Jasmine Warne Rowe Research Paper 04/19/13

Romanticism at the Root of Schuberts Transformation of the Lied One could easily argue that artistic creativity flourished during Europes Romantic Era in a way that was unprecedented. The periods celebration of individuality, spontaneity, and rebellion spurred artists of all mediums to try new daring techniques and forms. Musicians and writers took old forms and stories and loosened the limitations that traditionally bound them. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was one of those artists. Though his diverse collection of lieder, Schubert was a key agent in revolutionizing the traditional view of the German art song as he enhanced the Romantic aspects of poetry through his content-oriented composition. Although Schuberts lieder are often seen as a baseline upon which the late Romantics like Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) expanded and refined their techniques (Kravitt), his work elicited substantial push-back during his lifetime. On June 24, 1824, a critic tentatively identified as Gottfried Wilhelm Fink by Otto Erich Deutsch (Hirsch 149), wrote in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung that Schubert did not write actual songsbut rather free vocal works, many so free, that one might perhaps call them caprices or fantasies. The poemsare well chosen and their translation into music generally praiseworthy; the composer succeeds almost throughout in arranging the whole and each detail in accordance with the poets idea. He is, however, much less successful in the execution, which tries to compensate for the lack of inner unity, order and regularity by eccentricities, barely or not at all motivated, and by often rather wild goings-on. With only these qualities, admittedly, no artists work can become a beautiful work of art. Without them, however, certainly only bizarre, grotesque things will result (as qtd in Hirsch 1).

Many contemporary reviewers agreed that the problem with Schuberts songs were that they were songs only at times (1), either because they were too dramatic, too disorderly, or simply too bizarre (1-2). Still others objected to the lieders inaccessibility. A 1826 letter to Schubert from the Artaria publishing firm complained that the peculiar, often ingenious, but occasionally also rather strange procedures of your minds creations are not yet sufficiently and generally understood by our public (Probst, qtd in Hirsch 1), while others asked that he transpose his songs down in order to make them more palatable to singers (Youens 40). This resistance to Schuberts complex and sophisticated style was due in part to its radical departure from what was seen as a lieds traditional role: that of an approachable song fit for amateurs and house concerts. In his 1802 Musikalisches Lexikon, Heinrich Cristoph Koch describes the prevailing definition at the time: Lied. With this name one generally designates any lyrical poem of many strophes that is intended for song and associated with a melody repeated for each strophe, and that is capable of being performed by anyone who has healthy and not entirely inflexible vocal chords, without need of artistic instruction. It thus follows that a Lied melody should have neither so wide a range nor such vocal mannerisms and extended syllables as characterize the artificial and cultivated aria; rather it should express the sentiment in the text through simple but hence all the more efficient means (qtd in Hirsche 7). This characterization of the Lied as too simple or informal for a professional performance lingered long past Schuberts introduction of more challenging pieces; baritone Julius Stockhausen introduced Lieder to the public stage in 1856, and public performances of Lieder only gained acceptance in the 1870s (Kravitt 18). Perhaps professional worlds initial reluctance to embrace the Lied as a serious professional medium was due to its humble origins as the simple German folk song, featuring a strophic structure based around basic rhyme schemes and stanzas (Seelig 1). However, the Lied

is half poetry, and the characteristics of Enlightenment literature may have preserved the Lieds status as an accessible, traditionalist medium. Enlightenment poets prized reason, clarity, and intellectual inquiry over unbridled passion( ). The great thinkers of the period saw the natural world as ordered and every phenomenon as just one part of a series of precise machinery. The poetry of the time reflected this outlook; even the love poems of the time took on the form of a clear, extended argument, focused on drawing out one topic into a conceit extended to its logical conclusion, such as in John Donnes The Flea, or Valediction Against Mourning. The Classical lied matched many of the same aspects of Enlightenment poetry. In contrast to the Romantic Periods portrayal of nature as a turbulent, unstoppable force, Jane K. Brown notes that the nature featured in the Classical lied was decidedly domesticated, seen here in Hagerdorns Der Morgen, adapted by many composers, including C.P.E. Bach: The mornings red lures us into shrubbery and copse, where the shepherds pipe early resounds through the land. The lark ascends and trills, in joyous rapture; the dove laughs and coos, the quail calls.

Hills and meadow stand in new light and fruitfulness and joy strew flowers on the field. The enamel of the green surfaces

shines full of spendor, and from the clear brooks the night departs (17).

In addition to the obvious domestication of the land, the piece exhibits a sense of stasis absent from later Romantic poetry. Instead of using nature to reflect a complex emotion or spur a flight of the imagination, the poem presents a stable landscape that evokes a single mood. (Note the use of the departure of the night in the last line as a direct reference to Enlightenment-- removal of obscurity in favor of clarity of vision. In contrast, Romantic poetry celebrated the mystery of the shadows.) Likewise, even in translation, the poems structure is straightforward; each line presents one more element to the scene and then moves out of the way for the presentation of the next image. Brown notes that this homogenous precision is the essence of neo-classical simplicity (18). It would be safe to consider that the simplicity of Enlightenment poetry reinforced the Classical lieds tendency towards simple, predictable forms, and thus its accessibility as a medium. It follows that Schuberts transformation of the lied largely reflects his incorporation of the Romantic sensibilities of the time. Although much of Schuberts music reflected a mixture of the old and new, Marjorie Wing Hirsch concludes that the gradual transformation of genre was necessitated by the Romantic poetry to which Schubert became increasingly attracted after 1819 (136). Schuberts singular passion for poetry and drive to remain loyal to the text inspired much of his innovation. His close friend, Joseph von Spaun, described visiting Schubert as he practiced: He had several of Zumsteegs songs in front of him and told me that these songs moved him profoundly. Listen, he said once, to the song I have here, and with a voice that

was already half-breaking, he sang Kolma;. He said he could revel in these songs for days on endHe had already at the time attempted a few songsHe wanted to modernize Zumsteegs song form.(qtd in Hirsch 70). Although his contemporary critics might have seen him as an aggravating rebel, Schuberts drive to transform the German lied was clearly balanced by his respect for the powers of poetry. According to John Reed in The Schubert Song Companion, Schuberts triumph with Gretchen am Spinnrade was to demonstrate that the principle of fidelity to the text can best be realized when music is allowed to follow its own laws (464). As he developed as a composer, his concept of fidelity to the text came to include a number of musical innovations inspired by Romanticism. One major aspect that initially set Schuberts Lieder apart was his incorporation of dramatic scenes and ballads into his lieder. Reminiscent of opera, Schuberts depiction of characters actions, interactions, and psychological changes allowed for the depiction of contrasting moods and made lieder less static (Hirsch 19). In his depiction of changing moods, Schubert often departed from the traditional, strophic from, which repeated the same melody with each, or nearly each, stanza (52). Instead, he used throughcomposition, which gave the impression of emotional movement. In his dramatic ballads, a sudden switch from a throughcomposed section to strophic composition might indicate the cessation of the poems narrative, or a suspension of time (83). In his throughcomposition, Schubert was able to better accentuate what Romantics considered to be important, the turbulent and changeable nature of human emotion. Schuberts expression of Romantic turbulence is also reflected in the rapid modulation within many of his Lieder. Schubert distances himself from the harmonic contour of the Classical style, and especiallythe dominant and its dominants (Kramer 201). Joseph Kerman

notes that many of Schuberts introductions included only a cursory acknowledgement of the tonic with something less than a phrase, or a tonic chord or two (50). In In der Ferne, one of the rare, late times that he included an introduction that focused solely on the dominant, Schubert later features the grating juxtaposition of B-minor and B-flat major root-position triads that goaded one critic to exclaim: If such unseemliness, such insolently placed harmonic distortions, could find, in defiance of all common sense, their repugnant swindlers who would foist them as surplus originality upon patient admirers of extravagance we shouldsoon be removed intoa state of anarchy (cited by Rchard Capell, qtd in Kerman). Some of his radical harmonic gestures, such as the sudden semi-tone shifts found in On the Riverbank, wouldnt become commonplace until the last-quarter of the century (Youens 43). The unexpectedness of these harmonic shifts would have added to a sense of instability and drama, staples of Romantic story-telling. That is not to say that Schuberts lieder did not also capitalize on structure when it served the text. Schfers Klagelied contains many elements reminiscent of folk music in the rhythm, vocal range, and time signature, as well as what Hirsch refers to as reflection of Goethes Pseudo-iterative text in its structure. The use of a A B C D B A form echoes the shepherds imaginative flight of fancy and his return (114). This echoes a common trope in Romantic poetry, what Wordsworth referred to as emotion recollected in tranquility (qtd in Stillinger and Lynch 10), reflections upon the natural world that become imaginative excursions of the mind. In addition, Schuberts use of drama allowed him to portray distinct, morally complex characters. In fact, the brevity of the lied made it reasonable to portray easily-identifiable

characters, rather than relying on a nameless archetypal character (Hirsch 48). The Romantics focus on the individual, and often the alienation of the individual, calls for recognizable characters that distinguish themselves as unique. The importance of establishing a setting, especially a natural setting, was another important aspect of Romantic poetry, as well as Schuberts music. Rather than articulating an abstract melodic form, Schuberts piano accompaniment often imitates something within the characters environment, such as the imitation of the movement of the spinning wheel in Gretchen am Spinnrade, or the echo effect that marks the cathedral in Szene aus Faust (57). Even though the melody and lyrics of Das Wandering convinced many that it was an actual traditional folk song (Kravitt 303), the piano accompaniment that imitates the rushing water through a mill is a distinctly Romantic touch. The Romantic period gave artists license to explore their flights of fancy, and it later celebrated those individuals that broke with tradition. Goethe famously rejected Schuberts initial attempts to get his blessing for his lieder based on his poetry, but Lorraine Byrne notes that Goethe was swamped by hundreds of musical manuscripts based upon his work. He embraced the composers initiative in re-interpreting the text through music, and commented that the best composers turned his texts into a whole new poem (Donovan 61). Schubert Concurred, and it was his devotion to the poetic work that freed the lied from traditional conventions and made it something new.

Works Consulted (MLA Format) Brown, Jane K. In the beginning was poetry. The Schubert Song Companion. Ed. James Parsons. New York, N.Y: Universe Books, 1985. Print.

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