Schubert's ``The Trout'
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Schubert’s “The Trout”, Lied to Quintet and back to Lied: a contextual analysis of the pair © Okita, St Ontario To cite this version: © Okita, St Ontario. Schubert’s “The Trout”, Lied to Quintet and back to Lied: a contextual analysis of the pair. Humanities and Social Sciences. Brock University, 2020. English. tel-03005335 HAL Id: tel-03005335 https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-03005335 Submitted on 14 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. SCHUBRT’S “THE TROUT”: LIED TO QUINTET AND BACK TO LIED A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE PAIR by YOSHIAKI OKITA AN HONORS THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE HUMANITIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE HONORS BATCHELOR OF MUSIC DEGREE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC © YOSHIAKI OKITA BROCK UNIVERSITY ST. CATHARINES ONTARIO April 2020 All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopier or other means, Without the permission of the author. ii This thesis has been accepted as conforming to the required standard. _______________________________ Dr. Matthew Royal iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents……………………………………………………………………………………..….….iii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………..v CHAPTER 1 THE POEM DIE FORELLE (THE TROUT)………………………………………….……1 CHAPTER 2 ANALYSIS OF THE LIED DIE FORELLE , D 550……….……………………………...18 CHAPTER 3 SCHUBERT’ RESOURCES FOR COMPOSING “THE TROUT” QUINTET, D667 …54 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF “ THE TROUT ” QUINTET ………………………………………….……116 CHAPTER 5 THE LIED DIE FORELLE , VERSION #5……………………………………………….194 CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS…………………………206 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………….…..212 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES………………………………………………………………….……216 APPENDIX - Piano Quintet in A “The Trout” D667, Movement 1 - KEYS AND CHORDS………...221 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the teachers, staff and students of the Music Department of Brock University for teaching, guiding, advising, and accepting me as one of their own. I would particularly like to thank Dr. Debly and Dr. Royal for encouraging and guiding me and particularly for labouring through my writings throughout this project. Special thanks go to Dr. Royal who, many years ago when I was drifting along as a part time student, suggested that I pursue the degree course. Without his advice I would not have discovered how wide the musical field is and how enjoyable it is. Finally I would like to thank my wife for putting up with my tantrums while working on the project. v Abstract Schubert wrote a letter to his brother Ferdinand on October 29, 1818, when he was 21 years old, in which he said: “…As for me, I shall never turn my inmost feelings to personal or political account: what I feel in my heart I give to the world, and there is an end of it...” The “Trout” set composed by Schubert: Lied Die Forelle , D550, (early 1817), Piano Quintet in A “The Trout ”, D667, (fall 1819), and Lied Die Forelle , D550, version #5 (October 1821) is a manifestation of what his heart gave to the world, full of sorrow and full of love. The beautiful and popular Lied Die Forelle has been the subject of diverse interpretations, on the ground that “it is too simple,” or that “there must be more,” from various points of view such as sexual, psychological, political, etc. These “interpreters” do not seem to take into account the fact that Schubert himself left his interpretation of the Lied in the form of its version #5 and the Quintet. Too often also the Quintet is dismissed as a “happy” piece or a “popular” piece or its movement 4 as just a typical example of a “theme and variations.” Due respect appears not to have been paid to how seriously Schubert took the terms of commission that the Quintet was to be “based” on the Lied and how his effort resulted in a piece that is always enjoyable and could be said to be a prototype of program music. In Chapter 1 of this thesis, I will show that the poem Die Forelle was a light hearted imaginative sketch and when Schubert discarded the last stanza, wide varieties of feelings from the characters in the poem were left hanging, making the poem, as used in the Lied, lose its focus at the end. In Chapter 2 the Lied is analyzed in detail, but in spite of the musically skillful formulation and beautiful melodies and accompaniments, I will show that the loss of focus in the text made the Lied itself unfocused and unfinished. In Chapter 3, I will review the resources Schubert might have had for composing the Quintet literarily and musically. Especially for the latter, all the Lieder he composed before the fall of 1819 were reviewed for watery-words and/or watery-scenes and the accompaniments he used for them were vi complied. It will be shown in Chapter 4 that many of these accompaniments were used in the Quintet directly or indirectly. In Chapter 4, I will show that, from the overall structure of the Quintet and especially from the structure of movement 4, Schubert must have re-interpreted the poem by changing its point of view to a single one, that of the trout, and created the coherent and strong poetical narrative necessary for a long composition. Then against the new interpretation of the poem, each movement will be analyzed in detail, mainly on the use of themes and motifs, all of them found traceable to the music of the Lied. A sufficient amount of harmonic analysis is made to indicate how these themes and motifs are combined together to support the narrative. I will also show that the often-commented dismissal of the Quintet as being a work of a “simple copy-and-paste” is far from the truth and that almost every measure of the “copied” section is changed. Special attention is paid to movement 4, which can best be described as “story-telling in the story,” where I will show how carefully Schubert organized his variations, how effectively he used various themes and motifs, and how beautifully he ended the storytelling in the story. In Chapter 5, I will suggest how the narrative for the Quintet made Schubert revise the Lied into version #5, with which he appeared to have been satisfied since it is the last revision of the Lied. I recommend performing Lied version #5 and the Quintet together. An example of a lecture- recital program is included. 1 Chapter 1. The poem Die Forelle (The Trout) 1.1 Introduction In einem Bächlein helle, In a limpid brook Da scho β in froher Eil’ The capricious trout Die launische Forelle In joyous haste Vorüber wie ein Pfeil . Darted by like an arrow. 1 So begins the text of the popular Franz Schubert’s Lied, Die Forelle 2 (D 550, 1817, Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart) using a D ♭ major triad “folk-like” melody with a distinct piano accompaniment featuring “fishy wiggles”.3 Unlike Berlioz and other Romantic composers, and also many modern composers, who often provided extensive scripts or “explanations” of their compositions, 4 F. Schubert left little commentary on his compositions aside from a few references in his letters. This situation has left open its interpretation, and the text of this Lied, written by C.F.D. Schubart, with an apparently pastoral and simple depiction/story, is no exception. It has been analyzed in a variety of ways and preconceived theories. Some of them include: Who is the narrator, male or female? What is the symbolism of the trout? Is the song really about a maiden rather than about a trout? 5 Are the narrator and the fisherman competing for a female (the trout)? 6 If the narrator is a male, is he stating his wish to be a female? 7 Is 1 English translation by Wigmore (1988: 151-152) unless otherwise noted. Richard Wigmore, Schubert--the complete song texts: texts of the Lieder and Italian songs (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988). 2 In this thesis, all song titles in German by F. Schubert are in italic and bold followed by, in brackets in the normal font, Deutsch number, year of composition, and the name of the poet. 3 So named by Hogwood describing the pattern with a chromatic rise followed by a leap up and down: Christopher Hogwood, "Vienna and Schubert: The 'Trout' Quintet". December 6, 2012. Gresham lecture series: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/vienna-and-schubert-the-trout-quintet, an MP3 file of the live lecture demonstration and a Word file of lecture transcript. Accessed 2012-12-06. 4 For example, Beriloz supplied a very long narrative for his Symphonie Fantastique (1830): Hector Berlioz, “Symphonie Fantastique: the symphony’s programme”, 1845 and 1855, trans. Michael Austin, 2017, http://www.hberlioz.com/Scores/fants.htm. Accessed 2017-09-24). John Estacio (b. 1966) writes about his Spring’s Promise (2004. Duration 11 minutes) in the program brochure, Overture, of 2015/2016 season by the Niagara Symphony Orchestra, p 36. ~150 words. 5 Francis Kayali, “Fish roles in music: reaching for an understanding through synesthetic representation.” Unpublished, Fall 2006, http://franciskayali.com/papers/fich.pdf Accessed 2016-12-23 6 In this thesis, for the pronoun of the trout, “she” is used to avoid confusion although the German die Forelle can be both male and female.