Session Three NEGLECTED COMPOSER AND GENRE: SCHUBERT SONGS
SCHUBERT
Today our subject is neglected music by a single composer, Schubert, and our focus will be on Schubert songs. As I mentioned last week, the year in which a composer is born often determines to what degree his or her music will be neglected. Often, yes, but not always. The case of Schubert is an interesting one to explore.
Schubert had the great misfortune to have been born in 1797, when Beethoven was 27 years old and already famous. Except for the last ten months of Schubert’s life, Beethoven was Europe’s greatest living composer. So, it is fair to say that Schubert lived his entire life in Beethoven’s shadow. And a very deep shadow it was, a shadow that cast a pall over a whole generation of composers. Among these composers only Schubert emerged, only very gradually long after his death, as a great master. Today, in the 21st century, we have reasonable access to much of his music. But even so, there are still many of his finest pieces that are less known than their quality would lead us to expect.
BEETHOVEN
The nineteenth century did not just like Beethoven, it worshipped him. Musicians, scholars and audiences alike created the familiar persona of Beethoven as the lonely, stormy champion of human rights and political freedom; a genuine hero - the one composer who had dared to criticize Napoleon’s greedy political ambitions. To them, the very real passion and originality of Beethoven’s music seemed to dwarf the music of all the composers who followed. For fifty years after his death in 1827, musicians hotly debated who – if anyone – would be Beethoven’s worthy successor as the leader of European musical style.
As a result of this Beethoven-worship, Schubert’s reputation as a composer suffered for a very long time. For example: in his short but productive life he wrote ten complete piano sonatas, and ten more which are incomplete. When I was a conservatory student in the 1950’s - a full 125 years after Schubert’s death – none of these sonatas were ever assigned to piano students. Only two concert pianists – the great Arthur Schnabel and Dame Myra Hess - played his works in public, and this was considered eccentric. Today Schubert’s later piano sonatas and Impromptus are staples in the repertoires of concert pianists the world over. Still, the concert- going and CD-collecting public may never hear most of Schubert’s piano output. The same is true his wonderful chamber music, not to mention his masses.
SONG OUTPUT But the subject for today is Schubert’s songs, universally admired as masterpieces and at the same time the most neglected of his works. Because Beethoven wrote relatively few songs, and because they are not among his most popular compositions, one might assume that Schubert’s songs would be free of Beethoven’s overpowering shadow. But other forces have conspired to keep us from gaining easy access to them.
If you look at the complete works of classical composers such as Mozart and Haydn, you find almost no songs. Suddenly, with Beethoven, there they are, in all, a brand-new genre, or type of composition. And in succeeding generations, the number of songs is truly astonishing: 800 by Schubert, 400 by Robert Schumann, 104 by Mendelssohn, 350 by Brahms, 400 by Hugo Wolf. Then, suddenly, the output diminishes dramatically, and remains low but steady even today.
Why did the genre of the song become so important so quickly – and why did it fade at the dawn of the 20th century? The short answer is, “Romanticism.”
18TH CENTURY QUESTIONS Every age, including our own, seeks answers to important questions like these:
• For the individual, what is more important to rely on – reason or emotion?
• For the society as a whole, will we succeed more broadly by expanding and applying knowledge, or by freeing individuals to experience their full range of emotions and achieve their full range of aspirations?
It may seem obvious to you that this is a false dichotomy, that the only possible answer is, BOTH. But in a world of limited resources and overwhelming challenges, the obvious answer is not so easy to apply. If you favor the answers of reason and knowledge, you are in the classical camp. If you favor the answers of emotion and full experience, you are in the romantic camp.
ROMANTICISM The so-called Romantic era began in the 18th century as a reaction to the period now called, “The Enlightenment,” which favored solutions based on reason and logic. • Themes: nature, emotions, personal experience • Emphases: intuition over reason, the individual over groups, feelings over reason • Interests: expressive, even colloquial language over properly poetic language • Defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” • Intemperate extremes of emotion • The attitude that individuals need appeal to no authority outside themselves – not to the church or even God, not to the state, not to family or loved ones.
ROMANTICISM IN GERMAN-SPEAKING COUNTRIES In German-speaking areas, the single greatest catalyst for the growth romantic ideas was the publication in 1774 of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The theme of the book is the journey of a heroic young man named Werther as he encounters the sorrows of life. More than any other book up to that time, Werther had a great and lasting influence on the German-speaking public and on the arts. It was widely read and admired – and imitated.
ABOUT SCHUBERT SONGS Schubert’s songs were - and still are - among the most admired expressions of the Romantic spirit. Here are some things to listen for: • They tell a story or describe a mood – or sometimes both • The piano is not an “accompaniment” but a full partner in the music: setting the mood, describing the motion or emotion, clarifying the action or commenting on the text like a Greek Chorus. • Schubert’s melody and rhythm enhance the mood of the words.
ABOUT “THE ERLKING” • In German folklore, an evil spirit, a devil, a force of death. In Goethe’s poem, the Erlking preys on children. The piano imitates the horse fleeing the Erlking. • The song tells a story and also sets a mood of anxiety, mortal fear, and desperation. (all over-the-top emotions)
ERLKING PHOTOS
Listen to The Erkling
WHY NEGLECTED?
ABOUT ENGROSSED • The song tells a story and also sets a mood of feverish adoration and rapture at being able to hold her lover and comb his hair (over-the top, again)
• Piano shows wild abandon, moving over the entire keyboard quickly from high to low, moving ceaselessly back and forth as over the body of a lover
ABOUT “GRETCHEN AT THE SPINNING WHEEL” • Mood: excited, frantic, restless • At the climax, the piano stops as Gretchen becomes completely distracted by the thought of Faust's kiss, and then hesitatingly begins again as she realizes she has forgotten to keep spinning. • Piano describes Gretchen's restlessness and her beating heart, moving faster as she is able to concentrate on her spinning and slowing down as her emotions overcome her and she loses focus on her spinning
Listen to Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel ∞ ∞ ∞
ABOUT “THE WINTER JOURNEY” (See Links page for details) Schubert is also well known for his song cycles, especially “Die Schöne Müllerin” (“The Beautiful Miller’s Daughter”) and “Die Winterreise” (“The Winter Journey.”) For Romantic composers, these larger groupings of songs could tell a more complex story and explore emotions in more depth than was possible in a single song.
The emotional content is the profound grief, despair, loneliness, anger, bitterness, and self-pity of a young man – like Goethe’s Werther - whose sweetheart has left him for another man. The story follows his aimless wanderings through the countryside in the deepest of winter. His condition – of both body and mind - gradually deteriorates as he suffers from hunger, cold, and, finally, hopelessness. By the end, life itself, for him, is not worth living.
Each of the 24 individual songs in “Die Winterreise” • tells a story or describes the young man’s inner mood • The piano is not an “accompaniment “but a full partner in the music: setting the mood, describing the motion or emotion, clarifying the action or commenting on the text like a Greek Chorus. • Schubert’s melody and rhythm enhance the mood of the words.
ABOUT “GOOD NIGHT” • Piano sets the mood – walking and never stopping, but getting nowhere • Singer tells the story – the background, and expresses his grief, bitterness, anger, and hopelessness
• The words say “goodbye” as well as “good night” - does he think this is really the end?
ABOUT “THE WEATHERVANE” • Piano sets the mood of anger and bitterness
• Singer almost yells in sorry and grief, “My heart, my heart!”
• Text shows the difference between the weather outside and the “weather” inside his mind and heart.
ABOUT “THE POST” • Piano sets the mood – horses galloping
• Singer tells the story of how he responds emotionally to the arrival of the mail coach (The post has no mail for me!) OTHER NEGLECTED SCHUBERT WORKS On the Links page you will find links to performances of two other wonderful Schubert works: The Rondo in A Major for piano duet, and the Mass in A-Flat Major. Please listen to both think about why they might be among Schubert’s many neglected masterpieces.
WEB RESEARCH: NEGLECTED GEM OF THE WEEK Once again the Links page includes a Neglected Gem of the Week for you to find, listen to, and think about. It’s a piece that was very popular during the first half of the 20th century but is little known today. I’ll leave it to you to consider why that might be the case.