play for him whilst he sings, I cannot help but hear a translator making the same request to Schubert. As we will see in Chapter Four, different translational approaches reveal different readings of this dynamic.

Chapter Outline

In focusing on issues of ontology in the Lied, Chapter Two: Ontologies of the Lied and Notions of Authenticity bases its queries on those raised by philosopher Jeanette Bicknell on the ontology of song and of Peter Kivy on notions of “authenticity”. In attempting to define the parameters of the Lied, I turn to Ian Bostridge’s introduction to Richard Stokes’s Book of Lieder, various writings of Lawrence Kramer on song, Schubert and Lieder, the extensive section on Lied in Grove Music Online, and various chapters of the Cambridge Companion to the Lied. The discussion focusses upon various contemporary notions of what makes an “authentic” Lied performance, examines practices that transform part of the “original” and yet are still broadly accepted (and relies particularly on Lawrence Kramer’s thoughts on these practices) and seeks to determine how and why singing translations have become increasingly excluded from those notions (though they have the potential to extend them).

Chapter Three: Debates Around “the English Lied” attempts to examine the exclusion of singing translations from notions of “authentic” Lied performance by hosting a debate between “those who ground the terms”,83 (as prompted by Jeanette Bicknell). The views of these

82 Graham Johnson, “Schubert: Winterreise - CDA30021 - Franz Schubert (1797-1828) - Hyperion Records - CD Booklet (PDF Download),” Hyperion Records, accessed April 19, 2020, https://www.hyperion- records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA30021.

83 Jeanette Bicknell, Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2015), 7. 32

participants are sourced from a wide range of primary source materials in the public record and through interviews with contemporary stakeholders. They are grouped according to notions of what is “lost” and what is “found” in translation and identified in terms of Kivy’s “authenticities” where relevant. The chief written materials I have identified as contributing to the debate include but are not limited to the following (full details can be found in the bibliography):

1912 Harry Plunkett-Green “Interpretation in Song” 1915 Sigmund Spaeth “Translating to Music” 1920 Edward Dent “Music: In Defence of Translations” 1921 A.H.F. Strangways “Song-Translation” 1921 M-D. Calvocoressi “The Practice of Song-Translation” 1922 Herbert Peyser “Some observations on translation” 1922-23 A.H.F. Strangways “Translation of Songs” 1924 Eric Brewerton “Song Translation” 1940 A.H.F. Strangways “German Song” 1940 A.H.F. Strangways “The Translation of Songs” 1940 E.G. Porter “Song Translation” 1941 C.W. Orr “The Problem of Translation” 1948 W.H. Auden “Notes on Music and Opera” and “Translating Opera Libretti” 1950 Henry Drinker “On Translating Vocal Texts” 1958 Jacob Hieble “Should Operas, Lyric Songs, and Plays Be Presented in a Foreign language?” 1972 Frederic Kirchberger “The German Song Cycles. Should They Be Sung in the Original or in English Translation?” 1976 John Duke “Some Reflections on the Art Song in English” 1977 Andrew Porter “Song in Green” in The New Yorker 1981 Anne Rodda “Translating for Music: The German Art Song” 1984 Leslie Minchin “Schubert and Language” in The Schubertian 1989 Arthur Graham “A New Look at Recital Song Translation” 1993 Frederic Kirchberger “Sing Them In English!” Volume 1 Translator’s Preface 1995 Leslie Minchin “Schubert and Language” 1996 David Johnson “Jeremy Sams: Words and Music” 1998 Leslie Minchin “The Problem of Re-translation” 1998 Andrew Shackleton “Translating Lieder: A Pandora’s Box?” 2000 Michael Irwin “Opera Libretti and Songs: Translating into English” 2003 Peter Low “Singable Translations of Songs” 2003 Peter Low “Translating poetic songs: An attempt at a functional account of strategies” 2005 Peter Low “The Pentathlon approach to translating songs” 2005 Dinda Lee Gorlee Ed. “Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation” 2006 Harold Heiberg “Schubert in Singable English: The Miller’s Lovely Daughter” 2008 Peter Low “Translating Songs that Rhyme” 2008 Johan Franzon “Choices in Song Translation” 2008 Sebnem Susam-Sarajeva Ed. The Translator Special Edition “Translation and Music” 2010 Paul O. Jenkins Chapter Seven: “The Lovely Milleress and Stony Brook” in “Richard Dyer-Bennett: The Last Minstrel” 2013 Laura Tunbridge “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars” 2013 Helen Julia Minors Ed. “Music, Text and Translation” 33

2016 Katy Hamilton “And in English…” (Blog) 2016 Ronnie Apter, Mark Herman “Translating for Singing: The theory, art, and craft of translating lyrics” 2019 Laura Tunbridge “Singing in the Age of Anxiety: Lieder performances in New York and London Between the World Wars” 2020 Katy Hamilton “Natalia Macfarren and the English German Lied”

The interview subjects included but were not limited to:

Translators: Jeremy Sams, Richard Stokes, David Paul, Bryan Benner, Amanda Holden, Bruce Daniel, Thomas Beavitt

Pianists: Christopher Glynn, Helmut Deutsch, Graham Johnson, Iain Burnside, Rena Sharon, Warren Jones, Erika Switzer, Martin Katz, Sholto Kynoch, Kevin Stolz

Singers: Tobey Spence, Roderick Williams, Barbara Hannigan, Tyler Duncan, Mark Padmore, Ema Nikolaevska, Sarah Slean, Gabriel Kahane, Alex Samaras

Scholars: Katy Hamilton, Susan Youens

Chapter Four: Die Leierleute – The Hurdy-Gurdy People presents a collection of thirty-three distinct singing translations of Schubert’s “Der Leiermann” into English. The identities and motivations (where known) of the translators will be discussed and specific examples will be brought forward in order to demonstrate alternative notions of “authenticity” in Lieder performance, to discuss translation as an interpretive act, as a useful marker of reception history and as a novel way of interacting with Lieder (as integrated lyrical and musical texts) in the broadest sense. The apparent impossibility of a “definitive” translation is made obvious by such a case study, and the possibilities and dangers engendered by that lack of definition hopefully made plain.

1869 “The Hurdy-Gurdy” rendered into English by Natalia Macfarren (1827-1916) 84 1871 “The Organ Player” edited by (translated by?) E. Pauer (?-1905) 85 1888 “The Organ-Grinder” the English Version by Rev. Dr. Troutbeck (1832-1899) 86 1895 “The Organ Player” (contents page) / “The Organ-Grinder” (score title) English translations by

84 Franz Schubert, A Winter Journey: A Series of 24 Songs by Franz Schubert Rendered into English by Clarina Macfarren, ed. Edward F. Rimbau?, Chappell’s (Chappell & Co., 1869).

85 Franz Schubert, Winter Journey. Die Winterreise. 24 Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment ..., ed. Ernst Pauer (Offenbach s./M: Chez Jean André, 1871).

86 Franz Schubert, Die Winterreise = The Winter Journey : Twenty-Four Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment. Op. 89. The English Version by Dr. Troutbeck. (London; New York: Novello, Ewer and Co., 1888). 34

Dr. Theodore Baker (1851-1934) 87 1901 “The Organ-Man” The English Words by Percy Pinkerton (1855-1946?) 88 1904 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” translated by Frederic Field Bullard (1864-1904) 89 192-? “The Hurdy-Gurdy Player – Le Jouer de Vielle” The English Verse by W.J.Westbrook (1831-1894?) 90 1921 no title; Elizabeth Mott (dates unknown) 91 1927 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” The English Translation reprinted by permission from Schubert’s Songs Translated by Arthur Fox-Strangways and Steuart Wilson 92 1928 “The hurdy-gurdy man” translation Anonymous, as sung by Irish tenor John McCormack 93 1930 “The Organ-Grinder” translated by Julius Harrison (1885-1963) 94 1934 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” translated by Paul England (1863-1932) as sung by Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene 95 1938 “The Organ Grinder” English text by M.W.Pursey (?) 96 1938 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” English words by J. Michael Diack (1869-1947) 97

87 Franz Schubert, Songs with Piano Accompaniment English Translations by Dr. Theodore Baker, Schirmer’s (USA: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1895).

88 Franz Schubert, Songs with Piano Accompaniment by Franz Schubert The English Words by Percy Pinkerton, ed. Anton Rückauf, No. 716 (Austria: Universal-Edition, 1901).

89 Franz Schubert, Translated by Frederic Field Bullard, ed. Henry T. Finck (Oliver Ditson Company, 1904).

90 Franz Schubert, 80 Selected Songs. (Mélodies Choisies) Soprano or Tenor Schubert-Album: The Pretty Maid of the Mill, The Winter Journey, Swan’s Songs and 22 Selected Songs. The English Verse by W. J. Westbrook, ed. Franz Abt. (Collection Litolff, n.d.).

91 Various, “Song-Translations,” Music & Letters 11, no. 3 (1921): 190–210.

92 Franz Schubert, The Hurdy Gurdy Man (Der Leiermann) The English Translation Reprinted by Permission from “Schubert’s Songs Translated” by A.H. Fox Strangways and Steuart Wilson; the Music by Schubert, Published (London: Oxford University Press, 1927).

93 mark32626, “John McCormack ~ The Hurdy Gurdy Man / Farewell. Schubert. 1928 - YouTube,” YouTube Video 4:41, 1928, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeq17IutPY; Discography of American Historical Recordings, “Victor Matrix CVE-49213. The Hurdy-Gurdy Man (Der Leiermann) / John McCormack - Discography of American Historical Recordings,” accessed November 12, 2020, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/800022994/CVE-49213-The_hurdy- gurdy_man_Der_Leiermann.

94 Franz Schubert, The Organ-Grinder, ed. Julius Harrison, Winthrop R (London: Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd., 1930).

95 Harry Plunket Greene, Interpretation in Song (London: Macmillan and Co., 1956); Harry Plunket Greene, “Baritone Harry PLUNKET GREENE: The Hurdy Gurdy Man (1934),” YouTube, 1934, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAjioz1LWc.

96 Franz Schubert, Schubert Songs: High Voice English Text by M.W. Pursey, ed. David Best, Treasure B (London: Universal Music Agencies, 1938).

97 Franz Schubert, The Hurdy-Gurdy Man English Words by J. Michael Diack, ed. J. Michael Diack, The Lyric (London: Paterson’s Publications Ltd., 1938). 35

1946 “The Organ-Man” translated by Robert Randolph Garran (1867-1957) 98 1949 “The Hurdy-Gurdy” English version by Richard Capell (1885-1954) 99 1951 no title; Translations by Henry Drinker (1880-1965) 100 1968-9 “The Organ Grinder” new performing version by Roy Fisher (1930-2017) as recorded by Shura Gehrman (bass) and Nina Walker (piano) 101 1977 “The Organ Grinder” translated by Basil Swift (?) 102 1982 “The hurdy-gurdy man” translated into singable English verse by Leslie Minchin (?) 103 1982 “The Organ-Grinder” translation by Clare Campbell (?-2012) 104 1991 “The Organ Grinder” translated by Jeffrey Benton (b.1938) 105 1993 “The Organ Grinder” singable translation by Frederic Kirchberger (b.? – d.2004) 106 2007 “The organ-grinder” translator requests anonymity 2008 “the organ grinder (after Schubert)” unknown translator, appears on audio recording “under a pale moon” by Inner Voices and Friends 107 2009 New English translation by Michael Symmons Roberts (b.1963) 108 2009 “Hurdy Gurdy Man” a musical reworking and English translation by Sting (b.1951) 109 2009 “The Organ Grinder” translated and sung by Mike Zhai (b.1980) 110

98 Robert Randolph Garran, Schubert and Schumann Songs and Translations (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1946).

99 Franz Schubert, Vocal Works: Op. 89 The Winter Journey (Winterreise) English Version by Richard Capell (London: Augener Ltd., 1949).

100 Franz Schubert, Complete Song Cycles with Translations by Henry S. Drinker, ed. Eusebius Mandyczewski (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1951).

101 Shura Gehrman et al., “Schubert Winter Journey” (Nimbus Records, 1981).

102 Franz Schubert, Song Book No. 1 Translated, Illustrated and with Helpful Notes by Basil Swift Fully Singable Verbal Edition (Gentry Publications, 1977).

103 Leslie Minchin, ‘Schubert in English: The Songs Usually Included in Volume 1 of Standard Editions, Translated into Singable English Verse (London: Thames Publishing, 1982).

104 Clare Campbell, Lieder for English Singers: Translated for Performance (Cambridge: Cassandra Press, 2005).

105 Jeffrey Benton, “Die Winterreise | Jeffreybenton,” Jeffrey Benton: Singer/Translator, 2014, https://www.jeffreybenton.co.uk/die-winterreise.

106 Kirchberger, Sing Them In English! Volume 1 : Nine Great German Song Cycles from Beethoven to Mahler in New Singable English Translations.

107 “Under a Pale Moon” (Romeo Records, 2006).

108 “Libretti - Winterreise.”

109 Sting, “Sting | Discography | Hurdy Gurdy Man,” 2009, https://www.sting.com/discography/lyrics/581.

110 Mike Zhai, “Schubert - Der Leiermann (The Organ Grinder) from Winterreise,” YouTube, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFuQo80NcE&list=UUcth6oLaqHq2t7_Iri4J-eg&index=14. 36

2010 “XXIV. The Hurdy-gurdy Man” translated by Harold Heiberg (1922-2013) 111 2011 “The hurdy-gurdy man” Singable translation to English by David Paley (1942-) 112 2016 “Lyre Man” English translation by Darren Chase (1975-) 113 2016 “The Hurdy-gurdy Man” in an English version by Jeremy Sams (1957-) 114 2016 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” by Stephen Clark (1961-2016) 115 2018 “Hurdy-Gurdy Girl” English translation by Thomas Beavitt (1968-) 116 My Contribution

The principal motivation for this dissertation lies in my experiences as a performer. I am anxious that Lieder performance in settings where German is not the vernacular does not allow for direct aural communication between performers and audiences. Arguments that maintain singing in the original German for the sake of authenticity or fidelity to the composer’s intention seem to me worth both acknowledging and investigating. In addition to this, I want to explore the contemporary possibilities, concerns, and broader implications of translating Lieder for singing. What purposes might it serve, for whom, and where? What are the motives of its translators (both past and present)? What are the arguments of their critics? How does the community of Lieder devotees receive, police and sideline translation practice?

I also aim to explore the philosophical dimensions of Lieder translation. I discuss how it challenges the identity of the genre, and how the addition of a translator to what is otherwise perceived as a closed system (poet and composer transmitted by singer and pianist to an audience) complicates the existing heteroglossia of the genre. I look at how a translation reveals

111 Harold Heiberg, “Schubert in Singable English: Winter Journey,” Journal of Singing - The Official Journal of the National Association of Teachers of Singing 66, no. 4 (2010): 387–98.

112 David Paley, “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man,” www.lieder.net, 2011, https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=83645.

113 Darren Chase, “The Winter Journey: Schubert’s Winterreise in English Translation, Darren Chase and Michael Scales,” YouTube, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjhidS_lacI.

114 Schubert and Sams, “Winter Journey: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise D. 911 in an English Version by Jeremy Sams.”

115 Conall Morrison and Stephen Clark, “Woyzeck in Winter” (Galway: Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival; Barbican Theatre, 2017).

116 Thomas Beavitt, “Winter Journeyman,” Global Village Bard, 2018, https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ReverseLookup/522834; Thomas Beavitt, “Winterreise, D. 911 ‘Winter Journeyman,’” YouTube, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMjMpr-U3To. 37

the particular interpretive voice of the translator. I also want to draw attention to the ways in which historical translations form a particular kind of reception history around a work and demonstrate that that is worthy of interest. This goes against the prevailing tendency to dismiss such translations as misguided and unhelpful.

Finally, I want to better understand my own relationship with this repertoire. My hope is that this dissertation will encourage both performers and audiences to re-evaluate their relationship with many forms of Lieder translation: to acknowledge that some translation strategy is necessary for many participants in the genre, to prompt deeper consideration of how we engage in and utilise those strategies, and to challenge preconceived or received judgments about singing these songs in translation.

The creation of singing translations is at the very least a means to intimately engage with a Lied—to scrutinise its musical and textual elements, commit to an interpretation (both micro and macro), to scrutinise one’s priorities, to engage creatively with the material, to marvel at the genius (or otherwise) of the material. But engagement with the idea and practice of creating singing translations offers numerous other possibilities. For instance, the examination of existing singing translations is a way to study the subjective interpretations of other parties and examine the reception history of a particular work. The performance of singing translations can offer new insights into a well-known work or a means of access to a new work, welcome new audiences and provoke or inspire existing audiences. It is my belief and experience that a more rigorous and personal translation practice can and should play a much more prominent role in Lieder preparation and performance: in educational settings, in performance preparation, and in performance presentation. Translation has both the potential to reveal the past and the capacity to bring the past into a new and startling contemporary presence. It also has the potential to challenge foundational conceptions of the genre’s identity, which is the focus of the next chapter.

Ontologies of the Lied and Notions of Authenticity

…when they had rowed past the Sirens and we could no longer hear the sound and the words of their song...

—The Odyssey, Book 12 1

Before we can begin to consider the contemporary implications of singing the Schubertian Lied in translation, it is important to try to ascertain the qualities deemed by various stakeholders to be fundamental to that Lied’s identity and how they are thought to be compromised or indeed, enhanced, in translation. Understanding this should help illustrate the stakes of the various debates brought to the fore in Chapter Three.

The initial section of the following discussion attempts to determine how the Lied as a broader genre has come to be defined. Such a determination comes about by identifying what elements of that Lied are considered inviolable and through observing how those elements have been communicated, accessed and performed by parties who claim to interact with them in an “authentic” way. A difficulty inherent in making such identifications lies in the fact that the Lied emerged in a cultural context not only temporally remote, but also aesthetically and often geographically distant from the spaces in which it now appears. Another difficulty lies in determining who has a say in what elements of the Lied are inviolable, and what constitutes an “authentic” interaction.

The discussion then highlights any Lied’s dependence on various modes of transmission, including print, recorded media and embodied performance. These modes inevitably bear the traces of those involved in their creation, and analysis of the broad range of subjective interpretive actions made by these parties reveals something of the many ways that a Lied can be disseminated. Such actions inevitably have the potential to obscure the “original”, however that is imagined, and compositional intentions, whether presumed or decided based upon research. They include not only the subtleties of notes, articulations, dynamics and tempo, instrumental

1 [My emphasis] Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Dominic Rieu and E.V. Rieu (Penguin Classics, 2003), 161-162. 39

timbre and “grain” of the voice and transposition for different voice types, but also more controversial actions, including editorial and publication decisions, musical arrangements, multimedia treatments, and translations of any lingual component for singing. Some of these approaches attempt invisibility, whilst others announce their presence. Where these interactions appropriate, augment, interrupt or re-write the “work” in some way, they have the potential to challenge the objective identity of the “work” in question.

The discussion then turns to how a number of these approaches have been both justified and critiqued in terms of notions of compositional and personal authenticity: two of the four “authenticities” that philosopher Peter Kivy proposes as possible in musical performance. In such debates, respect for elements deemed “essential” to the composer’s original conception wrestles with attempts to make room for interpretive expression, even though that may at times deviate from what a composer may have appeared to indicate. The chapter concludes by considering how translation specifically navigates (or assails) the boundaries of the Lied’s contemporary identity as a genre and the specific identity of any Lied as a “work” within that genre.

Why sing?

One does not simply ‘sing,’ but one sings something.

—Bruno Nettl2

In 1772, some time before the arrival of the prototypical Romantic Lied, the essential nature and purpose of song was posed as the prompt in an essay competition on the origins of language. Both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder were awarded the prize, though their essays offered quite different accounts. Rousseau wrote about song emerging out of the primal scream, born out of an individual’s overwhelming need for self-expression. Herder pointed instead to a different primal act—an imagined conversation between the biblical figure of Adam and a sheep in the garden of Eden. Song scholar Amanda Glauert discusses this imagined

2 Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 40. Quoted in [9] of Nicholas Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance,” Music Theory Online 7, no. 2 (2001), https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.01.7.2/mto.01.7.2.cook.php. 40

conversation in some of her work,3 giving a gently comical account of Adam’s lyrical impulse to respond to the creature’s bleat in kind. To paraphrase Glauert, Adam’s “song” can be understood as meaning something equivalent to “you are that which goes baah”. The interaction between Adam and the sheep leaves room for another listener, (we might imagine this could be Eve in this arcadian context), to hear, understand, and potentially respond in turn to Adam: “you are he that hears that which goes baah”. In this model the “song” (such that it is) always reaches towards the next respondent. For Glauert, this makes singing dialogic: sounds emerge “in response to another’s sound and in preparation for communication with others – even if that dialogue remains internal”.4 Now, as Herder was an important antecedent of nineteenth-century

5 German Romantic aesthetics, a key influence upon Schubert and his circle, and a significant contributor to the body of Schubert’s Lieder texts with both original poems and translations, such views on singing seem particularly worthy of consideration. If we work with Glauert’s reading of Herder’s model, we can understand the Schubertian Lied as having its origins in this kind of primal communicative utterance. Though his Lieder are comparatively highly evolved and intrinsically linguistic, Schubert wrote these songs motivated and compelled by the cognisant presence of others. We might see this confirmed in Joseph von Spaun’s reminiscence of the first performance of Winterreise, at which he recalls Schubert saying: “Soon you will hear and understand”.6 Clearly, having his audience hear and understand both the sound and words of his songs appears to have been Schubert’s intention.

Music that carries such directly communicative dimensions has, however, been largely overlooked by other philosophers of music.7 Though it might be said that no artistic activity is

3 Amanda Glauert, “‘Do You Know the Land?’ Unfolding the Secrets of the Lyric in Performance,” Music Performance Research 6 (2013): 68–96; SongArtVideoSpace, “Keynote: Professor Amanda Glauert ‘Preparing for the Event of Performance,’” YouTube Video 1:00:14, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4hEBotbNnk&list=PLqHo6BDIklZMaC8mLM1tBR6_nkhZOoG45.

4 Amanda Glauert, “‘Do You Know the Land?’ Unfolding the Secrets of the Lyric in Performance,” Music Performance Research 6 (2013): 73.

5 Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Schubert’s Goethe Settings (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003), 80.

6 Susan Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 27.

7 “…song has been passed over by philosophers of art who otherwise have been intensely interested in both music and literature. Instead, philosophy of music has tended to limit its scope to a subclass of Western art music, largely 41

more ancient nor more commonly experienced as song, philosophers of art tend to focus their discussions upon genres of absolute music. These genres, uncomplicated by textual associations, can be ascribed universal, autonomous, and fundamentally untranslatable qualities.8 Such characterisations cannot be ascribed to music bound up with language since language brings explicit subjectivity and locality, the potential for multiple authorship, specificity of meaning and the potential necessity of translational mediation. Songs are excluded from being absolute music since they are not merely motivated by text (as programmatic music may be) but fundamentally structured by text—they are carriers of content that “continue to be shaped by the burdens and limitations of oral communication.”9 In the case of the Lied, the intimate relationship between text and music became its highest pursuit and achievement but also, owing to the primacy for many of absolute music and the inherent barriers of language, its impediment to some cultural mobility and canonical centrality.

The Lied in Context

The Lied first appeared as an eighteenth-century domestic entertainment, several generations before Schubert, and quickly became one of the primary amateur modes of music-making over the following century. At that time, Rousseau defined it rather modestly as:

[a] type of short lyrical poem, usually on a pleasant topic, to which a tune is added, to be sung at homely occasions such as at table, with one’s friends, with one’s mistress, or even alone, to while away some moments of boredom if one is rich, or to alleviate one’s misery and fatigue if one is poor.10

It can be seen in this description that the Lied had some way to go in terms of ambition and self- realisation, even as composers such as Beethoven began to experiment with the form. We can see as much in scholar Eric Sams’s description of Beethoven’s efforts as remaining “in the 18th

focusing on issues concerning instrumental music.” Jeanette Bicknell and John Andrew Fisher, “Introduction: Making a Space for Song,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 1 (2013): 1.

8 Lucile Desblache, Music and Translation: New Mediations in the Digital Age (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 2.

9 Bicknell, Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, 1.

10 Stokes, The Book of Lieder - The Original Texts of Over 1000 Songs. From Ian Bostridge’s Preface, xiii. 42

century tradition of a self-effacing enhancement of the words.”11 It was not until Schubert that the vernacular German song became fully-fledged as an artistic genre “in which musical ideas suggested by words were embodied in the setting of those words.”12 His vividly illustrative setting of “Gretchen am Spinnrade”, composed to a text of Goethe on 9th October, 1814, is commonly identified as the true arrival of the Romantic Lied.13

At this point, Lawrence Kramer contends that the Lied had two imperatives: to break away from Viennese classicism, and to bring music into the Romantic movement’s widespread effort to represent subjectivity in action.14 Thus, the choice of poetry for the form (selected as frequently from the greats such as Goethe, as from minor poets including Hölty, Müller, and Mayrhofer) was not necessarily about literary merit so much as emotional tone, a blending of higher and lower lyric styles, and a concern with the confrontation between the individual and powerful external forces, whether natural, historical or societal. One has only to look at the contemporaneous landscape painting of Caspar David Friedrich to see this subjective position in action. Friedrich’s figures are frequently solitary and cast in the wilderness. They somehow appear to embody a wide range of dualities, appearing both vulnerable and heroic, solitary yet relatable, grandiose and intimate, temporal and enduring, and peripheral yet significant.15 The Lied’s alliance with this sensibility, and the way its synthetic qualities manage to express the expressible and inexpressible at once, appealed very much to the burgeoning German-speaking middle classes caught up in the Romantic mindset.

11 Graham and Paul Böker-Heil, Norbert; Fallows, David;Baron, John H.; Parsons, James; Sams, Eric; Johnson; Griffiths, “Lied,” in Grove Music Online, 2001, https://www-oxfordmusiconline- com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630- e-0000016611.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Lawrence Kramer, “The Schubert Lied: Romantic Form and Romantic Consciousness,” in Song Acts (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 1994), https://books.scholarsportal.info/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks3/brill/2018-08- 17/7/9789004342132, 53.

15 Eric Sams and Graham Johnson, “IV: The Romantic Lied,” in Grove Music Online, 2001, https://www- oxfordmusiconline- com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630- e-0000016611. 43

Of course, the Lied was not merely a musical mode nor merely a means of interpreting, responding to and disseminating a body of German language poetry, but also a political agent. Esteemed for its ability to help cultivate the individual, it also helped to shape a national identity out of a disparate collection of independent eighteenth-century agencies by the time of the German Unification of 1871. These songs came to be so central to this project and to domestic cultural life that the German, according to Nietzsche, imagined “even God himself singing Lieder”.16 By 1885 the Lied was ubiquitous in households and cultural gatherings across German-speaking lands, as it was ideally suited for amateurs to put newly accessible instruments and sheet music to use (mass-production of both newly facilitated by the Industrial Revolution). This can be seen clearly in the extent and popularity of catalogues such as Ernst Challier’s Großer Lieder-Katalog of 188617 and in the convivial (if fictionalised) scene of Julius Schmid’s

1899 painting Ein Schubert-Abend in einem Wiener Bürgerhause18. However, despite the form’s prevalence “from the northern reaches of Schleswig-Holstein to the southern regions of Bavaria from Salzburg to Vienna”19 at the turn of the century, and its significant popularity at the beginning of World War I (with public Liederabende averaging twenty a week in Berlin between 1900 and 1914),20 the trajectory of the genre’s fortunes were set to mirror the German nation’s own “ascent to nationhood, dominion, downfall, [and] splintered afterlife”.21 The realities of the

16 James Parsons and Ed. James Parsons, “Introduction: Why the Lied?,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11.

17 Ernst Challier, “Ernst Challier’s Grosser Lieder-Katalog: 1.-15. Nachtrag,” Self-published, 1890, https://books.google.ca/books?id=uQtKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1990&lpg=PA1990&dq=ernst+challier%27s+liederb uch&source=bl&ots=7CF4xWVoAw&sig=ACfU3U1Unapkz1NOIWW_HrY8E_Qq0XahVQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved= 2ahUKEwis99qRj67nAhUCXM0KHbzJBioQ6AEwCnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=ernst challier’s.

18 “Schubert evening in a Viennese Civilian’s House”: a scene which unites a number of artistic figures prominent in Vienna in the 1830s in Lieder enjoyment, including Schubert, the singer Vogel, painters Kupelweiser and Schwind, poet Grillparzer and diarist Karoline Pichler. Julius Schmid, “Ein Schubert-Abend in Einem Wiener Bürgerhause,” 1897, https://www.akg-images.de/archive/Ein-Schubert-Abend-in-einem-Wiener-Burgerhause- 2UMDHUVVIIY.html. 19 James Parsons and Ed. James Parsons, “Introduction: Why the Lied?,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4.

20 Ibid., 4.

21 Ibid., 4. 44

first world war changed domestic preoccupations forever, with the co-option of some classical repertoire towards national socialist aims or its sentimental association with a previous era; internationally, it limited the mobility of both German-speaking artists and musics, especially those dependent on the sound and form of the German language. It is this increasingly splintered afterlife that concerns many contemporary stakeholders.

The Lied Displaced

The ongoing relevance of this body of repertoire in contemporary life is examined and worried over by many of its current stakeholders, as can be seen in UK-based art song pianist and scholar Graham Johnson’s query: “to whom do these songs [now] matter, and how much?”22 In 2011 Rena Sharon, a professor of Collaborative Piano at the University of British Columbia, asked with her research colleagues “why aren’t audiences packing concert halls?” when, “in theory, its exceptional specificities make Art Song a uniquely approachable genre within the abstract realm of Western classical music.”23 Musicologist James Parsons suggests that “in the age of the automobile, Hiroshima, Sputnik, and an ever-ascendant popular culture…[the Lied] surely is at odds with the spirit of the times now, a revenant with little or no relevance.”24 It seems clear it can be hard to make sense of the genre’s place in the twenty-first-century.

However, despite such concerns, the nineteenth-century Lied now has a global, if niche, audience and tremendous mobility in live performance, score accessibility and recorded form. In Anglophone settings, a song’s original language is overwhelmingly favoured in performance and understood by most musicians, audiences and scholars as essential to “authentic” performance practice (as fraught a notion as that is). What does this do to the communicative dimension its composers assumed? Does this have anything to do with the genre’s perceived “relevance”?

As we have seen, the Schubertian Lied emerged in dialogue with a German-speaking middle

22 Graham Johnson, “The Lied in Performance,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, ed. James Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 315.

23 Sharon et al., “Breaking Traditions: Art Song Theatre Cognitive Shifts through Staged Modalities,” 493.

24 James Parsons, “The Lied in the Modern Age: To Mid Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 275. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521800273.015. 45

class of the nineteenth century. In the absence of that audience, twentieth-century performers who seek meaningful performances of this repertoire must ask important questions about why they choose to sing it, how they should sing it, and for whom they sing. It is a genre which, like Friedrich’s subjects, embodies dualities, having long negotiated the private and public, the artistic and the popular, the realms of literature and music, traditional and individualistic modes, and amateur and professional spheres (such that French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician Roland Barthes described it as “by nature uncertain: out of date without being repressed, marginal without being eccentric”.)25 These precarities aside, perhaps that which is most uncertain in it has to do with the ever-widening span a contemporary performance must negotiate between the location and time of a Lied’s origin and that of any contemporary performance. Such uncertainty can increase protectiveness amongst devotees and concern for maintaining the integrity of the genre, but it might also provoke important debate as to how that span and other dislocations should be negotiated.

Two approaches to this negotiation prevail in contemporary Lieder performance practice, which I will broadly identify as “reaching back”, and “reaching forward”.26 The first involves the education of both performers and audiences to facilitate their understanding of Lieder performance in the original language. This initiation enables a kind of time travel which prioritizes a certain notion of tradition that can be reinforced by recording culture, an awareness or investment in historical performance practice, the burgeoning literature on the song repertory written by both performers and musicologists, and repeated exposure. This is the characteristic approach of audiences such as that at Wigmore, an approach we have seen Tunbridge describe as a process of self-translation. The second approach is more preoccupied with access for the non- initiated and reimagining repertoire to account for contemporary contexts. This approach

25 Roland Barthes, “The Romantic Song. Translated by Richard Howard,” in The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation (New York, 1985), 292.

26 Glauert uses “now” and “then” for these concepts throughout her discussion: “Keynote: Professor Amanda Glauert ‘Preparing for the Event of Performance’. 2012 - YouTube,” accessed March 26, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4hEBotbNnk&list=PLqHo6BDIklZMaC8mLM1tBR6_nkhZOoG45.; whilst Katy Hamilton describes this kind of idea as “what here and now….can tell us about then and there..” in an interview with Helen Julia Minors, “More Video Interviews: Katy Hamilton, Musicologist,” Translating Music, accessed July 12, 2020, Video, 18:35, http://translatingmusic.com/styled-7/styled-17/index.html. 46

includes experiments with alternative venues and extended performance practices (such as theatricalization, the use of multimedia, the use of non-traditional voices or instruments and translation). For many people, these latter approaches fundamentally threaten the perceived identity of the Lied, which makes an exploration of its ontology fundamental to this project.

Ontologies of the Lied

Now that we have at least a notional sense of its history, we must consider what qualities are deemed to be essential to the Lied now that it has become untethered from the time and cultural context of its origins. It is telling that we use a German loanword to identify the genre in English; in the following sample of definitions, the German language or a Germanic identity appears to be a core characteristic:

A song in the German vernacular. (Grove Music Online)27

A German art song especially of the nineteenth century (Merriam-Webster)28

A type of German song, especially of the romantic period, typically for solo voice with piano accompaniment. (Oxford Dictionary of English, Third Edition, 2010)29

…The genre presupposes a renaissance of German lyric verse, the popularity of that verse with composers and public, a consensus that music can derive from words, and a plentiful supply of techniques and devices to express that interrelation. (Grove Music Online)30

Lied is now the standard modern term for a German song. In recent English dictionaries of music (New Grove, New Harvard), Lied is defined as a song in the

27 Böker-Heil, Norbert; Fallows, David;Baron, John H.; Parsons, James; Sams, Eric; Johnson; Griffiths, “Lied.”

28 “Lied | Definition of Lied by Merriam-Webster,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, accessed October 30, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Lied.

29 “Lied | Definition of Lied by Lexico, Oxford English Dictionary,” Lexico OED, accessed October 30, 2020, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/lied.

30 Sams and Johnson, “IV: The Romantic Lied.” 47

German vernacular. (Glossary of The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism, Edward F. Kravitt)31

Such foregrounding of its Germanicism may appear to foreclose any further consideration of lingual change and make this project’s considerations moot. However, even as some of these definitions vary in the centrality of German language as the sine qua non of German-ness, there have been other more elaborate challenges to this notion in various quarters. In the foreword to The Book of Lieder, a large collection of texts, translations and other contextual information by Richard Stokes, tenor and writer Ian Bostridge admits that defining the Lied is in fact trickier than it may at first appear. In German, Lied means simply “song”, and as such is often used interchangeably with the noun Gesang. However, it has assumed an additional usage equivalent to the North American corollary of “art song” that Bostridge identifies as carrying the added weight of “the ambition of the genre and its seriousness of purpose.”32 In arriving at his own definition of the genre, Bostridge declines to emphasize a dependence on the German language. Instead he emphasizes the following: that the Lied usually sets pre-existing texts, is written for voice and piano as equal partners (a kind of vocal chamber music), is inherently theatrical and psychodramatic, and, perhaps most vexing to a discussion of the Lied’s identity, “it is what goes on in the Lied which we do not understand that gives the Lied its power.”33 Despite this apparent inscrutability, I will persist in subjecting what we can “understand” to some scrutiny as I proceed.

Following Rousseau and Herder’s interest in the origins of song, Toronto-based philosopher Jeanette Bicknell poses further ontological questions in her book, Philosophy of Song and Singing. For the purposes of this project, I have taken the liberty of rephrasing these questions to limit their scope from songs in general to a focus upon the Lied. Bicknell’s questions, reformulated thus, are as follows:

1) What are a particular Lied’s identity conditions? What kind of changes can we make to a Lied and still maintain that it is the same Lied that we started with?

31 Edward F. Kravitt, The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 298.

32 Stokes, The Book of Lieder - The Original Texts of Over 1000 Songs. Foreword by Ian Bostridge, i.

33 Stokes. Foreword by Ian Bostridge, xvi. 48

2) What manner of existence do Lieder have? Are they mental objects like ideas? Do they exist apart from their expression in performances and musical scores? 34

In examining tolerances or lack thereof towards Lieder translation, both sets of questions are relevant. Does changing the language threaten the identity of a Lied? And do experiments with language threaten the very existence of the genre?

Bicknell offers her readers two contrasting perspectives on these questions that attempt to locate where answers may best be found. Chapter Two and Chapter Three are attempts to explore and arbitrate between the two, the first grounded in the ideal, the second in practice. On one hand, Bicknell points to philosopher Nelson Goodman’s attempt to lobby for an empirical perspective:

[i]f a performance of a musical work departed in the smallest way from any of the notated features of its score, then that event, whatever its musical value and interest, [does] not count as a performance of that particular work.35

However, Goodman’s philosophical position seems to be intolerant of the inevitabilities of practical music-making. One consequence of rejecting Goodman’s claim obliges us to accept that any “imperfect” performance of “Erlkönig” can and must still qualify as a performance of that song, and not any other. Perhaps it is then worthwhile considering philosopher Amie Thomasson’s view, which Bicknell offers in contrast (and which motivates Chapter Three): that the answers to such ontological problems must be found within artistic practices, “or more concretely, in the practices of those whose words and actions ground the terms.”36 Bicknell identifies singers and composers as candidates for enquiry into song: we might elaborate that list in the case of the Lied to include poets, pianists, coaches, programmers, publishers, and record producers, musicologists, translators, and audiences. Bicknell is concerned, however, that Thomasson’s approach risks being too deferential towards the views of these candidates and that

34 Bicknell, Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, 5. Bicknell’s original questions are posed as follows: “There are two main types of ontological questions we can ask about songs. First, what are a particular song’s identity conditions. That is, what kind of changes can we make to a song and still maintain that it is the “same” song that we started with? Second, what manner of existence do songs have? Are they mental objects like ideas? Do they exist apart from their expression in performances and musical scores?”

35 Ibid., 6.

36 Ibid., 5. 49

it might not account for how divergent their views may be. Somewhere in conciliating between the views and practices of stakeholders and in attempting to draw parameters around tolerable divergences from the notated features of a score we might perhaps discover the authoritative source of a song, its fixed and variable features, and at what point these variations disqualify a performance from counting as a performance of a particular work.

With respect to these questions, Bicknell uses the distinctions made by fellow philosopher Stephen Davies between ontologically “thick” and “thin” musical works to mark a difference between art-songs (a category inclusive of Lieder) and other kinds of songs:

Generally speaking, the thinner the work, the more interpretive freedom the musician is allowed, and the thinner the song text, the more acceptable it is to change the text in performance. A thick work gives musicians comparatively little freedom or room for interpretation. 37

On this view, we can understand folk songs and certain pop songs as ontologically “thinner” than classical art songs as they can typically sustain radical transformations in timbre, arrangement, form, and style without identity loss. One only has to consider the jazz tradition’s endless musical elaborations upon its standards and the embrace we typically extend towards these: we understand that Eva Cassidy’s “Autumn Leaves” is fundamentally the same song that Miles Davis plays under that name, though so many dimensions of their respective versions are fundamentally different. But what about changes in the lyrical text, at their most extreme in contrafacta? Is Jacques Prevert’s 1945 French original "Les Feuilles mortes" the same song as Johnny Mercer’s 1947 English version “Autumn Leaves” (with its substantially different lyrical content)? Is Eric Whittaker’s “Sleep” the same song when sung with the Robert Frost words the composer first set?38 Bicknell clarifies the difference she perceives in classical art music, explaining that unlike a pop song, for instance, which a singer may adapt to suit their mood or contemporary events,

37 Ibid., 8.

38 More on this can be found at “Sleep – Music Catalog – Eric Whitacre,” accessed October 30, 2020, https://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/sleep. 50

[n]ot a word of Schumann’s Dichterliebe or a Mozart duet may be changed at the singer’s whim. Generally speaking, the more a song is considered a work of “classical” or “art” music, the more rigid is its text.39

Whilst Bicknell is writing specifically about lyrics, (which are of course the focus of this project) we can also read “text” to mean the transcribed “work” as a structural whole. In the case of the Lied this rigidity has traditionally applied to the melody, its invariable accompaniment, its instrumentation, and the German language lyrics as set by the composer. Unlike a pop song, which it might make sense to identify as residing in a specific recorded performance for instance, the source of the Lied’s material has primarily been identified as residing in the score. Whilst Bicknell urges an ontological examination based upon consultation with the “grounders of terms”, these same individuals will almost universally profess to locate their individual authority in terms of a close adherence to the score, in line with the notion of werktreue. Thus, singing translations have the potential to challenge not only the identity of a particular song, but entire paradigms.

The Desire for Objectivity

As philosopher Lydia Goehr has identified,40 notated “fixities” and the accompanying regulatory concept of werktreue have steadily become institutional within Western art music since the Enlightenment. These concepts emphasise increased fidelity to the score, (which itself has become more exacting and precise in its demands), cultivate the notion of genius and have served to bring about the decline of overtly performative interactions such as improvisation and ornamentation. “Works” become “objectified expressions of composers that prior to compositional activity did not exist”41, which implies that subsequent to compositional activity such “works” exist as fixed objective entities. In investing composers (who are often unavailable for consultation) with supreme authority the score becomes proxy in their absence. Musicologist Lawrence Kramer elaborates:

39 Bicknell, Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, 3.

40 Lydia Goehr, “Being True to the Work,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47, no. 1 (1989): 55, https://doi.org/10.2307/431993.

41 Ibid., 2. 51

Justifiably or not, Western art music since the mid-nineteenth century has trained people to act as if musical compositions had an ideal existence. The classical masterwork has been implicitly defined as a score imparting transcendental value to any performance in which the variable elements adequately articulate the fixed ones.42

Interestingly, the nature of “adequate articulation” can be subjective, particularly where language is involved. Hence, despite its own emergence coinciding with the emergence of Romantic Lieder, the werktreue concept can make an awkward fit with texted vocal music even in its original state. Additionally, as the Lied was particularly suited for commercial distribution to the amateur market, was championed by popular singers of the day and was easy to adapt, musicologist Katy Hamilton suggests it may in fact have been one of the last idioms to fall under its sway43. In an article that focuses in part on an 1884 edition of “Erlkönig” in English, Hamilton identifies the free approach to Schubert’s rhythms it exhibits as “a fascinating insight into the lack of a notion of werktreue as we would now apply it.”44 When faced with such an example, one that does not comply perfectly with the conditions of the work-concept, Goehr finds it telling that we do not exclude it from falling under that concept:

[a] procedure…made possible in virtue of the connection holding between the paradigm and the derivative use of a concept—the conceptual dependency of the latter upon the former which has to be understood in terms of the aims and beliefs of musical agents.45

Goehr, like Bicknell, draws our attention to the importance of aims and beliefs of musical agents: both those who execute the “work” in addition to those responsible for fixing its material form. It can be seen that the agents responsible for the 1884 edition at hand had a different range of aims and beliefs than might be held by their counterparts today, but it seems there remained a

42 Lawrence Kramer, “Performance and Social Meaning in the Lied: Schubert’s Erster Verlust,” in Song Acts (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 1994), 89.

43 See appendix B4.

44 Katy Hamilton, “Natalia Macfarren and the English German Lied,” in German Song Onstage: Lieder Performance in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Natasha Loges and Laura Tunbridge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 54-55.

45 Goehr, “Being True to the Work,” 61. 52

meaningful connection between this edition and the paradigmatic concept of “Erlkönig”. The question for this chapter is far can we go and still maintain a meaningful connection with the paradigmatic concept of a Lied?

Under the notion of werktreue, any interaction becomes a challenge to the idealised “work”. There are countless variabilities associated with music’s necessary dependence on material transmission or upon interpretive, embodied performance. There are countless more subtle variations that may lead us to assess such an edition as “accurate” or “flawed” or a performance as “boring, mediocre, exciting, transfiguring, revelatory, parodic, eccentric,” or even as “authentic”.46 In print, there are formatting and engraving decisions, interpretations of the autograph; in performance, the quality, or “grain” of voices,47 that can be hard to dissociate from the expressivity of the songs they sing, the choice of a modern or historical pianoforte to accompany, and the implicit and endless dramaturgical possibilities. But there are also those bolder variations where performers or other agents decide to deliberately transform a piece of music in some way. It is these derivative versions that challenge the ontology of the Lied most. These include the practical considerations of preparing a song for multiple voice types and the presentation of a song in transposed keys; the excision of parts of a song or extraction of individual songs from whole cycles; the collisions and consonances of programming choices; choices to dramatize or present in multimedia; and choices to translate or change the lyrical text. These are just a few of the many realities of the dependency of the Lied upon subjects other than the composer.

What starts to become clear in consideration of any interaction with a Lied is the ways in which they, or indeed, any musical “works”, are utterly dependent upon subjects other than the composer for their ongoing existence. The variabilities that are inevitable in any transmission of the Lied highlight the vulnerability of the notion of an authoritative, ideal form independent of performance and complicate the assumption of compositional intention manifested in a score based authoritative “source”.

46 Kramer, “Performance and Social Meaning in the Lied: Schubert’s Erster Verlust”, 89.

47 As described most famously by Barthes in Roland Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice. Translated by Stephen Heath,” in Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977). 53

Making Room for Subjectivity

In the mid-1960s, the spiritualist Rosemary Brown (1916-2001) started producing music she claimed was dictated by the spirits of various famous composers. Liszt was her first and then most frequent visitor, but he was soon joined by Bach, Stravinsky, Chopin, Rachmaninov, John Lennon, Fats Waller and Gracie Fields. Clara Schumann would visit with Brahms in tow to share new compositions by her husband Robert (though she sadly shared none of her own), and Franz Schubert also appeared. Brown thought him “really quite handsome, particularly as he does not have that ‘puffy’, rather jowly look familiar from most portraits.”48 Though Brown lists herself as the principal author on scores, she lists Schubert as co-composer of a pair of Moments Musicaux, some Impromptus, a sonata and several songs.49 Conveniently, as Brown herself did not speak German, all of the Schubert songs were dictated in English – a characteristic common to the song output of a number of her composer friends. Brown sometimes credited this to the composers’ further linguistic education in the afterlife and at other times to the translation services of spiritual intermediaries. Either way, given the opportunity, Schubert apparently chose to transmit new compositions to the Anglophone audience of the mid-late twentieth century in their vernacular language.

While questions might most obviously be raised around the legitimacy of Brown’s claims, issues of authorship, as well as the assured canonical status of her mainly male musical visitors (though, at the time, critics gave some energy towards gauging the “authenticity” of the works Brown “received” on formal musical grounds), the Brown-Schubert “collaborations” offer a useful thought-experiment for a project such as this. Were Schubert indeed our revenant contemporary, is this what he would do? Would writing in the language of his intended audience be a foregone conclusion as it seems to be here? Would direct lingual communication trump other considerations for the Viennese composer? Do these songs count as Schubert Lieder regardless of their language? With such questions in mind, it seems useful at this point to examine other

48 Frankie Perry, “Music From Beyond: The Rosemary Brown Collection,” British Library Music Blog, 2018.

49 Apparently, Schubert tried to sing the latter compositions to her, but “he hasn't a very good voice”. Ibid. 54

posthumous interactions with Schubertian repertoire that have not enjoyed the luxury of permission directly from the composer.

In the absence of compositional consultation or supervision, the score becomes invested with additional authority. As such, publishers frequently purport to “faithfulness” in their editions. Yet, there are many ways of understanding that notion, and ways of expressing that “faith”, as every publication is an act of mediation, and publishers must interpret the texts they choose to publish. Historically at least, publishers have not necessarily made many of those decisions transparent. Musicologist Lawrence Kramer warns of the implications of this, describing publication as “do[ing] damage to the bold yet fragile configurations through which sets of poems are put into music;”50 with “the published version of a song submer[ging] in its wake all other versions, even distinctly unique settings of the same poem.”51 The tonic, according to Kramer, requires a return to the moment in which a song was conceived, the “arcane matrix of thought from which song is born.”52 The autograph copy, in theory, bears the closest witness to this matrix, and urtext critical editions attempt to present it in a more functional form.

A significant consequence of this approach to publication is the exclusion (attempted, at least) of all parties beyond the idealised “transmitter” (the composer) and the idealised “receiver” (the listener). Intermediaries are both essential to this transmission but also have the potential to submerge the object of this transfer: not least performers, but also publishers, editors, recording engineers and scholars, amongst others. While transcultural scholar Lucille Desblache agrees with much of Kramer’s concern about the damage such agents can wreak, she also points out how publication in particular has the capacity to create new configurations around a song that are in fact worthy of consideration:

Music publishing has played a crucial role in the international history of music and in the development of transnational cultural movements. It evidences how music and cultures were traded, exchanged, adapted and consumed. The work of

50 Lawrence Kramer, “In Search of Song,” in Distant Cycles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 3.

51 Lawrence Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 12.

52 Kramer, “In Search of Song”, 3. 55

publishers has also impacted directly on musical products and on the ways they were performed and listened to….printed scores are not the transparent, reliable source they were once believed to be; they bring to light their own history of the period and its players, one enriched by complexities of the material cultures and social technologies of the time.53

While we can share Kramer’s concerns about publication and seek out the autograph where possible, it seems useful to also consider what Desblache is advocating for: curiosity towards the histories that various publication approaches bring to light. Whilst they reveal less perhaps of the intentions of the composer and the “arcane matrix of thought from which song is born”, they reveal more of the reception and performance history of those songs, the ways they have navigated geographical and chronological distances from their makers, and the ways that those makers and their intentions have been understood, manipulated, and transformed over time by a range of subjective agents.

We must look no further for an example of this than to Schubert. Though we know that publication can establish a boundary around a work and has the capacity to establish an otherwise largely informal activity as a permanent composed work, these processes were even less straightforward with the Lied and with the Viennese composer than they were with other genres, which have, nevertheless, inspired frequent debates. Schubert was a relative latecomer to print, establishing much of his fame through performances rather than publications. Once his songs were published, multiple versions often appeared to meet various commercial demands: alternative accompaniments or arrangements for other instruments, and versions with embellishments, simplifications, transpositions, editorial incisions and translated lyrics.

One of the most ubiquitous transformations of the Lied is transposition for different voice types, as well as the offering of ossia for extremities of range or virtuosity. Again, Lawrence Kramer calls attention to the way that such publication choices, made to suit certain commercial briefs, distort the source material. In changing key and in making new key relationships between songs Kramer finds that “[w]hat is lost is of the essence and has to do with this ineffable moment at

53 Desblache, Music and Translation: New Mediations in the Digital Age, 202. 56

which poem and music are fused in the composer’s mind.”54 He elaborates: “transposition - and here I mean the concept that in equal temperament any key is as good as any other - is pernicious to the meaning of the song.”55 Clearly, for Kramer, “meaning” is as much a function of tonality and its context in the Lied as any other component. However, Kramer is forced to admit that Schubert’s own behaviour was “riddled in aesthetic contradiction”:56 it is known that Schubert frequently changed his mind about keys, constantly refitting his songs for publication, demonstrating the tension between his roles as composer and businessman.57 Does this mean we have permission to do the same? Performers routinely make a case for it, singing in transposition where deemed necessary in performance (where it is also less likely to be acknowledged explicitly), but also occasionally advocating for it in print. Tenor Christoph Prégardien argues for it in the foreword for the new Bärenreiter editions of Schubert’s Lieder, claiming that transposition just allows more singers to sing the repertoire,58 whilst pianist Graham Johnson points out that whilst the keys are significant, they are not always practically possible, and some pragmatism is necessary. Johnson goes so far as to declare that the acclaimed baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau would simply not have had a career without transposing, and asserts that “it is better, surely, to hear songs sung by a great singer in transposed keys than by uninteresting singers in the original ones.” While “[k]eeping the key sequence the same in a transposed performance [of Winterreise for example] is a worthy academic consideration… it is the singer’s first responsibility to his public, and to himself, to create musical magic”:59 a telling conciliation between notions of werktreue and the practicalities of embodied performance. Certainly, it seems

54 Kramer, “In Search of Song,” 3.

55 Ibid., 6.

56 Ibid., 4.

57 Ibid., 4.

58 “Schubert Als Gradmesser. Im Gespräch: Christoph Prégardien,” Bärenreiter Verlag, accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/focus/franz-schubert/schubert-lieder/schubert-als-gradmesser-im-gespraech- christoph-pregardien/.

59 Johnson, “The Lied in Performance,” 322. 57

broadly acceptable to these eminent musicians, many of their colleagues60 and to publishers to assert that Schubert’s “Erlkönig” in F minor is the same song as “Erlkönig” in the original G minor: which means that, ontologically, at least for many grounders of the terms, a specific tonality does not seem to form an inviolable characteristic of a Lied. But what of other transformations made in performance and/or committed to print?

Some interpreters make additions that prove controversial. Many historical publications reflect common performance practices of their period, and this includes those of singers close to Schubert. Johann Michael Vogl, the composer’s frequent performance partner, participated with Diabelli in preparing the second edition of Die schöne Müllerin a year and a half after Schubert’s death. The edition reflects the singer’s sense of personal identification with the work, even ownership: the score has several altered pitches and added ornamental embellishments included in an effort to “improve” the cycle and reflect his performing experiences with the composer. Though we can only presume that Schubert was aware of Vogl’s approach from their performances together, in the second half of the nineteenth century these changes were roundly denounced as Fälschungen (falsifications) by editor and musicologist Max Friedländer (who was responsible for what was to become the dominant edition).61 However, a twenty-first-century reviewer tries to distinguish between the simplifications that Vogl made (inadmissible, he finds) and the embellishments he offers. In attempting to make a case for Christoph Prégardien’s 2008 recording with Michael Gees62 (which takes Vogl’s ornaments as a point of departure), the un- named reviewer decides that “embellishments belong to the realm of performance” and “do not belong in a printed edition, as they bind the singer”,63 a critique that demonstrates more tolerance for performative interpretive acts than those inscribed in print. And yet, it is their appearance in printed form that gives a unique insight into Vogl’s performance practice, an insight that would

60 See the popular website https://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/schubertline for hundreds of art song scores (Schubert and many others) available to print in transposition.

61 See Max Friedlaender, “Fälschungen in Schubert’s Liedern,” Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 9 (1893)

62 “Review: Schubert: Die Schöne Müllerin - Prégardien / Gees,” HRAudio.net, n.d., https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=5189.

63 Ibid. 58

otherwise have been lost except in anecdotal form. Given this insight, Prégardien, a contemporary artist, was prompted to reconsider such a practice, and in turn, to invite his audience to consider the acceptable parameters of performance. Where Vogl and Diabelli went wrong, perhaps, was in asserting their version in place of the first edition—as an “original”, not as a “version by Vogl”. Indeed, this is the view put forward by German musicologist Walther Dürr, editor of the Neue Schubert-Ausgabe from 1965 to 1997, who suggested that:

Vogl’s versions (as well as the several versions Schubert often wrote of a song) should serve only as models for individual creation of improvised, non-essential embellishments. 64

In making this distinction, Dürr appears to express tolerance for the possibility of such “individual creation” in performance.

Excisions are as controversial as such additions are in print. When Schumann described the “heavenly lengths”65 of Schubert (in an article which many understood to be a gentle admonishment of some of the older composer’s longer meditations), he inadvertently gave pianist Harold Bauer a kind of permission to publish significantly abridged versions of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in Bb major. In two editions, published in 1918 and 1942 by Schirmer’s Library of Musical Classics, Bauer cut large sections: 389 bars in the first, and 406 in the latter, whilst also altering, condensing and rewriting many bars. Though to her knowledge no recording exists of either edition, scholar Anne M. Hyland discusses how Bauer’s:

urge to render D. 960 not only shorter, but also more hypotactic, lucidly demonstrates the ways in which reception history informs practical approaches to music. Thus, although one might easily dismiss his editorial approach as cavalier, yet the editions merit … serious critical and analytical attention … not only for their details (or rather, omissions), but more significantly for the ways in which they instantiate reception history, thereby contributing towards the as-yet- evolving portrait of Schubert and his music in the first half of the twentieth century. In this sense, they are significant primary documents which tell us

64 Walther Dürr, “Schubert and Johann Michael Vogl: a reappraisal”, 19th century music, iii (1979) 138-140 quoted in Robert D. Levin, “Performance Prerogatives in Schubert ,” Early Music 25, no. 4 (1997): 723–27, https://www- jstor-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/3128416?pq-origsite=summon&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.

65 Anne M Hyland, “[Un]Himmlische Länge: Editorial Intervention as Reception History,” in Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style, ed. Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 76. 59

something new and valuable about how Schubert’s ‘heavenly lengths’ were perceived in the wake of Schumann’s writings, and offer a snapshot – heavenly or otherwise – of how they can be made to say more, rather than less, in absentia.

Hyland’s commentary recalls the tension between Desblache’s advocacy for the reception history embodied in publications vs. Kramer’s concern about their potential to obscure. Though of course this example does not deal with a Lied, it is useful in considering to what extent Bauer’s interaction with Schubert’s original can be tolerated. Are these shortened versions still identifiable as Schubert’s B-flat Major Sonata? Do they reveal anything about their Sonata that we would not otherwise know? In posing the question “what exactly is lost from the music in omitting, as Bauer did, Schubert’s repetitions and sequences?" Hyland asks if there is “any justification for arguing that these [the omitted materials] are somehow indispensable to Schubert’s conception of form, and thus imperative to the work’s structure?”66 We might ask the same of various elements in a Schubertian Lied: which are indispensable? What can be taken away? Does the omission or substitution of lyrical text threaten form irrevocably? Can such interventions tell us about a song’s reception history even as they obscure other data?

In further considering what losses a Lied can survive, the obvious examples to consider are Liszt’s Schubert Lieder transcriptions for solo piano, which omit the lyrical text (at least aurally). There are fifty-eight transcriptions in all, mostly published in Vienna between 1838-1840: twelve were commissioned initially by Diabelli, and a few others by Haslinger once their popularity prompted further commissions. Liszt insisted that the words be printed over the music so that the performer would be aware of their specific literary origins, though of course any listener’s awareness is necessarily contingent on their existing knowledge of the song or the provision of text in some way. In performance these present therefore as “unsung” songs: Christopher Gibbs distinguishes them as “song[s] performed without words”67 from the “song[s] without words”

66 Ibid., 55.

67 Described by at least one contemporaneous reviewer as Gesangsstücke ohne Text (sung pieces without text): Christopher H. Gibbs, Beyond Song: Instrumental Transformations and Adaptations of the Lied., ed. James Parsons, The Cambridge Companion to the Lied (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521800273.013, 225. 60

style that Mendelssohn made so popular.68 Of course, many of Liszt’s Viennese audiences by this time knew Schubert songs by heart; such listeners could silently supply words as active but silent vocal partners. But what of the impact of these transcriptions upon audiences that didn’t already know the songs, such as mid-nineteenth-century audiences outside Vienna? Reviews indicate that they were apparently just as captivated: Liszt’s arrangements seemed able to succeed on musical merits alone69 (this also speaks to the apparent sufficiency of Schubert’s material without the words, as discussed in Chapter One).

In considering this example we must remember that the Liszt transcriptions are Liszt’s readings of Schubert – just as Bauer’s and Vogl’s editions document their own readings. Each agent felt compelled to both interpret and change the works of another and commit those changes to print. By doing so they complicated and extended the ontologies of those works but also made their own points of view material and enduring.

Multiple Authenticities

What is hopefully becoming clear in these examples is a tousle between at least two conceptions of “authenticity” in Lieder transmission—those of compositional authenticity and personal authenticity. These are two of the four species of authenticity that philosopher Peter Kivy proposes in his seminal work Authenticities70. Kivy attempts to overthrow a singular concept traditionally founded in what is considered historically most “accurate” and what comes closest to the perceived (or presumed) intentions of the composer. Kivy proposes instead that in addition to compositional authenticity (respect for the composer’s original conception), there are a further three kinds of authenticity: sonic authenticity (an attempt to restore the sound materials the composer worked with); personal authenticity (making room for a performer’s expression which may deviate from what a composer indicated); and sensible authenticity (the meaning attached to a performance by its audience).

68Lieder ohne Worte: Gibbs., 234.

69 Ibid., 234.

70 Peter Kivy, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). 61

As briefly acknowledged, compositional authenticity, “whose basic aim is to find out from contemporary evidence and source materials as much as possible about how a composer considered that his work might best be performed”,71 is traditionally at the very centre of performance practice. As recourse to consultation with the composer is often impossible (despite Rosemary Brown’s conviction to the contrary), contemporary performers orient themselves overwhelmingly towards the assumed witness of urtext critical editions. Such editions attempt to offer performers the closest simulation of unmediated rapport with composers and to make transparent any external interference. Within this structure it is typically the musicologist’s task to discern “facts” about the “work” and then relate those to the performer in the binding medium of print, though the composer is understood as supreme authority on the work. In the composer’s absence, the printed “work” itself is to be respected, performed and preserved and not made subject to manipulations by other parties72. The implication of this can be seen in remarks about J.S. Bach by Paul Hindemith (though they are broadly applicable to any pre-twentieth-century composer):

We can be sure that Bach was thoroughly content with the means of expression at hand in voices and instruments, and if we want to perform his music according to his intentions we ought to restore the conditions of performance of that time.73

If we co-opt Hindemith’s claim and state that “we can be sure that Schubert was thoroughly content…”, we must similarly ask what we can reliably know about his intentions, what we can glean about them from performance conventions in his lifetime, and what can be presumed from writings, scores and from contemporary descriptions of performance about what might have been the conditions of performance of that time.

71 Jackson, “Authenticity or Authenticities?- Performance Practice and the Mainstream”, 7.

72 “The genuine artist lives only for the work, which he understands as the composer understood it and which he now performs. He does not make his personality count in any way. All his thoughts and actions are directed towards bringing into being all the wonderful, enchanting pictures and impressions the composer sealed in his work with magical power” E.T.A. Hoffmann quoted in Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 2.

73 John Butt, Playing With History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2004), 3. 62

Rosemary Brown had a particularly convenient solution to this problem, as we have seen – welcoming “Schubert” into her home, authorising her own compositional activity through his supernatural mediation. However, what can most of us say with certainty about Schubert’s wishes, and how much, if at all, should they concern us? To whom exactly do we owe any obligation? How should we interpret and prioritise “compositional intention” in the light of posthumous contingencies? In “The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past,” Richard Taruskin critiques such presumptions, maintaining “that composers do not usually have intentions such as we would like to ascertain”. Furthermore, Taruskin finds:

…the need obliquely to gain the composer’s approval for what we do bespeaks a failure of nerve, not to say an infantile dependency. The appeal to intentions is an evasion of the performer’s obligation to understand what he is performing.74

Could it be true that an insistence upon original language performance of Lieder in Anglophone contexts allows some degree of evasion of this kind of obligation?

Personal authenticity, on the other hand, according to Kivy’s definition, originates from the self: “belonging to himself, own, proper” and “acting of itself, self-originated, automatic”.75 For Kivy, the performer must make a “work” belong somehow to themselves, whether through becoming an “arranger” of musical compositions, or through inhabiting a work such that it seems to come from themselves. In this view, a score can be thought of in terms of “suggestions for performance” upon which the performer may legitimately expand. Barthes seems to describe this kind of possessive interaction in the following passage:

For the other’s work to pass in me, I have to define it as written for me and at the same time to deform it, to make it Other by force of love. 76

74 Richard Taruskin, “The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past,” in Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance, 1995, 98.

75 Two Oxford English Dictionary definitions for “authentic” quoted by Kivy, "Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance", 3.

76 Briggs, This Little Art, 131. 63

Barthes illustrates this notion by comparing his own performance of a piece by Bach to that of a performance by harpsichordist Blandine Verlet. Hearing the professional performer by chance on France Musique, at first he did not even recognise the piece, which to his ear was supposed to be sensual, lyrical and tender. Verlet performed the piece three or four times faster than the amateur Barthes. Even as it became clear that it was the same piece, Barthes continued not to recognise it, or to at least resist recognising it, because he realised it had ceased to be “his”. Consequently, in hearing it, nothing happened: “nothing was created; nothing was transformed”.77 Barthes was, he himself admits, an amateur keyboardist—but should the amateur (a word which comes from amator – one who loves and loves again)78 be excluded from aspiring to such deeply personal authenticity in musical performance? More pertinently, is there a parallel in Barthes desire to “create”, “transform”, and make a work his own, to the desires of translators?

In the many examples of the previous section, it is also clear that the role of interpreter can mean actively altering the past, an activity Adorno describes as being “loyal….in being disloyal”.79 Taruskin agrees:

For performers cannot realistically concern themselves with wie es eigentlich gewesen. [How it really was] Their job is to discover, if they are lucky, wie es eigentlich uns gefällt—how we really like it.” 80

In using the collective plural pronoun, Taruskin incidentally invokes Kivy’s fourth species of authenticity: sensible authenticity, which involves the meaning attached to a performance by its audience. It is worth noting however that in attempting to discover “how we really like it” the potential for damage may not be taken into account. Consider Doña Cecilia Giménez’s recent attempt to “restore” Elías García Martínez’s Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) in the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain: though it could be argued that her “interpretation” has actually had a tremendously positive impact on the profile of the original work and the touristic fortunes

77 Ibid., 131.

78 Ibid., 195.

79 Richard Taruskin quotes Theodor Adorno’s description for the Händelian arrangements of Schoenberg and Webern in Taruskin, “The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past”, 107.

80 Ibid., 148. 64

of Borja, the original was irretrievably obscured by her attempt, which itself was made a laughing stock. In music, is such a “defacement” possible? Does a range of transpositions dilute the impact of the composer’s chosen key? Does a transcription diminish the verity of the original? It can be argued that Schubert’s Lieder are not damaged by any of the subjective interpretations in print detailed in the previous section, (particularly as these works are sufficiently canonical to allow for comparison and access to urtext versions), though it is true that in the moment of any performance only one “version” is communicable. With this in mind, we can borrow Taruskin’s critique of the ambitions of the “authentistic performer” (read: the composer-oriented performer) as akin to an art restorer, “who strips away the accumulated dust and grime of centuries to lay bare an original object in all its pristine splendour.” 81 Such splendour seems desirable, but Taruskin tries to advocate for that which is taken away in such an act:

In musical performance, neither what is removed nor what remains can be said to possess an objective ontological existence akin to that of dust or picture. Both what is “stripped” and what is “bared” are acts and both are interpretations [….] What is thought of as the “dirt” when musicians speak of restoring a piece of music is what people, acting out of an infinite variety of motives over the years, have done with it.82

Thus, it is the accretion of these kinds of interpretive acts that this project is concerned with: acts of translation that occupy, intrude, change, assert, deface, transform and reveal how different people, “acting out of an infinite variety of motives”, “really like it”. Hence, whilst one could describe the collection of translations in Chapter Four using the simile of “dust”, we can also understand it as a collection that documents witness.

As we will see in the next chapter, some translators have attempted to justify their translational activity through historical study of compositional intention (and extrapolation from other composer’s expressed feelings on the issue). Others have very much tried to make a case for the artistic merit of their personal interaction with the work, for which they do not feel they require

81 Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance, ProQuest E (Oxford University Press, Incorporated., 1995), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docID=1591191, 150.

82 Taruskin, “The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past”, 150. 65

permission. Resistance to translation is sometimes heard in terms of notions of sonic authenticity (where performance in the original language is understood as faithfulness to the sound, intonation and colour of that language), whilst the last of Kivy’s “authenticities”, “sensible authenticity”, can be seen in translations which attempt to recreate the effect of the original in a new audience, by getting at “what may have occurred in the minds of audiences, a sensitivity or responsiveness lying beneath mere surface impressions”.83 For Kivy, sonic authenticity has taken some precedence over sensible authenticity, with efforts to duplicate sounds failing to take into account how past audiences may have responded to these sounds. Performance in English translation seems a particularly imaginative way of engendering sensible responses from an Anglophone audience more akin to those experienced by German-speaking audiences when sung to in German, but of course translation is not the transparent transmission that many people presume it to be.

To return one last time to Rosemary Brown, for whom Schubert had either learnt to speak English in the afterlife or was happy to rely on a celestial translator: we might compare her confidence to our own doubts, and our lack of permission from the afterlife. By contrast, contemporary Lieder translations exhibit the hubris/courage of an unsanctioned, all-too-worldly mediator—a translational figure bound to their own particularities of identity, location, context, time, and background—who chooses to interact, interpret and essentially rewrite a German Lied into an English version of itself.

83 Jackson, “Authenticity or Authenticities?- Performance Practice and the Mainstream”, 6. 66

Debates around “the English Lied ”

…the sense arrives, like a glowing hot coal, straight from the mouth of the singer, and strikes instantly at the head and heart of the listener.

—British opera producer David Pountney, on vernacular singing translations.1

To sing lieder in translation is a weak substitute for the real thing – a poor supermarket wine beside one of the great Rhine or Rhine-Hessian vintages!

—Keith Whitton, author of Lieder: An Introduction to German Song.2

I know I’m sticking my neck out, but I just had to do it. Does the idea offend you?

—American folk-singer Richard Dyer-Bennet, discussing performing his own translation of

Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin at New York’s Alice Tully Hall in 1977.3

English texts have nothing to do with German songs. Why don’t you say that it’s necessary for your catalogue and sales in England? Then I don’t mind.

—Johannes Brahms to Fritz Simrock, February 24, 1887.4

Now that we have some sense of the broader issues at stake, we can examine the debate around singing Lieder in translation more closely. The following chapter will firstly establish some historical context, and then proceed to identify contributors to the debate and bring forward their key concerns around the ethics, aesthetics, and practicalities of this topic. These concerns are grouped according to what they fear is lost and what they believe is found in singing in translation. Hosting this debate constitutes an attempt to fulfil the task proposed by Jeanette

1 Quoted by Peter Low, “Translating Songs That Rhyme,” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 16, no. 1&2 (2008): 2.

2 Whitton, Lieder: An Introduction to German Song, 85.

3 Raymond Ericson, “Dyer-Bennet Meets Schubert at Tully Hall,” The New York Times, January 1977.

4 Max Kalbeck, ed., Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel (Berlin: Deutsch Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1919, repr. Tützing, Ger.: Hans Schneider, 1974) quoted by Hamilton, “Natalia Macfarren and the English German Lied.” 52. 67

Bicknell in her discussion of the ontology of song (as discussed in Chapter Two): that the philosopher should be “engaged in a dialogue with those who ground the terms.”5 Therefore, in examining the political-aesthetic economy of singing translations, I attempt to engage in such a dialogue.

Determining what criteria participants should possess in order to participate in such a dialogue is naturally a key concern. For the purposes of this project, I have included historical writings alongside the views of contemporary agents involved in the practices of Schubert Lieder – performers, translators and scholars. Through presentation and analysis of their views on singing translations, an attempt to trace the contours of both prohibition and advocacy of translation amongst these figures, and consideration of “authenticities” in relation to singing translations, this chapter seeks to determine the trajectory, parameters, and stakes of the debate. In addition, this chapter seeks to promote the centring of such debate as a desirable, healthy and invigorating dimension of ongoing contemporary Lieder performance more broadly.

Lost in Translation

For an example of the kind of pushback these translators encounter we need look no further than the view expressed by Keith Whitton at the outset of this chapter. Characterising a translation as a “poor substitute” is typical in both the area of Lieder translation and in broader literary translational practice, as are colourful metaphors of loss, betrayal or fraudulence that assert the task of the translator to be not only futile but often destructive. This can be seen in the oft-cited Italian idiom traduttore, traditore, which equates the translator with a traitor, or in the comparison that the Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher and semiotician Umberto Eco makes between translation and “dentures or a pair of glasses”, a prosthetic “means by which I gain limited access to something that lies outside my range.”6 Others make more creatively pejorative comparisons: James Howell, a seventeenth-century Anglo-Welsh historian and writer,

5 Bicknell, Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, 7.

6 Ironically enough, this quote comes from a document advising upon thesis writing. Eco’s negativity around the indirectness of translation overlooks the ways in which such tools can potentially help exceed ‘normal’ capacities (ie, glasses that can give better than 20/20 vision). Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013), 50. 68

said that “some hold translations not unlike to be/the wrong side of a Turkish tapestry”,7 whilst the German poet Heinrich Heine decried translations of his poems into French to “moonlight stuffed with straw”8. Perhaps most famously of all, the Russian novelist and translator Vladimir Nabokov famously asked (and answered): What is translation? On a platter A poet’s pale and glaring head, A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter, And profanation of the dead.

Though Nabokov’s comparisons are brutal, (for him, the act of translation becomes the act of beheading a poet, of making music into noise, and of profaning the dead), their intensity is shared by most interlocutors who discuss singing translations. Almost all writing on the topic starts from this pessimistic position, acknowledging just how problematic such translations can and have been in practice, asserting that the Lied is untranslatable, and even going so far as to describe those who write or use singing translations as “ignorant and vulgar.”9 Admittedly, bad examples are so prevalent that even Bryan Benner of The Erlkings declares “we’ve all been traumatized more than once”!10 Thus, critiques tend to be scathing, as can be seen in the following examples. Lieder scholar Eric Sams found the 1946 translations of Australian Sir Robert Garran’s to be “clearly the result of a relaxation from his more demanding duties, with a corresponding relaxation of their more exacting standards”11 (Garran was erstwhile a distinguished constitutional lawyer). Descriptions of “rhymed doggerel in a language that no one but translators ever wrote”12 feature in a 1989 article on singing in translation by Arthur Graham, a singer and teacher; while Anne Rodda, writing in a book of essays on translation in theory and practice, spends considerable time exposing how a turn of the century singing translation for

7 David Johnston, “Introduction,” in Stages of Translation: Essays and Interviews on Translating for the Stage, ed. David Johnston (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1996), 10.

8 Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 252.

9 Tunbridge, “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars”, 66.

10 Quote transcribed from phone interview - 2 January 2019.

11 Sams, “Lied Texts: Schubert and Schumann: Songs and Translations by Robert Randolph Garran.”

12 Arthur Graham, “A New Look at Recital Song Translation,” Translation Review 29, no. 1 (1989): 31. 69

Mozart’s “Das Veilchen” fails both as independent poetry and as a faithful rendition to Goethe.13 In these examples and many more, the consensus gathers that singing translations are by definition “imperfect”14 and too impossibly constrained for serious consideration.

There is perhaps no more perfect encapsulation of this prejudice than in John Greer’s song “Reflections while translating Heine (Fantasia on a theme of R. Schumann)”. In 2012, the Canadian song composer opened his cycle A Sarah Binks’ Songbook by having the titular heroine sing some of the “translations” she writes as the lead character in Paul Hiebert’s 1947 satirical (and fictional) biography Sarah Binks. Having befriended some German neighbours on the prairies, this “Songstress of Saskatchewan” decides to render some of the German poetry they have shared with her into English. Her efforts include what she believes to be her almost perfect version of Heinrich Heine’s “Du bist wie eine Blume”15:

Du bist wie eine Blume, You are like one flower, So hold und schön und rein; So swell, so good and clean, Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmut I look you on and longing Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Slinks me the heart between

In Greer’s setting Binks sings this first part of her translation within Schumann’s musical setting. Greer then has her digress for a few verses to muse upon her own genius before she resumes with Schumann and the remainder of her singing translation:

Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände Me is as if the hands Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt’, on head yours put them should

13 Rodda and Gaddis Rose, “Translating for Music: The German Art Song.” 147-148.

14 Michel Dimitri Calvocoressi, “The Practice of Song-Translation,” Music & Letters 2, no. 4 (1921): 321–22.

15 I offer Richard Stokes’ literary translation for comparison (“Du Bist Wie Eine Blume | Song Texts, Lyrics & Translations | Oxford Lieder,” accessed November 6, 2020, https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/599.

You are like a flower, So sweet and fair and pure; I look at you, and sadness Steals into my heart. I feel as if I should lay My hands upon your head, Praying that God preserve you So pure and fair and sweet.

Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte Praying that God you preserve, So rein und schön und hold. So swell, so clean, and good.

Though Binks’s translational effort was undoubtedly sincere, we are supposed to know better than she: to smile at her irrepressible hubris and the incongruities of her translation, to laugh knowingly at her apparent limitations and the ways she has chosen to domesticate the foreign material of the poem. Perhaps we are also meant to laugh at her for her gender or provinciality. The humour relies at least partly upon us having an existing knowledge of the Schumann setting, or at least recourse to discover it, and with it the Heine lyric (and a scholarly translation, should that be necessary). More fundamentally, it relies upon a shared presumption of the folly inherent in attempting to translate Lieder and its deep Germanic Romanticism, so contingent on its musical setting, into singable English. As her invisible audience we are meant to join Heine in equating her effort with “straw-stuffed moonlight”. We are also meant to join the critics in understanding Binks’s action as presumptuous and wonder at how she thinks herself worthy to encounter and, in fact, mediate the works of such a cultural giant as Heine. Such assumptions underscore the hegemony of original language performance practice in contemporary Lieder performance.

In the context of this orthodoxy, any change, no matter how well-intentioned, is therefore generally understood to disturb a whole range of tautly contrived relationships within the song fabric. Doing the work required to perform and understand the repertoire in its original state is intensive and highly esteemed. Within this context, singing in translations is simply singing “in the wrong language”.16 In his 2000 article on “Opera Libretti and Songs: Translating into English”, Michael Irwin, a musical translator himself, states unequivocally that “translation impairs what is heard” [my emphasis]. He goes on: “music is deformed with a different sequence of vocal sounds imposed upon it” [again, my emphasis].17 Such descriptors, invoking notions of wrongness, impairment and deformity, carry an emotional, even a moral weight – and effectively charge the translator with what amounts to musical abuse. Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan uses similarly strong language: she considers “singing songs in translation to be

16 An anonymous participant described singing translations in this way.

17 Irwin, “Opera Libretti and Songs: Translating into English,” 1023. 71

generally against the music,” which she describes as “an inseparable union between chosen text and harmony”.18 Again, an opposition is evoked: you can either be for or against the music, which itself embodies a quasi-divine unity that no mortal should tear asunder.

The importance of this unity can be understood in terms of Kivy’s definition of “sonic authenticity”. As the Lied is a sonic art, the sound, stress and rhythms of the German words are understood to be as essential to the form’s authentic performance as their semantic properties. Any presumption of the separability of these elements is deeply problematic, as Hannigan writes:

…the colours and meaning which are invariably linked to text setting, are near impossible to replicate in translation. And we have also to consider that every vowel has an overtone, so once we are no longer singing the same vowel as the composer originally set, we are in a way, changing the harmonic structure of a piece, even though we did not change the actual notes.19

Hannigan’s astute argument is reminiscent of that made by music critic Herbert Peyser in his 1922 article, “Some Observations on Translation”. He also describes how:

[c]ertain tones and combinations of tones presuppose certain aggregations of overtones. Change these, and no matter how you retain their previous relationships, you evoke and bring into play another set of overtones and hence a new scheme of color, which can more or less raise or lower the potentialities of the music. 20

Such comments dispute the notion of distinct and separable elements of language and music in a Lied and point out how deeply musical oral language is. In addition to these concerns for the specific overtones of vowels and their relations with specific pitches, there is concern for the loss of what Peyser describes as “the peculiar clang-tint”21 of an individual language. Iain Burnside uses an example from the Russian repertoire to illustrate the same kind of point, asking “Who

18 see Appendix B3.

19 see Appendix B3.

20 Peyser, “Some Observations on Translation,” 357.

21 Ibid. 72

wants to hear […] Rachmaninoff “Zdes kharosho” in English? ‘How fair this spot?’ Please...” 22 whilst Graham Johnson uses an example from the French repertoire, asking the reader to “think what loss of atmosphere and potency a performance in English [of Duparc’s “L’invitation au voyage”] without the original luxe, calme et volupté of Baudelaire would entail!”23

It is hard to imagine English lyrics that could replicate the easy sensuality of the French or the calm grandeur of the Russian without embarrassing a native English speaker. Such arguments make it clear that for some stakeholders at least, changing the words in a Lied amounts to the same thing as changing the music. Thus the question arises: if a Schubertian Lied is sung in “the wrong language”, and additionally, a language that the composer himself would not have understood, how can it remain a Schubertian Lied? Hannigan feels that in listening to a song in translation “we are not listening any longer to what the composer actually wrote” [my emphasis], suggesting that the work actually ceases to be itself in translation. The ontological peril brought about by changing the language of the “chosen text” can be seen clearly for example in the case of the premiere of Brahms’s Requiem in England. As the premiere was in English, composer and scholar George Alexander Macfarren recoined Ein Deutsche Requiem as An English Requiem: a change necessary, in his view, to better reflect the change of language and performance context.24 We can imagine how odd it would have seemed, in fact, to arrive for a performance of a German Requiem only to hear it sung in English, and while there are arguably infinite ways to be German or English that have nothing to do with language, Macfarren clearly felt that commonly held assumptions about the nationalistic implications of language and the assimilative properties of translation compelled this renaming. And yet, we are likely broadly comfortable with asserting that it was still a performance of Brahms’s Requiem: even sung in translation, we understand that this was the same “work”.

22 See Appendix B1.

23 See Appendix B5.

24 “To render the title of this work in analogous language would be to call it an English Requiem for the name signifies that the music is set to words in the vernacular of the country in which it was first performed; and, in like manner it is with an English version of these words that the composition is brought before an English public.” Macfarren’s programme notes from the premiere quoted in Michael Musgrave’s liner notes to “An English Requiem” (Choir of King's College 2017). 73

The type of nationalism that this example hints at was most evident in the practice of singing translations in the wake of the first world war. We have seen how connected the Lied was to the emergence of the German state; Graham Johnson explains that:

[…] Germany is not the only country whose politics have been mirrored by its singing. The complacency, snobbery, and insularity of “Little Britain” comes flooding from the shellac in certain pre-war records of English song, not to mention our performances of Lieder in English translation, or perhaps worse, atrociously enunciated German.25

Johnson’s comments suggest that translation during this period was a political act. Certainly, both Lieder performed in translation and in poorly pronounced German were indicative of the prejudice that had taken root in England at that time against German culture, which displaced a formerly admiring dynamic between the two states. Johnson describes elsewhere how “the disinclination of shell-shocked British audiences to hear the German language phonated in any form”26 favoured the translation of German repertoire in performance, in an “era when dachshunds were kicked in the street and the Bechstein Hall had to be renamed Wigmore Hall…”27 At this time, translations allowed the music of Schubert and his Teutonic colleagues to be heard even when the “parents and siblings of boys who were slaughtered in the trenches were in no mood to hear the language of the Barbarian sung at them.”28 In this fractious context, singing translations offered a means to hang on to beloved music whilst neutralising its language and assimilating its content to suit the tastes of Georgian England. We can also understand such translations as asserting some kind of cultural victory in their appropriation of the Teutonic material.

In contemporary Britain choosing to translate into English has other problematic political implications, particularly in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016.

25 Johnson, “The Lied in Performance”, 324.

26 See Appendix B5.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid. 74

Both Johnson and fellow pianist Iain Burnside express concern about the political implications of translating songs from the continent in the age of Brexit. The latter points out that:

in the UK, […]as a culture we are increasingly lazy about – and occasionally hostile to – learning other European languages. This has led to a sense of Anglophone supremacy/entitlement that I am passionately opposed to. I know that Liederabend audiences here and abroad are not to be tarred with this brush, but it is a sad part of our broader cultural/political landscape. Whilst excluding “Liederabend audiences” from his critique, Burnside seems to be concerned that the song culture they patronise not fall any further into the Anglocentricism he perceives at work in the broader culture. Johnson agrees, urging against any trend towards performing Lieder in translation in the interest of maintaining its European sensibility. Though he describes prominent translational efforts such as Sams’s as “…a talking point, an interesting experiment” he claims that:

in the end if we were to have to decide between the future of Little Englanders and Brexiteers, I am afraid I would still place my faith in the authenticity and sheer numbers of the EU. A language that was good enough for Schubert to live, think and compose in is good enough for me.

Such commentary not only places the onus very much on performers and audiences to do the work required to understand Schubert’s chosen language, but it also asserts that original language performance has an ethical dimension beyond duties to Schubert or the Lieder canon. Johnson indirectly claims political economy for this most concise of musical forms and thus charges any translational activity with additional responsibility.

It is from this position that many concerns arise about how translations can intrude or corrupt upon notions of “meaning”, imperiling what Kivy calls “sensible authenticity”. When sung, translations cease to be an external supplement, asserting themselves as they do within the musical fabric and usurping the position of the original text. Because of this, Erik Brewerton states in his 1924 article on song translation that “within every translation an antagonism springs up which can never be entirely reconciled”.29 Sholto Kynoch, pianist, founder and Artistic Director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, describes this antagonism as “someone […] forcing this very direct literal understanding onto me

29 Erik Brewerton, “Song Translation,” The Musical Times 65, no. 980 (1924): 893–94. 75

which I don’t really want.…”30 For Kynoch, regardless of his role as a performer, programmer or listener, any sung translation runs the risk of conflicting with an existing and cherished interpretation in this way.

I was able to observe the conflict of such subjectivities in action recently, as I watched a graduate class discuss their own efforts to create a singing translation for Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “Wandrers Nachtlied”. The class discussed at exhaustive lengths possible substitutes for Gipfeln (dative plural of the noun Gipfel), a simple topographical description which may seem otherwise inconsequential. However, as those familiar with the song will know, it is one which sets the scene for the entire song. A two-syllable noun was required to match the musical setting, and “summits”, “hilltops”, and “mountains” were all proposed and considered by the class. Their conversation reflected both strong personal preferences alongside concern for singability, rhyme, and considerations of historicity31. I cite this example as it seemed impossibly difficult for the group to find consensus on even this single choice: it is therefore easy to imagine that a performance of the translation they eventually produced could produce similarly passionate division in its listeners. Jeremy Sams describes the kind of loss involved in this kind of experience (either by performers or listeners) as a “mourning for the original that they know and have learned.”32 On the other hand, imagine an audience whose first encounter with “Wandrers Nachtlied” is made through the performance of this class’s translation. Having read this paragraph or being previously acquainted with the song, one becomes aware of the possibilities contained in the noun Gipfel. That audience however, who may only hear “summits” sung in its place, do not have access to that range of possibilities. Do they mourn for an original that they cannot know and cannot learn? Does the translation become the original when it is the first version that is heard? And what is the translator’s responsibility in that case?

In addition to being intrusive or distracting, “translations are often inaccurate, and sometimes even

30 Transcribed from phone interview, 20 December 2018.

31 Out of interest, a translator I consulted on this problem found “hilltop” to be preferable as the Kickelhahn, the location of Goethe’s hike, was just slightly higher (200m) than the official limit of a hill.

32 See Appendix B10. 76

unintentionally amusing, even with the best intentions.”33 Joseph Addison, English essayist, poet, playwright and politician and co-founder of The Spectator wryly summarised some of the consequences of vocal translation, as true in 1711 as today:

…our Authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the tune. By this Means the soft Notes that were adapted to Pity in the Italian, fell upon the Word Rage in the English; and the angry Sounds that were turn’d to Rage in the Original, were made to express Pity in the Translation. It oftentimes happen’d likewise, that the finest Notes in the Air fell upon the most insignificant Words in the Sentence. I have known the word And pursu’d through the whole Gamut, I have been entertain’d with many a melodious The, and have heard the most beautiful Graces Quavers and Divisions bestow’d upon Then, For, and From; to the eternal Honour of our English Particles.34

Addison’s ironic summary largely matches the drier 1972 list of Frederic Kirchberger, who felt it necessary to explain the pitfalls of his craft in the preface to a collection of his own translations. He lists:

1) key words in the wrong places 2) word order involuted 3) rhymes prioritised = trite/far-fetched word choices 4) unmusical or un-English word declamation 5) translations lack the sound / flow of natural English, let alone English poetry. 35

However, many translations take even greater liberties. In a recent lecture, (kindly shared with me in transcription by the author), scholar Susan Youens offered a critical evaluation of a nineteenth century Winterreise translation into French. Youens describes the protagonist of this particular Voyage d’Hiver as a “Frenchified winter wanderer, a transmogrified creature who spouts encyclopédiste philosophical Reason, conventional piety, and Romantic fustian in turn.”36 Youens finds these to be traits entirely lacking in the protagonist of the original. The anonymous

33 see Appendix B5.

34 Addison as quoted by Apter and Herman, Translating For Singing: The Theory, Art and Craft of Translating Lyrics (Bloomsbury Advances in Translation), 26.

35 Frederic Kirchberger, “The German Song Cycles. Should They Be Sung in the Original or in English Translation?,” Journal of Singing 62, no. 5 (2006): 532.

36 From a forthcoming scholarly article by Susan Youens, shared by private correspondence. 77

Gallic translator, writing in the 1840’s, also gave themselves the liberty of many more verses than the original to expand upon these and a host of other themes, again quite alien to the Germanic original. This effort, more recognisable as an adaptation or appropriation perhaps, demonstrates how broadly translation as a notion has been understood. In this case, for this translator, singing in French required not only a lingual change but a psychological transformation of the protagonist.

Sung translations can be intrusive or distracting even where the original is not known, as they destroy the inevitable (and often desirable) mystique of the foreign lyric. Arthur Fox-Strangways rather drolly described this kind of problem as equivalent to losing one’s appetite for “tète de veau” if it appears in English on the menu as “calves head”:37 somehow foreign languages confer a kind of elevation it is hard to match in one’s own tongue, particularly when one does not understand them. In his 1920 article “In Defence of Translations”, British critic and music writer Edward Dent suggested that:

If they [a British audience] hear English, they are bound to refer it in some degree to their normal world, to the world of common sense, and it is exactly from the world of common sense that they wish through music to find momentary escape.38

Such momentary escape can understandably be a desirable dimension in a song recital or indeed, any musical experience, though in the case of the Lied it is a phenomenon possible only in non- German speaking settings. Contemporary composer/singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane describes how this quality is exactly what compelled him when listening to a performance of Schumann’s Dichterliebe:

I didn’t speak German and I was still deeply moved by it. I don’t really think you have to understand a word of it in order to get the sweep. There is a kind of dramaturgy to that cycle and the dramaturgy to me is legible in the absence of the word.39

37 A H Fox-Strangways, “The Translation of Songs,” The Musical Times, 1940.

38 Edward J Dent, “Music: In Defence of Translations,” The Athenaeum, 1920, 376.

39 Transcribed from interview 4 January 2019. 78

This different kind of legibility prompted Kahane to learn the cycle for himself despite the lingual disconnect and perform it on tour alongside his own cycle, the Craigslistlieder. He describes the negative space of a song as a desirable attribute, whether that space comes from the absence of translation or simply of explanation. That negative space provides a surface onto which a recipient can creatively project, an opportunity for ‘personal authenticity’ which makes Kahane

…reluctant to talk about the specifics of songs, not just for fear of demystifying a particular song and therefore depriving them of their own subjective relationship to that song, but also the broader veil that conceals what is fact and what is fiction.

Similarly, the South African visual artist William Kentridge also talks about how he doesn’t understand the German of Schubert’s Winterreise, though he has created a celebrated set of projections to accompany the cycle that has premiered at major festivals.40 Instead of functioning as comprehensible narratives, Kentridge describes Müller’s texts as being “like prayers”, “setting off an emotional response”41 somewhere deeper than the conscious space of mere textual meaning. I would suggest that many audiences in Anglophone settings experience Schubertian Lieder in exactly this way, but that candour about the muted literal meaning in that experience is quite rare. Jeremy Sams expresses discomfort at this reality in inimitable terms: if “‘I love you’ sounds the same to us as […] ‘I need to have a shit’..” he wonders, fairly I suggest, what the point of the sung language is.

These arguments, then, beg the question: is it possible to imagine satisfying a range of compositional, personal, sensible and sonic authenticities in Lied performance whilst facilitating greater access to textual meaning for Anglophone receivers of the Lied?

40 “Winterreise | William Kentridge | Quaternaire,” accessed April 28, 2020, http://www.quaternaire.org/william- kentridge/winterreise.

41 “‘Winterreise’ Augmented by Kentridge Video Art - The New York Times,” accessed April 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/arts/music/winterreise-augmented-by-kentridge-video-art.html. 79

“Hacks and Versifiers”

As the Schubertian Lied first made its forays on the continent and beyond, English versions were argued to be necessary for their dissemination. As might be surmised, this was asserted by publishers, who saw the wider commercial potential of making translations available for amateur use. However, these publishers did not always take the most care with the creation of these editions, and the procedures employed to create these English versions were not always straightforwardly categorizable as translation proper. In December 1831 the London firm of Johanning and Whatmore sought to promote Schubert’s setting of “Erlkönig” (written by the teenaged composer a mere sixteen years earlier) through the publication of a version featuring Sir Walter Scott’s English version of Goethe’s original lyric “shoehorned”42 in. In this case the publisher was likely seeking to piggyback upon the poet’s greater fame to bring Schubert into wider circulation in England; unfortunately, the result is rather clumsy and involves some heavy rhythmical changes to accommodate the Scott version, which was not written specifically for singing.43 A decade later, Cramer, Addison and Beale of London launched a series of Schubert song volumes with English lyrics “imitated from the German by Thomas Oliphant”. Though Oliphant was well known at the time for his extensive interpretations of German songs, by all accounts apparently Oliphant did not actually speak German.44 This fact perhaps accounts for the alternative adjective to describe his activity, which relied heavily upon English paraphrases written by others. Novelties such as these “imitations” became fairly common in Britain by the 1860s and 70s, though it was not until 1871 that the German born pianist and critic Ernst Pauer assembled a representative selection of Schubert’s work with singing translations for the English market. It is not clear from his editions, however, who exactly created the English texts that they

42 Katy Hamilton used this unusual adjective in private correspondence with me to describe a lyric that sits uncomfortably in the melodic contour written for the German original: a result something like the Grimmsian step- sister jamming her foot into Cinderella’s slipper and claiming it her own. See Appendix B4.

43 See Appendix B4.

44 Wikipedia, “Thomas Oliphant (Lyricist),” accessed August 27, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Oliphant_(lyricist). 80

bear or whether their process had any stricter criteria than that of Mr. Oliphant.45

From 1874 the German publisher Simrock decided to issue bilingual editions, and co-operative partnerships began to form between German and English publishers.46 As a consequence, many of Schubert’s compositions for piano and voice were actually first heard in Britain in English translation, and performance records from the regular “popular” concerts held at London’s Crystal Palace from 1855 onwards attest to this. The directors of the series, German-born August Manns and his colleague George Grove, did much to introduce Schubert’s music to their audiences, featuring many Austro-Germanic performers alongside domestic artists who sang in both the original language and in translation. In fact, Schubert songs appeared as frequently in English translation as they did in German throughout the almost thirty-year season of concerts.47 Even Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (D965) received its English premiere sung in English, as “The Swiss Peasant on the Rock” (now more commonly known as “The Shepherd on the Rock”) at the Hanover Square Rooms in 1836.48 If this version of Schubert’s original title gives us any indication, translators of the time gave themselves some creative latitude.

The invention of the phonograph in 1877 and the mainstream circulation of recordings in the early decades of the 20th century did much to change the increasing ubiquity of this practice. Alongside the possibility of private and repeated listening at home, societies devoted to the connoisseurship of Lieder were established in England (including the Hugo Wolf Society) and encouraged a debate about the necessity and aesthetic desirability of singing in translation. As appreciation for performance in the original language grew, advocates for singing in translation

45 Pauer assembled a four volume collection, which included both German and English translations: See John Reed, Christopher H Gibbs, and James H editors Ottaway, “Schubert’s Reception History in Nineteenth-Century England,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 200.

46 Katy Hamilton, “England,” in Brahms in Context, ed. Natasha Loges and Katy Hamilton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 322.

47 Weller offers a catalogue of all Schubert performances at the Crystal Palace from 1855-1883 in her PhD dissertation: Beth Anne Weller, “The Reception of Schubert in England, 1828-1883” (King’s College London, 2015), https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-reception-of-schubert-in-england-18281883(32622a6a-5ac6- 4d24-8ba3-74353cc1d32e).html., 385-396.

48 Reed, Gibbs, and Ottaway, “Schubert’s Reception History in Nineteenth-Century England,” 256. 81

had to defend themselves against being classed as “grubbing hacks and soulless versifiers.”49 This defensive position can be seen particularly in Arthur Fox-Strangways’ attempts to spearhead a more deliberate translational movement through a number of articles and calls for translations in his newly founded periodical Music and Letters in the 1920s.50 However, despite his best efforts, as the English audience increased its familiarity with the repertoire, arguments for the necessity of immediate linguistic comprehensibility became less compelling. Parallel to the increasing connoisseurship of the Lieder audience was a gradual custodial transfer of the repertoire from the amateur and (relatively private) domestic realm to that of professionals and public, commodified performances. Performers of Lieder accordingly garnered more prestige, and many became more invested in issues of “authenticity”, a concept which became increasingly rooted in the primacy of the original language. At the same time these performers became less concerned with facilitating the comfort of a wide range of receivers and more concerned with honouring the perceived goals of the composer. As the Lieder landscape changed, translators found themselves and their activities increasingly marginalised. Ironically, it is from this disadvantaged position that we see many translators come into greater visibility. In attempting to promote themselves from dismissal as “hacks”, translators were forced to engage, to some extent at least, in a rather circular debate around the processes and validity of their practice.

In trying to make a distinction between translators hired by publishers to increase revenues and break new markets and translators who aspire to create art or even to receive a future verdict as “a great interpreter”,51 a great many commentators have offered their thoughts on the ideal qualities a creator of singing translations should possess. The following come from documents

49 Sigmund Spaeth, “Translating to Music,” The Musical Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1915): 298.

50 Fox-Strangways’ call for the public to submit Lieder singing translations prompted a parallel conversation amongst his peers, and a small culture of performances and publications (collaborators and mentees included the tenor Steuart Wilson and soprano Lucia Young, both of whom premiered their own translations at Wigmore Hall).

51 “Why should not the modern Anglicizer of vocal music be ambitious for the future verdict “He was a great interpreter”? Perhaps if the thoughtless propagandists of “singing in English” and the careless crticis of translations in general realized the stupendous difficulties faced by the translator of even the simplest song, they would be more inclined to treat with respect and consideration a work worthy of the most inspired poet-musician, instead of relegating it to the underworld of grubbing hacks and soulless versifiers.” Spaeth, “Translating to Music”, 298. 82

which constitute the historical debate (an overview of these documents can be found in Chapter One). American music author and critic Lawrence Gilman proclaimed in 1911 that such a verdict would require a candidate who was both “a musician and a poet of inspiration and fabulous skill in order to achieve the task of providing…a viable English text, let alone one that would give satisfaction to an appreciative lover of the original.”52 To these qualities American musicologist Sigmund Spaeth added “linguist” in 1915, (though he stressed it was one of the least important qualities required);53 American music critic Herbert Peyser added “etymologist” 54 and

“psychologist” 55 in 1922; and in 1921 the Greek multilingual music writer, critic and translator M. D. Calvocoressi qualified that the translator must also be “an expert practical musician”, and, at that, one equipped to deal with musical prosody, phrasing, analysis, and voice-production, regardless of whether the composer has taken these things into consideration or not.56 In 1924 British critic, music writer and opera translator Edward Dent brought up the necessity for the translator to “know something of the language from which he is translating”, but stressed that “it is more important that he should have a good command of his own.”57 British ethnomusicologist, editor and translator Arthur Fox-Strangways made one further recommendation in 1940: “The best translator is the singer, if he has the knack”,58 which naturally his colleague, baritone Harry Plunket-Green agreed with: The true singing translation is freedom itself; it should be sound English, should be able to rank as a poem, and should follow the lilt of the song. […] The freer the hand, the better the chance for prosody and metre. Only a singer can appreciate this; and on the rare occasions when the translator is both singer and poet

52 Lawrence Gilman, “Opera in English,” The North American Review 193, no. 666 (1911): 748.

53 Sigmund Spaeth, “Translating to Music,” The Musical Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1915): 298.

54 Peyser, “Some Observations on Translation”, 366.

55 Ibid., 353-4.

56 Calvocoressi, “The Practice of Song-Translation”, 314.

57 E J Dent, “The Translation of Operas,” in Proceedings of the Musical Association, 61st Sess. (Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical Association, 1934.), 82.

58 A H Fox-Strangways, “German Song,” The Musical Times, 1940: 439. 83

himself—“Schuhmacher und Poet dazu”59—we get masterpieces to sing.60

What Spaeth realised early in the debate was how rare such combinations of qualities are. He proposed that “if all these qualities are not to be found in one man, it would be better for several individuals to collaborate”;61 a notion which Arthur Fox-Strangways reinforced in 1921, when he called for “a school of song-translators […] to arise”, one that was “truly co-operative and mutually critical.”62 Fox-Strangways went some way towards trying to establish such a school through his efforts at Music and Letters but these were not sustained beyond 1922. Regardless, the Schubert scholar E.J.Porter renewed this call in 1940 in his article, “Song Translation”. Porter expressed a wish for a set of “authorised versions”63 of all the great vocal music in English, in particular Schubert, to be created. He felt this would most ideally be achieved through co-operative group translation.

Many of these same assertions are made by translation advocates much later in the century. For instance, American translator Frederic Kirchberger wrote in 1972 that a musical translator should be: sufficiently sensitive to the essential demands of both poetry and music, mindful of the singer’s needs, and—last, but not least—patient enough to work his way through a hundred revisions […], 64 whilst the singing teacher Arthur Graham made the now familiar argument in 1989 that a translator should be able “to integrate knowledge from prosody, psychology and music to come

59 Another reference to shoes as a metaphor for translation! This is a reference to Hans Sachs, a meistersinger and shoemaker, poet and playwright (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576).

60 Plunket Greene, Interpretation in Song, 139-140.

61 Spaeth, “Translating to Music”, 291.

62 A H Fox-Strangways, “Song-Translation,” Music & Letters 2, no. 3 (1921): 223.

63 E G Porter, “Song Translation,” The Music Review, 1940, 374.

64 Kirchberger, “The German Song Cycles. Should They Be Sung in the Original or in English Translation?”, 532. 84

up with acceptable, even artistic, translations.”65 In 1996 British translator Jeremy Sams agreed that “things like being able to read music, understand voices,…understand a few languages” are important but, (in a reclamation of the maligned term with which this discussion began) “the most important [skill of a translator for singing] is to be able to versify, to spin verses.”66 New Zealand translation scholar Peter Low urged in 2003 that competent translators should be “skilled in manipulating the target language and preferably native speakers,” 67 equip themselves with dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries and thesauri, and “should preferably sing the song in order to immerse themselves.” 68 In 2008 he added the practical suggestion to study wordsmith lyricists such as Gilbert, Lerner, Sondheim, and read theorist-practitioners such as Henry Drinker.69 Interestingly, when I proposed to the American Lieder scholar Susan Youens that of all candidates for the role of translator she would have to be especially qualified, she replied that “since I am not, alas, a poet on the order of W.H. Auden, [whose translation of Don Giovanni she is particularly enthusiastic about] I wouldn't dare attempt a translation myself!”70 Youens’ invocation of the concept of “daring” recalls Laura Tunbridge’s discussion of dominant performance practice at London’s Wigmore Hall, as discussed in Chapter One. At the very least, Youens’ modesty at this suggestion (and appreciation of the risk of doing so) reveal much about the impossibly tall order that these many ideal specifications make of a prospective translator.

Approaching Translation

In addition to the articulation of the idealised qualities of a song translator, contributors to the debate have offered diverse guidance on how to go about creating singing translations. In their

65 Graham, “A New Look at Recital Song Translation”, 31.

66 David Johnston, “Jeremy Sams: Words and Music (in Conversation with David Johnson),” in Stages of Translation: Essays and Interviews on Translating for the Stage, ed. David Johnston (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1996), 171.

67 Low, “Singable Translations of Songs”, 98.

68 Ibid., 98.

69 Low, “Translating Songs That Rhyme”, 19.

70 I am grateful to Susan Youens for this insight in a private communication. 85

recent book on translating vocal music, Ronnie Apter and Mark Herman ask the apparently straightforward question: “what constitutes a good translation?” Their conclusions, that “it must work on stage” [and] that “it must be closely enough related to the original that it is not an entirely new piece”71 dissemble the many attempts at more precise answers from the fields of semiotics, word-music interrelationships, art theory and art song performance. It should be noted that Apter and Herman are seeking to define what constitutes a good translation, rather than a perfect translation, which Herbert Peyser declared in 1922 to be similar to the concept of a limit in mathematics. Approaching, rather than attaining, such perfection, which Peyser described as “the reproduction of one tongue in equally forceful terms of another, yet without the loss of its peculiar genius and without enfeeblement of its musical subjection”72 involves aggregating a number of ideals:

1) flawless preservation of the original correspondence between poetry and music 2) absolute literalness of rendering 3) complete coincidence of verse structures and metrical subtleties 4) identical nuances of idiom 5) the intangible proprieties of word selection 73

Peyser conceded that this seemed to be a conflict of irreconcilable elements, within which “the maintenance of one involves the sacrifice of another”74 Thus, we learn that compromise is the means of approaching perfection in translation, and the skill of the translator lies in choosing the essentials of that compromise.

Peyser’s impulse to identify and aggregate key priorities in song translation becomes quickly familiar to any observer of the debate, though each interlocutor betrays their own priorities as they articulate them. For instance, in Arthur Fox-Strangways’ rather more idiosyncratic list of 1940, he starts out

71 Apter and Herman, Translating For Singing: The Theory, Art and Craft of Translating Lyrics (Bloomsbury Advances in Translation), 30.

72 Peyser, “Some Observations on Translation”, 353.

73 I have paraphrased Peyser’s criteria as a list. Ibid., 353.

74 Ibid., 353 86

with a play on older tropes of translation as a change of garment and then directs the translator repeatedly towards the actions and presumed motives of the composer:

1) String the poem of its German dress, and clothe it in English 2) Omit nothing the music takes note of, and get the words where the composer puts them. 3) Keep the composer’s phrasing 4) Find words that will bear just the inflexion the composer has chosen.75

Elsewhere, Henry Drinker, a translator noted for the craftmanship and sheer number of his Bach translations in particular, suggests six requisites that attempt to serve the music, as distinct from compositional intention (1950):

1) To preserve the notes, rhythm, and phrasing of the music; 2) To be readily singable with the particular music; 3) To be appropriate to the particular music 4) To be idiomatic and natural English, and not merely translated German, Italian, etc.; 5) To contain rhymes wherever the music or the text calls for them; and 6) To reproduce the spirit and substantially the meaning of the original. 76

In contrast, the folk singer Richard Dyer-Bennett offered the following list in 1974, upon reflecting on his process in translating Die schone Müllerin (a translation he performed at Carnegie Hall). Dyer-Bennett opens his list with the concept of “singability”, which foregrounds the singer’s needs in creating an effective singing translation:

1) if not singable above all else, then all other factors are meaningless; 2) it must sound as though the music had been fitted to it (that is, the new poetic images must be equivalent to the originals and the prosodical arrangement of stresses and accents must match the original music); 3) the rhyme-scheme of the original poetry must be kept because it gives shape to the phrases; and 4) liberties must be taken with the literal meaning when the first three requirements cannot otherwise be met. 77

75 Fox-Strangways, “German Song”, 440.

76 Henry S Drinker, “On Translating Vocal Texts,” The Musical Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1950): 226.

77 Quoted Emmons and Sonntag, The Art of the Song Recital, 292. 87

Finally, Andrew Kelly, in his 1992-3 article “Translating French Song as a Language Learning Activity”, invokes the audience in his list, repeating:

1) Respect the rhythms; 2) Find and respect the meaning; 3) Respect the style; 4) Respect the rhymes; 5) Respect the sound; 6) Respect your choice of intended listeners; and 7) Respect the original. 78

The contemporary scholars try to be more candid about the need to determine the skopos or desired function of any translation and offer methodologies that allow for differences in these. Johan Franzon, in his 2008 article “Choices in Song Translation”, tries to co-ordinate between the four categories listed by semiotician Dinda L. Gorlée (“phonetic”, “prosodic”, “poetic”, “semiotic”79) and the Pentathlon Principle of French professor Peter Low80 (which tries to aggregate “scores” between “singability”, “sense”, “naturalness”, “rhythm” and “rhyme” as a pentathlete would between their five events) with a functional approach to song translation. For instance, a singable lyric achieves a prosodic match by observing the music’s melody, how it is notated, and attempting to create comprehensible, natural lyrics (through matching syllable count, rhythm, intonation, stress and ‘good’ sounds). A singable lyric achieves a poetic match by observing the music’s structure, how it is performed, and attempting to create lyrics that communicate and sound poetic (through matching rhyme, segmentation, parallelism and contrast, and the location of keywords). A semantic-reflexive match is achieved by observing the music’s expression and creating lyrics that reflect or explain what the music ‘says’ (through simulating

78Andrew Kelly “Translating French Song as a Language Learning Activity” (1992-93) 92 Quoted in Low, “Translating Songs That Rhyme,” 5.

79 Dinda L Gorlée, ed., Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005). Referenced by Johan Franzon, “Choices in Song Translation,” The Translator 14, no. 2 (2008): 391.

80 Dr Peter Low, a professor of French at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, has published articles on French poetry, popular and classical song, and translation theory, prepared surtitles for six operas, and submitted over 100 of his song translations to http://www.lieder.net. 88

mood, character, description and metaphor in the target language). 81 It is easy to see how one translator alone could create countless versions of a single text whilst attempting to achieve varying degrees of these matches.

Alongside his Pentathlon Principle Low also offers a point-scoring system for ranking existing translations. While the Pentathlon Principle more generally advises on balancing five priorities in translation, Low’s points scoring system attempts to definitively assess the success of prioritising the latter in particular in translation. As an example, Low evaluates three translations of the second stanza of song twenty of Die schone Mullerin, “Des Baches Wiegenlied”. Using his system, Frederic Kirchberger’s effort ranks highest at a score of 38.7, Harold Heiberg at 33.7 and Theodore Baker at 28. Though these scores roughly correlate with my own instincts about the success of these particular translations, I can’t help feeling the redundancy of such an analytic approach when confronting the efforts of translators in this artistic medium. I only offer these many attempts to work out how to write an optimum translation to reveal just how many different approaches there are, and how there are inevitably many different outcomes. Though many reviews of singing translations, when favourable, seek to describe the effort at hand with some relation to its proximity to a “definitive version”, one only has to ask “definitive for whom?” to see the folly of such a characterisation. Certainly, it seems overdue that I depart now from abstract scholarly evaluation and consider singing translations in practice.

Found in Translation

Nothing is lost in translation. Everything was always already lost, long before we arrived.

— Antena82

While there are a wide variety of objections to singing in translation (practical, ethical, aesthetic and philosophical, as we have seen) advocates orient themselves overwhelmingly around issues of accessibility. While there are a range of resources that can ground the performance and

81 Franzon, “Choices in Song Translation,” 390.

82 Jen Hofer and John Pluecker, “A Manifesto for Ultratranslation,” Antena Books / Libros Antena, 2013, https://antenaantena.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ultratranslation_eng.pdf. 89

reception of art song repertoire for those in the know, intelligibility and access present a problem for any uninitiated listener. The German pianist Helmut Deutsch opines that, whilst “[t]he saying is that music knows no boundaries […] sadly these are rather tangible when it comes to song.”83 The realities of these boundaries in practice are clearly evidenced in the following anecdote by Roderick Williams, in which he describes giving a performance of Winterreise in Sheffield:

[…] the audience were on all four sides with the piano (lid-less) in the middle of the space. There was space for me to wander around, singing in different directions, sometimes standing (and sitting) amongst the audience, on the steps between rows…..when it came to “Das Wirtshaus”, as the pianist began the introduction, I happened to be near enough to settle myself on the back of his piano stool, back to back with him. I found myself staring down at the club foot of a wheelchair-bound member of the audience directly in front of me, only a couple of feet away. So as I came to sing, I looked up at him and sang the whole of the first verse straight into his eyes.

What was immediately apparent though was that he had no clue what I was singing to him: there was a look of panic in his eyes that was almost comical, were it not for the poignancy of the music. He tried to glance at the translation his wife was clutching right next to him but she was bowed down, reading it so intently, she never once looked up to see the situation. In fact, she missed the moment I had had with her husband completely!

The predicament experienced by both patrons in this example is reminiscent of Peter Newmark’s description which I quoted in Chapter One. It is this predicament that prompts even deeply invested stakeholders to consider at least the possibility of singing in translation despite the difficulties I have elaborated (and more). Yes, says Jeremy Sams:

Firstly, and obviously, Lieder and French song, and indeed all art song should ideally be performed for an audience who understand the poetry in the language in which it was written and which inspired the composer to write their songs. And by understand I mean hear and comprehend at the point of delivery (i.e. performance).

However, given that this ideal, as we have seen, is impossible in many settings, Sams offers two solutions: to have the audience read the translations (either written in a programme or projected)

83 See Appendix B2. 90

or to sing the songs in a language most of the audience understand.84 (Even his father, Eric, conceded that “Schubert in English translation is better than nothing.”85) Other significant parties, both contemporary and historical, are and have been of a similar mind: Helmut Deutsch feels that “in so many cases I would be very happy indeed if the songs were to be sung in the respective local language”; Dutch pianist Coenraad van Bos, author of The Unashamed Accompanist and antecedent of Gerald Moore (as both prominent accompanist and memoirist), voiced his “complete disagreement with those who advocate the singing of Lieder or other songs only in the original languages of their texts”;86 John McCormack, an Irish tenor and one of the most successful singers of the interwar period on both sides of the Atlantic was similarly adamant that songs “be sung to people in their own tongue,”87 and even Susan Youens, when approached about the subject, offered: “I applaud whatever will make my favourite genre more accessible to people” because “[a]s a matter of principle, I like having non-Germans understand what’s going on.”88 Perhaps the strongest statement comes from translator Ruth Martin, who apparently declared at a NATS convention in St. Louis that, in fact, “…it is immoral not to translate.”89 Frederic Kirchberger quotes Martin in the introduction to the volumes of his Lieder translations in order to insist that such an argument, and ethical position, becomes even more pressing in the case of Lieder presentation than it does in opera. Lieder of course does not have the same advantages of gesture, costume and staging as the larger scale genre to inform audiences about “meanings”. In making his case, Kirchberger does not argue solely for the importance of directly understanding the verbal content but for that understanding extending to

84 See Appendix B10.

85 Eric Sams, “Franz Schubert Song Book, No. 1,” The Musical Times, 1979, 49, https://www.ericsams.org/index.php/music-reviews/schubert/books/242-franz-schubert-song-book-no-1.

86 Coenraad V Bos, The Well-Tempered Accompanist, ed. Ashley Pettis (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Co. , 1949), 159.

87‘[…] and with an enunciation that makes every word understood.. [because] no inconsiderable part of the enjoyment my audiences derive from my singing is attributable to this ability to ‘get’ each word.’ McCormack quoted in Tunbridge, “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars”, 68.

88 I am grateful to Susan Youens for this insight in a private communication.

89 Kirchberger, “The German Song Cycles. Should They Be Sung in the Original or in English Translation?”, 531. 91

the music: “[t]he listener at a song recital may need intelligible words even more urgently than does the opera audience” (as we can see demonstrated so clearly in the Williams anecdote) as “the fusion and interaction of poetry and music is at the core of Romantic song; the listener who misses the words, misses half the music as well.”90 If verbal intelligibility is axiomatic to “proper” appreciation of the Lied, then perhaps it could be asserted that the need for translation might also be understood to be axiomatic, as Peyser claimed in 1922. If, as Peyser continues, “[w]hat is unintelligible to people does not exist for them,”91 performers might need to consider translational practice as essential as other elements of their interpretation in bringing a Lied into existence.

Such concern for the audience’s experience consistently comes to the fore of song translator’s defences of their activities: they do not want songs to “speak to the air”92 but to make direct and intelligible oral sense. Translation scholar Harai Golomb describes singing in translation as:

the only procedure that can possibly simulate the effect of synchronised verbal/music/rhetorical fusion, as it functions in the original, transmitted from a singer’s mouth to a listener’s ear as an interaction realised in sound, sense and gesture.93

As such, where singing translations are dismissed, Arthur Fox-Strangways insists that connoisseurs of Lieder “miss the fusion they desire by rejecting the compromise in which alone it exists.”94

90 Ibid., 531.

91 “The need of the translation is axiomatic”: Peyser, “Some Observations on Translation”, 359.

92 St Paul to the Corinthians: “6 Now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how shall I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? 7 If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will any one know what is played? 8 And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? 9 So with yourselves; if you in a tongue utter speech that is not intelligible, how will any one know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. 10 There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning; 11 but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.” 1 Cor 14: 6-11 RSV

93 Golomb, “Music-Linked Translation (MLT) and Mozart’s Operas: Theoretical, Textual, and Practical Perspectives”, 142.

94 Fox-Strangways, “The Translation of Songs”, 476. 92

Just as Roderick Williams is able to describe something of the pitfalls of performing in German for Anglophone audiences, he is also able to articulate the possibilities of a translational compromise. Williams is in a unique position to do so, as he sings Winterreise both ways: the baritone has performed Jeremy Sams’s English version, Winter Journey in parallel with the German original many times over the last few years in the UK. Williams describes an experience of intense rapport with his audience when singing in the vernacular:

Sharing this arc of emotion directly with an English-speaking audience, seeing the immediate comprehension in their eyes in the instant that I sing, is powerfully rewarding.95

Without saying so directly, Williams is implying here that this experience is rewarding in contrast to his experiences singing in other languages. In such performances, verbal comprehension can be inadvertently sidelined. Katy Hamilton describes this in her blog as having the song “wash over” you. For her, too, singing in translation is a viable solution for this condition. She writes:

Parts of Winterreise are indeed beautiful. But if it just washes over you in German, try the translation. Then you’ll see it for what it really is, and feel it too: icicles down the spine, and storms in the head and heart. Better a blizzard in English than the decorous snowflakes of a language you don’t speak. They might be pretty, but they’ll melt into meaningless vowel sounds so fast, you’ll never see winter at all.96

In these testimonies we see a concern for both the audience’s experience, (something we can understand as an alternate “sensible authenticity”). We also see concern for the performer’s experience, for whom singing Lieder in translation may allow the performer more direct access to the material (an alternate species of “personal authenticity”). Baritone Simon Keenlyside speaks to this, admitting that there is the potential to “mum and mug meaning”97 in performance

95 Roderick Williams, “‘What Language Do You Like Singing In Best?’: Roderick Williams on Schubert’s Winterreise | by Bachtrack for Classical Music, Opera, Ballet and Dance Event Reviews,” Bachtrack, accessed March 22, 2020, https://bachtrack.com/feature-roderick-williams-schubert-winterreise-lieder-month-january-2019.

96 Hamilton, “And in English...”

97 Ismene Brown, “The Singer’s Dance of Death,” The Telegraph, September 13, 2003, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/3602564/The-singers-dance-of-death.html. 93

as a non-native German speaker, an expression which I understand to mean as a kind of miming of expression and comprehension98. It is this reality, at even the pinnacles of the profession, that prompts Helmut Deutsch to explain that singing in translation can be a good idea “if it [the target language] is the native language of these singers.. [as] nearly every singer sings best in his native language/mother tongue”99 [my emphasis]. Graham Johnson agrees:

That for me remains the best reason to sing these things in English: when singing something in the singer's own language unleashes forces of communication in that singer with which he or she is not in touch within him/herself in a foreign language.100

Though Johnson uses the “abysmal” German of baritone Harry Plunkett-Greene as an example of where singing in translation can help to avoid graver problems,101 and Benjamin Britten advocated for translation into the vernacular in order to avoid the “gibberish which can result from singers using languages they do not understand and cannot pronounce”,102 professional contemporary artists with exemplary German are also happy to make their own more positive cases for singing in translation. Bryan Benner of The Erlkings, a Floridian who studied and now lives in Vienna, explains that for him, what:

98 We might compare this to an actor who must learn to convincingly speak dialogue in a language they don’t speak – for example, Tom Cruise and Jonathan Rhys Meyers speaking Italian in Mission Impossible 3: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkY0L9LUyPg

99 See Appendix B2.

100 See Appendix B5.

101 “Do listen to recordings of celebrated baritone Harry Plunket Greene (1865-1936) to work out why singing translations were necessary at that time! Greene's Schwanengesang Abschied (reissued in a modern compilation entitled Schubert on Record) has the most abysmal and incomprehensible German imaginable. Laughable - and I play it for after-dinner amusement. His Leiermann in English on the other hand, if very mannered and cavalier with the musical text, was famous. He needed to sing in English not only for the benefit of his listeners, but because German was clearly a closed book to him and would get nothing out of him as an interpreter.” See Appendix B5.

102 “I believe passionately in the intelligibility of the words…I always encourage my works to be sung, abroad, in the vernacular, even pieces like the Spring Symphony and the Nocturne, which contain some of the greatest English poetry. Of course, something is lost, but not a great deal when you substitute the gibberish which can result from singers using languages they do not understand and cannot pronounce.” Benjamin Britten, “58. On Writing English Opera (1960),” in Britten on Music, ed. Paul Kildea (Oxford University Press, 2003), 208, quoted by translator Amanda Holden on her website http://www.amandaholden.org.uk/translations/ 94

singing in general, and Lied singing particularly relies on is the clarity of emotion and understanding of the interpreter.. and it’s just not possible if you’re not totally in awareness of what you’re singing and trying to communicate.103

Tyler Duncan, a Canadian baritone who studied and worked professionally in Germany for many years, agrees that:

even if you speak German but you’re a foreigner, the emotional and visceral connection to the text can be lost a little bit. Like you can turn the switch off and just listen to pretty music. But when you understand the words fully and if they’re a part of you, when you feel the words….that’s what song is supposed to be.104

Whilst English baritone Roderick Williams explains:

I still mostly filter German text through a prism of translation. I don’t have, cannot have the same emotional response to the words as I have to my mother tongue. Forging an emotional connection to the words I hear and sing can be done most truthfully and powerfully in my own language. Anything else I have to study; it is less instinctive.105

The candour of all three performers brings forward their desire for “personal authenticity” founded in the connection between a singer’s instincts and emotions and lingual familiarity. For some translators however, rationales concerned with the comfort or emotional connection of either audience and performer do not seem compelling enough. (Considering the fierceness of some critiques, and concerns for a genre’s survival at stake, it is little wonder that some justifications may simply feel too modest, too preoccupied with literalness at the expense of other meanings, or presumptuous about the genre’s accessibility). As a consequence, some translators have therefore concerned themselves with justifying singing translations as a way of honouring what they perceive to be the composer’s intention.

This alternate view on “compositional authenticity” is based on the assumption that Schubert expected the texts he set would or could be understood by their recipients but could never have imagined needing to make provision for the fact that his songs might eventually be performed on

103 Transcribed from phone interview, 1 January, 2019.

104 Transcribed from in person interview, 21 December, 2018.

105 Williams, “‘What Language Do You Like Singing In Best?’: Roderick Williams on Schubert’s Winterreise | by Bachtrack for Classical Music, Opera, Ballet and Dance Event Reviews.” 95

stages in New York or Beijing. Translator Henry Drinker makes the point that “though it may be argued that Bach and Brahms wrote to be sung in German – it might also be answered that they wrote it to be sung and heard by Germans.”106 If we want to perform and listen to these works and we are not German, surely all bets are off? In fact, Arthur Fox-Strangways offers translation as a means of actually getting closer to understanding a composer’s intention: “[s]ome hold that to sing other words than those the composer set is to falsify his intention; but how do they know his intention, except in a sort of dream, if they do not translate him?”107 Others look to the wishes of other composers in order to extrapolate permission, citing Mozart’s choice of German for his German-speaking public (whereas he chose Italian for foreign courts), Menotti’s personal investment in the French translation of his works when he travelled to Paris, Schoenberg’s apparent request that Pierrot Lunaire be performed in the language of the country of its performance108 and Britten’s encouragement of vernacular translation as demonstrative of an openness to language change by core composers of the Western Art Music tradition.

In an article for The Schubertian in 1984, Translator Leslie Minchin109 tried to make a more specific historical case for translating Schubert Lieder. Firstly, he references the settings of Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake, the Sieben Gesänge aus Walter Scotts "Fräulein am See", in which Schubert went to some lengths to accommodate the original English poems alongside the German translation he first set for singing. Though the autographs are lost, all but one of the set were printed with English words below the stave, with alternative note-values to allow their use. Minchin cites a letter written by Schubert’s brother Ferdinand in the Autumn of 1825 which congratulates the composer on these pieces as proof that this bilingualism was a deliberate choice on Schubert’s part. However there also exists a letter from Schubert to his parents from around the same time that announces this bilingual plan, alongside an expression of the composer’s hope

106 Drinker, “On Translating Vocal Texts”, 225.

107 Fox-Strangways, “The Translation of Songs”, 476.

108 Emmons and Sonntag, The Art of the Song Recital, 290.

109 Minchin’s singing translations were extensively published by Peters Editions in the 1970’s. 96

that Scott’s existing prestige would help to extend his own beyond Austria.110 Minchin also takes the three songs published as Op. 56 in 1826 to make his case: Goethe’s “Wilkommen und Abschied” and Bruchmann’s “An die Leier” and “Im Haine”, which were all published with Italian singing lyrics below the German. Minchin claims from this provision that “it is clear that Schubert wished his song to be sung in Italian if that was more suitable to the occasion…. he did not aver, as his followers today are wont to do, that these songs ‘must be sung in the original tongue’” and “evidently wanted the words to take their place as an integral part of the songs in all countries – not only the sound of the words, but their meaning too.” 111 A further three Italian songs for bass voice, Op. 83 (D902) were published by Haslinger in September 1827 to texts by Metastasio with German texts set below the Italian. Apparently, most of these double texts disappeared from those editions stemming from the editions published in Germany in the 1890s by Mandyczewski and Friedländer, which were prepared with a German public in mind. Happily the new Bärenreiter edition restores both texts, though Minchin, writing before the publication of this new edition, concludes that “it is an unfortunate consequence [of editorial decisions] that we may fail to realize how sympathetically Schubert seems to have regarded the performance of his songs in languages other than his own.”112

Beyond these examples of existing bilingual songs, Minchin also notes plans for more ambitious multilingual settings. Jacob Nicolaus Craigher de Jachelutta, an Austrian poet and translator, recorded in his diary on the 23rd October 1825 that Schubert and Schwind (a painter) had come for breakfast, during which time:

Schubert…entered into an agreement with me to supply him with a number of songs by English, Spanish, French and Italian classics with German translations in the metre of the originals, which he will then set to music and have published with the original text.

110 John Reed, The Schubert Song Companion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 215.

111 Leslie Minchin, “Schubert and Language,” The Schubertian 125, no. 1699 (1995): 497–98.

112 Leslie Minchin, “Schubert and Language,” The Musical Times (The Schubert Institute (UK), 1984). 97

Though this plan did not come to fruition, it shows that Schubert was at least open to the possibility of multi-lingual songwriting. Contemporary re-wordings are, we must concede, an entirely different proposition, and though Minchin and others (Frederic Kirchberger, for example) have seized upon this historical evidence as permission for their own efforts, other stakeholders (such as Katy Hamilton and Graham Johnson113) feel these examples were commercially rather than artistically motivated. As such, Johnson in particular does not consider them a valid basis for the creation of singing translations.

Minchin’s desire to justify his own work by aligning them with an understanding of Schubert’s compositional intentions is not one universally felt by other translators. When I asked Toronto based singer-songwriter Sara Slean, who has sung Brahms’ songs in English translation at Art of Time Ensemble concerts,114 whether she felt the need to seek “permission” to do so, she wrote:

“Hahaha – I’m too old for that kind of thinking ;)”115. Bryan Benner also made light of my query, claiming regular communion with Schubert’s ghost as his means of validating his activities116. When the composer’s ghost is not available to consult, Benner’s solution is to “walk and get drunk in the same places he [Schubert] did”. He admitted: I think you have to have a certain amount of arrogance to be able to take… these masterpieces from Goethe or Schubert or Schiller - whatever it is, to be able to say, yeah, this is great, I love this, but we’re going to do it like this instead!

This “kind of thinking” centres the performer as the proxy authorial voice, a position doubly reinforced when the performer is also the translator. Like Benner, the English born American folksinger Richard Dyer-Bennett was moved not only to sing in English translation but to write the translations himself. Dyer-Bennett described this impulse:

I’ve long wanted to do Schubert. But my whole career has been spent in the kind of direct communication that comes from singing Elizabethan songs, Scottish

113 As can be seen in Appendix B4 and B5.

114 “Art of Time Ensemble - Concert - Johannes Brahms,” accessed May 1, 2020, http://artoftimeensemble.com/concert/johannes-brahms.

115 Quoted with permission from private correspondence 30 January 2019.

116 Benner does not share Rosemary Brown’s conviction in the revenant Schubert. 98

border ballads and other folk songs in English. It’s a question of ‘listen! I’m going to tell you this story’ because the Müller poems form a melodrama. I couldn’t come out and sing it in German….I looked at other translations of the cycle.. But none of them suited me. I had spent two years in Germany, so I was at home with the language, and I’m a singer. I decided to make my own version. 117

In approaching the Lied in this protestant way, we can arrive at a third kind of motivation for creating singing translations. Beyond concern for the audience or for performers, I want to suggest that the act of creating a singing translation operates as a form of close reading equivalent to other interactions such as singing or playing a Lied and that this is perhaps the most compelling motivation for undertaking translation projects. The pleasure and fascination inherent in this kind of experience is evident not only in Dyer-Bennet’s impulse but also in the recollections of the poet W.H.Auden. Describing his own experience working on opera libretti alongside Chester Kallmann, the poet admits:

Once we started, we felt our aesthetic prejudices weakening for a reason which is not perhaps a valid one since it is purely selfish: we found ourselves completely fascinated by the task.118

Auden acknowledges that the translator will know despair,

but irrespective of success and failure, the mere attempt can teach a writer much about his own language which he would find it hard to learn elsewhere. Nothing else can more naturally correct our tendency to take our own language for granted. Translating compels us to notice its idiosyncracies and limitations, it makes us more attentive to the sound of what we write and, at the same time, if we are inclined to fall into it, will cure us of the heresy that poetry is a kind of music in which the relations of vowels and consonants have an absolute value, irrespective of the meaning of the words.119

This position is echoed by Jeremy Sams, who describes one of the joys and privileges of translation as finding “oneself more like an author than a reader. You’re inside the room looking out, as it were. Which gives one, if not ownership, then a degree of empathetic insight into the

117 Paul O. Jenkins, Richard Dyer-Bennet: The Last Minstrel (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 107.

118 Auden W.H., “Translating Opera Libretti,” in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 484.

119 Auden, 499. 99

creative process.”120 The potential outcome of such an endeavour in Lied translation is made beautifully clear, once again, by Katy Hamilton:

a few months ago, I had a go at it myself. I sat down with the score of Erlkönig, and a pen, and a large pile of scrap paper. And to put it mildly, producing singable translations is bloody hard. After about four hours, a lot of talking to myself, and a pile of discarded rhymes that could have stocked the Christmas pantomime circuit for the next couple of years, I finally came up with something not entirely dreadful. It still needs work, and tweaking, and thinking about. But the real revelation was not, in fact, how difficult it was. (That much I had been able to predict.) Instead, it was how much more deeply I ended up engaging with the poetry and its protagonists as a result of trying to lead them from one language to another. I speak German. I know that song well. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt so strongly that I know the people in it as deeply as I do now.121

I feel it is well worth registering Hamilton’s enthusiasm for the capacity of this kind of translational activity, particularly as she is someone who already has considerable means of access to “meaning” in the Schubertian Lied as a performer, German-speaker and nineteenth- century specialist. Beyond the more obvious utilities of singing translations (audience and performer accessibility), deep reading of this kind is compelling since making one’s “own version” of a song through translation constitutes an interpretive act in and of itself. This is true regardless of whether or not a translator can sing or play the Lied they have translated for singing. Creating such a version has the potential to take into account both musical and lingual elements in a creative and deeply personal interaction and force an interrogation of those elements that otherwise may not occur. In her book This Little Art, translator Kate Briggs writes about conceiving translation:

…as a means of writing the other’s work out with your own hands, in your own setting, your own time and in your own language with all the attention, thinking and searching, the testing and invention that the task requires. 122

120 Schubert and Sams, “Winter Journey: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise D. 911 in an English Version by Jeremy Sams.” Sams’s essay is on page 6.

121 Hamilton, “And in English...”

122 Briggs, "This Little Art", Location 1052. 100

In this understanding, translation becomes a process of discovery, of dissolving barriers, of “reading…[in this case, the Lied text] so intensely that one feels tempted to recreate it.”123 I propose that this labour can in some way compare to that of a performer preparing for performance. Briggs continues, claiming translation:

as a laborious way of making the work present to yourself, of finding it again yourself, for yourself. 124

In reminding us “that choosing between one word and another is the basis not only of translation, but of working out what we think about the world”, Briggs’ thinking takes us to a rather more optimistic conception of translation, one which acknowledges difficulty but views translation as a creative means, and one that enriches a text rather than betrays it. In “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” (The Task of the Translator), German philosopher, essayist and cultural critic Walter Benjamin argues that translation creates a third space, distinct from both its source and from its target. He writes:

It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his recreation of that work. For the sake of pure language, he breaks through in his re-creation of that work.125

In this understanding translation can become a liberating force, a way of releasing a work from canonical strictures, of allowing for multiple incarnations, and a way of satisfying the deeply subjective nature of the Lied. If we understand translation as re-creation we make space for it as a viable alternative for interaction with and interpretation of a Lied, alongside the more traditional modes of singing, playing, and listening.

123 From a review of “This Little Art” by Carlos Fonseca printed in the flyleaf of Briggs, "This Little Art".

124 Ibid., Location 1041.

125 [My emphasis] Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator (1923),” in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (Routledge, 2000), 22. 101

Singing, Playing, Listening, Translating

In trying to conceptualise music as embodied performance rather than as a subordinate reproduction of an autonomous and idealised “work”, ethnomusicologists locate music as an intrinsically meaningful cultural practice. In doing so, its interpreters are recast from “deviants” and “corrupters,”126 or mere intermediaries and “middle-men” into authorial, creative roles indispensable to the living nature of musical activity. In “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance”, Nicholas Cook elaborates upon how language such as this has traditionally served to marginalise performance and performers in these types of ways. He writes: …we are led to think of music as we might think of poetry, as a cultural practice centered on the silent contemplation of the written text, with performance (like public poetry reading) acting as a kind of supplement. 127

Cook goes on to highlight how the traditional orientation of musicology towards the reconstruction and dissemination of authoritative texts reflected a primary concern with musical works as the works of their composers, understanding them as messages to be transmitted as faithfully as possible from composer to audience.128

As discussed, this configuration can leave the performer’s only legitimate aspirations to be “transparency, invisibility, or personality negation.”129

As we have seen, translators have suffered many of the same intolerances and expectations. Though I concede that in many essential ways a translator is not the same as a performer, their interaction as interpretive mediators does bear some similarity. It is therefore my hope that, just as performance has been “[c]onstrued […] as an act of resistance against the authority and closure of

126 “Performers are essentially corrupters—deviants, in fact.”: Richard Taruskin sees this implied in the New Grove Dictionary definition of performance practice, apparently concerned with “the amount and kind of deviation from a precisely determined ideal tolerated…by composers” Quoted in Cook, 4.

127 Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance.” 2.

128 Cook, 5.

129 Lydia Goehr, “The Perfect Performance of Music and the Perfect Musical Performance,” New Formations 27 (1996), 11, quoted in Cook, 5. 102

the reified text” 130 and therefore “a vehicle for rehabilitating the interests of those marginalized by traditional musicological discourse,”131 the cause of translation might serve a similar purpose. By opening up the lyrical text to a translational act, both the status of the sacralised “work” is challenged and the interests of a wider (and otherwise alienated) audience may potentially be met. Further to that, if it is true, as Christopher Small describes it, that “Western classical music embodies a kind of society that does not allow for mutual participation of all peoples because it is based upon works, not interactions”,132 then presenting a Lied in a language foreign to both its performers (however highly trained) and its audience in deference to the perceived sanctity of the “work” could be understood as a perpetuation of that exclusive society. Small suggests that in a more inclusive and creative society there shall be “no such thing as a musical work, [but] only the activities of singing, playing, listening [and] dancing.”133 Where verbal comprehension is intrinsic to those activities, I propose that translating might have the capacity to facilitate such desired inclusivity and creativity, and as such, might be added to this list of musical activities. In facilitating comprehension and allowing access, translational interaction with a “work” has the potential to allow for mutual participation, for performers, translators and audiences. Transparency around that interaction seems to be the key to assuaging concerns about its impact.

130 Cook,7.

131 Ibid., 7.

132 Robert L. Martin, “Musical Works in the Worlds of Performers and Listeners,” in Michael Krausz, ed., The Interpretation of Music: Philosophical Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) 123; Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 51 quoted by Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance.” 7.

133 Small, Musicking, 11, quoted in Cook, 7. 103

Die Leierleute – The Hurdy-Gurdy People

perhaps a kindred spirit will someday be found whose ear will catch the melodies from my words, and who will give me back my own

—Wilhelm Müller1

…this is music that seems to demand an empathic response…

—Laura Tunbridge, on Der Leiermann2

Watching you, old man, I see myself in you.

— Sting, “Hurdy Gurdy Man”3

As a consequence of the various debates presented thus far, this penultimate chapter presents a practical case study: a collection of translations of a single Schubertian Lied. This chapter attends to the history of “Der Leiermann”, the final song of Winterreise, where it has been performed, recorded, or published with English lyrics for singing in place of the German. The thirty-three unique English singing translations of this Lied that currently make up this collection (Appendix C) constitute, if you like, a virtual gathering of thirty-three Leierleute4 spanning a wide chronology (from 1869 right through to 2018) and hailing predominantly from England and North America. Through discussion of the many subjective readings expressed in these translations a particular type of reception history is revealed around this Lied, which is without question a cornerstone of the Lieder canon.

As we have seen, such translational readings are usually dismissed by performers and Lieder

1 Diary and Letters of Wilhelm Müller, ed. Philip Schuyler Allen and James Taft Hatfield (Chicago, 1903), 5 quoted in Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise, 3.

2 Laura Tunbridge, “Singing Against Late Style: The Problem of Performance History,” in Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style, ed. Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 434.

3 See Appendix C.

4 The inclusive collective noun Leute (people) has been used here in place of Männer (men) for reasons that will become clear. 104

cognoscenti at large. However, I propose that there is something worth discovering in these many incarnations. Whilst they may not achieve all that their authors desire, they do offer a unique means of revealing how approaches towards this specific Lied have changed over that 150-year period in Anglophone settings. Additionally, in confronting the many choices of these diverse translators, one is forced into a consideration of one’s own interpretation. Crucially, their diverse exegeses of the encounter in this particular song – between the wanderer and the hurdy- gurdy player, and by implication, the encounter between their verbal and musical attributes – go to the heart of the controversy in taking a translational approach to the Lied.5 Are the Wanderer and the Hurdy-Gurdy Player aspects of the same psyche or distinct personalities? And by corollary, are the verbal and musical elements of a Lied intrinsically bound or are they separable elements? What is the nature of the encounter between these two figures amid their societal alienation? Is there an empathic communication between them? And if so, is it founded in language or in music? Beyond such questions, I hope that in acknowledging the history of the many materialised interpretations of this one song, I can advocate more broadly for the creation and performance of Lieder singing translations as a valid and illuminating interpretive activity. I believe such translations have the potential to direct us more closely towards the source text where that is desired, to expose its impact on individuals in diverse settings and times, and to emancipate a creative mode of interaction with the Lied in the present beyond the traditional modes of singing, playing, and listening.

In considering a collection of this size one must decide whether the “original” is illuminated or obscured by the proliferation of derivative versions (and indeed, whether that is of concern). One must also ask what such a collection demonstrates. I offer three models in anticipation:

A Literary Model Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei presents and discusses nineteen different translations of a 1200-year-old, four-line scrap of literary Chinese. Like the modest Lied under consideration in the current chapter, the original poem Weinberger considers is concerned

5 The collection is available with source details and bibliographic referencing at Appendix C.

105

with a mere few images: a mountain, a forest and the illumination of a patch of moss by the setting sun. Though Weinberger describes it as a “thing, forever itself, inseparable from its language”6, he presents nineteen different translations that attempt to do that very thing. Though a work of literary criticism, (which this dissertation does not aim to be), Weinberger’s efforts offer a means of access for a reader like myself, who cannot read the source fragment in its original language.

A Musical Model In “Singing Against Late Style: The Problem of Performance History”, 7 Laura Tunbridge attends to a performance history of Schubert’s “Ständchen”, which, like “Der Leiermann”, is often excerpted from its position within a larger cycle. Tunbridge finds evidence of performances in both English and German, in various orchestrations including a version with Fritz Kreisler on violin, and appearances in cinematic and theatrical productions. Whilst discussing those performers who have recorded the song multiple times, Tunbridge notes how each iteration brings out different qualities inherent in the song (affects including vulnerability, presence/abstraction, eroticism/neuroticism, sentimentality, hectoring etc.). Tunbridge explains that “[w]hile interpretations may reflect contemporary aesthetics, they are also shaped by their singers’ bodies: their technical limitations and the grain of their voices on different days, in different decades”8. Perhaps this can be said of the translation project too? I borrow Tunbridge’s formulation for this purpose: “[w] hile translations may reflect contemporary aesthetics, they are also shaped by their translator’s minds: their vocabularies, social and cultural contexts and the time they live in”. Though Tunbridge’s essay is a critique of late styling, her assembly of an equivalent collection serves to demonstrate how the reception and performance of a single Schubertian Lied reflects its reception through time: an ambition that this project shares.

6 Eliot Weinberger, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways), E-book (New Directions Publishing, 2016) , 4.

7 Tunbridge, “Singing Against Late Style: The Problem of Performance History.”

8 Ibid., 440. 106

A Visual Model In William Kentridge’s visualisation of “Der Leiermann”, a set of projections which were made for a 2014 Aix-en-Provence festival performance of Winterreise by Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhaüser,9 a visual metaphor is made which speaks to the collection at hand. Though Goerne sings, in German, of a singular encounter, Kentridge ushers a parade of silhouetted walking figures across the stage with attributes placing them well beyond a nineteenth-century Germanic context. Each carry with them a burden of some kind: one figure carries a telescope, another a bundle of sticks, another a body of a woman slack upon a chair, and another dances with a large drum. It seems to me as though Kentridge is trying to transform the predominant alienation and solitude of the work into a shared, communal experience: it is my hope that the collection of translators and their work that follows can be met with a similar understanding.

9 This performance was available in full on MediciTV at https://www.dev.medici.tv/en/concerts/schubert- winterreise-aix-en-provence-festival/ but “Der Leiermann” is excerpted here: “Schubert Franz - Der Leiermann - YouTube,” accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yyYaxNpTRg. 107

“Der Leiermann”

108

109

110

Example 1: Autograph manuscript of “Der Leiermann” 10

10 Franz Schubert, “Schubert, Franz | Winterreise | Music Manuscripts Online | The Morgan Library & Museum,” accessed October 19, 2020, https://www.themorgan.org/music/manuscript/115668. 111

112

113

Example 2: “Der Leiermann” from Neue Schubert-Ausgabe, Series IV 11

114

These few inked lines form the seed of this chapter. This simple, folkish song in an AAB form is based upon a monotonous left-hand drone in the piano, designed to imitate the repetitive and clumsy turn of a hurdy-gurdy. A repeated, hypnotic melodic fragment in the right hand of the piano answers each vocal statement. In preparing his setting, Schubert changed two of Müller’s words: schwankt became wankt and brummen became knurren (as each pair are more-or-less synonyms, the change was likely made for ease of singing). A handwritten note above the autograph score indicates a subsequent revision made by the composer: originally written in B minor, Schubert decided upon A moll (A minor) when he re-sequenced the songs for publication. The autograph is followed by a blank staved page.

Despite, or because of this simplicity, this song holds a tremendous magnetism for amateur and professional alike.12 Regardless of its language, or whether you know what the words are about, it has a catching and haunting quality, and is inherently singable. Just the other day my father-in- law, musical, but not a trained singer, hummed his way through it while my husband picked out the accompaniment on his guitar. This is the same music that the great baritone Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau recorded no less than eight times over the course of his career.13 Whilst it forms a coda to Winterreise, it has also lived a vibrant independent existence, floating free at times of the narrative that spawned it. It prompted Carl Banck to write a small six song cycle, Des Leiermanns Liederbuch14 (1838-9), a kind of sequel to Winterreise which starts with an unashamed nod to the Schubertian setting; it moved Liszt to transcribe it for an unusually restrained solo piano solo version, sans text, in his Winterreise: Zwölf Lieder von Franz Schubert

11 Franz Schubert, Neue Schubert-Ausgabe, Serie IV, Band 4a: Lieder 4, ed. Walther Dürr, Bärenreiter, 1979, http://imslp.eu/linkhandler.php?path=/imglnks/euimg/2/21/IMSLP570459-PMLP2203-D_911,_Winterreise.pdf.

12 This can easily be seen on the excellent website https://winterreise.online/ which attempts to collect information on all the many commercial and informal recordings of the cycle alongside scholarly and other materials.

13 “All the Best: Winterreise | Financial Times,” accessed October 20, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/afbc3e22- 0fda-11e3-a258-00144feabdc0.

14 “Der Leiermann - Hyperion Records - CDs, MP3 and Lossless Downloads,” accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W2552. 115

S561; and Brahms to recast in his 13 Canons, Op. 113 as “Einformig ist der Liebe Gram”15 with a new text by Rückert. The same song accompanies a particularly melancholy scene in In Bruges, a 2008 British-American black comedy crime film written and directed by Martin McDonagh, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson,16 and as we will see, has drawn at least 33 translators to attempt to render it singable in English. It is a song that, like its protagonist, has travelled far from its home and encountered many strangers.

Whilst the twenty-three songs preceding “Der Leiermann” in this “monstre sacré of the German classical Lieder tradition”17 can be understood as a monodrama,18 this song is different. As far as the protagonist knows, for twenty-three songs they have not been heard nor understood. The audience is sought but not seen by the subject on stage; it bears witness but cannot change, affect, console, or befriend. Meanwhile, the protagonist’s encounters are limited to one-sided conversations with crows and signposts. Though the presence of other human beings is implied in the appearance of an abandoned coal-keeper’s hut, in the imminent arrival of the postman, and in the lingering impact of the faithless lover, these figures are, importantly, physically absent. It is not until the last song, as the protagonist approaches the boundary of a town, that other human beings appear and are acknowledged. The significant figure amongst them is a Leiermann, a street musician, who stands barefoot on the ice turning the drone of a hurdy-gurdy despite the disdain of townspeople and wild dogs alike. Like the wanderer before him, the Leiermann has been ignored and misunderstood by the community around him, and though most of the song

15 You can listen to the Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardiner sing this beautiful canon here: “Brahms - Einförmig Is Der Liebe Gram (Op. 113/13) - YouTube,” accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFb1O4B82w4.Brahms set the Schubertian motifs to a new text by Rückert, Einförmig ist der Liebe Gram/ ein Lied eintöniger Weise/ und immer noch, wo ich's vernahm/ mitsummen musst' ich's leise. Love's grief is monotonous, a song with but a single tune, and always when I heard it, I had to hum it too. (Translation from the link above).

16 “In Bruges - Der Leiermann (Schubert) - YouTube,” accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOoWWjgzfZg.

17 Ian Bostridge, “Zender’s Winterreise: Old, New, Borrowed – but Still True | Classical Music | The Guardian,” The Guardian Newspaper, May 12, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/12/ian-bostridge-zender- schubert-winterreise.

18 Susan Youens uses this noun in “Retracing a Winter’s Journey”: for her, Müller deliberately excludes “the implied presence of an auditor”, leaving the reader to be an “eavesdropper”. Youens, "Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise". 51 and 53 116

describes this figure in the third person, in the wanderer’s final phrases he addresses him directly. He asks: “Wunderlicher Alter, soll ich mit dir gehn? Willst zu meinen Liedern deine Leier drehn?” (which I attempt to translate directly as “Curious elder, should I go with you? Will you turn your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”).

Many Lieder feature rhetorical questions like this. Marianne von Willemer’s Suleika (as set by Schumann and Schubert19, amongst others) asks the wind “Was bedeutet die Bewegung?” (What does this motion mean?). Wilhelm Müller’s apprentice miller, (as set by Schubert), hopes a brook will confirm his own desires, asking “War es also gemeint?” (Is this what was meant?) and “Hab ich’s verstanden?” (Have I understood?)20. As text alone, these questions reach into rhetorical silence. However, as sung lyric, answers are implied in the music. Though we do not know what the wind’s motion means, we get a hint of its part in the lovers’ conspiracy in the piano accompaniment; and though we do not know if the brook hears the miller (at least at this point in the cycle), we do hear the way it seems to keep him company in the piano part. In this way, “understanding” the music is demonstrated as being contingent on understanding the posed question. Likewise, when heard as lyric alone, we do not know if the hurdy gurdy player of Müller’s “Der Leiermann” has even heard the singing wanderer, let alone understood his request. But in Schubert’s musical setting there is the implication of cognizance written into both the piano postlude and into the cyclical structure of the piece as a whole. As the final question is posed, Graham Johnson points out that both hands in the piano (the pseudo-hurdy-gurdy) support the vocal line, a gesture which he understands as “a tiny demonstration of the proposed collaboration.”21 Ian Bostridge describes the “momentary swell of passion in the hurdy-gurdy,

19 D720 “Suleika I” 1820 see “Suleika I | Song Texts, Lyrics & Translations | Oxford Lieder,” accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/1380.for the text and a translation by Richard Wigmore.

20 D795 “Danksagung an der Bach” Op. 25 1823 see “Danksagung an Den Bach | Song Texts, Lyrics & Translations | Oxford Lieder,” accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/2048.for the text and a translation by Richard Wigmore.

21 Johnson, “Schubert: Winterreise - CDA30021 - Franz Schubert (1797-1828) - Hyperion Records - CD Booklet (PDF Download).” (Der Leiermann) 117

just as the voice ceases”22 and wonders if this is “empathy between two outcasts in their pain?”23. Lawrence Kramer describes the phrase that follows in the piano as “the only one [in this otherwise disarmingly simple setting] to play on the complexities of interval, register, harmony, and ‘thematic” dissonance’”24. These musical alterations, “just enough to suggest some intimate response to the wanderer,”25 confirm Kramer’s agreement with Johnson and Bostridge that there is empathy and recognition implicit in Schubert’s reading of the relationship between the two subjects. The Leiermann, unseen, and otherwise unheeded, appears to be given voice by Schubert. At the macro level, many understand the inevitable reiteration of the cycle as evidence that the hurdy-gurdy player has indeed obliged and accompanied the wanderer’s songs: a “notion of eternal recurrence”26, which sees both figures engaged in the endless repetition of their songs together.

The argument can therefore be made that verbal cognizance between the two figures is an essential function of the structural whole of the musical work. Walter Bernhart, referring to the notion of “monodrama”, suggests that it:

turns out, in a retrospective reading, to be a musical “duodrama” with the singer figuring as the wanderer and the piano player representing the hurdy-gurdy man in the act of their “going” or performing together, the very act prepared and motivated by the last two questions in “Der Leiermann”.27

But what about the cognizance of their witnesses? The lyrics indicate that there are others present

22 Ian Bostridge, Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 484.

23 Bostridge, 484.

24 Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song, 183.

25 Ibid., 183.

26 Ian Bostridge, “Ian Bostridge on Singing Schubert’s Winterreise - an Indispensable Work of Art,” The Guardian, January 3, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/03/ian-bostridge-wanderer-schuberts-winterreise.

27 Werner Wolf and Werner Wolf, “10 ‘Willst Zu Meinen Liedern Deine Leier Drehn?’: Intermedial Metatextuality in Schubert’s ‘Der Leiermann’ as a Motivation for Song and Accompaniment and a Contribution to the Unity of Die Winterreise [2001],” in Selected Essays on Intermediality by Werner Wolf (1992–2014) (Brill | Rodopi, 2017), 259– 77, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346642_011. 269 118

with the Leiermann but that “Keiner mag ihn hören, Keiner sieht ihn an” (No one wants to listen, no one looks at him). We know that he is singing about the villagers who ignore the musician, and as audiences we attempt to reprove their negligence every time the cycle is performed. We arrive disputing the claim: wanting to listen, ready to witness and keen to mark our difference from those who would ignore.

A German speaking audience has the potential to understand these questions as they are sung. However, as discussed, audiences that do not speak German must rely upon mediation of some kind – mediation that necessarily compromises such native directness. This predicament and the fact that so many English-speaking audiences demand German text suggests that they have come to value original language performance more for its implications of “authenticity” to compositional intention than for its communicative dimensions. This also speaks to these audience’s existing familiarity with the cycle. However, with the alienated Wanderer’s assumptions about the world in mind, if we as audience members cannot understand what is being asked and offered by the two characters in “Der Leiermann” at the moment of transmission, is there not something of his fears fulfilled? It is desired that the audience heed what others do not – a desire not exclusive to the lead character of the cycle but expressed also by its poet and its composer. As seen in the epigraph to this chapter, Müller longed for eine gleichgestimmte Seele28 (a kindred spirit); we also know that Schubert believed his friends would soon “hear and understand”.29 Semantic cognizance between wanderer, hurdy-gurdy player and their audience witnesses seems to be an essential dimension of the “sense” of this song.

It must be some variety of this desire (to facilitate direct access between subject, object, and audience in Lieder performance) that has motivated so many translators to try their hand at translating the Lieder repertory for singing, and within it, the song at hand. As we know, their activity has been in defiance of growing critiques around the practice. Therefore, because it is customary to project elements of Schubert’s biography upon either or both figures in this

28 Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise, 5.

29 [My emphasis] from Susan Youens, “‘Horrifying Songs’: Schubert’s Winterreise | Hampsong Foundation,” Hampsong Foundation, 2007, https://hampsongfoundation.org/resource/horrifying-songs-schuberts-winterreise/. 119

particular song,30 when we hear the Wanderer asking the armer Musikant to play for him whilst he sings in English, we might also hear the translator making the request of a proxy-Schubert: “Will your music work if I translate your lyrics?” When this song is performed in English, it is, in fact, the comprehension of an English-speaking audience that is prioritised. Such an act embodies a desire to insist that those who are present listen and understand. In this sense, though a translator may be petitioning Schubert, (though we know that this is futile), they are certainly advocating for the relationship between the characters of the song and their witnesses. In addition, they perhaps advocate most strongly for themselves, for their right to “read” and inhabit the Lieder text in this way, alongside their right to assert that reading in the public domain. This is evidenced by the sheer number of translations in the collection at hand, as each translator has clearly felt that to some extent their translation merits dissemination in addition to those already at large. (Though some, it will be seen, wrote their translations thinking their efforts to be unique).

And so, we have a crowd populating Müller’s barely delineated village square, singing many versions of the same original text, in an effort to be understood. But before we can find out how accommodating Müller’s square can be, I must ask: who are these translators, how did they transmit their translation and what has been the fate of their efforts?

30 See the following from 1904 for an example: “The disconsolate climax of the Winter Journey is reached in this wonderfully realistic and pathetic song... Though the music is simply a mirror of the text, one cannot help reading into it a bit of autobiography – for did not Schubert, also, sing on incessantly; and did not his tray, too, like that of the hurdy-gurdy player, remain forever empty? Lachner saw him selling some of these Winter Journey songs to a publisher for twenty cents apiece.” Henry T. Finck, “Franz Schubert: The Greatest of Song-Writers,” in Fifty Songs by Franz Schubert for Low Voice (Philadelphia: The Musicians Library: Oliver Ditson Company, 1904), xix; or the following from 1997 as another: “We should remember that when Schubert set these poems to music, he was confronting his own probable fate. Enough was known about the terminal stages of syphilis in the 1820s for Schubert to realize that this illness ended in horrifying dementia and paralysis preceding the ultimate denouement, If death turned him away in the first or second stages of the disease, as it turns away the wanderer in “Das Wirtshaus”, would he have to suffer the living death the wanderer endures, his creative faculties numbed and the stream of his music frozen? The cycle ends on a terrifying question mark, for which there is no answer, only the echoing silence following the dying away drone of the hurdy-gurdy. Realizing this, one understands what a heroic act it was for Schubert to set this text, of all texts, to music, to wring music of this power from the bleakest fear imaginable. Somewhat fancifully, I like to think that Death, perhaps flattered by Schubert’s many and varied portraits of him in music, spared the composer the fate he most dreaded, taking him swiftly and before the otherwise inevitable onset of insanity. Despite the tragedy of his premature death (and we will always wonder what might have been), we can only be grateful that he escaped the wanderer’s miserable fate, that he transformed Müller’s characters into songs “I like more than all the rest” before his own gentler end.” Youens, “‘Horrifying Songs’: Schubert’s Winterreise | Hampsong Foundation.” 120

Identifying the Collection

I had already long embarked upon this project, with the motif of this encounter already borrowed for its title, when it occurred to me to see how many English singing versions of “Der Leiermann” I could find. This quickly became a treasure hunt from which an eclectic parade of individuals began to emerge, with participants both well-known and little known, professional and amateur, from the classical realm and far beyond. I discovered their efforts printed in scores, (published by both international publishing houses and small firms, and self-published), in collections of translated lyrics, hosted on the internet and/or captured in recorded form (both audio and video). Not all are publicly available, many are actively protected under copyright, and I had to transcribe a number from recordings. Many appeared within the context of the entire cycle of Winterreise in translation, though some were excerpted and presented as a stand-alone song. As you might imagine, it became increasingly addictive and exciting to pursue new versions, especially as the collection grew. I recall boasting in an article for Art Song Canada in January 2019 that I had found sixteen versions:31 little did I know that I would eventually find more than double that number. There were exciting moments scouring internet catalogues and leafing through compendiums of sheet music at the British Library, finding references to specific recordings in radio playlists or to performances in newspapers. The following table summarises these examples in chronological order, giving years of creation and comparing the ways in which translators describe their activity, name their translations, and where and how it was made publicly available (if relevant).

Year of Description of Creator Title Location creation activity

1823-1824 Written by Wilhelm Müller Die Winterreise First published in Schall, Karl; von Holtei, Karl “Der Leiermann” (eds): “Deutsche Blätter für Poesie, Litteratur, Kunst und Theater”. Breslau 1823, bei Graß, Barth und Comp. No. XLII. 14. page 166 as no. 10 of the installment of “Die Winterreise. Lieder von Wilhelm Müller”. Also published in Müller, Wilhelm “Gedichte aus

31 My article can be found in Issue 2: Lara Dodds-Eden, “When a Person Knows and Can’t Make the Others Understand, What Does He Do?,” Art Song Canada, 2019, http://artsongfoundation.ca/art-song-canada-autumn- 2020/#1548014579753-028659b1-3580. 121

den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten”. Zweites Bändchen. Deßau 1824. Bei Christian Georg Ackermann, pages 107-108.32

1827 Set to music by Franz Schubert Winterreise The Morgan Library and Museum: Song XXIV:“Der http://www.themorgan.org/music/manuscript/1156 Leiermann” 68

1869 Rendered into Clarina Macfarren Winter journey: A Series London, Chappell’s Musical Magazine, London English by (1827-1916) of 24 Songs Singer (contralto), “The Hurdy-Gurdy” Hathi Digital Trust: translator, publisher, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c045202 editor 331;view=1up;seq=61;size=175 b. Germany, resided in Britain

1871 Edited by Ernst Pauer (1826 - Die Winterreise. 24 Songs Offenbach s./M : Chez Jean André (translated by?) 1905) with Pianoforte Austrian pianist, Accompaniment British Library Digital Collection: composer and educator “The Organ Player” http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_10 b. Vienna, resided in 0050898524.0x000001 Britain NB: this translation matches the translation printed in the 1895 Schirmer Edition by Theodore Baker

1888 The English Rev. Dr. Troutbeck Winterreise (The Winter- Novello, Ewer and Co. Version by the (1832-1899) Journey) Twenty-Four London and New York English clergyman, Songs with Pianoforte translator and Accompaniment composed British Library Collection musicologist by Franz Schubert (Op. 89) “The Organ-Grinder”

1895 English Dr Theodore Baker First Volume. 82 songs Schirmer Edition, Translations by (1851-1934) Part 1. The Maid of the New York Music scholar, Mill (Mullerlieder), 2. (This edition is a 1923 reprint) lexicographer, Winter Journey publisher, literary (Winterreise), 3. Dying University of Toronto Music Library Collection editor and translator Strains (Schwanengesang) and for Schirmer 4. 24 Favourite Songs Hathi Digital Trust: Publishing firm (1892- “The Organ Player” (in the https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001295670?t 1926) contents page, “The ype%5B%5D=all&lookfor%5B%5D=winterreise b. New York, d. Organ-Grinder” (score %20baker&ft= Dresden title)

32 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man (Müller, Set by (Carl Banck, Reiner Bredemeyer, Theodor Heinrich Gerlach, Wilhelm Kienzl, Cyrill Kistler, Franz Peter Schubert, Johannes Wolfgang Zender)) (The LiederNet Archive: Texts and Translations to Lieder, Mélodies, Canzoni, and Other Classical Vocal Music),” accessed November 12, 2020, https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=83645. 122

1901 The English Percy Pinkerton Songs with Pianoforte Universal Edition words by (1855-1946?) Accompaniment by Franz edited and annotated by Anton Rückauf Schubert Wien, Leipzig “The Organ-Man” Printed in Austria

Recorded by Norman Allin (bass): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UN- TDhQWuU

Digital Copy of the score obtained from State Library of Western Australia

1904 Translated by Frederic Field Bullard This collection features Oliver Ditson Company (1864-1904) highlights of the three Edited by Henry T. Finck composer, organist, cycles and other song teacher; studied organ selections Digital Copy available at: and composition with “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” http://brittlebooks.library.illinois.edu/brittlebooks_ Joseph Rheinberger; open/books2010- American 04/schufr0001fifson/schufr0001fifson.pdf

192-? The English W.J.Westbrook (1831- Cover: Collection Litolff no. 257 (date Verse by 1894?) 80 Selected Songs Edited by Franz Abt unknown) (Mélodies choises.) Braunschweig, Henry Litolff’s Verlag Soprano or Tenor. Boston and New York; Paris; London; Milano (Franz Abt.) National Library and Archives of Quebec Title Page: Schubert Digital copy available: Album: The Pretty Maid of the mill, The Winter http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52 Journey, Swan’s-songs, 327/2632821 and 22 selected songs by Schubert “The Hurdy-Gurdy Player – Le Joueur de Vielle”

1921 Elizabeth Mott (?) No English title Submitted and published in Song-Translations, poet (a 1920 collection Music and Letters, July 1921, II (3) p. 194 entitled Dryad’s trove: and other poems published by Hutchinson, London, was the only reference I found)

1927 English Arthur Fox- “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” Oxford University Press translation Strangways (1859- 1948) The English translation reprinted by permission English from Schubert’s Songs Translated ethnomusicologist, translator, editor, critic British Library Collection and publisher and Steuart Wilson (1899- 1966) English tenor,

123

translator, music director

1928 Unknown “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” Sung by John McCormack (1884-1945) (UK) with orchestra perhaps also released in as “The Organ Grinder” (in Lyrics transcribed from: the US) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeq17IutPY

1930 Translated by Julius Harrison (1885- “The Organ-Grinder” Unison Song (with optional second part) 1963) Winthrop Rogers Edition English composer, Festival Series of Choral Music (General Editor: conductor, repetiteur, Julius Harrison) editor (his mother was German) British Library Collection

1934? Paul England (1863- “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” Discussed p 125-131 of ‘Interpretation in Song’ 1932) 33 by Harry Plunket Greene, printed 1931

as sung by Harry Plunkett Greene, accompanied by Leonard Borwick: 1934 recording accessible on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW04f0olXUY

1938 English text by M.W.Pursey Schubert Songs (High Universal Music Agencies (no information) Voice) Edited by David London Best (appears as part of a selection of favourite “The Organ Grinder” Schubert songs, not as part of Winterreise)

British Library

1938 English words J. Michael Diack The Lyric Song Books Paterson’s Publications, London; Edinburgh by (1869-1947) Edited by J. Michael arranger, teacher, Diack with notes on (printed with solfége publisher, Scottish interpretation by Cyril for unison group singing) Winn British Library “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man”

1946 English Sir Robert Randolph Schubert & Schumann, G.C.M.G Melbourne University Press Translations by Garran Songs and Translations (1867-1957) Reprinted 1971 legislative lawyer, Australian Toronto Reference Library Robarts British Library

1949 English version Richard Capell (1885- F. Schubert Vocal Works Augener‘s Edition by 1954) Augener Ltd. London

33 Plunket Greene, Interpretation in Song. 124

music critic, editor, The Winter Journey University of Toronto Library English (Winterreise)

“The Hurdy Gurdy”

1951 Translations by Henry Sandwith Franz Schubert Complete 1970 Dover Edition Drinker Song Cycles Reproduces with some corrections Drinker’s (1880-1965) Die schone Mullerin, Die translations from Texts of the Solo Songs of Franz lawyer, music scholar, Winterreise, Schubert in English Translation, [Volume 1] , American Schwanengesang which was printed privately and distributed by The Association of American Colleges Arts Edited by Eusebius Program, New York, in 1951 Mandyczewski from the Breitkopf & My own library Härtel Complete Works Original Drinker pamphlet available at University Edition of Michigan with translations by Henry S. Drinker

1973 New performing Roy Fisher (1930- “The Organ Grinder” As recorded by Shura Gehrman, bass and Nina version by 2017) Walker, piano, on Nimbus Records poet and jazz pianist, English

1977 Translated, Basil Swift (no Franz Schubert Song Book Fully singable verbal edition illustrated and information) No. 1 Gentry Publications with helpful notes by “The Organ Grinder” With introduction by Gerald Moore

Toronto Reference Library British Library

1982 Translated into Leslie Minchin (no Schubert in English: The Thames Publishing. singable English information) songs usually included in verse by English Volume 1 of standard Toronto Reference Library editions

1982 Clare Campbell (?- Lieder for English Singers Cassandra Press, 2005 2012) Translator, English “The Organ-Grinder” I was able to source a copy of this booklet from Richard Utting, a personal friend of Clare.

1991 Jeffrey Benton “The Organ Grinder” Recorded with Rona Lowe (piano) on Symposium (b.1938) Records, UK, 1991 English baritone Translation available www.jeffreybenton.co.uk

1993 Frederic Kirchberger Sing Them in English Vol The Scarecrow Press, Inc. (?) 1 Metuchen, N.J., & London pianist, coach, translator, American “The Organ Grinder” also published in NATS Journal of Singing Vol 62 (b. Germany) no 5 University of Toronto Library

125

2007 Translator’s name www.lieder.net withheld at their request

2008 Translator unknown “the organ grinder” Roméo Records Release date January 29, 2008

From ‘under a pale moon’, Audio Recording by Inner Voices and Friends Synthesizer, Wind machine, Choir sings German under a loosely sung English version.

2009 Michael Symmons unknown Commissioned by Aldeburgh Festival, London’s Roberts (b. 1963) South Bank Centre and the Lincoln Centre, New poet York for production (including material of both Schubert and Beckett) by Katie Mitchell: One English Evening also featuring Stephen Dillane and pianist Andrew West.

Was also performed by Tyler Duncan and Erika Switzer.

Translation not publicly available.

2009 English Sting (b. 1951) “Hurdy Gurdy Man” Appears on Sting’s Album If on a Winter’s Night adaptation by www.sting.com

2010 Mike Zhai (b. 1980) “The Organ Grinder” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFuQo80Nc American E

2010 Harold Heiberg (1922- Journal of Singing – the Heiberg, Harold. "Schubert in singable English: 2013) Official Journal of the Winter Journey." Journal of Singing, vol. 66, no. coach, pianist, National Association of 4, 2010, p. 387+ professor of voice, Teachers of Singing: Mar translator; American 2010 vol. 66, no. 4

2011 David Paley (b. 1942) “The hurdy-gurdy man” http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId= 83645

2016 Darren Chase (b. The Winter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjhidS_lacI 1975) baritone, Journey: Winterreise in http://thewinterjourney.blogspot.ca/ American English Translation: a Translation of Wilhelm Book published independently, available on Müller's Die Winterreise Amazon and Google Books for English Language Performances of Franz Schubert's Song Cycle “Lyre Man”

2016 Translated by Jeremy Sams Available in the CD liner Signum Records (Hyperion) notes Winter Journey 126

“XXIV. The Hurdy-gurdy https://www.hyperion- Man” records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W20703

2016 After Müller Stephen Clark “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” This song is printed in the programme for the World Premiere performance in Galway, 17 July 2017 Winter Is Coming: Woyzeck and Winterreise, 15.

2018 Translated by Thomas Beavitt A new, contemporary https://globalvillagebard.ru/Winterreise-winter- English translation of journeyman/ Wilhelm Muller’s Winterreise set to a lightly adapted transcription of Franz Schubert’s original piano score.

“Hurdy-gurdy girl”

But what to make of them all? What is the point in presenting such a collection? Does this proliferation of readings tell us more or less about the Leiermann? Do they tell us anything about Schubert? Or do they tell us more about the people who wrote them and their reception of Schubert? Most importantly, how do they shed light on the query at hand: the implications of singing Schubert Lieder in English translation? The following section will consider specific examples in an attempt to answer these questions.

Considering the Collection

The multiplication of texts entailed by translational activity can challenge the predominantly literary orientation of musicology that seeks to identify a singular and fixed source for musical “works”. So again, I will turn to attempts made by ethnomusicologists and an increasing number of musicologists and music theorists to make space for performance activity within this orientation as a resource for my attempt to make space for translational activity. Just as “[n]o one performance exhausts all the possibilities of a musical work within the WAM tradition”,34 it follows that any single performance constitutes merely part “of a larger universe of possibility”. If we equate translational activity as an interpretive activity akin to performance, translations themselves can be understood as similarly unexhaustive and part of a larger universe of

34 In this context, the acronym WAM stands for Western Art Music. Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance”, 4. 127

possibility.35 The parameters of this universe in performance have traditionally been conceptualized using the stemma, a tree-like model borrowed from philology “in which successive interpretations move vertically away from the composer’s original vision”.36 However, musicologist Nicholas Cook explains attempts made by performance studies to turn this vertically oriented model through 90 degrees in order to emphasize what Richard Schechner calls “explorations of horizontal relationships among related forms rather than a searching vertically for unprovable origins.” 37 Considering the horizontal nature of a work in this way is to understand performances in relation to each other rather than in exclusive relation to the vision supposedly embodied in an authoritative text. Such a conception means that a performance acquires meaning from its context, from its interpreters, and from its relationship “to the horizon of expectations established by other performances” 38 instead of solely from how well it reproduces an idealized source. This is comparable to Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s position that contemporary Urtext editions of Beethoven’s symphonies do not replace the earlier texts but add new ones.39 If we consider these proposals with translations in mind, and consider both the ways that translations attempt to navigate the “gap between “text” and performance”40 and the ways they relate to each other, a horizontal and intertextual field of translations emerges. This is part of my rationale in assembling a translation collection: comparison to the efforts of other translators become as pertinent as reference to the “original” and any prospective translator might make their own efforts with awareness of a full field if they wish. I propose this field is well worth exploring through an ethnographic approach, which, as articulated by Cook:

35 Ibid., 4.

36 Ibid., 6.

37 Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance”, 16.

38 Ibid., 16.

39 Referenced by Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance”, 7.

40 A formulation by Peter Kivy, Authenticities, 131-3, referenced by Cook, 11. 128

seeks to understand the performance of a particular piece in the context of the total performance event, encompassing issues of program planning, stage presentation, dress, articulation with written texts, and so forth.41

With this mandate in mind, all contextual information for these translations is understood to be relevant.

Having gathered them all together in the spirit of Weinberger, Tunbridge and Kentridge’s equivalent collections, we can now consider whether these “thirty-three different ways of looking at Der Leiermann” help illuminate or obscure the “original”, as contentious a notion as that is. On one hand, Susan Bassnett suggests that “[w]hat is fascinating for readers is to follow the various translations […] and to note the vast differences, not only in style, form and mood, but in the interpretation of what is actually going on in the poem” [my italics].42 Bassnett’s inference is that a translation collection can allow us to access something deep and true in a source text, and, in some way, the more translations the merrier (reminiscent of what we see in Kentridge’s offering, in which multiple Leierleute populate the stage). However, the contrasting view is offered by Edwin Gentzler: that “[w]hat becomes apparent when analysing the evolution of one text in history, viewing its multiple forms and the processes of re-integration into different historical epochs, are not the eternal verities of the original, but the mechanisms of history which mask any sense of the original at all.”43. Just as Tunbridge surveys a history of performances, I hope to allow a consideration of this problem in surveying a history of translations.

The translations appear with remarkable regularity throughout the almost 200-year period since the composition of the song. The earliest I found comes from Lady Natalia Macfarren’s edition of all three Schubert song cycles. Macfarren, a German-born contralto who was also known as Clarina Thalia Andrae, published her version of A Winter Journey in England on Dec. 1, 1869. In

41 Cook explains that this is in contrast to “monological analysis”, which “filters out such dimensions of performance as are not directly referable to the work being performed”. Cook, 28.

42 In this quotation, Bassnett is referring to the Weinberger collection. I have co-opted her statement as pertinent to this one also. Bassnett, Translation, 112.

43 [My emphasis] from Gentzler, Edwin, “Translation, hypertext, and creativity: Contemporary translation theories.” (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2001), 196; Quoted in Bassnett, 122. 129

her editor’s preface, she claims it to be the first publication of the series “in a complete form” in England, and while she elaborates on Schubert’s biography and the origins of the cycle in that preface, she makes no reference to her decision to translate and publish in English. At the time the edition was published by Chappell’s Musical Magazine and sold for the price of one shilling.44 149 years later, Scottish singer and self-taught translator Thomas Beavitt self- published his own edition of Winter Journey and made it available for free download online on the International Music Score Library Project (www.imslp.org). At the time, Russian-based Beavitt undertook this translation believing he was the first person to translate Winterreise for singing in English. This may in some ways explain his idiosyncratic approach as may the fact that Beavitt approached his translation effort from a position rather remote from standard Anglophone Lieder performance practice (as a folk-singer and self-described bard living in Russia).

I am sure there are translations that I have not yet found. I am not entirely convinced that Natalia Macfarren’s 1869 translation is the earliest – it seems a long wait after publication in 1827, especially as we know that there were translations of Schubert songs made as early as 1831 in England.45 I suspect there are also other translations, particularly from North America, that I have not found: for example, a notice from the New York Times in 1921 describes the performance of Schubert’s Winter Journey by Australian baritone Nelson Illingworth using the translations published “locally” by “Musicians’ Library” and modified by the singer. 46 Whilst I believe the source translations are those by Frederic Field Bullard which were published under that banner, I suspect Illingworth’s modifications were not formally published. At the later end of the chronology, I also found reference online to an unpublished Winterreise translation by American Emmy-winning composer, lyricist, conductor, producer and translator Glen Roven47

44 For more information on Natalia Macfarren, see Hamilton, “Natalia Macfarren and the English German Lied.”

45 For example, I found Erstarrung, another song from Winterreise, translated into English as A Winter’s Walk by John Oxenford and published by Chappell & Co. in 1865 in a Cambridge University Collection.

46 At Aeolian Hall, accompanied by Coenraad van Bos. “Nelson Illingworth Reappears,” The New York Times, February 4, 1921. Referenced by Laura Tunbridge, Singing in the Age of Anxiety (University of Chicago Press, 2018), 56.

47 This information was on www.glenroven.com, but this site has subsequently been taken down. 130

but have had no success finding out anything more from the executors of his estate or the baritone for whom it was written after his sudden death in 2018. Michael Symmons Roberts also very recently wrote to me to let me know his translation had been picked up for an online presentation (due to Covid19 restrictions) that had given him cause to revisit and rework his translation. This may, depending on the extent of this reworking, constitute a new and distinct translation (this remains to be seen when and if the Symmons Roberts translations become publicly available).

As can be seen already, the translators come from a wide range of backgrounds (there are singers, pianists, coaches, poets, ethnomusicologists, publishers/editors, professional translators, hobbyists and educators amongst the list) but they are mostly male, of Anglo-Saxon extraction. Only three of the thirty-three are women: Elizabeth Mott (1921); Clare Campbell, (1982); and Macfarren. The authorship of two of the translations in my collection is unclear, (Pauer (1875) and Dr. Theodore Baker (1895)) as the translations are identical but attributed differently. As may be expected, a number of the prominent interlocutors in the translation debate tackled this song, including Arthur Fox-Strangways, Leslie Minchin, and the Schubert scholar Richard Capell. Of the thirty-three, Capell and Jeremy Sams are far and away the figures with the strongest existing connection to the dominant Lieder tradition.

Where possible I looked for paratextual materials to determine the implied or explicit motivations of this group of translators. We can guess that their reasons for translating into English were diverse and often political: to avoid the sound of German when politically sensitive; to encourage autochthonous compositions in the same vein; to extend the reach of German romantic music and poetry; to enable amateur interaction and engagement; to make money; to correct/revise/bring forward certain subjectivities; to make a certain reading explicit and to bring Schubert’s music into a contemporary time and space. However, where their reasons are made plain these translators largely express a desire simply to improve the accessibility of the Lieder archive. This is made most obvious by those publications with an educational purview: a number of the translations appear with solfège symbols, perfect for teaching and amateur settings, whilst the Harrison translation appears in an edition for unison choir. However, some translations are evidently more ambitious. Whilst the expressed desire of Christopher Glynn in

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commissioning Jeremy Sams in 2016 was to allow new audiences to access the repertoire,48 a number of factors indicate an adjacent desire to prompt reconsideration of singing in translation from established audiences (and by implication, performers). Their performances at Wigmore Hall demonstrate a desire to “convert” established Lieder audiences to translation as a new way of hearing a familiar work. The same can be said of Leslie Minchin’s translation: though this particular one was published by Thames Publishing, many of his other efforts were published by Peters Editions in the 1970s and 80s. Minchin expresses his hope for new performers and new audiences in his paratextual notes, but his publication by such a central publishing house serves to place his work firmly in the centre of the ongoing elite Lieder tradition, and as we have seen from letters exchanged with Peter Pears, Minchin had ambitions for his translations to be used at the highest levels.49

A number of the more recent translations were written with very specific performance contexts in mind that clearly shaped how the material was translated. These include, for example, Michael Symmons Roberts’ 2009 translation, commissioned for a production by director Katie Mitchell called One Evening. This production presented the cycle alongside material from Samuel Beckett and employed a kind of radio play staging with amplification and sound effects. Another example is Stephen Clark’s 2016 translation, which was commissioned for a production called Wozzeck in Winter featuring non-classical singers and material blended from Winterreise and Büchner’s Wozzeck. In these cases (particularly the latter), the translation supports the wider vision of the hybrid production.

A number of the translations were inevitably written by performers wishing to sing their own version of the lyrics, be they amateur or professional musicians. These include “Youtuber” Mike Zhai, who recorded his version himself both singing and playing the piano in 2010,50 and

48 Schubert and Sams, “Winter Journey: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise D. 911 in an English Version by Jeremy Sams.”

49 Minchin, “A Letter to Peter Pears from Leslie Minchin Dated 18/6/80 from the Estate of Leslie Minchin.”

50 “I'm a poet and not a musician, but discovered lieder by myself as a teenager. I always found it hard to get anyone else interested in this genre of music because of the language barrier (which, for some reason, did not stop me), so I've tried my hand at a few translations. This one works for me because there is a sad folk song quality to it that translates well to American English (imagine Bob Dylan singing it).” Mike Zhai, in personal correspondence. 132

baritone Darren Chase, who recorded himself singing in 2016 and self-published his translation (which changes the instrument from hurdy-gurdy to lyre)51. Baritone Jeffrey Benton recorded his own translation of “The Organ Grinder” with Rona Lowe on piano for Symposium Records in 199152; Thomas Beavitt recorded his version of the full cycle53, and Sting recorded his own version alongside a range of other songs from the Western Art Music tradition (including compositions by Bach, Purcell and Praetorius).

The following are examples of translations sung mostly by professional singers who did not themselves create the translation. There is a 1928 recording of “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” (translator unknown) by tenor John McCormack (1884–1945),54 an Irish American tenor well known for his performances of Irish folk songs and his interpretations of Mozart, Handel, and German Lieder, and another recording from the same period (1923-1929) by British bass Norman Allin of Percy Pinkerton’s 1901 translation “The Organ Grinder.”55 Perhaps most famous of all is the 1934 Harry Plunket Greene recording of Paul England’s translation56: it is this translation that Christopher Glynn refers to as a prompt for his commission of Jeremy Sams.57 Later recordings include the bass baritone Shura Gehrman performing the translation of

51“The cumbersome words, "hurdy-gurdy player" mean nothing to me, so I have substituted the ironic "lyre player" whenever possible; however, my first instinct when translating the instrument's awkward name was 'auto-lyre,' which evokes for me the childhood image of Judy Collins playing an 'auto-harp' on Sesame Street. With one hand she strummed its strings, with the other she pressed rectangular white buttons labeled with the names of chords. My young brain wondered if it was a real instrument. Ian Bostridge notes that there is a folksy Bob Dylan quality to this song and so far, I have always ended up crooning this one. Does Schubert's last song presage the music of the masses? What a beautiful and horrible sound.” Darren Chase, “TheWinterJourney: No. 24 The Hurdy-Gurdy Man,” Blog Spot, 2016, http://thewinterjourney.blogspot.com/2016/03/no-24-hurdy-gurdy-man.html.

52 “Die Winterreise | Jeffreybenton,” accessed October 20, 2020, https://www.jeffreybenton.co.uk/die-winterreise.

53 Beavitt, “Winterreise, D. 911 ‘Winter Journeyman.’”

54 mark32626, “John McCormack ~ The Hurdy Gurdy Man / Farewell. Schubert. 1928 - YouTube.”

55 Norman Allin, “The Organ Grinder,” YouTube Video, 2:50, 1928, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UN- TDhQWuU.

56 Plunket Greene, Interpretation in Song.

57 From Glynn’s notes in the programme notes for the Hyperion recording: Schubert and Sams, “Winter Journey: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise D. 911 in an English Version by Jeremy Sams.” 133

poet and jazz pianist Roy Fisher in 197358 and tenor Ian Partridge’s 1982 live recording at Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard alongside his pianist sister, Jennifer, of poet and scholar Clare Campbell’s translation.59 Most marginal perhaps is a recording by amateur singer Janette Miller, who sings a curious version of Theodore Baker’s translation in 201760 accompanied by a GarageBand digital piano and a video montage, which she apparently assembled as part of her grieving process at the loss of her husband. Most high profile has been Roderick Williams’ performances of Jeremy Sams’s translation with Christopher Glynn on the piano at Ryedale Festival,61 Wigmore Hall62 and Oxford Lieder Festival63 and their recording of the cycle on Signum Classics. There were also a significant number of translations in the collection for which I did not find any evidence of performance.

In keeping with an ethnographic mindset, it seems to be important to notice how translations appear in print. For instance, let us begin with discussing the typography in those that appear in printed editions. Quite amazingly, there is not a single printed translation in the whole collection that appears with German lyrics above the English translation. Natalia Macfarren’s translation, published by Chappell’s Musical Magazine, sets the trend, with any German titles in brackets, in a much smaller font, printed below the English. In the music, the German lyrics are italicised and

58 Lieder scholar Hilary Finch is not impressed by this effort: “Shura Gehrman, a thick, cloudy baritone, who took it into his head to record an original German version and his own English translation of the work, has produced twin recordings which can only be regarded as curiosities, and rather unpleasant ones at that. In German, his perverse verbal and musical inflections convey little but the ardour of his own response; in English, colloquialism sinks to risible extremes, distracting the listener, perhaps mercifully, from everything else that is going on.” Hilary Finch, writing on recordings of Schubert Winterreise in Alan Blyth, ed., Song on Record Volume 1: Lieder (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 54.

59 David Utting, “Winter Journey: Songs from Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ Performed by Ian and Jennifer Partridge,” YouTube 12:45, 1982, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTi2pQiUphI.

60 Janette Miller, “Winter Journey - Die Winterreise Schubert Janette Miller Draft 1,” YouTube Video 1:11:10, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGkwl7kT9JI.

61 https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/leisure/music/14648311.review-ryedale-festival-winter-journey-royal-northern- sinfonia-players-old-malton-priory-july-25-and-26/

62 https://beckmessersquill.com/2016/11/06/schubert-winterreise-reflections-roderick-williams-christopher-glynn- wigmore-hall-winter-journey/

63 https://seenandheard-international.com/2019/10/roderick-williams-charts-an-emotional-trajectory-in-schuberts- winter-journey/ 134

placed below the English translation. Neither Müller nor Schubert’s name appear except on the title page (where both are acknowledged). The introductory notes, written by Macfarren, focus upon Schubert’s biography but make no mention of the English translation or how or why she wrote it. Of all the editions I found until Westbrook’s translation in 1920, this is the implicit hierarchy that is presented, in publications by Novello, Schirmer, Universal and Offenbach, amongst others. Westbrook’s translation, remarkably, published by Collection Litolff, does not include the German at all. Instead, the editors present a bilingual French-English edition in which the languages take equal footing in terms of the size and location of the typeface, though, in the lyrics, it is the French translation that is italicized and sits beneath the English.

Where I found translations in text form only, without a musical score, they almost universally appear without the German present. This seems rather extraordinary to me: however, when I asked Jeremy Sams about the absence of the German texts in the Hyperion sleeve notes of his translation, he told me he felt that their presence would be unnecessary as they could easily be summoned in print or online. Perhaps this was the rationale of many of these translators and publishers. I suspect that many just considered the German redundant alongside the new English text. A number of editions from the 1920s on similarly exclude any German from the publication, a decision which one could fairly assume may have some political dimension: these include Fox-Strangways’ and Steuart Wilson’s 1927 edition and Harrison’s 1930 version. Around this period, the translations start to appear in a more diverse range of sites: in the journal Music and Letters, in collections of music for choir, in a treatise on Interpretation in Song, and ‘Best of’ collections aimed at the amateur market. The translations by Mott (1921), England (1934), Garran (1946), Drinker (1951), Swift (1977), Campbell (1982) and Minchin (1982) were all found as English text only; of these, Swift, Garran, Campbell and Minchin’s were all published within collections of translations. I see this as a shift towards foregrounding translational activity. From Garran on, the notion of copyright attribution starts to appear, and is asserted in those editions by Minchin and Swift in particular.64

64 Copyright protection is an interesting area in translation. In copyright law, translation is understood to be a derivative work, alongside musical arrangements and cinematic adaptations, for example: an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, but constitutes a second, separate work independent in form 135

Whilst the song appears across the field of editions in a range of transpositions, the musical content is unaltered in other aspects in print in all except two instances: Harrison’s “choral” arrangement, with its optional second voice; and Beavitt’s “slightly adapted” transcription (Beavitt changes melodic and rhythmic aspects of the vocal line to adapt to his translation). In recorded form, there is an altogether freer approach in three of the examples towards the musical dimensions of the song in addition to the lyrical: McCormack’s 1928 recording of an unknown translator’s version features an instrumental arrangement for orchestra (8 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, bass, flute, oboe, bassoon, 2 clarinets, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, piano, harmonium, harp, and traps); Sting’s 2009 version is accompanied by folk musicians, and the album under a pale moon, also from 2009, features a choir, synthesizer and wind machine.

In contrast to the opacity of many of these editions and recordings around the translational additions, two translations are accompanied by extensive essays that offer insight into their creation. Harold Heiberg (2010) published his translation in the National Association of Teachers of Singing journal, which is targeted towards singers and their teachers. He printed the German to the left in the same font as his English translation, which is printed to the right. The English title comes second to the German in the heading, in the same size font. This is prefaced by an explanatory essay comparing the translation to quite a few other translations and defending and explaining his own choices. Thomas Beavitt (2018) also published an essay on translating Winterreise available on his website and on ResearchGate.65

These many observations about the ways in which translations are presented are pertinent because there are many things implied by seemingly small editorial decisions. Where the German text is missing, assumptions are made about access and recourse to the original; where from the first. The transformation, modification or adaptation of the work must be substantial and bear its author's personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright. It wasn’t until 1976 however that UNESCO recommended that translators should be given copyright protection, and most countries now seek to legally protect both original and derivative works. Therefore it is not surprising to see Basil Swift (1977) and Leslie Minchin (1982) asserting copyright protections quite energetically in their editions around this time.

65 Thomas Beavitt, “Translating Winterreise: Sense and Singability,” ResearchGate, 2019. 136

the translator’s name is as large as Schubert’s an equation is made. In performance, of course, such concerns become irrelevant: as an embodied experience dependent on the live moment a translation cannot be two things at once but must assert itself in place of the text it has rewritten. There is one exception in the collection however, an example that manages to offer both the original text and a translation concurrently. The isolated Schubertian track, “The Organ Grinder (After Schubert)” which appears on a 2009 pop/new-age release from Romeo Records entitled under a pale moon, was recorded in Nuremberg, Germany, by an ensemble called Inner Voices and Friends. In this version, a choir sings the original German text under a loosely sung English version spoken by a low voice. Because the German and the English can be heard almost simultaneously, this version can be understood as an “acoustic palimpsest”, which satisfies, in some respect, any concern about the complete erasure of the original text that is otherwise an inevitable consequence of a translation’s auditory presentation.

Though the concept of the palimpsest is more conventionally a notion associated with manuscripts and the act of writing, ethnomusicologist J. Martin Daughtry tries to repurpose the idea for acoustic phenomena, using the concept as:

a metaphor to help us imagine sonorous objects and auditory experience as layered. This thought experiment asks if the palimpsest—a venerable (although some might say threadbare) source for metaphorical play—can be recalibrated (or “wired for sound”) in order to point us toward a politics of listening that is both hermeneutically rich and deeply complementary to the ethnographic project.

With its qualities of partial erasure (the contour of the melody is missing from the German text, whilst the German text is missing from the contour of the melody), writing-upon-writing (the translator “writes” the English version upon the “original” text), and the presentation of a multilayered record, this version of “The Organ Grinder” aligns with Daughtry’s notion of an aural palimpsest in a particularly conspicuous way. However, other examples from the collection can also be examined in terms of this metaphor. Daughtry makes the point that, unlike conventional musical philology, which attempts to clear away editorial layers in search of the

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musical urtext, “the “palimpsestuous” scholar is enthralled equally by each layer and each accretion, and by the gestalt effect of layerdness as well.”66

As we have already considered briefly, “[t]ranslations are profoundly linked to their historical moment because they always reflect the cultural formation where they are produced.”67 This link inevitably creates, at a minimum, an object that reflects two time periods simultaneously. This notion is perhaps best illustrated with a brief reference to the visual arts: two portraits of Schubert which were created long after the composer’s death. The first is Gustav Klimt’s portrait of “Schubert at the Piano”, which was painted in 1899, seventy-one years after the composer’s death.68 It features the composer dressed in a dark, high collared formal coat of his own era playing at a keyboard. Interestingly, the composer is joined by a few women who are dressed in a style appropriate to Klimt’s fin-di-siécle Vienna (one of them reputed to be the artist’s mistress). Such sartorial anachronism asserts Schubert as a comfortable time-traveller, but whether Klimt had chosen to represent Schubert in historical or turn of the century garments is in fact irrelevant: the scene holds the Viennese composer in a context fundamentally and materially contemporary to Klimt, from the subject matter to the composition of the paints. In the same way, Hadi Karimi’s very recent 3D digital portrait of the composer, which he created in 2020 from merely a contemporary description by Sonnenleither, the composer’s death mask,69 and a solitary painting completed a year or two before the composer’s death, allows a kind of time-travel whilst remaining very much an image of the twenty-first-century. In these images Schubert wears period clothing but is brought to contemporary presence by cutting edge digital rendering tools. In the same way, I want to propose that translations layer time in both material and acoustic

66 J. Martin Daughtry, “Acoustic Palimpsests and the Politics of Listening,” Music and Politics 7, no. 1 (January 2014), https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0007.101., 3.

67 Lawrence Venuti, “Retranslations: The Creation of Value,” in Translation and Culture, ed. Katherine M. Faull (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004), 34.

68 Gustav Klimt, “Schubert at the Piano” , 1899, Oil on Canvas, 150cm x 200cm, Destroyed by a fire set by retreating German forces in 1945 at Schloss Immendorf, Austria.

69 “Romantic Composers Brought Back to Life in Artist’s Hyperrealistic 3D Portraits - Classic FM,” accessed August 19, 2020, https://www.classicfm.com/composers/brahms/liszt-chopin-schubert-3d-digital-composer- portraits/. 138

palimpsests (in scores and in performance) by presenting older subjects through an inevitably and unavoidably contemporary lens.

It is important to understand that this time layering occurs regardless of the ambition of the translator. In fact, though many early translations clearly desire to create an “appropriate” historicity through their vocabulary, they often utilise what are in fact archaic and often inappropriate vocabularies. These vocabularies can actually situate the translations even more profoundly as products of their own time, as they embody certain prevailing attitudes to the “foreign” and the “old”, in much the same ways as Richard Taruskin has critiqued historically informed performance practice in music70. Following Taruskin’s arguments, perhaps the translational efforts of Clare Campbell, who aimed to translate the Winterreise poems for singing in a simple, “basically nineteenth-century style’” so as not to sound “out of period”71 with the music, can be understood as something akin to the musical philologist’s (ultimately futile) efforts to peel away the layers of editorial interventions on a musical text, and the Historically Informed Performer’s efforts to play and perform in period style. At the other extreme, Thomas Beavitt’s surprisingly intertextual translation of the full cycle shows no such concerns for historicity, and features references to mobile phones (in Die Post), the urban legend of Marie Antoinette’s prematurely grey hair (Die graue Kopf), the philosopher Nietzsche (in Mut!) and a Corbie, a Scottish crow (in Die Krähe).72 As we can see, Beavitt is happy to incorporate references well beyond the scope of Müller’s nineteenth-century German sensibility.73 In his correspondence with me, Beavitt explained he deliberately “wanted to remove the narrator as much as possible from the context of early nineteenth-century Germany, so as to present his compelling story to

70 See the following for an example: “What we had been accustomed to regard as historically authentic performances, I began to see, represented neither any determinable historical prototype nor any coherent revival of practices coeval with the repertories they addressed. Rather, they embodied a whole wish list of modern(ist) values, validated in the academy and the marketplace alike by an eclectic, opportunistic reading of historical evidence” Taruskin, Text Act Essays Music Perform, 5.

71 Campbell, Lieder for English Singers: Translated for Performance.

72 Thomas Beavitt, “Winter Journeyman,” Global Village Bard, 2018, https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ReverseLookup/522834.

73 Indeed, with this degree of freedom, I would have expected his version of Der Leiermann to feature some more contemporary mechanical music-maker, a record player perhaps, but Beavitt does retain the original instrument. Instead, he saves his novelty for the gender of the hurdy-gurdy player (more on this later). 139

contemporary audiences.” Such an approach is reminiscent of the anonymous French translation discussed by Susan Youens (mentioned in Chapter Two): a transplantation of the cycle into a different cultural context and adaptation of its structure and caché to communicate a personal agenda.

Other translations overtly rely upon the canonical status of the Lied, presuming any audience has an existing familiarity that allows their re-writing to form a contrapuntal (and palimpsestuous) layer. In Stephen Clark’s translation, commissioned for Conal Morrison and Conor Linehan’s Woyzeck in Winter,74 Clark translates “Der Leiermann” from the hurdy-gurdy player’s perspective. Instead of the wanderer speaking about the street musician, the musician sings: “barefoot on the ice, I stagger to and fro”. It is the musician who asks the wanderer in from the wasteland, asking “won’t you stay with me/Deep beyond the ice/Our songs for company?” By reversing the subject and object of the song, Clark gives agency to the otherwise wordless hurdy- gurdy player: the point of view is shifted, the “other” speaks. Even the simple possessive inclusion of “our” gives a different feeling – the plural possessive pronoun evokes an expectation of collaboration and co-creation, as opposed to the original’s singular possessive of “meine Lieder”.75 In this production the hurdy-gurdy player was played by a woman, though this did not require any additional manipulation of the translation, as we see evidenced in the next example. Given Thomas Beavitt’s Scottish brogue it was perhaps inevitable he might embrace the alliterative charm of “Hurdy-Gurdy Girl”, though he identifies several other reasons in addition to this one for this change. Originally intended to be used as one of three songs excerpted from the cycle for a ballet piece to represent what he calls the “three ages of Woman – maiden, mother and crone”,76 Beavitt also discovered that a significant number of travelling hurdy-gurdy playing

74 A musical theatre piece produced by Landmark Productions and performed at the Galway International Arts Festival, the Barbican Centre, London, and the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2017.

75 Julius Harrison’s choral arrangement of 1930, which features a second voice at the concluding questions, inadvertently creates a similar feeling, simply by virtue of it being a choral arrangement (even though it is largely unison).

76 “My idea was that she would dance three numbers: (1) Sweet Dreams [Gute Nacht], (11) Dream of Spring [Frühlingstraum] and (24) Hurdy-Gurdy Girl [Der Leiermann]. These three numbers would then represent the “three ages of Woman” – maiden, mother and crone. Of course, this is something of a conceptual superposition onto Winterreise, but I felt (and feel) that there is more of a feminine presence pervading the cycle than is often represented.” This comment is excerpted from private email correspondence and reproduced here with permission. 140

women began entertaining publicly during the nineteenth century, first within Germany, then throughout Europe and finally even across the Atlantic. Given Beavitt’s plan to use these three songs for a specific project that identifies a rather limited perspective on feminine experience, I am not convinced that the gender swap in this case counts as “asserting a female presence”77 or as a “hijacking”, a term that describes a translational change that charges a text that was not originally feminist with feminist significance, which can include, for example, altering gendered language or changing the sex of the protagonist. However, it does prompt us to consider how gendered language and stereotypes around gender affect the translation of a piece. It also potentially prompts us to consider what aspects of the original “work” presume maleness.

In coming to the end of what inevitably must be a preliminary discussion, given such a large collection, I hope I have justified to some extent the rationale behind bringing such activities to attention. Though of course this was not his intention, the tenor Ian Bostridge inadvertently helps support the efforts of these many translators by highlighting Schubert’s decision to drop the definite article from Müller’s title for the cycle, which was originally Die Winterreise. Transforming the title from a singular noun with a definite article into a noun both singular (though indefinite) and plural opens the possibility for there to be multiple Winterreise. Whilst Laura Tunbridge sees this decision as “transforming one specific journey into a metaphor for the human condition”,78 Bostridge goes further: First, he made the work his own, something distinct from its originating material and owing no loyalty to it beyond the use he could make of it in molding it to his own purposes. Secondly, he made it more abstract, less definite, more open – without its definite article – and, from our perspective, more modern. Winterreise has a starkness which is utterly true to its material in a way that Die Winterreise would not be. Anyone can own this journey. 79

But is that true? And if it is true, is it desirable? This song’s capacity to offer an “alternative subjectivity”80 can be seen in even the simplest choices in translation. As already implied, some

77 Bassnett, Translation, 79-80.

78 Laura Tunbridge, The Song Cycle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 32.

79 Bostridge, Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, 15.

80 Ibid., 15. 141

translations make radical departures from the source material. But even in subtle ways, just as Schubert himself transformed the whole song from B to A minor, each lyrical translation manifests a slightly different scene – both in terms of material details and mood. The nature of the instrument and its player is diversely represented: not only as a hurdy-gurdy player, but as a barrel or street organ player (implied by the choice of “organ-grinder” to describe the player of an instrument that was popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and similarly operated by a crank) .81 One translation, as already discussed, even refers to the instrument using the homophone of “lyre”.82 Even in this simplest of choices we see how a translator can affect the way a listener hears the song (if we read the title of “The Lyreman” before listening we surely listen to the piano accompaniment quite differently than if we expect a hurdy-gurdy?)83 One only has to look at the many diverse images that result from a simple Google image search for “Der Leiermann” to see how diverse interpretations can be. There are as many Leiermänner as artists who wish to depict him: Walter Grässil’s graphite version sees a masked harlequin figure with peacock feathers in his hair grinning surrounded by dogs including a Doberman and a Dalmation;84 Victor Eeckhout’s turbaned musician painted in oils stares at the viewer accompanied by a young girl;85 Huhnen Fritz’s grey bearded figure dominates the canvas in his

81 Stephen Clarke, custodian of Toronto’s Stratton Collection of Historical Recordings, suggested to me, (in reference to the confusion around the release of John McCormack’s recording as “The Organ Grinder” in the US, and as “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” in England), that in some cases this difference may be similarly accommodating to the two different markets (barrel organs being more common in the US, and hurdy-gurdy’s more familiar in England with its proximity to Europe.)

82 See Chase’s comments on this at his blog: Chase, “TheWinterJourney: No. 24 The Hurdy-Gurdy Man.”

83 This problem is reminiscent of Douglas Hofstadter’s Le ton beau de Marot (a set of 60+ diverse translations and commentaries upon a short poem by Clément Marot in Renaissance French called “A une Damoyselle malade”). These many translations, which employ registers from Elizabethan English, 1920’s American slang, pop lyrics and rap render Marot's Ma mignonne as ''My sweet dear,'' ''Honey bun,'' ''Sugar lump,'' ''Turtle dove,'' ''Chickadee,'' and ''Pal petite'' amongst others. Robert Alter, “My Little Chickadee,” Internet Archive: Wayback Machine, 1997, https://web.archive.org/web/20130616192456/http:/www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/reviews/970720.20altert.htm l.

84 “Www.Galerie-Bunt.ChWinterreise Zeichnungenhompage Walter Graessli,” accessed November 1, 2020, http://www.galerie-bunt.ch/winterreise-zeichnungen.html.

85 “Der Leiermann by Victor Eeckhout on Artnet,” accessed November 1, 2020, http://www.artnet.com/artists/victor-eeckhout/der-leiermann-Ts5Z6ASVL2Qmuzguooy1SQ2.2 142

black gouache attire;86 whilst Eva Frankfurther’s charcoal figure stoops with an empty plate beside him. Just as these artists make diverse visual representations of what is ostensibly the same character, the translators locate the encounter in similarly diverse ways. Though Graham Johnson points out that “Müller has placed his player “Drüben hinter'm Dorfe”—not even in a village, but outside and beyond it”,87 the translations exhibit a variety of different locations, not only out of town as Johnson says is the literal meaning (“out beyond the village”, “just beyond the village”, “up behind the village,” “down behind the village”) but also within it (“in the village high street”) and elsewhere (“by the village crossing”). As a penultimate example, we can also look at the exclamation of “Wunderlicher Alter” towards the Leiermann. This seems to cause some difficulty to the translators and appears variously as a “wonderful old fellow”, a “strange and speechless beggar”, the “strangest of the ancients”, and a “strange and weird musician”. Perhaps most obviously, however, we should examine the many approaches of these translators towards the question from which I take my title, in which we see thirty-three incredibly different ways of making what appeared at first to be a seemingly simple request.

The Müller original is distinctive for its lack of qualifying adjectives. However, most of the translators do not match his restraint. Natalia Macfarren’s version of 1869 states “Play thy dreary music to my songs of woe”, a description echoed in the 1888 “English version” of Rev. Dr. Troutbeck “Thou canst turn thy organ while I sing of woe”. Both translator’s use of archaisms such as “thy”, “thou” and “canst” can also be seen in the Percy Pinkerton translation of 1904, in which he asks: “Wilt thou, while I’m singing, grind the tune for me?” These dour versions contrast enormously with the translation that appears in the 1871 Pauer Edition, which seems positively cavalier by referring to the songs as “ditties” (one way to replace the two syllables of lieder): “Will you to my ditties play the music too?” Richard Capell arrives at the same solution in 1949: “I will sing my ditty, You shall play the air”, as does Leslie Minchin in 1982: “With your hurdy-gurdy sing my ditties too?”, while the anonymous translator sung by John

86 “Huhnen Fritz | Der Leiermann (1940) | MutualArt,” accessed November 1, 2020, https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Der-Leiermann/A9D5278552C2909E.

87 Johnson, “Schubert: Winterreise - CDA30021 - Franz Schubert (1797-1828) - Hyperion Records - CD Booklet (PDF Download).” 143

McCormack in 1928 uses “lay”: “Will you grind the organ while I sing my lay?” and Frederick Field Ballard uses “ballad”: “Will you on your organ play my ballads too?” These nouns give an entirely different feeling to the near ninety minutes of effortful psycho-narrative that have preceded the song at this point. Frederic Kirchberger’s 1993 version uses “song” but turns them into songs of love: “Let me sing my love songs/ while you turn your drone!” Harold Heiburg opts instead for a “songbook” in 2010, requesting “Would you for my songbook/Turn your organ too?” in a rather odd back-to-front formulation reminiscent of the German word order. “Songbook” points the listener towards a physical article, a book of songs, as opposed to an oral experience, and whilst, as an American, Heiburg is perhaps giving a nod to the notion of the Great American Songbook, within the Lieder tradition we also might think of the great Liederbücher of Wolf. Most curious of the set is likely Thomas Beavitt’s effort, “Shall I sing my swan song/To your hoary drone?”. Whilst “swan song” plays knowingly upon our knowledge of Schubert’s last great brace of songs, Schwanengesang, as well as our knowledge of Schubert’s looming death at the time of writing this work, the intended meaning of “hoary drone” is potentially ambiguous, especially as Beavitt has changed the gender of the song’s subject.

In a kind of refutation of the prevailing alienation of the cycle, (and the choices of many translators to dwell on the “grind” of the hurdy-gurdy) a number of translators use this conclusive moment to emphasise the possibility of collaboration between the pair: in the 1920’s William J. Westbrook asks “Wilt thou, when I’m singing, Me accompany?...” and Elizabeth Mott suggests “let us, you and I, Grind our tunes together, while the world goes by!” while Claire Campbell in 1982 begs “Will you take me singing/everywhere you play?” Within this context it is interesting to consider Jeremy Sams’s 2016 choice to insert the concept of “brokenness”: “Play your broken music/to my broken song?” Sams is distinct from the other translators in the collection in ascribing the same quality – in this case, broken-ness – to both the Wanderer and the Hurdy-Gurdy Player.

In the light of this choice, I return to questions I posed at the beginning of this project: what is an English-speaking audience to make of the inferences of Sams’s translation? What is the “brokenness” that Sams introduces, and what are “broken songs” and “broken music”? If we then agree with Sams’s diagnosis, and consider it to have wider implications, we must ask what precisely is

144

broken, and how, who is responsible, and what we can do to effect some repair, if indeed, that is needed or even possible.

The simplest answer one might suggest is that these are two “broken” men, one worn from heartbreak and his wintry travels, the other neglected and ignored, abjectly “droning” on. Neither is sure of the next step ahead, and by choosing the same adjective for the activities of both figures, Sams draws a likeness between them which no other translator does so explicitly. Is there the hope that in collaboration these two broken figures might make something whole? As Sams poses this question in English, I think there are possibly also other associations. In translating the lyrics of a Lied for singing, the intimate connection established by the composer between words and music is, it must be admitted, “broken”. The two aspects of the Lied which are treasured for their relationship with one another are literally separated from each other by a translational act. With this in mind, in Chapter One: “Broken Music?” I wondered if Sams’s translational choice may potentially reflect some acknowledgement about the implications of his translational practice, not only in how it goes against aesthetic conventions but in how it explicitly goes against his own father’s advice. Could he be talking, indirectly, about his own broken songs?

At the same time, singing in a language not spoken by either performer or audience does not fulfill the aesthetic goals of the repertoire at hand.88 Where this is the prevailing performance convention certain conceptions of compositional “intention” and notions of “authenticity” that privilege the authority of the “work” are prioritised at the expense of other, relational, priorities in performance. With this in mind we can also read Sams’s choice as a critique of such practices as “broken” and as a justification of his own translational practice as a means of repair.

In the same section I also suggested that this notion of “broken-ness” may also in some way recognise the disjunct between a nineteenth-century German song and a twenty-first-century

88 In this case, the Lied is distinct from vocal repertoire such as Vivier’s “Lonely Child” which has large tracts of purposefully nonsensical sung language. 145

Anglophone setting. However, I would now like to suggest that there is also something more fundamental that this concept of “broken-ness” can speak to.

Translation and Repair

Singing this in English….awoke a wave of emotion in me for which I hadn’t been prepared. It is hard to describe but I guess it was a rush of empathy, of pity from one human being to the plight and suffering of another. It connected me to the sight of all the homeless people I see on the streets of our cities on any given day. My heart was touched…and I could barely sing.

—Roderick Williams, on singing Jeremy Sams’s English version of “Der Leiermann” 89

It is essential to see the things and the people who are primarily unseen and banished to the periphery of our social graciousness. At a minimum it is essential because they see you and address you.

—Avery Gorden, quoted by Daughtry in “Acoustic Palimpsests” Layer 3 90

When a person knows and can’t make the others understand, what does he do?

—Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 91

As we know, Müller’s “Der Leiermann,” as set by Schubert, does not himself speak. The only sound he makes is his music, a disconsolate, circular motif grinding upon his (likely battered) hurdy-gurdy. But, as discussed, he may offer some kind of intimate response to the Wanderer’s query in the music Schubert gives him to play. This can be heard not only in “Der Leiermann”, the concluding song of the cycle, but every time we hear the piano embark upon “Gute Nacht”, the first. As the cycle begins, we might hear the Leiermann saying, in sound, that yes, he will play his music while the Wanderer, once again, sings his songs.

89 Williams, “‘What Language Do You Like Singing In Best?’: Roderick Williams on Schubert’s Winterreise | by Bachtrack for Classical Music, Opera, Ballet and Dance Event Reviews.”

90 Daughtry, “Acoustic Palimpsests and the Politics of Listening.”

91 Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 69. 146

As seen in the collection, some translators seem to have felt that in some contexts comprehension of this agreement is not assured and lingual mediation is necessary. I can understand this kind of impulse when I remember the man displaced from the church in Chelsea when I performed Winterreise over a decade ago. Before he left, I experienced a sharp pang of recognition: it seemed to me that the subject of our 180 year old music was present. We were doing our best to interpret Schubert’s masterwork with integrity and authenticity. But somehow, we were speaking to this man in the wrong language. I am reminded again of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in which he says: “if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.”92

Indeed, the Wanderer begins the cycle as a stranger, a foreigner in his own home;93 and by the twenty-fourth song, he finds another who seems to share this condition. As we have discussed, there are many readings of their dynamic: translators making light of the encounter, or switching the two roles, or amplifying certain aspects; performers giving the characters life, and literally, a voice. Amongst the many readings in scholarship, Susan Youens offers a psychoanalytic perspective on these two figures, identifying the Leiermann as “the refracted image of the wanderer himself” [my italics].94 In making this identification, Youens makes an explicit parallel between the Leiermann and a Doppelgänger: indeed, we can recognise in the Winterreise setting something like the moment in the “Schwanengesang” setting of Heine’s poem on that very subject. The protagonist in Der Doppelgänger exclaims upon seeing a figure below him in the street: “Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt” (“The moon shows me my own form!”)95

There may be both apprehension and consolation in recognising oneself in a stranger. In that recognition there can be curiosity about the stranger’s nature as well as projection of our own. In apprehending something of himself at large in the world, Youens sees the protagonist of

92 1 Cor 14: 11 RSV

93 “Fremd bin ich eingezogen,/Fremd zieh’ ich wieder aus.” (A stranger I came here, a stranger I depart) – the opening two lines of “Gute Nacht”, Song 1 of Winterreise.

94 Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise, 299.

95 “Der Doppelgänger | Song Texts, Lyrics & Translations | Oxford Lieder,” accessed November 13, 2020, https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/997. 147

Winterreise prefiguring Rimbaud’s formulation “Je est un autre” (I am another”). This is something similar, I think, to Graham Johnson saying of the abject Leiermann that “[t]here but for the grace of God, go I”96; I think it’s also similar to Christopher Glynn proposing that “there is even a sense in which the hurdy-gurdy man is anyone and everyone”97 (an idea we can see visualised in William Kentridge’s projected Winterreise village). I think sung translations of Lieder sometimes come out of this same feeling: a feeling of recognition, kinship and curiosity alongside psychological projection. Translations can therefore be a heartfelt, but complicated, way of encountering the works of others.

One thing I have wondered about in preparing this collection is these many translators approaching the lines: “Keiner mag ihn hören, Keiner sieht ihn an” (No one seems to listen, no one looks at him). Ironically, it has been their own efforts that have largely been overlooked and rejected by the Lieder community at large. It seems to me that singing translations have long laboured under misapprehensions about their identity, and it is often the lack of either awareness or transparency in their presentation that has contributed to this situation. Where translations are offered as substitutes instead of supplements, as definitive instead of interpretive, they are set up for difficulty. Additionally, despite many translator’s attempts to bring the “work” forward, it is people that such translations bring most clearly into view. While the collection ostensibly tells us about the Lied’s journey into Anglophone contexts beyond the 19th century, it is translators such as Elizabeth Mott, Harold Heiberg, David Paley and Clare Campbell that we learn most about. It is for this reason that I chose this particular Schubertian Lied as a case study. When heard in German we are moved to pity a nineteenth-century figure. When heard in English we may be confronted with a figure closer to home.

96 Johnson, “Schubert: Winterreise - CDA30021 - Franz Schubert (1797-1828) - Hyperion Records - CD Booklet (PDF Download).” See “Der Leiermann”

97 Schubert and Sams, “Winter Journey: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise D. 911 in an English Version by Jeremy Sams.” See Christopher Glynn’s note, 4-5. 148

Implications of the Project

…actually, the more you dig into it the more you’re probably realizing it has tendrils connected to your deepest assumptions about the meanings of these songs and their performance…

— Bryan Benner, lead singer of The Erlkings1

These are kind of unresolvable things, but the unresolvability of it is a fertile area… And there can be good and bad experiences within that and you don’t know what they’re going to be until you have them. So it’s very hard to make rules about these things because it’s not about rules, it’s about experiences, really...

— Nick Drake, poet and playwright2

I embarked upon this project knowing that in many respects there were no definitive answers to be found. It is not possible to ascertain whether the practise of singing Schubert’s Lieder in translation is objectively right or wrong, (nor desirable, I would suggest), and that much was made very clear in my survey of performers, translators, colleagues and mentors. It is possible, however, to consider the practise of singing translations deeply, rather than dismissing it out of hand. By bringing the issue into discussion, hopefully I have asked any reader to consider a number of different aspects of contemporary performance practice that they may otherwise have taken for granted: the ways the Lieder community approaches language and how strongly it prioritises comprehension, and consequently, the relationship between language as “meaning” and language as “music”; the relationship this community fosters with audiences and the way it honours composers; and the challenges it faces in negotiating the gap between repertoire of the past that is performed in the present. The questions “why sing?” and “how?” should, ideally, be at the root of all Lieder practises, and prompt vigorous conversations and deeply considered performance choices. Rather than accepting any inherited mode of performance without question, surely it is healthiest for performers to equip themselves with knowledge and then explore possibilities on their own terms?

1 Transcribed from interview 1 January 2019.

2 Transcribed from interview 10 January 2019. 149

As a performer myself, there are many ways that this project has transformed the way I think about Lieder. I have wondered about my “right” to interact with repertoire that is not immediately verbally accessible to me, and my “right” to transmit that repertoire to audiences similarly hindered. I have wondered about my “right”, and the “rights” of others, to change aspects of that repertoire specified by the composer (whether those aspects are musical or verbal) in order to make accommodations for performers or receivers of that repertoire. I have considered the implications, both creative and destructive, of changing the lingual elements of the Lied, not only changing the words as set but changing the chosen language and its sounds. I have thought about ways to embolden and inspire trainee performers to relate more deeply to the music they study and perform. I am still incredibly cautious about performing in translation or proposing it to my colleagues, as either a collaborative activity or as a performance alternative. However, I now have greater skill and access to materials to support discussion and consideration should the opportunity arise and have enjoyed participating in and facilitating collaborative translation activities along these lines.

I want to make clear that focussing on singing translations is not an attempt at creating an “out”. Though I will continue to study and improve my German, as might anyone who cares for Lieder, the need for the project remains: regardless of my skills in German, I remain an Anglophone interpreter working within (largely) Anglophone settings, as do so many of my colleagues, and we cannot assume that our audiences understand German. So whilst it is true that developing literacy in German should remain the goal of any Lieder specialist, we might also acknowledge and develop our skills in our roles as translators. The skills of a translator are both indispensable to and analogous to being an interpreter of German language repertoire as an Anglophone. This is true whether the purpose of that translation is to inform a musical interpretation, to read aloud before a performance, to project as surtitles, print in a programme or to sing. I propose that consideration of translational approach is as integral as preparing a musical interpretation.

Firstly, translational practice could be brought more centrally into the training of young singers and pianists. Ways of implementing this include: teaching translation strategies alongside more traditional Lieder studies; making translators themselves more visible (in teaching roles for instance); and offering opportunities to explore creative translation exercises. Students could be taught a range of translational strategies and have the opportunity to write translations to meet a 150

variety of purposes (for use in surtitles, for use in programmes, for use in singing) and have those translations scrutinised. Translations could be created collaboratively or individually and compared with standard translations.3 A more deliberate approach to translation practice along and beyond these lines (and inclusive of singing translations) could offer additional strategies to Anglophone performers-in-training in order to help focus, reveal and interrogate their own interpretive decisions, help them to examine musical structures more closely, and position themselves in more lively creative dialogue with the repertoire.

I recently had the opportunity to see this in action when I was invited to explore the subject of singing translations at East Carolina University in the USA. Dr. Catherine Gardner, an Assistant Professor in Voice at ECU College of Fine Arts & Communication School of Music, invited me to lead a series of workshops for her post-graduate Song Class. These workshops included writing, listening to, and singing translations, in addition to reading some select materials. The classes were lively, provocative, and warmly received by Dr. Gardner and her students. Some translations I presented were surprising to the class, others unacceptable: regardless, they prompted stimulating discussion and helped the students consolidate their own efforts. (Feedback from Dr. Gardner on these workshops can be read at Appendix D.)

Secondly, translational practice could be foregrounded more in performance, in an effort to bring audiences into a space that acknowledges language difference and makes better efforts to negotiate that creatively. By no means do I mean that more singing translations should necessarily appear in performance. However, the realities that have continually prompted the creation of singing translations over the last 150 years could prompt the mitigation of semantic loss from as broad a range of strategies as possible. The fact that surtitles only made their debut in a Lieder recital at Wigmore Hall in 20194 communicates a reluctance to accommodate for language difference and I believe we could do much more. Again, translators themselves could

3 For example, the Australian translator Bruce Daniel approached his translation of Die schöne Müllerin in consultation with the prominent Australian collaborative pianist David Miller.

4 Translator Richard Stokes went to some effort to convince Wigmore Hall of the importance of surtitles for this recital of the ballads and playful songs of Carl Loewe on 2 April 2019, and wrote me in private correspondence that “this is the first time that surtitles will be used in a Liederabend at Wigmore Hall.” 1 March 2019. 151

be made more visible, their approaches more explicit, and translation itself made the subject of conversation around performances of the repertoire.

Thirdly, I hope to bring singing translations into the light as an idiosyncratic and fascinating type of reception history: as I hope I have illustrated, such translations reveal trends and attitudes as transparently as recordings do but have been largely ignored and misunderstood. This is revealed most obviously in the collection, which I hope to use in the future as a vehicle for presenting some of the ideas above for wider consideration: perhaps it will be possible to present it more formally as an annotated published collection, bringing forward more of the biographies of the translators, offering more documentary analysis and historical context for each version, alongside commentary on their various translational choices. Though I have included merely the texts in this dissertation, a full collection would exhibit the translations in the “sites” where I found them, along with all the elements of typography, the hierarchies made explicit by font sizes and positioning, illustrations, and paratextual materials (or lack of such) that attend them. Such a project would also allow me to bring forward some of the more fascinating (and otherwise obscure) characters behind these translations, as Katy Hamilton has done with Natalia Macfarren5.

Fundamentally, this project seeks to re-orient prevailing attitudes around translations within the Anglophone Lieder community which I see as tending either to the passive, the overly optimistic or the overly dismissive. Translations cannot be definitive; they cannot replace. They are inevitably subjective and require deep and sensitive engagement with a “text”. I want to urge an approach to translating Schubert for singing akin to that described by the translators of a 1928 essay by Theodor Adorno entitled “Schubert”. Jonathan Dunsby and Beate Perrey describe their 2005 translation as “an alternative” and “a reinterpretation...”, one which

grew out of a shared fascination and enchantment with its [the Adorno essay] verbal brilliance as well as elusiveness, and a shared interest in finding and—as is the case with all reading, but especially when it comes to difficult texts—in

5 Hamilton, “Natalia Macfarren and the English German Lied.” 152

making its meaning. In this sense, translating “Schubert” essentially meant reading it, except more closely.6

Conceding that “no translation will be as rich, or rich in the same way, as the original”, and that “[t]ranslating this kind of text requires weighing up options and making decisions, and […] invites controversy”7 their belief that the object of their translation “tells us something essential about Schubert’s music while sending us back to it, to listen to it once more, and more receptively this time”8 justifies their activity. I have hoped to make the same case. No singing translation can or should replace the original, but instead should be considered as an “alternative” and a “reinterpretation”: expressive of both fascination and enchantment with the source material and sending us “back” to Schubert’s music whilst also helping it find its way to us in English.

6 Theodor Adorno, “Schubert (1928). Translated by Jonathan Dunsby and Beate Perrey,” 19th-Century Music 29, no. 1 (2005): Introduction by Dunsby and Perrey, 4.

7 Ibid., 5.

8 Ibid., 4. 153

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Tommasini, Anthony. “Critic’s Notebook: Devising an Experiment to Save the Song Recital.” The New York Times, January 18, 1997. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/18/arts/devising-an-experiment-to-save-the-song- recital.html. “Translate | Definition of Translate by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.Com Also Meaning of Translate.” Accessed July 7, 2020. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/translate. Tunbridge, Laura. “Singing Against Late Style: The Problem of Performance History.” In Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style, edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton, 426–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. ———. Singing in the Age of Anxiety . University of Chicago Press, 2018. ———. “Singing Translations: The Politics of Listening Between the Wars.” Representations 123, no. 1 (2013): 53–86. ———. The Song Cycle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. “Under a Pale Moon.” Romeo Records, 2006. Utting, David. “Winter Journey: Songs from Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ Performed by Ian and Jennifer Partridge.” YouTube 12:45, 1982. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTi2pQiUphI. Various. “Song-Translations.” Music & Letters 11, no. 3 (1921): 190–210. Venuti, Lawrence. “Retranslations: The Creation of Value.” In Translation and Culture, edited by Katherine M. Faull, 25–38. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004. Weinberger, Eliot. Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways). E-Book. New Directions Publishing, 2016. Weller, Beth Anne. “The Reception of Schubert in England, 1828-1883.” King’s College London, 2015. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-reception-of-schubert-in- england-18281883(32622a6a-5ac6-4d24-8ba3-74353cc1d32e).html. Whitton, Kenneth. Lieder: An Introduction to German Song. New York: Franklin Watts, 1984. Wikipedia. “Indirect Translation.” Accessed June 22, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_translation. ———. “Thomas Oliphant (Lyricist).” Accessed August 27, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Oliphant_(lyricist). Williams, Roderick. “‘What Language Do You Like Singing In Best?’: Roderick Williams on

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Schubert’s Winterreise | by Bachtrack for Classical Music, Opera, Ballet and Dance Event Reviews.” Bachtrack. Accessed March 22, 2020. https://bachtrack.com/feature-roderick- williams-schubert-winterreise-lieder-month-january-2019. “Winterreise | William Kentridge | Quaternaire.” Accessed April 28, 2020. http://www.quaternaire.org/william-kentridge/winterreise. “‘Winterreise’ Augmented by Kentridge Video Art - The New York Times.” Accessed April 28, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/arts/music/winterreise-augmented-by- kentridge-video-art.html. Wolf, Werner. “10 ‘Willst Zu Meinen Liedern Deine Leier Drehn?’: Intermedial Metatextuality in Schubert’s ‘Der Leiermann’ as a Motivation for Song and Accompaniment and a Contribution to the Unity of Die Winterreise [2001].” In Selected Essays on Intermediality by Werner Wolf (1992–2014), edited by Walter Bernhart, 259–77. Leiden: Brill | Rodopi, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004346642_011. “Www.Galerie-Bunt.ChWinterreise Zeichnungenhompage Walter Graessli.” Accessed November 1, 2020. http://www.galerie-bunt.ch/winterreise-zeichnungen.html. Youens, Susan. “‘Horrifying Songs’: Schubert’s Winterreise | Hampsong Foundation.” Hampsong Foundation, 2007. https://hampsongfoundation.org/resource/horrifying-songs- schuberts-winterreise/. ———. Retracing a Winter’s Journey : Schubert’s Winterreise. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Zhai, Mike. “Schubert - Der Leiermann (The Organ Grinder) from Winterreise.” YouTube, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFuQo80NcE&list=UUcth6oLaqHq2t7_Iri4J- eg&index=14.

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Appendices

A: Research Subject List B: Select Responses from Research Subjects C: Der Leiermann Translation Collection D: Feedback on singing translation workshop

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A: Research Subject List

Bryan Benner Phone Interview Transcript Lead singer of The Austria Erlkings, a Lieder folk band based in Vienna that perform in English

Iain Burnside Email Exchange Appendix B1 Pianist, Pedagogue, England Broadcaster – creator of theatrical art song events at Guildhall School of Music and elsewhere

Stephen Clarke Listening Session Notes Curator of the Stratton Canada and Personal Collection Interview

Bruce Daniel Phone Interview Notes Translator of The Fair Australia Maid of the Mill, 2018, published by Wirripang Pty Ltd.

Helmut Deutsch Email Exchange Appendix B2 Lieder pianist Germany

Nick Drake Phone Interview Transcript Poet and Screenwriter England Librettist of Between Worlds (2015, ENO) and Cave (2018, London Sinfonietta)

Tyler Duncan Personal Interview Transcript Canadian Baritone, USA performed Michael Symmons Roberts translation of Winterreise at Music on Main, Vancouver, in 2013, with pianist Erika Switzer

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Emily Ezust Email Exchange Translator, Founder and Canada Personal Interview Managing Director of www.lieder.net

Bram Gielen Email Exchange Composer Canada

Christopher Glynn Phone Interview Transcript Pianist, Artistic Director England of Ryedale Festival, Commissioned Jeremy Sams to write translations of Schubert song cycles, Auf dem Strom, Des Hirt auf dem Felsen, Wolf Italienisches Liederbuch, Brahms LiebesLiederwalzer

Barbara Hannigan Email Exchange Appendix B3 Musician (singer, Canada conductor)

Katy Hamilton Email Exchange Appendix B4 a freelance researcher, England writer and presenter on music for venues including Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, BBC Proms, Ryedale Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival and BBC Radio 3’s Record Review. Research Assistant to Graham Johnson for Schubert Project.

Amanda Holden Email Exchange Translations Prize-winning opera England translator (frequently commissioned by ENO) Translated Dichterliebe

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for the Southern Cathedrals Festival, 2010 for performances at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester by Mark Wilde and David Owen- Norris.

Graham Johnson Email Exchange Appendix B5 Founder of the England Songmaker’s Almanac, Author of The French Song Companion and Schubert: The Complete Songs Senior Professor of Accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Warren Jones Phone Interview Transcript Professor of Collaborative USA Piano at Manhattan School of Music and Music Academy of the West, Conductor

Gabriel Kahane Phone Interview Transcript Singer-Songwriter USA Composer of CraigslistLieder

Martin Katz Email Exchange Appendix B6 Professor of Collaborative USA Piano at University of Michigan Conductor

Sholto Kynoch Phone Interview Transcript Pianist, Artistic Director England and Founder of Oxford Lieder Festival

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Che-Ann Loewen Personal Interview Pianist, vocal coach Canada retired faculty of University of Toronto

Elizabeth Personal Interview Soprano, faculty of Canada Macdonald University of Toronto, School of Music

Wendy Nielsen Phone Interview Soprano, faculty of Canada University of Toronto, School of Music

Ema Nikolovska Personal Interview Transcript Soprano Canada/based in England

Mark Padmore Phone Interview Transcript Tenor England Premiered Michael Symmons Roberts’ translation of Winterreise in Katie Mitchell’s production One Evening

Norbert Palej Personal Interview Associate Professor of Canada Composition at University of Toronto

David Paul Phone Interview Transcript Director USA PoetLOVE 2016 (Dichterliebe sung in English translation, set in Brooklyn, NY)

Alex Samaras Email Exchange Singer Canada

Jeremy Sams Email Exchange Translations Translator (pianist, England Appendix B10 conductor, composer)

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Rena Sharon Personal Interview, Appendix B8 Head of Collaborative Canada Email Exchange Piano at the University of British Colombia

Richard Stokes Phone Interview Notes Translator England Professor of Lieder Studies at Royal Academy of Music

Sarah Slean Email Exchange Singer-Songwriter Canada

Michael Symmons Email Exchange Poet Roberts Commissioned to translate Winterreise for Mark Padmore

Toby Spence Personal Interview Transcript Tenor England Premiered Jeremy Sams’s The Fair Maid of the Mill

Kevin Stolz Email Exchange Appendix B9 Masters student in Canada Collaborative Piano

Erika Switzer Phone Interview Transcript Pianist, Faculty of Bard Canada College, Founder of Sparks and Wiry Cries

Naomi Taylor Email Exchange Founder and Creative England Director of Chiltern Arts Programmed Brahms in Love (Jeremy Sams translation)

Monica Whicher Personal Interview Soprano, faculty of Canada University of Toronto, Faculty of Music

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Roderick Williams Email Exchange Appendix B10 Baritone England Premiered Jeremy Sams’s Winter Journey and will sing all three cycles in English at Oxford Lieder Festival in 2019 Also premiered Brahms in Love and Wolf’s Italian Songbook, also translated by Sams (the latter at the Barbican, Feb 2019)

Heather Williams Email Exchange Pianist, Coach Canada

Susan Youens Email Exchange Appendix B7 Musicologist, Lied USA scholar

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B: Select Responses from Research Subjects

B1. Iain Burnside

Excerpt from email correspondence 5 December 2018 published with permission

"What a thought provoking and interesting area of research. I wish you well in it and applaud heartily your avenues of enquiry.

I fear I have not much to add, though. In general, my experience of performing foreign language songs in English has not been particularly positive. I’m afraid as I advance towards senility that I increasingly think the beauty and flavour of each foreign language plays a big part in the sound world of the various art song traditions. And there’s simply not the same need for narrative clarity as in opera. Surtitles have changed everything, not that I especially like them in song. But once you’ve experienced them, you can’t un-learn the experience. I’m also not convinced that we always need all texts and translations printed at song recitals either - the Wigmore orthodoxy, as it were. I personally like 2/3 lines summary, to encourage audiences to watch and listen, rather than read. Not always, but sometimes!

Also, in the UK, there is a point tangentially related to Brexit: as a culture we are increasingly lazy about - and occasionally hostile to - learning other European languages. This has led to a sense of Anglophone supremacy/entitlement that I am passionately opposed to. I know that Liederabend audiences here and abroad are not to be tarred with this brush, but it is a sad part of our broader cultural/political landscape.

I did some translations into English of several Schubert songs for my theatre piece Why does the Queen die? It was a very interesting experience, one which hugely increased my admiration for those who do it and do it well. It is so much harder than the layman could possibly imagine. My admiration for Jeremy Sams knows no bounds and his Schubert cycle translations are tours de force.

HOWEVER, they also carry their own health warning, as do his opera translations. Their Sondheimesque verbal virtuosity is so dazzling, his solutions to the pitfalls and problems so witty and ingenious, that the translations can’t fail to draw attention to themselves. Thus, Winterreise

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can turn into an Evening With Jeremy Sams. Not that this was his intention, for a moment - he is simply a victim of his own brilliant success. There’s also nothing wrong with such an evening - indeed it’s a terrific idea - but it all depends on your expectations, and motivations, in buying a ticket and booking a babysitter. One of the elements of Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise is that they have a rather limited, almost banal range of form and vocabulary. From this Schubert creates something miraculous. If this becomes a bravura number with LOL rhyming couplets (eg Jeremy’s spectacular “Der Jäger”) then the goalposts have moved.

The same issues in French/Spanish/Russian songs are if anything even more acute. Who wants to hear Faure “En Sourdine”, or Rachmaninoff’s “Zdes kharosho” in English? How fair this spot? Please. But as soon as you try to come up with something better, you see the problem..."

B2. Helmut Deutsch (translations by Eva Burke)

Excerpts from email correspondence 22 February 2019 published with permission

Haben Sie allgmeine Bemerkungen oder Gedanken betreffend Singen/Gesang in Uebersetzung? Manche Leute, die ich bis anhin befragt habe, auesserten sich mit Entsetzen wenn das Thema aufkam, zutiefst verstoert darueber, dass jemand die Lieder "mit falschen Worten" singen wuerde, waehrend andere meinen, es waere moralisch nicht richtig, wenn man den Text nicht uebersetzt, und somit das Ziel, mit dem Hoererpublikum zu kommunizieren ignoriert.

Koennen Sie die Qualitaeten beschreiben, die Ihrer Ansicht nach ein guter Uebersetzer brauchen wuerde? Koennen Sie spezifische Eigenschaften erwaehnen, die Ihrer Ansicht nach, eine gute Uebersetzung eines Gesangs aufweisen soll

“Ich bin in einer Zeit aufgewachsen, in der alle Opern in der Landessprache gesungen wurden. An den meisten großen Opernhäusern war es in der Mitte der Sechziger Jahre damit vorbei. An kleineren Häusern ist es aber immer noch üblich, und viele Leute freuen sich darüber, besonders wenn es heitere Opern sind und sie jeden Scherz verstehen.

Bei Liedern hat man schon zu Schuberts Zeiten angefangen, singbare Übersetzungen zu machen, nicht nur englisch, sondern auch italienisch.

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Später gab es zweisprachige Ausgaben bei mehreren Komponisten, zum Beispiel Brahms oder Wolf. (Es gibt eine CD von Cecilia Bartoli mit italienisch gesungenen Schubert – Liedern.)

Es ist seltsam, dass sich das niemals durchgesetzt hat. Vielleicht liegt das auch an den sehr schlechten Übersetzungen, die ja auch in der Oper oft ein Problem waren. Das finde ich im Allgemeinen schade.

Ein gebildetes Publikum wie zum Beispiel in London versteht sicher zu einem gewissen Teil auch deutsch oder französisch. Aber wahrscheinlich schon weniger spanisch, und russisch überhaupt nicht. Und in kleineren Städten, besonders in Frankreich, Spanien oder Italien, ist es noch viel schlimmer.

Aber es geht nicht nur um das Publikum. Nur wenige deutschsprachige Sänger zum Beispiel wagen es, slawische Lieder zu singen, besonders russische, weil sie die Sprachen (und im Russischen auch die Schrift) nicht beherrschen.

Man sagt, die Musik kennt keine Grenzen. Aber im Lied sind sie leider sehr spürbar vorhanden.

Sicherlich ist das Ideal die Originalsprache. Aber in vielen Fällen wäre ich sehr glücklich, wenn Lieder auch in den jeweiligen Landessprachen gesungen würden, vor allem natürlich, wenn es Sänger sind, die in ihrer Muttersprache singen. (Und fast jeder Sänger singt in seiner eigenen Sprache am besten!)

Eine Übersetzung muss aber nicht nur gut sein, das heisst, möglichst genau und poetisch. Sie sollte auch soweit wie möglich in den Satz – und Wortbetonungen dem Original ähnlich sein. Und das ist nur sehr schwer zu erreichen. Wenn das gelingt, würde man viele Zuhörer glücklich machen.”

Haben Sie je mit einer Gesang Uebersetzung gearbeitet, oder haben Sie je versucht, eine zu schaffen? Gibt es Umstaende, in denen Sie es fuer richtig faenden, eine solche zu erwaegen? (so hat Britten, z.Bsp, darauf insistiert, dass seine Arbeiten im Ausland in der Landessprache gesungen werden, sogar Stuecke, die bekannte Englische Gedichte umfassten.)

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“Ich habe in Japan ziemlich viele Lieder in Uebersetzungen gespielt. Manche bekannte deutsche Lieder sind in japanischer Uebersetzung sehr populaer, zum Beispiel „Die Forelle“, „Der Lindenbaum“, „Das Veilchen“.

Fuer ein Publikum, das mit Liedern in einer fremden Sprache nur wenig oder gar nicht vertraut ist, koennen diese Uebersetzung sehr hilfreich sein. Das gilt vor allem fuer kleinere Staedte in der Provinz. Es ist in vielen Faellen ein guter Einstieg in das Lied, und das japanische Publikum war darueber sehr erfreut.”

Obwohl Ihre Diskografie vorallem aus der Liedertradition stammt, habe ich auch ein ansehnliches Japanisches Repertoire bemerkt, ein Spanisches und etwas Franzoesisches und Englisches Repertoire. Was ist Ihr Zugang zu einem Repertoire in einer Sprache, die Sie nicht sprechen? Wie ermoeglichen Sie das Verstaendnis des Hoererpublikums vis-a-vis Poesie herbeizufuehren?

Welchen Unterschied bemerken Sie wenn Lieder in deutschsprachigen Laendern aufgefuehrt werden, im Vergleich zu anglophonen Laendern.

“Ich spreche etwas Japanisch und auch andere Sprachen. Aber das Wichtigste ist, die Bedeutung einzelner Worte zu kennen, wenn sie in der Vertonung eine besondere Rolle spielen. Gerald Moore meinte, dass der Begleiter jedes einzelne Wort kennen muss. Das halte ich im Allgemeinen fuer etwas uebertrieben. Wenn ich polnische oder tschechische, finnische oder ungarische Lieder spiele, kenne ich natuerlich kein Wort dieser Sprachen. Aber ich weiss den Inhalt und auch die Bedeutung einzelner wichtiger Worte.

Es ist auch im Deutschen ein grosser Unterschied zwischen beispielsweise Brahms oder Wolf. Brahms laesst sich oft von der Stimmung eines Gedichts inspirieren und geht auf einzelne Worte meistens nicht ein. Bei Wolf ist fast immer das Gegenteil der Fall. Man muesste als Pianist also meiner Meinung nach bei Wolf viel mehr vom Text verstehen als bei Brahms. Aber natuerlich gibt es auch Ausnahmen in beide Richtungen.

Fuer ein Publikum, das die Sprache der Lieder nicht versteht, macht man im Allgemeinen etwas intensivere Unterschiede in Dynamik und Agogik. Viele Saenger benuetzen dabei auch mehr Koerpersprache und Mimik als sonst. 180

Den Unterschied merkt man eigentlich am meisten bei erzaehlenden Liedern (z.B. Balladen) und bei humorvollen. Man wird vielleicht solches Repertoire sinnvollerweise hauptsaechlich in deutschsprachigen Laendern auf das Programm setzen.”

Sind Sie optimistisch in Bezug auf Lieder?

“Ich bin absolut optimistisch. Seit ich diesen Beruf ausuebe, hoere ich, dass der Liedgesang ausstirbt. Das Geruecht gab es aber auch schon vor 70 und mehr Jahren.

Heute studieren viel mehr Saenger und Pianisten Liedgesang an Hochschulen und Universitaeten als frueher. Es gibt viele kleine und groessere Festivals, in denen das Lied eine grosse Rolle spielt oder sogar im Zentrum steht. Die Schubertiade in Oesterreich zum Beispiel. Es gibt jedes Jahr fast hundert Liederabende in der Wigmore Hall, Liedbegleiter haben heute eine viel hoehere Position im Musikleben als vor 50 Jahren.

Es war immer ein spezielles Publikum, das Lieder liebte. Aber das wird es auch in Zukunft geben. Daran glaube ich fest.”

Was wuerden, Ihrer Meinung nach, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms und Wolf betreffen der Lebensdauer ihrer Werke sagen oder betreffend deren Tragweite - deren Auffuehrungen auf den Buehnen von Beijing, in Galerien in New York, oder gar auf der Filmleinwand?

“Das ist eine wunderbare Frage! Natuerlich wissen wir es nicht. Aber zur Zeit Schuberts und davor wurden fast ausschliesslich Werke von Zeitgenossen aufgefuehrt. Aber es gab schon ein paar Ausnahmen: Messias in Mozarts Bearbeitung zum Beispiel. Daher kann ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass Schubert daran geglaubt hat, man wuerde seine Musik nach 200 Jahren noch kennen und sogar noch mehr schaetzen als vor 100 Jahren.

Ab Schumanns Zeit beginnt sich das zu aendern. Bach wird „wiederentdeckt“.

Und Komponisten wie Brahms oder Wolf waren (wie wahrscheinlich Wagner in besonderem Masse!) wohl der Meinung, dass ihre Werke lange Zeit bestehen bleiben.

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Bei einem Komponisten wie Richard Strauss besteht meiner Meinung nach ueberhaupt kein Zweifel darueber, dass er ueberzeugt war, fuer die „Ewigkeit“ komponiert zu haben.”

Do you have any general thoughts about singing in translation? Some of my respondents have expressed their alarm at the thought of anyone singing Lieder with the 'wrong words' whilst others believe that there is something morally wrong in not translating to facilitate communication with an audience. Can you identify specific qualities that a good translator would need? Can you identify specific qualities that a good translation for singing would have?

“I have grown up in an era where all operas were being sung in the local national language. By the mid-sixties in the large opera houses this was, as a rule, a thing of the past. But it is still customary at the smaller venues and many people really enjoy it, above all when it comes to cheerful operas and they understand every joke. As for Lieder, even in Schubert’s time they started embarking on translations which lent themselves to song, not just in English, but in Italian as well. Later on, several composers brought out bilingual translations, for instance Brahms or Wolf (there is a CD by Cecilia Bartoli with Schubert Lieder sung in Italian).

It is curious that this has not taken hold ever. Perhaps this is due to the very bad translations, something which was often a problem with operas as well. Generally, I do think this is a pity. An educated audience, such as in London, would surely to some degree understand the production if it is in German or French. When it comes to Spanish, this might not so much be the case, and with Russian not at all. And in smaller cities, above all in France, Spain or Italy, the situation is much worse.

But it’s not just about the audience. There are, for example, only very few German speaking singers who would dare sing Slavic songs, above all Russian ones, as they have no command of the languages (nor the Russian script).

The saying is that music knows no boundaries. But sadly these are rather tangible when it comes to song.

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The original language is most definitely the ideal. But in so many cases I would be very happy indeed if the songs were to be sung in the respective local language, above all of course, if it is the native language of these singers. (And nearly every singer sings best in his native language/mother tongue).

A translation does not only have to be good, which means it has to be as accurate as possible and poetic. The translation also should aim to be as similar as possible to the original sentence emphasis and word emphasis.

That is barely achievable, it’s so difficult. When or if one succeeds in this area, one would make many listeners in the audience happy.”

Have you ever worked with a singing translation or attempted to create one? Are there any circumstances you could imagine in which you would consider it? (Britten, for instance, was insistent that his works be sung, abroad, in the vernacular, 'even pieces..which contain some of the greatest English poetry').

“In Japan I have played a number of songs in translation. Some well-known German songs are quite popular in Japanese translation, for example Die Forelle, Der Lindenbaum, Das Veilchen. For an audience who is only marginally familiar with Lieder in a foreign language or not at all, such translations can be very helpful indeed. That holds true above all for small towns in the province. In many cases this is in fact a good entry point to the song, and the Japanese audience was very pleased with it.”

Though your discography is largely from the Lieder tradition, I noticed a lot of Japanese repertoire, a Spanish disc, and some French and English repertoire. How do you approach repertoire in languages you do not speak? How do you facilitate your audience's comprehension of the poetry? What differences do you notice when performing Lieder in German speaking countries as opposed to performing Lieder in English speaking countries?

“I speak some Japanese and some other languages as well. But the most important point is to comprehend the meaning of particular words once they play a particular part when put to music.

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Gerald Moore felt that the accompanist must know every single word. This, I must say, I find somewhat exaggerated.

When I play Polish or Czech, Finnish or Hungarian songs, I of course don’t know a single word in these languages. But what I do know is the contents of a few of the important words and their meaning.

Even in German there is a vast difference between Brahms or Wolf. Brahms will often be inspired by the emotion/atmosphere/feeling of a poem and doesn’t delve further into the particular words.With Wolf the opposite holds true in nearly every single case. As a pianist, in my opinion, one has to have a much better understanding of the poem than with Brahms. But, of course, there are exceptions in both schools of thought.

For an audience who doesn’t understand the language of the song, one generally tends to mark with more emphasis the differences in dynamics and agogics. Many singers will also use more physical language/expression and mimic more than they would usually.

Where one tends to be mostly aware of the difference is when it comes to the narrative songs (e.g. ballads) and/or the humorous ones. It would be sensible and advisable to place that type of repertoire on the programme of German speaking countries.”

Are you optimistic about the future of artsong? (I use artsong to encompass songs of other languages in addition to German)

“Indeed, I absolutely am. Ever since being in this profession, I have heard that singing Lieder is becoming extinct. But such rumours circulated even 70 years ago and even before that.

Today, there are many more singers and pianists studying song at secondary schools and universities than before. There are many larger and smaller festivals being organized, where song plays an important part or indeed is their focal point. There are the Schubertiade in Austria for example. Annually, there are some one hundred song performances at the Wigmore Hall, accompanists of Lieder occupy a much more prestigious position in the world of music than fifty years ago.

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It was always a very special audience which loved Lieder. That will continue into the future. This is my firm belief.”

Can you imagine what Schubert, Schumann, Brahms or Wolf might have made of the endurance and reach of their works - their appearance on stages in Beijing, galleries in New York, on screen?

“That is a fabulous question! Of course we don’t know. In Schubert’s time, but before that as well, it was traditional to perform work almost exclusively by contemporaries.

But there were a few exceptions: Mozart’s re-working of the Messiah for example. That’s the reason I cannot imagine that Schubert would have believed that his music would still be known some two hundred years later and that then, it would be even more appreciated than one hundred years ago. That changed as of Schumann’s time. Bach was being ‘rediscovered’. And composers such as Brahms or Wolf (and probably Wagner above all) were of the opinion that their work would live long into the future.

When it comes to a composer like Richard Strauss there is no doubt in my mind that he was absolutely convinced that he was composing ‘for eternity’.”

B3. Barbara Hannigan

Excerpt from email correspondence 9 January 2019 published with permission

“My personal feeling is that, as a musician, I prefer very much to sing the actual words that the composer set to music. Every single syllable carries meaning - this vowel on that note. The overtone associated with the vowel (whether the composer is consciously aware of this or not), a noun, verb or a preposition at a particular point in the musical phrase have a deep meaning, and as a musician, I want very much to live and make my sound in that chosen sound world. The colours and meaning which are invariably linked to text setting, are near impossible to replicate in translation. And we have also to consider that every vowel has an overtone, so once we are no longer singing the same vowel as the composer originally set, we are in a way, changing the harmonic structure of a piece, even though we did not change the actual notes. One can argue that the composer was not consciously planning for one overtone or another, but there are many

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aspects of the creative process of a composer which are not conscious. Occasionally, a composer writes a piece with two languages in mind - simultaneously setting the text in one language and another (as Hans Abrahamsen is doing now with The Snow Queen, which will have its Danish premiere in Nov 2019 and its English premiere one month later). Obviously this has a totally different intention and engagement than, for example, The Rake’s Progress or Lulu, being re-set in German or English respectively, after the composers and librettists are long dead. I consider singing songs in translation to be generally against the music, which I feel is an inseparable union between chosen text and harmony.”

B4. Katy Hamilton

Excerpt from email correspondence 6 February 2019 published with permission

“I've recently written a book chapter, due to appear later this year, on Natalia Macfarren and her translations of Brahms songs during Brahms's lifetime1. As part of it, I did some digging into earlier singable English translations - the earliest I found was a Schubert translation from the early 1830s, Erlking with Walter Scott's translation shoe-horned into Schubert's score (which involves some very heavy rhythmical changes!). There's only a very small literature on these things as far as I could tell, but it does just about exist....

My sense from contemporary reviews is that the 'moral' or aesthetic implications of a translation are not really foremost in anyone's minds for much of the nineteenth century. The work-concept and idea of a fixed, immutable version of the work are still developing; Beethoven had set English-language texts to broaden his audience (there is a pre-Berne-convention copyright angle as well, I've no doubt), and Haydn had even written a bi-lingual oratorio, The Creation, published in both English and German and suitable for performance in either. So there's the shrinking world on the one hand, the wish to connect; plus the wish to financially exploit that; plus the practicalities of copyright and also of good old-fashioned comprehensibility. (If you go back to the C18th and the first editions of The Spectator you'll find Addison and Steele writing rather grumpily that people of the future will assume the London audiences all speak fluent

1 Hamilton, “And in English...” 186

Italian because that's what the singers insist on performing... the audience all had to have word books to work out what was going on!)

Translations become fairly common in Britain by the 1860s/1870s, I think, and there are also more concerted efforts for publishing houses to link up across countries, to find distributors abroad. (Eventually when the US is added to the mix, a lot of the translation work seems to move there for companies like Simrock.) The song is still an amateur genre; people want to understand what they're singing. In fact it may be that the song, and indeed choral music, are perhaps the last genres to fall under the work-concept banner - the last to reach a place of immutability - because they are the genres in which amateurs arguably remain involved the longest.

As for what composers thought about their works being translated, that's a job of going through correspondence. Brahms was totally uninterested in his songs in translation - he had set the German and that as far as he was concerned was the song. The translations were Simrock's business. (He says as much in a couple of letters.) But he's also not angry about them - he understands that such things are necessary to promote his work, and he was after all someone who valued amateur musical activity very highly. Whether you'd find the same in the letters of Mahler or Wolf, I somehow doubt! But it's worth looking.

Personally, I think good singable translations are a real boon, both to performers and audiences. The immediacy they allow, the demystifying of the text, the narrative detail and so on, makes for a very different experience than listening to a language one doesn't understand, or only partially grasps. There are also strange notions of 'depth' and 'poeticism' that cling (irrationally) to certain foreign languages for English speakers; that 'Tod' somehow means more than just 'death', that the very foreign-ness of certain words lend them greater profundity than they have in our own language because we have imbued them with aesthetic weight beyond what we perceive as the merely utilitarian function of whatever we speak ourselves. This is nonsense of course: language can be utilitarian and poetic, but we aren't used to hearing poetry sung in English - or rather, not poetry of much of the nineteenth century. Heine or Mueller can seem disappointingly simplistic once translated. They aren't - and of course we lose the poetic ingenuities of their settings in translation - but I wonder if the disdain some folks have for this repertoire in English is partially

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a sort of horror at how straightforward, actually, the poetic presentation and/or sentiment actually is.

All of that said, what would make for the richest musical scene would be the opportunity to hear translations and originals. We panic about losing what we consider important - someone's sung it in English, what if EVERYONE starts singing it in English and the German is lost forever! - but of course there's room to do both. In fact, the more we can keep concepts of a work flexible, with room for adaptation and surprises, the better (in my view). That's what stops performance pieces from getting preserved in aspic, and what helps them keep their emotional immediacy.”

B5. Graham Johnson

Excerpt from email correspondence 31 January 2019 published with permission

“The question of translations is an interesting one. Of course, as I am sure you know, the later opus numbers of Brahms were issued with English singing translations by the likes of Natalia McFarren (married to the head of the RAM of the time) and you would be in touch with my very dear friend Dr. Katy Hamilton who has done research on her and other Lieder translators of the epoch. It was Katy who was my assistant in the preparation of the Schubert book for publication. She is now something of a rising star on the lecture and radio circuit. The fact is that translations at the time were very often simply a business proposition, provided in the hope of broadening the appeal of the music in foreign markets. Brahms, no fan of England and the English, permitted Simrock to issue Lieder with bi-lingual texts simply because of Brahms's almost god-like status in Britain, and there was a lot of money to be made. Schubert himself was persuaded by Craigher de Jachelutta that some of his songs should appear with singing translations. There was no evidence of the commercial success of this tactic, but Craigher's Italian translations, the only ones to be published, at least gave Ms. Bartoli the chance to record a handful of Schubert Lieder in Italian with an authentic excuse, and without venturing into the German language.

Do listen to recordings of celebrated baritone Harry Plunket Greene (1865-1936) to work out why singing translations were necessary at that time! Greene's Schwanengesang Abschied (reissued in a modern compilation entitled Schubert on Record) has the most abysmal and incomprehensible German imaginable. Laughable - and I play it for after-

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dinner amusement. His Leiermann in English on the other hand, if very mannered and cavalier with the musical text, was famous. He needed to sing in English not only for the benefit of his listeners, but because German was clearly a closed book to him and would get nothing out of him as an interpreter. That for me remains the best reason to sing these things in English: when singing something in the singer's own language unleashes forces of communication in that singer with which he or she is not in touch within him/herself in a foreign language.

Other than that I regard it is a Brexit-like retrograde step, and mainly because translations are often inaccurate, and sometimes even unintentionally amusing, even with the best intentions (Fox Strangways, Leslie Minchin for a Peters album in the 1970s, and countless others!!). Of course in the 1920s the disinclination of shell-shocked British audiences to hear the German language phonated in any form gave translated recitals a new lease of life. This was the era when dachshunds were kicked in the street and the Bechstein Hall had to be renamed Wigmore Hall. I can assure you that great German music performed in the English provinces or dominions circa 1920 was just about OK, but parents and siblings of boys who were slaughtered in the trenches were in no mood to hear the language of the Barbarian sung at them. Interestingly this was not a problem in the second war on account of all the German-speaking refugees in the UK. There was many a Schubert recital in the National Gallery in the 1940s as the Luftwaffe strafed overhead, and these recitals were given in German without a second thought. A war waged by the Hohenzollern Kaiser represented the entire nation and culture, but artistic people in the 1940s seemed to have realised that Hitler and his bunch of crooks had hijacked that country and did not represent its essential culture so profoundly.

As for this new wave of Lieder in English, it seems to me that Jeremy Sams is an extraordinary exception. Steeped in German from birth, knowledgeable about Lieder in a sense unrivalled by almost anyone I have known, verbally adroit and gifted as a translator. I have admired him since he was 17 (through his dad, Eric, of course, my dearest mentor, and Britain’s greatest Lieder scholar). In fact we have recently collaborated: my forthcoming book (November 2019) on the life and songs of Poulenc contains new translations of the poems, not singing translations of course, by Jeremy. He is very much a one-off, and people are fascinated to hear his feats of verbal dexterity, plus the chutzpah that only someone who knows the works profoundly, and inside out, can get away with. 189

A theory that the Sams translations herald a new age would presuppose other people equally gifted and knowledgeable "having a go", but I question whether this will really happen. I also question whether reputable singers will be so interested in taking up earnestly efficient translations by any future well-meaning but clunky Tom, Dick or Harriet. The reason why the Sams’s translations have been taken up is that he is rather a chic artistic figure in London and NYC, known for his work in opera, and stage direction and the BAFTA-awarded composition of film music. If a translator can be a "star", Jeremy is one, and these translations have a kind of glamour personal to him and his reputation.

One has to differentiate between the idea of Lieder recitals being routinely done in English, and the one-off Sams fad. Every new performance of the over-recorded Schubert cycles has to have an "angle". For the Prégardiens, father and son, it is making recordings of the cycles ornamented supposedly supported by scholastic justifications. Chris Glynn clearly saw the potential of making his recordings with these translations. It was his angle. And, in stirring up interest and discussion, they have been a success - with Schwanengesang less so than with the other two cycles. But it remains a game where people who know the works very well are amused and impressed by Jeremy's extremely clever solutions (too clever sometimes in my opinion, robbing the work of its simplicity and volkstümmlich quality) and hearing them is a talking point among the cognoscenti. Sams executed these translations as a jeu d'esprit, as something to divert and amuse, something to do simply because he could do it, and not (as was the case with Minchin and others) as part of an earnest desire to permanently change the way song recitals are presented in English-speaking countries.

This will not happen, and this is because top British recitalists now (sadly) do all their main work in Europe where there is no call to hear the works in English. Of course, these Sams translations will have a kind of novelty life in English-speaking countries, but that is not to set a trend unless others come up with equally ingenious solutions, and as I said, that is most unlikely to happen. Otherwise, where to perform these versions? We are in an age when Germany has an ascendancy not only of young Lieder singers and pianists (very different from as recently as the 1980s) but when Berlin is now a more natural and easy place to study vocal music than London. You were part of the last wave of Australasians who regarded study in London as inevitable. Financial and visa considerations have changed all that. No more Kangaroo Valley in Earls Court and Fulham, 190

just expensive flats for Russians and Chinese investors. This triumph for globalism is a tragedy for art and it means that a new generation of English-speaking singers will increasingly find their mastered German a natural means of communication and something of which they can be proud.

One must remember that all foreign songs were at one time sung in English. Imagine a believable L'Invitation au voyage by Duparc and think what loss of atmosphere and potency a performance in English without the original luxe, calme et volupté of Baudelaire would entail!! The fact is that Jeremy Sams has cleverly alighted on the narrative and folksy works (the two Müller cycles) that can wear English translations without being entirely destroyed in terms of atmosphere. The Schwanengesang is another matter, in my opinion, as is his attempt at the old Italienisches Liederbuch. As for the fantasy that these translations (or others like them) will miraculously win new audiences for Lieder, I beg to differ. The German language has always been far less of a problem for Lieder fans than one might think. The Lied has achieved its conquests with English speakers partly because of the magical and exotic nature of an only partly understood language, and for those who take to the form, and the music, and intimacy, and the expressiveness, and the interchange between singer and pianist, the presence of the German language is simply no hindrance at all. It is partially understood, studied, a challenge to surmount., a fun project to get your German better, part of the authenticity of the entire product, and it has not prevented millions from joining in with lifelong enthusiasm. In my own youth, and before I spoke German fluently, German increased the songs' fascination, rather than diminished it.

There is no doubt that listening to a cycle in English might be a more enjoyable experience for English-speakers who find themselves, willy-nilly, at a song recital, and find themselves unexpectedly drawn into the story. But this contingent, I would strongly argue, are the passers-by and mildly interested, and if it takes this to get their interest, as opposed to the depth of Schubert's music, and the vocalism, and the piano playing, I do not see this cadre of people as essential to the survival of the Lied as an art form. One cannot deny however that a small number may hear the music in a new way as a result and become converted, but it is my contention that the true convert will, in time, want to hear the songs in the original language.

So we have a talking point, an interesting experiment, but in the end if we were to have to decide between the future of Little Englanders and Brexiteers, I am afraid I would still place my faith in

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the authenticity and sheer numbers of the EU. A language that was good enough for Schubert to live, think and compose in is good enough for me.”

B6. Martin Katz

Excerpt from email correspondence 30 December 2018 published with permission

In our preliminary correspondence, you described your horror at anyone singing this repertoire in 'the wrong language'. Can you clarify the qualities of the breach? Are art songs fundamentally untranslatable?

“It is not art song that is untranslatable; it is poetry. Art songs which are prose set to music (Argento's Diary of Virginia Woolf, for example, or Libby Larsen's Try me, good king) would not bother me as much as moving Verlaine or Heine into another language. Operatic libretti in translation don't turn me off either, at least not to the same extent as Dichterliebe.”

You also indicated that the multi-lingual range of the art song repertory is essential to your delight in it. Today it seems more important than ever for us to hear other languages, to make our mouths accommodate their unfamiliar sounds, to open ourselves towards difference. One of the problematic aspects of 'singing translations' of course, is the negation of this difference (of particular concern in the light of the global hegemony of English). What have you found to be the most successful means to facilitate semantic understanding of non-vernacular song texts in Anglo and North American audiences? Do you consider it your responsibility at all, beyond your role in the music-making?

“I was very much against supertitles when they were first used for song recitals. In the last 5 years, however, I have personally seen and felt the enormous difference in an audience's participation when looking down at a paper program is no longer needed. So I'm a big advocate for them now. I also think if the text is obscure enough in meaning (Barber's Nuvoletta or Poulenc's Sanglots) that speaking and clarifying from the stage is a wonderful tool.”

You describe ‘singing translations’ as 'another act of "dumbing down"'. What other approaches fit into this category for you - how else are we assisting audiences to be ‘lazy’?

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“I'm not fond of staging songs as if they were mini-operas. I've seen a soprano ride a hobby- horse in Mussourgsky's Nursery cycle, and just a couple of weeks ago, DiDonato offered us Winterreise as if it were an ancient book, never lifting her head as she sat at her desk; worse--- at the end her pianist turned out to be the wanderer in the cycle! How absurd! A Mt. Everest of a piece does not need all those extras, and if the audience needs a scorecard, the piece itself gets 2nd billing.”

It seems to me that the potentially instantaneous access to a range of translations online might mean that students of song don't necessarily have to do the legwork that their predecessors had to do to understand a song text. Would you consider the pedagogical utility of crafting a singing translation, as described by Katy Hamilton in her blog: https://katyhamilton.co.uk/2016/07/31/and-in-english/ ?

“I agree with you. Sites such as lieder.net have HELPED singers NOT to memorize texts---or even think of the words in the order of the original language. That simply leads to no nuances or nuances in the wrong places. The tedious work of looking up words in dictionaries is part of the joy of learning something.”

You describe the art form as 'a patient on life support'. Can you identify why this is the case and what might be best done about it? For you, what is the right balance between defending against harmful approaches and modelling appropriate ones?

“A lot has happened to imperil the art song. a. impresarios hire famous opera singers who may have no acquaintance with poetry or the small nuance. (DiDonato, Brownlee, Netrebko) b. because of the high fees they pay said singers, they need to put them in larger and larger auditoriums or earn enough money to book them in the 1st place. c. life has become social media, lightning fast responses to requests on computers, digitally enhanced films where armies of soldiers kill other armies----just too much stimulation 24 hours a day. The act of sitting quietly looking at 2 performers standing and sitting still is

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foreign to most people these days. If our imaginations were muscles, they would have atrophied from lack of use years ago.”

Can you imagine what Schubert or Wolf might make of the endurance and reach of their works - their appearance on stages in Beijing, galleries in New York, on screen?

“Schubert was modest, never intended to become famous. He would have freaked out. Wolf was an egotist and would think it was inevitable that he was world-renowned.”

B7. Susan Youens

Excerpt from email correspondence 23 January 2019 published with permission

“I have two general thoughts on the matter: 1) I applaud whatever will make my favorite genre more accessible to people and 2) I insist on *GOOD* translations. I am not quite sane in my rabid enthusiasm for W. H. Auden's brilliant translation of Don Giovanni (I mean, really: to translate "Viva la libertà" as "Thy will be done"? How marvellous is *that*?!). I love examining translations: I'm now writing an article on a French translation of “Winterreise”, published in Vienna by Schubert's publisher for a visiting French singer of Schubert. It's not great poetry, but as cultural transference, it couldn't be more interesting. …. 1) As a matter of principle, I like having non-Germans understand what's going on, and Sams is a skillful wordsmith: I love much of his version of "Im Dorfe," despite the occasional prosodic awkwardness, and the "witches' brew" in Stormy Morning" is great: the proper Shakespearean note. However, there are things in his translations that are crucially "off," as in most singing translations; Auden is one of the people I've ever found who gets it right virtually the entire time. For example, it is essential in "Gute Nacht" that there be *some* acknowledgement of the wanderer's lack of religious faith/religious consolation/metaphysical systems on which to rely. When "Die Liebe liebt das Wandern—Gott hat sie so gemacht/Von Einem zu dem Andern" becomes "But lovers never linger/It's better not to dwell/We've other worlds to conquer and other tales to tell," not only have the anti-metaphysics been surgically removed, but there's a hint of-- not optimism but acceptance that simply is not to be found in the German. And the ending of the poem set my teeth on edge: Müller's wanderer writes "Good Night" on the gate so that "you 194

might see that I thought of you." "Remember me" is a command in the imperative and has an entirely different meaning. On the opposite side of the coin, "Freud und Leide" in "Der Lindebaum" is very different from "in heaven and in hell;" there, one doesn't want the theological subtexts. 2) It matters that in "Die Krähe" the wanderer is bitterly quoting a phrase out of the marriage service – "Treue bis sum Grabe." "You will stay my faithful friend till the final curtain" is good, but it misses that extra soupçon of bitterness and irony. 3) "Der Wegweiser," like "Der Lindenbaum," is a "hinge moment," a BIG moment in the cycle. The signpost does NOT show "the road I left behind;" that's a distraction and a head-scratching decision on his part. The wanderer can *only* stare straight ahead at an inevitable future, as the vanishing lines of perspective in the music tell us. 4) Now I'm probably *really* going to annoy some people: translators often seek to make explicit what is implicit (and therefore better, IMHO) in their versions. Sams ends "Der Leiermann" with a truly lovely couplet--"Play your broken music to my broken song." But Müller says nothing about self-recognition of brokenness, and the simplicity, the directness of Müller's version is so much better. Music, poetry, is EVERYTHING to the two characters, or single character, if you read the hurdy-gurdy player as a split-off of the wanderer, his Doppelgänger, and I don't see him/them thinking of their art as "broken." And I don't like the ending of "Der greise Kopf" for a similar reason: "Wer glaubt's? und meiner ward es nicht auf dieser ganzen Reise" strikes right to the bone and tells of Time, while "How strange that I'm not deathly-white this godforsaken morning" doesn't encompass the whole journey. And I think it matters that the wanderer tells us his hair is black: it's the only personal detail in the entire cycle, and it's omitted here.

I could pick my way through song after song; translators are used to the likes of me nitpicking, alas. I will confess a preference for projected literal translations while singing in German.”

B8. Rena Sharon

Excerpt from email correspondence 18 November 2020 published with permission

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“Translation is an extraordinarily complex art form, consummately vital to human discourse across all realms, and an incalculably precious gift that opens the breadth of literary works - prose, poetry, lyrics - to communion across cultures. My comments here are expressed only in the context of Art Song - itself a "translation" of verbal art into the hybrid modality of text-music fusion.

In the consideration of diverse performance practices for Art Song’s sustainability, translated performance modalities offer a compelling sector of accessibilities to assist audience engagement. As one who has introduced an array of unexpectedly controversial staged Art Song practices during the past 25 years - some of which have proven highly appealing to some audiences while disturbing to the professional Art Song community - it is amusing to find myself on the side of orthodoxy in this emerging realm! I celebrate the passionate pro-action of those who have undertaken this initiative. If my personal counterpoints offer any beneficial strands to the emerging discourse, I propose the following considerations in advocacy of original-language performance:

1. Hearing poetry sung in its original form is a fascinating and powerful mode of cross-cultural engagement for both active and non-active global languages. Issues of aural authenticity in sung translation warrant reflection, and one might struggle as well with questions of appropriation that may arise in some cases. Encountering the unique sound imprints and nuances specific to each sung language might be regarded as intrinsic to the nature of Art Song (even when the impact may be more subliminal than conscious).

2. One often reads accounts of the creative process of great art song composers – Hugo Wolf and Samuel Barber come to mind as ready examples – which began with reciting a poem aloud hundreds of times. The composer waited for some sort of organic merge of verbal inflection and inherent rhythms (as interpreted by the composer’s reading) into a melodic line and metred durations, companioned by harmonic instrumental textures. Each note of a carefully crafted Art Song is thus the outcome of the ideational and emotion-infused reading of the poem’s consonants, vowels, syllables, flow of speech, and precisions of expressive language - including culturally-specific turns of phrase. The vocal lines captured by the composers were born of that word-flow, with which specific instrumental sounds and textures combine to deepen the aural

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dimensionality. To my mind, an ideal Art Song interpretation reflects a natural fluidity in which text is wedded (to paraphrase Schumann) to the melodic content in ways that respond to the elasticity of spoken speech flow, subtly un-tethered from the metered bar-lines.

As such, the insertion of translated words that have different inherent attributes (sounds, syllable quantity) or grammatical positioning will perforce alter the connection between poem and music at the core of the hybrid creation. The inescapable variables of grammatical ordering are extremely challenging to overcome, and the absence of that ordering can cause disjuncture from musical alignments designed for meaningful word emphases.

In that sense, a sung translation that does not align with original-language word order might be said to significantly modify the composer’s intention. One would want to assess the extent of "drift" or "uncoiling" from the original word-music relationship. One might propose a standard of emergent practice in which crucial alignments of word/music should are sustained so that the poetic text is maximally synchronized with musical analogues. To bypass that process risks unravelling the nature of Art Song’s hybridity.

3. The fascinating challenges of poetical translation for use in Art Song – either purely for study purposes or for singable performance options - can be undertaken through an examination of the multiple English versions available online or in printed scores. Schubert’s treatment of J.W. v. Goethe's iconic “Wanderers NachtLied II” is a wonderful model to explore, since the poem is so structurally concise, yet so replete with meaning and mystery.

Its multiple translations demonstrate the continuum of conundrums that arise from aligning music with the technical components of poetry, latterly subjected to substantial alteration through emergent incompatibilities with an alternative language frame.

For example, consider the opening line: “Über allen gipfeln ist Ruh”. While my own woeful lack of schooling prevents any attempt at informed analysis, it is easy enough to sense the strong acoustic contrast between the word “Ruh”, in which the open-ended vowel sound without terminating consonant evokes a gently soothing murmur – almost a sung vocalization in itself - as opposed to the often-used English analog “rest”. The word choice is entirely apt, begins with R, and adheres to the one-syllable form. However, it closes with an entirely different set of

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vowels/consonants landing on a clear terminus. Some translations replace “rest” with “peace”, opening questions of altered implication, as well as the aural impact of the brighter vowel sound. Some versions have different syllabic counts, and many have different word orders with varying degrees of distance from the original. To select one among those (even for use in a printed or projected program) becomes difficult, since one would want the audience to have the nearest connection to Goethe's immensely evocative word choices as they merge with Schubert’s musical pacing and melodic stresses related to word primacies, strong and weak syllables, and other expressive elements.

It might be fair to say that with the greatest skill and sensibilities, it is perhaps not generally possible to encompass all aspects of a poem's content, technical infrastructure, and expressive identity to fit within one singable translation of an existing song. Priorities may have to be selected, and each may involve a forfeiture of some aspect of the poet's and/or composer's original intentions. If one wishes to adhere to the original rhyming schematic, will the rhythmic content be challenged as a consequence? If one seeks to maintain strict word-note alignment (rather than a more general text phrase-music phrase approach), might insurmountable grammatical puzzles result in disordered meaning?

A different sort of wonderfully confounding problem was presented by Art Song scholar Sharon Krebs with Literature scholar Dr. Laura Kinderman at a conference some years ago, citing the interesting interpretive quandary arising from Lord Byron’s “My Soul is Dark” as translated to “Mein Herz ist schwer” by Karl Julius Körner and set by R. Schumann. A priori, the use of “Herz” as a translation for “Soul” ignites a profound existential problem for English- fluent interpreters, faced with a philosophical/musical tension that is surely unreconcilable.

My go-to example of a perfect conundrum is the first lines of Verlaine’s “C'est l’extase” as set by Claude Debussy, precisely because the words translate quite directly from French to English, yet the results produce poetical alterations that would presumably have been of great importance to Verlaine in the context of his poetic manifesto: “La Musique avant tout!”2

2 “Music first and foremost!” from “Ars Poetica by Paul Verlaine | Poetry Foundation,” accessed November 18, 2020, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55034/ars-poetica-56d2361d56078. 198

Verlaine's exquisite words, carefully detailed with Debussy's glorious musical correlates, are filled with auditory signals - the many se sounds at the ends of words - extase, languoreuse, amoureuse; brises, grises; the soft "re" of murmure, susurre, and other matching pairs evoking the sensory impressions that are essential aspects of his craft. A Verlaine scholar would perhaps contend that the syllabic sounds and related rhythmic flow are crucial perceptual phenomena to the experiential apprehension of the poem. Further, the word order - brilliantly sculpted in Debussy’s score - must be understood as more than a happenstance function of normative grammar. “C’est l’extase langoureuse” - the word langoureuse extends languidly outward; while an adjective to l’extase, in this position it acquires an essential centrality to the description of a specific state of being. In a sung translation, however, English grammatical ordering would place ecstasy - or some other word more conducive to the syllabic stresses of the Debussy setting - in the last position: “languorous ecstasy”. One might propose that the placement of the noun at the end of the line subsumes and conditions the immanence of the adjective, arguably installing a shift to the poem's over-arching atmosphere as declaimed through those opening words. To re-state the obvious, the English ordering also poses a troublesome dissonance with Debussy’s musical gesture, which clearly emphasizes languor over the more energetic noun with which it partners!

In summary: Perhaps some grounded theories and assessment protocols are needed apropos the suitability of specific songs for singable translations, rather than a singularity of yes/no judgement upon the entirety of practice. The world’s poetry has an immense array of culturally specific sensitivities and formal elements, some of which may be vulnerable to dissolution in the translation process; some poems may therefore be intractable for use in sung translation just as some poems are deemed generally unsuitable for musical setting in their original languages.

There are very important reasons for offering the great multi-cultural archive of Art Song in translation. Offering ease of access to the repertoire through heightened connection and immediacy of comprehension is enormously beneficial to the future of Art Song as a

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performance mode. Equally, there are aesthetic outcomes that must be acknowledged when imposing this degree of change to the Art Song domain.

Sorting out some principles governing issues of rhyming, rhythm, vowel and consonant alignments, syllabic flow, precision of verbal imagery - a few that come to a mind untrained in the deeper subtleties of poetic craft - is perhaps a starting place. To my mind, the definitive issues for pre-existing songs (rather than contemporary song, which opens to many interesting possibilities) is the need for deep reflection regarding the defining precision of aligned fusions - text-music gesture, nuance, timing, inflection, and the harmonies and instrumental treatments that envelope specific words, all designed to impart the magically synaesthetic, multi-layered cognition of Art Song’s hybrid language. In great Art Song, words and music coalesce and combine into a sensory/intellectual/emotional nexus, wherein every word has its sound companion, reciprocally generating dimensional layers to the experience of poetry while offering stunning discernments of meaning to music’s non-verbal realm in the real-time synchrony of auditory performance.

Individual composers “agreements” regarding adherence to a poem’s integrities are ideally embedded into a singable translation, since the musical intention may be diluted or literally “lost in translation” when word placements detach from original sound-text weave. Something as tiny as “Calme” becoming “Calm” in Fauré´s beautiful first bars of Verlaine’s “En Sourdine” highlights the breathtaking musical forfeiture that can be inherent in even a perfectly benign translation analogue. The semi-tone downturn on the voiced “me” in the original French offers a moment of incredible tenderness - almost a musical kiss. What is lost when Fauré’s poignantly intimate gesture cannot be accommodated in the one-syllable English version?

As one who has been much castigated for my general advocacy of innovation to Art Song performance practice, most specifically in the multi-media realm of theatricalization, these views may seem a disappointingly conservative and perhaps unwelcome set of caveats. Indeed, theatrical components have been proposed for reasons that are strongly resonant with translation initiatives: accessibility, immediacy of poetic comprehension, improved emotional engagement, and relief from the multi-faceted challenges that confront people when listening to a foreign- language song for the 1st time. However, while theatre practices seek to add external contextual

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elements, the songs themselves retain their original nature. Sung translation can create shifts within the song's infrastructure. In that sense, it becomes a new form of hybrid entity.

Art Song comprises a vast socio-historic-philosophical-artistic realm, encompassing the story of how humans engage the world, the cosmos, and the enormous mystery we inhabit together. The singing and playing of the world's poetic legacies into the listening air brings us all into congress with the continuum of our search - to understand ourselves, each other, and our shared existential journeys. In service of the preservation and growth of this magnificent archive of art and human experience, all avenues should be explored and all beneficial innovation implemented. Art Song’s artists are its stewards.

These comments are offered by one who has seen both happy and unhappy experimental realizations of one’s philosophical conceptions and convictions – created as models of the possible for which a matrix of theory and principles has yet to be collaboratively carved. Those who seek to expand and refine the practice of singable translation are undertaking a fascinatingly complex journey. I am so grateful to Lara Dodds-Eden for the enormously thoughtful and important work she has done and the scholarly legacy to which she has thereby contributed.

The Art Song field needs meetings among its ardent artistic constituents through which to explore our complex disciplinary questions collectively – to identify and to support purposeful new performative directions, to examine potential aesthetic benefits and liabilities of innovation, to explore uncharted expressive fusions, and to join forces in creating thrilling new vistas for Art Song for its creators, performers, and audiences in the 21st century.”

B9. Kevin Stolz

[Kevin, a Masters student in Collaborative Piano, was asked to provide feedback on a class project on singing translations in which he accompanied eight of his colleagues singing their own translations of Schubert’s “Wandrers NachtLied II” as well as singing his own version. Excerpt from email correspondence 25 February 2019 published with permission.]

“The song translation project was wonderful for me. It crystallized many ideas in my mind about sung words. Creating a singable translation forced me to consider word stress, rhyme, and how difficult it is to come up with something that simply isn't cringy, let alone something beautiful! 201

Particularly tricky were words strongly brought out by the composer in the original German that could not be the same literal translation in English because of issues of word order. A song may have a totally different effect if a different word is accented in such a way, but I had to make some of those compromises in creating my singable translation. It also made me think about words, such as prepositions and articles, that are very unimportant, and particularly not to put these words in a strongly stressed position.

Accompanying 8 singers in a row on the same song all with different texts was also very useful. Especially because the song I was playing (Schubert’s Wandrers NachtLied II) has a very exposed texture, I was forced to carefully listen for consonant placement and word stress in each singer’s version in order for us to be together.

Since this project, my learning of song repertoire has changed drastically. While before I made a word for word translation, I was not feeling every word as they were sung, and playing to the pull of each important word. Now I take the word for word much more seriously and colour my playing with the phrasing of the words as well as the music.

I barely listened to lyrics at all until I was in my mid-twenties, even when listening to vocal music in English. It has been a continuing journey for me to get inside sung words, and this project was an important step in that journey.”

B10. Jeremy Sams

Excerpts from email correspondence 25 October 2019 published with permission

Graham wrote me a wonderful essay on singing in translation for inclusion in my research. In it he talks about the exceptional acceptance you've achieved with your translations thus far as a product of your unique fitness for the task: 'steeped in German from birth, knowledgeable about Lieder in a sense unrivalled by almost anyone I have known, verbally adroit and gifted as a translator.... very much a one-off'.. I am curious if you feel that to be true, or if you could conceive of other translators achieving a similar quality of work? What are the necessary qualities that you see as necessary? Could anything be gained from encouraging more translators to attempt these translations for singing?

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“Firstly, and obviously, Lieder and French song, and indeed all art song should ideally be performed for an audience who understand the poetry in the language it which it was written and which inspired the composer to write their songs. And by understand I mean hear and comprehend at the point of delivery (i.e.performance). (This could of course , as I used to do at the opera, mean acquiring the ‘foreign text ahead of time and 'doing your homework'!)

That’s ‘ideally’!

Less ideally there are two other ways of communicating this material.

1. by the audience reading translations (written or projected). 2. singing the songs in a language most of the audience understand.

2. is, obviously, what you are most concerned with. I’ve laid the matter out this clearly to highlight the fact that 2. is also what the composers had in mind. (This holds true for opera as well. Poulenc’s Carmelites was first performed in Italian, at La Scala. Wagner had no problem with his works in French in Paris. Nor did Verdi. In fact Don Carlo, as performed in most opera houses, is in fact a translation.)

It’s very sweet that Graham is so appreciative of my work - but it’s vital that an aesthetic distinction is drawn between translating Lieder and translating Lieder well!….Let’s agree that it is a good and worthwhile thing to do - and let’s try and do it very well! A bad attempt doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea - merely that it was inexpertly executed.

As it happens, I do have a combination of credentials which sort of qualify me for this task. Firstly and most importantly I’m a musician. Pianist, composer, that sort of thing. And I’ve translated a lot. More than 30 operas for quite a few years now. All the big Mozarts, the whole Ring, lots of Weill, a couple of Offenbachs, a few Verdis, Strauss, Lehar, etc. They're published and done a lot all over the place. Also about the same number of plays … (I’m old!) .So I’ve got, as we say in the UK, ‘previous’! On top of that - I love puzzles. Crosswords, anagrams, rhyming games. (And this is like 3 -dimensional chess sometimes.) So the verbal skill angle, rhyming, scansion, etc. I’m very into.

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And I’ve been steeped in the connection between words and music since I can remember. Specifically Lieder and Mélodies, but more recently in opera and musical theatre. That’s a part of all of my life….The other part of it is theatre, staging…etc…

Also I’ve been speaking and reading German, French, Italian from a young age. Lieder and Mélodies were (thanks to my dad) the first music I played and heard.

The bits of all that that others might find optional are the language skills. I’ve never translated from a language I don’t speak - but I guess I could. The real knack is fitting the words to the music so they cling to it like Saran-wrap (we say Clingfilm) - with all the stresses in the right places….

In fact one of my (secret) ambitions has always been this. Imagine that the composer had received my words in English (and that he/she speaks English) - this is the music that he/she would have written.”

Graham also believes that for you they are a jeu d'esprit rather than part of a desire to change song-recital performance practice as has been the case with some other song translators - what do you hope for the ongoing life of these translations? Why do you do it? May anyone perform them? Do you hope to find new audiences? What about new types of performers/voices?

“To be clear, though, this is not, for me a jeu d’esprit or a parlour game….I think there is a place for Lieder recitals in translation, for individual songs in recitals in translation. I have seen audiences galvanised and transported by Winterreise, Schöne Müllerin, the Italian songbook….Cycles with stories , or which can be made into stories. And I have seen parties of kids riveted, and rooms full of people, feeling, for once, that they are not too stupid or uneducated for the art form.

So, yes, I am very committed to it. There is, for me, as much a place for it as for opera in the vernacular.”

I believe Chris Glynn is looking at creating an edition with accompanying tracks to facilitate access to these songs (and perhaps re-orient them to the amateur/domestic setting?) Would you

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print the translations in a dual language edition or with English alone as you've done in the digital booklets? Can you tell me about that decision?

“We are going to make performing editions of everything we’ve done…..I would doubt if they would be bilingual. The originals are available at the click of a mouse.”

Some of your predecessors/colleagues have outlined what they see as the translations priorities unique to song (Richard Capell admits to sacrificing 'the literal sense of the poem' in his 1947 translations of Schwanengesang over other concerns including rhyme and note values; our contemporary Peter Low proposes the 'Pentathlon Principle' in order to balance rhyme, rhythm, sense, singability and naturalness) whilst others tend to the more instinctive (such as Bryan Benner of the Erlkings!) Could you describe your process?

“Anything ‘literal’ will fail, I think. Occasionally one gets lucky! and something fits word for word, note for note, rhyme for rhyme. And that’s great - use it. Quite soon though one will have to be reinventing in the spirit of, rather than to the letter of the original. Word for word will very rapidly sound like Terrible English (in fact, foreigners’ English ) and even more quickly descend into total nonsense that no one would think, feel or say, let alone sing.

So, for some examples…opening line of Winterreise..Easy (We get lucky) 'I came here as a stranger, a stranger I depart’. 1st line of Schöne Müllerin is harder: ‘To wander is the miller’s joy, to wander’ is nonsense, really . And ‘wander’ doesn’t have the same meaning in English. It’s about wanting to be somewhere else….hence my version. Etc.

So if I had to do ‘c’est l’extase langoureuse’ I would see straight away that a word for word won’t fit that phrase. So the question becomes ‘what’s this song about?’ It’s about post-coital languor, and a poet trying to describe that feeling in words and sights and sounds. So it might be something as outlandish as ‘how would you describe this feeling _ with all our senses still reeling?’ (if one wanted to stick to the rhyme-scheme,) or something more literal….’is it ecstasy or languor’

But in fact I may well fight shy of this one…. (see below)”

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Is there any collaboration in your process? Did the Italian Songbook or any of your other texts change at all in workshop/rehearsal with the feedback of the singers or Chris?

“Singers often have thoughts and preferences. I always listen to them, sometimes even act on them. Often though, they are in mourning for the original that they know and have learned. But in fact they are doing something new and different. If they say ‘ it doesn’t sound enough like the German ‘ ….I would urge them to do it in German.

Vowels, by the way…on high notes, I try and replicate the original vowel.

Rhyme I try to go with the original - particularly when the MUSIC rhymes. Sometimes I can find rhymes that aren’t in the original - to match the rhymes (even internal rhymes) in the music. Sometimes I’ll ignore rhymes if the music doesn’t follow them, or if, to be honest, I can’t find anything brilliant. The challenge with rhyme is that in other languages (particularly French and Italian) they are everywhere. Impossible to order a meal in France or Germany without rhyming! IN English (with so many more words, paradoxically) they are more ‘found’ and often comic, whimsical or bathetic. Pairs of rhymes that do not draw attention to themselves, or which don’t have a weaker member of the pair, are like gold dust to the translator. Dangerous also, cos I find the same ones keep cropping up!”

Some translators change location (ie changing the river in Dichterliebe to the Hudson, or the Thames), domesticate images (changing the lindenbaum to an elm) or use deliberately contemporary language. How do you approach these kinds of issues?

“Changing location does nothing for me, to be honest. A brook and a mill stands for the world…a river is an elemental force….the more specific (the Rhine) the more universal.”

What might you say to someone who feels that changing the words that the composer was responding to is against the music - to change overtones and therefore in some way the harmonic structure of a piece (this concern is from Barbara Hannigan) or the impossibility of translating words like sehnsucht (though I know it was a swearword in your house growing up!) or sentences such as c'est lextase langoureuse.. ? 206

“re the Sehnsucht issue…find a word that might have elicited that harmonic response from the Composer….”

I wonder if you consider those you've completed as your 'definitive' translations? Could you see yourself returning to them and reinterpreting them at some future time (like Barenboim has done with the Beethoven Sonatas?)

“‘Definitive’? Well for me they are the result of an incredible amount of work. The hardest thing being to make them sound as if they were dashed off in minutes!….I’m sure things can always be improved. Often in rehearsal things occur to me…Let’s say they are often the best I can do…though I am often sad there are elements I just can’t see a way of working in.

One makes, I find, a big decision before starting ….what is this song about? What is the tone of it? (is it honest, is it melodramatic, is it optimistic, etc?) If one gets all that, the choice of words becomes easier.”

I believe you are working on the Poulenc translations for Graham's new book. Are you tempted to approach these for singing or indeed any other French repertoire? Do you have any repertoire that you consider off-limits or absolutely untranslatable? What next?

“Interestingly - so far I have worked on poetry that is wonderful in that it moved Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, in a happy hour….but is not perhaps famous (or ‘great’ whatever that means) in its own right. I have really fought shy of Verlaine, Goethe, Baudelaire, Eichendorff, Mörike, Apollinaire, Eluard….But interestingly the Heine songs in Schwanengesang felt easy. Of course, to Schubert they were as ‘great’ as Müller. Newer, sure, but equally things to spark his imagination. The reticence was mine….But famous, runic things are a real challenge. One plan coming up is to do the complete Duparc - but ‘ordre et beauté, luxe calme et volupté’ may well defeat me!

I don’t like changing note values, unless it really is a recitativo feel…. The Poulenc translations are not singing ones. I’ve never tried any Poulenc!”

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B11. Roderick Williams

Excerpt from email correspondence 18 December 2018 published with permission

I am interested that you learnt both texts in tandem and that you continue to sing both texts, depending on your audience (and your pianist partner). Do you embody the same character regardless of the language, or do you have a doppelgänger situation, with a German wanderer slightly distinct from your English one?

“Thanks for this and you pose a very interesting question.

I’m not sure that my characterisation is especially different from language to language, except that I have observed of others and people have observed of me that one’s speaking voice changes when one speaks in different languages. I am not especially fluent in German (or any other language than English, to be fair!) but when I speak it, my friends and family notice that it is different to my English speaking voice. So if you know me well, I’m sure you could tell that my singing of Winterreise and Winter Journey are different in ways difficult to define.

However, in more general terms, I feel the arc of the character is the same in both versions for me. What is different is the level to which I can share with the audience.

Let me tell you an anecdote to illustrate: When I sang Winterreise at Music in the Round in the Crucible, Sheffield, the audience were on all four sides with the piano (lid-less) in the middle of the space. There was space for me to wander around, singing in different directions, sometimes standing (and sitting) amongst the audience, on the steps between rows. I often sang the ‘plodding’ songs on the move, using the more static songs to stand still and sing in one direction. Space was limited but this made the intimacy of the performance even more telling.

When it came to Das Wirtshaus, as the pianist began the introduction, I happened to be near enough to settle myself on the back of his piano stool, back to back with him. I found myself staring down at the club foot of a wheelchair-bound member of the audience directly in front of

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me, only a couple of feet away. So as I came to sing, I looked up at him and sang the whole of the first verse straight into his eyes.

What was immediately apparent though was that he had no clue what I was singing to him; there was a look of panic in his eyes that was almost comical, were it not for the poignancy of the music. He tried to glance at the translation his wife was clutching right next to him but she was bowed down, reading it so intently, she never once looked up to see the situation. In fact, she missed the moment I had had with her husband completely!

It just left me feeling sorry for them that they couldn’t have shared that with me. I sang Winter Journey in the round in Doncaster and of course had none of those problems.”

B12. Alex Samaras

Excerpt from email correspondence 23 February 2019 published with permission

Would you approach this repertoire in its original language?

“I don’t think I would approach this music in its original language. I know this could possibly be seen as a lazy or uncommitted approach. Usually my interest with a song is to be as clear as possible to the listener and because I have no training in singing in these languages other than choral training as a child I would not sing them. I did perform “Morgen” once and it felt very uncomfortable. I’m still interested in hearing these songs sung in their original languages if the interpreter’s diction and approach is similar to them speaking to me in that language today.”

How do you feel about singing in translation?

“I enjoy it immensely. There is at once a detachment from the original version that allows me to take risks and bring my complete self to it, and at the same time I imagine the composer standing beside me listening carefully to make sure every note carries the meaning and weight he/she intended it to have. I also realize I am writing this at a time when diversity and shared space are of vital importance and I do not think that singing songs in english is better than other languages. I just think it is an option that has not been explored deeply enough.”

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Are you concerned about issues of “authenticity”' when singing in translation? Do you feel the need to seek permission? (for instance, has your interactions with Steven given you confidence that you're on the right track, or are they not essential to creating your conviction?)

“I think because I mostly exist outside of the “classical scene” I have no need to worry about authenticity. As a singer of many styles, I am constantly working on my instrument and am interested in elevating my diction which helps when there are no mics to use. Working with Steven and Lara has helped with singing a lot of this rep. I look at it from the way I work with classical singers interested in jazz. They have the voice, but it is now about getting a better sense of rhythm and working on their ears and improv skills. My work in singing art song and classic repertoire has mostly been diction, like I mentioned, and staying on top of the beat with consonants and triplets! There is no laying back!”

Would you write a translation yourself?

“It would be a challenge for me.(...) But, yes, I would love to try it out.”

What qualities do you think a translator (for singing) needs?

“They need to read poetry. They should have a solid understanding of the sound of the language they are translating from.

It is a gift to have someone translate something with your voice and skill set in mind, so maybe it is helpful for translators to think of a singer (that they know personally or they admire from afar) and translate with that person’s voice and energy in mind.”

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C: “Der Leiermann” Translation Collection

Source documents:

1823-4 Der Leiermann

First published in Schall, Karl; von Holtei, Karl (eds): “Deutsche Blätter für Poesie, Litteratur, Kunst und Theater”. Breslau 1823, bei Graß, Barth und Comp. No. XLII. 14. page 166 as no. 10 of the installment of “Die Winterreise. Lieder von Wilhelm Müller”. Also published in Müller, Wilhelm “Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten”. Zweites Bändchen. Deßau 1824. Bei Christian Georg Ackermann, pages 107- 108 3 Drüben hinter'm Dorfe Steht ein Leiermann, Und mit starren Fingern Dreht er was er kann. Baarfuß auf dem Eise Schwankt er hin und her; Und sein kleiner Teller Bleibt ihm immer leer. Keiner mag ihn hören, Keiner sieht ihn an; Und die Hunde brummen Um den alten Mann. Und er läßt es gehen Alles, wie es will, Dreht, und seine Leier Steht ihm nimmer still. Wunderlicher Alter, Soll ich mit dir gehn? Willst zu meinen Liedern Deine Leier drehn?

1827, pub. 1828 Der Leiermann, Song XXIV of Winterreise by Franz Schubert

Drüben hinter'm Dorfe Steht ein Leiermann, Und mit starren Fingern Dreht er was er kann.

3 This information comes from www.lieder.net: “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man (Müller, Set by (Carl Banck, Reiner Bredemeyer, Theodor Heinrich Gerlach, Wilhelm Kienzl, Cyrill Kistler, Franz Peter Schubert, Johannes Wolfgang Zender)) (The LiederNet Archive: Texts and Translations to Lieder, Mélodies, Canzoni, and Other Classical Vocal Music).” 211

Barfuß auf dem Eise Wankt er hin und her; Und sein kleiner Teller Bleibt ihm immer leer. Keiner mag ihn hören, Keiner sieht ihn an; Und die Hunde knurren Um den alten Mann. Und er läßt es gehen Alles, wie es will, Dreht, und seine Leier Steht ihm nimmer still. Wunderlicher Alter, Soll ich mit dir gehn? Willst zu meinen Liedern Deine Leier drehn? (words in bold were Schubert’s changes)

Translations:

Where the translation has been excerpted from a musical score I have broken up the lines to match the form of the original German poem. Where the translation has been sourced as text only, it appears as found. All capitalisations are as found.

1869 “The Hurdy-Gurdy” rendered into English by Clarina Macfarren (1827- 1916)

(Also known as Clarina Thalia Andrae and Natalia Macfarren) singer (contralto), translator, publisher and editor; born in Germany, lived in Britain. Winter Journey (Die Winterreise) A Series of Twenty-Four Songs, Written by Wilhelm Müller and Composed by Franz Schubert, Rendered into English by Clarina Macfarren; Chappell’s Musical Magazine Edited by Edward F. Rimbau? (obscured); London: Chappell and Co., 50, New Bond Street, December 1, 1869. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German) A minor.

Out beyond the village stands a poor old man, Feebly turns a hurdy- gurdy as he can.

Barefoot on the frozen ground he totters by, Not a single coin upon his plate does lie.

No one cares to listen, no one looks at him, Only growling dogs he 212

sees with vision dim,

Nought cares he what bitter blast sweeps o’er his head, Turns his hurdy-gurdy, begs his scanty bread.

Brother in affliction! let me with thee go, Play thy dreary music to my songs of woe.. 1871 “The Organ Player” edited by (translated by?) E. Pauer (1826-1905)

Pianist, editor, arranger, conductor, composer and author; born in Vienna, lived in Britain, died in Germany. Winter Journey. Die Winterreise. 24 Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment by Franz Schubert edited by E. Pauer. Offenbach s./M chez Jean André. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). * This translation matches the Theodore Baker translation in the 1895 Schirmer Edition A minor.

Up behind the village stands an organ man, And with stiffen’d fingers turns as best he can;

On the cold ground barefoot sidles here and there, And his empty saucer shows the gifts are rare.

No one listens to him, no one looks or cares, Snarling dogs pursue him, still a smile he wears;

And no disappointment does he once betray, But upon the organ turns and turns away.

Wonderful old minstrel, shall I go with you? Will you to my ditties play the music too?

1888 “The Organ-Grinder” the English Version by Rev. Dr. Troutbeck (1832- 1899) Clergyman, translator, musicologist; English. Winterreise (The Winter-Journey) Twenty-Four Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment 213

Composed by Franz Schubert (Op. 89) The English Version by the Rev. Dr. Troutbeck. London and New York; Novello, Ewer and Co. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). A minor.

Out behind the village stands an organ-man, And with stiffened finger grinds as best he can:

To and fro he totters barefoot on the ice, In his little trencher not a penny lies.

No one cares to listen, no one near him stays, Only dogs are snarling round him as he plays

On he goes, let all things happen as they will; Turns and turns his organ, never standing still.

Man, by all neglected, let me with thee go, Thou canst turn thy organ while I sing of woe.

1895 “The Organ Player” (contents page) / “The Organ-Grinder” (score title) English translations by Dr. Theodore Baker (1851-1934) Music scholar, lexicographer, literary editor, translator for Schirmer Publishing firm (1892- 1926), publisher; born New York, died Dresden. Franz Schubert Songs with Piano Accompaniment, English Translations by Theodore Baker, G. Schirmer, Inc., New York. Bilingual music edition (English above German). * Translation matches the translation published in the 1871 Offenbach Edition edited by Pauer. A minor.

1901 “The Organ-Man” The English Words by Percy Pinkerton (1855-1946?)

No other biographical information found. Franz Schubert Songs First Volume (Mezzo Soprano or Baritone and piano) Universal-Edition No. 716; [Title Page] Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment by Franz Schubert Edited and Annotated by Anton Rückauf The English Words by Percy Pinkerton; Universal Edition Wien – Leipzig, Printed in Austria. Recorded by Norman Allin (bass), 1928, Columbia: 5019 (matrix WA7339, WA7340) can be

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heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UN-TDhQWuU Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). G minor.

There, behind the village, stands an organman, And with frozen fingers grinds as best he can.

On he totters, barefoot, o’er the icy way, Not a single penny in his little tray.

Yet for all his grinding No one seems to care; And the loafing mongrels snarl about him there,

And he lets the whole world wag as best it may, Quite content his crazy organ still to play.

Wonderful old fellow! Shall I go with thee? Wilt thou, while I’m singing, grind the tune for me?

1904 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” translated by Frederic Field Bullard (1864- 1904) Composer, organist, teacher; American, studied in Munich. “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man (Der Leiermann)” Oliver Ditson Company, Edited by Henry T. Finck. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). F minor.

Down behind the village stands an organ man And with stiffened fingers turns as best he can

Barefoot in the cold he walks with feeble gait; Seldom falls a penny on his little plate.

No one cares to listen, no one looks his way, And the village dogs a bout him growl and bay.

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But he lets the world neglect him as it will, Turns his little organ, that is never still

Wonderful old player, may I go with you? Will you on your organ play my ballads too?

192-? “The Hurdy-Gurdy Player – Le Jouer de Vielle” The English Verse by W.J.Westbrook (1831-1894?) Arranger, translator; English. Collection Litolff No. 257 Schubert 80 Selected Songs (Mélodies choisies) Soprano or Tenor. (Franz Abt.); [Title Page]: The Pretty Maid of the Mill, The Winter Journey, Swan’s Songs and 22 selected songs The English verse by W. J. Westbrook, music by Franz Schubert Edited by Franz Abt. Braunschweig Henry Litolff’s Verlag. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised French). A minor.

In the village high street Stands an aged man, Turning hurdy-gurdy Quickly as he can,

Stiffened are his fingers, Cold and bare his feet, But his earnest playing Small reward doth meet.

No one cares to listen, Or his face to see, Surly dogs are growling Under every tree.

Still, he does not heed them, Ceases not his play, Turning, turning ever, Through the livelong day.

Strange and weird musician, Shall I go with thee? Wilt thou, when I’m singing, Me accompany?...

1921 no title; Elizabeth Mott (dates unknown) Poet, author; English?

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Text only: submitted and published in Song-Translations, Music and Letters, July 1921, II (3) p. 194, Published by Oxford University Press. Sourced online: Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/726055

Yonder down the village, there’s an organ-man, With his frozen fingers playing as he can; On the icy causeway, in the falling snow, Barefoot there he wanders, shambling to and fro, Playing tunes forgotten years and years ago.

Not a penny jingles in his empty plate, House-dogs eye him snarling as he nears the gate; And he lets the great world pass him as it will, Turns his hurdy-gurdy, out of tune and shrill, No man hears of heeds him, yet he turns it still.

Queer old man, come with me; let us, you and I, Grind our tunes together, while the world goes by!

1927 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” The English Translation reprinted by permission from Schubert’s Songs Translated by Arthur Fox-Strangways (1859-1948) and Steuart Wilson (1889-1966); (A.H.F-S) ethnomusicologist, translator, editor and publisher; (SW) tenor, translator; English. Single sheet (extracted from the cycle), Published for the Bournemouth Competitive Musical Festival 1927 by Oxford University Press. Monolingual music edition (English). F minor.

Down the village street a hurdy-gurdy man Drones his patient music plays as best he can;

Shuffling on the ice and slith’ring in the snow, In his greasy cap there’s not a coin to show.

Not a soul that listens, not a heart that feels, Look, the very mongrel’s yapping at his heels.

Storm and rain and sunshine find him, night and noon, Meekly grinding out the same eternal tune.

Let’s go on together; turn and turn about, I will make the songs 217

and you shall grind them out.

1928 “The hurdy-gurdy man” Translation anonymous, as sung by Irish tenor John McCormack There is some suggestion that this was released in the US as “The organ grinder”. Translation transcribed from audio recording: Victor matrix CVE-49213; Tenor vocal solo with orchestra (8 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, bass, flute, oboe, bassoon, 2 clarinets, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, piano, harmonium, harp, and traps) Sourced online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeq17IutPY Sounds like Bb minor (historical recording, so pitch may not be true)

There’s an organ grinder standing by the way In his frozen fingers grinding all the day o’er the snow he staggers and his feet are bare and his plate is empty, not a penny there

no–one looks in pity, no one cares to hear, village dogs around him snarl as he draws near all unmoved he seems to bear it come what will with his doleful music, never standing still

Curious old fellow, shall I join your way will you grind the organ while I sing my lay

1930 “The Organ-Grinder” translated by Julius Harrison (1885-1963) Composer, conductor, editor; lived in Britain, mother was German. Choral score: Unison Song (with optional second part) Poem by Wilhelm Muller translated by Julius Harrison; Winthrop Rogers Edition, Copyright Hawkes & Son (London Ltd) Festival Series of Choral Music. Monolingual music edition (English) with solfége above the staff. A minor.

Just beyond the village, stands the organ man, With his frozen fingers grinds as best he can; Barefoot o’er the ice he totters on his way, Not a copper has been thrown to him today,

All the people of the village pass him by, Snarling dogs surround him, listen to their cry. If the world goes past him, little does he care, Still his wheezy organ

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plays the same old air.

Wonderful old fellow Let me go with thee; Let me sing the tune and thou shalt/you shall play for me. (optional part for lower voice is offered from “Wonderful old fellow”) 1934 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” translated by Paul England (1863-1932) as sung by Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene

Translator; English. Text: discussed p 125- 131 in Plunket Greene’s Interpretation in Song published 1931 by Macmillan and Co., Limited St. Martin’s Street, London & Stainer and Bell, Limited, 58 Berners Street, London, (reprinted from 1912 edition): translation printed and discussed without explicit reference to the German original. Sourced online: https://imslp.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_Song_(Greene%2C_Henry_Plunket) Recording: Columbia 1934 DB 1377 The Hurdy-Gurdy Man (Schubert). 10 January 1934; matrix CA14259-1. Sourced online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAjioz1LWc F minor.

Yonder stands a poor old hurdy-gurdy man, And with frozen fingers plays as best he can Barefoot shuffling sidelong on the icy way Not a single penny in his empty tray

No one seems to heed him, no one stops to hear Only snarling mongrels care to venture near Little does he trouble, come whatever may Still his hurdy-gurdy drones and groans away

Wonderful old fellow, shall I with you go? Will you drone your music to my songs of woe?

1938 “The Organ Grinder” English text by M.W.Pursey (?) Arranger, translator. Schubert Songs (mixed selection) Treasure Book Series No. 1 High Voice Edited by David Best English Text by M.W.Pursey; Universal Music Agencies 40, Langham Street, London. W. 1. Printed in England. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). English text copyright M.W.Pursey. A minor.

Just behind the village stands a poor old man, Grinding at his organ, earning what he can, On the ice he totters, No one seems to care, For his plate is empty, 219

not a penny there.

No one seems to hear him, No one looks his way. Round him dogs are barking much to his dismay. Everybody passes, but he never minds, Still he goes on playing, cruel the world he finds.

Wonderful old fellow, Shall we walk along? Will you grind your organ, While I sing a song?

1938 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” English words by J. Michael Diack (1869- 1947) Arranger, composer, translator, publisher; Scottish The Lyric Song Books Edited By J. Michael Diack with notes on interpretation by Cyril Winn Paterson’s Publications Ltd. London, Edinburgh. Score marked for unison voices with solfége notation above the staff. Monolingual music edition (English). F minor.

Yonder thro‘ the village comes the organ man, Grinding out his dreary tunes, as best he can;

Frozen are his fingers, ragged are his clothes, Where he comes from, where he goes to, no one knows.

Not a single penny has he earn’d today, And the dogs are snarling at him all the way;

But he scarcely hears them, slowly trudges on, Dreams of happy days, now long since past and gone.

Wonderful old fellow! Let me come along, You will grind your organ, I will sing my song.

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1946 “The Organ-Man” translated by Robert Randolph Garran (1867-1957)

Legislative lawyer, translator; Australian. Schubert and Schumann: Songs and Translations Robert Randolph Garran, G.C.M.G. Melbourne University Press (Text only, p103)

There behind the village Stands an organ-man And with frozen fingers Grinds as best he can.

On the ice bare-footed To and fro he sways And his tray beside him Ever empty stays.

None is there to hear him, None is there to see, And the dogs are snarling Round the old man’s knee.

But he takes no notice, With the world at peace; Grinds, and not a moment Lets his organ cease.

Wonderful old fellow, May I with you stay? Will you to my singing Make your organ play?

1949 “The Hurdy-Gurdy” English version by Richard Capell (1885-1954) Music critic, editor; English. F. Schubert, Vocal Works Op. 89 The Winter Journey (Winterreise) Augener’s Edition 18 Great Marlborough Street London W. 1. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). A minor.

By the village crossing There’s an organman, With his frozen fingers Does the best he can.

Barefoot in the gutter Goes the sorry bard, And his empty saucer Shows the times are hard.

None there is who heeds him, Looks at him or cares. Village dogs are snarling At the rags he wears.

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Nothing seems to move him, Whether late or soon, As he plays the self-same Hurdy-Gurdy tune

Come, my old musician, We two make a pair! I will sing my ditty, You shall play the air.

1951 “The Organ-grinder” Translations by Henry Drinker (1880-1965) Lawyer, music scholar, translator; American. German score with translations in appendix: Franz Schubert Complete Song Cycles: Die schöne Müllerin, Die Winterreise, Schwanengesang Edited by Eusebius Mandyczewski, from the Breitkopf & Härtel Complete Works Edition, with translations by Henry S. Drinker 1970 Dover Edition Reproduces with some corrections Drinker’s translations from Texts of the Solo Songs of Franz Schubert in English Translation, [Volume 1] , which was printed privately and distributed by The Association of American Colleges Arts Program, New York, in 1951. Bilingual interlineal text with matched syllables, (German above English).

On the corner stands a hurdy-gurdy-man, with his stiffened fingers grinds as best he can, Barefoot on the ice he stumbles to and fro, empty is his cup and ever will be so

None has stopped to hear him, since he first began and the dogs are growling round the poor old man But he lets it all go on as go it will, keeps the handle ever turning, never still.

Strange old organ-grinder, shall I go with you? Will your organ play my songs for just us two? 1968-1969 “The Organ Grinder” new performing version by Roy Fisher (1930- 2017) Modernist poet, jazz pianist; English. As recorded by Shura Gehrman (bass) and Nina Walker (piano) Schubert Winter Journey Nimbus Records, UK, 19734. Translations appear to the right of the German original in the sleeve notes.

4 Derek Slade states that the recording has textual changes which were not authorised by the poet in his bibliography of works by Roy Fisher: John Kerrigan and Peter Robinson, eds., The Thing about Roy Fisher: Critical Studies (Liverpool University Press, 2000), https://books.google.ca/books?id=N2eincgxgfkC&pg=PA330&lpg=PA330&dq=Nimbus+records+shura+gehrman+ winter+journey&source=bl&ots=MWfyXSgr_v&sig=ACfU3U2a67sH54O9ntecKXgquJ7G5mTAaA&hl=en&sa=X &ved=2ahUKEwjMsKmM0JLmAhWjg-AKHRB0DKUQ6AEwBHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Nimb. 330. 222

Sung in A minor. English text copyright Roy Fisher and Nimbus Records, reproduced with permission.

Here’s a poor old wandering Hurdy-Gurdy man. And with frozen hands he plays as best he can.

Barefoot on the ice he stumbles on his way, begging through the village with an empty tray.

No-one comes to hear him, no-one stops to stare; Mongrel dogs run snarling all around him there.

Life just passes by him and he lets it go, one pathetic tune seems all he wants to know.

Ghostly wanderer lead me far from all these wrongs. Grinding out your music while I sing my songs.

1977 “The Organ Grinder” Translated by Basil Swift (?) No biographical information found. Text only: Franz Schubert Song Book No. 1 Translated, illustrated and with helpful notes by Basil Swift; Fully singable verbal edition, Introduction by Gerald Moore. Gentry Publications Bilingual (English to left of italicised German). Text only, no key. English text copyright Basil Swift.

There the organ grinder past the village stands, and he turns the music with his frozen hands.

Barefoot, now he staggers, in the ice and grime, with his tiny platter—empty all the time.

Not a soul will listen, not a soul will care, and the dogs are snarling at his ankles bare.

But he grinds the organ, may there come as will, turns, and lets the music keep on playing still.

Wonderful old fellow, tell me this, I pray, will you turn my verses, if I go your way?

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1982 “The hurdy-gurdy man” translated into singable English verse by Leslie Minchin (?) Scientist, translator; English. Schubert in English: The Songs Usually Included in Volume 1 of Standard Editions, translated into singable English verse by Leslie Minchin, Thames Publishing. English text copyright Leslie Minchin.

[…] Strange and lonely minstrel, shall I go with you? With your hurdy-gurdy sing my ditties too?

1982 “The Organ-Grinder” translation by Clare Campbell (?-2012) Classicist, Poet, Translator; English. English text copyright Clare Campbell from the booklet Lieder for English Singers published 2005 by Cassandra Press. This is out of print, but I was able to source a copy via an executor of her estate. Ian Partridge (tenor) and Jennifer Partridge (piano) originally recorded this translation for BBC Birmingham on 27.7.1983 and the last five songs can be heard online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTi2pQiUphI A minor.

[…] Will you take me singing everywhere you play.

Some words in the recording differ from Campbell’s printed version.

1991 “The Organ Grinder” translated by Jeffrey Benton (b.1938) Singer (baritone), translator; English. https://www.jeffreybenton.co.uk/die-winterreise Recording available with Jeffrey Benton (baritone) and Rona Lowe (piano) on Symposium Records, UK, 1991 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNCmCc9knGs&t=3489s Text provided courtesy of Jeffrey Benton Translation © Jeffrey Benton (www.jeffreybenton.co.uk) Sung in G minor. Translation reproduced with permission.

Just beyond the town An organ grinder stands. And he turns the handle With his frozen hands. Barefoot in the snow He shuffles on his way. Not a single penny In his empty tray. No-one wants to hear him, No-one looks his way. Dogs are snarling round him, No heed does he pay. He lets it happen 224

As it always will. He just goes on turning, Never is he still Curious old fellow, Shall I go along? will you grind your organ Only to my song?

1993 “The Organ Grinder” singable translation by Frederic Kirchberger (b.? - d. 2004) Pianist, coach, translator; born in Germany, lived in America, Professor of Piano at Truman State University from 1951-1981. Sing them in English! Volume 1 Nine Great German Song Cycles from Beethoven to Mahler in New Singable English Translations The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen, N.J., & London. 160- 162. Bilingual music edition (English above italicised German). English text copyright Frederic Kirchberger. A minor.

There beyond the village he stands all alone, […]

2007 “The organ-grinder” translator requests anonymity

2008 “the organ grinder (after Schubert)” translator unknown Audio recording under a pale moon by Inner Voices and friends Synthesizer, Wind machine, Choir sings German text in unison, under a loosely sung English version Roméo Records 7257, recorded 2005-2006 released January 29 2008, recorded in Germany. English text copyright, excerpt transcribed from recording sourced on Spotify. G minor.

[….] Tell me, poor old stranger, Shall I come with you […] 2009 Winterreise New English translations by Michael Symmons Roberts (b.1963) Poet, writer and broadcaster; English. Not published, not publicly available; commissioned by Aldeburgh Festival, London’s South Bank Centre and the Lincoln Centre, New York; performed in 2009 as part of One Evening, a production by Katie Mitchell featuring tenor Mark Padmore, actor Stephen Dillane and pianist Andrew West.

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2009 “Hurdy Gurdy Man” a musical reworking and English translation by Sting (b.1951) Pop singer, guitarist; English. English text copyright Sting, published online at https://www.sting.com/discography/lyrics/581 Appears on If On a Winter’s Night Oct 26 2009 https://www.sting.com/discography/album/365 Accompaniment arranged for small band. A minor. Reproduced with permission.

In the snow there stands a hurdy gurdy man, With his frozen fingers plays as best he can, Barefoot on the ice he shuffles to and fro, And his empty plate it only fills with snow And his empty plate it only fills with snow

No one wants to hear His hurdy gurdy song, Hungry dogs surround him and before too long He will fall asleep and then before too long He’ll just let it happen, happen come what may. Play his hurdy gurdy till his dying day.

Watching you, old man, I see myself in you. One day I will play The hurdy gurdy too.

2009 “The Organ Grinder” translated and sung by Mike Zhai (b.1980)

Chinese born translator and poet who grew up in California and currently resides in Michigan. English text copyright Mike Zhai: video performance of the translator singing and playing piano sourced online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFuQo80NcE A minor. Reproduced with permission.

Just outside of town The organ grinder stands And he turns his organ With his frozen hands Barefoot on the ice He staggers back and forth And for all his music Not a penny's worth No one wants to hear him No one sees him play And the dogs are snapping At his feet all day And he lets the world go Spinning as it will Turns and turns his organ 226

Leaves it never still

Now, you weird old stranger Shall I come along? Will you turn that organ And play to my song?

2010 “XXIV. The Hurdy-gurdy Man” translated by Harold Heiberg (1922- 2013)

Pianist, coach, Professor at College of Music, University of North Texas, translator (over 250 English versions of song, choral and operatic works in print); American. English text copyright Harold Heiberg, sourced from Heiberg, Harold. “Schubert in Singable English: Winter Journey." Journal of Singing, vol. 66, no. 4, 2010, p. 387-398. Text only, no key. Reproduced with permission.

Near the village stands a hurdy-gurdy man whose old, stiffened fingers turn as best they can, on the ice he’s barefoot, halting is his gait, no one drops a coin upon his little plate.

No one comes to listen, no one stops to greet, only village mongrels growl around his feet. Letting all the folk ignore him, as they will, he his hurdy-gurdy keeps on turning still.

Strange mysterious fellow, may I go your way? Will you to my songs your hurdy-gurdy play?

2011 “The hurdy-gurdy man” Singable translation to English by David Paley (b.1942)

Author, poet, translator, creator of poemswithoutfrontiers.com; English. English text copyright David Paley, sourced online at https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=83645 Text only, no key. Reproduced with permission.

Over by the village Stands an organ man Who, with frozen fingers, Grinds out what he can.

Barefoot on the ice he Totters here and there; And his little coin dish Stays forever bare.

No one cares to hear him, No one looks at him; And the dogs are growling Round the agèd man. 227

And he lets it happen All is for the good, Thus, his hurdy-gurdy Turning, never still.

Wonder of the ancients, Shall I go with you? Would you for my songbook Turn your organ too?

2016 “Lyre Man” English translation by Darren Chase (b.1975)

Tenor, high school teacher; American. Text transcribed from video recording of a live performance at New York Theatre Ballet Concert Series, April 2 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjhidS_lacI and checked in Chase’s self-published book of translations of The Winter Journey, sourced from http://thewinterjourney.blogspot.ca/ English text copyright Darren Chase. A minor. Reproduced with permission.

There behind the village stands the lyre man And with frozen fingers he plays best he can Barefoot on the ice he teeters here and there And his little plate remains forever bare

No one wants to hear him, no one wants to see And the dogs are barking at the old man's feet And he lets it go on always as it will Playing on his hurdy-gurdy, never still

Strange old lyre player, shall I go with you? Will you play your lyre along with my songs too? 2016 “XXIV. The Hurdy-gurdy Man” in an English version by Jeremy Sams (b.1957)

Pianist, composer, translator; English. Audio Recording featuring Roderick Williams (baritone) and Christopher Glynn (piano) made February 2017 at St Silas the Martyr, Kentish Town, London, United Kingdom; Produced by Nicholas Parker, Engineered by Dave Rowell; Released on SignumClassics, Signum Records Ltd. April 2018. English text copyright Jeremy Sams, sourced online at https://www.hyperion- records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_SIGCD531 A minor. Reproduced with permission.

By the open road a hurdy-gurdy man 228

With his frozen fingers plays as best he can Dogs are barking round him People come and go Still he plays his music Shivering in the snow

Though he’s old and broken Though his feet are bare No-one seems to notice No-one seems to care Everyone ignores the saucer at his feet Just another madman standing in the street

I must journey onwards Will you come along Play your broken music to my broken song

2016 “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” by Stephen Clark (1961-2016), after Müller

Playwright, librettist and lyricist; English. Featured in the production Woyzeck in Winter by Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival, co-commissioned by the Barbican. The piece blended elements of Winterreise and Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. World Premiere Black Box Theatre, Galway, 17 July 2017; the character of the Hurdy-Gurdy Man was played by Rosaleen Linehan. English text copyright Stephen Clark, as printed in the show programme.

Here outside the town My hurdy-gurdy sings […]

2018 “Hurdy-Gurdy Girl” from Winter Journeyman: a new, contemporary English translation of Wilhelm Müller’s Winterreise set to a lightly adapted transcription of Franz Schubert’s original piano score by Thomas Beavitt (b.1968)

Translator, singer, researcher at the Kafedra of Foreign Languages at the Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founder of Global Village Bard (www.globalvillagebard.ru); Scottish. Text copyright Thomas Beavitt, and available online at www.winterjourneyman.com and https://globalvillagebard.ru/winterreise-winter-journeyman/ Monolingual music score available online at https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ReverseLookup/522834 A Minor. Reproduced with permission.

By the village plays A hurdy-gurdy girl. Her frostbitten fingers On her keyboard whirl. 229

Barefoot on the ice She totters to and fro Giving little thought To coins no one will throw.

No one sees her beauty, No one hears her tune. Only snarling dogs Perceive her waning moon.

But she lets it happen, Happen as it will. Turns her little handle Never keeping still.

Hurdy-gurdy girl, Now soon to be a crone. Shall I sing my swan song To your hoary drone?

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D: Feedback on singing translation workshop

Dr Catherine Gardner, Assistant Professor, Vocal Studies Department, East Carolina University, USA; 13 Nov 2020.

“Lara Dodds-Eden held a three-day workshop for my graduate art song literature class last year. Although these graduate level singers had been performing art song throughout their formal education, many had never approached translation directly and were used to accepting the translations they found online without question as a true representation of the original poetry. From the silly to the profound, Mrs. Dodds-Eden shared samples of translations for discussion, revealing to the class the importance of word sound and meaning in the subtle art of translation. Honing in on the smallest of language details allowed my students to savor and make meaning of poetry that they had perhaps taken for granted, or at least glossed over in favor of perfecting technique or foreign language diction. Both as a means to an end (ideally, a deeper understanding and connection to the poetry!) and as a possibility for performance, being allowed the freedom to play with language in this way inspired both me and my students to look more deeply into the important role translation plays in our musical process. Her workshop reinforced the idea that a singer’s task is to communicate with our audience, and that we must play an active role in this mission. This kind of work should be required course content for voice students and singers everywhere.”

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