CRACKING THE LINZ CIRCLE'S SECRET CODES: A SINGER'S GUIDE TO ALTERNATE INTERPRETATIONS OF SCHUBERT LIEDER

Jane M. Leathers

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

December 2006

Committee:

Myra Merritt, Advisor

Mary Natvig

Christopher A. Williams

© 2006

Jane M. Leathers

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Myra Merritt, Advisor

Building on recent biographical research, this thesis examines coded references with possible connections to homosexuality and/or desire in approximately twenty-five Schubert Lieder. Several recurring images will be identified in the texts of

sixteen poets, specifically Bruchmann, Goethe, Hölty, Hüttenbrenner, Klenke,

Mayrhofer, Platen, Rochlitz, Rückert, Salis-Seewis, Schiller, Schlechta, Schlegel,

Schober, Schubart, and Seidl. Some of these poets were associated with the Linz circle,

which was a society of writers formed in 1815 in that city as a club for youth interested in

literature. Others formed a small group of Schubert’s friends. Later in Vienna the Linz

friends mixed with Schubert’s circle of friends in that city. They were poets, painters,

musicians and other intelligentsia who met weekly for poetry readings, both classic and

new. Although Goethe was not a part of either circle, he is included in this discussion

because Schubert’s settings of his texts often show a concern with these same images.

Recurring images that may reference homosexuality or desire include “fishing” and

“fishermen,” “roses” and “rosy cheeks,” “brooks” and “streams,” “East wind breezes,” “a

thousand [kisses],” “verdant groves” and “driven search.” A chart with alternate

meanings for the targeted images will be provided as a reference for the singer. Specific

Lieder to be investigated and included on the candidate’s recital are: Heidenröslein,

Ganymed, Abendstern, Heliopolis, Der Jüngling an der Quelle and Bei dir allein. An iv

awareness of these references in Schubert’s Lieder enhances the singer’s understanding of this composer’s cultural milieu and thus aids in a more informed interpretation. v

To my husband, Dr. Timothy D. Leathers, for his selflessness, generosity, and

encouragement. vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the musicology faculty members on my thesis committee,

Dr. Mary Natvig and Christopher A. Williams, for helping me develop and refine my thesis. vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I. THE ARGUMENT FOR CODES AND METAPHORS...... 3

CHAPTER II. FRANZ SCHUBERT’S LITERARY INFLUENCES...... 9

CHAPTER III. FRANZ SCHUBERT’S PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS ...... 20

CHAPTER IV. FRANZ SCHUBERT’S IMAGES ...... 28

Fishing and Fishermen...... 28

Roses and Rosy Cheeks ...... 31

Brooks and Streams ...... 35

East Wind Breezes ...... 37

A Thousand ...... 40

Verdant Groves...... 43

Driven Search ...... 45

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS ...... 49

REFERENCES ...... 51

APPENDIX. LEATHERS’S LIST ...... 57

1

INTRODUCTION

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is the preeminent composer of the German Lied, having composed more than six hundred Lieder in his thirty-one short years. These

Lieder are extraordinary in their musical variety because of Schubert’s ability to capture

the essence of a poem in song. In his early years, Franz Schubert surrounded himself

more with poets, painters, writers, and actors than with other musicians. These personal

connections spurred Schubert to respond strongly to the literary aspects of the poetry he

set. In recent years, Schubert scholars have developed models for analyzing how

recurrent themes and images convey a cultural message in Schubert’s œuvre. Lawrence

Kramer, for instance, has outlined a “production model” of subjectivity whereby poetic

symbols are carried by the music into the listener’s sense of self, allowing for discovery

of radical potential within one’s normal subjectivity.1 This has direct relevance to the

performance aspect of Schubert’s songs. Susan Youens has shown that symbolic parallels

exist between art and life in Schubert’s works, that Schubert did not ignore the multiple

pathologies present in the interpretative heart of his chosen poems.2 Kristina Muxfeldt

has studied the way Schubert personalizes the sense of his chosen poems through musical

interpretation, often permitting Schubert to represent the psychological state behind the

language.3 My thesis is a synthesis of current scholarship concerning potential ambiguities in Schubert’s texts and music. Drawing on these and other scholars’ concepts of understanding a composer through poetic interpretation, I will suggest hidden meanings in Schubert’s choice of texts. Furthermore, I will hypothesize that they contain

1 Lawrence Kramer, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 7-8. 2 Susan Youens, Schubert, Müller, and ‘Die schöne Müllerin’ (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xvi. 3 Kristina Muxfeldt, “Schubert Song Studies” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York, 1991) 2 coded messages intended for the enjoyment of his intimate associates. I believe this knowledge will enhance the singer’s understanding and aid in a more informed interpretation of Schubert’s Lieder. 3

CHAPTER I. THE ARGUMENT FOR CODES AND METAPHORS

Since Maynard Solomon’s article, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of

Benvenuto Cellini,” was first published in 1989, scholars have debated Schubert’s sexual

orientation, and its possible significance for understanding his art.4 Edward T. Cone,

Kristina Muxfeldt, Susan Youens and Lawrence Kramer have concurred with or at least acknowledged the plausibility of Solomon’s position, that Schubert may not have been exclusively heterosexual.5 Rita Steblin, however, has repeatedly argued against that

possibility.6 While it is not the purpose of this thesis to debate the issue of Schubert’s

sexuality, I, myself, am convinced that Schubert may have had homosexual relationships.

So in light of Susan McClary’s assertion that composers “had complex psychological and

sexual lives and that these aspects of their personalities might be relevant to the work

they produced,” I maintain that these relationships may have influenced his Lieder.7

Franz Schubert was dependent upon the written word for his inspiration. “It is fair

to say that Franz Schubert was one of the first modern composers whose response to

poetry and other literature was central to his creativity… .”8 David Montgomery goes on

to talk about Schubert’s sonic innovations and his departures from the typical sound

envelope in favor of an enhanced tonal language.9 I am interested in Schubert’s literary

4 Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 19th-Century Music 12, no. 3 (Spring 1989): 193-206. 5 Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics,” 19th-Century Music 5, no. 3 (Spring 1982): 233-241. Kristina Muxfeldt, “Political Crimes and Liberty, or Why Would Schubert Eat a Peacock?” 19th-Century Music 17, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 47-64. Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.) Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.) 6 Rita Steblin, “The Peacock’s Tale: Schubert’s Sexuality Reconsidered,” 19th-Century Music 17, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 5-33. 7 Susan McClary, “Music and Sexuality: On the Steblin/Solomon Debate,” 19th-Century Music 17, no.1 (Summer 1993): 83-88. 8 David Montgomery, Franz Schubert’s Music in Performance: Compositional Ideals, Notational Intent, Historical Realities, Pedagogical Foundations (Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2003), 1. 9 David Montgomery, Franz Schubert”s Music in Performance, 2. 4

inspirations, his coding of certain words and phrases to evoke in his audience a nuanced

understanding of the text. I will talk about the musical elements he used to highlight these

meanings only in a perfunctory way. My goal will be to extract the literary codes that I

believe Schubert used to inform and delight his knowledgeable associates.

Though not often given credit, Franz Schubert had a particularly apt

understanding of the ambiguity prevalent in romantic poetry. For the most part, the

poems he chose to set to music are ambiguous, either in use of theme or imagery

conveyed. Lawrence Kramer calls the uncertainty produced by Schubert’s Lied, Die

Forelle, D550, “constitutive; there is no escaping it. But that very uncertainty makes

connotation of this type an invaluable means of opening – or closing – questions of

sexuality.”10 Kristina Muxfeldt talks about the play of images and inflections present in

Rückert’s poem, Dass sie hier gewesen, which Schubert set as Lied, D775, as being

tricky “to precipitate out all the ambiguities in this complex emotion for it is the nuances

of possible meanings that is a large part of what the poem is about… .”11 In describing poet Johann Mayrhofer’s verse, Susan Youens acknowledges that “the ambiguities, the gaps implying missing information, the imagery which seems to constitute a coded language, are far from direct.”12 She states elsewhere that since the Schubert homosexuality debate has focused primarily on private letters and diaries, it is time to look into the poetry for clues. Youens asserts, “it is possible…that the seeming ‘women’ in the poems are actually youths or men, veiled in an identity that would pass muster with the censors… but whatever the genesis of these works, they impel curiosity.”13

10 Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song, 81. 11 Kristina Muxfeldt, “Schubert Song Studies,” 56. 12 Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder, 153. 13 Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder, 160. 5

Curiosity comes from telling the story in multiple layers of meaning. This is

done through the medium of an all-knowing narrative voice. Brian Newbould calls this

voice the ‘poetic persona’. A composer composes through a ‘persona’ who is free of the

day-to-day baggage of life. He is suspended above present reality but shares the

composer’s accumulated past.14 The poetic persona, alternately referred to as poetic speaker or poet-singer, declaims the text sometimes in first person, sometimes in second person, sometimes in third person, and sometimes through the music alone. Schubert’s famous Lied, Heidenröslein, D257, with text by Goethe, is a worthy example. The song begins with a poetic persona in the third person telling a tale about a young lad picking a rose. The lad speaks, the rose speaks, and the narrator speaks again. The simple story belies a deeper meaning, even layers of meaning. The rose is not just a rose. It is innocence itself which has been plucked, thereby destroying its value. The poetic persona progressively laments its loss each time with the phrase, “Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.” This refrain is sung at the end of each stanza, at first admiring the rose with wondrous joy, secondly cajoling the reluctant rose who is not eager to suffer, and thirdly, picking the rose with first awe then vicious glee. A singer’s interpretation can change the poetic persona’s frame of reference. Instead of choosing triumph and identifying with the victorious lad, a singer may choose to side with the violated rose, i.e. girl, and maintain the sad persona through to the finish. This is also an example of Kramer’s alternate subjectivities. One can choose to toss off the violation of the “rose” as normal and natural (the virile masculine approach), or respond with

14 Brian Newbould, Schubert: The Music and the Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 262. 6

sensitivity to such an unnecessary event (the nurturing female approach). Either way the rose will no longer be the same, but one’s humanity is affirmed in relation to it.

It is this subjective relation of decaying images that philosopher Theodor W.

Adorno calls the interplay of ‘truth-character’ which forms the ‘landscape’ of Schubert’s music.15 In grandiose verbage, Adorno reveals that Schubert’s works of art “succeed in

revealing images to such an extent that the luminous force of truth no longer restricts

itself to such images, but breaks through to what is real.”16

The concept of revealing images is dissected in Beate Perrey’s essay, “Exposed:

Adorno and Schubert in 1928.”

…that which is thought to precede language and which for that reason is believed to be closer to music’s own semantic resistances, is the image. …Images extend the reach of merely ordinary words and add greater symbolic depth and intensity to language, enhancing its semantic capacity. Here then, in the image, and above all perhaps in the metaphor, lies what links music and poetry.17

If the linking of music and poetry lies in the image and metaphor, then this

statement paves the way for image work to be done in Schubert Lieder. By categorizing

images and metaphors, one can understand at a glance the greater symbolism governing

that subject area.

In “Landscape as Music, Landscape as Truth: Schubert and the Burden of

Repetition,” Scott Burnham covers Schubert’s circular wandering and the repeatability of

unalterable “truth-character.” He decries Schubert’s repetition as a “makeshift device of a composer incapable of controlling large forms,”18 but that it is idiomatic to his

expression. He calls Schubert’s repetition of illusory landscapes through mediant

15 Theodor W. Adorno, “Schubert (1928),” 19th-Century Music 29, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 3-14. 16 Ibid., 9. 17 Beate Perrey, “Exposed: Adorno and Schubert in 1928,” 19th-Century Music 29, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 18. 18 Scott Burnham, “Landscape as Music, Landscape as Truth: Schubert and the Burden of Repetition,” 19th- Century Music 29, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 37. 7

modulation an existential act. This awareness of having being in time and space

recognizes subjectivity as the only knowable truth.19 It is also abstractedly connected with death in the same way that inevitable darkness falls every night only to be experienced over and over; or that one’s lungs continue to take in and expel oxygen. In other words, the unalterable truth remains the same. The present moment is all there is.

There is, irrefutably, nothing more.

Kofi Agawu’s article, “What Adorno Makes Possible for Music Analysis,” continues the discussion of temporal landscapes. He elaborates: “It all begins in the realm of temporality, the realm of time crafted, time inhabited. We are reminded that time is domesticated differently by different composers…in Schubert, unlike in Beethoven, the most lasting impression is made by remembrance… .”20 This remembrance, as Agawu

instructs, is conveyed through image or metaphor, the analysis of which is “necessarily

comparative… . Schubert’s idiolect is described with the aid of categories like theme,

harmony, form, and relationship between text and music.”21 (I will present some of these categories in my fourth chapter.) Agawu admits that narrative metaphors are hard to resist in analyzing Schubert. He states that the composer’s choice of song texts provides us access to another realm of artistic expression. The strategy is designed to produce a delicate understanding, but one that generates only provisional answers. When pursued authentically, it leads the listener toward the truth content of a composition.22 I believe that authentic pursuit of Schubertian themes can only be attained in performance.

19 Scott Burnham, “Landscape as Music, Landscape as Truth,” 37. 20 Kofi Agawu, “What Adorno Makes Possible for Music Analysis,” 19th-Century Music 29, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 53. 21 Ibid., 50. 22 Ibid., 50-51. 8

However, a provisional understanding may still be gained by working with song texts and the images conveyed by them.

9

CHAPTER II. FRANZ SCHUBERT’S LITERARY INFLUENCES

Schubert’s nineteenth-century Vienna was characterized by distinctive gender differentiation. Women were not allowed to vote, own land, write books, or hold reputable paying positions. Men’s lives were also confined to a rigid mold. The

Biedermeier patriarchal society expected men to better themselves through proper education and support their wives and children monetarily. If men did not earn a certain level of income, they were not permitted a marriage license. Seventeen-year-old Schubert was not able to marry Theresa Grob because his assistant teacher’s salary was too small; and though music composition was a respected field, state and church patronage for composers had waned.23

In the late 1700s, the German middle classes preferred relaxed home entertainment to the fancy imported art forms prevalent at upper class courts. Simple melodies set to Old German texts became the basis of the new Singspiel and later, the

Lied. Kenneth S. Whitton describes a scenario that parallels the future Schubertiads.

It would be performed in the home among a circle of like-minded friends, where the singer would accompany herself or himself. Behind the pleasant picture there was a strong moral and patriotic purpose. This was music for ordinary Germans performed in their language….For ordinary Germans, these Lieder represented what they most appreciated—naturalness. The Lied was an unpretentious art form whose simple texts and music brought peace and delight.24

Schubert was a master of this genre. In great simplicity and naturalness, he allowed his music to give expression to poems of equal originality and ingenuity.

The nineteenth-century intellectual movement called Bildung affected Schubert and his contemporary poets in a substantial way. According to Susan Youens, the ideals

23 Elizabeth Norman Mc Kay, Franz Schubert: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 44. 24 Kenneth S. Whitton, Goethe and Schubert: The Unseen Bond (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1999), 25. 10

of Bildung directed the individual to pursue a higher state, mediated through the arts.

“That this was modeled in part on the concept of friendship in classical antiquity and in part on the classicizing tenets of the late eighteenth-century German masters (Herder,

Jacobi, Goethe and Schiller) is central to the antiquarian ideals of the group.”25 David

Gramit describes Bildung as a lifelong pursuit of intellectual, spiritual, and emotional

cultivation.26 Initially influenced by this movement in Linz, the two Antons, Anton von

Spaun and Anton Ottenwalt, spearheaded the inception of a club for Viennese youths, which Schubert was invited to join. The club was designed to encourage the study of

Greek and Roman classics. Its aim was to elevate society. Ottenwalt recounted the club’s formation in a letter to Schober on July 28, 1817. “It was in the year of the comet of 1811 that we declared that we wanted to be known as brothers because of our common love of the good.”27 The initial circle of Bildung brothers included Josef and Anton Spaun, Anton

Ottenwalt, Johann Mayrhofer, Josef Kenner, Franz Schober, Johann Senn, Franz

Schubert and Franz Bruchmann. As time went on, additional members joined such as

Anselm and Josef Hüttenbrenner and Leopold Kupelweiser. This group of like-minded poets, painters, writers and musicians did cultivate a lifelong pursuit of learning through continuous interaction. Eventually the circle reformed in Vienna. A new crop of friends joined, notably Moritz Schwind and Eduard Bauernfeld. The circle responded to

Schubert’s compositional need for additional original texts. Poetry readings were now a regular part of the meetings, which also included musical performances called

Schubertiads. Literary debates among the circle continued to be strong.

25 Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder, 155. 26 David Gramit, “‘The Passion for Friendship’: Music, Cultivation, and Identity in Schubert’s Circle,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 58. 27 Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets, 155. 11

Schober became leader of the Bildung circle in 1819. Because Schober was an ardent devotee of hedonism, the circle likely debated this philosophy, which held that feelings of pleasure are the highest aims of conduct and therefore actions which increase one’s pleasure must be considered right and good. This view was held by Aristippus of

Cyrene during the school of philosophy that flourished between 400 and 300 BC. Its

doctrines derive from Socrates and Protagoras. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived

from 341 to 270 BC, also advocated the pursuit of pleasure, along with a guilt-free

attitude. It is surmised by Peter Bevan that pleasure-seeking activities among the group

increased to a considerable extent under Schober’s direction. The five-year period from

1819 to 1824 may have proven Schubert’s undoing for it was at this time that he

contracted syphilis.28

John Gingerich sheds light on the Bildung circle’s acceptance of unconventional

philosophies and topics. He conjectures that the group’s “identity was nonconformist,

artistic, and literary, and as a result of that self-understanding tolerated and even

promoted a variety of ‘deviant’ sexual behavior.” 29 According to Solomon, Franz

Schubert’s circle was familiar with Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography, the Vita, first published in 1728, but translated by Goethe into German in 1806. Cellini (1500-1571) was a celebrated goldsmith and sculptor of the Italian Renaissance. He was also a murderer and convicted sodomite. His autobiography is an illuminating account of a bi- sexual artisan’s life during the late Renaissance. Among other exploits in his autobiography, Cellini talks about sleeping with his female and male models, killing one

28 Peter Gilroy Bevan, “Adversity: Schubert’s Illnesses and their Background,” in Schubert Studies, ed. Brian Newbould (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1998), 253. 29 John Michael Gingerich, “Schubert’s Beethoven Project: The Chamber Music, 1824-1828” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1996), 113. 12

of his rivals and standing trial for sodomy charges. Scholar Margaret Gallucci writes that

Cellini’s male apprentices “often slept in the workshop itself, if not in the same beds.”30

Cellini writes in a frank, conversational manner about the pleasures of sex and the joys of male love. He also writes about male companionship, loyalty and the tie that binds male friends together. This certainly had something to do with ‘common love of the good’ for

Cellini’s joy of creating lasting works of art manifested itself while working alongside his faithful associates. There are several stories in his Vita that recall days and nights of struggle on arduous projects, always toiling side by side with a trusted apprentice. While studying in Florence, Cellini recounts a two-year relationship with Francesco Filippo.

“About that time I contracted a close and familiar friendship with an amiable lad of my own age, who was also in the goldsmith’s trade. He was called Francesco, son of Filippo, and grandson of Fra Lippo Lippi, that most excellent painter. Through intercourse

[meaning friendship] together, such love grew up between us that, day or night, we never stayed apart…and for two years or thereabouts we lived in intimacy.”31 Cellini was a violent man, and his life history shows that as amiable as his male bonding may have been, his irascibility was cruelly dangerous. When a rival threatened his business and reputation, Cellini resorted to murder to maintain his honor. The entire episode is recounted in the sixty-third and sixty-fourth chapter of Cellini’s Vita. Amazingly, the

Florentine noblemen and the Pope defended the murderous act. Cellini’s behavior toward the female sex was no less amoral. He often punched and kicked his female models until he tired, an act associated with physical abuse and misogyny. However, Cellini married

30 Margaret A. Galluci, Benvenuto Cellini: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Artisitic Identity in Renaissance Italy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 34. 31 Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. John Addington Symonds (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Company, 1932), 23. 13

his mistress of several years and supported their children. Perhaps one of the reasons that

the ‘brotherhood’ was interested in Cellini was because his strongly traditional masculine

traits were coupled with homoerotic tendencies. The hunting of Cellini’s “peacocks,”

which he used as code for attractive young men, became a running joke within the

Schubert circle as ascertained by the surviving letters. When Schubert was out of sorts, one of the Bildung members wrote that he was in need of young peacocks. This formed the crux of Solomon’s argument that circle members were taking part in homosexual

activities.

Another major Schubertian influence was celebrated poet, novelist and

playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the preeminent author of German

letters. His writings affected Schubert no less than the entire Germanic literary world;

perhaps more so because the young composer was acutely attuned to the imagery of the

great author’s poetry. Goethe was first and foremost a pedagogue, as evidenced by the

following tale. When the young Goethe lost his younger brother Jacob, he “seemed

irritated by his parents’ tears. …ran into his room, and brought back a quantity of lessons

and stories which he had prepared for his brother’s instruction. He seemed to reproach

Jacob for having deprived him, by dying, of the pleasures of educating him.”32 This predilection to educate others through the written word was to serve Goethe throughout

his career. Coupled with what Angelloz calls mystic symbolism, Goethe found his

defining utterance in poetry.33 The following excerpt is from Goethe’s autobiography,

Dichtung und Warheit.

And thus began this sense of direction from which during my whole life I was never to stray; to express as a symbol, a poem, what delighted

32 Joseph-Francois Angelloz, Goethe, trans. R.H. Blackley (New York: Orion Press, 1958), 17. 33 Ibid. 14

me or tormented me or preoccupied me in any way and thus to concentrate it in myself, partly to correct my ideas on the outside world, partly to achieve inner peace. No doubt this gift was more necessary to me than to anyone else, for my nature cast me incessantly from one extreme to the other. Consequently, all of my published work represents only fragments of a great confession.34

Though published in Tübingen between 1811 and 1822, Schubert may not have had

access to Goethe’s complete autobiography, but perhaps he would have agreed through

personal experience that art brings peace to men of divergent natures. Eduard Bauernfeld,

in his memoirs of Schubert, writes:

If there were times, both in his social relationships and in art, when the Austrian character appeared all too violently in the vigorous and pleasure-loving Schubert, there were also times when a black-winged demon of sorrow and melancholy forced its way into his vicinity… .35

If having conflicting tendencies was a commonality between Goethe and

Schubert, there was a second connecting link as well. Both men shared a skepticism of

mainstream religion and worshipped God through nature. Thirdly, both men shared a love

affair with the image, and that poetically expressed through music. Consider Goethe’s

excerpt from Book VII of his autobiography. “Images, then! But where should one get

those images except from Nature? The painter openly imitated Nature; why should not

the poet do so too?”36 Goethe’s poems resonated artistically so well with Franz Schubert that his Goethe settings, particularly Gretchen am Spinnrade, Der Erlkönig, Ganymed

and Heidenröslein, are widely recognized as miniature musical masterpieces.

August Reissmann verifies that Schubert’s settings of Goethe’s lyric poetry

maintained perfect balance with music simply illustrating the words. “Reissman claims

34 Joseph-Francois Angelloz, Goethe, 27-28. 35 Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Schubert: Memoirs By His Friends, trans. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 234. 36 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe’s Autobiography: Poetry and Truth From My Own Life, trans. R.O. Moon (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1949), 226. 15

that both Goethe and Schubert ‘sang their Lieder as did the Volk in bygone days’.”37 In

the following excerpt, Tobias Lund explains the easy connection to music Schubert felt

when Goethe supplied the poetic impetus.

For Schubert, a lyric poem by Goethe immediately aroused the very sentiment that caused Goethe to write it, and this sentiment then completely governed Schubert’s composition. The musical melody became one with the poem since it came out of the basic sentiment as well as the prosody and the structure of the poem.38

Franz Schubert attested to his admiration of Goethe’s poems in his diary entry of

June 1816. In it Schubert explains how enthusiastically his Lied, Rastlose Liebe, was received and comments that “Goethe’s musical poet’s genius contributed much to the success.”39 Goethe was called the ‘Prince of Poets’ and it is unfortunate that the two men

never met. Kenneth Whitton surmises that Goethe’s long association with the

conservative Berlin composer and Kapellmeister, Karl Friedrich Zelter (from the late

1790s to their deaths in 1832), may have effectually closed “the older man’s mind to any

experiments in music generally, and to contemporary music and therefore Franz Schubert

in particular.”40 Goethe enjoyed strophically set versions of his poetry where the music is held subordinate to the written word. Perhaps as a particular cultural and literary aesthetic, Schubert’s forays into through-composition left the German man of letters cold.

Besides Goethe’s influence, Schubert’s artistic development was further stimulated by the active concert schedule in Vienna. In his book, Cultivating Music: The

Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770-1848, David Gramit

37 Tobias Lund, “Winners Write the History: The Reception of Schubert’s Goethe Lieder” in Goethe and Schubert: Across the Divide (Dublin: Proceedings of the Conference ‘Goethe and Schubert in Perspective and Performance,’ Trinity College, 2003), 66. 38 Tobias Lund, “Winners Write the History,” 66. 39 Lorraine Gorrell, foreward to Goethe and Schubert: The Unseen Bond, by Kenneth S. Whitton (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1999), 9. 40 Kenneth S. Whitton, Goethe and Schubert: The Unseen Bond, 38. 16 explains the blossoming musical activity of Schubert’s time as a distinct intellectual and social phenomenon.

The ideal of a high musical culture as it developed through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in German-speaking Europe must be understood in the context of the historically specific material and social concerns of musicians and those dependent on musical activity. Neither the gross developmental schema of a transition from feudal to capitalist relations of production, on the one hand, nor the privileging of a history of ideas and aesthetic developments, on the other, adequately characterizes this development, unless one also takes account of the local and practical concerns of those who constituted the social field of music… Those concerns dictated that the status of music as a serious activity worthy of the attention and support of cultivated society was of paramount importance… Ultimately, the status of German musical culture rested on a precariously double- edged claim: serious (and most often German) music was held to be universally valid, even though, at the same time, maintaining its prestige demanded limiting access to it along the lines of existing social divisions, prominent among them class, gender, education, and nationality.41

Franz Schubert was surely aware of these social divisions and may have used his music to subvert them. According to Lawrence Kramer, Schubert went against the “grain of his age” in constructing alternative subjectivities for gender. 42 Many of Schubert’s songs concern either a female subject or establish a female perspective. Kramer implies that

Schubert courageously depicted virile nineteenth-century masculinity as hard-edged and unresponsive to sensitivity and nurture.43 The repressive and restrictive mores of

Schubert’s cultural milieu may shed light on his advocacy of alternate subjectivities for gender in his art songs. Was Schubert philosophically opposed to cultural domination practiced by either sex, or in particular, to the traditional male hegemony of his era? In describing Daniel Paul Schreber’s delusional system, Kramer states, “one of them is the

41 David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 20-21. 42 Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song, 99. 43 “Nurture” has traditionally been associated with the female gender. 17

desire to throw off the wearisome masculine role of the stronger, the protector.”44 The allure is to be the weaker one, the one who follows.

Inviting men to identify with feminine subjects or subject-positions, they set up femininity as an alternative mode of masculinity. …The wish to be woman is primarily a means of imaginary escape from the self-alienation, the emotional and sexual narrowness, demanded of ‘normal’ men.45

Graham Johnson sheds light on exactly how Schubert portrays the traditional

male in his notes to Hyperion CDJ33034 when he describes Der Alpenjäger, D524. “The

contour of the vocal line moving up and down the stave, and occasionally plunging the

octave, suggests the physical movements of a sure-footed climber, and these intervals

also tell us that he can yodel into the next valley when necessary. The accompaniment

employs the thirds and sixths typical of horn music.”46 Johnson explains that what he

considers the authentic Schubertian touch happens in the contrasting middle section.

[Hear the]…voice and accompaniment rise to a D flat underpinned by a diminished seventh chord; …this changes enharmonically to a C sharp as part of an A seventh chord leading to a modulation into D major. This change seems to conjure a vision of sweetness and femininity before our eyes and ears, and the singer is transformed by the radiance. It is as if a beam of healing love has ennobled this rustic soul and rendered him able to communicate in a delicate and sensitive manner.47

Ternary form in this song is completed with a recapitulation of the first verse, prompting

a further observation by Johnson: “After having glimpsed another, more vulnerable side

of the man’s character we are happy to hear his working refrain once again.”48

What might account for Schubert’s journey to the feminine in the middle section of Der Alpenjäger? A postmodern interpretation might reflect what Karen Bottge calls

44 Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song, 80. 45 Ibid., 78. 46 Graham Johnson, The Hyperion Schubert Edition 34 Complete Songs, notes by Graham Johnson (London: Hyperion Records CDJ33034, 1991), 9. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 18

“the maternal voice.” Bottge equates the moment of self-recognition, which she calls jouissance, to the loss of oneness once experienced with the maternal body. She explains,

“the joy of newfound selfhood is tinged with the remorse of separation, and the freedom and identity of the ‘I’ acquired by this separation is tainted with the responsibilities of subjectivity.”49 Susan Youens also discusses Schubert’s feminine side in relating the tale of a young lad’s return to the maternal element in Die shöne Müllerin. By drowning in a brook, which lovingly enfolds him, he has in a sense, returned to the womb.50 John

Shepherd continues this topic:

Women, as emotional nurturers, as the first people to ‘provide the vital delights of social intercourse’ for very young children, come to stand for the very process – social relatedness – through which people and societies are created, maintained and reproduced. …To be sure, social relatedness implies negotiability of political power. …The objectification of women thus becomes a crucial step in the mystification of social relatedness. …Male-defined culture is projected back onto nature; women as objects are in turn equated with a natural or material world thus susceptible to unilateral control by men.51

Schubert may be rallying against this unilateral control by men when he inserts soothing melodic sweetness in the middle of a mountain climber’s yodel or recalls the consoling maternal element through repetition of musical motives. Consider Schubert’s Lied, An die

Leier, D737, with poem by Franz Bruchmann, which decisively wrestles with the interplay of alter egos, in favor of the feminine. The reference to Cadmus and the sons of

Atreus is to the heroes of the Theban and Trojan wars.

Of Atreus’ sons, of Cadmus will I sing! But my lyre-strings will hymn only Love in their strains. I changed the strings, I was fain to change the lyre,

49 Karen M. Bottge, “Brahms’s ‘Wiegenlied’ and the Maternal Voice,” 19th-Century Music 28, no. 3 (Spring 2005): 185-213. 50 Susan Youens, Schubert, Müller and ‘Die shöne Müllerin’ (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 6. 51 John Shepherd, “Music and Male Hegemony,” in Music and Society: the Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception, ed. Richard Leppert and Susan McClary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 154. 19

I bade them sound with might Hercules’ victorious deeds.

But again my lyre-strings would only hymn Love in their strains.

Then farewell, heroes!

For my lyre-strings will hymn (instead of threatening with heroic song)

Only Love in their strains.52

The nature of the reference which features brutality and revenge is ironically offset by a

poetic persona who emphasizes three times that his lyre-strings will only “hymn Love in

their strains.” Schubert heralds the female viewpoint in his songs so often as to establish a

compelling feminine perspective. Perhaps it is because he wishes to ‘hymn only Love’ in

the strains of his songs, strains which are associated with nurture, not warfare.

.

52 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs in Three Volumes for Voice and Piano, English translation and notes by Gerard Mackworth-Young (New York: International Music Co., 1961): III, iv. 20

CHAPTER III. FRANZ SCHUBERT’S PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Franz Schubert was accepted into the Konvikt (Royal Seminary) in Vienna at age

eleven, and was there a “free boarder during his chorister period 1808-1812.”53 Josef von

Spaun, a violinist nine years older than Schubert, left the Konvikt one year after Schubert entered. Franz played second violin behind Josef in the student orchestra. Their relationship endured and Spaun was his helper and mentor until Schubert died in 1828.

From Mary Macken, one has a glimpse of Spaun’s many kindnesses to the young

Schubert. Spaun procured paper for his compositions, supported his decision to end school-teaching, and in 1817, wrote to Goethe on Schubert’s behalf. Josef Spaun spoke of

Schubert as “a great-hearted man, good and kind.”54 Spaun was the only one of the early friends who remained by Schubert’s bedside till the very end.

Elizabeth Norman McKay gives an enlightening account of Schubert’s early

schooldays in her book, Franz Schubert: A Biography. She explains why Josef Spaun

was one of Schubert’s first friends at the Konvikt and sheds light on what some historians

have termed Schubert’s dual nature. Law student Josef Spaun was assigned to conduct

evening rehearsals of the student orchestra in the absence of music director Wenzel

Ruzicka. A professional violinist, Ruzicka performed in the Burgtheater orchestra for the

royal court. It was the custom for a younger boy of the chapel choir to assist the student

music director with the dissemination of scores, lighting of candles, and upkeep of

instruments. Since the young Franz stood behind Josef to play from the same score,

Spaun was quick to recognize his talent. “Very soon I became aware that the little

musician far surpassed me in the sureness of his beat. …I noticed how the otherwise quiet

53 Mary Macken, “The Centenary of Franz Schubert,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 17 (1928): 581- 593. 54 Ibid. 582. 21

and indifferent-looking boy surrendered himself in the most lively way to the impressions

of the beautiful symphony we were playing.”55 Josef soon asked little Franz (the full-

grown Schubert was only 5’1”) to be his orchestral assistant. This must have meant the

world to Schubert who was shy and quite new to the Konvikt. Spaun later recorded in his

memoirs that Schubert once whispered in his ear, “You are my favourite in the whole

Seminary, I have no other friend there.”56 Spaun allowed Schubert’s art to grow and

blossom in those early years. He supplied the indispensable music paper. “He [Schubert]

told me that secretly he often wrote down his thoughts in music, but his father must not

know about it, as he was dead against his devoting himself to music. After that I used to

slip manuscript paper into his hands from time to time.”57

Another classmate, Georg Franz Eckel, wrote later about Schubert’s self-

absorption. “Even on the walks which the pupils took together, he mostly walked apart,

pacing along pensively with eyes down and with his hands behind his back, playing with

his fingers (as though on keys), completely lost in his own thoughts.”58 As McKay points out, these creative tendencies may have isolated him from other boys, though his father asserted that Schubert “was never happier than when he could spend his leisure hours in the company of lively friends.”59 These dual natures of quiet sensitivity and lively

sociability continued to interact throughout his life. Spaun observed that Schubert’s morning countenance during composition work was different from his appearance in the afternoon.

Anyone who has seen him of a morning occupied with composition, aglow, with his eyes shining and even his speech changed, like a

55 Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, 126. 56 Ibid., 127. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 50. 59 Ibid., 212. 22

somnambulist, will never forget the impression….In the afternoon he was admittedly another person, but he was gentle and deeply sensitive, only he did not like to show his feelings, but preferred to keep them to himself.60

Timid by nature, Schubert must have felt drawn to the magnanimous Franz

Schober. Schober was extremely witty, intelligent, and charismatic. He became the self- proclaimed leader of any group he entered. He succeeded in increasing Franz Schubert’s social connections to a considerable degree. Schober’s friends became Schubert’s friends, as Spaun put it, and both circles mutually benefited. Schober’s friendship was readily available to Schubert, though more sporadically than Spaun’s. He took frequent trips, which owing to the horse-drawn carriage mode of transportation, translated into long absences. When he was in Vienna, Schubert would often board with Schober. This arrangement lasted for twelve years. As I have already stated, their close relationship may have been Schubert’s undoing, especially given Schober’s attachment to the philosophy of hedonism. Schober was known for his gregarious personality, living large, and apparently loving the ‘sons of Adam as well as the daughters of Eve.’ David Gramit cites a quote from an unpublished letter to Schober written by Antonio Mayer from August 8,

1825, though Gramit coyly terms it “difficult to interpret.”

I am the happiest of men… I have a three-coloured cat! Since you have gone, I have relied much more on cats; it’s better than going to the dogs. I have made the acquaintance of two slender, one imposing, one curious, and two hardworking cats. I could tell you a lot about that, but since I don’t know if my friends are also yours, it would be doubly indiscreet to talk about it, first because it could bore you, and second because I could compromise my cats.61

Despite David Gramit’s reluctance to interpret this passage, it seems likely that Mayer is talking about homosexual activity, in lieu of whore-mongering with dogs.

60 Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Schubert: Memoirs, 138. 61 David Gramit, “The Passion for Friendship,” 67. 23

Biographer Peter Clive writes that Schober “led a life of considerable self-

indulgence.”62 It is clear from memoirs that the Spaun family, and later the Bruchmann

family, did not want their daughters involved with or married to Franz Schober. When

Josef’s sister, Marie, confessed a growing attachment to Schober, Mrs. Spaun was quick

to act. She told her daughter that “she had gathered from Schober’s behaviour and from

many conversations that Schober was not religious,”63 and advised her to break it off. The intense response of the Bruchmann family to Schober’s ‘secret’ engagement to Justine

Bruchmann in 1824, seems to verify misconduct of some kind. According to Clive, Franz

Bruchmann wrote in his autobiography that he “recalled with satisfaction how he had driven away a man who ‘had had the outrageous temerity to seek to sully one of the most

precious jewels of my family’.”64 Josef Kenner, a member of the original Bildung circle, also denounced Schober’s integrity.

Kenner described Schober as an exceptionally charming and highly gifted young man, but one entirely lacking in moral principles, vain, jealous, a veritable Mephistopheles who ensnared and corrupted innocent souls, a false prophet who craved total domination over his disciples. Kenner stated, moreover, that he had been informed (for he rarely saw Schubert either after 1816) that Schober’s dazzling but perverse personality had exercised a disastrous and lasting influence on the impressionable Schubert.65

Schober’s idleness may have been a factor in his moral decline. His solitary

venture into the business world was short-lived. In 1826 Schober purchased the

Lithographisches Institut, a printing establishment in Vienna that subsequently published two opus works of Schubert, containing approximately seven Lieder. This entrepreneurial

pursuit, intended to profit from Schubert’s compositions, was ill-fated. According to

62 Peter Clive, Schubert and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 188. 63 Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, 350. 64 Peter Clive, Schubert and His World, 191. 65 Ibid. 24

Clive, “Schober sold the Institut not long after Schubert’s death, by which time it was close to bankruptcy.”66

If Josef Spaun was Schubert’s most helpful influence, then Franz Schober may

have been his most negative one. Schober only succeeded in assisting Schubert on two

(admittedly important) accounts. He arranged for Schubert to have two rooms, i.e. his

own apartment in the Schober household, complete with pianoforte, whenever the

composer’s financial reserves were depleted. He also helped Schubert widen his

familiarity with contemporary German literature. In exchange for these two ‘gifts,’

Schober’s opportunism may have been one of the reasons Schubert had little saved from

the publication royalties of his music. Schubert was free with his money amongst friends,

and I speculate that Schober may have taken advantage of that.

No discussion of Franz Schubert’s personal life would be complete without including Johann Mayrhofer, whose poems Schubert set more often than any poet save

Goethe, and who figures much more strongly than any other poet from within Schubert’s inner circle of personal friends. Mayrhofer met Schubert through Spaun in 1814.

Mayrhofer was ten years older. Schubert set a few poems by Mayrhofer initially, but in

1816 and 1817 there followed numerous settings. Schubert eventually set a total of forty- seven Mayrhofer poems. Susan Youens reports, “In November 1818, Schubert moved from his father’s house to Mayrhofer’s lodgings on the third floor of 1 Wipplingerstrasse, above a tobacconist shop. They shared the address for eighteen months until the end of

1820.”67 On May 24, 1819, Anton Holzapfel wrote a letter to Albert Stadler at Linz in which, referring to Schubert, he makes an offhand remark about Mayrhofer which some

66 Peter Clive, Schubert, 190. 67 Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets, 155. 25

scholars have interpreted as homosexual companionship: “Mayrhofer, who seems to be a

friend of the house, also came just then.”68 Maynard Solomon uses the Mayrhofer relationship as basic evidence in his case for Schubert’s potential homosexuality.69

Mayrhofer was an unhappy, sarcastic man who hated himself and his body.

Mayrhofer disliked women and proclaimed matrimony as unthinkable. Considering

himself accursed, he had recurrent attacks of pathological depression. Only Mayrhofer’s

art coupled with the power of Schubert’s music could lift him temporarily out of his dark doldrums. For these very reasons, Schubert may have attempted to help his moody friend, though the effort proved futile. In late 1820 Schubert and Mayrhofer experienced a falling out that sent Mayrhofer into deep depression. Youens wonders if Schubert’s comment of March 27, 1824 may refer to Mayrhofer.

There is no one who understands the pain or joy of others! We always imagine we are coming together, and we always merely go side by side. Oh, what torture for those who recognize this!70

One may surmise that the kind-hearted Schubert might have revolted against Mayrhofer’s

negative and nihilistic attitudes. After Schubert’s death in 1828, Mayrhofer continued to work in the Censor’s Office. In 1836, upon hearing of a cholera epidemic, Mayrhofer panicked and jumped out of a third story window. He died forty hours later.

Johann Mayrhofer’s poem, Aus ‘Heliopolis’ II, D754, which Schubert set in 1822, bears the inscription “An Franz” (To Franz). It is the poet’s injunction to the humble composer to continue to associate with the true and the noble, that in so doing he

[Schubert] “will find the right word.”71 This Lied is surprising in its harmonic

68 Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., The Schubert Reader: A Life of Franz Schubert in Letters and Documents, trans. Eric Blom (New York: W.W. Norton, 1947), 120. 69 Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 198-199. 70 Ibid., 158. 71 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, x. 26 fluctuations which celebrate the heroic through aggressive musical gestures describing the tempestuousness of life. One can actually hear rock-climbing in the music with harmonic progressions slowly rising by semitones. The octave-doubling in the pianist’s hands conjures up a firm grip on the surrounding precipice.

Rocks piled on rocks, firm ground and sure foothold, Waterfalls, tempestuous showers, power beyond comprehension:… Standing alone on mountain pinnacles, ruins of monastery or castle, Engrave these on your memory, for the poet lives on reality.

Breathe the sacred air, embrace the world in your arms; Only with the worthy and the great make firm companionship. Let the passions blare in trumpet-like accord; When fierce storms are raging, you will find the right word.72

My own favorite Mayrhofer setting is Schubert’s Abendstern, D806, composed in

1824.

Why do you linger alone in the heavens, o beautiful star; and are so gentle? Why do the sparkling throng of brothers stand apart from your face? “I am the true love star. They keep themselves far away from love.”

So you should go to them, you are Love, delay not! Who could resist you now? You sweet stubborn light! “I sow, see no growth, and stay grieving silently here.”73

Barely two years have passed between Aus ‘Heliopolis’ II and Abendstern, yet one hears an entirely different attitude, from the poet once attempting to advise the young composer to now trying to learn from him. It is an extraordinary switch in perspective and one most certainly made through serious reflection. In Mayrhofer’s eyes, Franz Schubert may now

72 Ibid. 73 Author’s own translation 27

be the star of ‘Love’ who sows progress or growth. Therefore the poet-speaker may be

addressing Franz Schubert.

An extremely interesting Schubert Lied is Auflösung, D807, which essentially

contains an autobiographical soliloquy by Mayrhofer. Consider the words, with the title

translated as Dissolution or Release.

Hide yourself, Sun, For the glowing warmth of joy Scorches my frame; Music, be dumb! Beauty of spring, Begone! and leave me alone.

Yet from every corner of my soul There spring delectable influences That surround me with heavenly song. Perish, o world, And disturb not the sweet, ethereal choirs!74

Schubert perfectly captures Mayrhofer’s existential attitude when he repeats the phrase

“geh’ unter,” three times at the end of the song. The full sentence is “geh’ unter, Welt,

geh’ unter, Welt, geh’ unter.”75 It is a graphic representation of the personality of the poet, who would shut out the world in favor of spiritual transcendence.

74 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, xv. 75 Author’s translation: “End, world, end, world, end!” 28

CHAPTER IV. FRANZ SCHUBERT’S IMAGES

Following Susan Youens’s lead that symbolic models exist in Schubert’s music, selected images are examined as possible symbolic metaphors.

Fishing and Fishermen

A favorite Schubertian image is fishing by fishermen. In discussing Schubert songs written between 1815 and 1817, which include Fischerlied, D351, D364 and D562,

David Gramit wonders what “could explain an interest in such songs among Schubert and a small circle of largely young, educated middle-class auditors, urban dwellers connected neither to the landed aristocracy nor to agricultural laborers?”76 He pronounces that either the values of self-cultivation or the songs representing recreation be considered. He

suggests that “the process through which meanings could be derived from them deserves

closer consideration.”77 Gramit discusses each alternative, granting that either outcome is bound up with social identification.

While the comic interpretation depends on a literal understanding—the auditor imagines a ‘real’ farmer or fisherman—a moral application (which many of these texts invite) demands abstraction: Schubert and his friends clearly would not have understood these texts as exhortations to diligently plow or fish. Instead, of course, the texts would be applied metaphorically… .78

One may assume then, that these fish are certainly not simply fish. My interpretation is

that they may represent a sexual object of desire, whether male or female with the image

of ‘fishing,’ signifying seduction and ‘fishermen,’ the seducers or mankind.

Goethe’s little poem, Liebhaber in allen Gestalten, D558, set by Schubert, tells

the fishtale of seduction in the very first verse (though it runs through several other

animal forms before it is through.)

76 David Gramit, Cultivating Music, 82. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 83. 29

I wish I were a fish So agile and lovely; And if you came fishing I would not fail you.79

The fish (man or woman) would not fail to respond to the attempted seduction. Consider

Schubart’s poem Die Forelle, D550, which helped make Schubert famous. The first verse describes a fish (an object of sexual desire) darting merrily in a clear brook while an onlooker enjoys the visual feast. The second verse introduces the protagonist.

A fisherman with his rod Was standing there on the bank Cold-bloodedly watching The fish dart to and fro… “So long as the water remains clear,” I thought, “He will not Catch that trout With his rod.”

But at last the thief Could wait no more. With guile he made the water muddy, And, ere I could guess it, His rod jerked, The fish was floundering on it, And my blood boiled As I saw the betrayed one.80

The “thief” cold-bloodedly assails the victim. Many singers performing this Lied do not realize the seduction angle of the text, in part because the melody is so light and charming. Incorporating this dimension in one’s performance produces a very different effect. The ‘fish’ truly is the betrayed one, as often in life, deceit accompanies seduction.

79 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, xix. 80 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, I, xxii. 30

Goethe’s poem, Der Fischer, set by Schubert as D225, describes a fisherman

calmly fishing when suddenly a mermaid appears. She berates him for fishing. “Why do

you entice my brood with human wit and human cunning, up into the deadly warmth?”81

The story continues in the fourth verse.

The water swirled, the water rose, And moistened his bare foot; His heart grew as full of desire As it would at a sweetheart’s greeting. She spoke to him, she sang to him, Then it was all over with him; She half dragged him down, he half sank by himself, And was no more seen.82

In this installment of the well-known “dangerous mermaid” (Lorelai, Undine, Rusalka)

vein in Romantic poetry, the fisherman here succumbs to the mermaid’s seduction. This

may be interpreted as the culmination of sexual desire known as the ‘little death,’ with both parties participating in the climatic experience.

For Schubert’s Lied, Fischerweise, D881, Baron Schlechta provided the poem.

Schlechta, incidentally, was known for his own sexual pursuit of men.

The fisherman is not assailed By care, worry or grief; At early dawn he unmoors His boat lightheartedly…

Immediately one sees this as a carefree pursuit of the fisherman’s prize. Later there is a twist.

Angling there on the bridge, Is the shepherdess! Sly minx, Abandon your wiles!

81 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, vii. 82 Ibid. 31

You will never catch that fish!83

The shepherdess (a woman) fishing on the bridge is trying to catch the same prize. But

Baron Schlechta knows something the shepherdess does not. Perhaps she is trying to

catch a fish (a man) who likes other men.

Roses and Rosy Cheeks

The image of flowers in nineteenth-century literature was associated with youth and femininity, while the plucking of them denoted loss of virginity; hence our term ‘de- flowered.’ Michael Spitzer’s assertion, that flowers become human only in the romantic age, is relevant to this topic. He cites popular comic novelist Jean Paul Richter’s

Vorschule der Aesthetik, originally published in 1812.

Jean Paul Richter calls metaphor an ‘abridged personification.’ To metaphorize in the nineteenth century is to compare music to a person, rather than a picture (baroque) or a language (classical). More broadly, this comparison is itself mediated through the metaphor of human beings as vegetal life: plants symbolized a state of preconsciousness associated with the aesthetic.84

If plants symbolized a preconscious state of awareness as well as youth or femininity,

could Schubert’s use of rose imagery be equated with sexual innocence, with the ‘bud

unopened’? If the rose image in Schubert’s music may be equated with virginity, then it

follows that the image of “rosy cheeks” may be connected with passion or experiencing

the heat of passion.

In Schubert’s Lied, Du liebst mich nicht, D756, poem by Platen, the poet-speaker

asks:

What use to me is the rose-blossom? Or the bloom of jasmine? Or the bloom of narcissus?

83 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, II, v. [Emphasis Macworth-Young’s] 84 Michael Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2004), 278.[Translation Margaret Hale] 32

You love me not!85 The poetic persona may be asking what use are blossoms when passion, the connecting force between lovers, is gone. If “rose-blossom” is referencing virginity, then the poetic persona is really asking, “Of what use is virginity, the virginity of a female [reference to jasmine] or the virginity of a man [reference to narcissus], and who cares?”

In Schubert’s setting of Klenke’s Heimliches Lieben, D922, a forbidden love is described. O, when your lips touch mine, My soul is carried away in rapture, Deep down I feel a nameless trembling And my bosom heaves.

My eyes are aflame, a glow spreads o’er my cheeks, My heart beats with an unknown desire: My spirit is lost, intoxicated by stammering lips, And can hardly compose itself.

In such an hour my life hangs Upon your sweet, soft, rosy mouth, I am almost lost, enclosed as I am by your dear arms.

Ah me, that my soul cannot even so escape Wholly from itself to glow in yours; That our lips, which burn with passion Must nevertheless part.

That my being cannot dissolve in kisses When joined so closely to your mouth, And to your heart that never dares To beat aloud for me!86 The words “sweet, soft, rosy mouth” may be a code for a virgin, either a young lad or lady. If the poem references the love of a lady, then by its forbidden nature,

85 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, iv. 86 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, II, xiv. 33

(possibly adultery) that love can never be brought to light. The love described is sending an implicitly rosy glow o’er the poetic persona’s cheeks and is produced by the heat of passion. More likely this may be a man/young man relationship because the ending sentence declares that this relationship can never be addressed in open society and that the beloved’s heart “never dares to beat aloud for me!”

Last in this category is Schubert’s Lied, D745, Die Rose, text by Schlegel. Again the rose image may imply a loss of virginity as reason for expiration of the personifying plant.

Genial warmth enticed me To venture into the light, There fierce heat scorched me; Forever must I bewail it. I could have bloomed for long In mild, clear days; Now I must wither early, Renounce life too soon.

The rosy morning came, I abandoned all fear, And opened the bud Wherein lay all my charms. I could have spread sweet scent And worn my crown, … But then the sun became too hot, That is my complaint against him.

Of what use is the mild evening? I must now sadly ask; No longer can it save me, And chase away my griefs. My rosy hue is bleached, Soon the cold will gnaw me: Dying, I would tell once more 34

The tale of my brief young life.87

If “rosy cheeks” may be connected with passion or experiencing the heat of passion, a

“rosy hue [that] is bleached” denotes the absence of that exciting possibility. Because

Schubert composed this Lied after his diagnosis of syphilis (a virtual death sentence), the musical references consciously foreshadow Schubert’s own demise. Unless a singer is fluent in German, his/her first step in learning this Lied is likely to map a word-by-word translation above the music. Playing through the Lied on the piano, while perusing the text, will co-ordinate poetry and music to display Schubert’s intent. Schubert starts with a beautiful hymn-like motive which descends and moves more chromatically as he

[Schubert] becomes scorched by the ‘fierce heat.’ The contrasting middle section has fourteen measures of driving dactylic rhythms that give an obsessive quality to the “rosy morning” activity in which he “abandoned all fear and opened the bud.” The recapitulation of the opening melody occurs in minor, perfectly capturing Schubert’s sentiment regarding his own imminent death: “Of what use is the mild evening? I must now sadly ask.”88 Significantly, on the repeat of the penultimate phrase, the answer comes as Schubert shifts back to G major, as if to calm and reassure us that it has all been for the good.

87 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, v. 88 Ibid. 35

Brooks and Streams

According to Jane Brown:

Schubert was evidently fascinated with the musical representation of flowing water—one has only to think of Schöne Müllerin, but even Winterreise devotes generous attention to the frozen brook and memories of its flow in summer. Whatever musical reasons there may be for this fascination, the phenomenon has undeniable literary significance. German romantic poetry abounds in babbling brooks and in rivers that glitter like necklaces in the landscape. Flowing water takes on particular importance for the romantic because it makes noise: brooks are the voice of nature….Water is so important in these texts precisely because it images central romantic concerns with the voice of nature and the threat of self-loss; Evidently these themes are still central for the Biedermeier generation.89

In addition to brooks and streams being the voice of nature, Muxfeldt associates sounds or voices of nature with inner experience, imagination, and memory.

One of the most characteristically Schubertian strategies from the earliest songs to some of the latest is the representation of an inner experience through an analogy with some outward physical motion or sound….Each of these songs draws on the imitation of an outside physical movement or sound to create the effect of immediate, present experience, and in each of them the core of that experience consists in a powerful act of imagination or memory. The literal actions of the present moment—the spinning, the walking, the gently lapping water— become a continuously evolving symbol through which the interior life finds expression.90

If sound is the symbol of an interior life, one sustained through immediate, present consciousness, the “babbling brook” may be an outward representation of the reflection of inner contemplation or memory. Schubert’s use of “brooks” and “streams,” then, may be seen as metaphor for reminiscence.

89 Jane K. Brown, “The Poetry of Schubert’s Songs,” in Schubert’s Vienna, ed. Raymond Erickson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 196-197. 90 Kristina Muxfeldt, “Schubert’s Songs: the Transformation of a Genre,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 131-132. 36

Two succinct examples are presented. In Schubert’s Der Jüngling an der Quelle,

D300, with poem by Salis-Seewis,91 the youth at the bank’s edge scolds the softly rippling brook and the waving whispering poplars for reawakening his love.

Softly rippling brook! Waving, whispering poplars! Your lullabies merely awaken love. To you I looked for relief, Hoping to forget her, the coy one; but alas1 Leaves and brook alike Sigh, Louise, for you!92 Longing remembrance has in fact awakened his love. Life itself seems to sigh for

its lost one. The constantly rippling sixteenth-note figure in the pianist’s right hand serves to remind the youth of the brook and his association with his beloved there. The interior life of memories associated with love has found expression in the rippling brook and whispering poplar trees. These and other nature images also reflect Schubert’s basic belief that nature brings us closer to the divine than any organized religion. They also serve to emphasize the present moment and experiences related to remembrance.

Schubert’s Greisengesang, D778, with poem by Rückert, presents a “brook” and

“stream” image which in addition to memory, denotes also the passage of time.

The bloom of youth on my cheeks, The roses are gone, All gone, one after the other. Whither have they gone? Down into my heart: There they bloom with desire As they used to do. Are all the streams of worldly joy dried up? There still flows through my heart a placid brook. Are all the nightingales of the country now mute?

91 According to Grove, the author is not Stoll as listed in the Universal Music Co. anthology. 92 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, xvi. 37

Here with me, in tranquility, one is still awake. She sings: “O master of the house, close your door, Shut out the harsh air of reality, And give roof and room to fragrant dreams alone.”93 The images of “streams” of worldly joy and the placid “brook” flowing still through his heart, respectively represent the remembrance of past joy and the calming passage of time.

East Wind Breezes

And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, And the Lord brought an East wind upon the land all that day, And all that night; and when it was morning, The East wind brought the locusts. Exodus 10:13 (King James Version)

It is safe to assume that Schubert’s well-educated circle would have been familiar with

scriptural passages that define the East wind as the wind of danger, an image that is also

present in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

I will scatter them as with an East wind before the enemy: I will shew them the back, and not the face, In the day of their calamity. Jeremiah 18:17 (King James Version)

Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: The East wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas. Ezekiel 27:26 (King James Version)

Furthermore, the East wind is an exotic wind, often the bearer of private messages

in Persian love poetry.94 Considering the association with love poetry, could these Persian messages, or messages from the East, be messages of desire? Another significance of the

“East” image is the exoticism connected with the ‘others’ of southern Germany and the orient. According to Graham Johnson, “It was the overpowering attraction of the warm and tolerant South which lured Thomas Mann’s Aschenbach to Venice, self-discovery,

93 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, II, iii-iv. 94 Kristina Muxfeldt, “Schubert Song Studies,” 54. 38 and death.”95 Aschenbach, the middle-aged central character of Mann’s Death in Venice, goes on vacation at the Lido in order to “clear his mind,” but is drawn into a fatal, homosexual obsession with a young teenaged Polish boy; so Johnson’s reference seems calculated to evoke homosexuality as an aspect of the “lure of the East.” Consider Suleika

I, D720, a poem by Marianne von Willemer, which Goethe included in his own West-

östlicher Divan of 1819.96 The poet-speaker is incredulous that the “East wind” is bringing something good. “Does the East wind bring me glad tidings?...Softly he tempers the sun’s glow, and cools my hot cheeks… .”97

What means this movement? Does the East wind bring me glad tidings? The fresh stirring of his wings Cools the heart’s deep wounds.

Caressingly he plays with the dust, Stirs it up into little clouds; Drives to the shelter of the vine-leaves The merry insect tribe.

Softly he tempers the sun’s glow, And cools my hot cheeks; And in his onward flight kisses the vines Resplendent on field and hill.

And to me his light whisper brings A thousand greetings from my dear one: Ere yet these hills grow dark A thousand kisses will greet me.

And so (East wind,) you may pass on your way,

95 Graham Johnson, The Hyperion Schubert Edition 11, 29. 96 The inscription under the title heading reads ‘Franz von Schober gewidmet’ (dedicated to Franz von Schober). 97 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, ii. 39

Ministering to friends and to those in trouble. There, where the high walls are all aglow, I shall soon find my best beloved.

Ah, the heart’s true tidings, Love’s inspiration, life’s renewal; For me come from his mouth alone; Only his breath can give them to me.98

The danger associated with the “East wind” and which is wrapped up in the fear

of the exotic, and most likely sex, is asked to pass on its way, and minister to friends and

to those in trouble. Could it be that Goethe, and by association Schubert, were not afraid

of sexual experimentation?

A case for connecting the “East” metaphor with ruin or destruction occurs in

Schubert’s Der Pilgrim, D794, text by Schiller. The story concerns a young man who has left his father’s house, staff in hand, in search of a “golden gate” which symbolizes immortality. After many struggles he reaches a stream.

Then I came to the banks of a stream Which flowed eastward; Cheerfully trusting to its direction, I plunged into it.99 The key word, “eastward,” having a sexual and disastrous implication, denotes trouble

(perhaps a fatal mistake.) The lad is carried to the ocean, which keeps him from making

further progress toward his specified mission. He does not find the eternal. His life

purpose on earth is thwarted. He is trapped, maybe even damned. He exclaims. “The

Yonder is never here!”100

98 Ibid. 99 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, II, xiii. 100 Ibid. 40

A Thousand

The ‘thousand’ metaphor, as a symbol for sex, may date back to the Roman poet,

Gaius Valerius Catullus, 84-54 BC, who along with Sappho, was a major influence on

Western lyric poetry. His poems in translation were likely known to the Bildung circle, including the following:

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, And let us judge all the rumors of the old men To be worth just one penny! The suns are able to fall and rise: When that brief light has fallen for us, We must sleep a never ending night. Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred, Then another thousand, then a second hundred, Then yet another thousand more, then another hundred. Then, when we have made many thousands, We will mix them all up so that we don’t know, And so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out How many kisses we have shared.101 (Catullus, Carmen 5)

Also from Rome, in the Ganymede myth, the ‘thousandfold joy of love’ finds resonance in Arcadelt’s 1538 madrigal, which closes with the phrase, “with a thousand deaths a day I would be content,”102 a common metaphor for orgasm in Renaissance poetry. It is no great leap to understand that a ‘thousand kisses’ in a poem set by Schubert would symbolize an erotic encounter.

In Suleika I, D720, by Schubert and von Willemer, mentioned above for its

101 Rudy Negenborn, “Carmen 5,” Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, 14 May 1997, http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/e5.htm (26 May 2006), Let us live, my Lesbia. 102 J. Peter Burkholder and Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 7th edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 246. 41

preoccupation with the wind images, the poetic persona confesses that the “East wind”

has brought sexual greetings.

And to me his light whisper brings A thousand greetings from my dear one: Ere yet these hills grow dark A thousand kisses will greet me.103 A “thousand” kisses, sexual love, will greet the persona in spite of his advancing age

(“Ere these hills grow dark”).

In Goethe’s poem, Ganymed (Schubert’s Lied, D 544), the male youth is seduced

by another older man.

With the thousandfold joy of love, My heart is enveloped By the blissful sensation Of your eternal warmth.104 Called ‘Greek love,’ since that society accepted male-male sex relationships as normal,

(particularly, and interestingly, in the context of a Bildung pedagogical relationship), the

older man is also one of the Greek gods. The “all-loving father”105 is his sex partner and

Ganymede has just completed copulation.

In Schubert’s setting of Seidl’s poem, Im Freien, D880, the evoking of sexual release is clear from the beginning with the insistent use of a ‘thousand.’

A thousand arms beckon to me With tender appeal; A thousand voices are calling “Greetings to you, dear one!”106 The metaphor has moved to ‘arms’ and ‘voices,’ but it is the adjective which summons

the appropriate remembrance.

103 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, I, xxvii-xxviii. 104 Ibid., I, xxvii. 105 Ibid., I, xxviii. 106 Ibid., II, xi. 42

Seidl’s Die Taubenpost, D957, written in October 1828, is Schubert’s last Lied. It was published posthumously in 1829 and attached as the final composition of Schubert’s

Swan Songs. A “thousand times” is equated with “Desire…the true heart’s messenger.”107

I have a carrier pigeon in my pay, It is so devoted and faithful; It never fails to reach its destination, Nor flies beyond it.

I send it forth a thousand times Daily to carry news, It flies past many a well-loved spot Straight to my darling’s house.

There it peeps in at the window, Espies her glance and step, Gaily delivers my greetings And collects hers.

I need write no more letters, I give it even my tears… It would surely not misdeliver them, So zealously does it serve me.

By day or night, when awake or dreaming, It is indifferent to all. As long as it can keep on journeying It feels itself well recompensed!

It never grows tired or jaded, Its course seems ever new to it; It needs no inducement, no reward, The bird is true to me!

Therefore I keep it loyally, too, in my heart,

107 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, I, xviii. 43

Thus assured of the fairest prize; It is called Desire…do you know it? The true heart’s messenger?

Verdant Groves

A favorite Schubertian image is the quiet, cool ‘grove’ or forest. Plantinga associates the green, misty forests of northern Europe with “the sublime, with its implications of the mind-boggling, overpowering, threatening.”108 He further states that a

Romantic temperament was inclined to embrace this view. Therefore the “grove” image may have been a known metaphor for the sublime among Schubert’s circle of poets.

Furthermore the grove, or forest, often served as a motivic natural meeting place for lovers in much of Romantic literature. In Schubert’s setting of Bruchmann’s poem, Im

Haine, D738, the calm of the grove serves to wipe away grief and sorrow.

Oh, that always Dark trees, Sunshine and Green forest edges Might bloom And gleam around us, Obliterating the trace of every sorrow! 109

Consider Hölty’s poem, An die Apfelbäume, D197, set by Schubert, as reflecting pure

rapture in the woods.

Let hallowed murmurs and a sound of music Vibrate through your treetops, o avenue Where the blissful ecstasy of first love, Timid and wild, intoxicated my heart.110

108 Leon Plantinga, “ ‘Classic’ and ‘Romantic,’ Beethoven and Schubert,” in Schubert’s Vienna ed. Raymond Erickson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 85-86. 109 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, I, xxxi. 110 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, III, xvi. 44

An excellent image of a cool, green grove appears in Schubert’s Bei dir allein,

D866, No. 2, text by Seidl.

Through you alone sense I that I live That younglove to me swells, From one joyous world love to me trembles through My soul rejoices with you alone, by you alone, Through you alone!

With you alone the breeze wafts so refreshingly It refreshes the open fields so green, So gentle the spring’s blooming, so fragrant the evening. So cool the grove with you alone, by you alone!

Through you alone pain loses its bitterness Joy wins by desire! You secure my heart its rightful inheritance; I feel my soul with you alone, by you alone, Through you alone!111 Among wildly swirling harmonies of rapture, Schubert sculpts a song that recalls the intimate experience of the grove, which is highlighted in the contrasting middle section.

This is a late song (1828) which recalls the ecstasy experienced in the company of one’s beloved. If ever a song can be said to capture the essence of an exhilarating moment in

Schubert, this one has.112

111 Author’s own translation 112 This Lied is not included in the International Music Co. publications. A singer must go to Schubert’s Complete Works to find it. 45

Driven Search

The ‘driven search’ may be found in the tenets of early German romanticism.

David Montgomery explains:

Through all of it we can identify a central and consistent artistic thread, a transcendental principle which we might describe as ‘the Ideal implied in the Actual’. …The idea of making something larger-than- life out of something merely life-size or ‘life-limited’ had been one of the central dreams of the literary generation in the late years of the eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth. It was expressed in Goethe’s reworkings of the Faust legend, whose chief character sought to transcend his earthly limitations; and in the mystical landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich and Phillip Otto Runge, which were designed to direct the viewer’s imagination far beyond the confines of canvas, frame, and immediate subject. The idea reflected a desire to find the entrance to a secret, mystical world invisible to the eye, undetectable to the ear, incomprehensible to the brain. …In an age no longer delighted particularly by rationalism and light, art sought to show mankind how to see behind the veil, into the darkness and beyond mortality, and perhaps even to master time itself.113

Franz Schubert and the men of the Bildung brotherhood were searching for knowledge and inspiration, inspiration which would lead them to the ‘golden gates’ (from

Der Pilgrim114) of immortality. Through the light that was conversely defined as ‘golden’ or ‘clear’, they were to find salvation through art, which included the gift of eternal life in heaven. These men were devout seekers of truth. ‘Driven search’ may be equated with the brotherhood’s mission. Schubert’s strong bond of connection to his friends is indisputable. He relied on his friends for moral support, for inspiration, and not the least of which, for poetic texts. To continue the search against all odds is an image well associated with Schubert.

Johann Mayrhofer was a transcendental Classicist. He provided texts for forty- seven of Schubert’s songs. Some of his poems speak like a ‘driven search’ mantra. One

113 David Montgomery, Franz Schubert’s Music in Performance, 4. 114 Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, II, xiii. 46

Mayrhofer setting Der Schiffer, D536, expresses the dangers of life and how to negotiate them with courage.

In wind and storm I ride the river, The pouring rain soaks through my clothes, I lash the waves with a powerful stroke, Hoping, hoping for clear daylight.

The waves are hounding the groaning craft, The whirlpool threatens, the rock threatens too, Boulders roll down from craggy heights, And fir trees sigh like the moaning of ghosts.

It had to be thus, I wanted it so, I hate a life that rolls along in comfort; And were the waves to engulf the groaning boat, I would still approve of my chosen course. Then thunder the waters with impotent rage! From my heart there springs a blessed fount, Refreshing the nerves; o heavenly joy, To defy the storm with a manly heart, 115

Upon recitation only of this thrilling poem, one feels the tug of Adorno’s ‘truth- character.’ Schubert has found the defining music for self-cultivation in the face of formidable odds. Schubert’s circle, which was so concerned with the highest or noblest formation of self, found that self-identity was realized through philosophical and/or literary expression. Schubert’s self-identity was, and ours is, confirmed by the universal themes present in his music. David Gramit explains how the whole process of abstracting to a universal value affects the confirmation of a person’s self-identity. He quotes from

1794 essay Ueber Matthisson’s Gedichte by Friedrich von Schiller, Goethe’s old associate.

115Franz Schubert, 200 Songs, II, ii. 47

Only then, when he feels not as this or that particular person (in whom the concept of the type would always be limited) …but as a human being in general, is he certain that the entire type will feel as he does— or at least he can insist on this effect with the same right as he can demand humanity of every human individual.116

This Schiller quote aptly applies to the body of Schubert’s work. Schubert employs alternate personas, i.e. subjectivities in his music to emphasize the importance of dear, unspoiled “roses” or beautifully innocent “fish.” Schubert summons us to feel, as human beings, the underlying inhumanity of man. He is raising us to a higher level of understanding by pointing out discrepancies between individual and universal human values. We are surprised and sometimes struck by the textural and musical implications of his songs, but we are always affirmed in our own identities.

For instance, Schober’s poem, Schatzgräbers Begehr, chronicled as Lied D761, exemplifies the ‘driven search’ quest as available to every human being, even if one succeeds only in self-destruction.

Deep in the earth there rests an old decree I am driven to search for it continually; And meanwhile can fulfill no other tasks. In vain for me the world spreads its golden net, In vain for me sounds the idle chatter of fools: “You will spend your time and toil in vain.” That will not deflect me from my work, I dig on ardently, now as ever.

And if the joy of discovery never rewards me, If I, still hoping, dig nothing but my own grave, I’ll descend into it gladly, my longings will be stilled.

So leave me undisturbed in my endeavor! No one grudges a man his grave,

116 David Gramit, Cultivating Music, 84. 48

Then will you not, my friends, allow one to me?117

117 Ibid., II, xiv. 49

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS

The song examples explored here serve as my apologia for coded meanings in

Schubert’s Lieder. I have extracted seven metaphorical images from Schubert texts that unveil hidden meanings involving remembrance of desire.

The first category of images, those connected with “fishing” and “fishermen,” is equated with remembrance of seduction. This may be seduction of a male or female object. Drowning the ‘other’ in water may serve to complete the seductive act while in other instances, catching or spearing a fish serves the identical purpose. Images connected with “roses” and “rosy cheeks” brings remembrance of youthful sexual innocence and the heat of passion involved with losing that innocence. Thus a “rosy” mouth may indicate a virgin and blush on cheeks, a person in the midst of sexual activity.

Images, “brooks” and “streams,” are used as metaphors for contemplation and reminiscence. Longing remembrance of a past love may often be involved. Flowing bodies of water serve to denote time’s passage. “East wind breezes,” denotes danger and sexual desire. Remembrances of danger associated with the exotic is often involved.

The fifth category of images, “a thousand,” means the sex act. Most often this word is linked to “kisses,” but any “thousand” implies that sexual activity is involved.

“Verdant groves” images bring remembrance of the sublime associated with passion.

Very often a period of serenity follows this image. Any cool, green arbor may provide cover for secret lovers’ meetings. The last category, “driven search,” brings remembrance of Franz Schubert’s circle; his “brotherhood” of like-minded individuals who were constantly striving to better themselves through the medium of the arts. Any text alluding 50

to “striving,” especially through difficult circumstances, with a goal to better oneself, is

indicative of “driven search.”

As the singer rehearses a Schubert Lied, keeping the appropriate image or images in mind while performing will result in a heightened sense of identity for performers and audience alike. In light of this research, singers are urged to look for the seven images summarized here in the Schubert Lieder they are studying. When singers have the proper

mental picture in mind, their face, stance, etc. will portray or project a clear

representation of the textural implications. This will serve to enhance the reflective

mirror of Schubert’s magnificent œuvre.

The exegesis of some of Franz Schubert’s chosen texts has been the principal

focus of this thesis. It is my hope that this work will contribute in developing an analytical tradition which will help us better understand and appreciate Schubert’s music.

A singer’s interpretative tool is included in the appendix. May this list be an impetus for greater comprehension of Franz Schubert’s masterful Lieder.

51

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______. “Schubert: Some Consequences of Nostalgia.” 19th-Century Music 17, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 34-46.

Spitzer, Michael. Metaphor and Musical Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Steblin, Rita. “The Peacock’s Tale: Schubert’s Sexuality Reconsidered.” 19th-Century Music 17, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 5-33.

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______. “Schubert’s Relationship With Women: An Historical Account.” In Schubert Studies, ed. Brian Newbould, 220-243. Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1998.

Tellenbach, Marie-Elisabeth. “Franz Schubert and Benvenuto Cellini: One Man’s Meat.” The Musical Times 141, no. 1870 (Spring 2000): 50-52. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Goethe’s Autobiography: Poetry and Truth From My Own Life. Translated by R.O. Moon. Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1949.

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______. Schubert’s Late Lieder: Beyond the Song Cycles. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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______. Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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APPENDIX. LEATHERS’S LIST

The following is an interpretative tool for singers studying Schubert’s Lieder:

1. Fishing and Fishermen = Remembrance of Seduction

2. Roses and Rosy Cheeks = Remembrance of Virginity and Passion

3. Brooks and Streams = Remembrance of Contemplation and Reminiscence

4. East Wind Breezes = Remembrance of Danger and Sexual Desire

5. A Thousand[Kisses] = Remembrance of the Sex Act

6. Verdant Groves = Remembrance of the Sublime associated with Passion

7. Driven Search = Remembrance of the “Brotherhood”