Ian Bostridge, Tenor Julius Drake, Piano
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, March 21, 2010, 3pm Schubert’s “Real Swansong”: a two-part tale of a young man, unlucky in love, Zellerbach Hall Winterreise, Op. 89, D911 (1828) wandering across a winter landscape had parallels with Die schöne Müllerin of four years earlier, but Müller’s new poems elicited even greater pathos Ian Bostridge, tenor Schubert and the lied from Schubert’s pen. It seems likely that the cir- cumstances of Schubert’s own life lent him par- Julius Drake, piano The genre of thelied —that particular kind of song ticular empathy with Müller’s poetic monodrama. whose genesis is inextricably linked to the poetry of Enough was known about the terminal stages of German Romanticism with its themes of lost love, syphilis in the 1820s for him to realize that he was death and angst—was central to the creative output confronting his own fate: from the onset of his ill- PROGRAM of the Viennese composer Franz Schubert (1797– ness in early 1823, Schubert had lived with physical 1828). His first surviving lied dates from his 15th impairment and chronic anxiety. As he approached year, and Schubert scholar Robert Winter surmises the fourth anniversary of his illness, he had grap- Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Winterreise, Op. 89, d911 (1828) that he wrote the last of his more than 600 com- pled repeatedly with depression and despair but pleted songs only a few weeks before his premature maintained extraordinary resolve in the knowl- 1. Gute Nacht death at the age of 31. Schubert had a lifelong pas- edge that this illness usually ended in dementia sion for poetry, and his first encounter with Goethe and paralysis. Müller’s monodrama of physical 2. Die Wetterfahne led him to more than 150 poets over a 17-year ca- and emotional separation must have been deeply 3. Gefrorene Tränen reer as he diligently sought out verses that he could resonant. Joseph von Spaun recalled the gathering 4. Erstarrung set to music. Some two-thirds of Schubert’s works at which Schubert previewed Winterreise (“Winter 5. Der Lindenbaum are lieder, and it was through these that he became Journey” or “Winter’s Journey”) for a small circle 6. Wasserflut famous in his lifetime. Legend has it that, on his of friends: 7. Auf dem Flusse deathbed, Beethoven read through some manu- For some time, Schubert appeared very scripts of Schubert’s lieder and remarked “truly, in 8. Rückblick upset and melancholy. When I asked him Schubert there is a divine spark!” Schubert’s unique 9. Irrlicht what was troubling him, he would say only, contribution to the genre was described by one of 10. Rast “Soon you will hear and understand.” One his closest friends, Joseph von Spaun: 11. Frühlingstraum day he said to me, “Come over to Schober’s In Lieder he stands unexcelled, even un- 12. Einsamkeit today and I will sing you a cycle of hor- approached.... Every one of his songs is rifying [schauerlicher] songs. I am anxious 13. Die Post in reality a poem on the poem he set to to know what you will say about them. 14. Der greise Kopf music.... Who among those who had the They have cost me more effort than any 15. Die Krähe good fortune to hear some of his greatest of my other songs.” So he sang the entire 16. Letzte Hoffnung songs does not remember how this music Winterreise through to us in a voice full of made a long familiar poem new for him, 17. Im Dorfe emotion. We were utterly dumbfounded by how it was suddenly revealed to him and 18. Der stümische Morgen the mournful, gloomy tone of these songs, penetrated to his very depth. 19. Täuschung and Schober said that only one of them, 20. Der Wegweiser “Der Lindenbaum” (“The Linden Tree”), had appealed to him. To this Schubert 21. Das Wirtshaus The genesis of Winterreise 22. Mut replied, “I like these songs more than all the rest, and you will come to like them 23. Die Nebensonnen How the work of the disregarded Prussian poet as well.” 24. Der Leiermann Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827) came to Schubert’s attention is unknown, but both of the com- It is not surprising that Schubert’s friends were poser’s song cycles—Die schöne Müllerin and puzzled by the gloomy tone given the predomi- Please note that Mr. Bostridge and Mr. Drake will perform the song cycle without intermission. Winterreise—are settings of Müller’s poetry: what- nance of minor keys and declamatory vocal lines ever the reason, in February 1827 Schubert became in a narrow range replacing the spontaneous, lyri- This afternoon’s performance is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Linda and Will Schieber. preoccupied with the melancholy cycle of poems cal melodies characteristic of his earlier lieder. The Cal Performances’ 2009–2010 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. entitled Die Winterreise. Its deeply inner drama, songs represent the voice of the poet as lover, and 4 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 5 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES form a distinct narrative and dramatic sequence in developed over nearly two decades of musical alienation becomes painfully clear. Exhaustion But death rejects him decisively in Das which the poet, whose sweetheart has broken his friendship. Indeed, it is something of an irony that, pervades the musical atmosphere of Irrlicht (9), Wirtshaus (21)—in spite of the funeral march heart, takes leave of her house as she sleeps, and while Schubert’s reputation as a song composer was with its strange intervals and the yearning quality rhythm that permeates the piano prelude and in- begins his long journey through the frozen win- formed and sustained by his undeniable gift for lyr- of its wide-ranging melodic lines, and still more of vokes the “path…that has led me…to a graveyard.” ter night—walking along the river-bank and up a ical melodies, the melodies of few lieder composers Rast (10). Here the piano’s left hand repeats an os- For he finds no room at this “Inn of death,” and steep path to a remote village where he falls into depend as heavily on their piano accompaniments tinato figure (eighth-note to quarter-note rhythm) discovers that he is not to have a “lovely and sooth- an exhausted dream of love and springtime. Upon for their effect as do Schubert’s. In Winterreise, that suggests the weary traveler trudging by with a ing death” but is condemned to a living death as a waking, he feels reconciled to his loneliness and perhaps even more than in his earlier, more lyrical heavy burden of sorrow. poet-singer irrevocably set apart from society. So, continues on his way through the cold, the dark, songs, Schubert uses a variety of musical ideas in In Frühlingstraum (11), sleep works its decep- he sings, “…lead me onward, only onward, my and the barren winter landscape which serves to the piano to convey the moods and images of the tion through the piano’s sweet, major-key lulling trusty staff!” and, buoyed by the piano’s heroic dot- intensify his heartache. Along the way, he encoun- poetry including, at times, the innermost feelings figuration. But the dreamer faces his desolation in ted rhythms and rising figures that open Mut (22), ters the various people and things which appear of the poet-singer. the final couplet when he finds his heart still beat- we hear a few fleeting moments of vocal courage. in the songs. The work is an allegorical journey of The cycle opens with the piano’s steady walk- ing warmly after his dream: “Die Augen schless’ ich The rich major chords of the subdominant-in- the heart—and yet, the poet-singer’s first words, ing rhythm of eighth-notes which are emblem- wieder, Noch schlägt das Herz so warm” which is flected Die Nebensonnen (23) conjure up the glow- “Fremd bin ich eingezogen, Fremd zieh’ ich wieder atic of the dark journey upon which the poet is accompanied by a right-hand gesture in the piano ing hues of a sunset, but it is a heartbreaking sight. aus” (“I came here a stranger, I depart a stranger”), setting-out in the first song, Gute Nacht, as he suggestive of the heartbeat. The piano’s response The wander sees two phantom suns on either side hint at what the scholar of Schubert lieder, Susan leaves for ever his sleeping beloved (how different to his final question, devastating in its eloquent of the sun; like these illusory globes of light in the Youens, has described as “an existential dilemma from the happy, upbeat “wandering” of the miller finality—“when will you, leaves, at the window be sky, his sweetheart’s eyes shone on him and then beyond sorrow over lost love, as wrenching as that that the piano conjures in the opening song of Die green again? When will I hold my darling in my vanished. Lieder pianist Graham Johnson describes is; thereafter, over and over again, he asks himself schöne Müllerin!). arms?”—is a desolate A-minor chord, whose at- this triple meter song as “dance music in slow mo- variations on the fundamental question, ‘Why In Wetterfahne (2), the hollow octaves of the mosphere pervades the final song of the first part, tion,” and he perceptively remarks that “Schubert’s am I always a Fremdling, a stranger to others and piano, outlining arpeggios and chilly trills, invoke Einsamkeit (12). music encouraged romantic embraces from which to myself?’” the blustery wind whistling through the weather- Songs 13 to 24 are settings of poems that he himself was excluded” in the sense that Schubert Yet Schubert’s personal tragedy did not produce vane on her roof.