Eftychia Papanikolaou Is Assistant Professor of Musicology and Coordinator of Music History Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio
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Eftychia Papanikolaou is assistant professor of musicology and coordinator of music history studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Her research (from Haydn and Brahms to Mahler’s fi n-de-siècle Vienna), focuses on the in- terconnections of music, religion, and politics in the long nineteenth century, with emphasis on the sacred as a musical topos. She is currently completing a monograph on the genre of the Romantic Symphonic Mass <[email protected]>. famous poetic inter- it was there that the Requiem für Mignon polations from Johann (subsequently the second Abteilung, Op. The Wolfgang von Goethe’s 98b), received its premiere as an inde- Wilhelm Meisters Leh- pendent composition on November 21, rjahre [Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship], 1850. With this dramatic setting for solo especially the “Mignon” lieder, hold a voices, chorus, and orchestra Schumann’s prestigious place in nineteenth-century Wilhelm Meister project was completed. In lied literature. Mignon, the novel’s adoles- under 12 minutes, this “charming” piece, cent girl, possesses a strange personality as Clara Schumann put it in a letter, epito- whose mysterious traits will be discussed mizes Schumann’s predilection for music further later. Goethe included ten songs in that defi es generic classifi cation. This Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, eight of which article will consider the elevated status were fi rst set to music by Johann Fried- choral-orchestral compositions held in rich Reichardt (1752–1814) and were Schumann’s output and will shed light on included in the novel’s original publication tangential connections between the com- (1795–96). Four of those songs are sung poser’s musico-dramatic approach and his by the Harper, a character reminiscent of engagement with the German tradition. an epic rhapsode, and four by Mignon.1 Numerous composers, from Zelter and A Bildungsroman? Beethoven to Liszt and Wolf, set Mignon’s and the Harper’s songs as lieder for solo The idiosyncratic style and content of voice with piano accompaniment.2 In Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre has led many 1849, a year that witnessed numerous scholars to dispute its categorization as celebrations surrounding the centenary of a Bildungsroman. Only a couple of years Goethe’s birth (an anniversary with obvi- after its publication, Friedrich Schlegel ous nationalistic overtones), Schumann called the book “absolutely new and chose to commemorate him in his Szenen unique.” He asserted that we “can learn aus Goethes Faust (1844–53)3 and by to understand it only on its own terms. creating a comprehensive opus out of all To judge it accordingly to an idea of genre the songs in Wilhelm Meister. With the drawn from custom and belief, accidental exception of only one (an anonymous experiences and arbitrary demands, is satire, “Ich armer Teufel, Herr Baron” from as if a child tried to clutch the stars and Book 3, Chapter 9), Schumann wrote mu- the moon in his hand and pack them in 5 sic for all remaining nine songs and, in an his satchel.” If Faust, especially Part II, unconventional turn, he chose to cap this still resists traditional stage presentation, collection of lieder with a musical setting largely due to its philosophically oriented of Mignon’s funeral rites, a passage that aesthetic nuances, then Wilhelm Meister’s appears later in the novel and that had illusive classifi cation as a Bildungsroman never been set to music before. seems to fail to do justice to the excep- Schumann’s lied cycle and Mignon’s tional qualities of this work. Exequien (as Goethe called the funeral In the course of the novel’s eight books scene) appeared in 1851 under a uni- (which vary in length from 9 to 17 chap- fi ed opus number, titled Lieder, Gesänge ters each), Wilhelm undertakes a process und Requiem für Mignon aus Goethe’s of self-discovery and education, but it is Wilhelm Meister, Op. 98.4 In the fall of Mignon, one of the main characters (some 6 1850 Schumann moved to Düsseldorf to might even say the protagonist) who assume the duties of music director, and radically evolves and tragically perishes at CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 51 Number 2 19 ""WhoseWhose MMourning?ourning? Schumann'sSchumann's DieDie RequiemRequiem fürfür Mignon"Mignon" the end of the book. Early on we learn that her life, is no longer the strangely looking, theaters, where music only serves she was “taken from her parents when she androgynous creature Wilhelm saved. When the eye, accompanying movements, was very young by a company of acrobats,” she is asked to participate in a theatrical not feelings. In oratorios and and she became Wilhelm’s adoptive daugh- play as an angel, we witness her for the fi rst concerts the physical presence of ter, with whom she formed a strange attach- time “clothed in a long, thin white garment the singer is disturbing. Music is only ment, at once fi lial and erotic.7 Mignon is “the with a girdle of gold around her chest and for the ear. A lovely voice is the most prey of strong emotions,” and her personal- a golden crown in her hair.”10 Immediately universal thing one can think of, and ity “consists almost entirely of a deep sort afterwards she sings her last song in the if the limited individual producing of yearning: the longing to see her mother novel, “So lasst mich scheinen,” whose text it is visible, this disturbs the effect again, and a longing for [Wilhelm]”—those, relates immediately to this transformative of universality…. when someone actually, seem to be “the only earthly things experience. It also sadly offers a prolepsis is singing, he should be invisible, his appearance should not prejudice about her.”8 Fragile and vulnerable (indeed of her impeding death: Wilhelm encounters me in his favor or distract me. With she suffers from “terrible convulsions” when her shortly thereafter, still decked out in singing it is a case of one organ emotionally disturbed),9 Mignon is a mar- her “long white dress, her thick brown hair addressing another, not one mind ginalized personality until she undergoes a partly hanging loose”; at the sight of Wilhelm speaking to another, not a manifold major transformation. Starting with Book kissing another woman, Mignon suffers a 11 world to a single pair of eyes, not 6, Mignon, who had worn boys’ clothes all seizure and dies. Afterwards, we learn heaven to a single man.13 that the Harper (who is also dead) was her father, and Mignon was born of an incestu- (Book 8, Chapter 5) ous relationship with his sister. As strange as this story seems, even if read allegorically in It is immediately after this account that Goethe’s superbly crafted prose, it neverthe- Mignon dies. A couple of chapters later, less helps elucidate the constant yearning, Mignon’s funeral takes place in this familiar isolation, and poignancy of the novel’s ten Hall, as if it were “an elaborately staged dra- lyrical interpolations. It will also help us un- matic performance.”14 This time Mignon’s derstand the elaborate scene of Mignon’s embalmed body lies inside the ornamented Exequien and how such a non-traditional sarcophagus, and four boys and two invisible musico-dramatic setting forms the perfect choirs, as if “disembodied” in the manner analog to the novel’s unconventional content. described earlier, intone in “gentle strains.”15 After a detailed stage description of the Hall of the Past, Goethe relates a dramatic Exequien exchange that takes place between the four The prose text for Die Requiem für boys sitting near Mignon’s coffi n and the two Mignon comes from the opening of Book invisible choruses. Schumann’s melopoiesis 8, Chapter 8 of Goethe’s novel, in which of this short dialogue, which resembles a the author dramatizes the funeral rites that dramatic scene, constitutes Die Requiem für follow the unexpected death of Mignon. Its Mignon. location, the Hall of the Past, with the “four Schumann, appropriately, gave the texts large marble candelabras” in the corners, of the four boys to two solo soprano and was already described to the readers before, two solo alto voices, while the two choruses when Natalie and Wilhelm observed the are represented by a single chorus on the 16 “exquisite craftsmanship” of a sarcopha- score. Unlike what one would expect gus—an eerie prolepsis of the fate that from the nature of the text, Schumann they knew Mignon would soon succumb does not set this dialogue in an antiphonal to. In that scene, their observation of the manner. Instead, he creates a miniature “semicircular openings” for the “choirs of dramatic presentation in six parts, per- singers, so that they may remain unseen”12 formed without a pause. As he had done had prompted Natalie to relate her uncle’s before, and especially in his setting of scenes 17 account on vocal music—a discourse on from Faust, Schumann followed Goethe’s romantic aesthetics that deserves to be cited text quite faithfully: with the exception of in its entirety: occasional repetitions and/or alterations, the prose serves almost as a libretto (Table We have been spoiled too much by 1 outlines Schumann’s division of the text 20 CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 51 Number 2 "Whose Mourning? Schumann's Die Requiem für Mignon" Table 1 Indications of Modifi cations in Schumann’s Setting [roman] = alternate spelling [italics] = entirely omitted underlined = new or modifi ed text italics = repeats text from before J. W. von Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Leh- J. W. von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Robert Schumann, Requiem für Mignon aus rjahre, 1795–96. In Sämtliche Werke, Apprenticeship, edited and translated by Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Op.