‘Independence of the composer from the poet’:
A comparative analysis of eight settings of Goethe’s Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Ruben Adriaan Meijerink (10424156) – Master’s Thesis February 16, 2020 Thesis supervisor: Dr. R.M. Helmers Second reader: Prof. dr. J.J.E. Kursell Table of contents
Introduction 3
Context of the poem and its settings 9
The poem itself 14
Method 16
Analysis 28 Mignon (lines 1-2) 28 Mignon (lines 3-4) 35 Mignon (lines 5-6) 41 Mignon (lines 7-8) 47 Mignon (lines 9-10) 54 Mignon (lines 11-12) 61 Conclusion 67
Appendix: scores 74
2 Introduction It is commonly held that music is a type of language. Since music and language both rely on organized sound, it is hard to make an absolute distinction between the two. We speak of the musicality of language, or even that music has a grammar. Musicality of language is particularly relevant in poetry. When reciting a poem, it is easily recognized that poetic language is ‘musical’, with its rhythms, pitches and rhetorical ebb-and-flows. In some poems, the sounds of the words are even more important than merely communicating their lexical meanings. Indeed, these non-referential components of poetry make the comparison with music especially apt: both a piece of music and a poem can be seen as a composition of ordered sounds. Poetry and music are often combined in song. In setting words to music, song composers, when presenting their musical material, need to grapple with an appropriate diction, as well as the poem’s rhythms and specific sounds. In studying text-to-music settings, then, it is an interesting analytical question how those ‘systems’ of music and language collaborate. In other words, how are the words accommodated within the vocal melody? What note goes with what syllable—is such text underlay arbitrary? Does rhythmic differentiation in the music align in one way or another with speech rhythm; or, divisions into syllables with divisions into musical beats? It has often been debated which of these domains—language or music—has the upper hand. The relationship between language and music is generally considered to be very strong in nineteenth-century art song, especially the German Lied. Since the eighteenth century, the idea of a union between music and poetry had been reinvigorated. Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, this union was actualized by reflecting textual details in musical settings. Many composers of the German art song in this period were deeply interested in the relationship between poetic language and its musical setting. Lied composers turned to a wide range of poetry to set to music, some works being particularly fashionable. For example, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Mignon Lieder from his novel Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre were set to music many times. As the novel designated these poems as ‘songs’ in the first place, such texts obviously reinforced composers' interest in the interrelations of poetry and music. The present thesis is about one of these Mignon Lieder, called ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’—abbreviated as ‘Sehnsucht’. It is a song sung by the character Mignon and constitutes
3 a single lyric moment without dramatic development. It is particularly short with an economic form that subtly balances regularity and irregularity. Many composers have been drawn to this short poem; it has even inspired some composers to write multiple versions. In this thesis, I look at eight settings of ‘Sehnsucht’, each by a different composer, to examine the interrelations between the sound and structures of language and the musical presentation thereof.
On the basis of this poem, literary scholar Meredith McClain has set out an argument about music’s “independence” from lyrics in an 1987 article.1 McClain illustrates the development of the German Lied by reviewing seven settings by six composers of ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ (from here on designated as ‘Sehnsucht’). She addresses the question to what extent the words are followed by the music or whether the composer’s music becomes independent. In her analysis, this selection of settings of the poem serves to illustrate a general “evolution” towards the independence of the composer from the poet. She starts tracing this evolution with Johann Reichardt’s strophic setting of ‘Sehnsucht’, a setting commissioned by Goethe himself. This setting would still be in accordance with Goethe’s own views, namely that music should follow the words. Similarly, the second composer that McClain discusses, Carl Friedrich Zelter, composed a simple strophic setting too. She explains that Zelter, just as Reichardt, was a “member of the Second Berlin Song School, so it is not surprising that his music supports and follows the poetic text.”2 What is more, these two early composers are quoted as saying that they read the poem out loud repeatedly, in order for the correct expression in the melody to arise naturally, instead of writing an instrumental melody first and couple music and words later.3 Indeed, Goethe himself famously endorsed such an aesthetic view, according to which words and music should be unified in the Lied.4 With the settings that follow, McClain describes a gradual divergence from this aesthetic. This development starts with Beethoven and Schubert: we are told, although the settings are still fluently singable, and articulate the syntax musically, one can glean something of the “evolving complexity and independence of
1 Meredith McClain. ‘Goethe and Music: “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’’’. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: one hundred and fifty years of continuing vitality. Ed. Ulrich Goebel. Lubbock, Texas: Texas University Press, 1984: 201–227. 2 McClain, p. 207. 3 Ibid. 4 Lorraine B. Bodley. Schubert's Goethe settings. New York: Routledge, 2017, p. 20.
4 the musical form in relation to the verbal structure”.5 In addition to a relatively more complex musical form, Beethoven “takes a liberty” to repeat and interpolate words, for example.6 Significantly, then, McClain discerns a watershed in Schumann’s setting, which for her exemplifies the “independence of the composer from the poet”.7 Schumann would represent a new direction, characterized by a great range of musical detail. McClain states that for this setting it is too difficult to “make a meaningful simple graphic reduction of its form”.8 Indeed, she designates the setting as completely through-composed, where the music “evolves without attention to syntactic breaks”.9 In other words, the text is made subservient to the composer’s will. McClain’s indeed states that “the music is in control of the text.”10 Consequently, McClain closes her discussion with Tchaikovsky's setting, published almost four decades after Goethe’s death and twenty years after Schuman’s setting. Whereas the early settings were designated as simple strophic and Schumann’s as through-composed, Tchaikovsky’s musical form is so complicated in articulating the poem’s structure, McClain holds, that it is now simply impossible to outline graphically.11 McClain’s reason for ending her survey with Tchaikovsky’s setting is the following:
Of all the settings presented it is the only one in which the music was such a successful entity that it lives on in performances of instrumentalists [...] without the words and many people who today would recognize the melody would have no idea who Goethe was or that it was his poetry which had inspired the music12
Of course, it is not this proposition itself that is interesting (let alone plausible) but rather the idea that is implied: Goethe’s poem as a poem can hardly be recognized anymore because the music has become independent to such a large extent. She indeed writes that: “For this reason this setting completes the evolution we have been following since the discussion of the original Reichardt setting”13 However, a skeptical reader might reply: when such a piece of music exists independently from the words it was based on, what does this fact necessarily
5 McClain, p. 210 6 Ibid, p. 209 7 Ibid, p. 211 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 212 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.
5 imply? Cannot it both be an independent piece of music and fit on the words as well? Indeed, McClain does address an interesting issue, namely what fate textual details have over time and to what extent the music may come to reign independently. The picture of development towards through-composed songs and a more independent role for the piano are indeed commonplace in histories of music.14 However, the particular idea that a poem dissolves in the musical setting, ceases to be poetry and becomes music as it were, has been criticized by recent authors. A recent article by Stephen Rodgers takes aim at such a view in musical analysis, dubbed the ‘assimilation model’ by Kofi Agawu.15 Rodgers explains this model as follows:
Analysts who adhere to this view argue that a poem ceases to be a poem when it is set to music: ‘purely’ poetic elements, such as line length, meter, enjambment, assonance, alliteration and caesuras, are so thoroughly absorbed by the music that they cease to be very relevant to an understanding of the song.16
This paradigm, Rodgers proceeds to show, has been challenged before by various musicologists, such as Berthold Hoeckner (quoted by Rodgers) who writes: “Even when a poem has been molded into a through-composed song; even when its words have lost the rhythm of their original meter; and even when its text has been altered by the composer: the poetic text still remains an independent component of a song”17 . This insight is important for Rodgers, as he contends that precisely this independent component of the poem deserves more attention in the study of text-to-music settings. In other words, he wants to give proper due to the sounds and structures of the poem, apart from what the words are thought to mean. For this purpose, he draws strongly on the work of Don Michael Randel and Robert Snarrenberg.18 All three authors have in common, that they first consider such independent linguistic material of the poem, its sounds, and subsequently study the composers response.
14 J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music: Tenth International Student Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019, p. 590. 15 Stephen Rodgers. ‘Song and the Music of Poetry.’ Music Analysis 36.3 (2017): 315-349; Kofi Agawu. ‘Theory and Practice in the Analysis of the Nineteenth-Century ‘Lied’.’ Music Analysis 11.1 (1992): 5. 16 Rodgers, pp. 316-317. 17 Ibid., p. 317. 18 Don Michael Randel. ‘Congruence between Poetry and Music in Schumann’s Dichterliebe.’ 19th-Century Music 38.1 (2014): 30-52.; Robert Snarrenberg. ‘On the Prosody of German Lyric Song.’ Journal of Music Theory 58.2 (2014): 103-154.
6 It is particularly interesting that these recent authors under review focus on composers from the Romantic era—Schumann in particular. Crucially, the authors document that nineteenth century composers, too, carefully read out loud the poems before setting them to music as well, much in keeping with the statements of the Second Berlin School composers that McClain had quoted, which I will elaborate on in the next chapter.
Significantly, the ideas from Rodgers, Randel and Snarrenberg diverge from the ‘assimilation model’ as well as familiar music-and-text perspectives that predominantly look for semantic correspondences between words and music. At times, however, these recent authors still use their observations as a technique of text interpretation: they do not intend to exclude hermeneutics. Conversely, a strength of McClain’s comparative analysis is that she employs a single analytical yardstick—independence of the composer from the poet—for multiple settings of the poem, not taking occasional detours to the interpretation of the poem’s meaning, for example. However, in sketching the picture of independence, McClain does not analyse systematically or in detail what features and structures of the poem are purportedly lost, and to what extent this happens over time. Relying on single observations, she inevitably sketches her model of development with a broad brush. In order to study this general idea of independence more precisely, I believe it is warranted to look closely and systematically at the poem’s words and structures as they appear in declamation: likely such features direct compositional choices. These textual features include meter, poetic structure, pronunciation and even the phonetic sound of words. Richly inspired by the three recent authors mentioned above, I aim to analyse musical settings from such a viewpoint in this thesis. While McClain is thus not ultimately my central point of reference, I do take some of her hypotheses into account: those about irregularity, syntactic breaks and the relation between poetic structures and musical structures, as these bear on the idea of independence. Taking my cue from Rodgers, Randel and Snarrenberg, then, it is interesting to analyse the treatment of the composer with these aspects. In short, following McClain, it is valuable to analyse settings of ‘Sehnsucht’ comparatively, in order to see how musical settings respond to textual features as mentioned above. By studying multiple settings, I can make a stronger argument as to how a musical setting can be tied back to textual elements and to what extent this is so, and to what extent a chronological development can be detected in this matter. For this purpose, I take up a selection of analytical observations from the literature and apply them to multiple settings, in
7 order to investigate whether such observations can be generalized or remain unique. My own comparative analysis of multiple settings, then, ought to provide more insight into the issue of “independence” across the chronology. I aim to reconsider and re-evaluate the idea of development towards independence of the composer from the poet: not to ‘debunk’ it per se, but to study if and how such an evolution to independence might be mapped. What textual features are ignored and to what extent? Alternatively, what textual features are supported—or interacted with—by the vocal melody? And seen from a historical perspective, could this shed light on any developing ‘independence’ through time? These angles may help us to understand the general idea of independence better with respect to these particular Lied settings, and secondarily, the viability of the methods of Rodgers, Randel and Snarrenberg. This thesis steps in to answer these questions, for which I take the most useful elements of the articles described above. I will elaborate on these studies and set out my own method in detail below, but first I provide some contextual information on the poem that is the object of this study.
8 Context of the poem and its settings
In this chapter I will briefly provide some information on the poem and the settings that I have included for analysis. The poem under review is taken from Goethe's, classic Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, published in 1795. The novel is about the protagonist Wilhelm Meister's journey to self-realization. Embedded within the narrative, this poem constitutes one of four famous “Mignon songs”. Mignon is a mysterious waif-like character in the novel, about 13 or 14 years of age. She was rescued by Wilhelm from a troop of dancers who had abducted her from her homeland. The girl willingly accepts his protection and forms a close bond with Wilhelm, and accompanies him on his adventures. This song is located near the end of book four. While Wilhelm is resting in his room, suffering from wounds inflicted on him by robbers, he falls in a state of dreamy longing. From outside of his window, he overhears the poem being sung, its words echoing his own yearning for a beautiful Amazon that had saved his life. Mignon sings the poem together with a character called the Harpist: according to the narrator, it is an “irregular duet sung with the most heartfelt expression.”19 Although it is designated as a duet, the words attest to distinctly personal expression. In fact the poem has been associated with Mignon almost exclusively, and is often called simply Mignon’s Lied.
Composers were fascinated by the Mignon as a character and the highly expressive words of this poem, spurring many interpretations. Indeed, at least 56 settings are known by professional composers.20 The poem undoubtedly attracts composers due to the preeminence of Goethe as a poet, and the increasing interest in the bond between music and poetry. This affinity between music and lyrics that Goethe himself espoused would continue to fascinate composers throughout the nineteenth century. As the poem is not recited in the novel but actually sung, it is no wonder composers were attracted to this text. My own choice for selecting this poem is partly pragmatical. As a famous poem that has been set multiple times, material is readily available for comparative analysis. The form of the poem, too, lends itself well for comparison, due to its tight structure and recurring
19 Thomas Carlyle. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels: Translated From the German of Goethe. London: Chapman and Hall, 1888, p. 211. 20 Jack M. Stein ‘Musical Settings of the Songs from Wilhelm Meister.’ Comparative Literature 22.2 (1970): 125-146.
9 features. What is more, the poem has no dramatic development or narrative, which makes the poem especially conducive to formalist analysis. Most importantly, of course, I want to specifically follow up on the issues that McClain addresses. This is why I have included all but one her selection of settings reviewed in her article. Indeed, of her selection of settings I include: Reichardt, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. I have omitted Zelter. To these I have included three additional settings, from Ferdinand Hiller, Hugo Wolf and Gustav Jenner. First, I have selected these particular settings for roughly two reasons: to represent the whole century as much as possible, that is to say: find an even distribution of settings through the century. Second, more pragmatically, I had to consider whether a score was available. In what follows I will briefly introduce the settings of the eight composers under review.
The setting of Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) from 1795 was commissioned and approved by Goethe himself. In fact, the very first edition of Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre included Reichardt's music for all songs in the novel—eight in total. Goethe's influence on his composition is echoed in the remark by Reichardt quoted in the introduction. This composition is the only setting under review that is actually a duet. However, I will only analyse the upper voice (i.e. Mignon), which differs in melodic shape and one single rhythmic irregularity.
In 1810, Ludwig van Beethoven published this setting together with three other settings of the same poem. This reflects his typical experimental spirit and dissatisfaction with his own creative works. The setting chosen for the current analysis was his last and, according to McClain, his most successful attempt.21 Although it is the only through-composed setting of his collection, according to Jack Stein all the settings “are extremely simple and brief, very strongly in the eighteenth-century tradition.”22 According to the New Grove, however, his next 1816 cycle would be closest to the Volksweise endorsed by Goethe.23 Beethoven said that the rhythms of Goethe’s poetry had great power over him, and that melody realized the sensuous element of poetry in general and the song of Mignon in particular.24 While Goethe's
21 McClain, p. 209 22 Stein, p. 132. 23 Douglas Johnson, Scott G. Burnham, William Drabkin, Joseph Kerman, and Alan Tyson. ‘Beethoven, Ludwig van.’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001. 14 November 2019. 24 McClain, p. 209.
10 opinion on this setting is not known, McClain quotes a “telling” reaction to his setting of Kennst du das Land, where Goethe reproached Beethoven for not writing simply enough.25
It is documented, too, that Goethe was disappointed with Franz Schubert’s interpretation. Schubert's 1826 setting under review is the last of no less than six versions. Schubert is often seen as the quintessential Lied composer. A general view in his lifetime held, that he introduces more formal freedom and complexity to the folk-like strophic style of the Second Berlin School. Modern scholarship stresses the variation in Schubert's compositional method throughout his career and that his poem settings are indeed stylistically divergent.26
Robert Schumann spent a fair amount of time of his life on the composition of Lieder. Himself conversant in literature, he strongly believed that music and poetry were interrelated as art forms. As such, he sought for a fusion of poetry and music, in which composer and poet are co-creators.27 His setting of ‘Sehnsucht’ from 1849 is part of his song cycle Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister. Stylistically, the songs attest to very different styles compared to his earlier song cycles. The songs employ more chromaticism and dissonance and are more declamatory, almost operatic.28 The cycle is considered to be of comparatively low aesthetic value, compared with his earlier Lied cycles. As are most works of Schumann’s ‘late style’, the songs are commonly seen as a deterioration as compared to his previous output. Quite a few commentators, however, do see value in Schumann Wilhelm Meister settings. For example, Stein writes that, “The songs are richer in texture, the harmony is more complex, the musical declamation more subordinate to the poetic line, and the songs in general more dramatically conceived.”29 Schumann, a watershed in McClain’s article, and the three composers that follow in the chronology, will figure as ‘late composers’ in my discussion.
Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885) was a close friend of Schumann, who, together with Felix Mendelssohn influenced Hiller as a composer. This setting is from 1867, published around
25 Ibid. 26 Maurice J.E. Brown, Eric Sams and Robert Winter. ‘Schubert, Franz (Peter).’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001. 11 February. 27 Jürgen Thym. ‘Schumann: reconfiguring the Lied.’ The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Edited by J. Parsons & J. Cross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 126. 28 Ronald Taylor. Robert Schumann: His life and work. London: Granada Publishing, 1982, p. 127. 29 Stein, p. 139.
11 the same time as Tchaikovsky’s. Though Hiller is fairly unknown today, he was an important figure in his own time. The composer is considered a graceful composer especially in the smaller forms. When he went to Weimar to become one of Hummel’s pupils (from 1825-27), he met Goethe and played concerts at his home. A prolific writer, he also wrote a biography called Goethes musikalisches Leben.30 This song is part of his 12 Gesänge, Op.129.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky is generally associated with his instrumental compositions. However, he wrote a fair amount of vocal music, often less well-known outside of Russia. This setting of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt is the last of his collection Six Romances op. 6, composed in 1869. This collection was successful in its time, and the setting of ‘Sehnsucht’ is perhaps the best known today. While Tchaikovsky is not seen as an equal to the greatest of Lied composers, the New Grove believes it is hard to deny the vocal excellence in many of his songs.31 For this setting, Tchaikovsky used Lev Alexandrovich Mey’s translation of the German words into Russian. The translation preserves the original metrics of the German, and the scholar Richard Sylvester believes that “Tchaikovsky's music is perfectly suited to Goethe’s text, including the lines which Tchaikovsky repeats, as can be seen in the frequent recording of the song in German.” A different language raises all sorts of questions and qualifications. For the present project, I simply use the score provided by McClain with German text, in order to follow her argument in which Tchaikovsky’s setting has a key role, as Tchaikovsky marks the endpoint of her discussion. For this thesis, I have included some later settings to further investigate the issues at hand.
In my view, Hugo Wolf is an essential composer to include. In contrast to Tchaikovsky, he devoted most of his life to vocal music, particularly the art song. His absence from McClain's selection is interesting, as he is often named in general overviews of the Mignon lieder. For example, Jack Stein, an author heavily referenced by McClain, includes Wolf “among the most important of the countless settings that have appeared.”32 What is more, Wolf's Mignon settings, including this setting from 1888, are considered the among best he wrote.
30 Reinhold Sietz. ‘Hiller, Ferdinand’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001. 14 November 2019. 31 Roland J. Wiley. ‘Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il′yich’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001. 14 November 2019. 32 Stein, p.126ff.
12 In general, his Lieder lean towards opera idiomatically, as he was strongly influenced by Wagner, an influence that is most obviously seen in the intense chromaticism that was in vogue. Generally, for his dramatic and lyric ambitions, Wolf did not believe the strophic form was suitable. In contrast to Schumann, he has a reputation to meticulously adhere to the poetic text.33 Compared to most Lied composers, he valued perfect declamation to a large extent.34 A distinctive practice of his, is that he prefaced the performance of his Lieder with a recitation of the words. In this he reasserted the centrality of the poem, where he strived for an equality of poetry and music.35
The latest setting from 1900 that I discuss is from a largely unknown composer, Gustav Jenner (1865-1920). He was a composition student of Brahms and one of many who praised the union of music and words that Brahms could achieve. Brahms scholar Heather Platt summarizes Jenner’s comments in which he summarizes his master’s view that “the music must reflect the structure and meaning of the original poem, and he [Jenner] notes that such relations between the text and music include form, musical and verbal syntax, declamation, word painting, and harmony.”36 According to Platt, “Jenner begins by emphasizing the necessity of thoroughly knowing the text before beginning to compose a Lied, and he recalls that Brahms specified familiarity with all of the intricacies of a poem including being able to recite it correctly.”37 Such statements inform my analytical angle. In keeping with them, I will consider the text of the poem itself in the next section.
33 Lawrence Kramer. ‘Hugo Wolf: Subjectivity in the Fin-de-Siécle Lied.’ German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Rufus Hallmark, Routledge, 2009, p. 187. 34 Kramer, p. 189 35 Ibid. 36 Heather Platt. ‘The Lieder of Brahms.’ The Cambridge Companion to Brahms. Edited by J. Parsons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 185. 37 Ibid.
13 The poem itself
In this section, I discuss the text of the poem itself. I only sketch a general overview of the poem’s structural features. I will not zoom into individual lines or line pairs much, let alone words and phonemes—this is largely reserved for the analytical chapter.
1 Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt A
2 Weiss, was ich Leide! B
3 Allein und abgetrennt A
4 Von aller Freude, (B)
5 Seh’ ich ans Firmament A
6 Nach jener Seite. C
7 Ach! der mich liebt kennt, A
8 Ist in der Weite. C
9 Es schwindelt mir, es brennt A
10 Mein Eingeweide, C
11 Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, A
12 Weiss, was ich Leide! B
The poem has only 12 verse lines, each line being rather short. In the novel, the poem is printed as one single stanza. Its first two lines are repeated at the conclusion of the poem, which gives the whole a ‘cyclical’ form. From the onset, the poem alternates lines of six and five syllables, where the initial line ends on a stress, and the answering line ends on an unstressed syllable, i.e. masculine and feminine endings. In effect, lines of three and two beats alternate. On the above account, according to McClain, the poem can be divided in two segments as “the basic rhythmic structure indicates two stanzas based on the same pattern.”38 As indicated, the rhyme scheme is AB, A(B), AC, AC, AB, AB. In this view, the poem can be seen as one stanza with three quatrains, where the four middle lines are one rhyme group ACAC. Because ABAB returns at the end, the framing function of the repeated
38 McClain, p. 205.
14 final lines is underscored. Even taking into account the half-rhyme of (B), the two rhyme schemes are rather similar. Indeed, the constant return of A further creates a sense of regularity. Grammatically, each line pair constitutes one syntactic unit. Lines 3,4,5,6 form one sentence of four lines. The subordinate clauses of this sentence are connected through enjambment and a comma (3-4) and again an enjambment and a comma (5-6).
Following McClain, and other commentators, I will divide the poem in two stanzas as well. An additional good argument in favor of this division is that line 7 has a syntactic structure similar to line 1.
The verse feet are not completely axiomatic either. That becomes apparent in the phrasing when McClain’s writes that “one way to describe the pattern of metric feet is to assume that the basic foot is iambic (u /), but that the rhythm is suspended or counterbalanced by word stress in in the first foot of lines, 1, 2, and 5 in stanza one and of lines 1, 5, 6 in stanza two, causing trochaic feet (/ u)”.39 Scholar of German literature Harry Seelig, designates the lines of the poem as “dactylic-trochaic” without explanation.40 He means that the verse feet are either (/ u u) and (/ u) throughout. As to both views, the difference lies in only where one marks off the verse feet, that is to say when a set of stressed and unstressed syllables begins and closes. In this sense, interestingly, the accents in both accounts do not necessarily conflict. As there are no indications of verse feet printed alongside the poem, however, the lines require some additional explanation, which I provide in the analytical chapters that follow. But first I will set out my own method.
39 Ibid. 40 Seelig, p. 11.
15 Method
Before I present my analysis, I will review the literature named in the introduction and set out my own method. These studies provide the general theoretical framework that I draw on and respond to. The more recent authors in question—Randel, Rodgers and Snarrenberg—can teach us how to pay attention to poetic sound and sound structure present within the poem, contending that composers have attended to these immanent features of the poem before setting the words to music. These authors offer various analytical observations to investigate the composers’ interaction with the poem, a helpful supplement to McClain’s questions and observations. These studies will partly guide my own project, as they illuminate a particular way of thinking about text-to-music setting. It is crucial to note that these three authors describe the relation between musical setting and the words as one of ‘response’, ‘interaction’, ‘convergence of sound worlds’ and how the materiality of the poem ‘constrains’ the setting. In this sense they diverge from McClain, as the above terms contradict the hierarchy that McClain implies in her phrase “independence of the composer from the poet” and the composer being “in control”.41 By contrast, Randel tellingly describes his approach as viewing poetry and music on more “parallel footing”.42 This parallel footing is found in the the fact that the two systems both have sound. Having established this view, the authors want to show what this can reveal in individual works: that is how the sound world of music brings out the “sound world” of a poem. In keeping with this, Robert Snarrenberg focuses on the declamation of poetry in general and prosody in particular: where the ‘reading’ of a poem by the composer means not only ‘interpreting’ but also quite literally a reading out loud before setting it to music.43 Another purpose of these three authors is to show how composers draw attention to particular textual elements and why. This way of studying the compositional process of Lied composers is interesting to pursue, as it differs from the traditional emphasis on lyric content that has basically defined the field of song studies. Goethe’s ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ has not been studied systematically in this way, although McClain is an important point of departure for the present study with her focus
41 McClain, pp. 211-212. 42 Randel, p. 32. 43 Snarrenberg, p. 103ff; cf. 130.
16 on text dependency and comparison. My own method is generally inspired by all four authors, but as stated in the introduction, both my method and my aim are different. I look at settings of the same text by many composers comparatively, where I investigate what light such a focus on the ‘material’ of poetry and the musical interaction can shed on a collection of settings across a time span. As mentioned above, to focus my topic, I look more closely at the settings that McClain discusses and include additional settings. First, I will now review three authors thematically, with emphasis on matters that are important for my own project. Secondly, I will set out my own method.
The four main authors all begin their analyses with a discussion of the particular poem under review. Indeed, they analyze the words as a sound structure or sound notation, distinct at first from musical analysis. Rodgers, Snarrenberg and McClain explicitly emphasize that a variety of Lied composers are known to have read poems out loud before setting them to music, as I will dwell on below. Rodgers notes in the opening page of his article that
One would think that analysts of art song would be especially attuned to what I am calling the music of poetry.There is plenty of evidence, after all, that composers of art song were so attuned. Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf were all known to have read poems aloud before setting them.44
In a similar vein, Snarrenberg illustrates his main theme at the start of his article: Brahms advised his pupil Jenner that before writing one note of a musical setting, he should memorize the poem and read it out loud, to attend closely to its declamation and placement of pauses.45 As described in the introduction, McClain quoted Reichardt and Zelter as following a similar procedure. These examples illustrate a main theme in these studies: the text is not merely a carrier of meaning, but also specific material that can be declaimed. In other words, the poem constitutes a notation that is in itself quasi-musical, where elements like rhythms, words, sounds, accent patterns recur and alternate. Note how this resembles the way that musical motifs and themes are studied as recurring and alternating features in musical analysis. In addition, reading poetry out loud is a physical performance, where the concrete materials of a poem will be, indeed must be, articulated in recital. In short, there is a range of
44 Rodgers, p. 1. 45 Snarrenberg, p. 103.
17 specific textual elements and materials in poetry (and prose), and hypothetically, in the setting in one way or another. Such analyses of texts that these authors offer are interestingly detailed. They all include comments on the meter, syllable count, various regularities and irregularities in rhyme scheme and line endings. Randel, Rodgers and Snarrenberg go into much more detail than McClain. They also dwell at, for example, punctuation marks and syntactic breaks (including pauses such as enjambments). At a structural level, they look at the number of syllables that appear at every recurring accent, which might alter per line, and the unique moments this creates within the broader sound structure. I mention this to call attention to ways in which poems structure sound that resemble such structuring in music, where ‘unique’ moments stand out against previous patterns, and hence are not studied entirely in isolation but in relation to the structure. One example is when Randel discusses Heine’s ‘Aus meinen Tränen sprießen’ as set by Schumann. The poem’s second stanza’s first three lines have a more active syllabic rhythm than what went before and also shift the prosodic pattern. Schumann, accordingly, sets these lines distinct from the the first stanza, However, in the poem the final line (line 8) of the second stanza returns to the simple syllabic rhythm (“rhythmic relaxation”). Schumann reinforced this return with his setting, which returns a simple pattern that he used in the first stanza. This contrast gains more particular relief because he had shifted the prosodic pattern of lines 6 and 7 in his setting.46 I provide Randel’s outline of lines 7 and 8 below (figure 1), where it can be seen that 7 is prosodically more complex and the only place in the song where Schumann used a triplet, while 8 suggests a more basic rhythm, which Schumann reinforces with his setting.
Fig. 1 Outline of Heine’s “Aus meinen Tränen sprießen” lines 7-8 (Don Michael Randel)
Another example in this vein, is a line in Schumann’s setting of ‘Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ that Randel and Rodgers both comment on. The line is unique among the others in that it substitutes a trochee for an iamb and has a mid-way caesura. This caesura—a colon— would afford a rhythmic irregularity in a recitation of the poem as a whole. Randel writes that
46 Randel, p. 36.
18 Heine’s text “does not vary the syllabic rhythm, but Schumann’s setting has varied it quite strikingly at moments and in ways that can be thought about in relation to other features of the text”. Rodgers, speaking about the same poem, disagrees with this interpretation. He finds it curious that Randel does not discuss the rhythmic regularities such as the “striking” colon in this line. Indeed, Rodgers argues that varied poetic rhythm is “precisely one of the ‘features of the text’ to which Schumann seems most attentive.”47 Following Rodgers, I take such ‘features of the text’ and the degree towards a composer appears to be attentive as my point of departure. That is to say, I map out aspects such as varied poetic rhythm that are heard in reciting the poem, and then investigate if and how these match with musical features. On the whole, then, I am more interested in simple correspondences between music and and text, and I believe this makes the analysis more tractable. Indeed, it is congruent with my focus on word dependency, which I take to mean that something inherent in the poem is recognized in the music. Helpful is Rodgers’ phrase “most attentive” [emphasis mine], implicating that there is both a wide range of textual properties and also degrees in being attentive to them. This concern with meter and rhythm is widespread in all authors, of which Snarrenberg and Rodgers (Randel to a lesser extent) also pay attention how to pronounce words in speech and what syllables might be emphasised. Such emphasis might run against the verse feet that are used in the poem by convention. This attention to speech rhythms and its flexibilities, helps to study musical meter and rhythm in more detail. For example, Snarrenberg dwells at some length at the word ‘Waldeinsamkeit’. Referring to phonological work, he notes that different syllables of this word can be stressed. Both ‘Wald’ and the first syllable in ‘Einsamkeit’ invite to be accentuated: this stress clash can be resolved by lengthening ‘Wald’, for example. In German speech, such a clash is often avoided shifting a stress to another syllable. In the settings, Schumann and Brahms stress different syllables in fact, (see figure 1), and according to Snarrenberg “their decisions reflect the ambiguity of the word’s phonological structure”.48
47 Rodgers, p. 27. 48 Snarrenberg, p. 112.
19
Fig. 2 Eichendorff’s “In der Fremde,” lines 6b-7, as set by Schumann and Brahms
Another reason that Snarrenberg suggests, is that in both composers, their stress replicates a rhythmic “parallel” that exists with another line.49 Attention to pronunciation on the one hand, and the between the local and structural is important for my analysis as well. Whereas Snarrenberg mainly focuses on the placement of stress, Rodgers and Randel also delve more deeply at phonetic sounds and patterns thereof in a poem. That is to say, the appearance of vowel and consonant sounds, what textures they create and how they are physically pronounced. Rodgers goes the furthest in this: for example he minutely maps out occurrences of [a] and [ɛ] vowels. He notes that Schumann “reserves some of his longest and highest notes for the poem’s prominent [a] and [ɛ] vowels.” He also concludes his article with his statement that whereas sometimes Schumann “remained true to the poet’s song, echoing it with his own, but just as often he managed to uncover hidden strains of poetic music, revealing beautiful phonetic patterns that might not be heard without the aid of the composer’s art”.50 I will return to the question of phonetic sound in the second part of this chapter. But in general, as I will explain below, I take as a point of departure the affordances of the text, and then study the composer’s interaction. Conversely, I do not look at how the composer is as it were a director of our experience of the poem, let alone “uncover hidden strains of poetic music”. That is to say, a particular texture of phonetic sounds in the poem is made more explicit by the music, by emphasizing and amplifying a constellation of sounds that is rather implicit in the poem. I believe this aim is not relevant to my research question and a bit too esoteric. Recalling the previous discussion syllabic rhythm, I instead look more at
49 Ibid. 50 Rodgers, p. 24.
20 interactions, or where the composer is indeed “true to the poet’s song.”. As will become clear when I set out my specific approach to studying the words, I do include individual phonetic sounds and phonetic patterns within a single line pair (for example, a sound is repeated often, e.g. internal assonance). Of course some textual feature might not be supported by the composer’s music; this, however, does not mean that the composer is not attentive to the words on the whole: he as it were ‘negotiates’ with the words. Hence I suggest that the poetic material can be properly seen as affordance, a concept introduced by James J. Gibson.51 That is to say, the linguistic material of the poem and its structures might afford (make possible) compositional choices, or direct them in a certain way. The affordance concept is often explained with reference to a chair. A chair in the environment, by dint of its form, ‘invites’ one to sit on it. That is not to say, however, that you cannot possibly stand on it. Indeed, such objects are not absolute properties of the environment, but can be suited to various needs or not. For example, a twig of a tree affords support for a bird, but not for humans. Analogously, textual features are half-normative, as they can reasonably give direction for composers. Ultimately, the composer’s musical reaction to the words can sound as reflecting the poetic sound structure. However, the present project leaves open how composers do that, which is what I aim to investigate. The three authors under review do not use the same analytical questions for each song they analyse. The initial comments on the text are not always used as a test case, but rather as a first general overview of the poem’s sonoric shape. Indeed, sometimes new textual observations occur in the course of their discussion of the actual musical setting: in this sense their discussion feels exploratory. Conversely, I hope to investigate whether such observations are unique to single composers or songs, or to what extent generalisations can be made about a broader group of composers. Can we ascertain whether compositional choices are inspired by textual features, or, to put it differently, is there a correlation between textual details and the way composers respond to them? The purpose of my method is to shed more light on this.
Structure of my analysis Now in this second part of the methods section, I will more concretely describe my investigation of the poem’s setting. Each analytical chapter of my thesis focuses on one line
51 James J. Gibson The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New York: Psychology Press, 2015.
21 pair, that is to say two verse lines and their musical setting. I do so because these line pairs form grammatical units, often a single sentence. What is more, sets of two lines constantly alternate six with five syllables. Each line is rather short on its own. By studying units of two lines, I can anticipate parallels with other line pairs. I begin each chapter with a short overview of the line pair. This contains an outline of the meter and its possible ambiguities, and I note structural relationships with other lines or line pairs, which I will tell more about below. I mention significant textual details such als caesurae, punctuation marks, enjambments. In addition, I map out what phonetic properties stand out in this line compared to other lines. Then the next step is to examine the musical settings of the line pair comparatively, in which I analyse the vocal line only. My aim here is to pay attention to how composers respond to the textual details that I have outlined in advance. This response is framed around what Rodgers calls “support” and Randel “fit”, that is to say when musical sound and poetic sound conjoin. As I said, this implies that a negative answer is possible too in this respect. Such a negative answer must be taken into account as well, since it bears on my research question. I investigate how forms of music—musical rhythms, musical meter, melody—in some way match textual forms or not. To this end, I present my analysis under four headings, each representing a different theme. These themes are: accentuation, structural relations, structural differentiation, phonetic sound. The discussion of themes in turn constitute different subheadings in the chapters for each line pair. For each theme, I generally try to answer the following cluster of questions. Can a shift in compositional approach be recorded over time in the settings of the poem, and if so, where does that lie in? Conversely, what does remain the same across settings? To what extent do earlier composers adjust more to the course of the text? Can I map out the impact of textual details: and, in turn, when looking at a range of composers, can this qualify the idea of a development? Can this shed more light on McClain’s idea of independence: what causes such independence more precisely? In what follows, I will clarify the four themes in turn, and give an explanation of how each theme relates to the aim of the present project.
Accentuation In the first theme called ‘accentation’, I analyze to what extent the layers of poetic meter and musical meter align. That is to say, is there any alignment in the accented and unaccented sounds between, on the one hand, poetic verse, and, on the other hand, musical meter? Conversely, these layers can also conflict in settings.
22 These terms—alignment or conflict between such layers—are used in an 1817 article by Hans Georg Nägeli, who foretold a “new epoch in the art of song” and a “higher style of Lied”, that would feature “an as of yet unrecognized polyrhythm, so that the rhythm of speech, singing, and playing will be subsumed into a higher artistic whole”.52 Indeed, Nägeli correctly presumed that the Lied was evolving from Volkstümlichkeit, where the layers of poetry and music are customarily aligned, towards complexity, where they become more independent and even will conflict. This description strongly echoes McClain’s notion of a development, indeed “evolution”, towards complexity and independence. I take up Nägeli’s observation to make McClain’s historical sketch about an evolution towards independence concrete: that is to say, I use his analytical angle—independence of layers—to study a possible evolution. One layer found in a (recited) poem that I use from this discussion is meter. Indeed, building on Randel, Rodgers and Snarrenberg, declamation of poetry is a basic point of departure, where I look to what extent declamatory schemes are reflected in the settings of verse lines.53 I highlight declamation, because when a declamatory trait is reflected musically, the music will to some extent keep representing the delivery or diction of a text. In this sense the distinction between music and poetry is less marked: this invites us to speak of “equal footing”, instead of the music being merely in control. To study such alignment, I take seriously the possible ambiguities of meter in the poem. Conversely, I call some accents in the poem unambiguous. Two factors decide whether I call an accent unambiguous. First, there is no discussion about the accent in the literature on this poem. Second, leaving this syllable unaccented would sound very strange in speech, phonologically. Both these unambiguous accents and more ambiguous ones are explicitly mentioned in the overview of each line pair. As a synonym for an unambiguous accent I will use the term ‘main accent’. In the background lies what the most straightforward rhythm fitting for the time signature would be and, secondarily, how verse feet can be distributed straightforwardly in measures.54 In the main, I investigate here: to what extent the vocal melody employs accents that are analogous to poetic accents? This question must answer to what extent the poetic meter still directs the melody in the text-to-tune settings or, alternatively, how they diverge. This examination entails the following questions: are
52Malin, Yonatan. Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 29–30. 53Cf. Randel, p. 34. 54 Rodgers. p. 10; Randel. p.40
23 unambiguous accents allocated to a stressed beat, either the first downbeat or second stressed beat? Conversely, how are stressed syllables alternated with non-accented syllables? Are non-accented syllables allocated to particular pieces of the measure, most straightforwardly to an unstressed part of the measure? Throughout, the following question remains implicit in my examination: to what extent are later settings of the poem “irregular” as to the course of the vocal melody? With this frame in mind, I search for developments or other patterns, discovering whether a development or not as to independence of the composer from the poet can be mapped out in this respect. When I analyze the treatment of poetic accents, then, I zoom in on musical accents, that is to say how those accents are accentuated musically. For this, I focus on a range of possible musical accentuation: I account for registral, agogical and dynamic accents and constellations thereof (called a peak by Snarrenberg) in each accent under review.55 These are easily quantifiable parameters that all authors use. In addition, I include poetic caesurae found in the lines under review. Obviously, they often occur in tandem with poetic accents and such caesurae have a significant impact in the declamation of a text. For a composer, in turn, there are various ways to set a caesura to music or neglect it (that is to say, to what extent composers have no attention to “syntactic breaks” as McClain suggests). For example, one way to set a caesurae to music is by lengthening the tone before the pause instead of the pause itself, which Snarrenberg calls “little caesurae”.56 In other words, I focus on concrete musical parameters while retaining openness in looking at how accents and caesurae are treated. Ultimately I will discuss important observations about common features (or the lack of them) and developments (if any) found in the selection of settings with respect to these accents. Indeed, for all themes, I will frame my discussion around the most important observations, not necessarily pick out every detail in my report.
55 Snarrenberg, p. 107 56 Ibid., p. 106; cf. 327
24 Structural correspondences After having dwelled on key accents in verse lines on a more local level, the next theme is about poetic structure more broadly conceived. The aim in these sections is to look at parallels and structural correspondences that pre-exist in the poem. That is to say, concrete places where lines parallel each other strongly and textual elements recur. How do I decide where such structural parallels are found? Lines can be formally related in having the same implied meter; because they are positioned at a similar point in the stanza; they share syllable counts and or subdivisions in syllables, particular line endings (end rhyme) and so on. I have to clarify why I relate lines, but they are readily shown to be rather straightforwardly related by formal and prosodic elements in the poem. In my initial discussion of the line pair, I have explained in advance significant structural relations with other lines or line pairs. Thus, by analyzing the musical settings comparatively, I examine to what extent the music echoes such structural relations that pre-exist in the poem. Again looking at the standard set of musical parameters, to what extent are those related lines similar in the musical setting? Are such parallel lines declaimed similarly? Are rhyming words echoed with musical rhyme, for example the same cadences at places with end-rhyme? Is a repeated word set in the same way elsewhere?57 If yes, this suggests dependence, because poetic forms are reflected in the music. When the same melody is used for different words, I would like to speak of a ‘pattern’. I aim to investigate to what extent such a pattern really “fits” the words. Or does the composer implicitly say: I am going to use this pattern, no matter what? If so, I argue, that this would signal independence. An additional question then, is where such use of patterns can be located, not just in single instances but possibly across a timespan. McClain sketches a schematic image that in the course of time, settings would articulate the form of the poem (division in stanzas) less straightforwardly, ultimately culminating a continuously through-composed setting. It is interesting to look at this in more detail. To what extent do composers tie back with their music to textual details that form some kind of structure? Are such textual details echoed in the music? Are later composer less attentive to these structural points?
57 Rodgers, p. 35.
25 Structural differentiation The next theme is called structural differentiation: the complementary reverse of ‘parallelisms’ between lines and line pairs discussed above.That is to say, now that the structural parallels have been mapped out, I can closely compare lines and line pairs as a foil to see at what places in the text important differences pop out, for example an imposition of a comma or other punctuation mark in an otherwise structurally similar line. In addition, I pay close attention to verse feet, how words are subdivided in syllables, what other textual details elements occur. To do this, I first ask the question how does the line pair under review contrasts with the previous line pair? For example, when this new line or lines in the poem contrast in declamation, will the musical setting contrast as well? Again, the key issue is whether shifts or patterns can be recorded across the timespan (or not). If there is such a musical contrast, in what metrical or other textual property of the line in question is this contrast found? Focusing on the same straightforward parameters, I analyse if and how the composers respond to those differences. I can briefly illustrate this analytical lens with an example from Randel. He showed that in one strophic setting, where the music repeats for each two stanza, parallel lines in the second stanza differs in the poem: they have one fewer syllable and accent. Consequently, a small “adjustment” was made, namely an unique non-syllabic treatment on these linest. If textual properties such as ‘syntactic breaks’ or metrical patterns influence the setting, it can be assumed that the text guides the setting and that the music cannot be wholly independent.58 Indeed, the frame of ‘adjustment’ clearly runs counter to McClain’s idea of “independence”.
Phonetic sound The last theme concerns phonetic sound: that is to say, the category of sound units in language, such as vowel and consonant sounds. Traditionally, in musical analysis of the Lied, there has been little attention to these aspects. Here Randel and Rodgers provide an important contribution: they believe a composer can carefully respond to those sounds as well, by either capturing or enhancing them. For this reason I will take up some of their observations as a test case. However, the present project cannot take everything into account. For example, whereas Rodgers may map out every ‘a’ and ‘e’ vowel across the entire Lied, I limit myself to patterns found in a single line pair. Otherwise, comparison with other composers is extremely hard.
58 Randel, p. 37.
26 Since this project places much emphasis on declamation, I zoom in phonetic sounds as they are performed in the reading of a poem, indeed requiring physical gestures. Some sounds or sounds in succession are more effortful, for example when they require the mouth to open and in pronunciation. The main questions I ask are the following: Are phonetic similarities at points reflected or “reinforced’’ with melodic similarities at these points?59 What happens to vowels that resemble an exclamation?60 Within the line pair, do particular sounds fall in a specific register? Can some melodic choices be explained by the way of producing vowels? What happens when lines have a particularly high phonetic density, that is to say direct repetition of phonemes, including assonance and alliteration.61 Is such monotony reflected in the music? By dint of being effortful, are such phonetically dense lines set differently, for example with broader rhythms62 ? By contrast, does something significant happen with sudden appearances of a new sound63 , or when phonetic patterns progress to less effortful in comparison64 ? In addition, I include other phonetic properties that stand out in a line pair, such as sharp, plosive sounds, etc. Do these influence the setting? In addition, I note the use of diphthongs, where the audience might expect gliding vowel sounds in speech.65 Such compositional techniques are relatively tractable to analysis and comparison. In short, I focus on what distinctly stand outs, and ask whether these can reasonably tied back to the concrete parameters employed by the composer.
After this analysis, I hope to have gained more insight in the handling of textual details by a range of composers, and whether it is possible to say more about the composer’s independence from to the poet and a chronological development (or not) in the settings under review. In addition, I aim to determine the viability of the methods of the authors reviewed above. Now I turn to the analysis of each line pair, starting with the first.
59 Rodgers, p. 15. 60 Ibid., p. 23. 61 Randel, p. 35. 62 Randel, p. 43. 63 Rodgers, p. 9. 64 Randel, p. 44. 65 As does Rodgers, I consider the first sung vowel in the vocal melody of the diphthong as being accented. Rodgers, p. 9; cf. Snarrenberg, p. 109.
27 Analysis
Mignon (lines 1-2) Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, (Weiss) (was) ich leide!
Text The first two lines constitute a self-sufficient sentence, with a comma after ‘kennt’. Regardless of whether we interpret the meter as iambic with trochaic substitution, or dactylic-trochaic, Nur / Sehn / Kennt / Lei- will be accented in recitation. These are the unambiguous or main accents of the poem. In the view of both of the above mentioned interpretations of the verse feet, ‘weiss,’ would also be accented. This would in effect make 1-2 the only line pair that starts with a trochee or dactyl in both lines. However, the word ‘weiss,’ could be slightly more ambiguous, as will pass in review. As to phonetic sound, there is relatively much alliteration: ‘Sehn-sucht’ / ‘Weiss-was’. What is more, ‘sucht’ and ‘kennt’ produce three plosives in short succession.The segment ‘Sehnsucht kennt, weiss,’ is relatively effortful: it has many different sounds in short succession.
Accentuation Most composers place Nur on the first downbeat of the first measure. Alternatively, in Schumann’s setting, the first line begins after a quarter note rest that opens the first beat of the vocal melody; here the word ‘Nur’ will be accented in practice. The principal exception, thus, is Hiller, who places a eighth note rest at the beginning of the beat, where ‘Nur’ is not metrically accented and short, unlike Schumann. It is important for most composers across the timespan to stick to a declamatory rhythm for the first three monosyllables: ‘Nur’ is long and ‘wer die’ are shorter. For example, Schumann effectively gives a quarter note for ‘Nur’ and uses the remainder of the 3/4 measure for ‘wer die’, straightforwardly in two eighths. Indeed, a basic ‘long short short’ rhythm for ‘Nur wer die’ is distinctive for most composers: Reichardt and Tchaikovsky use a precise one and two halves-division. Beethoven, Schubert and Wolf employ a slight hierarchy: the word 'wer' is longer than ‘die’. Conversely, however, Hiller and Jenner use three tones of equal length for these three
28 words. Thus the use of such a figure might be some kind of independence from the text. These patterns have a function however. Hiller's metrically ascending line functions clearly as a preamble to the next strong accent Sehn. Jenner also makes a broad gesture to 'Sehn' with an arpeggio, including a fourth leap towards ‘Sehn’. As literary scholar Terence Cave notes, Schumann picks up a motive from the opening figure of the vocal line for ‘Kennst du das Land’ “with the fourth stretched to a sixth, and then inverted in the second phrase and again at the final reprise of the line ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’”66 Indeed, as the interval is altered, I would suggest it is mostly a rhythmic similarity, and that a similarity between ‘Kennst du das Land’ and ‘Nur wer die Sehn-’ in speech sound too, with its dactylic rhythm and then a leap, enhanced by the music, to intensify the next accent of the expressive word ‘Sehnsucht’ In addition, it is interesting to note that such a leap to ‘Sehn’ is significantly found ‘late’ composers Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Hiller. Indeed, only Reichardt, Schubert, Beethoven and Wolf reach ‘Sehn’ by step. Significantly, this word falls on the first downbeat of the new measure, and has a relative agogic accent everywhere. Consequently, it can be seen that the word ‘sucht’ prepares an accented beat reserved for ‘kennt’. Here the interval between ‘sucht’ and ‘kennt’ is most often a stepwise descent; only Reichardt and Beethoven use an ascending step, and Schumann uses repeating tones. It is interesting to note that, conversely, ‘Sehn’ was reached by an ascending interval by all composers except in Wolf’s descending scale. I will return to this in the discussion of phonetic sound. As expected, the word kennt most often falls on a strong beat then, but not always on the first downbeat.
The first caesura, that is the line ending of line 1 (‘kennt,’) is worth dwelling on further. Reichardt cannot articulate this line break in his setting: the melody unfolds without any musical breaks in eighth tones. Thus his distinctive direct eighth note continuation is surely strange from a declamatory perspective. Other composers do reflect the caesura effectively. For instance, Beethoven, Schubert and Wolf place a dotted quarter tone on the second strong beat, taking up half a measure. Indeed, they use this same pattern, which could indicate influence. Schumann writes ‘kennt’ at the second beat, preceded by a dotted note and short note which practically accentuates the word (some kind of mazurka rhythm); no less than two
66 Terence Cave. Mignon's Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. p. 207.
29 quarter tones of rest follow, which makes ‘kennt’ ring out as well. Similarly, Tchaikovsky also places a rest after a long tone on ‘kennt’. What is key to note is how these rests heighten the sense of pause after the line break, where it might reflect the poetic structure instead of continuous prose. There is much variation in treatment of this caesura, that is to say how it is reflected musically. All composers (excluding Reichardt), however, have a particular idea for this caesura or at least accentuate it.
Importantly, for Reichardt, ‘weiss’ does not sound like a caesura at all in his setting either. This raises an additional point: since the next word ‘was’ is stressed in Reichardt’s setting of line 2, could this word also be accented in a reading of the poem instead of ‘weiss’? In speech, this would make for a subtle semantic difference (weiss was): the attention shifts more to the amount of suffering. It is hard to say that it is not possible, but it would neglect the comma in the poem as a midway caesura. But it is important to note that the composers across the time span do differ at this point. For example, Beethoven and Schubert place ‘weiss’ on the first downbeat, which mirrors the preceding caesura by using the same note value, a dotted quarter tone. Schumann mirrors his employed note value and place in the measure—the second beat—as well. Wolf makes this caesura in effect longer than ‘kennt’ and is followed by a rest. After this eighth note rest, the words ‘was ich’ constitute a syncopation on the strong beat, closely mirroring a declamatory rhythm.
Other ‘late’ composers–Jenner, Hiller and Tchaikovsky–have diverging treatments as well. Jenner places ‘weiss,’ on a downbeat, but with no particular accent, other than being the highest note of the second line. Hiller puts ‘weiss’ on the second strong beat and it is also accented agogically: a quarter tone tied over to another quarter tone. In contrast, Tchaikovsky makes 'weiss' short, where he has separated the word ‘kennt’ and weiss with a quarter rest: 'weiss' falls on the second beat of the measure (cf. Reichardt) and prepares as some kind of upbeat pattern for the final word of the line pair. Remember the pattern of Hiller, where Tchaikovsky has effectively prepared the broadened word ‘leide’ with a scalar ascent. I do not see a development of independence from the text so much, as many differing treatments that can be tied back to different aspects of the text. There are some more commonalities to note, however. In general, the composers with ternary meter tend to place 'weiss,' on the first downbeat. Indeed, line 1 can be divided into
30 two groups of three syllables ‘Nur wer die’ and ‘Sehn-sucht kennt’ , which would direct ‘weiss’ to the downbeat of a new measure; this is the case indeed. Indeed, this kind of symmetry is in effect also found in Schumann. Hence these ‘irregular’ composers seem to rely on an orderly pattern that is shared with other composers. Most composers seem to prepare for the next word ‘leide’. Jenner uses passing tones, a non-syllabic pattern on the words ‘was ich’. Tchaikovsky has effectively prepared the broadened word Leide with an scalar ascent (cf. Hiller in the first measure preparing 'Sehn'). Significantly, all composers then set the word ‘leide’ in a similar fashion: that is, on the first downbeat of the last measure, where it is the longest sounding single word of this line pair—the exclamation mark is not reflected by a leap. This unambiguous accents remains a key factor in the melody, where it gravitates to as it where, whether a pattern is used or not.
Structural correspondences Hiller has purposely worked towards the fifth scale degree we hear on ‘kennt’. Hence he uses tonal tension to connect these lines. Wolf's setting shares with Hiller that ‘kennt’ and ‘weiss’ are both on the same pitch, opting for a less ‘song-like’ setting, i.e. more declamatory. A broader pattern is that in Wolf’s setting, lines one and two are linked by a chromatic descending line. This might be a particular way of declamation, but there is no distinct semantic connection: it is not that these lines would be more affectively congruent with a traditional ‘sad’ descending figure than the next line pair for instance, which in fact has a more upbeat and lively declamation. Beethoven and Schumann, in setting lines 1-2 use the same rhythmic pattern for the first three words of either line (‘Nur wer die’ and ‘Weiss was ich’): they are both monosyllables and interpretable as a dactylic feet.
Structural differentiation In general, in the musical settings of this line pair, all verse feet of the poem are differentiated in rhythm in the melody. That is to say, there is a continuous rhythmic variation across adjacent verse feet. Hence, in late composers, I would say especially so, the “varied syllabic rhythm” that indeed characterizes these lines is reflected better. Secondly, considering the respective line lengths of 6 syllables and 5 syllables, we can see a pattern. Namely, all composers except Schumann make line 1 indeed sound shorter than line 1 (Wolf, Jenner and Tchaikovsky in an exact 6 to 5 ratio). Schumann would be an
31 exception, unless we count the two rests as belonging to 'kennt,' as it were. Hiller is very irregular in this respect. These two examples convey that these textual properties are not neglected but reflected differently.
Phonetic sound The shift in vowels from ‘Sehn-’ to ‘sucht’, which would sound like a slight fall in articulation, might be heard in the use of descending tones (descending leap with Tchaikovsky). The two exceptions are Reichardt (ascent) and Beethoven (repeating tone). Beethoven's repeating tone might instead heighten the internal alliteration of two 's' sounds. Hence Reichardt is an exception: the melody can be heard as running counter to an expected declamation sound. This holds as well for the plosives ‘Sucht- kennt’: here Reichardt resembles Tchaikovsky in not using a small interval or percussive repeating tone, as do the others. Instead, Reichardt gives a particularly ‘song-like’ quality in setting the ‘e’ vowel not entirely syllabically: it shifts to an adjacent tone, which changes the vowel color a bit (inclining more to ‘i’), which does not necessarily happen in a recital of the poem. Schubert and Hiller are the only ones to musically articulate the diphthong of the final ‘ei’ in their settings of lines 1-2. In line 2, perhaps reflecting the introduction of the sharper ‘i’ sound, the words 'was ich' are set as an ascending third leap (Reichardt, Beethoven, Schumann) or fourth leap (Hiller). Tchaikovsky reaches the word by an ascent too. Wolf and Jenner are an exception: significantly, however, these composers both use a stylized descending scale. Apart from this example, specific vowels do not tend to fall in a specific register.
Synthesis The variation in syllabic rhythm in the poem is extensively reflected in the settings. This includes the caesurae. It could even be said that settings after Reichardt reflect the syllabic rhythm better, because they include a straightforward treatment of this caesura. All settings are straightforwardly structured around key accents on ‘Nur’ / ‘Sehn’ / ‘Kennt’ / ‘Leide’. The word ‘weiss,’ is found to be more flexible. Here it appears as if the composers ‘seize’ on the irregularities afforded by the poem, in this instance the more flexible meter. Other patterns could be discerned: later composers tend to reach ‘Sehn’ with a leap instead of a step. An obvious explanation is semantic: it is a particularly expressive
32 word. All composers after Reichardt and Beethoven consequently place '-sucht' lower than 'Sehn', as in pronunciation. All settings that use four measures, tend to have a shorter second line musically as well. ‘Leide’ is the longest sounding word, both in all musical settings as in pronunciation. Such reflections of pronunciation sound can also be heard in the phonetic qualities.
33 Mignon (lines 1-2)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Schubert (1826) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Schumann (1849) 3 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss was ich lei de!
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Jenner (1900) 3 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
34 Mignon (lines 3-4) Allein und abgetrennt von aller Freude
Text This line pair forms an incomplete grammatical unit with an enjambment after line 3. From the outset, it is clearly differentiated from the previous pair with a shift to a regular iambic pattern. These iambic feet throughout the line pair make the main accents straightforward: -lein / ab / -trennt / all / Freu. The iambic shift that starts the phrase (allein) raises expectation that the fourth line will start with a similar foot, which it does (von al-). This return to the newly set up pattern is enhanced by the shared liquid (l) in the first accented syllable in the new line. At the end of line 3 the word ‘abgetrennt’ sounds like an echo of the stress pattern of ‘Sehnsucht kennt’, where the final syllable also rhymes. Line 3 is characterized by a relative phonetic density: many plosives in succession, consisting of mainly compound words but nevertheless snappy rhythm. Line 4, then, forms a relative relaxation in sound: it is shorter and less plodding, with a broader syllabic rhythm.
Accentuation All composers place -lein on a strong beat, preceded by an upbeat or syncopation pattern for ‘al-’. Interestingly, excepting Jenner, there are three ‘late’ composers who opt for the latter - a syncopation pattern in the new measure reserved for the beginning of the line. However, Reichardt uses this same pattern too, in augmented form. In addition, then, Reichardt does have in common Jenner that he gives a marked agogic accent on ‘lein’ in combination with with a relative registral accent. Hence, notably, Reichardt shares compositional techniques with these later composers, which makes it hard to discern where later composers diverge specifically from him. All in all, with every composer, though, the initial shift to an iambic meter remains central. In turn, the word ‘und’ is not very important. Indeed, all composers use an eighth note for this word and direct it at the very end of the measure or measure half, which clearly prepares the next accent ab.
35
The syllable ab finds a strong beat everywhere, and is practically accentuated by Schumann as well. Indeed, it has been preceded by a fifth leap and is an augmented form of the rhythm of ‘Sehnsucht kennt’. Significantly, the syllable is most often reached by an ascent in the settings, a leap of a third or higher with Jenner, Schumann, Schubert. Exceptions to this are found in Reichardt, Wolf and Tchaikovsky, composers which have been prone to use a pattern. Next, the syllable ‘ge’ prepares the the next strong beat as did ‘und’: it clearly serves as a passing tone to the next strongly accented word trennt. How trennt is reached from ‘ge’ varies. Three times this has been with a repeating tone (Hiller, Jenner, Wolf), of which I say more in the section on poetic sound. Significantly, Jenner also uses a mazurka rhythm (cf. Schumann) to give this syllable marked emphasis on the second beat. Hence this unambiguous accent is directing in this late composer as well. Interestingly, it is only Schumann who gives the syllable a marked agogic accent, which is perhaps fitting for the final stress of the line on a broad word. Conversely, Reichardt shares with Hiller, that ‘trennt’ is oddly short and runs into ‘von’ immediately. Hence in their settings there is no declamatory sound reflected. A more substantial pattern in the chronology is this: up until Schumann, ‘trennt’ is invariantly on the first downbeat of the measure; but with composers after him ‘trennt’ can also be found on the second strong beat of the measure (Wolf and Tchaikovsky) and on the accented strongly within the 3/4 measure (Jenner). Moreover, these four have in common, that before this accent on ‘trennt’ their placement of ‘ab’ had been on the first downbeat instead of the second downbeat. Significantly though, this illustrates that the basic framework of stressed/unstressed remains the same, where it is only shifted. Without a single exception, for the word ‘aller’, ‘al-’ is placed on a strong beat. Only Wolf and Tchaikovsky reach this syllable by a descent. Wolf then continues a melisma where the melody rises with a sixth leap (and he will make another leap to ‘Freude’). Eric Sams describes that the voice “lifts yearningly to that word ‘aller Freude’”.67 I believe that simply in reciting the poem the voice often makes such a lift as well. That is so because it is an emotionally-laden word on its own, apart from the hermeneutic question whether this is a yearning recollection of past joy (for instance). It must also be noted that there is a development discernible in the settings. Note that
67 Eric Sams. The Songs of Hugo Wolf. London: Faber & Faber, 2011, p. 162.
36 in the first four settings, the syllable is already gradually set longer with each setting. Distinctively, then, the word finds much elaboration in the consequent ‘late’ settings, in some instances taking up an entire measure. This extension of penultimate stressed syllable seems to be an instance of development, i.e. independence. Conversely, ‘ler’ is very short (except with Reichardt, relatively speaking), as it simply leads as quickly as reasonable to the next main accent, namely on the last word ‘Freude’. With all composers, ‘Freude’ falls on the first downbeat of the last measure, in which it is the only sounding word, that is, the only word we hear in the last measure with every composer, a great similarity across all composers in compositional technique. Some place a strong agogic accent (Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Wolf), some add a melismatic effect (Jenner). Beethoven and Schumann do not let the last word ring out much because they directly continue the melody. Interestingly, Schumann and Wolf do reflect a feminine ending: the last syllable ‘de’ is unstressed in effect and not on a strong measure part. Conversely, Tchaikovsky has a clear cadential feel with two half tones - as he did with ‘Leide’, in effect mirroring the half-rhyme and poetic enjambment. These examples convey another point where ‘late’ composers can be heard as giving other key features of the text profile.
Structural correspondences The expectation raised by ‘al-lein’ is confirmed as ‘von’ is parallely also merely an upbeat upbeat everywhere, even in Tchaikovsky, where ‘von’ is parallely set as the highest note of a scalar descent and an upbeat to the next strong beat, just as happened with ‘al-’. In this sense, the previous lines were less ‘related’ among the composers averagely, as the initial stress was ambiguous at some points. As mentioned above, in the text, the word ‘abgetrennt’ sounds like an echo of the stress pattern of line 1’s ‘Sehnsucht kennt’. Distinctively, these words are more often set with repeating tones as compared to other words, just as ‘Sehnsucht kennt’ had on average.
Structural differentiation The shift to a straightforward iambic feet is of course the most important differentiation from the first line pair. This differentiation is reflected strongly in most settings of line 3. Beethoven, Schubert and Wolf all begin a continuous rhythmic pattern that is distinctly iambic for line 3. Jenner really makes the initial shift sound more arresting, since the melody
37 begins in a higher register suddenly at ‘allein’, its agogic accent and the following eighth note rest. Jenner then retains an iambic feel throughout line 3. Reichardt also heightens the sense of contrast by the upbeat and lengthening of ‘lein’. However, he consequently rather masks the iambic meter in his setting: ‘und’ gets two sixteenth notes and runs into a passage of continuous eighths and hence does not amplify the iamb. Additionally, this does not sound like declamation. Schumann does something similar, where ‘und abge-’ have three eighth notes (some kind of amphibrach foot) that gravitates towards the dotted quarter note ‘trennt’, disrupting the iambic feel a bit, while keeping true to the expected accents. Tchaikovsky uses equal note durations for line 3, but these notes do alternate weak and (relatively) strong beats, for it did not begin on the first downbeat of the measure (which was reserved for a tied over note from the previous line). It is interesting to note that Hiller uses the opening melodic gesture but a third higher for ‘allein und ab’. Here, however, here it does fit with the new iambic pattern, which gains relief here. Such an effect is not heard in Reichardt’s setting. A key feature of the text, the iambic rhythm, is thus not heard in Reichardt so much. What is more, the treatment of the last word of the line ‘trennt’ as compared to ‘kennt’, is differentiated significantly in all composers except Reichardt. The strong differentiation lies in this. With ‘kennt’, there was a point of pause, a marked caesura, as described. Conversely, ‘trennt’ is more directly linked to the next word, where its rhythmic value fits within a pattern set up before (especially with Schumann). Indeed, on average, the time between ‘trennt’ and ‘von’ is a lot shorter. An exception to this might be Jenner; important to note though, is that in his setting ‘trennt’ has to make space for the word ‘von’. The word ‘trennt’ is also the precise place in Hiller’s setting where his previous pattern is disrupted: the word runs to ‘von al-’ immediately, comparable to Reichardt, but with a agogic accent (which befits the meter) on ‘al-’. These examples illustrate a general point that lines 1-2 are differentiated from 3-4, in that the composers after Reichardt set 3-4 as a more continuous phrase, as opposed to lines 1-2, possibly owing to the comma at the end of line 1, whereas line 3 has enjambment.
38 Phonetic sound The shift in vowels ‘und’ / ‘ab’ is always set with an ascent, except with Tchaikovsky, Reichardt, Wolf, where it is part of a customary formula in their own setting. Phonetically, though, a repeating pattern would sound even more declamatory. In line with this, ‘trennt’ is reached by three late composers by a repeating tone from ‘ge’—both part of a single word, which does mirror the declamatory sound and internal assonance. The more euphonious and relaxed sounds of line 4, might be heard as given profile as the elaboration and broadening on ‘aller’ gives some sense of release. However, it is hard to establish whether this is afforded by the liquids in this word or other phonemic properties, or whether it is just a stylized cadential formula. The same goes for the word ‘Freude’. One would not pronounce this word rapidly in speech, but it also concludes the line and has a strong semantic connotation as well. This underscores an important point: that some choices cannot be pinned down easily to a single textual factor.
Synthesis It is found that in all composers, the iambic meter, the syllabic rhythm as well as the ‘main’ accents in the text continue to play a major role in their settings of this line pair. Later composers heighten the iambic feel more than Reichardt, as Reichardt writes the melody as one ongoing flow, which, again, cannot reflect particular caesurae. The differentiation of the fourth line from the third is also reflected clearly in all settings, in particular the relaxation of line 4 has been given profile in all composers: later composers take liberty to extend ‘aller’ and ‘Freude’. It is hard, however, to establish whether this relaxation is prompted by sonoric features like liquids or phonetic properties. More significantly, later composers including Tchaikovsky musically articulate the enjambment. They specifically capitalize on such textual details. For example. the enjambment after ‘trennt’ is dealt with differently than the parallel word ‘kennt,’ which can be tied back to the text. Hence, on the one hand, independence from speech sound is found in the agogic extensions of words and the use of patterns, that is, repetition of melodic material. On the other hand, later composers do emphasize other textual details better, such as line breaks and even basic iambs.
39 Mignon (lines 3-4)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Schubert (1827) 6 8 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Schumann (1849) 3 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Al lein und ab getrennt von al ler Freude de
Jenner (1900) 3 4 Al lein und ab trenntge von al ler Freu de!
40 Mignon (lines 5-6)
(Seh) (ich) ans Firmament nach jener Seite
Text This line is not self-sufficient but grammatically completes the previous line pair. It concludes the first stanza as well. To stress the first word ‘Seh’ sounds most correct in the context of the whole. Stressing ‘ich’ instead, however, is possible, which would continue the simple iambic pattern of line 4. Hence ‘Seh’ or ‘ich’ can have the first stress. Consequently, accents that remain unambiguous are Fir- / ment / je- / Sei-. Line 5 parallels line 1-2 in starting with three monosyllables: the obvious parallel with line 1—in end-rhyme as well—is an argument for stressing 'Seh' first. Whereas line 5 has an end-rhyme with line 1 and line 3, line 6 establishes a different line ending (designated as C-rhyme). Furthermore, line 6 parallels line 4 in grammatical structure, both with the form preposition + modifier + noun, where the word ‘jener’ somewhat resembles ‘aller’ as well. The last word of line 6 ‘Seite’ breaks up a relative monotony of phonetic sounds. Line 6 sounds slightly less dense and effortful than line 5.
Accentuation ‘Seh’ and ‘ich’ can both be accented in a reading of the poem. This ambiguity can be glanced from the settings, as the composers diverge widely in placement of musical accent on either ‘seh’, ‘ich’ or both. Composers either place ‘seh’ on the downbeat, as an upbeat, or alternatively on a weak e part of the measure. Reichardt, Wolf, Jenner place ‘Seh’ directly on the first downbeat of the measure. Beethoven and Schubert use ‘seh’ as an eighth note upbeat to ‘ich’ at the first downbeat of a new measure. Late composers Hiller and Tchaikovsky place ‘seh’ on an unaccented measure part preceded by a rest: they then both clearly accentuate ‘ich’ by a leap, finding the downbeat. Wolf, uniquely, accentuates both words metrically: ‘seh’ by an agogic accent on the first downbeat, whereas ‘ich’ falls on the next second strong measure part. It is important to notice that his decision to lengthen both might be influenced by the fact that these words are both ambiguous accents. Schumann's setting of this syllable is interesting as well. He places ‘seh’ on the third beat of the measure that ended the last line pair. It is then tied over to the consequent
41 downbeat of a new measure. This word is practically accentuated by the strong agogic accent and forte marking. Richard Miller wrote “The f tied note on E♭ at “Seh” in bar 7 is a perfect match for both language inflection and the long German vowel.”68 It is important to notice how through-composed settings can afford such attention to language inflection. Notably, ambiguity in accent placement is not found with 'ans', which is accentuated nowhere. Instead, excepting Jenner, it is invariably set as a passing tone to a strong beat. Tchaikovsky and Hiller set the first three monosyllables ‘seh ich ans’ with equal length. Reichardt, Schumann and Jenner set ‘ich ans’ as two notes with the combined length of 'Seh', thus forming a basic dactylic rhythm. Our composers with a 6/8 meter either have an iambic rhythm (Beethoven, Schubert) or a trochaic shift (Wolf). Significantly, there is a clear rhythmic variation for these three syllables: the rhythms of the settings are not exclusively dactylic or iambic, which I contend is made possible from the ambiguity in the poetic meter.
In effect, the next syllable Fir is directed neatly on a strong downbeat in almost all settings: either the first strong beat of the measure or the second. An exception might be Jenner, who places the syllable on the third beat of the 3/4 measure. This beat, however, is strongly reinforced by the accompaniment which plays accented chords. Interestingly, Jenner shares with Reichardt that they both place a melisma on this syllable. In fact, they basically use the same rhythm for this phrase. Such a rhythmic parallel can also be found with Hiller and Tchaikovsky, where until this point Tchaikovsky used the same rhythm of Hiller's for this line, but augmented (double note value). The syllable was reached in different ways as well. Except for Schubert and Schumann (third leap and third descent), it is reached by step or repetition from ‘ans’ on. Next, ‘ma’ is a very short passing note everywhere. Half of the composers make it the shortest tone heard in this line overall: these composers are in fact the ‘late’ composers Schumann, Jenner, Hiller and Tchaikovsky. Such hierarchy in length these composers employ makes sense with respect to declamation, as ‘ma’ is the smallest syllable in the line (only two phonemes) and does not stand on its own.
68 Richard Miller, Singing Schumann: an interpretive guide for performers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 188.
42 For the last syllable of the line ‘ment’, the settings testify how important placing ment on the downbeat is. Indeed, it finds a strong beat everywhere, practically also in Schumann due to a mazurka rhythm. With Tchaikovsky, unlike other composers, the enjambment after ‘ment’ is articulated as a caesura by an agogic accent on this syllable of a half tone followed by a rest. At this point he loses the rhythmic parallel with Hiller; that is so because Hiller, conversely, directly continues ‘ment’ to ‘nach’—somewhat as in prose. This of course happens with Reichardt and Jenner as well. Indeed, Jenner even seems to copy Reichardt's rhythm: a dactylic rhythm for ‘seh ich ans’, a melisma on ‘Fir’, and lastly ‘ment’ running into ‘nach’ immediately. Hence it is quite an interesting observation in itself that the earliest and latest composer use a similar compositional technique. In what follows, 'nach' in all settings simply prepares the next strong beat again. Schumann is unique here in accentuating this word the same way as the first word of the previous line ‘Seh’: from the third beat of the measure on tied over to the next first downbeat, consequently making the same (dactylic/trochaic) rhythm. I believe it can be interpreted that Schumann opts to amplify a different but possible reading of the meter. However, Richard Miller, who I just quoted on the word ‘Seh’ writes: “The same rhythmic duration that occurs on ‘nach’ (short-voweled) and not an important part of the sentence) in bar 9 does not match.” Interestingly, he does concede that “examples of this sort can be found in the songs of every composer from Schubert to Strauss, but the charge if often brought against Schumann, and specifically here, that he distorts Goethe’s verses.”69 This point is important to emphasize, as the present analysis has indeed shown such instances in all composers under review. Continuing after ‘nach’, the first syllable of 'jener' is on a strong beat everywhere but in the settings with a 3/4 meter; it is also often drawn out. Wolf, Jenner and Hiller in particular extend this syllable, to more than half a measure. This could be for obvious semantic reasons, but it testifies to the importance of accentuating the main accent. Interestingly, Jenner still continues to resemble Reichardt by making a leap to ‘je’ as well; it is a third leap however, not a fourth. Similarly, Tchaikovsky makes a leap as well (fourth), with the effect of extra emphasis. Due to Schumann’s previous accent on ‘nach’, his setting is again different in this respect by placing 'je' on the second beat of his 3/4 measure. But all with all, there are many similarities in the treatment of this accent among the composers, as the syllable is accented
69 Ibid.
43 in all but one setting. What is more, composers share melodic and accentual patterns. The last syllable of this word ‘ner’ functions as a simple passing tone everywhere. Most frequently, it moves stepwards to the final word ‘Seite’. The syllable has been reached from third leaps by Reichardt and Wolf, which attenuates the consequent passing tone effect. Key to note is that ‘Sei’, then, without exception is located on a strong downbeat, namely of the last measure of the line pair. The composers extend the word with either half a measure or even a whole, which both underscores its expected cadential function and importance as an accented syllable. Again, Schumann is the only exception in this respect, where there is no particular agogic accent. His spare line ending does, however, sound more declamatory. Note that the final syllable ‘te’ is often quite unconventionally placed. Wolf and Hiller assign a rather abrupt eighth tone for the syllable. They do reflect the feminine ending by making the syllable both shorter and not on an accented measure part.Tchaikovsky has made an ascent to ‘te’, which then is also a half tone long. Jenner similarly allocates half a measure for ‘te’. All with all, accentuating the first syllable of the last two words was very important in general.
Structural correspondences Reichardt obviously relates this line pair with lines 1-2, as his is a strophic setting. Wolf uses a pattern from his setting of line 1 for the first four syllables of line 5: a descending line in the same rhythm as the initial four syllables of line 1. Similarly, Hiller uses the same rhythmic pattern as line 1 for the first three syllables; then ‘Fir-ma’ is set with a diminutive pattern of line 1's ‘Sehn-sucht’. Tchaikovsky places a long tone on ‘ment’, which is the same duration of line 1’s ‘kennt’; perhaps these unambiguous accents invite this relative gravity. He is the only composer who mirrors these lines as such. Such exact parallels are not found in the settings of Beethoven and Schubert. As much as line 3 was a shift, in line pair 5-6 Schumann recalls lines 1-2. He previously related the the two lines of line pair 1-2: both line 1 and 2 begin with a dactylic pattern. As described, such a dactylic pattern—but then augmented—is also found in line pair 5-6, which equally starts with three monosyllables. Hence, this pattern recalls the structural and sonoric relation between these line pairs. For the listener, the sonic effect at the beginning of this line is a clear return to the pattern of line 1-2, where line 5 also begins with both a stepwise descending line, a syncopated entry, and a dactylic rhythm.
44
Structural differentiation Compared to the beginning of the previous line pair, the start of this line pair is strongly differentiated in the settings. We have seen that in their setting of line pair 3-4, all began with an iambic rhythm. Beethoven and Schubert do start with a basic iambic rhythm for line 5. Hiller and Tchaikovsky use the same rhythm for the first three syllables. Conversely, Reichardt, Schumann, Jenner and Wolf begin the line differently than they did before, with ‘Seh’ on a downbeat as described above. This testifies to the ambiguity of the meter and how this can and in effect has been exploited. Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Hiller do not differentiate immediately from the previous line pair, as they use a similar rhythmic pattern up until a point. Schubert only changes the rhythm a bit for the word ‘aller’ and a longer ‘Sei’. Hiller and Tchaikovsky only mirror the first three words in rhythm.
Compared with lines 1-2, the line break here constitutes a point of differentiation generally. It can be seen that at the the line break of line 1, the word ‘kennt’ in line 1 works strongly as a caesura. The line break of line 5 (‘ment’) however, is more tied to the next word in all settings but Tchaikovsky’s. Hence this weaker caesura indeed runs more smoothly into the next word.
Phonetic sound Hiller and Tchaikovsky make a leap to ‘ich’, perhaps reflecting the sharper sound; the former has made a leap to ich before (‘was ich’.) The latter places a diphthong figure on line six’s ‘Sei’. Because Tchaikovsky uses the same rhythmic pattern for the whole line as for line 5, this diphthong functions as the ‘sixth’ syllable so to speak, since the line has one syllable more. The syllable ‘Seh’ also uses the same note as he used for ‘Sehn’. In addition, it is found that Schumann’s exceptional pattern of accentuating 'Nach' as much as ‘Seh’, resembles a particular compositional technique that he employed in his song ‘Melancholie’. Rodgers argues that in this song this was not a careless treatment but intensifies particular phonetic sounds.70 Interestingly, for the syllable ‘Seh’ Schumann also uses the same tone as he used for ‘Sehn’. In recitation, in the second line, the voice is expected to drop a bit on ‘jener Seite’; in the setting the melody most often descents at this part. Lastly, perhaps reflecting the
70 Rodgers, p. 22.
45 internal assonance of two ‘m’ sounds, the interval between ‘ma’ and ‘ment’ is often a relatively small interval in the settings, reflecting the monotony.
Synthesis We have seen that the placement of the first stress of the line varies with the composers. Apparently they interpret the poetic meter differently. This, in turn, throws into relief the ‘unambiguous’ accents, which are indeed closely followed by all composers. The melody again is directed determinedly to these main accents. It is found that composers rely on previously used melodic patterns as well. These patterns are not wildly “irregular” but orderly and refer back to previous lines. Nevertheless, these patterns can be seen as ‘moulds’ to be used and re-used regardless of the text: a possible exemplar of ‘independent’ music. However, the present analysis has shown that earlier composers use such patterns as well; it bears remembering that Reichardt of all case studies relies the most on exact patterns. What is more, with the late composers, we have seen that patterns are clearly disrupted—or differentiated—at points that seem to be reflecting the sounds of the text.
46 Mignon (lines 5-6)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je nerSei te
Schubert (1827) 6 8 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Schumann (1849) 3 4
Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Seh ich ans Fir mament nach je ner Sei te
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Jenner (1900) 3 3 4 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
47 Mignon (lines 7-8) Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Weite
Text The first line of this new stanza begins a syllable (‘Ach!’) that constitutes a pause due to the exclamation mark. Hence, in recitation the word would be broadened, which results in a shift that disrupts the flow of the previous stanza. However, the meter of line 7 is the same as to line 1 (and line 5 in a “trochaic” reading). It shares end-rhyme with line 1 as well, where the word ‘kennt’ returns. A difference with line 1 is that line 7 consists only of monosyllabic words. Then, after line seven’s relatively broad and plosive words, the shift to line 8—with fewer syllables and less variation in sounds—appears lighter and more swift in recitation. In turn, line 8 does not necessarily parallel line 2, as accentuating ‘in’ would be clearly more common, whereas in line 2, accentuating ‘weiss’ would be more common. The rhyme pattern of these two lines does mirror line pair 5-6. In effect, the unambiguous accents of this line pair are Ach! / liebt / kennt / Wei-.
Accentuation The first word of the new line 'Ach!' is unambiguously accented in a reading of the poem. We find indeed that this word is heightened in some way in all settings. Reichardt and Beethoven copy their previous pattern of lines 1-2, with the word on the first downbeat, taking up half a measure. Significantly, from here on, the composers all pay distinctive attention to this syllable. For example, Schubert begins ‘Ach’ on the downbeat as a quarter tone followed by an eighth tone rest. It should be noted, that Schumann contrasts his setting of the line as well at this point. For the first time in his setting of these lines, Schumann places this word on a 'normal' place in the measure, namely the first downbeat. Indeed, placing a distinctive contrast on this syllable is an important concern, especially for ‘late’ composers. Musically they differentiate the syllable from their previous line beginnings: Hiller now chooses to begin the measure with a somewhat higher note sounding on the first downbeat for ‘Ach!’ instead of the syncopated pattern heard before. Jenner surprises as well by a sudden agogic accent (half tone) for this word in a relatively high register, which gives a rhetorical effect. Interestingly, Wolf and Tchaikovsky both frame
48 this word with two rests, a rest at the beginning of the measure and one after the word, which makes for some kind of seufzer-figure that draws attention to this syllable. In addition, Tchaikovsky marks the word with a mezzo forte designation. Hence these late composers draw attention to this word with particular means. All with all, this caesura is reflected in the settings as the syllable is intensified. The next two words ‘der mich’ are often set with repeating tones, offering a recitative-like effect: besides Beethoven and Schubert, these include Tchaikovsky, Hiller, Wolf and Schumann. Thus, interestingly, a distinctive declamatory sound is still reflected in these late composers. However, as to the rhythmic values for these words, it is important to note that Beethoven and Schubert use a quarter tone for 'der' and an eighth tone for 'mich', where 'der' falls on the second strong beat. This is somewhat uncommon, as the other the settings invariably use two eighth tones on a weaker beat to prepare for the next word. Conversely, Beethoven and Schubert lack such differentiation, as they use the stylized durational pattern previously used for ‘Nur wer die’, which, through both the lengthening of ‘der’ and placing it on the second strong downbeat, make the whole sound slightly less declamatory.
In all but one (Schumann’s) setting , liebt falls on the first strong downbeat of a new measure. Schumann places it on the third beat, having reached the tone by a fourth leap that breaks up the repeating tones that started the line, which is an accent too. Similarly, Schubert and Tchaikovsky make a leap (c.q. to the first downbeat) for this word. The latter composer lengthens it a lot as well, making it a dotted half tone. Significantly, this lengthening of ‘liebt’ happens with most composers; in the settings of Tchaikovsky, Hiller, Wolf and Reichardt very much so (more than half a measure). This is not the case with Schumann and Schubert. Again, how Beethoven sets ‘und’ is unique in that he lengthens the word relatively much, which in effect sounds not declamatory. Conversely, the rest of the composers let it function as a mere short passing tone to 'kennt'. The word 'kennt' is placed on a downbeat in all settings, except in Jenner's 3/4 setting. Interestingly, Reichardt and Beethoven—our 'earliest' composers—reach ‘kennt’ by a leap larger than a third, the rest by a third or step. The importance of accentuating ‘kennt’ also gains relief by shifting the word to the first strong downbeat, an effect of the agogically extended single words that preceded it. In order to place this key accent Schumann has really made a 'run' towards the first strong beat; the many monosyllables perhaps ‘afford’ such a run with repeating tones.
49 Tchaikovsky places a sudden quarter tone plus eight tone rest after kennt, which amplifies the comma. Nevertheless, In some composers, this caesura is not given a clear profile. For example with Hiller, Jenner and Reichardt, as it moves to ‘ist’ rather quickly. In effect, ‘ist’ is rather short again in all settings but one (Schubert). In my view, to stress ‘ist’ in recitation after having stressed ‘Ach!’ in the previous line sounds clunky, but it is not absurd. It is important to notice that some kind of stress on ‘ist’ indeed happens in some musical settings however. Beethoven places the word on the second strong beat of the measure; Wolf does so as well. These two composers share a rhythmic pattern as well, with ‘kennt’ as a dotted quarter tone and ‘ist in der’ forming a group of three eighth tones. Other composers also link with the next two words ‘in der’ as part of a group of three eighth notes. For example, Reichardt and Hiller with an arpeggio, Schumann with a descending line and Tchaikovsky with no less than three repeating tones. For this segment, Schubert is also an outlier: he places ‘ich’ on the first downbeat and agogically accentuates it as well, to continue with an embellished pattern for ‘in der’ as well. Jenner, too, uses a stylized pattern: he starts a measure with ‘ich’ on the downbeat and makes use of an ascending version of the melisma pattern heard for 'weiss, was ich'. Hence, whether or not composers use some kind of ‘pattern’ it can be seen that the composers have 'read' where the first accent of the line should fall as being ambiguous in their musical setting, whereas, significantly, other line pairs were generally not interpreted as such. But in general this group of syllables function as a preamble towards the final word ‘Weite’.This word finds the first downbeat of the last measure everywhere. In some instances ‘te’ is found on a strong beat as well. This last syllable is reached by a descent in all but
Tchaikovsky’s setting—about which more will be said in the section on poetic sound.
Structural correspondences Due to his strophic setting, Reichardt is the only composer where the setting of the line has exact parallels with 1-2 and 5-6. The other settings are rather characterized by differences, as described above. Reichardt, Schubert and Schumann do use the same tone for ‘kennt’ in line seven as they did for the same word in line 1, whereas Tchaikovsky uses the same pitch class. In addition, Schumann employs the same rhythm (quarter tone plus two eights) for the first three monosyllables of line seven as used on line 1, but shifted in the measure. He also, similarly to his setting of line 1, makes a leap to the fourth word (‘Sehn / liebt’). Such subtle correspondences (vgl. 5-6) can be found in other composers as well: Jenner mirrors the
50 rhyme of the previous line ‘Seite’, by setting ‘Weite’ with an analogous musical motif: a descending minor second to an alteration.
Tchaikovsky again opts for a syncopated pattern to start line 8—now different, with its three eighth tones. This recalls the syncopation in line 2 (weiss, was ich), which also had a quasi-ambiguous accent pattern. For the opening of line 8, Schubert recalls the durational patterns of ‘weiss, was ich’ where the ambiguous accent ‘ist’ takes up the space as ‘weiss’ and so on. Because in addition this line also does not differ much from line seven that preceded it, he does not give much profile to the contrast with ‘Ach!’.
Structural differentiation Recall that this line pair constitutes a startpoint for a new stanza. In Wolf’s setting, the setting of this line is preceded by four bars rest for the singer. There is a following point to be made As the accompaniment continues, this can be seen as an example of independence or musical autonomy. But on the other hand, it emphasizes the division between stanzas in the text. This division is also heralded in the text by the word ‘Ach!’, which stands out as it breaks up the syllabic rhythm. Remember that with Reichardt and Beethoven's setting such a division is not given much profile. As described above, later composers surely reflect this caesura, where it really forms a distinct break with what went before: that is to say, it differs markedly from lines 1-2 and the directly preceding line pair as well, from the onset on. Indeed, it is noteworthy how Tchaikovsky starts the line halfway in the first measure, where ‘Ach!’ is placed between rests. Significantly, a composer setting Goethe's poem would not start the song with this note: surely not in tandem with the dramatic short tones on 'der mich' and 'ist in der' in this line as well. In this sense the music ‘fits’ well on this specific line and is not arbitrary. Note that Wolf has a similar pattern, as he uses such a setting for ‘Ach’ combined with repeating tones as well. In this respect, Schumann's start of the line pair must be noted too, which sounds accelerando, both in tempo marking as in syllabic rhythm. To start the song as such would sound out of place. In general there is a lot of rhythmic differentiation found in the setting of this line, owing to the sudden mid-way caesura. More importantly, late composers clearly respond in a particular way to this textual detail.
51 Phonetic sound The disjunct words in succession ‘liebt / und’ are more often set as disjunct intervals, whereas ‘Sehnsucht’ is often repeated, perhaps due to its internal assonance. Similarly, the density of recurring phonetic sounds (twice an ‘ch’ sound and many plosives) in line seven perhaps might be reflected by frequent repeating patterns in the settings, in particular at the first three syllables. However, again, this might be prompted by other textual details rather than phonetic sound. It is important to note that, the exclamation ‘Ach!’ finds a much higher register only once (Jenner). Finally, to round off a line, then, a falling pattern on disyllables such as ‘Weite’ is common in speech sound. It is found that in the settings, Tchaikovsky is the only composer who does not use a descending pattern for this word. In contrast, a falling diphthong pattern is employed by Beethoven, Schubert and Hiller here.
Synthesis In general, the mid-way caesura ‘Ach!’ has been heightened. In consequence the line as a whole, too, has been differentiated from what came before. Later composers have been attentive to textual details such as these, where they straightforwardly respond to important differences in the text. The line’s unambiguous accents, often found on broad and semantically-laden words, are directing for the setting as well. An interesting finding is an ambiguity on ‘ist’, in particular with Schubert. Schumann’s has been singled out as a rather exceptional setting, despite interesting congruences with the text. Early composers make odd choices with respect to the text setting as well, not responding to textual details. Furthermore, many musical patterns among composers are shared across the whole time span: this provides some qualification to the idea of a gradual independence across the chronology.
52 Mignon (lines 7-8)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te.
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist derin Wei te
Schubert (1827) 6 8 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te
Schumann (1849) 3 4 Ach! dermichliebt und kennt, ist in der Wei te
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt, ist in der Wei te!
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Ach! dermich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te.
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te
Jenner (1900) 3 4 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt, ist in der Wei te.
53 Mignon (lines 9-10) Es schwindelt mir, es brennt mein Eingeweide
Text Lines 9-10 constitute the final lines of the second stanza before the ‘lament’ returns. Paralleling lines 3-4, the meter can be straightforwardly interpreted as iambic feet, with the usual feminine ending in line 10. This makes the following accents unambiguous: Schwin / mir / brennt / Ein / wei. In line 9 we find a mid-way caesura, namely a comma after ‘mir’. This comma makes for a poised sound in declamation, a weighty rhetorical pause. Furthermore, the line is phonetically dense, with sharp ‘s’ sounds, broad words and a repetition of the word ‘es’. Hence line 9 stands out in the poem as the most effortful and weighthy line. Line 10 has an unique feature too: it has only two words, but counts no less than three ‘ei’ sounds, with obvious monotony. This line is also much simpler in rhythm than the previous line, which, compared with the monotony, offers some ‘relaxation’ compared to the previous line.
Accentuation One would perhaps expect more uniformity as to musical stress placement in the settings here. This indeed turns out to be what happens. It bears remembering that there was no such uniformity in previous line pairs like 5-6, especially the first stress at the start of the line. In effect, the present musical settings of lines 9-10 reaffirm the return to an unambiguous stress pattern inherent in the poem. The first accented syllable Schwin is on a strong measure part everywhere, which alters the rhythmic cadance with respect to the previous line. A key feature shared in all settings is that ‘Schwin’ was reached from ‘es’ by all composers as an upbeat pattern, either from a previous measure to the first strong measure part or within the same measure, where it was preceded by rests. In this, Beethoven is one important exception. After the line break of the previous line pair he writes an ongoing melody without pause. This is both uncommon and and somewhat unexpected, since in declamation one would expect a pause after the previous line pair, lines that formed a complete grammatical unit as well. In addition, notably, Beethoven has used
54 this melodic continuation before with other line breaks in his setting. This conveys that
Beethoven opts to stay within his own paradigm, using a ‘pattern’ where a textual detail—a line break—has been glossed over. As seen, this can happen with all composers. Now, the interval from ‘es’ to ‘schwin’ is most often an ascent; Wolf's setting and Tchaikovsky's first instance of the line are an exception, even though the latter does makes a fifth leap in his repetition of the line. Indeed, notably Tchaikovsky capitalizes on this textual detail in the repetition, as he employs a particular setting for this sharp syllable. This throws into relief that the descending scale in the first instance was considered a pattern. It should be noted that the syllables ‘-delt mir’: are rather often set as repeating tones. This percussive effect gives 'mir' extra stress. However, as to this pattern there clearly is no chronological development discernable, as both early and late composers either opt to use repetition or sometimes they do not. Obviously, the next stressed word mir in turn, invites a pause in a reading of the poem. Strikingly, Hiller, Tchaikovsky, Reichardt and Beethoven do not reflect the caesura as a pause. Instead of a weighty pause by including a rest—as did the other composers—, their melody directly goes on to the next word ‘es’. These composers have been named in conjunction before. Indeed, they again rely on some kind of musical figure for the phrase heard. Namely, Beethoven uses a drawn out rhetorical figure of a climax in a standard iambic rhythm; Hiller uses a descending sequence figure, almost ‘baroque’ style. Reichardt and Tchaikovsky both employ a previously used pattern for this phrase. This illustrates how musical patterns could lead to ignoring textual details, like a caesura. What is more, these patterns are not reserved for 'late' composers only. Above all, the placement of accent on ‘mir’ remains straightforward in the composers settings. It is either on a technically strong downbeat or is the last note of some kind of mazurka rhythm again. Notably, this conveys that to place musical stress on unambiguous accents from the poetic text remains generally important for all composers. Indeed less substantial is the second ‘es’, which, excepting Tchaikovsky, is set as an eighth note everywhere. However, in Tchaikovsky's first sounding of the line, it appears subordinate as well, for it heralds the word ‘brennt’—the end point of a descending scale pattern. The next strong accent brennt is reached by leap larger than a third only with Schumann and Beethoven. Above all, ‘brennt’ figures as a stable point on a strong beat for most composers. It is important to note that some composers choose to amplify the strong
55 enjambment after ‘brennt’: Tchaikovsky writes a strong agogic accent in his repetition; Jenner uses a long, rhythmically differentiated tone as does Schumann. Conversely, the rest interprets the text as prose; only the above composers distinctively lengthen the note, which heightens the poetic enjambment. Significantly, therefore, these late composers again reflect a property of the poetic sound structure. Generally, a leap to ‘Ein’ occurs more commonly in all composers than to other syllables. In his repetition, Tchaikovsky does make a leap to ‘Ein’ as well. Such a leap differentiates the word from the previous syllable and reinforces the accent. Wolf, in addition, lengthens the tone much. Alternatively, Schubert and Schumann use a repeating tone, of which I will say more in the section on phonetic sound. For Beethoven it is the conclusion of an employed rhetorical figure (the traditional ‘climax’-figure). In short, it varies whether or not a leap is used among the composers, but they all clearly stress this unambiguous syllable—either agogically or registrally—which forms an endpoint where the melody gravitates to. Another point where choices in musical settings roughly fall in two camps are the final two syllables ‘weide’. It is either strongly lengthened—which would not sound declamatory —or it is rather short. With Schubert for example, both syllables of ‘weide’ are eighth tones, where the last does not find a strong beat. Some composers use short tones for the syllables, others extend widely. It should be noted, that Tchaikovsky in his repetition of the text considers both as it were: at the second time he uses a shorter tone for ‘de’. Tchaikovsky thus exemplifies that either a declamatory rhythm (here a feminine ending) is faintly mirrored or alternatively, these syllables are set to a stylized musical cadence.
Structural correspondences An obvious parallel exists with lines 3-4 in verse feet. Reichardt and Tchaikovsky (in his first instance) acknowledge this by copying the melody for this line pair. Late composers Schumann, Wolf and Jenner also employ an iambic rhythm to a point. Beethoven resembles his setting of lines 3-4 by remaining consequent in his rhythm until the cadential last words. Significantly, a parallel overall contour between line pairs 3-4 and 9-10 is found with many composers: they use a straightforward iamb for lines 3/9, and tend to make the syllabic rhythm more loose with the onset of the - often cadential - line 4/10.
56 A particular example to note is that Schumann uses the same melodic pattern for ‘Weite’ and ‘weide’, two very similar words. Hence, the sound structure seems to be directing but different choices are made.
Structural differentiation A rhythmic difference with the previous lines 7-8 is heightened in all settings by the change of cadence of the new line pair from the outset on. That is to day, this strong contrast is found in the clear return to an iambic rhythm, or a return to a simpler pattern as Randel would describe it. Even Tchaikovsky makes a more distinct iambic rhythm in his repetition - in both of his instances the last word 'brennt' delineates the phrase. The iamb as a verse feet is characterized by being closer to speech. Of our two iambic lines, lines 3-4 have been set relatively more snappily and repetitive than lines 9-10. Indeed, lines 9-10 less static in the musical settings: less exact repetition (of rhythms and pitches) in general among all composers. This happens in part because of the compound word and comma that breaks up the line, affording a ‘poised’ rhetorical effect. In this respect it is notable that the word 'schwin' is not very much lengthened in the settings. Indeed it is shorter than ‘-lein’ was on average in lines 3-4. One reason is that it is part of a compound word. Second, more significantly, for various composers this compositional choice functions as to make room for the upcoming midway caesura (‘mir,’). Hence the text provides reasons why the exact same melody of lines 3-4 would not fit.
Phonetic sound Noted was the phonetic density of line 9 itself, starting with ‘schwin’. This syllable was seldom reached with a leap from ‘es’. Considering the alliteration in es/schwin, a shorter interval would be more convenient to perform. Conversely, Tchaikovsky writes a leap however, which draws attention to the appearance of this new syllable. The word is sometimes broader; on average, it is not in a low register. Often, the word ‘brennt’ is not in a very high register, except for Schumann. Within Wolf’s setting however it is, as Eric Sams notes that in his setting “all the ‘ennt’ rhymes save one are confined within the same third, G to B. The exception is the powerful ‘brennt’ on a high note.”71 This shows how text expression can sometimes override the equivalence
71 Sams, p. 187.
57 between rhymes. The facts that “powerful” words inspire differing treatments underscores the point that textual properties can afford more than one way of musical setting. Another unique component in the words of this line is the sequential repetition of
‘es..., es…’—indeed, there is a to-and-froing between ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds here as well. Besides Beethoven's sequential (‘climax’) figure, there is a intensifying and/or disjunctive sequence found in many composers. Here sound and sense do overlap in a sense: it is an enumeration of two negative events. An intensified dramatic expression in one form or another happens from early composers on. Phonetically, then, the last line ‘mein Eingeweide’ offers some relaxation. Distinctive are the many ‘ei’ sounds in the word. Indeed, composers lengthen these syllables compared to the previous line, which sounds like putting the brakes on a rapid syllabic rhythm. Note that this would be less speech-like, however. The three words are also related often: by using a triad (Jenner), repeating tones (Schubert; Schumann), or indeed in a higher register as some kind of outcry, especially with Jenner. An important point is that Reichardt probably could not attune to these specificities. Hence the settings of these composers can definitely be heard as attuning to textual details. Lastly, there is no diphthong found here in all settings, which would perhaps sound too plodding.
Synthesis Lines 9-10 is a distinctive part of the poem and is not seldom set in a distinctive way by the composers. Obviously there is some dramatic expression expected through the sense of the text. The analysis illustrates that the use of leaps or what McClain calls “jagged melodies” are not necessarily reserved for a single time period or set of composers. Nor are, I would add, the speech rhythms and the use of musical patterns. However, later composers do tend to place stronger agogic accents on syllables of line 10—such a pattern was also found with lines 3-4. Most of all, the analysis points out that there are different ways to be ‘faithful’ to the text as sound structure, more options and points of emphasis possible. In other words, composers across the chronology sometimes “read” the sound structure differently as it were, by placing emphasis on one aspect and ignoring others. To what extent this is an intended ‘response’ is difficult to ascertain. Significantly though, the poetic accents remain a directing factor in the settings, where the settings reflect the relative clarity of the meter. At the onset of this line pair, all composers enforce the sonoric effect of returning to an unambiguous stress pattern. Such
58 accents guide the musical setting more clearly than the phonetic qualities, where it is not always possible to ascertain to what extent some musical choices are or are not inspired by the actual sounds of the text or rather its the dramatic meaning of the text—or both.
59 Mignon (regel 9-10)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brenntmein Ein ge wei de Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Schubert (1827) Es schwin deltmir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Schubert #2 86 es schwin deltmir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Schumann (1849) 3 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Hiller (1867) 2 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Tchaikovsky #2 4 4
Es schwin delt mir es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Wolf (1888) 6 8 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Jenner (1900) 3 4 Es schwin deltmir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de
60 Mignon (lines 11-12) Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt (Weiss) (was) ich leide!
Text These concluding lines repeat opening lines 1-2. This refrain or ‘lament’ concludes the middle part of the poem. The end rhyme is the same as lines 9-10. Line 11 is straightforward in accent placement, and it is hypothesized that line 12 is more ambiguous in recitation and in the settings as well. The fact the lines are repeated make this test case more grounded. As lines 11-12 both begin with three monosyllables, they resemble line 5 and line 7. However, it is expected that ‘Nur wer die’ is less open to interpretation than the ambiguous ‘Seh ich ans’ but more open to interpretation than the ‘Ach! der mich’ of line 7, due to the midway caesara of the latter. As to phonetic sound, the lines contain more phonetic variety compared to the previous line pair, which had many ‘ei’ sounds. It forms a test case whether this variety and density can lead to different settings. In addition, the alliteration of ‘Sehn-sucht’ and ‘weiss-was’ will be taken into account again as well.
In this chapter, I will devote extra attention to comparing the final lines with the initial line pair. For readability purposes, I shall compare the settings of lines 11-12 with lines 1-2 with reference to two composers at the same time: these sets roughly illustrate one ‘theme’. Reichardt and Beethoven literally repeats the melody for the line pairs, but Beethoven appends a new phrase ‘ja, weiss, was ich leide!’ directly after this repetition. Schumann and Schubert both repeat the rhythm of line 1 for line 11. However, the melody is a bit different: they both set it in a tertiary relationship to line 1’s melody; in addition, Schubert treats ‘sucht’ syllabically now. Wolf and Jenner, two later composers nonetheless, repeat the exact music of line 1 for line 11. For line 12, Wolf takes up the caesura of ‘weiss’ again with the same treatment as in line 1, after which he, differently, makes a short leap to ‘ich’ and extends the final word ‘Leide’ as well. Jenner, for line 11, unlike line 1, does reflect the caesura of which I will say more below. I will discuss Tchaikovsky and Hiller in the sections below, too, as they employ more complex variations on previous melodic material,
61 Accentuation First I will review the general accent placement again. Similar to the first line pair, while all composers straightforwardly place Nur on the first strong downbeat, or in Schumann’s case, practically accentuate it, Tchaikovsky, Hiller and Jenner do something relatively unconventional.They begin with three notes of equal duration for the first three monosyllables. Tchaikovsky in fact alters his rhythmic treatment of the words as compared to his initial setting of lines 1-2. In addition, he now substitutes the first word ‘Nur’ for ‘Ach’. He shares with Hiller that he begins after a rest in the same measure and as part of an ascending gesture, which has the effect of making ‘Nur’ sound less accented. In short, it can be seen that these later composers have again set these words relatively unconventional, which signals independence. After these divergences, by contrast, there is a general normalisation at Sehn: all composers place it on the first strong downbeat. Schumann, Jenner and Tchaikovsky have reached this syllable that begins an expressive word with an upward gesture, which they share with Schubert. It is interesting to note that whereas the first mentioned three reach ‘Sehn’ again with a leap from ‘die’, the leap is now smaller than it was in line 1-2. Perhaps that sounds rhetorically fitting, as the final lines round off the poem. For in recitation, the reciter would introduce lines 1-2 in a slightly more arresting manner, and declaim the repetition more as an afterthought, lowering the voice in conclusion. While the above explanation ventures in speculative territory a bit, a clearer pattern can be seen in the rhythm of the word ‘Sehnsucht’ in general. The two syllables mark a hierarchy in the settings again. The syllable ‘Sehn’ is invariably longer than ‘sucht’: ‘Sehn’ can often be interpreted as a ‘dotted’ rhythmic value, where the remaining metrical spaces allow ‘sucht’ to prepare for the next strong accent at the word ‘kennt’. This reaffirms the normalisation I referred to above as ‘Sehn’ always has this straightforward treatment. Indeed, later composers in my selection lengthen tones more, the most striking example being Tchaikovsky. The next main accent kennt is accented everywhere. In this instance, Hiller continues his phrase after ‘kennt’ directly with a repetition of the same words of this line, regardless of the comma. Of course this direct continuation after ‘kennt’ happens with Reichardt as well. Less predictable to note, is how Hiller treats the final ‘kennt’ of the repetition: it is now followed by a eighth tone rest. This is found with Jenner as well: he now places two rests after kennt (cf. Schumann in line 1). The point to be taken is that Hiller and Jenner chose to
62 reflect a particular textual detail in this repetition: a poetic caesura, instead of letting it continue as prose. It is important to notice that they clearly saw the implications of such a caesura. In keeping with this, another difference in the repetition of the line pair is significant: Schumann lengthens ‘weiss,’ so that the word gets its due agogic emphasis for a poetic caesura, as opposed to his initial instance. However, now he neglects the poetic caesura at ‘kennt’ that I do see in the composers mentioned above. In addition, ‘was’ is now quite extended as well. Similarly, Tchaikovsky now continues both after ‘kennt’ and after ‘weiss’, despite the commas after both words. In effect, he does extend ‘was’. The above observations illustrate two points. One, the hypothesis that ‘weiss, was’ is more ambiguous is cautiously confirmed. A few composers lengthen ‘was’ significantly, at least compared to the next word ‘ich’; what is more both words are alternatively lengthened in the two distinct occurrences of the refrain by some. Second, it gives insight in how composers operate with the given text: they vary in what details to emphasize. It is seen how three ‘later’ composers faithfully reflect a poetic caesura at one point. One observation about the earlier composers stands out too. Remember how some later composers began lines 11-12 with three notes of equal duration for each monosyllable. Interestingly at the words ‘weiss, was ich’ Reichardt and Schubert do the exact same thing. This, in combination with the “jagged” downward leaps found in this line in Reichardt, Beethoven and Schubert, is a good illustration of how ‘earlier’ composers are as much guilty of presenting a text in a way that can be designated irregular or complex. In particular, Schubert’s three short notes for ‘weiss, was ich’ sounds slightly unnatural. Alternatively, it can be seen shared properties of being monosyllables affording note equality. Significantly, this is a matter of perspective. A minor point to note is, that in this repetition, Beethoven lets the word ‘was’ dip to a flatted tone in the repetition, a dip that according to John Paton is “a perfect example of the pathos of the Neapolitan tone and its associated harmony”.72 I believe this observation supports my argument that ‘was’ is not an unimportant word, as it draws attention to the amount of suffering, and might even warrant accentuation instead of ‘weiss’.
The last syllable Lei, is straightforwardly placed at a strong measure part, the first strong measure part in all but Schubert. Many embellish this syllable with a melismatic figure and
72John G. Paton. Gateway to German Diction: A Guide for Singers. Los Angeles: Alfred Music Publishing, 1999, p. 16.
63 extension. Exceptionally, by contrast, Schumann and Reichardt end the melody in a very simple way: one quarter tone for each syllable. At this point, especially in combination with Schumann’s simple repetition of line one’s rhythm, McClain’s claim that Schumann has been “irregular” could be qualified in this respect. It can be seen that later composers extend this syllable much, as an economic poem affords such extensions. However, composers like Jenner and Hiller's use melisma that are very formal and stylized. I can imagine that Goethe would find that formal and unnecessary. Again, it is still only a matter of degree. A final interesting point is that the word ‘leide’ is always set as two descending syllables. The only exception has been Tchaikovsky in lines 1-2. Hence it can be reasonably concluded that such a drop is directed by the declamatory demands of a poem.
Structural correspondences Tchaikovsky reiterates the two lines in two distinct musical instances. In the first he actually retains the basic rhythmic idea of lines 1-2, and in the second he lengthens ‘was’ affirming my notion of ambiguity at this point. It is interesting to note how Jenner also copies the exact rhythm for line 11. Indeed, in general line 11 often copies line 1 in rhythm. Indeed, for Schumann the rhythm is completely the same, which is a simplicity worth noting. In addition, Jenner and Hiller start with the exact same tones as they did in line 1. Whereas Schumann reserves the musical climax for this repetition, Wolf repeats the lines in a “half-resigned” way according to Ernest Newman, which I would agree to be a good description of how such a final refrain sounds when reciting a poem, too.73 Some specific correspondences with other lines can be found as well. Tchaikovsky reflects the end-rhyme with both line 3 and line 5 with a recurring musical motif, as well as a rhythmic pattern of 7-8. The motif that Hiller uses for ‘leide’ resembles his pattern for ‘weide’ exclusively and not other line endings.
Structural differentiation Within the line pair under review, line 12 is often clearly differentiated from line 11, where the last line is, speaking generally, not shorter but in fact longer due to stylized cadential formulae in a lot of settings: a development can be found in that such a cadential formula are extended in length at the word ‘Leide’.
73 Ernest Newman. Hugo Wolf. New York: Dover Publications, 1966, p. 199.
64 Besides length, a striking example of how lines 11-12 are differentiated in their own right is found in Jenner, who actually the delineates lines as phrases with a strong caesura in the latter, as one would expect (as poetry). In many composers, ‘weiss’ is extended too in particular: note how Schumann does lengthen this word in the final refrain. Finally, to compare with lines 5-6, the word ‘Firmament’ is at a parallel place as ‘Sehnsucht kennt’, where the latter are separate words. Only in a handful of composers do we see a significant difference, namely that ‘Firmament’ has shorter note values.
Phonetic sound Returning to the alliteration and plosives at Sehnsucht and sucht/kennt respectively, short intervals do figure again in the settings, but those characterize the line as a whole. As mentioned above, there are less wide leaps. Indeed, it is interesting to see that later composers have less disjunction in the melody as well as the earlier selection. It is found that composers are more conservative in this setting: this might also be explained by the fact that this line resolves the drama the poem. That is to say, it might be coincidental and not intended to take the cue of its setting from the phonemes. Similarly, the observation that ‘ich’ tends to fall in higher registers, as it quite often did in 1-2, must be qualified in light of the present line pair: only Reichardt and Beethoven. I have established such compositional ‘facts’ throughout the six analytical chapters. Especially in the sections on phonetic sound, my interpretive methodology has been relatively open. It is time however, to make some concluding statements, summarizing and synthesizing the observations of all sections one last time in the conclusion chapter below.
65 Mignon (lines 11-12)
Reichardt (1795) 42 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Beethoven (1810) 6 8
Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de, ja, weiss, was ich lei de! Schubert (1827) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Schumann (1849) 3 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Hiller (1867) 42 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Nur wer die Sehn kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Tchaikovsky #2 4 4 Ach, wer die Sehn sucht kennt weiss, was ich lei de! Wolf (1888) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Jenner (1900) 4 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, wasich lei de!
66 Conclusion
In this thesis I have looked at eight settings of ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’. Supported by recent literature, I investigated how different composers set the words of this poem to music. I delved deeper into a question raised by Meredith McClain, namely to what extent the music keeps following the words or “evolves” towards independence from the poet. As to a development towards independence, McClain sketches an unconvincing dichotomy: in her view, a composer is either faithful to the words or the composer goes his own way, wilfully sidestepping textual properties. This binary seems not apt. In my analysis, it turned out that a composer has more choices than simply following the text or not. Textual features do not simply either constrain or direct a composer. Composers make different choices as to what to reflect or emphasize of the given poem. The question then, as to who pays the best regard to the text cannot be answered that straightforwardly. That is so because composers have a broader spectrum of possibilities and points to emphasise at his disposal in setting a poem to music—and, different gradations in this matter as well. A case in point for this is how composers respond to the fluid meter of the poem and ambiguity of metrical stress.The poem does not contain the same metrical pattern throughout, and in some places, the accent pattern can be variously interpreted. The settings reflect this variety. Especially in line 5 (‘Seh ich ans’) composers differ in interpretation of the meter and in what word they accentuate first (and how), and the rhythm that arises from this. This fact acquires sharp relief, when compared with the more straightforward line (line 7) where the first accent is straightforwardly brought out. A similar divergence, then, was found at the first two words of line 8 ‘ist in’. This kind of fluidity resembles speech, where the musical setting keeps representing the delivery of words. From these findings we learned that details in the poem continue to be reflected throughout, minutely, sometimes especially so in through-composed settings. This treatment can also be discerned in more local textual details in the settings under review. Significantly, the “syntactic breaks” that McClain refers to have received much more musical articulation in my selection than she suggests in her article. The most striking example is the strong syntactic break in line 7: ‘Ach!’. Especially later composers differentiate this break, simultaneously affirming the unambiguous stress pattern and heightening the sound of this break. For instance, Wolf and Tchaikovsky frame the syllable with two rests. Indeed, at this point (and others) a speech-like effect is found in later
67 composers who tend to use repeating tones for the words that follow, whereas Beethoven and Schubert use a more unnatural rhythm from this perspective. Later composers often draw attention to textual features, where earlier composers pass over them—for instance, Beethoven directly continued his melody after the rhetorically weighty line ending of line 8. At line 1, the last word ‘kennt,’ Schumann and Tchaikovsky let it ring out rhetorically by placing a rest after it. Other composers distinctively lengthen it, except Reichardt, who does not articulate this poetic caesura at all. Strikingly, at line 3 the last word ‘-trennt’ was in fact directly linked to the next word in all settings except Reichardt. At this strong enjambment, significantly, the composers now chose to interpret the words as continuous prose, especially with Schumann who continues his previous rhythm set up earlier and Hiller immediately lengthens ‘al’ to reflect the iambic meter. Indeed, a commonality has been these nineteenth century composers differentiate line pair 1-2 as a whole from lines 3-4, which give textual details their due. A more specific variety of textual details are found to be brought out in the settings as well. Whereas Wolf and Hiller allocated an abrupt and unaccented eighth tone to the last syllable of ‘Seite’, hence reflecting a feminine ending, Tchaikovsky articulated the diphthong sound in ‘Sei’ by assigning two notes to this syllable. Alternatively, Jenner would relate ‘Seite’ with ‘Weite’ by using a similar musical motif. This illustrates that composers can choose to heighten features of the text in different ways. In fact composers continue to do so, but it shows that there is a broader range of options also later in the century.
In short, composers have various ways to reflect poetic structure. To elucidate this, the affordance concept by James J. Gibson is very helpful. The structures and features of the poem are, I suggest, affordances: they provide composers possibilities for composers to act on them, but not necessarily in one absolute way. In other words, these textual features are half-normative: they make compositional choices possible and direct them to some extent, but the perspective of the composer plays a part in this. It follows then, that the image of development, where composers grow increasingly more independent from the poet is not so clear-cut. For this, Wolf’s setting has been a case in point. On the one hand, his aesthetic seems close to Goethe’s in the sense that, like Goethe, he stresses the primary significance of the text and its proper declamation On the other hand, Wolf does search for increasing complexity in accompaniment and chromaticism. What is more, it is written in a time when composers of opera such as Verdi, Donizetti and Mussorgsky revalued the imitation of
68 speech rhythms and began to disfavor periodic regularity.74 As text fidelity is also matter of gradation, it follows that it is not so easy to mark boundaries between various composers. Hence I suggest to at least disentangle the history of the Mignon settings from Goethe’s views as echoed by McClain. The recent literature I drew on—consisting of Randel, Snarrenberg and Rodgers—have proven helpful to study more technical dimensions of the poem, especially those pertaining to structure. As both poets and composers structure sound, settings can helpfully be studied with this equivalent in mind. Interestingly, it is shown in my analysis that shifts to a different verse foot or a return to previously set up pattern—as Randel described it—are amplified in musical settings. For instance, the shift to an iambic meter at the onset of lines 3-4 is reflected in all composers—especially so in later composers such as Jenner, who make the first tone more arresting and does not mask the iambic rhythm with continuous eighths as Reichardt does. Another shift is the relative relaxation found at ‘mein Eingeweide’ which is brought out in most settings with agogic accents and loosening of the rhythm in general: such a loosening is also found with many composers in lines 9-10. Structural correspondences abound too, for example when Wolf and Hiller use the rhythmic formulae for both the first monosyllables of lines 1 and 5. Such examples have shown that there are many ways to unite poetry and music and reflect the poem’s sound structure in musical sound structure, where later composers are seen to pay tribute to the simplicity that Goethe valued, in some instances more than early composers. Here the analytical examples of Randel and Rodgers, in particular, have been proven useful, because they take sound structure into account, where words and lines are not merely studied as isolated units but also in their interrelation with other such units in the poem. Conversely, patterns on a micro-level, phonetic sound, have proven to be harder to study. My authors arrive at statements which hold only in their own specific case. In a larger sample, it is found, such statements are less significant. It is found that these kind of advanced parts of the recent literature are often hard to generalise. The examples they provide of how composers interact with phonetic sound are hard to make more general. In my analysis, some separate observations are made as to phonetic sound, but it is hard to establish whether these are intended techniques or are contingent on other textual aspects, if at all. Hence it remains a moot point to what extent the analyst finds patterns because he searches for patterns. For example, most composers make a descending step from ‘Sehn’ to ‘sucht’: this could reflect a drop in speech sound. Alternatively, Beethoven uses a repeating tone,
74 Cf. John Potter. Vocal authority: Singing style and ideology. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
69 which might reflect the monotony of ‘s’ sounds.
A comparative approach has additional advantages. By using a larger sample, it was hypothesized that my method perhaps could record a development. As to a possible chronological development, one theme has been found. As largely summarized above, in my analysis it is found that, interestingly, the emphasis has shifted from adhering to a poetic meter to more minutely differentiating the rhythm. Where Reichardt takes his cue from a regular meter, that is, a perceived system of accented and unaccented syllables in the poem, later composers tend to follow and bring out the rhythm of individual words more as they would sound in prose, or occasionally in poetry in particular. In this way, words and phrases are sometimes differentiated in detail. Interestingly, where Reichardt for example retains a fixed rhythm, such details are lost. Indeed, in line with this fluidity is found that at many places late composers follow simple speech rhythms. For example, Schumann straightforwardly used a quarter tone for the first syllable and two eights for other two monosyllables in ‘Nur wer die’. Wolf uses a simple syncopated declamatory rhythm for ‘Weiss, was ich’ reflecting the short pause after weiss. Commonalities among composers in this matter suggest that they often remain close to the structures of a text, which in turn suggests that a development is more nuanced. Another development is discernible in the use of large leaps and the lengthening of tones. Later composers in my selection, in general, write leaps and broader agogic accents more frequently. These happen often at emotionally charged words: indeed, perhaps even in recitation, a more expressive way of declamation is conventional and logical. The word ‘Sehnsucht’ is reached exclusively by a (small) leap by most later composers, as does ‘liebt’ (line 7). The most extreme instance is the expressive line 10 (‘mein Eingeweide’). In addition, all settings employ stylized cadential formulae, especially on important words like ‘Freude’, but later settings often more elaborately. Perhaps Goethe would not approve of them, as these give the settings a formal, that is ‘unnatural’, character too. One point of independence from the words can be located here, but with some qualifications as they often happen at particularly expressive words. Conversely, a commonality across the chronology is that what I called main accents are often loyally followed and brought out throughout the century. That is to say, they receive a metrical, agogic or registral accent or a combination thereof. Hierarchies that are found in the poem are reflected in musical hierarchies (relative accent etc.) and these often coincide
70 with important words (affectively and grammatically). Furthermore, often such an accent is reached with a run-up gesture, where they often function as pivot. As such they bring order and simplicity in the musical settings and are directing features. These commonalities suggest that the idea of a development is more nuanced. One final compositional aspect that all settings share is the use of melodic patterns: that is to say, pieces of melodic material that are reused on different words. For example, Hiller and Jenner uses tones of equal duration for the first three words of lines 1-2 and Beethoven sometimes use the same melodic continuation at line breaks. Hence, they both gloss over textual details and are not exclusive for any time period. The significance of this general point is, too, that it provides some qualification to the idea of growing independence. There are also many interesting instances where composers deliberately alter patterns, as particularly seen at caesurae or places where word declamation suggests a specific rhythm. For example, Hiller and Schumann use the same gesture for the first monosyllables of line 1 and the first monosyllables of line 5. However, in line 5 they then vary the rhythm for the compound word ‘Firmament’. Such a choice is not ‘purely’ musical: as the melody responds to the text, it cannot be absolutely independent. Such adjustments, which were not a central concern of analysts like Rodgers and Randel, prove to be especially fruitful lenses to comparatively analyze and study text adherence.
To arrive at a concluding note: we cannot know what Goethe would have thought of every setting under review, but it has become clear that his poem is not as much neglected by composers as McClain suggests. Her way of framing the issue, that is whether a composer adheres to the text or not, was not apt. My comparative method has been able to show this. More generally, my method turns out to be fruitful to analyse such a selection of musical settings to uncover significant analytical observations: it can and has shed light on commonalities, which in turn also foregrounds unique observations. This method can provide more insight into stylistic similarities and differences. The concreteness of the material of the poem is a helpful point of departure that warrants more research. Indeed, it is especially promising in that it combines formalist analysis with an historical dimension.
71 Works cited Agawu, Kofi. ‘Theory and Practice in the Analysis of the Nineteenth-Century ‘Lied’.’ Music Analysis 11.1 (1992): 3-36.
Bodley, Lorraine B. Schubert's Goethe settings. New York: Routledge, 2017. Brown, Maurice J.E et al. ‘Schubert, Franz (Peter).’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001. 11 February 2020. Cave, Terence. Mignon's Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Johnson, Douglas et al. ‘Beethoven, Ludwig van.’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001.
Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New York: Psychology Press, 2015.
Carlyle, Thomas. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels: Translated From the German of Goethe. London: Chapman and Hall, 1888. Kramer, Lawrence. ‘Hugo Wolf: Subjectivity in the Fin-de-Siécle Lied.’ German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Rufus Hallmark. New York: Routledge, 2009, pp. 186-217.
Newman, Ernest. Hugo Wolf. New York: Dover Publications, 1966.
Malin, Yonatan. Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
McClain, Meredith. ‘Goethe and Music: “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt”. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: one hundred and fifty years of continuing vitality. Ed. Ulrich Goebel. Lubbock, Texas: Texas University Press, 1984: 201–227.
Miller, Richard. Singing Schumann: an interpretive guide for performers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Paton, John Glenn. Gateway to German diction: A guide for singers. Los Angeles: Alfred Music Publishing, 1999.
Platt, Heather. ‘The Lieder of Brahms.’ The Cambridge Companion to Brahms. Ed. James Parsons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004: 185-203.
Potter, John. Vocal authority: Singing style and ideology. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
72 Randel, Don Michael. ‘Congruence between Poetry and Music in Schumann’s Dichterliebe.’ 19th-century Music 38.1 (2014): 30-52.
Rodgers, Stephen. ‘Song and the Music of Poetry.’Music Analysis 36.3 (2017): 315-349. Sams, Eric. The Songs of Hugo Wolf. London: Faber & Faber, 2011,
Seelig, Harry. ‘The Literary Context: Goethe as Source and Catalyst.’ German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Rufus Hallmark. New York: Routledge, 2009, 23-56.
Sietz, Reinhold. ‘Hiller, Ferdinand’ Grove music online. Oxford music online. Oxford University Press. 2001.
Snarrenberg, Robert. ‘On the Prosody of German Lyric Song.’ Journal of Music Theory 58.2 (2014): 103-154.
Stein, Jack M. ‘Musical Settings of the Songs from Wilhelm Meister.’ Comparative Literature 22.2 (1970): 125-146.
Taylor, Ronald. Robert Schumann: His life and work. London: Granada Publishing, 1982. Thym, Jürgen. ‘Schumann: reconfiguring the Lied.’ The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Edited by J. Parsons & J. Cross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 120-141.
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73 Appendix: scores Mignon (lines 1-2)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Schubert (1826) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Schumann (1849) 3 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss was ich lei de!
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
Jenner (1900) 3 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de!
74 Mignon (lines 3-4)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Schubert (1827) 6 8 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Schumann (1849) 3 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Al lein und ab ge trennt von al ler Freu de
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Al lein und ab getrennt von al ler Freude de
Jenner (1900) 3 4 Al lein und ab trenntge von al ler Freu de!
75 Mignon (lines 5-6)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je nerSei te
Schubert (1827) 6 8 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Schumann (1849) 3 4
Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Seh ich ans Fir mament nach je ner Sei te
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
Jenner (1900) 3 3 4 Seh ich ans Fir ma ment nach je ner Sei te
76 Mignon (lines 7-8)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te.
Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist derin Wei te
Schubert (1827) 6 8 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te
Schumann (1849) 3 4 Ach! dermichliebt und kennt, ist in der Wei te
Hiller (1867) 2 4 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt, ist in der Wei te!
Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Ach! dermich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te.
Wolf (1888) 6 8 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Wei te
Jenner (1900) 3 4 Ach! der mich liebt und kennt, ist in der Wei te.
77 Mignon (regel 9-10)
Reichardt (1795) 2 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brenntmein Ein ge wei de Beethoven (1810) 6 8 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Schubert (1827) Es schwin deltmir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Schubert #2 86 es schwin deltmir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Schumann (1849) 3 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Hiller (1867) 2 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Tchaikovsky #2 4 4
Es schwin delt mir es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Wolf (1888) 6 8 Es schwin delt mir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de Jenner (1900) 3 4 Es schwin deltmir, es brennt mein Ein ge wei de
78 Mignon (lines 11-12)
Reichardt (1795) 42 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Beethoven (1810) 6 8
Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de, ja, weiss, was ich lei de! Schubert (1827) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Schumann (1849) 3 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Hiller (1867) 42 Nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, nur wer die Sehn sucht kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Tchaikovsky (1869) 4 4 Nur wer die Sehn kennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Tchaikovsky #2 4 4 Ach, wer die Sehn sucht kennt weiss, was ich lei de! Wolf (1888) 6 8 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, was ich lei de! Jenner (1900) 4 4 Nur wer die Sehn suchtkennt, weiss, wasich lei de!
79