I’ve neglected posting on this blog for a couple of weeks now due mostly to intensive preparations for two upcoming concerts, a Verdi Requiem with the Springfield Symphony in my hometown (Springfield, Missouri), and my first recital here in Buenos Aires in early April. The program for the latter will consist of Schubert’s Schwanengesang (a posthumous collection of some of his last and very greatest songs) and some additional Schubert lieder to round out the program and bring it to concert length. As usual in my obsessive way, I’m writing my own program notes and preparing the translations, although in this case I’m definitely relying on the aid of some native Spanish speaking friends, since the program notes will need to be translated into castellano. It’s turning into quite a little undertaking. But the whole enterprise has me thinking about and studying Schubert’s music and life anew, which is a pleasure in itself.
In preparing various groups of Schubert songs through the years, I’ve noticed how many of my personal favorites among his hundreds of lieder were composed in the key of A-flat. (Of course, they aren’t always performed in A-flat, particularly since so many modern lieder singers are baritones and mezzos who invariably and quite rightly transpose many of the songs to more comfortable keys.) In general, I regard with skepticism the idea that keys have specific characters or convey specific ideas, and Schubert’s use of A-flat, for example, would seem to bear out my doubt, for he uses this key to express both adolescent romantic confusion (Lachen und Weinen), turbulent longing passion (Auf der Bruck), death-defying boldness (Der Zürnended Diana), rapt contemplation of nature (In Abendrot), and many other emotions and images.
Yet there is a core group of “A-flat” songs, which seem to me to point to similar themes, and I’ve come to a sort of tentative conclusion that perhaps it’s not an accident that Schubert cast them all in that key. The songs I have in mind are the aforementioned Im Abendroth, Das Zugenglöcklein, Frühlingsglaube, and the 2nd of Schubert’s two settings of the Goethe poem An den Mond. What they all have in common are poems that compare the constant, regenerative power of nature with the impermanence of human life, and musical settings which seem to comment on this dichotomy with a sense of tenderness and compassion that’s hard if not impossible to describe in technical terms, (certainly beyond me, anyway!) but is palpably there when you hear the music. Of course, this quality of empathetic tenderness is a principal aspect of much of Schubert’s music, and can be found as well in works composed in other keys, both songs (Im Frühling, Nachtviolen, Die Sterne and countless others) and instrumental pieces (the Impromptu in G-flat, D. 899, no. 3, to name the first example that pops into my head), but these four songs seem to assert a kind of wondrous faith in the face of change and decay that mark them as siblings. Im Abendroth (In the Twilight Glow) is the calmest and steadiest of the four, both poetically and musically, and perhaps as a consequence, the one that stays most firmly in the home key. In this song, though the poet may recognize the transient nature of existence, he maintains utter faith in his sustenance by the source of creation. The last lines of the song are
Das Zugenglöcklein (The Passing Bell), too, benefits from Schubert’s genius for rising above what, in this case, is a rather maudlin poem, full of conventionally pious sentiments about the faithful servant of God going to meet his Maker. Schubert virtually ignores the implied tone, and offers in the music only love and empathy. The title refers to the bell which according to old church tradition was rung in parish churches when one of the faithful was dying. By keeping the church bell ringing on an octave E-Flat throughout the song, Schubert makes the scene personal and immediate: the singer is hearing the bell as he walks along, and simultaneously thinking about who it might be tolling for. The music is a reflection of not only his thoughts, but the physical beauty of his surroundings as he wanders through the landscape, always accompanied by the sound of the church bell. And thus, a fairly mawkish piece of verse is transformed into a moving poetic scenario.
With the last of the four songs, we are dealing with poetry on a completely different level. Schubert set Goethe’s An den Mond (To the Moon) twice, the first time strophically (meaning that each verse repeats the same music), to a lovely and memorable if not terribly appropriate melody. A few years later he returned to the poem and set it again to music of far greater depth and understanding, capturing the stillness of the moonlit scene and the complexity of Goethe’s wide-ranging thoughts on joy, sorrow, friendship, and those things which “unknown or unconsidered by men, through the labyrinth of the heart, wander in the night.” The first two verses and the last are in A-flat, but the middle section, describing the path of a river through windy winter nights and springtime floods, wanders into C-flat and D-flat minor before returning to the home key to conclude Goethe’s philosophical thoughts. The tone that Schubert finds at the end of An den Mond, and in the other songs I’ve talked about, is one of contemplation and acceptance. The world is beautiful even though we know it only fleetingly, or perhaps because we know it fleetingly: a central theme of Schubert's poetic and artistic credo, and one we touch most closely in these songs in the same key.
In preparing various groups of Schubert songs through the years, I’ve noticed how many of my personal favorites among his hundreds of lieder were composed in the key of A-flat. (Of course, they aren’t always performed in A-flat, particularly since so many modern lieder singers are baritones and mezzos who invariably and quite rightly transpose many of the songs to more comfortable keys.) In general, I regard with skepticism the idea that keys have specific characters or convey specific ideas, and Schubert’s use of A-flat, for example, would seem to bear out my doubt, for he uses this key to express both adolescent romantic confusion (Lachen und Weinen), turbulent longing passion (Auf der Bruck), death-defying boldness (Der Zürnended Diana), rapt contemplation of nature (In Abendrot), and many other emotions and images.
Yet there is a core group of “A-flat” songs, which seem to me to point to similar themes, and I’ve come to a sort of tentative conclusion that perhaps it’s not an accident that Schubert cast them all in that key. The songs I have in mind are the aforementioned Im Abendroth, Das Zugenglöcklein, Frühlingsglaube, and the 2nd of Schubert’s two settings of the Goethe poem An den Mond. What they all have in common are poems that compare the constant, regenerative power of nature with the impermanence of human life, and musical settings which seem to comment on this dichotomy with a sense of tenderness and compassion that’s hard if not impossible to describe in technical terms, (certainly beyond me, anyway!) but is palpably there when you hear the music. Of course, this quality of empathetic tenderness is a principal aspect of much of Schubert’s music, and can be found as well in works composed in other keys, both songs (Im Frühling, Nachtviolen, Die Sterne and countless others) and instrumental pieces (the Impromptu in G-flat, D. 899, no. 3, to name the first example that pops into my head), but these four songs seem to assert a kind of wondrous faith in the face of change and decay that mark them as siblings. Im Abendroth (In the Twilight Glow) is the calmest and steadiest of the four, both poetically and musically, and perhaps as a consequence, the one that stays most firmly in the home key. In this song, though the poet may recognize the transient nature of existence, he maintains utter faith in his sustenance by the source of creation. The last lines of the song are
Und dies herz, eh’es zusammenbricht,The poet who speaks in Frühlingsglaube (Faith in Spring) shows a similar conviction in the power of Spring to renew and transform, but here the music suggests poignantly that this longed-for renewal, though perhaps guaranteed to nature, is no sure thing for the poet, and that his assertion that “everything must change” may turn out to be true in ways he cannot anticipate. This is a wonderful example of Schubert’s ability to transcend the poetry he sets, not going against the apparent meaning of the poem, but going deeper into the complexities of emotional states behind words and images and enabling the listener to discover multiple layers of meaning, some of them enigmatic or paradoxical.
Trinkt noch Glut un schlürft noch Licht.
(And this heart, before it breaks
Still drinks in the fire and the light.)
Das Zugenglöcklein (The Passing Bell), too, benefits from Schubert’s genius for rising above what, in this case, is a rather maudlin poem, full of conventionally pious sentiments about the faithful servant of God going to meet his Maker. Schubert virtually ignores the implied tone, and offers in the music only love and empathy. The title refers to the bell which according to old church tradition was rung in parish churches when one of the faithful was dying. By keeping the church bell ringing on an octave E-Flat throughout the song, Schubert makes the scene personal and immediate: the singer is hearing the bell as he walks along, and simultaneously thinking about who it might be tolling for. The music is a reflection of not only his thoughts, but the physical beauty of his surroundings as he wanders through the landscape, always accompanied by the sound of the church bell. And thus, a fairly mawkish piece of verse is transformed into a moving poetic scenario.
With the last of the four songs, we are dealing with poetry on a completely different level. Schubert set Goethe’s An den Mond (To the Moon) twice, the first time strophically (meaning that each verse repeats the same music), to a lovely and memorable if not terribly appropriate melody. A few years later he returned to the poem and set it again to music of far greater depth and understanding, capturing the stillness of the moonlit scene and the complexity of Goethe’s wide-ranging thoughts on joy, sorrow, friendship, and those things which “unknown or unconsidered by men, through the labyrinth of the heart, wander in the night.” The first two verses and the last are in A-flat, but the middle section, describing the path of a river through windy winter nights and springtime floods, wanders into C-flat and D-flat minor before returning to the home key to conclude Goethe’s philosophical thoughts. The tone that Schubert finds at the end of An den Mond, and in the other songs I’ve talked about, is one of contemplation and acceptance. The world is beautiful even though we know it only fleetingly, or perhaps because we know it fleetingly: a central theme of Schubert's poetic and artistic credo, and one we touch most closely in these songs in the same key.
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