Schubert Program Notes 2019

Notes on the Program

By Richard Stokes

FRANZ SCHUBERT Born in Vienna, January 31, 1797 Died in Vienna, November 19, 1828 WINTERREISE, D. 911 Composed in 1827; 70 minutes

The first performance of Schubert’s Winterreise took place at the house of Franz von Schober, where the composer was living on the second floor. Josef von Spaun sets the scene in his Aufzeichnungen über meinen Verkehr mit Franz Schubert (1858), an article in which he describes how Schubert sang through the entire Winterreise “with much emotion in his voice,” and how his friends had been “utterly taken aback” by the “gloomy mood” of the cycle. When Schober confessed that he had liked only one song—”Der Lindenbaum”— Schubert replied that he liked the songs more than all the others he had composed, and that one day his friends would like them too.

It was probably only the first 12 songs that were performed on that memorable evening.

Schubert’s original source was the 12 poems by Wilhelm Müller that had been published in Urania, a Leipzig almanac, in 1823, and it was these poems that he composed, in exactly the same sequence, in early 1827. Like Müller, he clearly considered the 12 poems to constitute a complete cycle—the first and last songs (“Gute Nacht” and “Einsamkeit”) are both in the same key, D minor, and he wrote “Finis” after the final bars of the 12th song. It was not until later in 1827 that Schubert encountered Müller’s additional poems—a further 10 in another periodical, and two more in the complete cycle, published in Dessau during 1824. It was Schober alone among the privileged gathering who liked only “Der Lindenbaum”— Spaun, in his memoirs, merely states that the gathering was “verblüfft,” dumbfounded, taken aback.

The question, therefore, is not so much why they did not like the songs, but why they failed to understand them.

Was Schubert’s voice to blame? Marie Wagner tells us that, although no one ever sang Schubert songs like Schubert, it was always “without a voice.” But would that have disconcerted them at Schober’s? They were, after all, used to his compositional voice. Was it his piano playing, then? Certainly he was scarcely a professional accompanist, as Hummel’s pupil Ferdinand Hiller makes clear in this assessment of Schubert’s piano playing, written in March 1827, at the very time of that first performance of Winterreise: “Schubert’s piano playing, in spite of a not inconsiderable fluency, was very far from being that of a master.” On the other hand, many contemporaries testify that, despite this lack of technique, there was something inimitable and inspiring about his playing.

No, we must look elsewhere. They were not thrown by Schubert’s voice or his playing at that private premiere of Winterreise. It was the novelty that nonplussed them. They were almost certainly expecting the cycle to bear some resemblance to Die schöne Müllerin—even admirers are rarely prepared for pioneering. The resemblances, however, are minimal. Die schöne Müllerin has a real plot and three deftly drawn protagonists, and all events are seen through the eyes of the young miller. Winterreise is virtually devoid of plot. Nothing happens. No one penetrates the mind of the lonely wanderer, except perhaps the wretched hurdy-gurdy man of the final song. The drama is interior. And the outcome is infinitely more tragic. Winter, in Winterreise, is never-ending. The hero does not die; there is no

refuge in the Wirtshaus (inn) of Death, no Wagnerian redemption through love. At Schober’s, they were not prepared for such gloom.

And then, where had the Bewegung of Die schöne Müllerin gone—that forward momentum which propels the miller on his way at the end of “Das Wandern” and, intermittently, during the whole cycle? “Gute Nacht,” it’s true, starts with a walking motive, and there’s talk of walking and journeying throughout, but unlike “Das Wandern,” which allows no ritardando, “Gute Nacht” ends diminuendo. As in many of the Winterreise songs, there is no forward thrust. Postlude repeats prelude, as though there had been no development, as though nothing had changed, as though no progress had been achieved. “Rast,” “Die Krähe” and “Das Wirtshaus” all have this circular pattern, while other songs, such as “Auf dem Flusse,” “Einsamkeit” and “Der Wegweiser,” end indeterminately, as if hanging in the air. And the tempi! None of the Munterkeit, the briskness and gaiety of Die schöne Müllerin, now. “Gute Nacht,” “Auf dem Flusse,” “Rast” and “Der Wegweiser” were marked mäßig on the manuscript that evening (actually, “Gute Nacht” was marked mäßig, in gehender Bewegung, but Schubert, in his copy for the printer, later omitted “at a walking pace”); “Die Krähe” bore the marking etwas langsam; “Einsamkeit,” langsam; and “Das Wirtshaus,” that ultimate, chilling rejection, sehr langsam. And the preponderance of minor keys must have perplexed the select audience, not to mention the uncanny, inexplicable way Schubert made major sound sadder than minor, as in the modulation to D major in the last verse of “Gute Nacht,” the return to F major at the close of “Das Wirtshaus” and the lento sections of “Frühlingstraum.” There were also those flashes of retrospective happiness to accentuate present despair. Evocations of past ecstasy proliferate during the first half of the cycle in “Gute Nacht,” “Erstarrung,” “Der Lindenbaum,” “Auf dem Flusse,” “Rückblick” and “Frühlingstraum”; dwindle in part two (“Die Post” and “Täuschung”); then cease and yield to a bleakness unmitigated by fond memory. At Schober’s, they were not prepared for it.

They should have been. Schober, von Schwind, Spaun, Mayrhofer and others all received letters which complained of ill health; as early as May 8, 1823, Schubert had written that harrowing poem, “Mein Gebet” (“My prayer”), which pleads for an immediate release from physical torment. And on March 31, 1824, he had poured out his soul in a letter to his painter friend Leopold Kupelwieser:

In a word, I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world.

Imagine a man, whose health will never be right again; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have come to naught, to whom the happiness of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best. Well might I sing now each day: “My peace is gone, my heart is sore, never shall I find peace again.”—for each night, on retiring to bed, I hope never to wake again.

That is no run-of-the-mill melancholy or hypochondria. And though Schubert’s friends are guarded in their letters and memoirs, though they respect the social niceties and never mention his disease by name, they recognized Schubert for what he was: a genital leper.

That surely is the subtext of the passage about love having “nothing to offer but pain, at best.” And yet at Schober’s on that Winterreise evening, they were startled by the “gloomy mood” of the songs. Small wonder when you consider that ever since Schubert had been treated for syphilis at the time of Die schöne Müllerin, his friends had regularly witnessed his ability to rouse himself from despondency; there is nothing inconsistent about a syphilitic salvaging his own sanity by creating works that brim with happiness. But this time there was no E-flat Major Piano Trio, no relief, and his friends were understandably confounded.

Schubert sent one of these friends, the composer Franz Lachner, with the first songs of Winterreise to Haslinger, with the urgent request to bring home the money needed for medicine and food. Lachner tells us that the publisher weighed up the situation and paid— one guilder for each song. But Schubert would not let all the songs go. According to Josef von Spaun, he spent the final days of his life, during his “few moments of lucidity,” correcting the proofs to the second part of Winterreise, “während er beständig sang”— “singing all the while.” As we listen to these harrowing songs, it’s perhaps appropriate to have a picture of Schubert before us. He was about five feet tall, fat (his nickname was Schwammerl (Little Mushroom) and myopic, and he had thinning hair as a result of the mercury treatment for syphilis. I find it almost unbearably moving that this genius—who was not always appreciated during his lifetime (there was only one concert devoted entirely to his music), and who never, as far as we know, had a loving and consummated relationship—should pour out his soul in these wrenching songs of unrequited love.