9781135854584_sample_510322

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German Lieder in the

Nineteenth Century

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MUSICAL GENRESR Larry Todd General Editor

Keyboard Music before 1700 2nd editionAlexander Silbiger Editor

Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music 2nd editionRobert L Marshall Editor

Nineteenth-Century Piano Music 2nd editionR Larry Todd Editor

Nineteenth-Century Chamber MusicStephen E Hefling Editor

Twentieth-Century Chamber Music 2nd editionJames McCalla

German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century 2nd editionRufus Hallmark Editor


Nineteenth Century

ROUTLEDGE STUDIESIN MUSICAL GENRES

EDITED BY

Rufus HallmarkMASON GROSS SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY

First published 1996by Schirmer Books

This edition published 2010by Routledge270 Madison Ave New York NY 10016

Simultaneously published in the UKby Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group an informa business

copy 1996 Schirmer Bookscopy 2010 Taylor amp Francis

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronicmechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or in anyinformation storage or retrieval system without permission inwriting from the publishers

Trademark Notice Product or corporate names may betrademarks or registered trademarks and are used only foridentification and explanation without intent to infringe

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataGerman Lieder in the nineteenth century edited by Rufus Hallmarkmdash2nd ed

p cmmdash(Routledge studies in musical genres)Includes bibliographic references and index1 Songs Germanmdash19th centurymdashHistory and criticism 2 Music and literaturemdashHistorymdash19th century I Hallmark Rufus E 1943ndashML28294G47 20097824216prime80943mdashdc22 2008055402

ISBN10 0ndash415ndash99037ndash8 (hbk)ISBN10 0ndash415ndash99038ndash6 (pbk)ISBN10 0ndash203ndash87749ndash7 (ebk)

ISBN13 978ndash0ndash415ndash99037ndash0 (hbk)ISBN13 978ndash0ndash415ndash99038ndash7 (pbk)ISBN13 978ndash0ndash203ndash87749ndash4 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2009

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcouk

ISBN 0-203-87749-7 Master e-book ISBN

This book is dedicated to the memories of

Christopher Lewis (1947ndash1992) and

John Daverio (1954ndash2003)

Contents

Preface xAcknowledgments xviiiContributors xix

1 The Literary Context Goethe as Source andCatalyst 1Harry SeeligFolk Song OriginsmdashGoethersquos ContributionmdashRationalism and RomanticismmdashGoethe andSchubertmdashRomantic Poetry and Romantic LiedermdashRomanticismrsquos AftermathmdashNaturalism andDeacutenouementmdashAppendix Lyric Poets andLied Composers

2 Franz Schubert The Lied Transformed 35Susan YouensTraits of Schubertian SongmdashSchubert and PoetrymdashSchubert Revising SchubertmdashSchubert and theldquoMiracle Yearrdquo of 1815mdashFrom 1817 to1822mdashSchubert in 1822mdashBetween Die schoumlne Muumlllerin(1823) and Winterreise (1827)mdashSchubert and theSong Cycle

3 Robert Schumann The Poet Sings 92Rufus HallmarkEarly Career and the LiederjahrmdashPoets and PoetrymdashThe Character of Schumannrsquos Songs Individual Liederand CyclesmdashInterpretationsmdashSongs for MultipleSolo VoicesmdashLate Songs

4 Johannes Brahms VolksliedKunstlied 142Virginia HancockFolk Song SettingsmdashFolklike (volkstuumlmlich) SongsmdashHybrid SongsmdashArt Songs (Kunstlieder)mdashPostludeThe Vier ernste Gesaumlnge Op 121

5 Crosscurrents in Song Six Distinctive Voices 178Juumlrgen ThymThe Storyteller Carl Loewe (1796ndash1869)mdashMaking HerVoice Heard Fanny Hensel (1805ndash47)mdashCosmopolitanInfusions Franz Liszt (1811ndash86)mdashIn Search ofldquoChastenessrdquo Robert Franz (1815ndash92)mdashThe Gift ofSongs Clara Schumann (1819ndash96)mdashReluctantWagnerian Peter Cornelius (1824ndash74)

6 Hugo Wolf Subjectivity in the Fin-de-Siegravecle Lied 239Lawrence KramerThe Oedipal RegimemdashThe Lucky Third SonmdashTheScrutinizing Mode Confession and RecognitionmdashOedipal Careers The SongbooksmdashSampling OedipusFour Songs

7 Gustav Mahler Romantic Culmination 273Stephen Hefling (after the original essay byChristopher Lewis)School and Apprentice YearsmdashFirst Published LiedermdashLieder eines fahrenden GesellenmdashSongs from Des KnabenWunderhornmdashRuumlckert Lieder Kindertotenlieder andFarewell to the Wunderhorn

8 Richard Strauss A Lifetime of Lied Composition 332Barbara A PetersenPoets and PoetrymdashTraditional Beginnings The EarlySongsmdashSelected Songs The 1880smdashAn ImportantOpus Vier Lieder Op 27mdashIncreasingly Varied Lieder1895ndash1906mdashThe Lied in TransitionmdashOrchestral Songsand Orchestrated Lieder

9 The Song Cycle Journeys Through a RomanticLandscape 363John Daverio (revised and with an Afterword byDavid Ferris)The Romantic Song Cycle as a GenremdashThe Prehistoryof the Romantic Song Cycle Performance or Work ofArtmdashSchubertrsquos Song Cycles Biedermeier Sensibilityand Romantic IronymdashSchumannrsquos Song Cycles TheComposer as Poet and HistorianmdashAfter SchumannExperiments Dramatic Cycles and Orchestral Lieder(Corneilus Brahms Wagner Wolf MahlerStrauss)mdashAfterword

viii German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century

10 Performing Lieder The Mysterious Mix 405Robert SpillmanCommunicationmdashFaithfulnessmdashUnderstandingmdashTechniquemdashStylemdashPresentation

Index 421

Contents ix

Preface

Du Lied aus voller Menschenbrust You song from the fullness of thehuman breast

Waumlrst du nicht ach was fuumlllte noch If you did not exist ah then whatIn arger Zeit ein Herz mit Lust In grave times would fill a heart with joy

(ldquoFragerdquo Justinius Kerner)

Words make you think a thoughtMusic makes you feel a feelingA song makes you feel a thought

(EY ldquoYiprdquo Harburg)

More than one acquaintance has marveled (or deplored) that I have spentmost of my scholarly career on the German lied For many the lied is agenre that is both outdated and overrefined And it comes in very smallpackages no match for piano sonatas string quartets symphonies operasThe lied constitutes a large body of music touted in music history texts andspecialized studies (vested interests one might argue) but otherwise oddlyneglected Young singers would generally prefer to move up to opera songis the spinach they have to eat as growing children (though ironically fewof them will make it to the opera stage) Most young pianists care little forthe vocal repertory in which they feel relegated to mere accompanimentThis particular body of song is moreover in German one of the leastobliging major European languages to sing much less to learn Singersbegin with the pure vowels and easy consonants of Italian and they arefamiliar with that language from the Italian airs of their voice lessons andthe operas of Mozart Verdi and Puccinimdashnot to mention the Italianatepronunciation of church Latin Germanmdashwith its comparatively harsherand more difficult sounds a vocabulary with many fewer cognates and aforbidding grammarmdashisnrsquot nearly as inviting (Observers note too that theGerman-speaking eacutemigreacute generation of the first half of the twentieth cen-tury which constitutedmdashit is arguedmdashthe major devotees of the lied hasdied off and not been replaced)

Then there are the sentiments of the poems these lieder have as theirtexts What does a postmodern youth in the age of environmental plunderknow of the beauty and allure of nature When light pollution in largesprawling urban areas is so severe that one cannot see the stars who knowsthe real darkness and mystery of night Who can hear of Romantic love

sickness without feeling one is eavesdropping on incurable neurotics Canthe world of today be congenial to such sentiments as a yearning for theinfinite a belief in a higher other reality even hope itself Even morebasically who reads poetry anymore in any languagemdashmuch less memor-izes recites enjoys and treasures it1

Furthermore the musical scene today is not the same as that of thenineteenth century which as Carl Dahlhaus has observed (Nineteenth-Century Music trans J Bradford Robinson Berkeley 1989 5) provided avery different context for lieder Although the agersquos instrumental musicand opera are emphasized in performance and teaching today non-theatrical vocal and choral music was dominant at the time Thenineteenth-century public were readers quite conversant with poetry andassociated literature with music more freely than todayrsquos audiences Vocalmusic was performed by the lay public song was a staple in domestic music-making and amateurs filled the ranks of ubiquitous community choralgroups So all told perhaps the German lied is a bit precious for todayrsquosworld (especially the non-German-speaking one) Especially a world inwhich the vast body of popular songmdashrock hip-hop country-westernBroadway and so on that dominates contemporary musical culturemdashallbut occludes this relatively obscure art song repertory

I seem to be arguing for the irrelevance of the book you have beforeyou Yet nothing could be further from my true intentions As a singer aswell as a scholar I am a fervent lied enthusiast as are many musicians andmusical scholars Why To put it plainly in the repertory of the nineteenth-century German lied one finds a tremendously rich vein of musical beautyItrsquos that simple Here is musical expressiveness in crystallized form theoperation of musical elementsmdashmelody harmony rhythm vocal andpiano timbremdashin a condensed time frame By ldquooperationrdquo I mean not onlythe describable chartable course of technical musical events (though theseevents and their analysis constitute an important and satisfying part of themusicianrsquos study) but also the emotional concomitants of the lied theaffective content that we all feel and that scholars are growing less reluctantto talk about Nearly every major (and minor) composer wrote songsand for many their songs are among their best efforts For some such asSchubert and Mahler the lied was a central genre without which our per-ception of these composers would be disfigured For others such as Hen-sel Franz and Wolf the lied was their almost exclusive arena of activitywithout which they would practically disappear from music history For stillothers such as Schumann and Brahms song was one part of a balancedmultifaceted compositional program yet one without which the physi-ognomy of nineteenth-century music would not be the same In short onlyat the peril of gross musical ignorance and immense aesthetic loss does oneneglect this repertory

It is not the purely musical elements alone but their combinationwith the verbal text and the interaction with the singer that set the art songapart and imbue it with some of its most special and attractive qualities

Preface xi

Although chamber music has the intimacy of a song recital and opera thebeauty of the human voice in neither is there the unique bond of eyecontact between musician and audience Singers and instrumentalists alikeacknowledge this crucial distinction (The young singer finds this one ofthe hardest things to become accustomed to) A good song recitalistbecomes the persona in the poem-song and engages each member ofthe audience in the shared lyrical experience of poet and composer (seeChapter 10 below and Cone 1974 57ndash80 and 115ndash35) To use a hackneyedbut apt expression the singer bares her or his soul and draws the sympa-thetic beholder-listener into an aesthetic psychological and emotionalexperience evoked by the words and mediated by the music For some thewords get in the way of the music But for others this apparent drawback isthe very thing that keeps the lied potent The lied invites us as in no othercommon modern situation (beyond school and college classrooms) toread poetry It enlivens thoughts and feelings delineated by the text thatwe thought were no longer part of our sensibilities The music insinuatesthem and we discover that this medium defines and releases feelings thatare not so outdated or superseded as we may have thought (Consider Didwe once believe that technology and contentmdashTechnicolor wide screensflawless special effects with computer-generated images fast-paced editingsexual and linguistic explicitness graphic violencemdashhad rendered thegreat movies of the 1930s and 40s second rate outmoded and irrelevant)We need not depend for our enjoyment on a museum recreation of whatlieder meant when they were new with intelligence and imagination we canfind readings that still speak to us today

Through lieder many musicians have their only significant contactwith German literature (other than a novel or two in translation)mdashthenative literature of many of the most important and beloved composers inthe Western European canon This is the body of philosophy prose fic-tion drama and poetry that (together with its English counterparts) gavevoice to the cultural consciousness named Romanticism Though no onechallenges the existence of Romanticism in late eighteenth-century andearly nineteenth-century Europe it admits no easy definition dependenton a simple set of traits An understanding of this phenomenon is bestformed inductively through the slow accretion of impressions Therecould be no better place to start than with the poetry and music of theGerman lied Here one encounters Goethe and Schiller the collectors andimitators of German folk poetry and other poets of the first Romanticgeneration then their successorsmdashthe spiritual symbolist Eichendorff theballadist Uhland and the hard-surfaced and curiously modern Heine toname but a few These figures though active and frequently set to musicwell before midcentury persist into the songs of Brahms Wolf Straussand Mahler Many who are considered lesser figures by literary historiansand critics were nevertheless prized and set to musicmdashfor example thepoet Friedrich Ruumlckert who was favored especially by Schumannand Mahler

xii German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century

And the pianist Far from serving as a mere accompanist the pianistwho delves into lieder will soon discover what balanced partners voice andinstrument are and how crucial to the total effect of the song the pianowriting is and how gratifying it is to play By the same token the singershould not think her- or himself the sole focus of the audiencersquos attentionbut must learn the mutual attentiveness and pleasure of chamber music-making

This is a great time to be studying German lieder In the first placereports of the death of the genre have been greatly exaggerated Profes-sional singers continue to feature lieder in recitals and recordings manynew and re-issued CD sets of the complete songs of majors composers areavailable and less well known lied composers are finding their way onto themarket Lieder remain a staple of vocal instruction And more scholars havetaken an interest in the lied producing numerous articles and books ofhistorical source-critical and style studies older interpretive discussions oflieder have been scrutinized and fresh analytical approaches are beingproposed to take their place The updated bibliographies of the individualchapters of this book will serve as a guide to this rich rewarding andburgeoning secondary literature and some of the more general seminalstudies are found in the (partially annotated) bibliography appended tothis preface There is no lack of specialized studies to draw on as a guide toappreciating the repertory (The growth of this secondary literature ismanifest in the roughly 20 percent increase in the chapter bibliographiessince first publication of this book in 1996)

The nineteenth-century German lied is often said to have been ldquobornrdquo on19 October 1814 when Franz Schubert composed ldquoGretchen amSpinnraderdquo The quantity and quality of Schubertrsquos songs were importanteven crucial determinants in music history so much so that it is not far-fetched to suppose that without his example many of the composers in thisbook might have ignored this genre altogether or devoted much less cre-ative effort to it But there are other factors to keep in mind (1) the pre-decessors of the eighteenth century the two ldquoBerlin schoolsrdquo (the secondone including the prolific lied composers Johann Friedrich Reichardt andCarl Friedrich Zelter) as well as the songs of Gluck Haydn and Mozart(2) Schubertrsquos predecessors and contemporaries in early nineteenth-century Vienna such as Beethoven and the balladist Johann Rudolf Zum-steeg2 and (3) the tradition of domestic music-making the growing popu-larity of the piano3 and the market for accessible keyboard music andkeyboard-accompanied song

Although these factors are not treated in this book a fourth crucialfactormdashthe lyric impulse of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centurypoetrymdashis discussed in the opening essay by Harry Seelig Seelig essentiallyargues for the seminal role of Goethe in launching the new unbuttonedlyricism in German poetry Although I considered organizing this book

Preface xiii

systematically by genre and form as in a recent German book on the lied(Duumlrr 1984) I decided to proceed by composer Thus in the subsequentchapters on individual composers the authors treat the six time-honoredmastersmdashSchubert Schumann Brahms Wolf Mahler and Strauss Thesechapters are not superficial surveys but fresh well-investigated thoughtfulessays that discuss a limited number of songs in detail The authors havebeen encouraged to give attention to less well-known repertory and toproduce original provocative and specific (but not overly technical) dis-cussions that draw the reader into the heart of each composerrsquos style Inpreparing the first edition of the book I asked contributors not to dwellextensively on their composersrsquo song cycles in light of the later chaptersurveying this genre but I came to feel that this was an artificial and arbi-trary exclusion and for this edition authors were encouraged to add discus-sions where appropriate of the cycles

Susan Youens begins by tempering the pervasive notion of Schubertrsquosoriginality with a discussion of his indebtedness to other composers shethen surveys his choices of poets and musical styles in preparation for ameaningful look at selected songs from different periods In my chapter onSchumann I argue that he (more than Schubert) offered heavily interpre-tive readings of the poetry he set to music Though I deal with the fruits ofthe 1840 ldquosong yearrdquo I also devote much attention to the later songs and tryto shake them free of the ignorance and prejudice that shroud so muchof Schumannrsquos late music Virginia Hancock writing about Brahms alsooffers a corrective essay that treats his folk-tune and folk-lyric settings on anequal footing with his Kunstlieder Lawrence Kramer looks at the lieder ofHugo Wolf in the broader cultural context of the Vienna of his day whichincluded the practice of ldquomental sciencerdquo he sees Wolf as involved innineteenth-century discourse on psychology and sexology and at the sametime in his own personal rite of passage In her chapter on RichardStrauss Barbara Petersen discusses the great range of poetry and musicalaesthetics found in his eight remarkable decades of lied compositionStephen Hefling coming to terms with the plethora of new writing aboutMahlerrsquos songs in the last fifteen years found he needed to rewrite Chris-topher Lewisrsquos chapter more fundamentally his survey provides an incisiveaccount of Mahlerrsquos evolving style through his lieder Juumlrgen Thymrsquos longerchapter is devoted to a representative selection of other composers who arelittle discussed and seldom performed in English-speaking countries Histreatments of Carl Loewe Robert Franz Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel ClaraSchumann (who is newly added for this second edition) Franz Liszt andPeter Cornelius impart the distinctive character of each of these com-posers whetting readersrsquo curiosity to hear and learn more about their songsand those of other comparable lied proponents Musical examples areadded to his chapter in this revised edition

John Daveriorsquos overview chapter on the song cycle raises conceptualand historical issues both literary and musical that merit extendedtreatment Daveriorsquos essay is complemented by David Ferrisrsquos substantial

xiv German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century

ldquoAfterwordrdquo on recent interpretive and analytical approaches to the songcycle Finally Robert Spillmanrsquos chapter on performance deals with thepractical issue of communicating in what for most users of this book isa foreign language He puts matters related to this problem ahead ofquestions of musical technique and style Students will find this chaptertantamount to a series of masterclasses and more experienced hands willfind themselves nodding in agreement with his helpful ideas

In late summer 1992 not long after he had submitted his original chapteron Mahler Christopher Lewis was killed in an automobile accident JohnDaverio died in a drowning incident in March 2003 Their untimely deathscut short two remarkable careers I am grateful to Stephen Hefling andDavid Ferris for taking on the revision and expansion of the chapters onMahler and the song cycle respectively In accordance with the wishes ofthe contributors this revised version of the book is dedicated to the mem-ory of these two scholars

Rufus Hallmark

Notes1 Some signs perhaps undercut this pessimistic conclusion A feature story on

the PBS Newshour (61608) told of a literature professor who teaches reading andwriting poetry to prison inmates in Arizona PBS has a regular poetry series ofwhich this was a part An article in the New York Times the very next day described apoetry program at a Navajo school in Santa Fe NM its students were preparing toparticipate in the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festivalin Washington DC These two unrelated and supposedly irrelevant reports areperhaps symptomatic of a renewed interest in poetry per se

2 For a sympathetic and informative account of the eighteenth-century pre-Schubertian lied see Parsons (2004 35ndash82) which champions this neglected andovershadowed repertory

3 For a discussion of the piano see Nineteenth-Century Piano Music ed R LarryTodd (New York 1990) especially Leon Plantingarsquos essay ldquoThe Piano and theNineteenth Centuryrdquo 1ndash15

Bibliography(Note The following works are recommended for further reading about theGerman lied in general Some specialized studies are included in the third sectionbecause they present interesting methodological approaches to lieder)

SurveysBrody Elaine and Robert Fowkes The German Lied and Its Poetry New York 1971Duumlrr Walther Das deutsche Sololied im 19 Jahrhundert Wilhelmshaven 1984Gorrell Lorraine The Nineteenth-Century German Lied Portland 1993Landau Anneliese The Lied The Unfolding of its Style Washington DC 1980

Preface xv

Moser Hans Joachim Dos deutsche Lied seit Mozart Tutzing 1968mdashmdash The German Solo Song and the Ballad New York 1958Parsons James ed The Cambridge Companion to the Lied Cambridge 2004Radcliffe Philip ldquoGermany and Austriardquo In A History of Song ed Denis Stevens

228ndash64 London 1960 Rev ed New York 1970Smeed J W German Song and its Poetry 1740ndash1900 London 1987Whitton Kenneth S Lieder An Introduction to German Song London 1984Wiora Walter Das deutsche Lied Zur Geschichte und Aumlsthtetik einer musikalischen

Gattung Wolfenbuumlttel and Zurich 1971

Lied Texts(These are the standard anthologies of lied texts and translations For more com-prehensive collections see the bibliographic notes for each individual composer)

Fischer-Dieskau Dietrich The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder The Texts of Over 750 Songsin German London 1976

Miller Philip ed and trans The Ring of Words An Anthology of Song Texts New York1966

Prawer Siegbert S ed The Penguin Book of Lieder Baltimore 1964

Interpretive and Analytical Studies(Note Some of these entries are annotated)

Agawu Kofi ldquoTheory and Practice in the Analysis of the Nineteenth-Century LiedrdquoMusic Analysis 11 (1992) 3ndash36 (Clear-sighted essay uncovering the assump-tions behind most lied analyses differentiating them into categories andsuggesting an alternative approach)

Clarkson Austin and Edward Laufer ldquoAnalysis Symposium Brahms Op 1051 ALiterary-Historical Approach [Clarkson]rdquo and ldquoA Schenkerian Approach[Laufer]rdquo Journal of Music Theory 15 (1971) 1ndash57 Reprinted in Readings inSchenker Analysis and Other Approaches ed Maury Yeston New Haven andLondon 1977 227ndash72 (These two essays exemplify two approaches to liedanalysis Though they may contain some of the unexamined assumptionslater identified by Agawu and others each one is an exemplary detailed studywith much to recommend it)

Cone Edward The Composerrsquos Voice Berkeley 1974 (A truly seminal study of musicas language discussing speculatively the nature of the persona that is ldquospeak-ingrdquo in a musical work The book has engendered numerous responses andexpansions as well as the refinements the late author himself made insubsequent publications It is highly recommended for performers as well asspeculative musical thinkers)

Dunsby Jonathan Making Words Sing Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Song Cam-bridge 2004

Frisch Walter ed Franz Schubert Critical and Analytical Studies Lincoln Nebraska1986 (A compilation of essays including often-cited studies of Schubertrsquoslieder by Joseph Kerman Arnold Feil Georgiadesmdashsee belowmdashDavid LewinAnthony Newcomb Lawrence Kramer and Frisch himself)

Georgiades Thrasybulos Schubert Musik und Lyrik Goumlttingen 1967 (Considered apath-breaking book in the close reading of the relation between the linguisticand grammatical structure of language and the corresponding elements of

xvi German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century

music A key chapter appears in English as ldquoLyric as Musical Structure Schu-bertrsquos Wanderers Nachtlied (ldquoUumlber allen Gipfelnrdquo D 768)rdquo in Frisch 198684ndash103)

Ivey Donald Song Anatomy Imagery and Styles New York 1970 (A basic primer instudying the elements of poetry and song)

Kerman Joseph ldquoAn die ferne Geliebterdquo Beethoven Studies ed Alan Tyson New York1973 123ndash157 (Imaginative and incisive study of Beethovenrsquos famous songcycle discussing poetry music and the biographical implications of thework)

Kramer Lawrence Music and Poetry The Nineteenth Century and After Berkeley 1984(In Chapter 5 ldquoSongrdquo 125ndash170 Kramer argues provocatively that song oftensubverts the meaning of the poetry His thoughts prefigure some of Agawursquoscritical approach)

Stein Deborah and Robert Spillman Poetry into Song Performance and Analysis ofLieder New York amp Oxford 1996 (Written for use as a textbook it surpassesIvey as an introduction to the study of the lied)

Stein Jack Poem and Music in the German Lied from Gluck to Hugo Wolf CambridgeMA 1971 (By approaching lieder as a literary historian Stein places thepoetry at the forefront challenges cozy assumptions about the superiority ofthe music and faults irresponsible scholarship that ignores or slights the textThough Steinrsquos pronouncements have been challenged his book provided ahealthy corrective at the time and is still valuable)

Thym Juumlrgen ed Of Poetry and Song Approaches to the Nineteenth-Century LiedRochester 2010 (Essays solo and jointly authored by Thym Ann C FehnHarry Seelig and Rufus Hallmark Includes studies of among other thingshow composers approach particular verse forms poetic meters etc in theirsong settings)

Winn James Unsuspected Eloquence A History of the Relations between Poetry and MusicNew Haven 1981

Zbikowski Lawrence M Conceptualizing Music Cognitive Structure Theory and Analy-sis Oxford 2002 Ch 6 ldquoWords Music and Song The Nineteeth-CenturyLiedrdquo 243ndash286 (A painstakingly systematic attempt to rationalize the discus-sion of how poetry and music interact to produce song Should be consideredtogether with Agawu Cone and Kramer)

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank R Larry Todd the general editor of the original series ofwhich this book was a part for his invitation to produce the book and forhis periodic gentle urgings and helpful suggestions The book owes muchto the confidence patience and prodding of Schirmer Books editor inchief Maribeth Anderson Payne and to her successor Richard Carlin Inaddition I most gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of all my fellowcontributors who were able with equanimity and generosity to bear upthrough the vicissitudes of the production of a book with ten authors oneof whom was also the sometimes foot-dragging editor

For this revised edition I am grateful to Constance Ditzel of Routledgefor her confidence and encouragement I also thank the anonymousreviewers who made many valuable suggestions about improving the bookif we did not follow all of them the oversight lies entirely with me I alsowish to express my thanks to the original contributorsmdashHarry Seelig SusanYouens Virginia Hancock Lawrence Kramer Barbara Petersen andRobert Spillmanmdashwho generously updated and revised their chapters toJuumlrgen Thym who added an additonal composer to his chapter and espe-cially to David Ferris and Stephen Hefling for their sympathetic updatingand reworking of the chapters originally written respectively by the lateJohn Daverio and Christopher Lewis

Finally I wish to thank all of those who have spoken or written to measking about the republication of this book It is gratifying to know that ourwork has aided colleagues in introducing the German lied to their studentsand has also provided a helpful survey for readers who have come to thebook independently

Rufus Hallmark

Contributors

John Daverio was Professor of Music at Boston University His publicationsinclude Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (1993)Robert Schumann Herald of a New Age (1997) and Crossing Paths SchubertSchumann amp Brahms (2002) plus many specialized articles on the nine-teenth century His article ldquoSchumannrsquos Im Legendenton and FriedrichSchlegelrsquos Arabesquerdquo (1987) won the Alfred Einstein Award of the Ameri-can Musicological Society

David Ferris is Associate Professor of Music at the Shepherd School ofMusic Rice University He is the author of Schumannrsquos Eichendorff Liederkreisand the Genre of the Romantic Cycle (2000) and has published articles in theJournal of the American Musicological Society Music Theory Spectrum and theJournal of Musicology His most recent publication is ldquoPlates for Sale C P EBach and the Story of Die Kunst der Fugerdquo in C P E Bach Studies (2006)

Rufus Hallmark Professor of Music at the Mason Gross School of theArts Rutgers University is the author of The Genesis of Schumannrsquos Dichter-liebe (1979) and of a projected book on Schumannrsquos song cycle Frauenliebeund Leben (2010) He has published many articles on the songs of Schu-mann Schubert and Vaughan Williams is editor of Schumannrsquos Dichterliebeand Frauenliebe und Leben for the new critical edition and of Recent Researchesin the Music of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (A-R Editions) Hallmarkserved as Secretary of the American Musicological Society (2001ndash7) He isalso a singer

Virginia Hancock Professor of Music at Reed College is the author ofBrahmsrsquo Choral Compositions and His Library of Early Music (1983) and of anumber of articles on the composerrsquos study and performance of Renais-sance and Baroque music his own choral music and his songs Hancock isalso active as a choral conductor

Stephen E Hefling Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve Uni-versity has also taught at Stanford Yale and Oberlin He is the author ofGustav Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (2000) editor of Mahler Studies (1997)and is currently preparing a two-volume study of The Symphonic Worlds ofGustav Mahler Hefling serves on the editorial board of the Mahler NeueKritische Gesamtausgabe for which he edited Mahlerrsquos voice and piano

version of Das Lied He also edited Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music (2003)for this book series

Lawrence Kramer Professor of English and Music at Fordham Universityis the author of Music and Poetry The Nineteenth Century and After (1984)Music as Cultural Practice 1800ndash1900 (1990) Classical Music and Post-ModernKnowledge (1995) After the Lovedeath Sexual Violence and the Making of Culture(1997) Franz Schubert Sexuality Subjectivity Song (1998) Musical MeaningToward a Critical History (2002) Opera and Modern Culture Wagner and Strauss(2004) Critical Musicology and the Responsibility of Response Selected Essays(2006) and Why Classical Music Still Matters (2007) He has edited or co-edited several other volumes is the editor of the journal 19th-CenturyMusic and is a composer with numerous song cycles among his works

Christopher Lewis was Assistant Professor of Music at the University ofAlberta Edmonton His publications include Tonal Coherence in MahlerrsquosNinth Symphony and several articles on Mahler Schoenberg and late nine-teenth- and early twentieth-century tonality including a study of the com-positional chronology of the Kindertotenlieder His essay ldquoThe MindrsquosChronology Narrative Times and Tonal Disruption in Post-RomanticMusicrdquo appeared in The Second Practice of Ninetheenth-Century Tonality (1996)

Barbara A Petersen Assistant Vice-President of Classical Music Adminis-tration at BMI (Broadcast Music Inc) and a member of the ExecutiveCommittee of the American Music Center wrote Ton und Wort The Lieder ofRichard Strauss (1980 revised version in German 1986) She is the author ofarticles for both The New Grove Dictionary of American Music and The NewGrove Dictionary of Opera

Harry Seelig Professor Emeritus of German at the University ofMassachusetts Amherst is the author of musical-literary studies onSuleika-Lieder by Schubert Schumann Hensel Mendelssohn and Wolf onnineteenth- and twentieth-century settings of Goethersquos ldquoWanderersNachtliederrdquo on Hugo Wolfrsquos cyclic settings of Goethersquos Divan lyrics ontwentieth-century settings of poems by Houmllderlin and Rilke and of a com-parison of Mahlerrsquos Symphony No 8 and Straussrsquos Die Frau ohne Schatten aslibretto and story

Robert Spillman is Professor Emeritus of piano at the College of Music atthe University of Colorado Boulder and he also taught at the EastmanSchool of Music and the Aspen Music School He is the author of The Art ofAccompanying Master Lessons from the Repertoire (1985) and Sight-Reading atthe Keyboard (1990) With Deborah Stein he coauthored Poetry into SongPerformance and Analysis of Lieder (1996)

Juumlrgen Thym Professor Emeritus of the Eastman School of Music

xx German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century

(University of Rochester) has published on the music mostly lieder ofBeethoven Schubert Schumann Wolf Weill and others (co-authoring sev-eral essays with the late Ann Clark Fehn) He edited the anthology 100 Yearsof Eichendorff (1993) co-edited several volumes in the Arnold Schoenbergedition and was co-translator of music theory treatises by Kirnberger andSchenker Most recently he has edited Of Poetry and Song Approaches to theNineteenth-Century Lied a collection of essays on text-music relationships byvarious authors

Susan Youens Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of NotreDame has written extensively on the lied Her books include Retracing aWinterrsquos Journey Schubertrsquos Winterreise (1991) Hugo Wolf The Vocal Music(1992) Franz Schubert Die schoumlne Muumlllerin (1992) Schubert and His Poets TheMaking of Lieder (1996) Schubert Muumlller and Die schoumlne Muumlllerin (1997)Schubertrsquos Late Lieder Beyond the Song Cycles (2002) and Heinrich Heine and theLied (2007)

Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE

The Literary Context Goetheas Source and CatalystHarry Seelig

Because the nineteenth-century German lied and German Romantic poetryare both so inextricably associated with musicmdashthe lieder most obviouslythe poems less explicitlymdashthis introduction will trace their origins in thelate eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary-musical culture thatgave rise to each genre1 The very term lied clearly indicates a symbiosisof literature and music In addition to designating a fully independentliterary text in and of itself as well as the art songs that are the subjectof this book it has often been used in the titles of large-scale works inpoetry (eg Schillerrsquos Das Lied von der Glocke) and in music (eg MahlerrsquosDas Lied von der Erde) that have very little to do with the miniatureforms we are primarily concerned with here Yet the basic and still cur-rent understanding of lied is that of an autonomous poem either intendedto be sung or suitable in its form and content for singing (Garland1976 535)

Folk Song Origins

For all its subtlety and complexity the German lied has its origin inthe simple German folk song German lieder generally consist of two ormore stanzas of identical form each containing either four lines of alter-nating rhymes or rhymes at the ends of the second and fourth lines onlyThis pattern also defines the basic four-line stanza of the Volkslied (folksong) whichmdashwith its abab or abcd rhyme schememdashis arguably the mostimportant source of the nineteenth-century art song The German termVolkslied was coined by the philologist theologian and translator-poetJohann Gottfried Herder (1744ndash1803) after reading the spurious popularpoetry of ldquoOssianrdquo as well as the authentic examples in Bishop ThomasPercyrsquos Reliques of Ancient English Poetry of 1765 Herder thereupon avidlycollected folk songs and in 1778ndash79 published two volumes of VolksliederSomewhat later Romantic theorists such as Friedrich Schlegel and thebrothers Grimm took these verses to be a kind of spontaneous expressionof the collective Volksseele (or folk soul) this rather mystical term received

1

further conceptualization in their theories on Natur- und Kunstpoesie ornature and art poetry (Garland and Garland 1976 900)

The search for the poetic roots of the German people reached itsapex in the work of Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim who col-lected and published the many folk songs and quasi-folk songs of DesKnaben Wunderhorn (1806ndash8) Goethemdashreflecting the nascent nationalismof central European literary Romanticismmdashfelt that this excellent source oflieder had a place in every German home His praise is understandablegiven his experience over thirty years earlier as a student in Strasbourgcollecting folk songs in the Alsatian countryside under the tutelage of hismentor Herder It was the infectious poetic spirit of Herdermdashwho hadmeanwhile published a second edition of his seminal Volkslieder now knownas Stimmen der Voumllker in Liedern (1807)mdashand the earlier folk-song versions ofldquoHeidenbluumlmleinrdquo that had inspired Goethe to write one of his best-knownearly poems ldquoHeidenroumlsleinrdquo The folk-song-like simplicity and freshnessof Goethersquos ldquoSah ein Knab ein Roumlslein stehnrdquo was so invigorating thatHerder enthusiastically quoted from it in his Ossian essay of 1773 whichintroduced the word Volkslied and also led to the false assumption thatldquoHeidenroumlsleinrdquo was a true folk song Both real folk song and its imitationsthen ushered in an entirely new lyric style2

Although German poets had been writing lieder for centuries preced-ing Herder it is a peculiarity of the nineteenth-century art songrsquos heritagethat its presumably primordial forerunner believed to be a spontaneousexpression of the Volksseele arose as a concept only with the Romantic the-ories of the early nineteenth century Whereas the Romantic lied finds itstheoretical origin in the retroactive speculative constructs of Romantictheoreticians Romantic poetry per se derives its fundamental impetusfrom the vast and varied earlier poetic achievement of Johann Wolfgangvon Goethe whose musically inspired lyricism was already flourishing inthe three decades before 1800 when the specifically German literarymovements of ldquoSturm und Drangrdquo (Storm and Stress) ldquoEmpfindsamkeitrdquo(Sentimentalism) and ldquoKlassikrdquo (Classicism) effectively served as the well-spring of German Romantic poetry even while Classicism stood in oppos-ition to some of the Romanticistsrsquo lyric intentions during the first third ofthe nineteenth century

Goethersquos Contribution

German literary Classicismmdashie ldquoDeutsche Klassikrdquomdashrefers to therelatively brief but halcyon period in German letters and culture that fol-lowed Germanyrsquos brief but rebellious post-Enlightenment ldquostorm andstressrdquo era it began soon after Goethe moved from Frankfurt to Weimar in1785 There he joined his younger and equally gifted compatriot FriedrichSchiller with whom he would engage in some twenty years of aestheticdiscourse exemplary in its intellectual ldquogive-and-takerdquo and in its celebratedyield of mutually inspired literary publications lasting until Schillerrsquos

2 German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century

untimely death in 1805 (Garland 1976 466) This ldquoClassical Age of Weimarrdquoembraces salient parts of Goethersquos vast oeuvre from as early as 1786 onwardand coexists temporally with much of Germanmdashand EuropeanmdashRomanti-cism well beyond the turn of the new century and is often referred to inGermany as the ldquoAge of Goetherdquo (Brown 1997 183) The designationldquoRomanticrdquo is notoriously controversial in its own right (cf Plantinga 199782ndash9) but it is problematic in this context because it has been appliedto three generations of artists generally regarded as belonging to bothClassical and Romantic ldquocampsrdquo in literature and music Goethe (born1749) Beethoven (1770) and Schubert (1797) whose careers coincided insuccessive waves from 1790 to 1827 and who played major roles in the eraunder discussion illustrate this ldquoperiod overlaprdquo3

The word ldquoromanticrdquo was first used in 1798 by Friedrich SchlegelIn influential public pronouncements he formulated the quintessentiallyromantic concept of ldquoprogressive Universalpoesierdquo to express the almostinfinite scope of German Romanticismrsquos aesthetic aspirations By ldquopro-gressiverdquo and ldquouniversalrdquo Schlegel meant not only that the basic epic lyricand dramatic genres of the literary enterprise should be imaginativelycombined and juxtaposed but also that this endeavor should involveinterdisciplinary elements from the other arts particularly music ldquoItembraces everything that is poetic from the most comprehensive systemof art to the sigh or kiss which the poetic child expresses in artlesssongrdquo4 He singled out Goethersquos novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (WilhelmMeisterrsquos Apprenticeship) the first edition of which was published withmusical settings of the interpolated lyric passages ldquosungrdquo by Mignon andthe Harper as one of the seminal events and accomplishments of the(Romantic) age5

ldquoNur nicht lesen immer singenrdquo (Donrsquot ever read it always sing it)With these urgent and sonorous words (from his twelve-line poem ldquoAnLinardquo) Goethe addresses the central cultural-aesthetic issue of the entireart-song century Although this seventh line has attracted the most atten-tion from critics it is the last quatrain that actually explains why Goethefeels that lieder should be sung and not merely read

Ach wie traurig sieht in Lettern Ah how sad the lied looks toSchwarz auf weiszlig das Lied mich an me in letters black on whiteDas aus deinem Mund vergoumlttern which your voice can sing divinelyDas ein Herz zerreiszligen kann as it breaks a loving heart

(Staiger 1949 93)

And the actual musical performance qua lied transcends the mere physicalproximity of the lovers which was primary when she originally played andsang his songs to him at the piano (as the first quatrain describes it)

A similarly proto-romantic articulation of this fundamental conceptioncan be found in Herderrsquos writings (Martini 1957 214) ldquoMelodie ist dieSeele des Liedes Lied muszlig gehoumlrt nicht gesehen werdenrdquo (Melody is

The Literary Context 3

the soul of song song must be heard not seen) Goethersquos clarion callalways to sing his otherwise ldquoincompleterdquo lieder expresses in nuce the aspir-ations of poets as well as composers throughout the nineteenth century6

Goethersquos lyric insistence ldquoimmer singenrdquomdashtaken together with Schlegelrsquosldquoartless songrdquo and programmatically ldquoprogressiverdquo view of the Mignon andHarper settings by Reichardt (see Schwab 1965 31)mdashemphatically antici-pates the importance of musical settings of poetry in the late eighteenthand nineteenth centuries

Musical settings of many kinds of poetry had been a vital part ofaristocratic and bourgeois social activity since the optimistic and confidentEnlightenment spirit of the mid-eighteenth century had taken hold in thethree hundredndashodd domains that made up the German territories of cen-tral Europe A five-volume novel published in 1770ndash73 in which songs aresungmdashusually at the pianomdashsome fifty times illustrates this literaryndashmusicalactivity and justifies the conclusion that the accompanied song was the mostimportant aesthetic feature of everyday bourgeois life (Albertsen 1977 175cf Smeed 1987 xii) Numerous theoreticians have sought to explain theinterrelatedness of poetry and musical settings throughout this period (andup to the present day)7 Moreover the social-aesthetic dichotomy betweenVolkslied (folk song) and Kunstlied (art song) as well as the more moderntheoretical distinction between ldquomusicalrdquo and (more or less) non-musicalpoetry further complicates an already problematic situation The latterdistinction engages primarily those theoreticians who feel that only lessldquomusicalrdquo poems allow enough aesthetic ldquospacerdquo for the lied composerto add something musical and meaningful to the text achieving a trueliterary-musical synthesis

Rationalism and Romanticism

Such antinomies are fundamental to the speculative theorizing ofGerman Romanticism itself Yet the philosophic basis for Romantic aesthet-ics is best understood as an inevitable development of the preceding erathe Age of Enlightenment Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pan-European rationalism is the logical antecedent of European Romanticismgenerally and has provided more than enough ldquoreasonrdquo for the aestheticspeculation in abstract and metaphorical terms that has been thriving eversince From this perspective it is appropriate that throughout his long lifeGoethe worked to improve and renew in a rational way the more ordinaryliterary genres of his day these efforts proved of great consequence for thedevelopment of the lied He was joined regularly by members of Weimarsociety meeting weekly to read and sing poetry as Max Friedlaumlnder (v31vii) has attested some of Goethersquos amateur associates in Weimar were moreprolific composers of lieder than many professional musicians of the time8

In seeking to ennoble ordinary verse through skillful parodies ofexisting songs Goethe inspired and participated in a form of dilettantismthat is hard to comprehend today In Weimar well before 1800 the poetic


lied was thoroughly grounded in the regular practice of group singingwhich in turn inspired numerous parodies ldquoSelecting simple and well-known melodies the poets supplied texts that could be sung at sight topopular tunesrdquo (Sternfeld 1979 13) ldquoGoethe wrote parodies by creat-ing new texts to older tunes and rhythms without any implication of ironyrdquo(Sternfeld 1979 8) using an age-old technique to generate poetry of first-rate quality Given this robust activity it is no wonder that many of Goethersquospoems were first published alongside their musical settings (Albertsen1977 177) Thus twenty of Goethersquos early poems were published in musicalsettings in the Leipziger Liederbuch of 1769

The ubiquitous folk song ldquoDa droben auf jenem Bergerdquo (ldquoUp there onthat mountainrdquo) illustrates the interdependence of literary and musicaltraditions Sternfeld (1979 12) explains ldquopoems wandered as freely asmelodies and by 1802 both the model and Goethersquos parody were beingwidely circulatedrdquo Sternfeld documents the popularity and parodisticpotential of ldquoDa droben auf jenem Bergerdquo by juxtaposing the first stanzasrespectively of the folk song itself Goethersquos original parody as well as asecond version and three even more varied parodies by Heine Uhlandand Brentano9 Brentanorsquos version ldquoseems to derive more directly fromthe folk songrdquo (Sternfeld 1979 12) even as its first line alters the traditionalldquodroben auf dem Bergerdquo image to the more distinctively Romantic ldquoimAbendglanzerdquo (in the glow of evening) underscoring the vast possibilitiesinherent in the folk-song tradition (It was Clemens Brentano of coursewho together with Achim von Arnim collected and published the many folksongs and quasi-folk songs of the consistently popular compendium DesKnaben Wunderhorn of 1806ndash8)

When Goethe arrived in Strasbourg in 1770 he met Herder who hadrapturously welcomed Johann Georg Hamannrsquos postulation of the primacyof poetry in human language through mystical epigrams like ldquoDie Poesie istdie Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechtsrdquo (ldquoPoetry is the mothertongue of the human racerdquo Rose 1960 159) These attitudes provided theperfect antidote for Goethersquos literary experience in Leipzig where hisyouthful linguistic exuberance had been criticized by the controlled andmannered rhetoric of conservative figures like Johann Christoph Gottschedand Christian Fuumlrchtegott Gellert who reigned supreme in matterspoetical as well as moral Herder had heeded Hamannrsquos call to unleashthe sensuality of language through the originality of linguistic genius(Sprachgenie) and encouraged Goethe to trust his heart and imaginationrather than the arbitrary rules and regulations of the Leipzig academicestablishment (Blackall 1959 481)

The crucial difference between Goethersquos innovative lyric power andthe older mode of poetry (as exemplified in the works of Friedrich GottlobKlopstock whose ecstatically poetic religious epic in classical hexametershad catapulted him to fame as the mid-eighteenth-century literary geniuspar excellence) may be seen in the juxtaposition of two lines fromKlopstockrsquos ldquoDie fruumlhen Graumlberrdquo (ldquoEarly Gravesrdquo) of 1764


O wie war gluumlcklich ich O how happy was Ials ich noch mit euch when still in your company

Sahe sich roumlten den Tag I saw the dayrsquos red dawnschimmern die Nacht the shimmering night

with the opening quatrain of Goethersquos ldquoMaifestrdquo (ldquoMay Celebrationrdquo) of1771

Wie herrlich leuchtet How glorously NatureMir die Natur glows for meWie glaumlnzt die Sonne How the sun sparklesWie lacht die Flur How the fields laugh

In Klopstockrsquos poem there is antithesis but in Goethersquos there is reci-procity Throughout ldquoMay Celebrationrdquo subjective and objective termsinterpenetrate at times to the point of indistinguishability

O Erdrsquo o Sonne Oh earth oh sunO Gluumlck o Lust Oh bliss oh pleasureO Liebrsquo o Liebe Oh love dear love

Boyle comments ldquoThe unprecedented fluency of this rhyming litany seemsat a single stroke to render obsolete the gawky sentiment of the previousquarter of a century It is no wonder that the received chronology of mod-ern German literature dates its beginning from 1770rdquo (Boyle 1991 157ndash58)

One of the supreme examples of Goethersquos new-found trust in thesensuality of poetic language is found in ldquoGretchen am SpinnraderdquoGretchenrsquos lament at her spinning wheel for the absent Faust beginningwith the lines ldquoMeine Ruh ist hin Mein Herz ist schwerrdquo (ldquoMy peace isgone My heart is sorerdquo emphasis added) Not only is this ten-stanzasequence of short (mostly iambic dimeter) lines a brilliant example ofGoethersquos ability to distill ldquoone of the most poignant scenes in all dramaticliteraturerdquo (Stein 1971 71) into purest lyricism but its ingenious structureas reflected by Schubertrsquos inspired setting makes it the first and foremostexample of what the German lied was to become

A survey of the most recent scholarly literature on Goethersquos poetry asit re-emerges in Schubertrsquos music generally and in ldquoGretchen am Spinnraderdquo(ldquoGretchen at the Spinning-wheelrdquo D118) in particularmdashsince publica-tion of the first edition of this book in 1996mdashreveals widespread agree-ment with this view of the poetrsquos pivotal role in the composerrsquos suddenand unprecedented development into the mature and singular art songinnovator he was destined to be For example

The establishment of the Lied as an autonomous musical formwas by far the greatest achievement of Schubertrsquos early years he laid the foundations of both his own greatness and a vast


literature of Romantic song from Schumann to RichardStrauss when all is said it was Schubertrsquos genius under thestimulus of Goethersquos poetry which created ldquoGretchen amSpinnraderdquo and which was responsible for the great outpouringof song which followed

(Reed 1997 26)

In her recent contribution to The Cambridge Companion to the Liedhowever Jane Brown expands the developmental parameters of Liedpoetry and demonstrates that ldquothe historical relation between poetry andsong is rather more complexrdquo than most Goethe-centric studies would sug-gest Readers interested in the latest scholarship on these issues would bewell advised to consult the following additions to this chapterrsquos updatedbibliography Brown (1997 2002 2004) Busch-Salmen (2003) Byrne(2003) Byrne and Farrelly (2003) Gibbs (2000) Jung (2002) Lambert(2006) Plantinga (1997) Reed (1997) Tschense (2004) and Whitton(1999 2003)

Goethe and Schubert

Many commentators have considered 19 October 1814 the daySchubert actually composed ldquoGretchen am Spinnraderdquo the birthday ofGerman art song but few have seen that the stanza-by-stanza developmentof Goethersquos poem actually dictatesmdashin the perfection of aesthetic sym-biosismdasha musical form that mediates between strophic and through-composed structure Just as Schubertrsquos startling composition (at age seven-teen) breaks new ground in ldquomusicopoeticsrdquo (Scher 1992 328ndash37) so didGoethersquos seemingly straightforward lyric stanzas probe new depths inhuman emotion rendered as poetry The crucial refrain-that-is-not-a-refrain the stanza that begins the whole is central to the thrust of thepoem

Meine Ruh ist hin My peace is goneMein Herz ist schwer My heart is soreIch finde sie nimmer Never will I find itUnd nimmermehr Nevermore

It recurs twice at strategic points within the poem but not at the endas a true refrain would and obviously inspired both the melody and theonomatopoeic accompaniment which reflects the spinning-wheel imageryin its relentless sixteenth-note motion But the text itself couched in quat-rains of increasing intensity and expanding referencemdashmoving fromGretchenrsquos person and psychic condition to Faustrsquos physical attributes asshe idealizes them and finally to an emotional agitation of grief that ldquohasbecome indistinguishable from sexual desirerdquo (Kramer 1984 152)mdashcallsfor varied musical treatment as it builds from an anguished but moderated


outcry (the very first instance of the ldquorefrainrdquo) to ldquoa violent and openexpression of sexual fantasyrdquo (Kramer 1984 153) in the climactic finalquatrain

Und kuumlssen ihn And kiss himSo wie ich wollt As my heart would chooseAn seinen Kuumlssen In his kissesVergehen sollt To swoon to die away10

The composer ultimately returns to the first two lines of the refrainmdashldquoMeine Ruh ist hin Mein Herz ist schwerrdquomdashas a musically apt denoue-ment but which nevertheless vitiates the ldquostunning effectrdquo (Stein 1971 72)of the poemrsquos deliberately abrupt ending Goethe achieves this stunningeffect as Jack Stein observes by ending both poem and scene (in the Faustdrama) at the moment of highest intensity on the words ldquoAn seinen Kuumlssenvergehen solltrdquo ldquoThe theater audience is left limp with empathy as thecurtain closes But the song is so much more aggressive in impact that theeffect of breaking it off at this climax would be brutal Hence the necessarytapering off rdquo (Stein 1971 72)

Schubertrsquos ending can be seen as a combination of both possibilities(1) the ldquobreaking off rdquo has been transferred to the final statement of therefrain which is then truncated after the ldquoreasonrdquo for Gretchenrsquos anguishmdashin the textmdashis revealed to be her heavy heart (2) the ldquotapering off rdquo resultsfrom the reiteration of the very first statement of the songrsquos basic melodic-harmonic substance Inasmuch as this denouement does not containany trace of the innovative merger of strophic variation and through-composition developed elsewhere in the composerrsquos profoundly progres-sive setting the music parallels Goethersquos dramatic literary ldquotruncationrdquo inits own terms

In the earliest form of Goethersquos play (the Urfaust) the poemrsquos stra-tegic enjambment combines ldquoUnd halten ihnrdquo (ldquoAnd hold him closerdquo) andldquoUnd kuumlssen ihnrdquo (ldquoAnd kiss himrdquo) into one eight-line stanza which gainseven more energy and urgency from the brutally honest words ldquoSchoszligrdquo(ldquowombrdquo) and ldquoGottrdquo (ldquoGodrdquo) in place of ldquoBusenrdquo (bosom)

Mein Schoszlig Gott draumlngt My womb God drivesSich nach ihm hin Me toward him soAch duumlrft ich fassen Oh could I claspUnd halten ihn And hold him closeUnd kuumlssen ihn And kiss himSo wie ich wollt As my heart would chooseAn seinen Kuumlssen In his kissesVergehen sollt To swoon to die away10

The enjambment itself is brilliantly reflected in Schubertrsquos musical exten-sion strengthening both enjambed stanzas Furthermore the music


embodies the spirit of Goethersquos earlier more explicit outburst (ldquoMeinSchoszlig Gottrdquo) in an extended ascending melodic sequence that in itsrelation to the whole setting makes this song innovative and archetypal atthe same time

The pivotal position of ldquoMeine Ruh ist hinrdquo in the development of theGerman lied is thus a function of its unique formmdashits strategically recur-ring ldquorefrainrdquomdashas well as its ever-intensifying content which might havebeen set in the traditional strophic manner by a less comprehending andless sympathetic composer Goethersquos revolutionary sense of dramatic develop-ment within the confines of lyric poetry facilitated the advent of through-composed art songs In reacting musically to Goethersquos developmental(dramatic) lyricism Schubert rendered strictly strophic settings as some-thing less than representative of the German Kunstlied at its best The para-digmatic Romantic lied can be characterized as a modified strophic settingin which a given poemrsquos individual stanzas are autonomous literary-musicalentities as well as interrelated units seamlessly integrated into the overalldevelopment of the word-tone synthesis

Goethersquos role in fostering this innovation can be seen by comparingSchubertrsquos settings of ldquoMeine Ruh ist hinrdquo (D 118) and ldquoAls ich sie erroumltensahrdquo (ldquoWhen I saw her blushrdquo D 153) the ldquolight and slight littlerdquo song(Capell 1957 89) that Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has deemed a ldquomore sub-jectiverdquo Schubertian counterpart to ldquoGretchen am Spinnraderdquo (Fischer-Dieskau 1972 72) Bernhard Ambros Ehrlichrsquos five quatrains of trochaictetrameter represent a perspective opposite that of ldquoGretchenrdquo a mascu-line outpouring of rhapsodical praise generated by desire for the femininebeloved

Allrsquo mein Wirken allrsquo mein Leben All my effort all my lifeStrebt nach dir Verehrte hin Strives toward you revered oneAlle meine Sinne weben All my senses conjure upMir dein Bild o Zauberin [I] Your image oh enchantress

Wenn mit wonnetrunkrsquonen Blicken When with rapture-laden glancesAch und unaussprechlich schoumln Oh how unspeakably beautifulMeine Augen voll Entzuumlcken My ecstasy-intoxicated eyesPurpurn dich erroumlten sehrsquon [V] Behold your crimson blush

The contrast between Ehrlichrsquos cascade of metaphoric adulationmdashthe muses a lyrersquos harmony the soulrsquos storm and Aurorarsquos sunset aresummoned to descriptive service in stanzas 2ndash4mdashand the avoidance ofobvious poetic embellishment in ldquoGretchenrdquo (except in the description ofthe ldquomagic streamrdquo of Faustrsquos forceful words ldquoseiner Rede Zauberflussrdquo)could not be greater But Schubert chose to give Ehrlichrsquos flowery versesa through-composed setting revealing the influence a poem can have on asetting Fischer-Dieskau points to some similarities in the rhythm melodicshape and sixteenth-note accompaniment figuration of both but the effect


of ldquoAls ich sie erroumlten sahrdquo is disappointing not only are the accompani-ment figures empty arpeggios throughout but the smattering of melodicinterest attending the first strophe degenerates thereafter into desultoryarpeggiated meanderings as well particularly in the fourth and fifthstanzas

These two settings demonstrate that a modified strophic form how-ever varied and unorthodox is the more appropriate form for musicalsettings of lyric poetry which after all usually exists in strophes of oneform or another Yet Romantic lieder are apt to be formally anything otherthan the simple strophic settings of their eighteenth-century predecessorsThree factors help explain this change The first as ldquoGretchen am Spin-nraderdquo indicates so poignantly is Goethersquos timeless ldquostructuralrdquo lyricismitself The second is the emerging awareness of an individual self whichevolves into the self-consciousness of distinctly Romantic poetry if theinsights of poet and literary critic W H Auden can be taken at face value11

Equally important is a third element in Romantic poetry reverencefor nature This deeply felt worship of nature articulated with specific ref-erence to German Romanticism by Madame de Staeumll in 1810 stressesthatmdashin direct contrast to the classical literary representation of man asdetermined by external societal forcesmdashRomantic literature sees manrsquosactions and behavior as primarily governed by inner energies and emo-tions Although mindful that the Romantic personality tends towardunbridled emotionalism and that its enthusiasm for the moon the forestand solitude runs the risk of mindless faddishness Staeumll considers theunusual wealth of feeling coming to the fore in Romanticism as a particularstrength of the Germans in poetic religious and even moral terms (Peter1985 102ndash3)

These characteristics infuse the specifically Romantic poems chosenby most lied composers but they are especially prominent in Goethersquoslyrics ldquoNur wer die Sehnsucht kenntrdquo (ldquoOnly one who knows longingrdquo) oneof the four Mignon songs from Wilhelm Meister embodies in astonishinglyconcentrated lyrical form the proto-Romantic emotional fervor and self-awareness

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt Only one who knows longingWeiszlig was ich leide knows what I sufferAllein und abgetrennt Alone and cut offVon aller Freude from all joySeh ich ans Firmament I gaze at the firmamentNach jener Seite in that directionAch der mich liebt und kennt Ah he who loves and knows meIst in der Weite is far awayEs schwindelt mir es brennt My head reelsMein Eingeweide my body blazes12

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt Only one who knows longingWeiszlig was ich leide knows what I suffer


Although Goethe concentrates all of Mignonrsquos passion into only onestrophe the symmetry occasioned by the repetition of rhymes and linesmdashverse lines 1ndash2 and 11ndash12 are identicalmdashhas led most composers to employstrophically varied forms that reflect this ABA structure in their settingsThe extreme prosodic economy of employing but two alternating rhymesthroughout twelve dactylic trochaic lines is rare enough but there is alsothe repeated expression of extreme yearning in which longing and alone-ness have become so poignantly merged that the cause of the anguishedsufferingmdashthe distant lovermdashis all but forgotten by the reader This radicalcompactness of lyric texture may have influenced Schubert to expand andenrich his early strophic settings so ingeniously

Another single strophe of utter succinctness ldquoUumlber allen Gipfeln istRuhrdquo exemplifies two Romantic themesmdashmanrsquos reverence for nature andhis self-consciousnessmdashwith simplicity brevity and profundity making itldquoprobably the most praised poem in the German languagerdquo (Plantinga1984 121) Its integration of form and content is so complete and infinitelynuanced as to offer an inexhaustible subject for aesthetic and culturalanalysis

Uumlber allen Gipfeln Over all summitsIst Ruh Is peaceIn allen Wipfeln In all treetopsSpuumlrest du You feelKaum einen Hauch Hardly a breathDie Voumlgelein schweigen im Walde The birds in the woods are hushedWarte nur balde Just wait soonRuhest du auch You too shall rest

ldquoThere is in it not a simile not a metaphor not a symbolrdquo (Wilkinson 196221) Yet a profounder poetic paradox is unimaginable nature and manhave here been totally fused and fatefully juxtaposed Only man can beconscious of how and why the ldquoHauchrdquo of breeze and breath is both figura-tive and literal since the air of manrsquos breath is dependent on the oxygen ofnaturersquos breeze even the birds are unnaturally mute in the face of thisinscrutable existential dichotomy The topic is timeless even as the personameasures time

Goethersquos title ldquoEin Gleichesrdquo (ldquoAnother Onerdquo) makes reference to theearlier ldquoWanderers Nachtliedrdquo (ldquoWandererrsquos Night Songrdquo) of 1776 ldquoDer duvon dem Himmel bistrdquo (ldquoThou that from the heavens artrdquo) which Schubertset in July 1815 (D 224) ldquoUumlber allen Gipfeln ist Ruhrdquo was written in 1780and set by Schubert before May 1824 (D 768) its title is therefore bestrendered as ldquoAnother Wandererrsquos Night Songrdquo This explicit referenceto the night song genre is crucial to a full understanding of the poem sincethe pervasive stillness invoked and evoked in it is normally experienced inthe evening twilight in celebration of which countless Abendlieder (eveningsongs) have been written The theme of night is particularly prevalent in


Romantic poetry Hymnen an die Nacht (ldquoHymns to the Nightrdquo) by Novalis(Friedrich von Hardenberg) the most lyrical and influential of the earlyRomanticists undoubtedly inspired countless Nachtlieder (night songs) oflater poets and composers ldquoNachtrdquo (ldquoNightrdquo) ldquoNacht liegt auf den frem-den Wegenrdquo (ldquoNight Lies on the Unfamiliar Waysrdquo) ldquoNacht und Traumlumerdquo(ldquoNight and Dreamsrdquo) ldquoNachtgangrdquo (ldquoA Walk at Nightrdquo) ldquoNachtsrdquo (ldquoAtNightrdquo) ldquoNachtstuumlckrdquo (ldquoNocturnerdquo) ldquoNachtwandlerrdquo (ldquoSleep-walkerrdquo) andldquoNachtzauberrdquo (ldquoNight Magicrdquo) are only some of the titles found in Fischer-Dieskaursquos compilation

The impact of Goethersquos unadorned poem on all subsequent lyric styleand lied composition is impossible to exaggerate Its radically concentratednonmetaphorical character or ldquoobjectiverdquo lyric style seems even leaner whenjuxtaposed with the first eight lines of a sonnet written in Britain at aboutthe same time and about the same theme by William Wordsworth

It is a beauteous evening calm and freeThe holy time is quiet as a NunBreathless with adoration the broad sunIs sinking down in its tranquilityThe gentleness of heaven broods orsquoer the SeaListen the mighty Being is awakeAnd doth with his eternal motion makeA sound like thundermdasheverlastingly

Not only is the poetic language of British Romanticism richer in similesmetaphors personifications and symbols than its German counterpart butthe subtle elegance of its diction has little of the direct access to the emo-tions and Volksseele (folk soul) that were the concern of Herder and Goethein the 1770s and 1780s13 and which became the goal of the GermanRomanticists after the turn of the century It was the directly affectingconcisely ldquoobjectiverdquo lyric evocation of evening on Goethersquos part thatprodded Schubert to a superlative 14-measure setting in which the all butimperceptible movement from inorganic through organic and animatenature to mankind itself is given the musical ldquoobjective correlativerdquo thatconstitutes another highpoint in the history of the Romantic lied14

The consistently stressed final syllable of each line of Wordsworthrsquossonnet points to another salient aspect of German Romantic poetry thepropensity for unstressed syllables (whether rhymed or unrhymed) at theends of lines The first four lines of Goethersquos ldquoNachtliedrdquo (ldquoNight Songrdquo)demonstrate the regular alternation of unstressed and stressed rhymewords in final position

Uumlber allen Gipfeln (unstressed)Ist Ruh (stressed)In allen Wipfeln (unstressed)Spuumlrest du (stressed)


In German prosodic terminology the term klingend (resonating)describes the unstressed verse ending while stumm (mute) designates thestressed alternative The more frequent occurrence of unstressed rhymewords in Germanmdashas compared to Englishmdashis caused by such multisyllabicforms as infinitives (uniformly ending in -en) strong participles (eg ges-prochen sprechend) and the plural conjugations of verbs not to mentionall the nominal pronominal and adjectival declensions that the threegenders and four cases of a highly inflected language require This struc-tural difference between German and English which does not offer itspoets a superabundance of unstressed final syllables can explain atleast partially why German lyric poetry strikes many ears as particularlyldquomusicalrdquo15

Romantic Poetry and Romantic Lieder

Ultimately most noteworthy and defining for the poetic structuresunderlying the nineteenth-century or Romantic German lied is the propor-tion of line and stanza types in the poetry that was set as represented inFischer-Dieskaursquos Texte deutscher Lieder (1968) About half of the 750 songtexts consist of quatrains with three or four stresses per line the form mostreaders associate with the Romantic poetry of say Eichendorff or HeineThere is then a substantial number of folk-like romantic verses in the liedtexts set to music But the other half of the texts demonstrate that com-posers did not hesitate to set quite diverse poetic forms to music as well Infact the variety of forms (and themes) once again points to the multifacetedoeuvre of Goethe as the obvious source of this diverse lyric outpouring

A history of the German lied might be written on the basis of Goethersquospoems alone so influential on composers and so diverse in content styleand form were they (Abert 1922 107 Forbes 1972 59) No other poetinduced Beethoven to attempt four and Schubert seven settings of thesame poem ldquoNur wer die Sehnsucht kenntrdquo (ldquoOnly he who knows long-ingrdquo) Nor could another poet prompt three composers like SchubertSchumann and Wolf to try their hands on the Mignon and Harper poemsor for that matter even two of themmdashSchubert and Wolfmdashto tackle thelarge-scale unrhymed lyrically philosophical ldquohymnsrdquo Ganymed Prometheusand Grenzen der Menschheit (ldquoLimits of Mankindrdquo)

A good example of the difficulty Goethersquos classical lyrics posedfor the development of Romantic poetry is Brentanorsquos ldquoDer SpinnerinNachtliedrdquo (ldquoThe Night Song of the Spinning Girlrdquo) which could be seen asa combination of elements from Goethersquos ldquoGretchen am Spinnraderdquo andldquoWanderers Nachtliedrdquo

Es sang vor langen Jahren Many years ago there surelyWohl auch die Nachtigall Sang the nightingaleDas war wohl suumlszliger Schall That was a lovely sweet soundDa wir zusammen waren Because we were together


Ich singrsquo und kann nicht weinen I sing and cannot weepUnd spinne so allein And do my spinning so alone Der Mond scheint klar und rein The moon shines clear and pureIch singrsquo und moumlchte weinen I sing and would like to weep

In six quatrains Brentanorsquos lovelorn maiden projects the new Romanticsensibility and self-consciousness in a nostalgic and rhapsodic style suggest-ing strophic setting Yet its meandering repetitions of the same prosodicsoundsmdashvowels semivowels diphthongs and alliterative wordsmdashseem tobeg for more than strophic musical treatment

Such a series of trimeter quatrains is found in many Romanticpoemsmdashpreeminently by Eichendorffmdashincluding those of SchumannrsquosLiederkreis Op 39 to take a familiar example The poem ldquoMondnachtrdquo con-tains three iambic trimeter quatrains in fact of the twelve poems in theentire cycle three are in two quatrains five are in three and four are infour But the meandering and repetitious quality of the Brentano poem isforeign to the structured development favored by Eichendorff

Es war als haumlttrsquo der Himmel It was as though the skyDie Erde still gekuumlszligt Had softly kissed the earthDaszlig sie im Bluumltenschimmer So that in gleaming blossomsVon ihm nun traumlumen muumlszligt Shersquod now dream (only)16 of him

Die Luft ging durch die Felder The breeze ran through the fieldsDie Aumlhren wogten sacht The ears of grain swayed gentlyEs rauschten leis die Waumllder The woods did rustle faintlySo sternklar war die Nacht The night was so starry and clear

Und meine Seele spannte And then my soul spread outWeit ihre Fluumlgel aus Its wings so wide and farFlog durch die stillen Lande Flew over the quiet landscapesAls floumlge sie nach Haus As if it were flying home

The explicit movement within and between the individual stanzas hereis a crucial difference between Eichendorff and other Romantic poetsgenerally17 Although ldquoMondnachtrdquo (ldquoMoonlit Nightrdquo) manifests all thefigurative devicesmdashmetaphors personification onomatopoeia and ldquoas if rdquosubjunctivesmdashcommonly associated with the atmospheric nature imageryof Romantic poetry it also reveals a carefully crafted structure very muchlike that of Goethersquos ldquoUumlber allen Gipfelnrdquo (ldquoOver every summitrdquo) wherethere is an ldquoorder of the inner process of nature as known by the mind anorganic order of the evolutionary progression in nature from theinanimate to the animate from the mineral through the vegetable to theanimal kingdom from the hill-tops to the tree-tops to the birds andso inevitably to manrdquo (Wilkinson 1962 317) But here the structure is


Romantically transmuted from the external order of nature to the internalbut equally natural realm of the psyche in Eichendorffrsquos vision the per-sona imagines a ldquomarriagerdquo18 between heaven and earth in the nighttimeskymdashsealed by a metaphorical kiss and sanctioned by a continuing dreammdashthat not only causes the grainfields and forests to sway and rustleempathetically in a breeze but also enables his soul to spread its wings andtake flight through the nocturnal countryside as if ldquoflying homerdquomdashtheutopian goal of virtually all German Romantic poetry

This combination of poetic order and psychic drama inspired theimaginative musical forms somewhere between strophic and through-composed through which Schumann projected the poetrsquos evocativelystructured landscapes The music feels as strophic as the poem in fact is butit sounds as rhapsodic as the spatially conceived poetic imagery seems Evenwhen the poem and the setting are both clearly strophic as in the firstsong of Dichterliebemdashwhere the poem consists of two brief quatrains andthe music has ldquoan improvisational quality suggested by the free-flowing accompaniment figures of the pianordquo (Brody and Fowkes 1971119)mdashthe overall effect can be anything but conventionally strophic It isthe prosodic structure of the poem however as much as anything else thatportrays the yearning for release that is the overwhelming burden of theverses

Im wunderschoumlnen Monat Mai In the wondrous month of MayAls alle Knospen sprangen When buds were bursting openDa ist in meinem Herzen Then it was that my heartDie Liebe aufgegangen Filled with love

Im wunderschoumlnen Monat Mai In the wondrous month of MayAls alle Voumlgel sangen When all the birds were singingDa habrsquo ich ihr gestanden Then it was I confessed to herMein Sehnen und Verlangen My longing and desire

The poemrsquos lyric structure goes further toward actual release thandoes Schumannrsquos setting which delays the musical releasemdashthat is thedominant-tonic resolutionmdashuntil the third measure of the next song ldquoAusmeinen Traumlnen sprieszligenrdquo (ldquoFrom my tears burstrdquo) The latter contains nofewer than six dominant-tonic cadences lavishly compensating for theunresolved harmonic ldquotensionrdquo of the first song Even if the poetic ldquoburst-ing forthrdquo of ldquoIm wunderschoumlnen Monat Mairdquo (ldquoIn the wondrous month ofMayrdquo) does not find overt musical realization until Schumannrsquos secondsong in which fully blossoming flowers literally ldquoburst forthrdquo from the per-sonarsquos tears Heinersquos quatrains provide the structural integrity and variedrhythmic movement that inspired Schumann to compose such an evoca-tively ldquodelayingrdquo musical texture

Heinersquos mostly sentimental often ironic and occasionally sarcasticpoetry contributed markedly to the development of the Romantic lied


A typically German way of dealing with the adversities of life in post-1815Europe was ldquosentimental lamentrdquo which ismdashaccording to Meno Spann(1966)mdashthe prevailing quality in the love poems of Heinersquos Book of Songsthat makes them ldquounbearable to readrdquo in our time These poems nonethe-less produced exquisite lieder in the settings of Schubert SchumannBrahms and other composers ldquoWhat inspired the composers was theperfect structure and often elegant antithesis of these ballad-like lyrics inwhich unfortunately all of nature with her weeping little flowers andgolden little stars and pale roses and saddened larks sympathizes withthe unhappy love of the poet whose heart bleeds or breaks wheneverrhyme meter or climactic effect require itrdquo (Spann 1966 quoted in Komar1971 113) A particularly good instance of the perfect poetic structurethat Heine could achieve is this jewel-like merging of alliteration andonomatopoeia

Leise zieht durch mein Gemuumlt Gently through my soulLiebliches Gelaumlute Sweet bells are pealingKlinge kleines Fruumlhlingslied Sound tiny song of springKling hinaus ins Weite Sound out far and wide

Kling hinaus bis an das Haus Sound out as far as the houseWo die Blumen sprieszligen Where the flowers are bloomingWenn du eine Rose schaust And should you see a roseSag ich laszligrsquo sie gruumlszligen Convey from me a greeting

The first two lines ldquowith their gorgeous liquid alliteration are a goodexample of what an inspired opening will do to make a poem famousforever apart from Goethe and Eichendorff hardly any poet was as skilledin extracting such sounds from the German language But the whole poemcontinues to be superb Although it contains not a single pure rhyme thelattice of near-rhymes and near-assonances gives it a genuine musicalityrdquo(Sammons 1969 182ndash83) This ldquogenuine musicalityrdquo paradoxically mayhelp explain why there is only one setting (Mendelssohnrsquos Op 19a No 5ldquoGrussrdquo) of ldquoLeise zieht durch mein Gemuumltrdquo (ldquoGently through my soulrdquo)listed by Fischer-Dieskau (1972) the metaphorical musicality of poetry maypreclude or leave no space for actual music

Romanticismrsquos Aftermath

Heinersquos younger contemporary Eduard Moumlrike (1804ndash75) thoughhumorous and witty did not share the older poetrsquos vitriolic tendencies butembodied instead the ldquoholdes Bescheidenrdquo (ldquogracious moderationrdquo) thatepitomizes the Biedermeier period This was a specifically German versionof the ubiquitous European Realism that reigned in the aftermath ofthe Vienna Congress of 181519 Germanists are prone to call this generalliterary movement Poetic Realism which suggests why the lyrical style of a


poet like Moumlrike might not immediately attract the musical interest ofcosmopolitan composers like Schumann and Brahms though both did setseveral of Moumlrikersquos poems20 It remained for Hugo Wolf (1860ndash1903) todiscover the modernity and musical utility of Moumlrikersquos poetry in generalover a decade after the poetrsquos death

Two poems both set by Wolf express graphically the introspectiveconservatism and subtle sensitivity of Moumlrikersquos paradigmatic nineteenth-century worldview that looks both backward and forward

Herr schicke was du willt Lord Send what Thou wiltEin Liebes oder Leides Delight or painIch bin vergnuumlgt daszlig beides I am content that bothAus deinen Haumlnden quillt Flow from Thy hands

Wollest mit Freuden May it be Thy will neither with joysUnd wollest mit Leiden Nor with sorrowsMich nicht uumlberschuumltten To overwhelm meDoch in der Mitten For midway betweenLiegt holdes Bescheiden Lies gracious moderation

Whereas ldquoholdes Bescheidenrdquo (ldquogracious moderationrdquo) clearly harks backto an imagined realm of pietistically quiescent balance between the delightand pain or the joys and sorrows of some bygone age Moumlrikersquos ldquoVerbor-genheitrdquo (ldquoSeclusionrdquo) anticipates the infinitely nuanced psychic ambiva-lences of a later Freudian and fin-de-siegravecle age

Laszlig o Welt o laszlig mich sein Leave O world oh leave me beLocket nicht mit Liebesgaben Tempt me not with gifts of loveLaszligt dies Herz alleine haben Leave this heart to have aloneSeine Wonne seine Pein Its bliss its agony

Was ich traure weiszlig ich nicht Why I grieve I do not knowEs ist unbekanntes Wehe My grief is unknown griefImmerdar durch Traumlnen sehe All the time I see through tearsIch der Sonne liebes Licht The sunrsquos delightful light

Oft bin ich mir kaum bewuszligt Often hardly aware am IUnd die helle Freude zuumlcket As pure joy flashes throughDurch die Schwere so mich druumlcket The oppressing heavinessWonniglich in meiner Brust mdashFlashes blissful in my heart

Laszlig o Welt o laszlig mich sein Leave O world oh leave me be

The candid intimacy and innovative importance of ldquoVerborgenheitrdquo(ldquoSeclusionrdquo) for its timemdash1832 the year of Goethersquos death21mdashcanbe seen in the difficulty of translating its title the translation by Birdand Stokes (1977) as ldquoObscurityrdquo insufficiently renders the pleasurable


withdrawal from society practiced by mid-nineteenth-century poets in thewake of Goethersquos very public aesthetic triumphs Although many succes-sors no doubt felt intimidated by the legacy of Goethersquos lyric achievementMoumlrike reacted with a degree of poetic introspection that represents amajor step on the road toward late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century symbolist poetry ldquoHis subtle interweaving of thought moodemotion impression and suggestion the enchanting mellifluousness ofhis words phrases and rhythms are unrivaled in any lyric poetry that hadgone beforerdquo (Stein 1971 155) Moumlrikersquos plea for undisturbed Verborgen-heit (ldquoin hidingrdquo) perceptively foresees the subconscious realm of theFreudian agemdashldquoOft bin ich mir kaum bewuszligtrdquo (ldquooften I am hardly awarerdquoline 9)mdasheven as it registers the ldquounbekanntes Wehrdquo (ldquounknown grief rdquo)that this seductive probing of the extremes of the human psyche willentail (line 6)22

Another example of Moumlrikersquos pre-Impressionist sensitivity is thefollowing two-line excerpt from ldquoIm Fruumlhlingrdquo (ldquoIn Springrdquo)mdash

Es dringt der Sonne goldner Kuszlig The sun kisses its goldMir tief bis ins Gebluumlt hinein Deep into my veins

mdashthe imagery of which goes further even than Goethersquos evocative meta-phors but the theme of whichmdasha lover lying on a hilltop in springtime(ldquoHier lieg ich auf dem Fruumlhlingshuumlgelrdquo line 1) borne on the wing of acloudmdashis unthinkable without the equally cloud-borne spring paeanldquoGanymedrdquo (Ganymede) that Goethe had written some fifty-four yearsearlier Yet Goethersquos influence did not guarantee public success by anymeans The significance of Hugo Wolfrsquos fifty-three settings in 1888 for thegeneral popularity and critical acceptance of Moumlrikersquos poetry some five ormore decades after its original publication is legendary23 But althoughMoumlrikersquos fame is indelibly connected with Hugo Wolf his poetry has notfound as many different composers as say Friedrich Ruumlckert (1788ndash1866)whose poetry has been set as often as Heinersquos and Eichendorffrsquos thoughnot nearly as often and as consistently as Goethersquos (Fricke 1990 18)24

Harald Fricke candidly admits that the lyric quality of Ruumlckertrsquos poetry isnot as high as that of Goethe Eichendorff and Heine he shrewdly analyzestheir lyric structure and finds thatmdashalthough their diction is typicallynon-ldquomusicalrdquomdashthey are rich in ldquovaried repetitionrdquo (variierte Wiederholung)and relatively sparse in themes or subjects Although Ruumlckertrsquos poems donot stray far from the usual Romantic topics of love suffering distressnature season and pious devotion the use of these themes is carefullylimited no more than ldquotwo-and-a-half rdquo such subjects are presented in agiven poem25

In addition to the lyrical poem another poetic genre the ballad hasbeen an important source of art song settings Because this genre can becharacterized as a combination of epic dramatic and lyric elements itsappeal to composers who want to tell a story as dramatically as possible


even while they evoke a pervasive mood is obvious The most celebratedcomposer of ballads Carl Loewe (1796ndash1869) provided many settings ofGoethersquos ballads as well as a brilliant alternative to Schubertrsquos famousldquoErlkoumlnigrdquo (ldquoErl-kingrdquo) But he is generally given greatest credit for hisevocative rendition of the horrific ldquoEdwardrdquo a grisly dialogue between ayoung man and his mother translated from a Scottish source by Goethersquosmentor Herder26

Almost all the poets so far considered wrote ballads as a matter ofcourse so that Heinersquos ldquoDie beiden Grenadiererdquo (ldquoThe Two Grenadiersrdquo)of 1819ndash20 set by Schumann in a dramatic through-composed versionis not unusual However both Heinersquos Bonapartism (Sammons 1969 4ndash5)and Schumannrsquos climactic quotation of the ldquoMarseillaiserdquomdashin 1840mdashrepresent a response to the erarsquos invidious censorship that emboldenedcreativity even as it sought to restrict its existence The Swabian poetJohann Ludwig Uhland (1787ndash1862) whose ldquoFruumlhlingsglauberdquo (ldquoSpringFaithrdquo) is the only work of the poet that Schubert set served the develop-ment of the Romantic lied in at least two respects his folk song-like poemshave often been taken to be authentic VolksliedermdashUhlandrsquos scholarlyupdating of earlier folk song collections in his Alte hoch- und niederdeutscheVolkslieder (ldquoOld high and low German Folk songsrdquo) of 1844ndash45 no doubtenhanced their apparent genuineness27mdashand his masterly ballads inspiredSchumann and Liszt to rhapsodic musical emulations

Some of the same poems by Goethe and Heine prompted both Lisztand Schumann to compose lieder that are staples of todayrsquos art song canonAnother poet who inspired Schumann and Liszt is Nikolaus Lenau(1802ndash50) an Austrian of German Hungarian and Slavic descent whosepoems met with enthusiastic reception in 1832 and thereafter no doubtbecause ldquothey echoed the Weltschmerz of the timesrdquo (Brody and Fowkes1971 218)28 Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800ndash75) on the other handreflected another passion of the times Orientalism He translated thePersian poet Hafiz (1300ndash88) and wrote pseudo-Oriental poetry Brahmsset nineteen Daumer poems including lyric versions of Hafizrsquos originalsThe repetitions of the word wonnevoll (ldquoblissfulrdquo) in ldquoWie bist du meineKoumlniginrdquo (ldquoHow Blissful My Queenrdquo) Op 32 No 9 reflect the Persianghazel which in its German realizations is perhaps the most ldquounusual andhighly patterned structurerdquo (Fehn and Thym 1989 33) that Romantic liedcomposers chose to set Whereas the sonnetrsquos length and meter are strictlylimited to fourteen pentameter lines the ghazel can vary in length from fourto perhaps fifteen couplets its meter is freely chosen by the given poetOnly the rhyme is constant but it binds each ghazel absolutely by virtue of itstwofold appearance in the first couplet whereafter it recurs at the end ofevery subsequent couplet Friedrich Schlegel was the first German poet touse the ghazel in 1803 but it was Joseph Hammer-Purgstallrsquos 1812 transla-tion of the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz master poet of the ghazel thatinspired Goethersquos West-oumlstlicher Divan (ldquoWest-eastern Divanrdquo) of 1819 andestablished the literary fashion of German Orientalism that enthralled


Ruumlckert and Platen in the 1820s as well as Daumer Geibel (1815ndash84)and Keller (1819ndash90)

Daumerrsquos Orientalism was by no means the first instance in whichmore or less exotic (or foreign) prosodic forms were prized in Germanpoetry and art song Already during the later eighteenth century odesand sonnets found favor as well The strict Classical meter of Houmlltyrsquos odeldquoDie Mainachtrdquo (ldquoMay Nightrdquo) is reflected in the carefully declaimedmelody and richly chromatic harmony of Brahmrsquos Op 43 No 2 whichconforms to the prosodic strictures of the asclepiadean ode even as itexpresses late Romantic musical sensibility The sonnet a highly shapedpoetic form ldquonot obviously and immediately compatible with the musicalidiom of the nineteenth-century liedrdquo (Fehn and Thym 1986 1) wasprized at the end of the eighteenth century by A W Schlegel whosetranslations of Petrarch were widely read encouraging Goethe PlatenEichendorff Ruumlckert Uhland Heine Moumlrike and Rilke to try theirhands at it Schubert set eight sonnets to music including three byPetrarch in Schlegelrsquos translation Pfitzner set Petrarchrsquos ninety-secondsonnet in Foumlrsterrsquos translation and there are two each by Buumlrger andEichendorff Mendelssohn Wolf and Strauss set only one sonnet eachBrahms two (Lisztrsquos three sonnet-settings are not in German translationbut in Petrarchrsquos original Italian)

As these translations of Petrarch suggest foreign poems (in well-crafted German equivalents) provided sources for many later Romanticpoets and composers Schubert Schumann and Brahms all set translatedpoems ranging from Anonymous to Burns Byron Moore Pope ScottShakespeare and the Bible Schumann used the translations of a French-man of noble descent Adelbert von Chamisso (1781ndash1838) who fled theRevolution and spent the rest of his life in Prussia Chamisso left France atage 9 for Berlin wheremdashamong many other literary pursuitsmdashhe trans-lated the poems of Hans Christian Andersen and Pierre Beacuteranger intoGerman these together with his cycle Frauenliebe und -leben (WomanrsquosLove and Life) account for sixteen of Schumannrsquos settings But it was thetranslations of Emanuel Geibel (1815ndash84) and Paul Heyse (1830ndash1914)thatmdashin addition to numerous Schumann settingsmdashprovided the poeticraw material for the ninety settings that make up Hugo Wolfrsquos major cyclesof 1891 and 1895 the Spanish and Italian Songbooks Although translatedtexts constitute ldquoat least half of Wolfrsquos liederrdquo as contrasted with 5 percentfor Brahms they account for a modest but significant share of the poemsset by Richard Strauss (Petersen 1980 36)

Naturalism and Deacutenouement

Even more interesting in literary terms however is Straussrsquosencounter (in the mid-1890s) with the poetsmdashand the poetrymdashof Natural-ism These socially engaged contemporary poetsmdashparticularly RichardDehmel (1863ndash1920) John Henry Mackay (1864ndash1933) and Detlev von


Liliencron (1884ndash1909)mdashwere then considered quite ldquomodernrdquo and evenldquorevolutionaryrdquo In 1898ndash99 Strauss set three of Dehmelrsquos new ldquosocial lyricsrdquo(Petersen 1980 170) ldquoDer Arbeitsmannrdquo (ldquoThe Laborerrdquo Op 39 No 3)ldquoBefreitrdquo (ldquoFreedrdquo Op 39 No 4) and ldquoAm Uferrdquo (ldquoAt the Shorerdquo Op 41No 3) The grimly realistic (ie ldquonaturalisticrdquo) protest of the vainlylaboring father who is nonetheless mindful of naturersquos bounty and hisfamilyrsquos rightful place therein gains a Nibelungen-like aura of joylessfutility in Straussrsquos darkly Wagnerian setting of ldquoDer Arbeitsmannrdquo (ldquoTheLaborerrdquo)

Wir haben ein Bett wir haben We have a bed we have a childein Kind

Mein Weib My wifeWir haben auch Arbeit und gar We also have work and work for

zu zweit twoUnd haben die Sonne und Regen And have the sun and rain and

und Wind windUnd uns fehlt nur eine Kleinigkeit And just one bit we lackUm so frei zu sein wie die Voumlgel To be as free as are the birds

sindNur Zeit Just time

The second stanzamdashomitted heremdashdescribes a Sunday stroll throughnaturersquos fields of grain where the familyrsquos clothing is as fine as that ofthe birds The third equates human needs with an impending storm andculminates in the oxymoron that expresses hope and hopelessnesssimultaneouslymdashhuman deprivation as a ldquobrief rdquo eternity

Nur Zeit wir wittern Gewitterwind Just time We sense windy stormsahead

Wir Volk We PeopleNur eine kleine Ewigkeit Just one brief eternityUns fehlt ja nichts mein Weib Naught do we lack my wife my

mein Kind childAls all das was durch uns gedeiht Save all that flourishes through usUm so kuumlhn zu sein wie die Voumlgel To be as bold as are the birds


The extreme economy of rhyming words is a structural feature thatmakes the unrhymed single occurrence of Volk (people) an emphatic callfor social justice in the intimate context of the (nuclear) family Straussbrightens the gloomy F-minor texture with smatterings of major harmonywhen the words ldquosunrdquo as well as the laborerrsquos ldquowiferdquo and ldquochildrdquo arementioned but in the crescendo-enhanced F-sharp-minor context ofthe anticipated storm the sudden F-major fortissimo harmony underlyingVolk emphasizes the political message as well


In the poem ldquoBefreitrdquo (Freed) Dehmel displays the psychologicalambivalence and ecstatic rhetoric typical of Nietzschersquos influence on thepoets and composers of this age although Dehmel said that the threequatrains describe a man speaking to his dying wife the threefold refrainldquoO Gluumlckrdquo (Oh happiness) suggests that the ldquoliberationrdquo involved is theldquoultimate devotion which has lsquofreedrsquo the loving pair from suffering to apoint which not death itself can threatenrdquo (Del Mar 1972 316) An evenmore Nietzschean utterance of Dehmelrsquos in 1896 ldquoAm Uferrdquo (On theShore) evokes a twilight-nighttime hallucination far removed fromGoethersquos serene nocturnal vision of 1780

Die Welt verstummt dein Blut The world grows mute your blooderklingt resounds

In seinen hellen Abgrund sinkt Into its bright abyss sinksDer ferne Tag The distant dayEr schaudert nicht die Glut It shudders not the glow engulfs

umschlingtDas houmlchste Land im Meere ringt The highest land in the sea wrestlesDie ferne Nacht The distant nightSie zaudert nicht der It lingers not out of the tide

Flut entspringtEin Sternchen deine Seele trinkt A small star springs your soul drinksDas ewige Licht The eternal light

Psychic eons seem to have passed between the late-eighteenth-centurysimplicity and harmony of Goethersquos ldquoWarte nur balde Ruhest duauchrdquo (ldquoJust wait soon you too shall restrdquo) and the anthropomorphicaestheticism of Dehmelrsquos fin-de-siegravecle conception of the bond betweenmankind and nature that can be expressed only metaphorically and syn-esthetically as ldquodeine Seele trinkt das ewige Lichtrdquo (ldquoyour soul drinks theeternal lightrdquo)

This ldquoshorelinerdquo vision so fatefully poised on the threshold of thetwentieth century received another setting in 1908 by Anton Webern thatheralds the atonal musical idiom that the younger Straussrsquos post-Wagnerianchromaticism sought but did not attain (Velten 1986 464ndash67) Evenmore prophetic is a very different ldquoshorelinerdquo vision by an all but ignoredearlier German poet who precariously bridges German Classicism andRomanticism Friedrich Houmllderlin (1770ndash1843) At some time between1799 and 1803 the tormented Houmllderlin wrote a short poem whoseimagistic concentration and radically disjunctive view of life whose intoxi-cated Romantic lushness and despairing existential hopelessness have rarelybeen equaled even by deliberate modernists (Hamburger 1970 268)

Mit gelben Birnen haumlnget With yellow pears the landUnd voll mit wilden Rosen And full of wild roses


Das Land in den See Hangs down into the lakeIhr holden Schwaumlne You lovely swansUnd trunken von Kuumlssen And drunk with kissesTunkt ihr das Haupt You dip your headsIns heilignuumlchterne Wasser Into the hallowed the sober water

Weh mir wo nehmrsquo ich wenn But oh where shall I findEs Winter ist die Blumen und wo When winter comes the flowers

and whereDen Sonnenschein The sunshineUnd Schatten der Erde And shade of the earthDie Mauern stehn The walls loomSprachlos und kalt im Winde Speechless and cold in the windKlirren die Fahnen Weathercocks clatter

Except for the adjective heilignuumlchtern (holy-sober) ldquoHaumllfte desLebensrdquo (ldquoThe Middle of Liferdquo) is written in the language of commonspeech But as Hamburger points out (1970 269) ldquoit creates newrhythmsmdashas the expression of a mood so new as to be terrifyingrdquo Thisdynamic syntax which became typical of the early twentieth-centuryExpressionists literally speaks for itself without any poetic or emotionalembellishment Yet the vast difference between Houmllderlinrsquos drastic con-junction of two diametrically opposed seven-line stanzas and Goethersquossingle eight-line strophe ldquoUumlber allen Gipfelnrdquo (ldquoOver every summitrdquo) is ameasure of the capacity of German poetry to express the vicissitudes ofhuman experience during the extended period when the major Romanticlieder were composed In his schizoid but lyrically conjoined utterancesHoumllderlin pits manrsquos classically discerned oneness with a harmoniouslyperceived and aesthetically experienced nature (in stanza 1) against aKafkaesque twentieth-century anxiety (in stanza 2) that calls into questionthe very existence of such relationships By contrast Goethersquos late-eighteenth-century confidence in the secure place of man in the naturalscheme of things seems a long lost utopian dream

Given the century that passed before Houmllderlinrsquos schizophrenicallyprophetic poetic insights could be discovered it is understandable that ittook another half-century for them to be set (in 1958) to congenial musicby the English composer Benjamin Britten (1913ndash76)29 The ingenious useof carefully controlled intervalic movement of the melody and arpeggiatedostinato harmonies to express two contrasting strophesmdashin radicallydifferentiated ways for summer and wintermdashmakes Brittenrsquos setting a para-gon of musico-poetic congruence as well as an apotheosis of Schubertrsquosthrough-composed lied ideal Just as the quintessential (musical) Romanticlied is all but unthinkable without the folk song tradition of precedingcenturies it is inconceivable that the many-faceted nineteenth-centurylied would not continue to influence receptive composers in thedecades thereafter30



Nineteenth Century









Nineteenth Century


EDITED BY




















Contents













Index 421

Contents ix

Preface












Preface xi








Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





































































































































Nineteenth Century


EDITED BY




















Contents













Index 421

Contents ix

Preface












Preface xi








Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert














































































































































Contents













Index 421

Contents ix

Preface












Preface xi








Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert




































































































































Index 421

Contents ix

Preface












Preface xi








Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





























































































































Preface












Preface xi








Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert

































































































































Preface xi








Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert




































































































































Preface xiii







Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert



































































































































Rufus Hallmark







Preface xv

























Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





















































































































































Preface xvii

Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





























































































































Acknowledgments




Rufus Hallmark

Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





























































































































Contributors
















Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert







































































































































Contributors xxi

CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





























































































































CHAPTER ONE



Folk Song Origins


1











(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert







































































































































(Staiger 1949 93)




























(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





















































































































































(Reed 1997 26)


Goethe and Schubert





























































































































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Transcript of 9781135854584_sample_510322