37? A^ 3U AIO. Z9AR
ART SONG BY TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY FEMALE COMPOSERS:
LILI BOULANGER AND ALMA MAHLER, A LECTURE
RECITAL, TOGETHER WITH THREE RECITALS
OF SELECTED WORKS OF R. SCHUMANN,
J.S. BACH, F. CHOPIN, M. RAVEL,
J. BRAHMS, F. SCHUBERT
AND OTHERS
DISSERTATION
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS
By
Sarah D. Click, B.M., M.M.
Denton, Texas
December, 1993 37? A^ 3U AIO. Z9AR
ART SONG BY TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY FEMALE COMPOSERS:
LILI BOULANGER AND ALMA MAHLER, A LECTURE
RECITAL, TOGETHER WITH THREE RECITALS
OF SELECTED WORKS OF R. SCHUMANN,
J.S. BACH, F. CHOPIN, M. RAVEL,
J. BRAHMS, F. SCHUBERT
AND OTHERS
DISSERTATION
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS
By
Sarah D. Click, B.M., M.M.
Denton, Texas
December, 1993 Click, Sarah D., Art Sona by Turn-of-the-Century
Female Composers: Lili Boulanaer and Alma Mahler. A Lecture
Recital. Together with Three Recitals of Selected Works of
R. Schumann, J.S. Bach. F. Chopin. M. Ravel. J, Brahms. F.
Schubert and Others. Doctor of Musical Arts (Performance),
December, 1993, 96 pp., 13 examples, 2 lists of published songs, 10 poetic translations, bibliography, 43 titles.
Whereas conditions have existed for many centuries which served to exclude or marginalize female participation in music, many women have written compositions of musical worth sufficient to justify their contemporary performance.
Although most women composers wrote works more fitting for the "salon" than for the concert hall at the turn of the century, Boulanger and Mahler are representative of the few women composers whose complex approach to art song fell within the mainstream of the genre. Many of their accompaniments attain a level of technical difficulty not previously found in women composers' writing. They offer an interesting comparison between nationalities and styles in that they both favored Symbolist texts. However, each represents a different side of the coin in her musical interpretation of Symbolism: Boulanger, Impressionism, and
Mahler, Expressionism. In addition, even though their styles involve opposite musical expressions, they both show a strong influence of Wagner in their writing.
This study includes background on turn-of-the-century music and musicians encompassing the role of art song among women composers. Symbolism is addressed as it applies to the poets selected by the composers, followed by information regarding the specific musical representation of Symbolist texts in the composers' art songs. The chapter of analysis serves as a means to guide musical decisions in the actual performance of the works. The conclusion briefly discusses performance practice issues and the possibility of a turn- of-the-century feminine aesthetic. Tape recordings of all performances submitted as dissertation requirements are on deposit in the University of North Texas Library.
1XX TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Programs First Recital v Second Recital vii Third Recital viii Fourth Recital ix
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES X
Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 Background on Turn-of-the-Century Music and Musicians Role of Art Song Among Women Composers Lili Boulanger and Alma Mahler Aims of this Research
II. THE TEXTS 15 Symbolism
III. MUSICAL REPRESENTATION OF SYMBOLIST TEXTS . . 24 Impressionism Expressionism Influence of Wagner Role of the Piano Accompaniment
IV. ANALYSIS OF WORKS 32 Lili Boulanger Alma Mahler
V. CONCLUSION 68 Performance Practice Issues Possible Turn-of-the-Century Feminine Aesthetic Closing Statements
APPENDICES 77 A. Lists of Published Songs B. Translations of Song Texts Included in Performance
BIBLIOGRAPHY 93
xv /-f/1 i 1*4/* / s U J presents Graduate Recital COLLEEN R. BOLTHOUSE, soprano SARAH D. CLICK, pianist
Monday, April 8, 1991 8:15 p.m. Concert Hall
PROGRAM
George Frideric Handel "Mio caro beneF (Rodelinda) "Care selve" (Atalanta) "Tornami a vagheggiar" (Alcina) Allison Oppedahl, violin George Settlemire, viola David Shaw, violone Johannes Brahms Bird Songs Nachtigall Aufdem Schiffe Lerchengesang Das Madchen spricht In Waldeseinsamkeit
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Concert Aria, K. 505 "Ch'io mi scordi di te? . . . Non temer, amato bene"
- Intermission
m UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
V Francis Poulenc Fiangailles pour rire La Dame d'Andri. Dans I'herbe II vole Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant Violon Fleurs
Samuel Barber Opus 13 A Nun Takes the Veil The Secrets of the Old Sure on this shining night Nocturne
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
vx l 'ottege, nf'Mw&
presents
Graduate Recital
SARAH CLICK, piano
Monday, November 18, 1991 5:00 p.m. Recital Hall
PROGRAM
Valses nobles et sentimentales Maurice Ravel
Sonata, Opus 78 Franz Schubert Molto moderato e cantabile Andante Menuetto Allegretto Prilude, Opus 45 Fr6d£ric Chopin Berceuse, Opus 57 Scherzo, Opus 39
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
VII University of North Texas 0
presents
A Graduate Recital
SARAH CLICK, piano
Monday, November 16, 1992 8:15 p.m. Concert Hall
PROGRAM
Toccata in D Major, BWV 912 Johann Sebastian Bach
Kreisleriana, Opus 16 Robert Schumann Aufierst bewegt Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch Sehr aufgeregt Sehr langsam Sehr lebhaft Sehr langsam Sehr rasch Schnell und spielertd
Jeux d'eau Maurice Ravel Dieu fluvial riant de I'eau qui le chatouille .. . (River god laughing as the water tickles him ...) Henri de R6gnier
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
vxii University of North Texas fijftye of 'Music
presents
A Graduate Recital SARAH CLICK, piano assisted by
Kelly Kimball, mezzo-soprano • David Sundquist, tenor
Monday, October 18, 1993 5:00 pm Recital Hall ART SONG BY TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY FEMALE COMPOSERS
Lobgesang Alma Mahler (1879-1964)
Reflets Lili Boulanger Clairieres dans le del (1893-1918) Elle etait descendue au bas de la prairie Je garde une medaille d'elle Demainfera un an
Laue Sommernacht Alma Mahler Waldseligkeit Ansturm Ernteleid Der Erkennende
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirments for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
IX LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
Example Page 1. Lili Boulanger, Dans 1'immense Tristesse, measures 28-35 34 2. Lili Boulanger, Attente, measures 26-28 35 3. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 3, Parfois, je suis triste, measure 8 39 4. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 13, Demain fera un an, measures 45-47 40 5. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 1, Elle etait descendue au bas de la prairie, measures 1-2 42 6. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 6, Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre r§ve, measures 1-2 43
7. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 13, Demain fera un an, measures 1-2 44
8. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Lieder, No. 3, Laue Sommernacht, measures 1-2 53 9a. Alma Mahler, Vier Lieder, No. 1, Licht in der Nacht, measures 25-28 56 9b. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Lieder, No.3, Laue Sommernacht, measure 11 57 10. Alma Mahler, Vier Lieder, No. 2, Waldseligkeit, measures 22-34 59
11. Alma Mahler, Vier Lieder, No. 4, Erntelied, measures 55-61 61 12. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Gesange, No. 3, Der Erkennende, measures 1-3 65 13. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Gesange, No. 3, Der Erkennende, measures 43-47 66
x CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Background on Turn-of-the-Century Music and Musicians
Music by European composers around the turn of the
19th century offers rich ground for critical and analytical study in that it resists being clearly defined or categorized. In this period, which exists between
Romanticism and Modernism, there was much emphasis on the composer as the creative individualist. This focus led to a great contrast of styles and compositional procedures.
Increasingly close ties to literature and other extramusical elements allowed composers new horizons. Expression, whether subtle or direct, had no specific regulations as long as it conveyed the artist's own inner perspective and creativity. Symbolism, Expressionism, and Impressionism all were movements within the arts at this time. They reflect the changing social standards and cultural tensions leading up to the First World War. These conflicts, echoed in all the arts, destroyed old boundaries and attained expressive extremes as people sought a new order in their perception of themselves and the changing culture in which they lived.
Musically, this is mirrored most obviously in expanding harmonic vocabulary—an expansion that eventually caused the collapse of a tonal system more than two centuries old.
1 2
Just prior to the turn of the century, the musical scene was dominated by the Germans, and, although other nationalities maintained their own traditions, they were responsive to the German influence yet careful and selective in incorporating it into their own styles. The music of this period in the European tradition manifests varying individual reactions to the expansion and subsequent collapse of the 18th and 19th century tonal system, as well as to the German dominance on the musical front. Some composers embraced the collapse and welcomed a new direction, some held to the older system, but most utilized elements of the new and old, as is typical of a period of transition.
Male musicians have always dominated the musical scene, despite the occasional appearance in music history of gifted women such as Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, and
Maria Theresia von Paradis. The 19th century, however, saw a notable increase in numbers of female musicians, brought about in part by certain political and social changes, but also as a result of the ascendancy of the piano with its suitability to a domestic environment. As public demand for music became stronger, opportunities grew for both men and women musicians. Public concerts flourished, resulting in the establishment of concert societies and music festivals.
New advances in technology and industry caused the middle class to prosper; this prosperity provided the leisure time 3 in which women could cultivate music, as well as the means for purchasing instruments, especially the piano. The increase in number of music schools made training and educa- tion available to women. This in turn produced female composers who could master even the larger forms of sonata, symphony, and opera, which traditionally had been handled by men who had received formal musical education.1
Even with such a host of new opportunities, many restrictions continued to be placed upon women. Society still held that a woman's role in life was basically to be supportive. Women were allowed to cultivate music, but only for certain ends. Its purpose was to entertain, to improve social status or perhaps even to add a virtue for those hoping to marry. In other words, music was acceptable for women as long as it was never more serious than a pastime.
Society also imposed the idea that one of woman's highest callings was to nurture, promote and inspire the male artist, to act as Muse, or the so-called "woman behind the man".2 This was the most socially acceptable musical role for her at the time. She was allowed some musical education, but her presence in theory or composition classes
1Diane Peacock Jezic, Women Composers: The Lost Tradi- tion Found (New York: The Feminist Press, 1988), 3.
2Nancy B. Reich, "European Composers and Musicians, ca. 1800-1890", Women and Music, ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1991), 98. 4 was not common until after 1870.3 As the prevalent attitudes slowly began to change, women finally emerged as professional composers. Success for women composers was often related to family background and home environment. Not only were many from families of musicians, including Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Josephine Lang, and Clara Schumann, but they also married poets or musicians. In a society that did not accept their role, women composers possibly needed the strong musical support of family and friends to stimulate and nurture their own compositional activity. Certainly constant cultural and musico-literary exposure made it seem only natural for them to develop the same skills as those about them. The acceptance they felt in so doing encouraged them to continue. They often wrote under pen names or even under other composer's names, as did Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Schumann, in order that their music might more readily be published and accepted.
Role of Art Song Among Women Composers Art song was one of the chief genres cultivated by women, precisely because it fit so comfortably into the domestic sphere. This intimate form did not compete with the larger forms of sonata, symphony, and opera and was therefore deemed by society more appropriate for female
3Ibid., 99. 5 expression. Two types of art song developed at the turn of the century- The most frequently encountered was song whose light and sentimental character was more fitting for the
"salon" than for the concert hall. A large amount of such music was written. Among its many well-known composers were, in England, Maude Valerie White (best known for the
Victorian drawing-room ballad) and Liza Lehmann; in France,
Cecile Chaminade and Augusta Holmes; the Norwegian Agathe
Backer-Grondahl; and the American Amy Marcy Cheney Beach.
Most women composers did not go beyond this conventional realm of salon music, writing expected from women and encouraged by society, but the few who did so made valid contributions to the repertory and have received less atten- tion than they merit. Their works, intended for the concert hall, constitute the second type of art song written by women, composed with the same seriousness of approach as that of their male counterparts of the time, including
Richard Strauss, Wolf, Mahler, Respighi and Debussy.
All these composers contributed to art song in its latter stages as a form. A characteristic common to all is the independent and challenging nature of the piano accompaniments, a feature especially apparent in the works of those composers interested in the newer usages of chromaticism. Harmony was the strongest expressive element in turn-of-the-century music, therefore the piano is extremely significant as it is responsible for that aspect 6 of the ensemble. The earlier women composers of art song had been primarily concerned with melody and it was not until the works of Clara Schumann and even later those of the Austrian Mathilde von Kralik and the German Ingeborg von Bronsart that the piano began to take on an assertively independent nature. The piano had evolved so far as to be able to express the softest nuances or the loudest orches- tral effects and was an ideal instrument for this expressive genre. The accompaniment's success in mirroring a given text is one of the main criteria in assessing its value. Many of the works of these women have not been the subject of such assessment, which would seem necessary in order to enhance and perhaps add a different perspective to our knowledge of turn-of-the-century music history.
Lili Boulanger and Alma Mahler For this purpose, two women have been chosen whose music represents the fin-de-siecle spirit of their own differing nationalities and of their own respective styles. They are the Parisian Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) and the Viennese Alma Mahler (1879-1964). Their art songs are excellent examples of the genre in its latter flowering and are beguiling witnesses to the changes which occurred as the tonal system was being pushed beyond its old limits. They provide an interesting comparison in that both favored Symbolist texts. However, each represents a different side of the coin in her musical interpretation of Symbolism: 7 Lili Boulanger, Impressionism, and Alma Mahler, Expression- ism. In addition, even though their styles involve opposite musical expressions, they both show quite strongly the influence of Wagner in their writing. Many of their accompaniments attain a level of technical difficulty not previously found in women composers' writing; such complexity, to be sure, was in keeping with the mainstream of art-song accompaniment of the time. Lili Boulanger lived to be only twenty-four, but at nineteen she was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome with her cantata Faust et Hel&ne. Her style developed within the mainstream of Impressionism. There have been several articles written about her, but the most scholarly and useful source of information is the comprehensive study of her life and works by Leonie Rosenstiel. This author, through her connection with Lili's sister Nadia, was finally able to obtain primary source materials that had remained out of reach of most researchers. Rosenstiel offers much insight into the young composer's more than fifty works. Boulanger's published songs consist of the four written between 1910 and 1916, and the thirteen songs in the cycle Clairieres dans le Ciel. Although Alma-Maria Schindler-Mahler (as her name appears on her published music) wrote hundreds of songs, 8 many burned in the bombing of Vienna during World War II4 and the only ones remaining are three published sets: Fiinf Lieder from 1910, Vier Lieder from 1915, and Fiinf Gesange from 1924, plus two songs that survive only in manuscript (published works only will be dealt with here). Unlike Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Schumann, whose works greatly resemble those of Felix and Robert, Alma Mahler's works are nothing like the style and harmonic language of her husband Gustav. Alma composed until she married Mahler, giving it up in order to assist in the production and promotion of his work. She did not compose again for ten years. Her works are highly sophisticated compared to representative pieces by most women composers of the period. Although hers have recently gained some attention, more detailed study is needed for them to be understood in depth. The most valuable source of information is Alma herself. She published four books—her autobiography Mein Leben, an English version of it entitled And the Bridge is Love, plus Erinnerungen und Briefe and its English counterpart Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. Warren Storey Smith has written about two of her sets of songs in Chord and Dischord (1950). Robert Scholium in 1979 and Susan Filler in 1983 both wrote scholarly articles on all the songs. The three authors provide introductory overviews and short
4Alma Mahler-Werfel, And the Bridge is Love (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), 299. 9 descriptions of the works in general. Edward Kravitt, in 1988, went several steps further in an article in which he discusses more specifically the poetry as well as the possible musical revisions done by Gustav, plus the many questions which arise in the study of Alma's surviving manu- scripts. A challenging field for study remains in the actual accompaniments and their rich harmonic language. Both women were born into artistic families and lived their entire lives in the company of friends and family who were artists from various fields. The Boulanger family had been a part of the Parisian musical scene since 1797. Lili's grandfather, Frederic Boulanger, was a cellist (he won first prize in cello at the Conservatoire National in 1797 when he was nineteen years old), vocal coach, composer, musician in the King's Chapel and a professor at the Ecole Royale de Musique. He married Marie-Julie Hallinger, who won first prize in voice at the Conservatoire National in 1809 and later joined the Theatre de I'Opera-Comique. They had a son, Henri-Alexandre-Ernest, in 1815. The environment of his parental home enabled him to make the acquaintance of many artists and intellectuals. He also attended the Conservatoire National and in 1835 won the Prix de Rome in composition. He wrote many successful operas and while teaching voice at the Conservatoire he met and married one of his students. Raissa, Princess Mychetsky from Russia, was only nineteen at the time and Boulanger was sixty. In 10 1885 they had their first daughter, but she lived a mere fifteen months. In 1887, Juliette-Nadia was born, followed on August 21, 1893 by Marie-Juliette Olga (Lili).5 Lili was a frail child whose physical strength never developed to match her musical and intellectual capacities. Her life was a sequence of illnesses that began when she was only two years of age. She survived that pneumonia, but never quite fully recovered, since this serious bout with illness destroyed her immunity to various infections, including intestinal tuberculosis.6
In 1909, at the age of sixteen, Lili was no longer a child. She was a properly brought-up young lady, and since her state of health made life uncertain and marriage impossible, the only thing for her to do was to choose an occupation in keeping with her abilities and concentrate on it until she had achieved any long-range goals she might set for herself. Besides, the Boulanger family at that time consisted of three women. What if something should happen to either Mme Boulanger or Nadia? What would become of Lili then? Mme Boulanger put these questions to Lili one day when the family was together, and Lili's answer was almost instantaneous. She wanted to study composition. Specifically, Lili wanted to win the Prix de Rome as her father had done in 1835, and to bring back to the family the prize that had just eluded her sister Nadia in 1908.7
Lili attended Nadia's music lessons whenever she was well enough to do so. From her fifth to seventh years she
5Leonie Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978), 19,20,23,26,28,29. 6Ibid., 33. 1Ibid., 46. 11 audited classes of Auguste Chapuis, Louis Vierne, and Paul Vidal.8 She also had lessons in solf§ge, violin, cello, harp, and piano.9 Since organ music greatly interested her, she audited another organ class in 1902 in which she met Marcel Dupr§, with whom she was to perform later in life.10 Included in the many classes she audited were those of Gabriel Faure and his assistant Roger Ducasse, who became a close friend to Nadia and Lili.11 Even with all this exposure and opportunity, her studies up to 1910 were, because of her ill health, never very consistent. Having decided at sixteen to pursue a career in composition, she finally began formal lessons with Georges Caussade and Paul Vidal.12 Despite the popular belief that Lili was a product of Nadia's teaching, her studies with her sister lasted for only a brief time in the summer of 1911.13 She was admitted to the Conservatoire in 1912 and in the same year made her debut as a composer. In 1913, she fulfilled her dream by winning the Prix de Rome, joining the illustrious company of such previous winners as Berlioz, Bizet, Gounod, Massenet, and Debussy.
6lb id., 33. 9Ibid., 35-36. 10Ibid., 37. lxIbid. 12Ibid., 47. 13Ibid., 49. 12
Very different from the dreams of Lili were those of
Alma Schindler, born in Vienna, August 31, 1879. Her father was the landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler, and Alma,
just as Lili, was surrounded by culture from childhood on.
In recounting early memories in her autobiography, she
states that nothing interested her as much as music14 and that at the age of nine she had begun composing.15
However, even in childhood, she had a sense of what in later years she was to view as her own special calling:
I dreamed of wealth, merely in order to smooth the paths of creative personalities. I wished for a great Italian garden filled with many white studios; I wished to invite outstanding men there—to live for their art alone, without mundane worries—and never to show myself.16
This mind-set prevented her from ever seriously pursuing a
career in composition and, in the society of that day, she was never encouraged to do so. Still, composing and playing
music held a very special place in her life. Before she
married, it was her main interest; throughout her life she
turned to it, or thoughts of it, as her creative outlet.
Often it was her psychological comfort in times of
depression.17 The men for whom she lived her life came
14Mahler-Werfel, op. cit., 7.
lsIbid., 8.
16Ibid., 6.
17JJbid. , 13,32,66,92,285. 13 and went, but her songs and music remained a constant. Her musical studies included counterpoint with the organist Joseph Labor and composition with Alexander Zemlinsky.18 Although her marriage to Gustav Mahler eventually brought her lyric creativity to an end, her childhood dream of fostering genius was realized through a succession of relationships and marriages with men of brilliant talent in various fields, including the painters Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, the architect Walter Gropius, and the writer Franz Werfel, with whom she eventually fled her homeland to live in the United States.
Aims of This Study This study seeks to develop an awareness of these women's creative contributions to turn-of-the-century art song. Their choice of similar types of poetry yields to opposite harmonic languages and expressive devices, yet reveals similar external influences within their individual styles. Harmony is the main medium of expression in their works and a major portion of the analysis focuses on this aspect. The analysis is viewed as a means to an end—that end being performance itself. Such analytical examination reveals unifying elements and ultimately, the structure of a work; awareness of these factors serves to guide the performer in musical decisions. The difference in styles
18Alma Mahler-Werfel, Mein Leben (Frankfurt-am-Main: S. Fischer-Verlag, 1960), 20. 14 also raises several questions regarding performance practice for singer and pianist. In addition, a possible turn-of- the-century feminine aesthetic must be investigated, not only in choice of texts but in the actual musical repre- sentation. CHAPTER II
THE TEXTS
Symbolism Both Lili and Alma were drawn to Symbolist poetry, chiefly to poets of their own time. Lili especially concen- trated on it in her melodies, while in other works she also included some Romantic and Parnassian poetry. For her art song, she chose the poets Maurice Maeterlinck, Francis Jamities, Bertha Galeron de Calone and Georges Delaquys. She set Maeterlinck's Attente and Reflets as individual songs and chose thirteen of Jammes' poems entitled Tristesses to set as a cycle. The verses of the other two poets have little symbolic content. Lili met Bertha Galeron de Calone, who was born deaf, mute, and blind, and learned that she had published Dans ma Nuit, a volume of poetry. Fascinated by her accomplishments, Lili asked permission to set one of her poems to music; the result was the song Dans 1'immense Tristesse.1 The other author, Georges Delaquys, a close friend of the Boulangers, was a minor Parnassian poet.2 His poem Le Retour is a description of Ulysses' return home
•"•Rosenstiel, op.cit., 123.
2Ibid., 154. 15 16 to Ithaca. Thus, the poems by Symbolists furnish the texts of the larger part of her art songs. Alma also set poems by her contemporaries: four by Richard Dehmel, three by Otto Julius Bierbaum and one each by Otto Erich Hartleben, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gustav Falke, and Franz Werfel (whom she later married)—all German language poets influenced by the French Symboliste movement. In addition she set poems by two earlier Romantic poets, Novalis and Heinrich Heine, whose texts contain Symbolism even though the term was not yet in use when they were written. Alma's taste in poetry developed in her childhood; she speaks of her father's influence:
I was tantalized by all things mystical, fascinated by words such as "humans at play in the locks of the deity"—a phrase my father had coined, watching the bathers on the beach and in the surf at Sylt. I often used this and other lovely expressions I had picked up from him, but no one paid me heed.3
She had begun a secret library when she was fifteen by trading in her children's books for modern literature.4 She was especially interested in Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Plato.5 There is even in her autobiography an entry from her diary in which she writes in a Symbolist vein herself:
Three nights . . .
3Mahler-Werfel, And the Bridge is Love, 10. 4Ibid., 9. sIbid., 24. 17 I once spent a night on an island under a blue, foreign sky. The window was open, souls spoke, bodies yearned—but then the bray of an ass rang out, so ridiculously common that the night became trivial. By my side was a brain on two legs, with the red heart missing and a gold watch ticking in its place. And that I saw only now. . . .
I once spent a night in the mountains, where every thing was gruesome. It was an icy, milk-white night. Mists hovered outside the open balcony door; a candle burned on a chair. A child slept in the room. By my side was a youth who had not yet found himself. . . . The candle flickered as the mists caught the flame. But that night was joyless.
I once spent a night in a valley that was disturbed by the light of dawn and the sweet song of nightingales. But by my side was a beautiful young man—and in this night two souls found each other and forgot their bodies.6
This affinity for Symbolist literature is guite strong; the images that repeat themselves in her choice of poems reveal much about her.
The Symbolist or Decadent movement, as it is often called, began in the late 19th century in France. Reacting against the objectivity and logic of earlier French Romantic poetry, it sought a more subjective approach, focusing on individual and inner experiences:
Symbolist poetry is a poetry of indirection, in which objects tend to be suggested rather than named, or to be used primarily for an evocation of mood. Ideas may be important, but are characteristically presented obliquely through a variety of symbols and must be apprehended largely by intuition and feeling. Symbolist poets use words for their magical suggestiveness. . . and one of their essential aims is to arouse response beyond the level of ordinary consciousness.
6Ibid., 85. 18
For the symbolists the power of the Word goes far beyond ordinary denotative verbal limits through suggestive developments in syntax and interrelated images and through what may be termed the "phonetic symbol" of musicality and connotative sound-relationships.7
The chief French Symboliste poets were Baudelaire, Verlaine and, most importantly, Mallarme. This fundamentally mystical movement influenced poets all over Europe, especially in Germany and Austria where the Expressionists developed their own version, as seen most readily in the works of Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George. Interpreting Symbolist poetry, many try to impose a literal explanation on the symbols, some of which are indeed universal, but the very nature of the movement had to do with the personal experience; the poet sought to find his own symbols which might or might not be understood by the public.8 The Symbolist poet's intention was less that the reader be able to understand exactly a poem's meaning than that he, the poet, be able to create associations of ideas and thoughts beyond the senses that might not even be describable in mere language other than through suggestion or allusion. To force a literal interpretation on this poetry is to miss the point. Another important feature of
7Alfred Garwin Engstrom, "Symbolism," Princeton Encyclo- pedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 836. 8C.M. Bowra, The Heritage of Symbolism (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1943), 7. 19 Symbolist poetry is its incorporation of musical character- istics:
No less important was the regard which the Symbolists had for the musical element in poetry. The great revelation for their age was the music of Wagner. In it Mallarm£ saw "la cime menagante de l'absolu", and Verlaine praised it in more than one sonnet. To their ears the music of Wagner, in its grandeur and sonority, was something new. In it they found an excitement which seemed to be just what they wished to convey through their own poetry. . . . The aim has been summarised by Valery, who says that the chief task of Symbolism was to take back from music what poets had lost to it. In such an ideal there were undoubted difficulties and ambiguities. But for the moment there seemed a great promise and a great hope. To French poets at least this was a glorious task. To do with words what Wagner had done with musical notes seemed both possible and desirable. Even outside France, in England and in Germany, this seemed a new call, a return to lost traditions of song, to the very heart of poetry.9
With these aims, it is clear that this poetry lends itself particularly well to musical setting. The Symbolist texts that these women set to music are very intimate, expressive texts—fertile ground for such an intimate and personally expressive genre as art song. The majority of Lili's melodie texts are those of Maurice Maeterlinck and Francis Jammes. Maeterlinck (1862- 1949) was a Belgian Symbolist whose works were often set to music; his play PellSas et Melisande was the basis for Debussy's opera. Lili set two songs from his Serres Chaudes of 1889 and was working on an operatic version of La Princesse Maleine when she died. Francis Jammes (1868-1938)
9Ibid., 8-9, 20 was a French poet also associated with the Symbolist movement. Lili was introduced to his poetry by her best friend Miki Pire and upon reading his collection Tristesses, immediately wanted to set them as a song cycle. Preferring a less somber title for the cycle, she contacted the poet and asked permission to use the title Clairieres dans le
Ciel, the title of not only another collection of his poems in the same volume but of the whole volume as well. Jammes consented to this change.10 Her choice of poetry often had an association with her own self, as her sister Nadia stated to Rosenstiel in 1972. "One might have said that she identified herself with Maeterlinck's poor little heroine just as she had already felt a sense of union between herself and the young girl evoked by Francis Jammes in the
'Clairieres. '1,11 As was the case with Alma, Lili's choice of texts seems to reveal and express very personal issues and emotions. It was as if their creative urges were simultaneously emotional and psychological outlets.
The poems of Richard Dehmel (1863-1920) were those most often set by Alma in her published works. Some of her choices were also set by Pfitzner, Reger, and Strauss. Just as his controversial poetry fascinated the public, the challenge to set his poems to music has attracted many composers. "... his brilliant images revealed the
10Rosenstiel , op. cit., 96, ^Ibid., 117. 21 intense inner emotional life (sexual or religious or both) that artists in all fields (and psychologists) were concerned to explore."12 Her three settings of texts by Otto Julius Bierbaum (1865-1910) again show poetry rich in the same sort of symbols as those of Dehmel. The mixture of sexuality and spirituality is also found in the songs to texts by Novalis (the pseudonym of Friedrich, Freiherr von Hardenberg, 1772-1801). She chose one of his Hymnen an die Nacht, his major poetic work, written after a profound religious experience following the death of his fiancee. Alma also set one of his Geistliche Lieder entitled Hymne. "In the 'Hymne,' conjugal union and religious communion become metaphoric equivalents, and the physical union of two lovers becomes the image of holy communion."13 The remaining poems she set and published are rich in symbols but are on differing subjects. Those of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) and Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) are the shortest and simplest of her settings, reflecting the nature of love and lovers in a much less intensely symbolic fashion than those previously mentioned. Her longest songs are set to texts of Otto Erich Hartleben (1864-1905) and Gustav Falke (1853-1916), again less symbolically involved than those of
12Paul Griffiths, "Dehmel, RichardThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), V, 326-327. 13John Neubauer, Novalis (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980), 111. 22
Dehmel, Bierbaum, and Novalis. Of special note is her setting of Der Erkennende by Franz Werfel (1890-1945)—it is the only poem and song to which she actually makes reference in her own writings.14 The verses are from his third collection of poems entitled Einander (1915).
As has been the case with many composers, Lili and
Alma freely changed the poetry they set. These changes range from replacing individual words and rearranging word order, to leaving lines and verses out all together.
Repetitive symbols are present in of both composers' selection of poetry. In Lili's Maeterlinck and Jammes texts, symbols of dreams, flowers, and colors recur.
Flowers are mentioned in eight of the thirteen Jammes songs and colors play an especially prominent role. Alma's choices are especially interesting since they involve a greater number of poets. The poetic symbols are open to clearer interpretation than those of Jammes and Maeterlinck not only because of the differences between German and
French poetry, but because, although her poets are varied, she chose from their works similar subjects and symbols to convey similar ideas. Night, which seems to represent aloneness or some sort of negative feeling, is present in six of the poems. Light, often set against the idea of
Night, evidently signifies love, hope or comfort, and appears in six of the poems (not all the same as the previ-
14Mahler-Werfel, op. cit., 3. 23 ous ones). Loneliness and love are constant subjects in her songs, just as they are in Lili's song cycle. CHAPTER III
MUSICAL REPRESENTATION OF SYMBOLIST TEXTS
Impressionism
Each woman chose to write in the most advanced compositional styles prevalent in her own country. Living at the same time as Debussy, Faur§, and Ravel, Lili, in her writing, gravitated toward the Impressionists. Her harmony, still anchored in tonality, is mainly used as a coloristic element, and often avoids traditional functional relation- ships between chords. There is much use of parallel perfect intervals and modality, perhaps to evoke an Oriental style or a religious connotation. As would be expected in
Impressionistic music, there are many instances of the use of modal, whole-tone, and pentatonic scales. She often
combines chords that are similar in guality and structure to
create a section within a song. Melodies frequently circle
around one pitch and are fairly static in nature. The music
is rich in pedal points and melodic-rhythmic ostinatos. She
avoids sharp sectional divisions, relying on subtlety and
understatement to create her effects. In setting Symbolist
texts, she evokes a general atmosphere and mood suggested by
the poem, rarely employing specific textual word-painting.
The dream-like quality of her writing is an ideal medium for
the fleeting moods and suggestive ideas of Symbolism.
24 25 It is in the piano accompaniment that one of the strongest unifying elements in her art songs is found. Although her harmonic rhythm is often slow and static, she creates movement and constant flow by using the same rhythmic division throughout a song or a section of a song. Broken chord figurations are one of her favorite devices; they produce a never-ending flow of delicate sound which continuously evolves through changing harmonies. Almost always there is an unfolding of the harmony through some sort of repeated rhythmic layer or ostinato, frequently with two or more layers occurring at the same time. Ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords are abundant as are added seconds and parallelisms. If a melodic motive is used several times, it is usually transposed to another pitch level and often reharmonized. This adds to the atmosphere of ever-changing variation and evolution, and contributes to a seamless quality of writing.
Expressionism Alma, on the other hand, was a product of fin-de- siecle Vienna. Expressionism was the new movement in the arts; within it, all artists sought the most intense, direct, and emotional means of conveying their own expression, regardless of whether others liked it or not. This led to much distortion, exaggeration, and a general intensification of the late Romantic style. Composers tended to produce highly-charged miniatures as they 26 abandoned tonality and triadic harmony. Alma's writing moves clearly in this direction. Its most striking characteristic is its surging harmony. Her works still make reference to tonal centers, but these are clouded by extreme chromaticism. Functional harmonic relationships are obscured by half-diminished, fully-diminished, and augmented sonorities. The rapid harmonic rhythm adds to the overall intensity; because one rarely hears an isolated major or minor sonority in her music, such instances become expres-
sive devices and are often found in climaxes or are used to point up specific words. Alma, like Lili, frequently
employs pedal points. Her general style is aggressive and
confident. The overall effect is that of density, created
through the use of large chords and heavily pedaled sections
in which much of the keyboard sounds simultaneously. Her
boldness is especially apparent in the endings of those
songs in which she leaves the harmonies unresolved.
Another general trait of Alma's work is frequent tempo
fluctuation. Flexibility and freedom to interrupt the
rhythmic flow is indicated by the many fermatas and caesuras
present in phrases and sections.
Much of the melodic writing for the voice is scale-
wise. This is also a characteristic of the bass lines,
especially those long descending lines which serve to unify
whole sections or pieces. When the bass line is not scale-
wise, its inclination is toward seemingly random choices of 27 intervals—possibly a structural weakness in her composition. Structural unity is achieved through the immediate development of a small idea or motive. She often begins phrases with similar harmonic movement and then alters the ends of them in ever-evolving variation. This is probably a direct inheritance from her teacher Alexander Zemlinsky, of whom she speaks highly in her autobiography:
Eventually I found the man to lead my frenzied tune- smithing into serious paths. Alexander von Zemlinsky was one of the finest musicians and a magnificent teacher. When I went to him for lessons—usually he came to our house—I often met his favorite student, Arnold Schonberg. "He'll be the talk of the world someday," said Zemlinsky. And that is exactly what Schonberg, the composer, has become, aside from teaching and influencing others, such as Alban Berg, Anton von Webern, Ernst Krenek. To this entire musical generation Zemlinsky was the teacher par excellence. His technical brilliance was unique. He could take a little theme, take it mentally in hand, so to speak, squeeze it, and form it into countless variations.1
Her harmonic language was heavily influenced by Zemlinsky, especially the writing he developed from his Opus 6 onward.2 Alma studied with him when she was twenty,3 during which time he was trying to absorb and assimilate the
1Mahler-Werfel, op. cit., 13. 2Lawrence Alan Oncley, The Published Works of Alexander Zemlinsky (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University,1975; Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 75-17,061), 133. 3Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), 77. 28 ideas of both Brahms and Wagner into his own composing.4 Both major influences seem to have been handed down to Alma as well: texture is dense and dissonance is handled in such a way that pushes constantly at the bounds of tonality, yet remains within them. She literally "frames" several of her songs by beginning and ending with similar musical material. Melodic motives that interplay between voice and piano also supply unity.
Influence of Wagner As history has proven, the influence of Wagner was a force to be reckoned with. Composers either embraced or consciously tried to deny it. Nevertheless, it had to be dealt with—Wagner had brought about a totally different view of form, thought, and harmonic vocabulary. Both women embraced his influence, but in different ways. Chromatic usage and its tendency toward non-functional purposes, as well as symbols, leitmotives, and recurring silences are evident in both composers' songs. Beyond this level, however, their incorporation of specific ideas take entirely opposite directions. Lili, steeped in the language of Impressionism, exhibits Wagner's influence in two ways: the first through the actual use of leitmotives, as seen in works like her cantata Faust et Hel&ne, the second through
40ncley, op. cit., 436. 29 almost direct quotation, as in the Nocturne for piano and violin and in the song cycle Clairieres dans le Ciel. The quotations are from Tristan und Isolde; in the sixth song of the cycle, the quote from its Prelude forms the basis of the piece. It is also recalled in the last piece of the cycle.
Rosenstiel believes that the "motive may refer not only to the love theme that runs through this collection of poems, but may also be a somewhat belated way of thanking Miki
Pire, who took Lili to a concert when she was in Nice working on this cycle. Lili had been very much impressed by the performance of the Tristan prelude she had heard
there."5
The Wagnerian influence on Alma—as on German music in
general—is, of course, much deeper. His presence permeates
the very fabric of her writing. The abundance of chromatic
non-harmonic tones, especially the appoggiatura as melody
and as chord, forms her very language, coupled with surges
of sound and the build-up created by harmonic progressions
piling dissonance upon dissonance toward a climax. That
Alma was attracted to Wagner's music long before she was
influenced by Zemlinsky is apparent in her own writing:
In those years of adolescence I grew completely away from my surroundings. I became indifferent to them, engrossed in music. I studied counterpoint with a blind organist, raced through musical literature, and kept screaming Wagner parts until my beautiful mezzo-soprano
bRosenstiel, op. cit., 179. 30 had gone to pieces. I lived in a music miracle of my own making.6
And later in life, after the death of a baby son and thoughts of suicide, she writes:
March 17 was an evening of pure music once again, the first time since the birth of my child that I had company. Werfel, Blei, Johannes Itten, and another painter were there. I played a great deal: Wagner, and more Wagner.
Role of the Piano Accompaniment The role of the piano in these composers' works is a challenging one. Both use it so aggressively that, at times, the voice seems to be merely another instrumental line within the sound—again Wagnerian. The accompaniments, therefore, are not mere harmonic supports for the vocal line, but are responsible for creating entire moods and interacting with the text on a highly expressive level. Not only do they often contain important thematic material, but also they provide structural unity. Much of the time, the main musical interest is in the accompaniment. Evocation of mood is the primary focus of the piano parts, a departure from the descriptive word-painting of an earlier time. However, there are some striking examples of text-painting to be noted in the analysis. These pieces still must be judged critically on their ability to mirror the text, as should all art song, but it must be remembered that the
bMahler-Werfel, op. cit., 10. 31 chosen texts in themselves suggest something beyond literal meaning. Both women are very successful in conveying this sense. Though they both have the same end in mind—that of evoking mood—they approach it from opposite stylistic corners: Alma from directness, Lili from indirectness. CHAPTER IV
ANALYSIS OF WORKS
Lili Boulanger Lili Boulanger's first and last songs are included in a set of four published by G. Schirmer. Nothing would indicate that they are to be performed as a group, except possibly the key correlations between them: a chromatic mediant relationship exists between numbers one (Bb minor) and two (C# Major), which serves as a dominant to number three (F# minor) and number four in the parallel major (F# major). All the pieces are relatively slow and similar in mood. She structures the music to the language, thus the vocal line is written in accordance with word length and accent, while the piano part provides transitions and commentary in an almost seamless manner. These pieces show that she had mastered the art of creating atmosphere through the use of static harmonies kept in soft, undulating motion by a constant rhythmic figure. That figure may be a broken chord as in Reflets, an offbeat repeated pedal or a constant eighth-note as in Dans 1'immense Tristesse and Attente, or even an ostinato as in Le Retour. Harmonically, she bases the first piece, Dans 1'immense Tristesse, on parallelisms and on a bell tone which functions as a pedal point in various registers. The parallel chords set the appropriate
32 33 serious, sad mood for this poem, in which a mother visits the grave of her baby boy to sing a lullaby. The most dissonant sections are placed where the text demands tension; in these sections the music becomes even more chromatic, employing half- and whole-step tone clusters. A striking aspect of this piece is the use of extreme regis- ters. The middle and upper ranges of the piano are the ones most often exploited in all the songs. Here, however, the very lowest ranges are utilized as well. An especially beautiful example of contrasting registers occurs in measures 29-33 (this contrast effectively brings out the text—see Example 1). The piece ends by guoting the traditional French lullaby Do, do, 1'enfant do, over parallel fifths and octaves. These then return to the original low register where the song began. This song is the last mSlodie she composed (1916); the others in the set were written before the 1914 song cycle and contain harmonies less dissonant.
The second and third songs are both from Maeterlinck's collection Serres Chaudes (1890). The second, Attente, was written in 1912, and the third, Reflets, written in 1911, is actually Lili's first published song. She eventually orchestrated both. They are similar in their employment of constant rhythmic figures, but they differ in structure. Attente sustains one accompaniment pattern throughout, while Reflets has more definite sections. Structural unity in 34 Example 1. Lili Boulanger, Dans 1'immense Tristesse, measures 28-35.1
p simple
Rien dc tout cc jus -qu l- ci nc I a that is not at the sad rea-son that
pp soutenu, triste
p sans expression
(La lune en cct ins - tant e - clai (The moon sud - den - ly lights up the
PP dair
% mJ douloureux comme une plainte
rait cct-te see nc,) Et ce que cet-te fern - me, (he' - las! . scene that en-rings her.) This wotn-an here is seek - ing • (Oh, heart,
mf - express! f douloureux
Attente is achieved not only through the two-measure harmonic pattern and sequence established in the beginning, but also by means of two pedal points: one on F# in
1Lili Boulanger, "Dans 1'immense Tristesse," Quatre Chants pour Voix et Piano (New York: G. Schirmer, 1979), 3, measures 28-35. 35 measures 8-16, the other on Ab (G#) in measures 22-28. The
dotted figure with which the piece ends is a telescoping of
this pedal point into a melodic motive that unifies and
completes the piece:
Example 2. Lili Boulanger, Attente, measures 26-28.2
gcs, dcs men - son sion, of il • hi
GarccnviHc. 1910
As stated earlier, Reflets has more distinct sections than
Attente. The harp-like broken-chord figure provides a
simple, flowing accompaniment for the first two of three
verses. The accompaniment never utilizes the half-step
interval in this section. Included is a beautiful transition
between verses in which the piano part imitates the melody
of the last word of the previous verse, r§ve, and repeats it
at the same pitch level while adding a falling step at the
end, thus tying it to the harmony of the next measure.
This flow is interrupted only in the last line of the second verse where bell-like C-octaves in syncopated larger-note
2Lili Boulanger, "Attente," Quatre Chants pour Voix et Piano (New York: G. Schirmer, 1979), 9, measure 28. 36 values provide a transition to the last section and verse.
This final section has a mesmerizing quality achieved by the use of an ostinato bass line countered in the treble by slowly-descending harmonies in the pattern of the previous eighth-note rhythm. These harmonies lead the ear to expect a minor dominant in measure 50, instead, a minor chord on the third degree lends a beautiful and surprising color.
This chord does resolve the melodic line by supplying the
C#, but as the third of the chord instead of the expected root. At this point, the rhythmic movement of the accompaniment abruptly slows while the voice continues over whole-note chords until the last word. Just before that
last word, a dominant-seventh chord on D, functioning as an
augmented-sixth chord, pivots back to the original key of F# minor. Elements of the accompaniment, including the recur-
rence of the ostinato figure (and its inversion), surround the continuing whole-note chords to end the piece. The
final cadence is achieved through a chromatic-mediant rela-
tionship between D major and F# minor—D major being the
false-side relative—adding a coloristic effect. This mediant relationship harks back to previous bass-line progressions. Except for the repeated melodic and rhythmic
pattern in measure 45, bass movement by third is the largest
span in the piece, all other bass movement is by half-step
or step. The closeness of these relationships creates the
subtle atmosphere of the piece. 37 Mediant relationships are even more important in the last song, Le Retour, (written in 1912 just after Attente); it employs these relationships on several levels. One such level occurs between adjacent chords, as demonstrated in the introductory passage of the accompaniment. This passage begins with a melodic figure that resembles a work of Debussy:
The song is dedicated to Hector Dufranne, who created the role of Golaud in Debussy's Pell6as et Melisande. Given the Boulanger circle's enjoyment of puns and serai- humorous quotations, the fact that Lili chose to allude to another piece by Debussy, Pr&lude a 1'apr&s-midi d'un faune, in the introduction to Le Retour was probably meant quite consciously as a veiled compliment to the singer.3
After this melodic figure, four major chords related by minor third create parallelisms which span an ascending octave. While parallelisms are common by this time in Impressionistic music, this particular type is unusual. Most parallelisms found in Impressionistic music change chord quality, often alternating between major and minor, a natural occurrence in chord progressions connected by thirds within a diatonic key or a mode. In measures 27-32, the bass moves again by ascending thirds as it did in Reflets. A larger-scale use of the chromatic mediant occurs between the first two major sections of the piece: the first section is in F# major and the next section is in A major. The bass
3Rosenstiel, op. cit., 154. 38 movement in this section is also by ascending and descending
thirds. The descending melodic sequence which occurs twice
in measures 80-89 is also by third. These relationships,
(in addition to pedal points on the tonic, mediant and
dominant), provide the piece with strong structural
integrity.
For her song cycle Clairieres dans le Ciel, her most
important work from the year 1914, Lili chose thirteen poems
from the cycle of twenty-four by Francis Jammes. It is
interesting to note that there were also thirteen letters in
her name. Moreover, her chosen monogram, which the Ricordi
company would place on her published works, used her two
initials entwined in such a way that they look like the
number thirteen.4 The perspective of the poetic cycle is
that of a man in love with a girl who has disappeared from
his life for reasons never made explicit to the reader.
These Symbolist poems reveal the ever-changing stages of his
depression: from beautiful memories to sadness and
suffering, from hope and fantasy to despair. The many
symbols in the work include flowers (Jammes mentions them in
eight of the thirteen poems Lili chose), and colors,
especially blue. Both lend a unity to the text which is
enhanced when the poet ends his cycle with a quote from his
second poem.
4Rosenstiel, op. cit., 173. 39
Lili matches the poetic unity in musical context. In the last piece, the most extended of the cycle, she brings back musical quotes from six of the other songs and ties them together with repetitions of an ostinato bass line.
The cycle as a unit seems to be based upon a descending whole-step motive. Its presence is heard in the macro- and micro-structure: the most obvious is the overall tonal shift of the cycle from its beginnings in a strong E major to the last songs which conclude the set in D minor. The most pervasive melodic motive of the cycle makes its first appearance in the third song (when the poet's happy thoughts suddenly change); the motive is based on the descending whole-step and is followed by an ascending fourth:
Example 3. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 3, Parfois, je suis triste, measure 8.5
chonte fa:
5Lili Boulanger, "Parfois, je suis triste," Clairieres dans le Ciel, revised by Nadia Boulanger (Paris: Durand, 1970), 6, measure 8. 40
This generative motive's next appearance is in measure 8 and is marked chant& by the composer (the only time this word is used in the accompaniment). In measure 46, the piano's statement of it is overlapped by a rhythmic diminution in the voice. The motive does not occur again until the seventh song where it is repeated a total of ten times at various pitch levels. In the eighth song, it appears once in the vocal line. Then in the middle of the ninth, several repetitions occur. After a short reference to it in the tenth, it is used in the eleventh song more than in any of the previous songs (the eleventh is also the only one which ends forte: all of the other pieces in the cycle conclude softly). The motive occurs once in the twelfth song, in the vocal line on the word esperer (hope). In the last song, its first use is in measure 45 where the only truly staccato notes (marked tres detache) in the entire cycle are found:
Example 4. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 13, Demain fera un an, measures 45-47.6
Plus ricn
pp tres detache
6Lili Boulanger, "Demain fera un an," Clairieres dans le Ciel, revised by Nadia Boulanger (Paris: Durand, 1970), 43, measure 45-47. 41
The motive begins again in measure 80 and repeats itself relentlessly until measure 100. In measures 88-91, the voice twice doubles the motive in unison with the accompani- ment (the only such instances in the cycle). The entire work ends with a postlude also based on this motive. Pitch level of the motive is significant and relates to the overall tonality of the cycle (E-D). The first appearance of the motive is on the pitches E,D,G. Although the motive occurs at various pitch levels, it occurs most frequently on
E,D,G, and returns at this pitch level in the final climax
of the last song as well as in the piano postlude. This
generative motive may represent the image of the beloved.
It appears when the poet speaks directly of her, when he
thinks of their being together, and twice over the word
esperer (hope). It is repeated most often and at its
loudest when he is despairing. Even at the end—when he
claims that "Nothing, I have nothing more to sustain me.
Nothing. Nothing."—the motive is the last thing heard.
Unlike Jammes, Lili chose to repeat these lines from the
middle of the last poem to end the work, a device which
provides the musical setting with even greater unity.
The first song displays the whole-step relationship
within the first two measures (Example 5). Not only does
the first measure contain a whole-step figure F#-E in the
eighth-notes, but from the first measure to the second
measure, the overall harmonic and bass line progression is 42 from E to D. In some form or another, this descending whole-step is found within the first two or three measures of every piece in the cycle, except for the last two which are firmly established in D minor. Whether in melody, bass line, or chord progression, the motive is found at the original pitch level (E-D) in songs one through six, nine and ten; at different pitch levels in numbers seven, eight, and eleven. Perhaps the original pitch level of the motive and the tonality of the cycle represent the solmization syllables contained in the name of Lili's best friend Miki
Pir6 (Mi, Re), who introduced Lili to Jammes' poetry.
Example 5. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 1, Elle 6tait descendue au bas de la prairie, measures 1- 2.7
Mode re simple et songeur I ' 1 EH in H IT^ J- -'if Elle e.tait des.cen . due au bas de la prai ,
t Modere f=p-Si S i Si ^ | , j=^ n a, jG ( f- f ,1 i' h pp ires envcloppe 'V'»j f j ,i m -' r
The second piece is rooted in E major as was the first. However, it runs harmonically further afield than the first, perhaps foreshadowing the change of mood which
7Lili Boulanger, "Elle §tait descendue au bas de la prairie," Clairieres dans le ciel, revised by Nadia Boulanger (Paris: Durand, 1970), 1, measures 1-2. 43 will occur in the next poem. The third song is an example of the composer's ability to incorporate subtle musical changes into the fleeting moods of the text without disturbing the overall atmosphere. This piece is also a cogent example of the other major unifying element of the cycle: the melodic-rhythmic ostinato, which is used as a
single texture or frequently layered in two or more ostinatos. One of the most interesting instances is the pattern short-long, short-short-long, short-short-long, etc., which occurs in the third piece, but also in the
sixth piece, which is based on the Tristan motive:
Example 6. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 6, Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre reve, measures 1-2.8
Assez lent
Assez lent exprcssif et sobre h j ^ w
sLili Boulanger, "Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre reve," Clairieres dans le Ciel, revised by Nadia Boulanger (Paris: Durand, 1970), 19, measures 1-2. 44
This song utilizes the pattern more than any other. Of its total forty-one measures, only eight measures in the middle section employ a different rhythm. This ostinato, also present in the bass line of the last piece (Example 7), occurs alone with the voice at the beginning of the song and then recurs in measures 13-18, 48- 53, and in the concluding section, measures 111-118—the repetition itself unifying the work. Strong unity is provided by these sections (based on the melodic-rhythmic ostinato) because by nature of simple repetition they are easily recognizable.
Example 7. Lili Boulanger, Clairieres dans le Ciel, No. 13, Demain fera un an, measures 1-2.9
Lent Librementresidue
De. main fe . ra ui1 an qu'a Au.daux je cueil - Lent
grave et morne
Other striking examples of musical depiction of the poetry include the open fifths and parallel chords which evoke the religious nature of the fifth song, and the use of the Tristan motive as the basis for the sixth song, which speaks of dreams, disillusions, and despair. Pedal points
9Lili Boulanger, "Demain fera un an," Clairieres dans le Ciel, revised by Nadia Boulanger (Paris: Durand, 1970), 39, measures 1-2. 45 are used more often as the cycle unfolds and are, in several places, the unifying element in otherwise dissonant passages.
Alma Mahler Alma's compositional skills were not nurtured and encouraged throughout life as Lili's had been. Her marriage to Gustav Mahler put an end to most of her writing:
He wrote me often, racking his brains and mine and finally asking me to ask my mother for my hand in his behalf—since he desired to be welcomed as a son on his return. Before this return, however, we had our first major conflict. I once wrote more briefly than usual, explaining that I still had to work on a composition, and Mahler was outraged. Nothing in the world was to mean more to me than writing to him; he considered the marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann "ridiculous," for instance. He sent me a long letter with the demand that I instantly give up my music and live for his alone.10
She finally promised Gustav to do exactly as he wished, but her desire to compose did not go away immediately:
I buried my dream, and perhaps it was better so; I have been privileged to see the realization of my creative talent, what there was of it, in greater brains than mine. And yet, somewhere in me a wound kept smarting. .
This conflict haunted their entire marriage; she mentions it several times in her books:
10Alma Mahler-Werfel, And the Bridge is Love (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), 19. 1:LIbid., 19, 46 I told Gustav how hurt I am by his utter disinterest in what goes on inside me. My knowledge of music, for instance, suits him only as long as I use it for him. He answered: "Is it my fault that your budding dreams have not come true?"12
I yearned for music—yes, for music! For our home was mostly hushed when Mahler came exhausted from the Opera, and because his music was alien to me, at first, I yearned for my own.13
Unfortunately, Gustav's attitude did not change until ten years into the marriage when their relationship was hopelessly crumbling:
One day during this time of emotional upsets I went for a walk with our little girl, Gucki. When we were nearly home again I heard my songs being played and sung. I stopped—I was petrified. My poor forgotten songs. I had dragged them to and fro to the country and back again for ten years, a weary load I could never get quit of. I was overwhelmed with shame and also I was angry; but Mahler came to meet me with such joy in his face that I could not say a word. 'What have I done?' he said. AThese songs are good— they're excellent. I insist on your working on them and we'll have them published. I shall never be happy until you start composing again. God, how blind and selfish I was in those days!' He played them over again and again. I had to sit down there and then—after a ten years' interval—and fill in what was missing. And that was not all; but since he was over-estimating my talent, I suppress all he went on to say in extravagant praise of it.14
12Ibid., 30. 13Ibid., 32. 14Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), 176. 47 Thus, in the final analysis, Gustav was responsible for the fact that these songs were published at all. Universal Edition brought out the Fiinf Lieder in 1910 and the Vier Lieder in 1915. The third set of songs, Fiinf Gesange, were published by Josef Weinberger in 1924. All three sets were reprinted by Universal Edition in 1984. The two sets of Lieder are short pieces for the most part, while the Gesange are longer pieces with more flexible forms and structures. Other than this grouping by size, there does not seem to be any conscious attempt to relate the five pieces in the first set either by text or by musical means. However, the Vier Lieder contain harmonic connections between some of the songs which may indicate the composer's intent to tie the group together. The first song, Licht in der Nacht, in D minor, ends on the dominant pitch A. This would offer a possible connection to Waldseligkeit which begins with the single pitch D. No such relationship exists between the second and third songs, but again between the third and fourth a harmonic resolution is possibly intended, although the connection is not as strong as the first. Ansturm, the third song, concludes on an unresolved A major seventh chord which sounds as if it has a dominant function, although not in the key of the piece. The last song, Erntelied, then begins on a Db major chord; even though this is the wrong tonic to resolve the previous dominant-seventh chord, a certain feeling of resolution is present due to a mediant 48 relationship between the two chords and the common pitch C#/Db. Susan Filler, one of the foremost authorities on Alma, believes that the Ftinf Gesange are grouped specifically according to the texts, whose juxtaposition balances the entire set. The first and last songs speak of love: one sacred, the other profane. The second and fourth songs express contrasting subject matter through nature symbols (the second religious and the fourth erotic). The third song, Der Erkennende, is the centerpiece of the group; its subject has to do with the inability of humans to estab- lish any kind of meaningful emotional communication with one another.15 Knowing that the songs were revised before publication, the question arises as to how much was Alma's own revision and how much might have been Gustav's. Since the only surviving manuscripts belong to two unpublished songs and to the Vier Lieder of 1915, no conclusions can be drawn. In the introduction to the 1984 Universal Edition, Herta Blaukopf maintains that Gustav confined "himself to matters of dynamics, phrasing and expression.1116 These manuscripts do point toward the fact that the pieces were not completely a product of her earlier years of composi-
15Susan M. Filler, "A Composer's wife as Composer: The Songs of Alma MahlerJournal of Musicological Research IV (1983), 435. 16Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler, Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), introduction. 49 tion, hence the question of revision remains open as long as the rest of the manuscripts are missing. Edward F. Kravitt offers information that somewhat contradicts Herta Blaukopf's statement. He believes that the revisions involved something more like the actual tightening of the overall structure, as in Erntelied, but again it is impossible to determine exactly who did the revising.17 He states in his article on Alma's Lieder in The Music Review (1988) that, "The songs do not show the Gustav Mahler imprint. They are of an entirely different style—that of Alma Mahler."18 Beginning with the Fiinf Lieder, it is apparent that Alma, like Lili, sets the vocal line in accordance with the natural accents of the language. This may account for many of the frequent meter changes. These five songs, presumably written before Alma met Gustav, are not as harmonically daring as the other two sets. Of her fourteen published songs, this set contains the longest song (In meines Vaters Garten) and the shortest song (Ich wandle unter Blumen). Although it begins and ends on a D major chord, the first song, Die stille Stadt, is in D minor, a key which convincingly depicts a lonely scene of a city at night surrounded by a heavy mist. A lone traveller in the
17Edward F. Kravitt, "The Lieder of Alma Maria Schindler- Mahler," Music Review XLIX/3 (1988), 198. 1QIbid., 203. 50 oppressive night gathers comfort when he sees a small light. The piece turns major on the word Lichtlein: "there shone a little light in the background and out of the smoke and mist began a song of praise out of children's mouths". The first twenty-one measures of the song are based on a descending melodic line that is varied in each return. A short transition follows based on a fully-diminished sonority in which the bass line descends (as did the previous melodic line) by half-step, enabling that sonority to change into a dominant-seventh sound which actually functions as an augmented-sixth chord whose unexpected resolution underscores the appearance of the "tiny light" in measure 26. The series of flickering grace notes which precede it may also forecast the Lichtlein. This last section, with its major sonorities, is further unified by the repeated usage of a melodic motive of an ascending leap of a sixth which resolves as an appoggiatura. This motive is replaced by the complimentary third, beginning in measure 32. The piece ends with a simple hymn-like tune in the accompa- niment, possibly depicting the "song of praise", framed by the opening measures.
The second song, In meines Vaters Garten, offers contrast to the surrounding pieces in several ways. It is in 6/8 instead of 4/4, it is much longer, and if these songs were intended as a group, the key of Ab major after D major is quite unexpected. The text itself dictates the section- 51 alized nature of this song. The story introduces three beautiful daughters of a king who have awakened from a dream under an apple tree in their father's garden. Each girl is represented by a different section of music, written to mirror the words and to characterize her. The sections in
Ab major and A major are connected initially by the melodic- mediant19 key of E major, which then serves as the dominant to A major. Toward the end of the song the return to Ab major is accomplished in reverse by the melodic- mediant motion from E major. Of particular interest is the passage in which the second daughter speaks of her lover marching off to battle. Here the marking ohne Pedal helps to suggest military music, (later there is an exact indication to resume pedalling—only in Die Stille Stadt is any other pedal marking to be found). In measure 72, the odd change in meter (to alia breve) for the accompaniment tends to reinforce the march-like military quality below her
6/8 dream world.
19The term "melodic mediant" was introduced by Dr. Joan Groom-Thornton from the University of North Texas to define a specific relationship between chords or keys. Of the eight possible mediants, two are diatonically-related and the remaining six are chromatically-related (remote keys or chords a mediant away from a given pitch). Of these chromatic mediants, two are considered to be melodic mediants. This relationship is based on the principal of voice-leading in which two voices move in contrary motion by half-step, while all other voices are common tones. This relationship therefore occurs between two major chords/keys a major third apart or two minor chords/keys a major third apart. (This same voice-leading also occurs between two dominant seventh chords a minor third apart, and two dominant seventh chords a tritone apart.) 52 The last three songs in this set are love songs. The most effective is Laue Sommernacht. It was premiered in New York on March 3, 1911 by Frances Alda Gatti-Casazza (the wife of the general manager of New York's Metropolitan Opera).20 Alma was fortunate enough to be able to attend:
I was often taken out for drives by friends as a relief from constant attendance at his bedside [Gustav's]; and one afternoon Frankel came for me unexpectedly. This was very opportune, as it was the afternoon of Alda Casazza's recital and I had a ticket for the back of the gallery. Mahler and I came to a secret understanding that Frankel should take me. Frankel was very much astonished when he found I was going to a concert, a thing I had not done for weeks. I did not say what the concert was, let alone that a song of mine was being sung, and I parted from him speedily before he had time to ask. Meanwhile, Mahler was awaiting my return in the keenest suspense. He said he had never been in such a state of excitement over any performance of his own works. When I told him it had been encored he said, xThank God,' over and over again. He was quite beside himself for joy.21
The entire set was then performed in December of the same year with Alexander Zemlinsky accompanying.22 Laue Sommernacht is tightly structured. The entire song evolves from a harmonic progression moving upward from the tonic to the dominant. The beginning of each new phrase supplies resolution for the preceding phrase. The whole song becomes
20Kravitt , op. cit., 191.
21Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), 191. 22Ibid. 53 a set of variations on the two-measure progression stated in the piano's introduction:
Example 8. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Lieder, No. 3, Laue Sommernacht, measures 1-2. Etwas drangend
stringendo
cresc. -
Structurally, the first seven measures are of an introductory nature, followed by two sections that are basically identical, one seven measures, one six measures. A feature worth noting is that the dominant harmony in the final statement of the progression is left unresolved. There is a great concentration of detailed tempo marks, fermatas, and caesuras in this song: constant tempo fluctuation is a hallmark of her style. Such markings are as important as the notes themselves if a performance is to realize the Expressionism which brings such emotional intensity to her works.
23Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Laue Sommernacht," Fiinf Lieder in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), 13, measures 1-2. 54 The last line of the text "fiel dein Licht11 shows a notable example of her word-painting by the fall of a minor seventh in the vocal line, while harmonically the accompaniment employs the "Tristan" chord. The last two songs in the set are shorter and simpler than the others. Bei dir ist es traut is unified on several levels. In the first half, the predominantly chromatic bass line provides harmonic direction (descending scale), while a bell-tone with a grace note is present in almost every measure, possibly suggesting the chiming clock. Two continuous rhythmic patterns delineate the two sections of the piece: the first, a guarter-note followed by two eighth-notes, the second, steady guarter-notes in the left hand against half-notes in the right hand. These repetitive patterns, in addition to the slow harmonic rhythm, impart a sense of stability: a rare characteristic in her writing. The piece is framed, as are several others, by the return of the thematic material that began the song. Dynamics ranging only from ppp to pp are employed. A similar emphasis on the softer side of the dynamic range occurs in the song Licht in der Nacht. All other songs contain wider dynamic ranges, often with many sudden contrasts.
The short poem Ich wandle unter Blumen is also set in two sections; the first is song-like while the second is almost a recitative. The chords in the first section are related as melodic mediants and dominant sevenths, while the 55 second section is freely chromatic. The piece ends as it began, in C major, with a quick reference to the harmonies heard in the initial measure condensed into a closing melodic motive. Of particular interest is the course of the vocal line which begins on G and ascends by half- or whole- step (except for wavering at the words "und schwanke bei jedem Schritt") until it reaches the next octave G, where upon it immediately falls an octave to the original lower G again responding specifically to the text "fall' ich dir sonst zu FtiBen". In the volume of Alma's songs the most successful of the three sets is the second, the Vier Lieder. It contains some writing that resembles that found in the previous set, but also much that shows movement toward atonality. This is not surprising, considering that the first and last songs were written before Alma married Gustav (before her twenty- second year in 1902), while the middle two were written in 1911. However, they all were revised before publication in 1915.24 More rhythmically sophisticated, these pieces have accompaniments far more challenging than those in the first set, with dense harmonic texture thickened by the increased use of broken chords, arpeggios, and doublings.
In this set and the last, rhythmic patterns are important unifying devices. In Licht in der Nacht, for
24Susan M. Filler, Gustav and Alma Mahler: A Guide to Research (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), xlix-1. 56 instance, there are two levels of rhythmic patterns which undergo only slight changes before the eleventh measure.
The first level (in the right hand consisting of two eighths followed by a longer note value) returns in measures 35-37 and beneath the last vocal phrase, while the second level
(in the left hand made up of a quarter note and dotted half) occurs with the previous pattern, however, only in the opening and closing phrases. In measure 12, a syncopated rhythmic and melodic pattern is introduced which is recalled at the climax of the piece (measure 26). The single measure of piano interlude which follows the climax is remarkably similar to one found in Laue Sommernacht (Examples 9a and
9b).
Example 9a. Alma Mahler, Vier Lieder, No. 1, Licht in der Nacht, measures 25-28.25
emst Je-su Christ, des ausdrucksvoll Sill steigerna I £
25Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Licht in der Nacht," Vier Lieder in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), 19, measure 28. 57
Example 9b. Alma Mahler, Ftinf^Lieder, No.3, Laue Sommernacht, measure 11,
p= mm— warm < JL _ \j>t4 7 rsfZ4 i TV f 1 Is u u ! 14"\ii i _j: 1
The rhythmic motive initiated in measure 12 reappears within
the four measures beginning at measure 31. Although the
vocal line outlines the tonic D minor triad in its last
measure, the accompaniment quotes the opening idea
concluding with the strange addition of the dominant pitch
in the bass left unresolved. The highest pitches of the
vocal line emphasize the words "flimmert", "Herz", "Licht",
"Stern", rising from Eb to E to F# and ultimately to G on
the word "Christ". Although there is considerable harmonic
change, the slow-moving bass repeats (measures 31-34 and 39-
42) and unifies the last section.
The second song, Waldseligkeit, is unified by three
elements. The first displays small rhythmic values utilized
in motivic patterns (an ideal device for creating the
atmosphere of a forest at night) which are recalled at the
26Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Laue Sommernacht," Fiinf Lieder in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), 14, measure 11. 58 end. Secondly, the falling appoggiatura which makes its first appearance in the third measure at the peak of the vocal line is immediately imitated a step higher in the accompaniment and recurs throughout the piece. An elaboration of the motive becomes the main melodic idea for the interlude marked Innig at measure 10. Thirdly, the harmonic direction is guided by the long bass line, which descends and ascends chromatically. Its descent guides the harmony into the first change of key areas from D minor to E major (measure 9 to 10), continuing to the E pedal point in measure 17. As the bass descends further, the build-up to the climax is intensified by the syncopation in the right hand of the accompaniment in measure 19 which is then appropriated by the left hand in measure 22, involving rhythms found in the initial bass line and in the elaboration of the appoggiatura motive (measure 10). The bass descends further to Ab where the unusual device of a black-key glissando serves beautifully to point up the repetition of the text nganz nur deinJ" A diminution in right hand octaves, (a reminder of the original descending bass line) repeats in an inner voice—the A which occurs on beat four of measure 26 in all probability should be an Ab,
substantiated by the statement in the inner voice which
immediately follows in measure 27. The piece ends in the
unexpected key of Db major, having been reached through a
rich cadence involving a ninth chord on the dominant Ab, 59 moving through an augmented dominant which is actually the melodic mediant substitution (voice-leading by half-step except for one voice which moves by whole-step between the first and second chords). Within the key, the original treble motive returns, now rhythmically in diminution and melodically mostly in evocative whole-tones:
Example 10. Alma Mahler, Vier Lieder, No. 2, Waldseligkeit, measures 22-34.27
hevorbrechend
zifur dein!
crescenao
£
sehr 1 anas am
) YH.VTANDO AUI TK'n schwarzcn Taslcn.
27Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Waldseligkeit," Vier Lieder in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), 21, measures 26-34. 60 Both key areas of E major and Db major, although not closely related to D minor, were forecast in the first section of the piece: measures 3 and 6. Noteworthy is the lack of fermatas and caesuras in this piece. Ansturm is a bold poem. The challenge to match its erotic mood through musical expression is met quite aggres- sively by the composer. Dehmel's subject of sexual tension and release is simulated most obviously in increasing rhythmic density. Although the key is ambiguous throughout, certain repeated sonorities and bass lines help to structure the piece. For example, the first two chords are immediately repeated, but with different doublings and roots. The first chord, in particular, becomes even more important because it returns with its original voicings in measure 24 as the piece draws to a close. In measure 5, a Bb major chord with an added major seventh appears; it returns as the sonority for the climax of the piece in measure 14 and again in the postlude. The opening bass line (to measure 5) returns in measures 24-28. The outlining of a third, very important melodically, is introduced in the opening vocal lines and occurs throughout, most obviously on the words "dann bebst du". The postlude is built around this melodic motive. The more extensive use of non- functional harmony clearly indicates a move toward atonali- ty. 61
Alma's surging harmonies are especially rich in the constant eighth-note motion of Erntelied, which through its inner chromatic lines in the accompaniment, displays a quick harmonic rhythm. In contrast, one harmony may
suddenly be sustained for a whole measure instead of
changing on almost every beat, possibly to set off part of
the text, as in measures 59 and 61:
Example 11. Alma Mahler, Vier Lieder, No. 4, Erntelied, measures 55-61 28
unci im B lauen sind esWa n - (ierf'lu - ye? Schweig, o
hast da t
cresc.
This song also contains the greatest dynamic range of all of
the songs, from ff in the climax to ppppp in the final
28Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Erntelied," Vier Lieder in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), 28, measures 55-61. 62 measure. Erntelied has two sections which contrast in rhythmic density. The opening section is fairly simple rhythmically; measure 17 introduces a more agitated section containing syncopations and smaller note values (including thirty-second note and sixteenth-note triplets). The first section returns in measure 37 and the whole process is repeated with slight variations on all melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic levels. The close brings a final reference to the first section for the piano, while the voice accompanies with a beautiful vocalise. The final set of songs, Ftinf Gesange, contains not only longer, but more freely structured pieces. The only one actually dated is Der Erkennende (1915), and it is believed that the others may also have been composed after Gustav's death as well.29 The first and last songs are to texts—one sacred and one profane—by Novalis. Similar means of construction are employed in them. Both contain melodic motives and rhythmic patterns that unify. In the seventh measure of the first song, Hymne, a two-measure melodic motive in both voice and piano is introduced and returns in the climaxes and closing section. This motive, strongly reminiscent of the melodic gesture found in two earlier songs (Examples 9a and 9b) would seem to be a veritable idSe fixe in Alma's musical thinking. The influence of Wagner possibly inspired her to
29 Filler, op. cit., xlix-1, 63 create from this motive a processional quality similar to that accompanying the celebratory rites in the temple of the Holy Grail in Parsifal (Novalis' text compares human love to the sacrament of communion). Two other short sections follow with contrasting rhythmic textures, one in constant triplets, outlining chromatically-moving harmonies, the other (appearing only once), beginning in 3/2 time with eighth-notes counterpointing half-note chords and ending in seven measures where movement almost ceases, creating a mysterious atmosphere to match the questioning text. The last song, Hymne an die Nacht, is the only published song which begins with the voice unaccompanied (with the exception of Ich wandle unter Blumen which has only an eighth-note upbeat for the voice). Its descending melodic motive returns throughout the piece and again in the "framing" conclusion. As the tempo quickens the voice climbs upward in a scale encompassing an octave and a fifth. The passionate section at measures 28-34 returns, after a brief unsettling shift to 6/8 when the text speaks of blood being transformed into the ethereal, this time a half-step higher. In measures 46-48 there is a bold return to the original pitch level. Although the piece begins in F minor, it ends in Ab major (after a momentary reminder of the previous sharp key), expressing the warmth of the ecstatic close of the poem. 64
Like these songs, the second and fourth have rhythmic textures which tend to sectionalize, but, by their very repetition, also unify. Ekstase, written in two distinct sections, is the simplest of the five songs. The chorale- like beginning (the word "Choral" even appears in the text) leads to an even broader section which pianistically exploits extreme registers of the instrument with high, shimmering repeated chords over low-bass octaves and arpeggios. This dream-like quality in contrast to the chorale appropriately reflects the transfiguration in the poem. Although the tonality moves from F major ultimately into the dominant of Ab major, a short sequential melodic motive returns it to the dominant of F major cadencing directly into the coda, which includes a direct repetition of measures 2-7. The fourth song, Lobgesang, begins in a majestic fashion similar to that heard in the second piece.
When the text speaks of waves, a descending melodic motive spanning a third is accompanied by surging arpeggios. This is followed by a calmer section in which triplets ultimately slow into longer note values. Both sections repeat, the arpeggiated section ppp to reflect the deeps of the ocean, the calmer section developing in rhythmic layers to the closing climax, where over a low C pedal point, fff parallel major chords are finally melodically resolved. The ever- changing smaller rhythmic values in this piece give a 65
Wagnerian sense of ebb and flow, as the text seems to demand.
The only piece that Alma mentions in her writings is
Der Erkennende. She was the wife of Walter Gropius when she discovered the poem; it was two years before she actually met its author, poet Franz Werfel, whom she later married.
"The poem engulfed me. It has remained one of the loveliest in my experience. I was spellbound, a prey to the soul of
Franz Werfel, whom I did not know. . . ."30 (Alma set only the first three of Werfel's seven stanzas). The song is distinguished from the others in this set by its compact structure. With great economy, she develops the musical material of the first three measures into a song of moderate length:
Example 12. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Gesange, No. 3, Der Erkennende, measures 1-3.31
Ruhiff
mm - - \^l Lg m' T * m:z j—1 Men - seheri lie - ebn
[TV \— /Pu—^ 43 •W' L * " J' a-VL - —*
hp bp 0 ' IB • •Ai'r'r 4
30Alma Mahler-Werfel, And the Bridge is Love (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), 3.
31Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Der Erkennende," Fiinf Gesange in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984), 39, measures 1-3. 66
Based essentially on this vocal line and the descending bass line, the piece is marked by strong sectional contrasts of major and minor sonorities. Given this economy of means, there is little rhythmic contrast compared to the other pieces of the set. A sense of a walking bass is created by the constant quarter-note movement of the piece; the sixteenth-note flourishes appear only in accompanimental interludes and interjections. In many places cadences overlap the beginnings of new phrases (a technique already used in Laue Sommernacht). The opening vocal entrance returns with the melody divided between piano and voice at
"heiflt: Allein", a crucial moment in the text:
Example 13. Alma Mahler, Fiinf Gesange, No. 3, Der Erkennende, measures 43-47.32
r * >)J If - J J1 1- jJJ)l u ^ Und das "fort,V das mUet, heifit: A1 lein- , _j—Jjp—^ j jii A l> 1 ——t*J*" • T* y'. J. ,1 «- - — tr fr=ff= • He bp hp bp m vw rp f~m f ! 1 — p -P-,—- p tM ——
A constant hovering around the pitch D in the beginning and ending sections and to a lesser degree around the pitch A in the middle creates a sense of pedal point. The music's tenacity in maintaining these pitches aptly reflects the
32Alma Schindler-Mahler, "Der ErkennendeFiinf Gesange in the Samtliche Lieder (Wien: Universal, 1984) 41 measures 46-47. ' ' 67 nature of the text, which deals with people's inability to
change, their indifference, and their incapacity to
communicate love.
Lili and Alma's art songs were written at
approximately the same time, yet incorporate completely
different harmonic vocabularies within the contrasting
styles of Impressionism and Expressionism. Even among such
divergence, there are similarities revealed through
theoretical analysis including chromatic mediant usage and
the integration of motive, harmony, tonality and form; this
indicates a depth of compositional musical understanding beyond "salon music" of the time. Such complexity sets
Lili and Alma apart from many other women composers and is
the impetus for my inguiry into their music. CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Performance Practice Issues
In performance, an important consideration is maintaining stylistic individuality: the works of these two women demand quite different approaches. Although both avoided presenting a detailed musical representation of the text, each expressed her perceptions in different ways;
Lili's music creates an emotional atmosphere, an impression, around a subject, Alma's conveys emotions and moods directly toward a subject, supposedly reflecting her own inner con- sciousness, the goal of Expressionism.
The previous chapter of analysis discussed chiefly the unifying elements of the works, because they serve to enhance performance. These elements must be pointed up in performance, for they convey the structure of the piece. A performance which purposefully stimulates the listener to perceive structure on some level can be considered successful. It is the performer's responsibility to present the composer's ideas as clearly as possible; what the composer deems most important is usually communicated through such unifying features. A performer's awareness and ability to call attention to them creates a musicianly performance. Decisions based on strong musical evidence
68 69 provided by analysis establish communication, not only between the performers, but also with the audience—a communication that cannot be achieved through random or arbitrary musical gestures, no matter how beautifully executed. Differing rhythmic approaches are necessary in performing these melodies, these Lieder. The understatement and subtlety of Lili's writing demands strict, steady tempo, unless specific directions are otherwise. Alma, on the other hand, generates a constant rhythmic freedom and rubato through countless fermatas, caesuras, broken chords and detailed tempo markings. Directness and intensity would be lost without this expressive freedom.
Another aspect of performance practice applied to the accompaniments is the use of the pedal. As might be expected, there are many more pedal marks in Lili's works than in Alma's. Alma marks "Pedal" in two pieces only, while Lili employs the mark throughout her songs and even indicates what combination of pedals to use, as is typical of French music of the time. Alma's writing would seem to assume a smooth connection of pedal at all times, but even more importantly, clean pedalling (unless otherwise indicat- ed as in Erntelied), in order that the faster harmonic rhythms might be heard and understood. The atmosphere of haziness that Lili's writing evokes reguires a different use of pedal, often with conscious blurring of the harmonies 70 through half-pedals and flutter-pedals. In general, the technical approach to the keyboard must reflect the nature of the writing. Overall, a highly sensitive, light-handed touch is required in order for Lili's songs to attain the necessary subtle coloristic changes, while an aggressive approach and a full-bodied sound is needed for the Expressionism in Alma's music. Performance of their works requires a great deal of sensitivity, but sensitivity to two different types of emotion.
Possible Turn-of-the-Century Feminine Aesthetic The study of the musical creations of women may well involve the possibility of a feminine aesthetic:
In addressing the more subjective question of seeking a feminine aesthetic in art music, the nature of aesthetics should first be considered. If aesthetics is defined as a response to the nature of beauty, art, or artistic expression, then it involves personal valuations. Valuations are often the result of experience, and women's collective experience is different from men's.1
With this in mind, is it possible to establish whether there was a turn-of-the-century feminine aesthetic?
We cannot distinguish women's music from men's at the present time, perhaps because we are not familiar enough with women's experiences, have not explored them enough to enable us to discern when they are being expressed. And because qualities associated with the feminine have traditionally been considered inferior and used against women, women composers may have had to adopt a masculine
1Diane Peacock Jezic, Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found (New York: The Feminist Press, 1988), 5. 71 mode of expression in order to be taken seriously as artists.2
Since it is only recently that some women have tried to compose music dealing specifically with the expression of qualities they believe to be characteristically feminine, it is highly probable that in their day there was no conscious effort by Alma Mahler or Lili Boulanger to express such qualities in their music. Did their being women, however, make a difference within the music? The answer to this, though speculative, may offer insight into their music. They already stand out as women composers in their contemporary cultural context: most women did not compose art songs at the serious level attained by these two. The nature of the texts chosen certainly enables us to peer into the personal experience of each, and perhaps even into her experience as a woman. That Lili identified with the heroine in the song cycle Clairieres dans le Ciel implies that her music was indeed expressed on a very personal level and her choosing to set the poem Dans 1'immense Tristesse as her last song could well have had something to do with a preoccupation with death, given her physical state. Alma's selections of texts offer a bold example of personal expression. Few of her text choices were of the kind that other women were setting. In fact,
2Renee Cox, "Recovering Jouissance: An Introduction to Feminist Musical Aesthetics," Women and Music, ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 333. 72 several, especially those of Dehmel, reveal subjects that even male composers had not dealt with so directly. Quite comfortable in expressing the erotic, she chose texts which attracted her. Knowing from her autobiography that she turned to composing and music, particularly in times of depression, it is no surprise that loneliness is a common topic in her music. With all the stressful experiences she had had with men in her life, is it any wonder that she thought so highly of Werfel's poem Der Erkennende? It seems that in both women outside circumstances played a large part in motivating them to create music expressive of and identi- fied with their own feelings. How a musical representation of a feminine aesthetic can be defined is problematic because of the nature of all music written toward the end of the 19th century:
Likewise, the polemics that proliferate around moments of stylistic change are frequently expressed in terms of sexual identity. Early Romanticism, for instance, was in part an appropriation of what the Enlightenment had defined as subjective, "feminine" imagination, and the battles over the relative status of structure and ornamental excess, between rationality and irrationality in early nineteenth-century music were understood as battles over the proper constitution of the bourgeois male. Similarly, the turn from late Romantic hysteria and popular music to the refuge of rigorous Modernism is a gesture partly informed by the desire to remasculinize the discourse.3
3Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 17-18, 73
Both women were writing at a time in which musical discourse itself in many respects verged on the feminine. Romantic composers had just spent a century trying to deconstruct the logic and balance of the Classical era and, in many ways, were exploring the "feminine", having exhausted the
"masculine". Chopin, for example, with his soft, lyrical, questioning melodies, and Debussy, with his muted, delicate instrumentation and use of small intervals, both employed qualities which had been traditionally regarded as feminine.
The masculine and feminine traits and gestures found in the songs of these women are found in most music of the period, whether written by men or women. But here, there is a problem in defining masculine and feminine traits. Are those qualities which seem to be universally accepted as representative of male and female only the result of centuries of social conditioning which literally dictate what are to be considered inherent norms of behavior?
Unable to divorce ourselves from the conditioning of society, we can only choose at this point to continue discussing music in the context of these stereotypes.
Overall, Lili's music would seem to have more feminine aspects in its understated and gentle qualities, while
Alma's music may well contain many more masculine features, including large intervals, thick textures, and an authoritative, outspoken quality. One unusual feature of
Alma's music is an occasional backing off dynamically at the 74 pinnacle of a harmonic climax (as in Erntelied, Der Erkennende, and Lobgesang). Might this characteristic somehow be related to the feminine? Both are feminine in the abundant use of the appoggiatura with its feminine connotation (based upon its resolution occurring on the weak beat). As is typical of the music of the period, they both tend toward ever-evolving forms (again, feminine in nature), instead of precise, goal-directed forms. Furthermore, nothing conclusive was drawn from an attempt at gender analysis: no specific motives, particular intervals, choice of pitches, or change in musical style were apparent when the texts contained specific charac- terization of male or female.
Closing Statements Although conditions have existed for many centuries which served to exclude or marginalize female participation in music, many women have written compositions of musical worth sufficient to justify their contemporary performance. Lili Boulanger and Alma Mahler have accomplished this through styles of composition existing within the mainstream of the overall development of 20th century music. The sophistication of their music was inspired by the Symbolist poets: the result, a unification of two contemporaneous movements within the arts. Theoretical analysis, not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to musical guidance in performance, has 75 revealed many facets of the music. Harmony as an instrument of musical motion produces a forward surge in Alma's songs, while in Lili's the product is a largely static effect.
They were both seeking freedom from the constraints of the traditional functional tonal system, and analysis revealed that although the tonality is almost always in question it is anchored with the device of repetition. Repetition supplies stability to music in which chromaticism and dissonance had become the norm. They both relied on subtle variations of repeated musical units; Lili, however, in typically Impressionistic fashion, utilizes more repetition than Alma. Clarity of form was no longer as important as continuous growth and evolution—repetition became an ideal vehicle for this development. Suspended tonality became commonplace; key centers were defined by implication and tonal motion was frequently directed toward a goal, but often remained unresolved. Analysis has provided insight into the characteristic compositional devices of each composer, into the songs' structural strengths and weaknesses, and into the differences between Impressionism and Expressionism.
The investigation of performance practice issues revealed that the complexities of their music demand much ability from singer and pianist, musically and technically.
Furthermore, the potential of a feminine aesthetic proved to 76 be definitive in choice of texts, but tentative in musical representation. APPENDIX A
LISTS OF PUBLISHED SONGS
77 78
APPENDIX A
LILI BOULANGER
LIST OF PUBLISHED SONGS
Clairieres dans le Ciel Cycle for tenor and piano (Published in 1919)
Poetry by Francis Jammes Revisions by Nadia Boulanger
Elle etait descendue au bas de la prairie Elle est gravement gaie Parfois, je suis triste Un poete disait Au pied de mon lit Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre r§ve Nous nous aimerons tant Vous m'avez regarde avec toute votre ame Les lilas qui avaient fleuri Deux ancolies Par ce que j'ai souffert Je garde une medaille d'elle Demain fera un an
Dans 1'immense Tristesse (Published in 1919) B. Galeron de Calorie
Attente (Published in 1918) Maeterlinck
Reflets (Published in 1919) Maeterlinck
Le Retour (Published in 1918) Delaquys 79
ALMA MAHLER
LIST OF PUBLISHED SONGS
Ftinf Lieder (Published in 1910) Die stille Stadt (Dehmel) In meines Vaters Garten (Hartleben) Laue Sommernacht (Bierbaum) Bei dir ist es traut (Rilke) Ich wandle unter Blumen (Heine)
Vier Lieder (Published in 1915)
Licht in der Nacht (Bierbaum) Waldeseligkeit (Dehmel) Ansturm (Dehmel) Ernteleid (Falke)
Fiinf Gesange (Published in 1924)
Hymne (Novalis) Ekstase (Bierbaum) Der Erkennende (Werfel) Lobgesang (Dehmel) Hymne an die Nacht (Novalis) APPENDIX B
TRANSLATIONS OF SONG TEXTS INCLUDED IN PERFORMANCE (With the assistance of translator Harold Heiberg)
80 APPENDIX B
TRANSLATIONS OF SONG TEXTS INCLUDED IN PERFORMANCE
Lili Boulanger
81 82
G 0 go
* u 0) 0) CD a) G X! 0 •p O -P CO — S# cd *H *0 cd CO 5 O U -A 0 TJ * XI -P cd cd U 0) CO 0 G u V d) 0* *x: 0 •H V HH M G CO -p G nj cd 4J 0) •H 0) O Xf XJ JH XI 0 X3 CD m G -P CO (TJ -P x; 4^ 0 o cd CQ •H Q) •P G CD X) 4h CQ (d O SH o X! -p •H 3 >1 •P 0 „ •P o g CD Oi Oi M 0) O CO C7> 0) •H JH 0 c •O U <+-« XJ i—I XJ -P •H 4H g co CD O 0 0 CD >i^h 00 &0 CD Q* U (D CD XJ x: x; rH O
CD 0) tl 3 cd •§
CD Q) u 0 co
0 0 G CD CD * • G 3 4J 0 CD X 3 r-H 0 Q>) 0 CO 0 D M JH > X O CD cd /cd cd 0 3 a <0 D X! rH 0 0 0 u cd o 0 •P a; *© Oi o 0 G - G CD o 3 CD CQ CQ 0 3 4J 0 G CD cd O 0 0 XJ G g cd JH V V •P 0 0 U M •H 0 O •o G g rH O CD 3. 6 g CD XJ 4-> G 0 (d rH 4J G -p G« 3 CD 0 fd 0 *0 0 TJ G G fd rH 4-> fd > 0 • 3 • u fd •H CD CD fd 0 Cn rH U c 0 x: -H -H 0 0 fd -H M a. 0 CO •H rH fd u 'D 13 a) d) • 0) a > Q) g rH 0) 0) CO 0 u O CO U -P 0 CO m CO u 0 • \Q) >0 0 > o< 0 *Q 0 fd CO rH g rH u 0 rH 0 rH cn -H rH 0 fd 0 * -p 0 tj 0 r0 G u *0 0 •H g 0 0 CO 0 TJ rH JH fd rH /3 O rH rH 0 0 fd 0 o T3 0 SH 3 V0 rH 0 G s rH •H O 0 U -P CO 0 % 04 3 G •o 0 U vO 3 4-J 3 0 •• M CO 0 rH CO 3 U rH •P CO •«H JH -H 0 O CV# v(D • G • a) Q) GO) £ 01 G *r-» G 0 0 1 CD 3 -H 01 tji 4J *«H -P . fl40lG0iai 3 rHOOM 4J O1 (D tJ 3 G 30iM -P M G -HcdcdGOlcdO10 ,p.p.P01MOT3 M (D01 3 O 301 O 0 cd 0 M &cd3 TRANSLATIONS OF SONG TEXTS INCLUDED IN PERFORMANCE Alma Mahler 87 cn d) G N o 0 I •H 0 I •p cn 0 XI 0 cn g cn 0 0 0 o G Cn x: JZ a X G •p •P 0 u •H 03 03 •P m 0) 73 cn O 5 cn 03 0 cn - >1 rH -P cn V - 0 0 cn 5M - x: •h G -P rH n cn d>) 0 D> 0 -P MH :3 G - U 03 M 0 cn O Tf 0 •H Cn rH -p x* CQ XJ -P o 0 -H cn G -H 0 CN c 0 A M r^- 03 JC XI I cn ago 0 cn -H *H 0> •H rH XJ TJ T3 T3 O M G G 0 G •H 0 0 a *. 0 g 1 ^ x: •» X3 cn *H d) -H 0 g D o x: o 0 cn -p 0 0 7u3 <2 •H O •• 0 xj cn u 0 73 5 ^ ^ X} ^ rH »H X3 cn 0 o 0 5 x: 0 0 0 (d 5 MH rH O o CPS > I CP G XJ -P H O TJ 0 *H x: ^ ftTJ -Ha t *0 3 «M TD rH 03 cn s ^ o :0 G rH T3 G T3 G 0 T3 W rH XI SH CP cn 0 x: :d cd 3 G O G 3 •h x: 0 c cn 0 03 *H a m 0 N 0 > 0 I cn cp g -P 0 > 03 (d -H Jr 0 TJ T3 cn o> g N cn g 0 0 -P ram rH tj tj x: u u u 0 U 0 x: U 0 X5 TJ u 000 CP:3 Cn O 3 0 CP 0 03 73 0 cn 03 rH m 4J -P cn G G G O -P O 03 -P G G -h 3 cn cn *H 3 3 3 15 0 12 ^ cn 3 3 grt! * H *H Cn 88 4J o>* CD G 0 -H JH -P 0 0) 0 X! 03 u - 0 cn 0 0 • •r-| 4-> 0 > fd oo 525 CO fd G 03 fd fd -P G XI x: ON > >i 03 0 s- o J-l fd CO >1 •H W 0 -H 03 fd 2J H 0) - "O 0 0) . X 0 s M G -P x: .P 0 *0 G 3 -P x: O 0 44 J3 3 03 TJ «H CO X! rH o* fd G U & G 0) -H 0 O G •H S-l • fd -H 0 X3 > -H G XJ -P QJ -TJ rH 44 H S X! rH cn fd CO * •H 03 03 0 O G 03 M S . rH CM X 0) 03 -H ^ -W4J 3 flj ¥ O CM > 0) Q) G 3 CU-H o > 5 > Ch r| H 3 O >i rH U U O S ® 0) U 44 3 8° O I 03 fd TJ U CH 4-> <-H H CN O G »-H U -P 0) OJ fd M 0) ® TJ 3 03 XI T3 •P M 0) ^ O 03 O >i •• . fd 0 0) -H Q) G d) XJ 3 -Q T5 XJ G X! 0 -H 0 G4J O-P * 3 0 c 0 M 3 -p U -P > ^ 0 d) G O rH -H rH CO 3: < O G 03 G S D J o* v g 03 -A 0 G (DO) * U -P g +J 03 • £ -H >i * O (1) 0 H H 0 •H X! -P G 0) 4J +J >1 C * 0 G 03 rH 0 03 rH -H 3 OH 0 fd g • cn M-PP w 2 03 H-l V-l O >i >i C •H O H 03 0 CHH 0 rH 4J(d03JC{ Q) (D H CQ 0 -H .p ^ -P 4J 03 C rH 0 J2 0 0 4J G »Q r-H rH 03 03 -H 03 X! 5^ 04 Cti V4 0 0> 3 0 O -H g g 3 V4 0 (d *4 «J <1)000 o X) m (d o x: u o >i pt4 T3 -P +> >»X2 S | >1 03 4~> 0 O 0 x; x: 3 a) a) V-l Cfl-P O "O H H +J O -P G 0 mh G 3 (D (DH •H >t V-| & a) a) a) t> 0 a) s JG X! 03 XI G .G X: 0 E-l .p (d -P < .p -P O a 0) X! - - G u+l c 0 • 03 xi a) cn <*0 POX:* G *• -H lO rd Q) g •P -P •H XJ cn •H >i rH C7> 0) - G x: >i td 4J -p •H (D 0 rH •p • rH G 03 -H 4-> •H (D * 3 O cm3 tJ1 G • V4 U G 03 3 rd td iH 0) TJ A 03 ^ U rH H G cn Oi4-» -H •H 3 •H rH 3 ^ -P 03 O *• rH 3 H rH a) x» 03 O 03 P +) 3 T5 3 0) 03 ^ 0 3 td 03 43 td >iX> 03 >i4-> 0) 4J >i 4-> -P x: a) o TJ •H - -P G * G G X! td -P c • 0) O u x; a) -P U -H x* o -P *H g M JC x: ^ •H CO fd x: 0) (0 •rl u 0 XI 0 cn 44 cd -P • D* 0 0 A g 0 CP O G - •H cv. 'O CP >1 0 'H 0 Jm g u (D 5 > o V r—I X3 tJ* o 0 CO O 0 4-i Cn G co > O Dlrl >.£! G ^ .rH 0 U -P r—I 3» CP 0 *0 CP O X - o •H TJ 0) G 44 * G 44 *H cd 0 G G g 0) 0 mh 4J 4J •H 0 fd -rl 4J I -P 0 Vi O H-l O 0 fd Jh 5 0 S U A (d 0-H > 0 rH x: rd 0 XI > CO m ou-P CO g x; 0 P 3 M • MH 0 6 ^ 0 m w •OOOG 0 4-» -H CO fd 0 O rH T3 *0 mh ns G O TJ A 04 0 fd >10 M O u 3 • 0 c •gH CO 3 0g V4 • o O H o • • a) a) 0 0 g CO > rH 43 X) • 0 — 0 O 42 44 CD T3 0 43 >idH C G cd 0) 0c G •H Q . a •H 0 -H c — a x; 0 So 5 r- 0 a) 4J 0 - O rH r— v vd £ c S-l 43 4J -H rH • TJ •H O U U 0 < G M G |S i4 3 4-> 0) -H O U 0 •H 0 G 5 G 0 ^ O tsj ^ G .. G G :3 O H S V4 44 0 CO 0 CJ 0 H ffi:3 Books Bierbaum, Otto Julius. Gesammelte Werke, 10 vols., ed. Michael Georg Conrad and Hans Brandenburg. Munich: G. Miiller, 1912-1922, I. Bowers, Jane, and Judith Tick, eds. Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Bowra, C.M. The Heritage of Symbolism. London: Macmillan Press Limited, 1943. Dehmel, Richard. Gesammelte Werke, 3 vols. Berlin: S. Fischer, 1913, I. Elson, Arthur. Woman's Work in Music. Portland, ME: Longwood Press, 1976. (Reprint of the 1903 edition.) . Gustav and Alma Mahler: A Guide to Research. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. Hall, James Husst. The Art Song. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953. Ivey, Donald. Song: Anatomy, Imagery, and Styles. New York: The Free Press, 1970. Jammes, Francis. "Tristessespp.29-56 of Clairieres dans le Ciel, 1902-1906. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. Jezic, Diane Peacock. Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found. New York: The Feminist Press, 1988. Mahler, Alma. Gustav Mahler: Memories & Letters, ed. Donald Mitchell, trans. Basil Creighton. New York: The Viking Press, 1969. Mahler-Werfel, Alma. And the Bridge is Love. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958. Mahler-Werfel, Alma. Mein Leben. Frankfurt-am-Mein: S. Fischer-Verlag, 1960. 93 94 Martner, Knud. Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler, trans. Eithne Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser, and Bill Hopkins. New York: Faber and Faber, 1979. Maeterlinck, Maurice. Serres chaudes, Quinze Chansons, La Princesse Maleine. Paris: Gallimard, 1983. McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Monson, Karen. Alma Mahler: Muse to Genius. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983. Neubauer, John. Novalis. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980. Oncley, Lawrence Alan. The Published Works of Alexander Zemlinsky. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1975; Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 75- 17,061. Palmer, Christopher. Impressionism in Music. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. Pendle, Karin, ed. Women and Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Preminger, Alex, ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Rieger, Eva, ed. Frau und Musik. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1980. Rosenstiel, Leonie. The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978. Sorell, Walter. Three Women: Lives of Sex & Genius. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1975. Stevens, Denis, ed. A History of Song. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1960. Stewart-Green, Miriam. Women Composers: A Checklist for the Solo Voice. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980. Weissweiler, Eva. Komponistinnen aus 500 Jahren. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer,1981. Werfel, Franz. "Das Lyrische Werk," ed. Adolf D. Klarmann. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1967. 95 Articles Chailley, Jacques. "L'oeuvre de Lili Boulanger," La Revue Musicale, 110. 353-354, June, 1982, 1-44. Filler, Susan M. "A Composer's wife as Composer: The Songs of Alma Mahler,11 Journal of Musicological Re- search IV (1983), 427-441. Filler, Susan. "Alma Mahler: Der Erkennende," Historical Anthology of Music by Women, ed. James R. Briscoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, 245-47. Fauser, Annegret. "Die Musik hinter der Legende: Lili Boulangers Liederzyklus Clairieres dans le Ciel," Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik CLI (November, 1990), 9-14. Griffiths, Paul. "Dehmel, Richard," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols., ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980, V, 326-327. Kravitt, Edward F. "The Lieder of Alma Maria Schindler- Mahler," Music Review XLIX/3 (1988), 190-204. Palmer, Christopher. "Lili Boulanger," Musical Times CIX (March, 1968), 227-28. Rieger, Eva. "Dolce semplice? On the Changing Role of Women in Music," Feminist Aesthetics. London: Women's Press, 1985, 135-149. Rosenstiel, L§onie. "Lili Boulanger," Historical Anthology of Music by Women, ed. James R. Briscoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, 232-244. Scholium, Robert. "Die Lieder von Alma Maria Schindler- Mahler," Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift XXXIV (1979), 544-51. Smith, Warren Storey. "The Songs of Alma Mahler," Chord and Dischord II (1950), 74-78. Scores Boulanger, Lili. Quatre Chants pour Voix et Piano. New York: G. Schirmer, 1979. (Reprints of songs published in 1918 and 1919.) 96 Clairieres dans le Ciel, rev. by Nadia Boulanger. Paris: Durand, 1970. (Reprint of 1919 edition.) Schindler-Mahler, Alma Maria. Samtliche Lieder. Wien: Universal, 1984. (Reprint of the 1910 and 1915 editions with introduction by Herta Blaukopf.)