Preamble
As its name would suggest, this page or "blog" was created to discuss the Lied, or German art song. And above all, to discuss the songs of Franz Schubert (1797-1828), who wrote ~700 of them in his short life.
Schubert's music, like Beethoven's, dates from that grey area between Classicism and Romanticism, when harmonies were getting richer, musical textures denser, and old forms evolving and dissolving. For me, part of Schubert's mystique is his timing; he arrived on the Earth in 1797, just as the French Revolution was winding down and Napoleon winding up. The white periwig and harpsichord of the 18th century were just at that moment going extinct. Mozart's memory was still fresh in Viennese civilization and his former competitors Clementi, Salieri, and the great Haydn -- the final generation of servile artists to eat with butlers and coachmen in the houses of the aristocracy -- were still teaching young musicians the galant style. But this style would not last. The next year Beethoven would compose his Op. 13, the Sonata Pathétique in c minor. Napoleon's cannons pummeled Vienna and Beethoven's symphonies did likewise. Still, when Schubert emerged as a composer in his own right in 1812 or so, he studied with Salieri, adored and lamented the dead Mozart, and wrote some works in a near-facsimile of Mozartian style. Music was changing and becoming more poetic/programmatic, but it still followed many of the formal rules set down in the 18th century, and developed upon that century's own "Romantic" tendencies: the Empfindsamer or "sensitive" style found in the great classical operas and moody fantasies for the fortepiano.
To me, Schubert's own music is the fullest, ripest manifestation of a classical ideal ready to burst. Schubert's music refuses to be bound strictly by unnatural forms, instead ambling from key to key, taking shortcuts and scenic routes as his emotional-musical instincts dictated. And yet he has much classical "restraint" and good taste. There is songfulness in most everything he wrote. He set his Lieder according to the emotional qualities of the text, and was willing to modulate relentlessly and create new accompanimental textures to capture the range of human experiences, as expressed in the poetry from the age of Goethe and Schiller. But while he addresses the emotions of this poetry without being hindered too much by formal conventions (and is thus Romantic by some definitions), he is always Schubert and never Weber or Schumann or Liszt. I guess, with this comment, I am making that famous cop-out of the inarticulate person unable to explain his taste, "I know it when I hear it."
But perhaps I mean that if he had lived beyond his scant 31 years, had composed another thousand works in the ensuing decades, he would have merged with that celebrated generation of 1810 and Schubert would not be forever associated with the mysteriously post-classical, pre-Romantic police-state of 1820s Vienna; he would not be associated with the shadow of Beethoven. We would know him from silvery daguerrotypes and the rest of Europe would have met him thanks to the chemin de fer. But for better and for worse this was not the case. He died scarcely a year after Beethoven, closing out an era.
Quite the rant for a page that will never be read. So, what is this page, this "blog"? I plan to make this space a sort of "call-in radio show" but without sound or phones, where people can discuss their favourite Lieder in an informal, non-judgmental environment. Non-judgmental because surely I am the least qualified person to write about Lieder on the 'net. I don't speak German; my harmonic and rhythmic senses are rudimentary; I don't sing or play piano (although I have some grounding in melody from playing violin); I don't even know html. I also don't want to be one of the foolhardy amateurs who attempts to define what inherently elusive artists like Schubert or Schumann mean, a practice rightly criticized in the movie The Piano Teacher.
So expect to see impressionistic, perhaps rather silly reflections on individual songs posted for reasons which remain vague even to me. My source for song translations is the helpful Lied and Art Song Texts Page, and for scores, it's the William and Gayle Cook Music Library site at the University of Indiana (links at sidebar). These are excellent online resources. I am only gradually becoming familiar with the many, many recordings of Lieder; Graham Johnson's 37-CD set of the complete Schubert lieder on Hyperion, featuring a wide range of luminary singers, is excellent; but I am gradually absorbing earlier and more recent records by Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf, Wunderlich, Bostridge, Terfel, Bonney et al. So, expect mostly Schubert here, but also the other greats of the Lied: Schumann, Brahms, R. Strauss, Hugo Wolf (yes, Wolf especially -- he's wonderful). Also Beethoven and Mozart. And not merely German songs! The French mélodies of Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, and their friends will also be welcome.
Schubert's music, like Beethoven's, dates from that grey area between Classicism and Romanticism, when harmonies were getting richer, musical textures denser, and old forms evolving and dissolving. For me, part of Schubert's mystique is his timing; he arrived on the Earth in 1797, just as the French Revolution was winding down and Napoleon winding up. The white periwig and harpsichord of the 18th century were just at that moment going extinct. Mozart's memory was still fresh in Viennese civilization and his former competitors Clementi, Salieri, and the great Haydn -- the final generation of servile artists to eat with butlers and coachmen in the houses of the aristocracy -- were still teaching young musicians the galant style. But this style would not last. The next year Beethoven would compose his Op. 13, the Sonata Pathétique in c minor. Napoleon's cannons pummeled Vienna and Beethoven's symphonies did likewise. Still, when Schubert emerged as a composer in his own right in 1812 or so, he studied with Salieri, adored and lamented the dead Mozart, and wrote some works in a near-facsimile of Mozartian style. Music was changing and becoming more poetic/programmatic, but it still followed many of the formal rules set down in the 18th century, and developed upon that century's own "Romantic" tendencies: the Empfindsamer or "sensitive" style found in the great classical operas and moody fantasies for the fortepiano.
To me, Schubert's own music is the fullest, ripest manifestation of a classical ideal ready to burst. Schubert's music refuses to be bound strictly by unnatural forms, instead ambling from key to key, taking shortcuts and scenic routes as his emotional-musical instincts dictated. And yet he has much classical "restraint" and good taste. There is songfulness in most everything he wrote. He set his Lieder according to the emotional qualities of the text, and was willing to modulate relentlessly and create new accompanimental textures to capture the range of human experiences, as expressed in the poetry from the age of Goethe and Schiller. But while he addresses the emotions of this poetry without being hindered too much by formal conventions (and is thus Romantic by some definitions), he is always Schubert and never Weber or Schumann or Liszt. I guess, with this comment, I am making that famous cop-out of the inarticulate person unable to explain his taste, "I know it when I hear it."
But perhaps I mean that if he had lived beyond his scant 31 years, had composed another thousand works in the ensuing decades, he would have merged with that celebrated generation of 1810 and Schubert would not be forever associated with the mysteriously post-classical, pre-Romantic police-state of 1820s Vienna; he would not be associated with the shadow of Beethoven. We would know him from silvery daguerrotypes and the rest of Europe would have met him thanks to the chemin de fer. But for better and for worse this was not the case. He died scarcely a year after Beethoven, closing out an era.
Quite the rant for a page that will never be read. So, what is this page, this "blog"? I plan to make this space a sort of "call-in radio show" but without sound or phones, where people can discuss their favourite Lieder in an informal, non-judgmental environment. Non-judgmental because surely I am the least qualified person to write about Lieder on the 'net. I don't speak German; my harmonic and rhythmic senses are rudimentary; I don't sing or play piano (although I have some grounding in melody from playing violin); I don't even know html. I also don't want to be one of the foolhardy amateurs who attempts to define what inherently elusive artists like Schubert or Schumann mean, a practice rightly criticized in the movie The Piano Teacher.
So expect to see impressionistic, perhaps rather silly reflections on individual songs posted for reasons which remain vague even to me. My source for song translations is the helpful Lied and Art Song Texts Page, and for scores, it's the William and Gayle Cook Music Library site at the University of Indiana (links at sidebar). These are excellent online resources. I am only gradually becoming familiar with the many, many recordings of Lieder; Graham Johnson's 37-CD set of the complete Schubert lieder on Hyperion, featuring a wide range of luminary singers, is excellent; but I am gradually absorbing earlier and more recent records by Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf, Wunderlich, Bostridge, Terfel, Bonney et al. So, expect mostly Schubert here, but also the other greats of the Lied: Schumann, Brahms, R. Strauss, Hugo Wolf (yes, Wolf especially -- he's wonderful). Also Beethoven and Mozart. And not merely German songs! The French mélodies of Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, and their friends will also be welcome.
posted by Mark at 23.11.05
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