Through the Songs
A Twelve Week Journey With Schubert's Winterreise
Week Two: Questions
By Lisa Houston and Catherine Framm
Photos by Lisa Houston
I have heard it said, and I agree, that there is nothing so humbling as learning a new piece of music. When the piece is a seminal work, with numerous brilliant interpretations well recorded, as well as a favorite topic among scholars, the task is more daunting still. Each in our own way, I think Catherine and I are both entering what might properly be termed the “Who do you think you are?” phase of creative endeavor. If experience may be relied upon, the answer will come but not before the question has been repeated and answered several times over. Writing about the process also demands that we answer the question in some way, so that you the reader may know who is speaking, and on what authority. So far, the answers have come in the negative. I, (Lisa is writing this) am not a scholar. I have dipped my toes into the body of writing on this cycle and stumbled over phrases about veiled Masonic references and political implications enough to know only that I wish I knew more. There are those who have written that there are no overt political references in this poetry due to the heavy censorship that both Schubert and Müller were operating within. I can imagine that they are correct. I can imagine that there are layers of the main character’s angst that were typical of the time and that brooded and suffered in the breasts of others of their day in a way that foreshadowed or influenced the revolution in Germany that would come twenty years hence. But I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. So, scholars we are not. Nor are we famous, established Lieder artists with any history of noteworthy renditions. As a journalist, I have twice interviewed the baritone Thomas Hampson and found him in every way worthy of his reputation and renown as an interpreter and champion of Lieder. We bring no such pedigree to this project. All that being said, I think I am a skillful singer, that Catherine is a skillful pianist, and that we have both a deep friendship and respect for one another as well as a sincere affection and curiosity for this work. We also share a highly motivating desire not to look like idiots. Those may be qualifications enough. And there’s another reason for optimism here.
Every time I listen to an interpretation of this cycle, especially those of greatest acclaim, it is radically different than the one that preceded it. The recording of the cycle sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Catherine’s teacher Klaus Billing at the piano in 1948 has been our template to begin, but I have listened to others, including Peter Pears singing to Benjamin Britten’s accompaniment and the famous Hans Hotter version with Gerald Moore. Each one is different, special, loud, soft, slow, fast, new, old, understated, brash, whatever that singer and pianist made it in that moment. The fact of this diversity eases my schoolgirl obedience and reminds me that there is not, there cannot be a “right” way to do these songs.
In our first rehearsal, Catherine and I discovered quickly when we tried to imitate a thing or two that we had heard in a recording, that the way the song wanted to be done between us was different. There was nothing wrong with the idea or interpretation we were trying out. It just wasn’t true to what needed to speak between us. Already, there is a distance between what is running around in our heads (the Germans call them Ohrwürmer, or ear worms) and the music we are finding our way too. I am certain that as we continue, that gap will widen.
And even as we begin our research, I wonder which of it really has a place in creating an interpretation. What do we really need to know?
“I like these songs more than all the rest, and soon you
will come to like them as well."
Said the composer of Winterreise. This is meaningful, given that he had over 600 songs from which to choose and perhaps it is the only fact about Schubert that I truly feel I may better understand the work through knowing. That he also called them “horrifying,” that he may have been suffering terribly form illness as he worked over the last years before his death from what may have been syphilis, mercury poisoning or typhoid fever, are all interesting and even inspiring facts. But to say that he knew he was dying and therefore became philosophical and intoned Der Leiermann, for example, with a melancholy air, is in a way to denigrate his power as medium and artistic collaborator. We know that he came upon these poems and that he felt moved to compose music to them, but can we know that it was because of his own suffering that he made them as they are? Wouldn’t that be to say that Schubert wrote the songs about Schubert and not the man in the poems? And do we trust him with dramatic content so little?
Maybe I want to disregard some of this history because I have found that I can enjoy works of art more easily if I forget about the personal life of the artist. I love the music of Wagner but don’t like to reflect at all on the content of his essay “Jewishness in Music.” One of my favorite Woody Allen movies is “Manhattan Murder Mystery” but I prefer not to think that much about the fact that while he was making it, his marriage was breaking up due to an affair with his de facto step daughter. Even if the details of Schubert’s life are less repellent and more inspirational, it still seems to me unfair to include them in a real analysis and interpretation of the songs. It may sound a circular logic, but to understand the songs, I think I will need to understand the songs. There is nothing uninteresting about Schubert’s short life, and I take enjoyment from learning about it. I am sure that Catherine and I will read and read and wonder and read some more about the young man who created this music, but in the end, we’ll need to find something in the poems, something in the music that is meaningful to us, and also find some way to bring it out, so that that meaning becomes clear to the listener. Still, isn’t it nice to know that he liked these the best?
Assuming, for the moment, that the songs are not about Schubert himself, then let’s begin our discussion of the songs themselves. Below are just a few thoughts that we are pondering so far. At this point, we certainly have more questions than answers. As mentioned last week, we are working from the outside in, beginning with songs one and twenty four, two and twenty three, and so on.
Song One: Gute Nacht Who is this man? This man who loses his love and sets out on a bleak journey of painful rumination? He certainly epitomizes the archetype of the stranger, seeing the world with new eyes. One theory about why he identifies himself as a stranger is that he was a journeyman, required by his guild to ply his trade away from home for a time, but Catherine tells me that some speculated he was a Greek freedom fighter on the run. The Greek War of Independence was going on at the time Müller wrote the poems, and he was known as "der Griechen Müller" because of his interest in the cause. I read one analysis of this poem that suggested that the man suffers from tremendous passivity, because he describes himself as affected by things but not acting in the world. At first, I could see the truth of this, but emotionally, it felt unfair. It made him seem unsympathetic to me somehow, and sounded more like a judgment than an interpretation. I read it that he is a particularly sensitive soul, affected deeply by harsh elements, tending to leave himself open to possibilities and see where things lead. This feels to me more in line with the music. If this is all just depressing resignation, why is there so much variety and emotion in the music, and why do people (Catherine and I included) love it so much? One thing that is important about character analysis is that you cannot always believe what a character says about himself. You need to look at his actions, the context, what others say about him. In this case, yes, he says that he can’t choose the time of his journey, but a short time later says, essentially, “why should I wait around here for them to kick me out?” He made his choice. I do not see him as passive. He is reflective. He is aware of great forces operating on him. He is sensitive to an embodied universe, altered by the moonlight, searching for tracks in the snow. Letting dogs howl, he follows the wandering ways of love with acceptance. “God made it that way.” He is open, and clear and loving and wondering, and most of all affected by what he comes across.
Song Twenty Four: Der Leiermann. Catherine and I both felt that this was the most optimistic poem of the piece. It seems to us that our traveler has found someone relating to the world in a different way. It seems even that he is inspired by the penniless man, so much so that perhaps, sharing his song with the man in the end, he symbolically or literally goes with him. Having decided to look at the songs two by two from the outside in, makes for some stark pairings. If we are right that he sets out in the first song on a spiritual quest of sorts, then it is fair to look at the last song and ask: what did he find? We were both moved by the fact that he felt drawn to this Leiermann, a man who had nothing, and struggled against nothing. The day we looked at this song together, a friend had emailed me a copy of the serenity prayer. We were both struck by the common theme of letting go of what you cannot control. In the longer version of the serenity prayer, there is a line: “Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.” In the case of the Leiermann, the line is, “he lets it go, all as it wants to.”
Song Two: Die Wetterfahne. Catherine likes the opposition of songs two and twenty three. One in a minor, one in a major. Also, she feels that in die Wetterfahne, the suffering is more active, less resolved. I wonder, what is the significance of changing voice in Die Wetterfahne when he sings, “he should have noticed sooner…” instead of “I should have noticed sooner.” Is he, perhaps chastising himself? Or, is there a second character, a narrator of sorts appearing?
Song Twenty Three: Die Nebensonnen. OK, I will admit to great confusion on my part. What are the three suns? Is this a Masonic reference to the power of three? Whatever the meaning of the three suns, this song’s ability to affect me is unshakeable. The longing, the utter longing for darkness in the end is so honestly bleak. “In darkness, I would be better.” That, to me is the essence of a suicidal mind. Catherine sees it as a progression from the suffering in Die Wetterfahne, to a deeper, more resigned state. Perhaps that is the acceptance that can precede a moment of awakening, and helps move him to the greatest acceptance of his fate we see in the cycle. There was a point when this song was the last in the cycle. That was changed and Der Leiermann finishes the piece, but there remains a sense of finality and truth here.
These are all open questions, and we have already had the experience of “deciding” more or less what something means, only to be disproved by the music as it came to us. In the first song, for example, Catherine was trying to explain to me some of the subtleties of the meaning of the word “fein” in German. She thought perhaps there was a slightly sarcastic edge to it when he sings goodnight to his “fein” Liebchen. When we sang it through, yes, there it was, an edge of anger that can be present when love is unrequited. But then suddenly, surprisingly, the second time I sang it, oh, the tenderness, “Fein Liebchen, Gute Nacht.” I imagine that these things may turn over on themselves a dozen times more and perhaps never find a permanent home of meaning, just as this cycle continues. As composer Benjamin Britten wrote in 1964: “Though I have worked very hard at the Winterreise, every time I come back to it I am amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of it, but by the renewal of the magic: each time, the mystery remains.”
Question for the Reader About this main character: Would this man have gone on this spiritual journey without the trigger of the heartbreak? Is he truly a seeker, or was he simply pushed to it by unhappy circumstance? Or, do you find him to be a seeker at all? We hope you will share your thoughts with us. I look forward to hearing them.
P.S. It was only after I chose this photo for inclusion with this piece that I noticed, after looking at it "lang und fest" that it does appear that there is not one sun, but three.
Read Week Three
A Twelve Week Journey With Schubert's Winterreise
Week Two: Questions
By Lisa Houston and Catherine Framm
Photos by Lisa Houston
I have heard it said, and I agree, that there is nothing so humbling as learning a new piece of music. When the piece is a seminal work, with numerous brilliant interpretations well recorded, as well as a favorite topic among scholars, the task is more daunting still. Each in our own way, I think Catherine and I are both entering what might properly be termed the “Who do you think you are?” phase of creative endeavor. If experience may be relied upon, the answer will come but not before the question has been repeated and answered several times over. Writing about the process also demands that we answer the question in some way, so that you the reader may know who is speaking, and on what authority. So far, the answers have come in the negative. I, (Lisa is writing this) am not a scholar. I have dipped my toes into the body of writing on this cycle and stumbled over phrases about veiled Masonic references and political implications enough to know only that I wish I knew more. There are those who have written that there are no overt political references in this poetry due to the heavy censorship that both Schubert and Müller were operating within. I can imagine that they are correct. I can imagine that there are layers of the main character’s angst that were typical of the time and that brooded and suffered in the breasts of others of their day in a way that foreshadowed or influenced the revolution in Germany that would come twenty years hence. But I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. So, scholars we are not. Nor are we famous, established Lieder artists with any history of noteworthy renditions. As a journalist, I have twice interviewed the baritone Thomas Hampson and found him in every way worthy of his reputation and renown as an interpreter and champion of Lieder. We bring no such pedigree to this project. All that being said, I think I am a skillful singer, that Catherine is a skillful pianist, and that we have both a deep friendship and respect for one another as well as a sincere affection and curiosity for this work. We also share a highly motivating desire not to look like idiots. Those may be qualifications enough. And there’s another reason for optimism here.
Every time I listen to an interpretation of this cycle, especially those of greatest acclaim, it is radically different than the one that preceded it. The recording of the cycle sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Catherine’s teacher Klaus Billing at the piano in 1948 has been our template to begin, but I have listened to others, including Peter Pears singing to Benjamin Britten’s accompaniment and the famous Hans Hotter version with Gerald Moore. Each one is different, special, loud, soft, slow, fast, new, old, understated, brash, whatever that singer and pianist made it in that moment. The fact of this diversity eases my schoolgirl obedience and reminds me that there is not, there cannot be a “right” way to do these songs.
In our first rehearsal, Catherine and I discovered quickly when we tried to imitate a thing or two that we had heard in a recording, that the way the song wanted to be done between us was different. There was nothing wrong with the idea or interpretation we were trying out. It just wasn’t true to what needed to speak between us. Already, there is a distance between what is running around in our heads (the Germans call them Ohrwürmer, or ear worms) and the music we are finding our way too. I am certain that as we continue, that gap will widen.
And even as we begin our research, I wonder which of it really has a place in creating an interpretation. What do we really need to know?
“I like these songs more than all the rest, and soon you
will come to like them as well."
Said the composer of Winterreise. This is meaningful, given that he had over 600 songs from which to choose and perhaps it is the only fact about Schubert that I truly feel I may better understand the work through knowing. That he also called them “horrifying,” that he may have been suffering terribly form illness as he worked over the last years before his death from what may have been syphilis, mercury poisoning or typhoid fever, are all interesting and even inspiring facts. But to say that he knew he was dying and therefore became philosophical and intoned Der Leiermann, for example, with a melancholy air, is in a way to denigrate his power as medium and artistic collaborator. We know that he came upon these poems and that he felt moved to compose music to them, but can we know that it was because of his own suffering that he made them as they are? Wouldn’t that be to say that Schubert wrote the songs about Schubert and not the man in the poems? And do we trust him with dramatic content so little?
Maybe I want to disregard some of this history because I have found that I can enjoy works of art more easily if I forget about the personal life of the artist. I love the music of Wagner but don’t like to reflect at all on the content of his essay “Jewishness in Music.” One of my favorite Woody Allen movies is “Manhattan Murder Mystery” but I prefer not to think that much about the fact that while he was making it, his marriage was breaking up due to an affair with his de facto step daughter. Even if the details of Schubert’s life are less repellent and more inspirational, it still seems to me unfair to include them in a real analysis and interpretation of the songs. It may sound a circular logic, but to understand the songs, I think I will need to understand the songs. There is nothing uninteresting about Schubert’s short life, and I take enjoyment from learning about it. I am sure that Catherine and I will read and read and wonder and read some more about the young man who created this music, but in the end, we’ll need to find something in the poems, something in the music that is meaningful to us, and also find some way to bring it out, so that that meaning becomes clear to the listener. Still, isn’t it nice to know that he liked these the best?
Assuming, for the moment, that the songs are not about Schubert himself, then let’s begin our discussion of the songs themselves. Below are just a few thoughts that we are pondering so far. At this point, we certainly have more questions than answers. As mentioned last week, we are working from the outside in, beginning with songs one and twenty four, two and twenty three, and so on.
Song One: Gute Nacht Who is this man? This man who loses his love and sets out on a bleak journey of painful rumination? He certainly epitomizes the archetype of the stranger, seeing the world with new eyes. One theory about why he identifies himself as a stranger is that he was a journeyman, required by his guild to ply his trade away from home for a time, but Catherine tells me that some speculated he was a Greek freedom fighter on the run. The Greek War of Independence was going on at the time Müller wrote the poems, and he was known as "der Griechen Müller" because of his interest in the cause. I read one analysis of this poem that suggested that the man suffers from tremendous passivity, because he describes himself as affected by things but not acting in the world. At first, I could see the truth of this, but emotionally, it felt unfair. It made him seem unsympathetic to me somehow, and sounded more like a judgment than an interpretation. I read it that he is a particularly sensitive soul, affected deeply by harsh elements, tending to leave himself open to possibilities and see where things lead. This feels to me more in line with the music. If this is all just depressing resignation, why is there so much variety and emotion in the music, and why do people (Catherine and I included) love it so much? One thing that is important about character analysis is that you cannot always believe what a character says about himself. You need to look at his actions, the context, what others say about him. In this case, yes, he says that he can’t choose the time of his journey, but a short time later says, essentially, “why should I wait around here for them to kick me out?” He made his choice. I do not see him as passive. He is reflective. He is aware of great forces operating on him. He is sensitive to an embodied universe, altered by the moonlight, searching for tracks in the snow. Letting dogs howl, he follows the wandering ways of love with acceptance. “God made it that way.” He is open, and clear and loving and wondering, and most of all affected by what he comes across.
Song Twenty Four: Der Leiermann. Catherine and I both felt that this was the most optimistic poem of the piece. It seems to us that our traveler has found someone relating to the world in a different way. It seems even that he is inspired by the penniless man, so much so that perhaps, sharing his song with the man in the end, he symbolically or literally goes with him. Having decided to look at the songs two by two from the outside in, makes for some stark pairings. If we are right that he sets out in the first song on a spiritual quest of sorts, then it is fair to look at the last song and ask: what did he find? We were both moved by the fact that he felt drawn to this Leiermann, a man who had nothing, and struggled against nothing. The day we looked at this song together, a friend had emailed me a copy of the serenity prayer. We were both struck by the common theme of letting go of what you cannot control. In the longer version of the serenity prayer, there is a line: “Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.” In the case of the Leiermann, the line is, “he lets it go, all as it wants to.”
Song Two: Die Wetterfahne. Catherine likes the opposition of songs two and twenty three. One in a minor, one in a major. Also, she feels that in die Wetterfahne, the suffering is more active, less resolved. I wonder, what is the significance of changing voice in Die Wetterfahne when he sings, “he should have noticed sooner…” instead of “I should have noticed sooner.” Is he, perhaps chastising himself? Or, is there a second character, a narrator of sorts appearing?
Song Twenty Three: Die Nebensonnen. OK, I will admit to great confusion on my part. What are the three suns? Is this a Masonic reference to the power of three? Whatever the meaning of the three suns, this song’s ability to affect me is unshakeable. The longing, the utter longing for darkness in the end is so honestly bleak. “In darkness, I would be better.” That, to me is the essence of a suicidal mind. Catherine sees it as a progression from the suffering in Die Wetterfahne, to a deeper, more resigned state. Perhaps that is the acceptance that can precede a moment of awakening, and helps move him to the greatest acceptance of his fate we see in the cycle. There was a point when this song was the last in the cycle. That was changed and Der Leiermann finishes the piece, but there remains a sense of finality and truth here.
These are all open questions, and we have already had the experience of “deciding” more or less what something means, only to be disproved by the music as it came to us. In the first song, for example, Catherine was trying to explain to me some of the subtleties of the meaning of the word “fein” in German. She thought perhaps there was a slightly sarcastic edge to it when he sings goodnight to his “fein” Liebchen. When we sang it through, yes, there it was, an edge of anger that can be present when love is unrequited. But then suddenly, surprisingly, the second time I sang it, oh, the tenderness, “Fein Liebchen, Gute Nacht.” I imagine that these things may turn over on themselves a dozen times more and perhaps never find a permanent home of meaning, just as this cycle continues. As composer Benjamin Britten wrote in 1964: “Though I have worked very hard at the Winterreise, every time I come back to it I am amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of it, but by the renewal of the magic: each time, the mystery remains.”
Question for the Reader About this main character: Would this man have gone on this spiritual journey without the trigger of the heartbreak? Is he truly a seeker, or was he simply pushed to it by unhappy circumstance? Or, do you find him to be a seeker at all? We hope you will share your thoughts with us. I look forward to hearing them.
P.S. It was only after I chose this photo for inclusion with this piece that I noticed, after looking at it "lang und fest" that it does appear that there is not one sun, but three.
Read Week Three