20. Robert Darnton comments on the links between philosophy and eroticism in literature of this period in The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1996). See in particular chapter 3, “Philosophical Pornography.”
21. Aside from those discussed in the main text, other versions included a ballet at the Paris Opéra in 1766, adapted by Michel-Jean Sedaine; Aline, reine de Golconde by J. A. P. Schulz (Rheinsberg, 1787), later adapted and very popular in Denmark as Aline Dronning i Golconda; Aline, reine de Golconde by Boieldieu (St. Petersburg, 1804); Alina, regina di Golconda by Donizetti (Genoa, 1828); and Franz Berwald, Drottningen av Golconda (Stockholm, 1864–65).
22. The Viennese quodlibet took various forms. Most common was a single musical number, usually but not always within a Volkstheater play, in which several preexisting musical pieces were quoted in short snippets, with surprise and disjunction being important aspects of the genre. A quodlibet play was a whole play in which entire musical numbers from preexisting works were borrowed. In both types of quodlibet, the text of the original could be left as is or changed to suit the dramatic situation. John A. Rice discusses some interesting examples that were performed at the Imperial court, including a quodlibet commissioned for Emperor Franz’s name day in 1805 by his wife. See Empress Marie Therese and Music at the Viennese Court, 1792–1807 (Cambridge, 2003), 132–40. The humor of quodlibets clearly depended on the audience’s recognition of the quoted material to be effective, so these works inform us about what music was known by their intended audiences. The very existence of the quodlibet also shows how significant the practice of quotation was in Viennese cultural life, supporting the broader points of this essay. For the Vogl duet, see the edition of Rochus Pumpernickel in Feurzeig and Sienicki, Quodlibets, 90–97 and 288–89.
23. Deutsch, Schubert Reader, 141–42.
24. Otto Rommel reprinted the play in his Alt-Wiener Volkstheater, 7 vols. (Vienna, Teschen, Leipzig, 1917), 5:81–165; in this version, the duet has five stanzas. In one publication of sheet music—Sammlung komischer Theater-Gesänge no. 21 (Vienna, ca. 1822)—there are three stanzas, two almost identical to the reprint and another that includes lines from two other stanzas in the reprint. In another sheet music version, clearly printed several years later as there is a note by Bäuerle referring to his 1826 edition, there are three stanzas, once again with words reordered and stanzas recombined. I have also found reference to a version of the duet printed by C. G. Förster in Breslau in 1822, in which the text opens “Wie gehts denn bei Liebichs,” referring to a famous Breslau landmark; presumably the text of the play was altered so that Aline comes from Breslau rather than Vienna.
25. The misspelling of Kahlenberg, a mountain just north of Vienna, could reflect dialect pronunciation or could be evidence that this version was printed outside Vienna.
26. This is from the post-1826 printing.
27. There is much to be said about the keen awareness of the Volkstheater shown by both Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss in Der Rosenkavalier. For example, they deliberately quoted the Aline duet. In Act 1, rehearsal number 219, at the moment when various merchants are showing their wares to the Marschallin, the Marchande de Modes announces that she has “Le chapeau Paméla, La poudre à la reine de Golconde.” (The Pamela hat, Queen of Golconda powder). The upper line in the orchestra at this moment plays the pitches B–E–D♯–F♯–A, forming exactly the same intervals as the beginning of the refrain to Müller’s Aline duet, while omitting repeated notes. The vocal melody is not identical, but it opens with B–E–E, adding the element of repetition that the orchestra has omitted. Strauss’s quotation creates an interesting anachronism, as the opera is set “in the early years of the reign of Maria Theresia”—that is, in the 1740s, even before the original literary work had been written and about eighty years before the Müller-Bäuerle theatrical version. See Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier, piano-vocal score (London, 1985), 3, 98.
28. Orel, Ferdinand Raimund, xviii–xxi.
29. Deutsch, Schubert Reader, 580. Franz von Hartmann describes a gathering at the Anker, with a list of various people who were there. The list includes the Spauns (not identified any more clearly), who had just attended the play, and also Schubert.
30. Wilhelm Zentner, in the afterword to Raimund, Der Bauer als Millionär (Stuttgart, 1952), 83; my translation. Zentner also lists German cities where the play found acclaim: Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, and Hamburg.
31. Ibid.
32. Raimund, Der Bauer als Millionär, 67–68.
33. This is shown, for example, in a performance from the Salzburg Festival of 1988 that is available on DVD, Arthaus Musik, 101 836. As explained in the accompanying notes by Werner Thuswaldner, the added stanzas in this production had to do with controversies about fighter planes, sex education, and television programming (10).
34. The text of the added stanzas is given in Fritz Brukner, ed., Ferdinand Raimund in der Dichtung seiner Zeitgenossen (Vienna, 1905), 63–64. It ends as follows: “Wer solches hat erstrebt, / Hat nicht umsonst gelebt. / Kein Aschen!” (Whoever has striven for this / Has not lived in vain. / No ashes!) Brukner specifies that the verses were sung by “Hrn. Weiß” (v), and I assume this was Eduard Weiß, who played some of Raimund’s roles when he was performing elsewhere.
35. Specifically, Susan Youens writes of “a broadly arching, symmetrical phrase that seems a musical metaphor for awakening, ascending to heights of joy, and then descending to disillusionment.” Retracing a Winter’s Journey: Schubert’s “Winterreise” (Ithaca, NY, 1991), 237.
36. Ibid., 237–38.
37. Such arguments are sometimes employed regarding Schubert’s compositional process for strophic songs; if the melody fits one stanza particularly well, then Schubert was probably composing it with that stanza in mind. For example, in the song Des Fischers Liebesglück (D933), the octave leaps are particularly well suited to the text of the final stanza.
38. We have no specific reference to this play in the Schubert documents. However, both Bauernfeld and J. (presumably Josef) Kupelwieser wrote poems about Raimund. Kupelwieser’s was published in the Theaterzeitung on 18 March 1834 after the performance of Raimund’s Der Verschwender, and Bauernfeld wrote his in response to Raimund’s death in 1836. Bauernfeld’s poem appears to refer to Die gefesselte Phantasie along with the myth of Prometheus in the final stanza: “Angeschmiedet war der Dichter / An den Fels Melancholie, / Und ein Geier fraß das Herz ihm, / Riesen-Geier: Phantasie.” (Fettered was the poet / To the rock Melancholy, / And a vulture ate his heart, / The giant vulture Fantasy.” These are reprinted in Brukner, Ferdinand Raimund in der Dichtung seiner Zeitgenossen, 32–33 and 69–70.
39. For other recent writings on this piece, see Frank Samarotto, “Intimate Immensity in Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock,” in Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music: Festschrift in Honor of Carl Schachter (Hillsdale, NY, 2006), 203–23; and Till Gerrit Waidelich, “‘Der letzte Hauch im Lied entflieht, im Lied das Herz entweicht!’ Varnhagens Nächtlicher Schall als letzter Baustein zum Hirt auf dem Felsen,” Schubert: Perspektiven 8 (2008): 237–43.
40. Musical aspects of several of Berg’s works, including the Lyric Suite, the Violin Concerto, and Wozzeck, have been linked to the composer’s close friendships and secret love affairs. See Douglas Jarman, “Alban Berg, Wilhelm Fliess, and the Secret Program of the Violin Concerto,” in The Berg Companion, ed. Douglas Jarman (Boston, 1989), 181– 94 and Douglas Jarman, “Secret Programmes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Berg, ed. Anthony Pople (Cambridge, 1997), 167–79.
41. See, among many examples, Susan Wollenberg, Schubert’s Fingerprints; Richard L. Cohn, “As Wonderful as Star Clusters: Instruments for Gazing at Tonality in Schubert,” 19th-Century Music 22/3 (Spring 1999): 213–32; and Su Yin Mak, “‘Et in Arcadia Ego’: The Elegiac Structure of Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor (D703),” in The Unknown Schubert, ed. Barbara M. Reul and Lorraine Byrne Bodley (Aldershot, 2008), 145–53.
42
. See, among many examples, Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder (Cambridge, 1996); Marjorie Wing Hirsch, “Mayrhofer, Schubert, and the Myth of ‘Vocal Memnon,’” in Reul and Bodley, The Unknown Schubert, 3–23; and Xavier Hascher, “‘In dunklen Träumen’: Schubert’s Heine-Lieder through the Psychoanalytical Prism,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 5/2 (2008): 43–70.
Liszt on Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella
INTRODUCED AND TRANSLATED BY ALLAN KEILER
During the winter and summer months and into the fall of 1854, Liszt published a series of articles on twelve dramatic works, all but two of them operas, connected with performances he conducted in Weimar. The pieces, in the order they were performed, were Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Auber’s La muette de Portici, Weber’s Euryanthe, Beethoven’s music for Egmont, Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, Boieldieu’s La dame blanche, Donizetti’s La favorita, and Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella. Liszt’s first six articles, as well as the one on Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, were initially published in the Weimarer Zeitung within a week or two after the performance, many in several installments. Throughout the year, all of them, in their final form and definitive order, appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.1
The premiere of Alfonso und Estrella, which Liszt gave in Weimar on 24 June 1854 to celebrate the birthday of the Grand Duke Karl Alexander, entails a journey with more than its share of false starts, mishaps, and ironies. If we turn to the article, little of the difficulties and drama that led to its performance by Liszt are discernible. What we have is a deeply heartfelt appreciation of Schubert’s gifts as a song composer as well as a more general rumination on the nature of talent and genius. When it comes to the work itself, Liszt in at least one regard is more practical than usual in comparison with the other essays of the series. Because neither the work nor the libretto was published, he provides his audience with a detailed summary of the plot and action, scene by scene and act by act.
In biographical matters, Liszt often resorts to uncritical generalities or guesswork, as in his biography of Chopin, for example, and in this essay too he is vague and inaccurate when he explains that “the work in question [is] a product of [Schubert’s youth] … its weaknesses … understandable given the rapidity with which he went about his work.” Schubert wrote Alfonso und Estrella between September 1821 and February 1822, during a period of his creative life that was crucial for him compositionally as well as personally. During this time he acquired new ambitions, particularly in works for the stage, left many pieces unfinished, including the “Unfinished” Symphony and the single movement “Quartettsatz,” but also completed, by the end of the period, such works as Der Musensohn, the Mass in A-flat, and the “Wanderer” Fantasy. It is a period of tremendous growth, new aspirations, and wildly fluctuating challenges. If anything, then, Alfonso und Estrella is a product of this first maturity.
Figure 1. Playbill of Alfonso und Estrella, Weimar 1854.
Contrary to Liszt’s view, composition of the opera proceeded with somewhat less haste and spontaneity than was often the case with Schubert, and for the most part in a more relaxed and concentrated manner. Schubert began the first act toward the end of September 1821. His librettist arranged for the two of them to work together without distraction at St. Pölten, where the bishop, a relative of the librettist, gave them accommodations. They returned to Vienna before the second act was finished. Encouraged again at the end of the year to resume work, composer and librettist completed the opera sometime in February.
The reader will notice that I have failed to mention the name of Franz von Schober, the librettist of Alfonso und Estrella, a somewhat disingenuous way of calling attention to the similar omission on the part of Liszt, who in his essay does not once identify him by name, although he does not hold back in criticizing the inadequacy of the libretto. Whether consciously or not, this omission could hardly have been inadvertent, as the reader will come to understand. Liszt’s relationship to Schober, which lasted for more than a decade, is an integral part of the story that would eventually lead to the first performance of Alfonso und Estrella by Liszt, an “act of reverence,” “the settlement of a debt of honor,” he writes, but one that, as Maria Eckhardt has rightly argued, “probably precipitated the alienation of their friendship.”2
Franz von Schober is well known as an intimate and influential member of Schubert’s circle, and his close friendship with the composer is also well documented. His relationship to Liszt is less familiar and for the most part haphazardly documented, with inaccuracies and lacunae that await clarification. In the meantime, what interests us is the role he played in connection with Liszt’s premiere of Schubert’s opera. It is not clear when they first met, probably sometime during the late 1830s. In the documented record we encounter them together for the first time in Pest during Liszt’s return to his native Hungary from December of 1839 to the end of January 1840—after his childhood one of the most famous and colorful episodes of his career. The central image amid the nationalistic fervor that accompanied Liszt during those weeks is the famous “sabre of honor” presented to him at his concert at the Hungarian National Theater by a small group of noblemen and civic officials. The entire episode—idolatrous outpourings about Liszt by the Hungarian press, Liszt parading in the streets of Pest in Hungarian costume, attempts to remake him as a symbol of Magyar nationalism—became easy prey for the European press, especially French journalists, who ridiculed his posturing, the presentation of the sabre, and much else. Liszt, with the aid of his mistress Marie d’Agoult, made repeated attempts at damage control, but the whole affair made him keenly defensive over his seriousness of purpose as an artist, his pride in and his fervor over his homeland.3
Figure 2. Portrait of Franz von Schober by Leopold Kupelwieser.
It was at this point that Schober entered Liszt’s life. He was an eye-witness to the presentation of the sabre and accompanied Liszt to other Hungarian cities, to Vienna, and then again to Hungary. Whatever conversations the two may have had at the time, Schober was sympathetic enough to Liszt’s aims and ideals to write a series of articles in the German press about his experiences traveling with the Hungarian idol. For his part, Liszt was pleased enough with the series to propose that Schober publish the pieces, which resulted in the pamphlet Briefe über F. Liszts Aufenthalt in Ungarn (Letters About F. Liszt’s Sojourn in Hungary). Schober’s account takes its place, then, among a series of biographical sketches and reportages from the early 1840s—those of Johann Wilhelm Christern, Ludwig Rellstab, and J. Duverger (an alias for Marie d’Agoult)—that formed a part of Liszt’s active attempts to create a biographical image in the French and German press that would reflect his ideas and objectives about art and society.4
Schober was a versatile talent, but he lacked perseverance. He gave up the study of law after only a single year; he then tried his hand at landscape painting, and for two years flirted with the profession of acting, and then changed course entirely when he assumed the directorship of the Viennese Lithographic Institute. What drew Liszt to Schober was not simply that he revealed himself to be a sympathetic ally in the midst of a highly troublesome and even embarrassing episode. Surely Liszt also admired his attractive and engaging personality. Schober was a brilliant conversationalist, well traveled, charismatic, a figure of cosmopolitan background with an enormous knowledge of German literature, the latter particularly appealing to Liszt. Just as important was his connection to Schubert, a composer Liszt held as much admiration for and drew at least as much influence from as he did Beethoven. Whether the subject of Alfonso und Estrella came up during these early years between Schober and Liszt, we do not know, but it would arise soon enough.
In the meantime, Schober was valuable to Liszt in various ways. He acted as translator, and provided Liszt with the poem “Titan,” on whose setting L
iszt worked for a number of years. When Liszt was appointed Kapellmeister in Weimar in 1843, Schober accompanied him as he arrived to take up his duties. Eventually Liszt used his influence with Grand Duke Alexander, recommending that he appoint Schober Legationsrat (legation counsellor). In the years following his appointment, Liszt continued to depend on Schober to help spread his ideas about his future plans in Weimar. When Liszt finally settled there, Schober provided other texts, for the cantata Hungaria and the dithyramb Weimars Toten, for which Liszt provided musical settings.5 Liszt must have found Schober useful in discussing his plans for the musical and cultural revival he was contemplating for the years ahead, so it is not surprising that the idea emerged of a performance of Alfonso und Estrella: Schubert’s lone through-composed opera and, along with Fierabras, his major dramatic work. It may have been Schober who raised the idea in the first place, for, in fact, he had striven for several years to have the opera performed.
The first evidence we have that Schober and Liszt reached some conviction that a performance of Alfonso und Estrella should be given in Weimar is a letter dated 7 February 1848 that Schober wrote to Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, asking him to send the opera to Liszt. We learn about this request about a month later, in a letter that Ferdinand writes to Breitkopf & Härtel, with which he is in negotiations to publish the opera as well as other works of Schubert: “On 7 February I received a letter from the librettist of this final opera, who is at present Legationsrat in Weimar, in which I was asked in the friendliest terms to send this opera to Weimar, because Franz Liszt (who is now Hof-Kapellmeister there) wants one of Franz Schubert’s operas to finally see the light of day.”6 Only a few weeks later, Liszt writes to Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein about his intention: “And perhaps there is still time to stage one of Schubert’s unpublished operas, Alphons und Estrella, for which my friend Schober wrote the text.”7
Franz Schubert and His World Page 24
