Franz Schubert and His World
Page 22
The connection between the two songs goes beyond the play on the words Rausch and rauschen. It also suggests a deeper foreshadowing: the miller’s encounter with the brook will lead to intoxication, and the apparently innocent rauschen will culminate in a deadly Rausch.
Aline and the “Wanderer” Fantasy
We move next to a more elaborate connection, this one between a theater song and an instrumental work based on one of Schubert’s Lieder. On 19 October 1822, Schubert went to the Leopoldstadt Theater and saw Aline, oder Wien in einem andern Welttheile (Aline, or Vienna on Another Continent), a play by Adolf Bäuerle with music by Wenzel Müller. The author of the play was important not only because he was one of the three central playwrights of his day, but because as editor of the Theaterzeitung he had a huge influence on theatrical matters in Vienna.17 A month after attending this performance, Schubert composed his Fantasy in C Major (D760), generally known as the “Wanderer” Fantasy because of its quotation from Schubert’s song Der Wanderer (D489) on a text by Schmidt von Lübeck. Hans Költzsch, in his seminal study of Schubert’s piano music, pointed out similarities between the waltz theme in the scherzo section of that piece and a duet from Aline that begins “Was macht denn der Prater, sag blüht er recht schön?”18 See Examples 3 and 4.
As in the previous case discussed, we find definite similarity without direct quotation. The dotted rhythms are a strong link, and the melodies are quite similar. At the end of the fourth bar of each passage, the melodies diverge, with Müller’s ending on the third scale degree, while Schubert’s ends on the fourth. At the openings of their second phrases, however, each tune immediately moves to the scale degree that was emphasized by the other one, creating a kind of virtual cross-relation.
Example 3. Wenzel Müller, duet from Aline, vocal lines, mm. 32–40.
Example 4. Franz Schubert, “Wanderer” Fantasy, right hand, waltz theme, mm. 405–20.
Költzsch pointed out the relationship between these two passages, but provided no interpretation, leaving it an open question why Schubert might have linked his piano fantasy with a recent Volkstheater song. To suggest an answer, it is once again important to know some particulars about the play and the song. The “Wanderer” Fantasy has no sung text that we can turn to for answers, but its association with Schubert’s earlier song links it to the Romantic archetype of the wanderer.19 How might this be related to Bäuerle’s play and the duet?
The play’s ancestry goes back to the French novella Aline, reine de Golconde (1761), written by the Chevalier Stanislas de Boufflers (1738– 1815). The heroine is a milkmaid who is seduced by a fashionably decadent young nobleman, as in many eighteenth-century French “philosophical” novels.20 Instead of falling into ruin, she rises through the demimonde until she becomes the enlightened monarch of Golconda, a prosperous state in India. Many years later, when her former lover shows up there, she wins him back by using the resources at her command to stage a recreation of the scene of her initial seduction, with herself costumed as the milkmaid she once was, convincing him of the value of what he had thrown away when he was too young to appreciate it.
This story captured the European theatrical imagination, inspiring numerous ballets and operas across Europe from the 1760s until well into the nineteenth century.21 The most widely known version was a French opera composed in 1803 by Henri Berton (text by J. B. C. Vial and E. G. F. de Favières) that in 1804 reached Vienna, where it was performed twenty times in the court theaters in German translation. Johann Michael Vogl, later the preeminent champion of Schubert’s songs, performed the important role of Osmin, and he also composed the duet Ich widme dir mein ganzes Leben to be substituted in the Vienna version for a duet by Berton. Vogl’s duet was sufficiently familiar to Viennese audiences to be included together with many well-established favorites from both Volkstheater and opera sources in the smash hit quodlibet play performed at the Theater an der Wien for the 1809 carnival season: Rochus Pumpernickel.22 Schubert himself had encountered the Aline story before the performance of Bäuerle’s play at the Leopoldstadt. The first play with music by Schubert to be performed in a major theater, Die Zwillingsbrüder, had six performances at the Kärntnertor Theater, each time as the first half of a double bill, and on 21 July 1820 it was paired with a ballet version of Aline.23
The story of Aline evokes the conflicting emotions of Romantic wanderers, who typically feel the urge to leave their homes but are then tormented by longing (Sehnsucht) for what they have lost. Aline—an example of the rare female wanderer in this period—travels a great distance to another continent, but then paradoxically wins her former lover back through nostalgic memories of her humble childhood home. (In Bäuerle’s Vienna-centered version, the specific location she conjures up is the Brühl, a forest area outside the Vienna suburb of Mödling.)
Schubert’s waltz theme echoes the Bäuerle-Müller duet mentioned earlier, which is sung by the play’s secondary couple of Zilly—Aline’s confidante, also from Austria—and Bims, the ship’s barber. Zilly, posing as the queen and pretending to know nothing about Vienna, nevertheless asks very pointed questions that show her specific knowledge of the city, and Bims fills her in on the latest developments in the Imperial capital. (This duet provides clear evidence of the improvisatory element in the Volkstheater, as variants are seen in several sources. Rommel’s reprint of the play and two piano-vocal scores all differ in textual details.)24
The duet text alternates between praise and satire. An example of praise:
Nur noch ein Wört’l, was g’fällt denn in Wien?
One more word: What do people like in Vienna?
Ehrliche Leut’ und ein fröhlicher Sinn.
Honest people and a merry spirit.
On the ironic side, the disastrous finances of the empire are skewered in other passages:
Nun, und der Kalteberg25 [sic] ist noch in Wien?
So, is the Kahlenberg still in Vienna?
Den habn’s jetzt verschrieben, er geht nach Berlin.
They’ve signed it over, it’s going to Berlin.
Ist noch die Schwimmanstalt, schwimmt man noch dort?
Is there still a public pool, do people still swim there?
Mit Schulden da schwimmen s’ ohne Wasser oft fort.
They’re swimming away in debt, even without water.
In most versions, the duet ends with a lovely self-referential twist:
Was jetzt im Leopoldstädter Theater vorgeht?
And what’s happening now in the Leopoldstadt Theater?
Da singt just die Zilly mit dem Bims ein Duett.
Zilly is singing a duet with Bims.26
This multivalent message leaves the question open of just how the refrain is intended. “Ja nur ein Kaiserstadt, ja nur ein Wien” (Yes, only one Imperial city, yes, only one Vienna) seems to express praise, but if said in the proper ironic tone, it could be meant cynically instead, as in “Yeah, it’s only Vienna.” The cynical reading is supported by Bäuerle’s next play, Wien, Paris, London, Constantinopel, which premiered five months after Aline in March 1823: the main characters receive a set of magical objects as they set out on their journeys, one of which is a purse that fills up with money whenever they think nice thoughts about Vienna.
By obliquely referencing the Aline duet, Schubert may have meant to evoke in his audience a sophisticated mixture of emotions: the tragic Romantic yearning of the poem “Der Wanderer” and of Schubert’s setting is intermingled with Bäuerle’s down-to-earth language and ironic rhetorical strategy that critiques Vienna in the very process of praising it. Perhaps this emotional mix reflects the ambivalence of the intelligent artist who in 1822 might both want to leave home and at the same time feel the need to stay.27
Winterreise and Der Bauer als Millionär
On 10 November 1826, a new play, Raimund’s Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt, oder der Bauer als Millionär (The Maiden from the Fairy World, or The Peasant as Millionaire) had its premiere at the Leopoldstadt Theater. It was an eno
rmous success, first in Vienna and then in several German cities. Raimund played the title role of Fortunatus Wurzel, a simple peasant who is used as a pawn by magical forces so that he becomes fabulously rich and then loses his money and his youth overnight. The music was composed by Joseph Drechsler (1782–1852), and two songs instantly became favorites, probably because they went beyond the particulars of the plot to become emblems of a widespread and general state of mind. There is significant evidence to support the belief that Raimund himself wrote the melodies of these songs; Orel includes facsimiles of both, written in music notation in Raimund’s handwriting, along with quotations from Raimund documents commenting on his compositional work.28
No documentation exists to prove that Schubert attended this play, but we know that his friends the Spauns did, on 21 December 1826, and that Schubert was with them later that evening, so it is likely that the play was discussed.29 I argue that both of these songs have parallels in Schubert’s Winterreise that are identifiable through musical and textual relationships.
Commentary from the time reveals how deeply the play—and in particular Fortunatus Wurzel, the central figure played by Raimund himself—moved the audience. For example, renowned German actor Ludwig Devrient “under [Raimund’s] spell, exclaimed, ‘The man is so true that a miserable person like myself freezes and suffers along with him.’ … ‘The whole house rejoiced, laughed, and cried, and I rejoiced and laughed and cried with them,’ reported an eyewitness.’”30
In order to grasp the play’s connection with Schubert’s music, we must examine Wurzel’s key scenes. Before the play begins, he is a simple peasant who is raising a foster daughter, little realizing that her mother, Lakrimosa, is a once-powerful fairy undergoing a punishment for her vainglory. For Lakrimosa to be redeemed, her daughter must grow up simply and marry an ordinary person by her eighteenth birthday—but two years before the play begins, the allegorical Envy, enraged after being rejected by Lakrimosa, has taken revenge on her by making Wurzel a wealthy man. He now lives in a great city, surrounded by flattering admirers; he indulges his appetites to excess; and he insists that his daughter must marry a rich man rather than the fisherman she loves. As Lottchen’s eighteenth birthday approaches, a grand battle of supernatural beings rages around the unknowing Wurzel. Angry at Lottchen for defying his wishes, he throws her out of the house, and he then receives a visit from an unknown person who claims to be an old friend: Jugend, or Youth. This role was played by Therese Krones, a beloved actress of the time, and Zentner observes that she “fascinated all Vienna. She too had found a task perfectly suited to her nature, and her legacy in theater history lives mostly through this role.”31
Jugend has come to say good-bye to Wurzel, who does not recognize this “old friend” or understand what is happening. In the first famous song, Brüderlein fein, Jugend begs Wurzel to forgive him and not hold a grudge when he departs. Wurzel first tries to bribe Jugend to stay, then grows angry—but finally the two sing an affectionate farewell. This song reached folksong status in Vienna, apparently because it captured a sorrowful, nostalgic mood that suited the 1820s, when the exciting years of the Congress of Vienna and the defeat of Napoleon were giving way to the frustrations of Metternich’s Restoration.
After Jugend goes offstage, Wurzel receives another visit, this time from Old Age (das hohe Alter). He is instantly transformed into an old man, his mansion disappears, and he finds himself back in the countryside. When he next appears in the play, he has just begun his new job as an Aschenmann, a collector of ashes. He expresses his newfound humility in the Aschenlied, whose text contrasts the vanity of wealth and ambition with the true values of love and faithfulness. In its original form, the song had three stanzas; here, to give a sense of its style and meaning, are the first and third:
So mancher steigt herum,
Many a man rises up,
Der Hochmut bringt ihn um,
Arrogance brings him down,
Trägt einen schönen Rock,
Wears a nice coat,
Ist dumm als wie ein Stock.
Is dumb as a stick.
Von Stolz ganz aufgebläht,
All swollen with pride,
O Freundchen, das ist öd,
O my friend, that is empty,
Wie lang stehts denn noch an,
However long you put it off,
Bist auch ein Aschenmann!
You’re also an ashman!
Ein Aschen, ein Aschen!
Ashes! Ashes!
Figure 1. Therese Krones as Jugend.
Doch vieles in der Welt,
Yet much in the world,
Ich mein nicht etwa’s Geld,
And I don’t mean money,
Ist doch der Mühe wert,
Is really worth the trouble
Daß man es hoch verehrt.
That we should honor it highly.
Vor alle braven Leut,
To all good people,
Vor Lieb und Dankbarkeit
To love and gratitude,
Vor treuer Mädchen Glut,
To the ardor of faithful maidens,
Da zieh ich meinen Hut.
I take off my hat.
Kein Aschen! Kein Aschen!32
Not ashes! Not ashes!
Like the Aline duet, this song was a perfect candidate for added stanzas caricaturing various types of people, and recent performances continue to feature such additions, frequently commenting on current events or scandals.33 Just a month after Raimund’s death in 1836, two newly written stanzas in tribute to him were sung on the stage of the Leopoldstadt. The use of this song as a vehicle for such homage reflects how closely the Viennese public identified Raimund with the poignant figure of the Aschenmann.34
Two songs from the second half of Schubert’s Winterreise can be linked to Der Bauer als Millionär: Der greise Kopf and Die Krähe. In Der greise Kopf, the winter wanderer notices that his head has been sprinkled with snow, giving him the appearance of an old man—but alas, this is only an illusion. The lines were probably intended metaphorically by Wilhelm Müller—but in Der Bauer als Millionär this literally happens to Wurzel. The link to the song cycle is strengthened by the circumstance that Wurzel’s transformation is accompanied by the sudden magical onset of winter.
Vom Abendrot zum Morgenlicht
From sunset to morning light
Ward mancher Kopf zum Greise
Many a head has turned gray
The song Brüderlein fein is a reflection on friendship at the moment that the allegorical friendship between Wurzel and Jugend is ending, in the sense that his youth is saying farewell to him. In Die Krähe, the wanderer questions the faithfulness of a crow who is following him:
Krähe, wunderliches Tier,
Crow, marvelous animal,
Willst mich nicht verlassen?
Wilt thou not abandon me?
The crow, he realizes, is expecting his death and hopes to eat his corpse, but he ironically compares its steadfastness with the fickleness of his beloved:
Krähe, laß mich endlich sehen
Crow, let me finally see
Treue bis zum Grabe.
Faithfulness unto the grave.
What is noteworthy here is that the situations are inverted. Jugend is leaving Wurzel, but still wishes him well and begs for forgiveness. The crow stays beside the wanderer like a faithful lover or friend, but its behavior results from its selfish needs rather than true concern for another. This inversion makes the comparison between the two situations all the more interesting.
Let us presume that Schubert deliberately incorporated references to the two famous songs from Der Bauer als Millionär into Winterreise. To do so while still preserving the musical style and expressive goals of his song cycle must have been a challenge. As a result, the resemblances between the two pairs of songs are fleeting and subtle, particularly in Die Krähe.
Example 5 shows the first half of the Aschenlied, omitting the introduction. Example 6 shows the key phrase o
f Der greise Kopf, which is heard three times in the song: as the piano introduction, the first vocal phrase, and then again near the end of the song; the final occurrence is shown here. The Schubert phrase first ascends, in a slightly winding arpeggiated melody, then arrives at an accented tritone (B–F) before descending in a more direct manner. Susan Youens interprets this phrase as a summary of the emotional trajectory of the song, with the ascent representing the wanderer’s joy when he believes himself to be old and the descent representing his disillusionment that this is not the case.35 The two-bar phrase at the end of the Aschenlied example shares the ascent-descent contour and also features a central accented tritone (C–F♯). Youens points out that the prosody of the Schubert phrase is very unnatural the first time it is sung, on the words “Der Reif hatt’ einen weißen Schein mir übers Haar gestreuet” (The frost had sprinkled white over my hair), with strong beats falling on the unaccented syllables “ei(nen)” and “ü(bers)”—yet when the phrase is heard later, “the prosodic accents more accurately and expressively emphasize the last light of dusk and the first light of morning, the nocturnal span in which others grow old but not the unfortunate wanderer.”36 This shift from awkward to appropriate prosody suggests that Schubert was thinking of the later phrase—the one that matches Wurzel’s story—when he first composed the melody.37