FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER S ESSAY IN DER T ONWILLE, VOL. 1

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1 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER S ESSAY IN DER T ONWILLE, VOL. 1 My response to Heinrich Schenker s inspiring account of Ihr Bild takes the form of a free-standing analytical essay rather than a point-by-point gloss.* Much has happened in the 75 or so years since the publication of Der Tonwille, and I have attempted to encapsulate a few developments here. One or two of these are Schenker s own, and reflect his evolution through Das Meisterwerk in der Musik to Der freie Satz and the late graphic analyses. Inevitably I explore the principle of transference across levels from foreground into deep middleground of configurations which he rightly hesitates to call motives (such as the first pair of Bbs in the piano). I have also replaced the background line of (his) Fig. 9 with my own, as indeed he might later have replaced it with a classical Ursatz. Nevertheless, in his Tonwille background, there is a powerful perception of parallels in the descending fourth progressions in each verse Bb to F which Schenker would surely have retained in any later reading. Schenker s text gives the lie to any charge that he invariably separated questions of structure and design from those of affect or aesthetic response. This separation was partly the unspoken agenda of his formalist exegetes of the 1960s and 70s. On the contrary, I have pursued his holism as far as possible, and included remarks on performance practice as indeed he did and might well have developed further. However, I avoid entering into Schenker s polemics over old and new prosody Schubert and Brahms versus Wagner and Wolf as the pressure to choose rather than differentiate is no longer with us, and our perception of even older traditions the declamatory style of Monteverdian opera in any case alters our view of prosody itself. As a pragmatist whose thought is rooted in the mechanics of composition, I am less concerned to debate the metaphysical considerations of the Urlinie than I am to show how the large line helps smaller and intermediate units cohere. Hence I talk about concrete harmonic and linear models, and the transformation of materials from one part of the song to another. Although I accept that creative power the strength of genius lies in the force and integrity of a single underlying vision, I cannot recog- * The material for this essay was first presented to a joint meeting of the Society for Music Analysis and the Institute of Advanced Musical Studies at King s College London on 16 March On this and other occasions I have benefited from the reactions to this work of William Caplin, John Deathridge, Jonathan Dunsby, Cliff Eisen, Jonathan Leathwood, Nicolas Meeùs, Robert Pascall, John Rink and Michael Taylor. 10 Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK

2 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 11 nise as any kind of creative starting point the ramification of the commonplace materials of backgrounds qua backgrounds that Schenker described in the 1930s (these are the three descents, 3 1, 5 1, 8 1). Schenker, of course, did argue in Der freie Satz that composition can begin at any point in the generative process; I would add that even the creation of a background sense can emerge from the handling of the foreground. Yet in my Ex. 6 I do admit a traditional Ursatz of a kind, adding a dimension to what is expressed in Exs. 2, 4 and 5. For the descent in Bb minor is never actually heard in the music, but exists in our mind s ear as that which is real but denied. This aids the composer s attempt to create an illusory musical world that matches the poet s. I also posit what Schenker might later have posited, namely a discrepancy between a two-part Ursatz-form and a three-strophe verse-form. In a further shift of emphasis I relate Schubert s practice to contemporary theory without actually situating the song historically; that would be a worthwhile but separate exercise. This relation seems particularly necessary in the matter of tonality. Schenker probed pitch relations around a source triad as never before, though admittedly with greater effect in minor rather than major tonalities (in major the relative minor stands outside the extension of the tonic triad in time, and is hence a thorn in the metaphysical flesh, as it were). But curiously, Schenker s analysis was not actually pitch-specific : it did not describe key-associations in the way other theorists did, nor did it find cultural significance in the effects of moving from one tonality to another (Tovey saw these as aesthetic facts). Both of these attitudes I have tried to reclaim. I have also reintroduced principles of rhetoric to emphasise the resourcefulness of Schubert s power to communicate; in this respect I follow the work of Hans Heinrich Unger and his modern successors. Tovey once claimed he could teach composition only as rhetoric, and in what follows I too take as a guiding principle the threefold aims of oratory to engage intellect, feeling and aesthetic judgement even though I recognise music as both less and more than a speech-act. Although I do not use Latin terms, rhetoricians will easily recognise their modern English equivalents here. The whole of this effort leads to a consideration of the main difference between Schenker s times and ours: I have tried, hermeneutically, to relate the source of the emotions presented in this art-work to our modern understanding of them in life. For this reason I have drawn on the work of behavioural psychologists. However, I do not treat their findings axiomatically, but rather as an emotional background to the song, something that helps us to relate our inner life to the outer one. To this end I also allow the practice of art to make its own contributions to the science of life in this respect following Freud, who integrated what he found in letters with what he learnt from medicine. Since I believe that the manner of criticising is at its best when it reflects the matter of what is criticised, I hope that students of Romantic irony will recognise how the simultaneously engaged and detached strategy of my essay tries to mirror the character of this haunting song. Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

3 12 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE I Art transmutes life through fantasy; science on the other hand sets fantasy aside to investigate life. Yet in certain instances what imagination uncovers may also feed what science discovers. Such is the case with Ihr Bild (1828), the song by Franz Schubert to words by Heinrich Heine (see pp. 8 9). For this affecting dramatic lyric is also an uncannily accurate diagnosis of the effects of loss. As art, it has an aesthetic impact which far outweighs its relatively brief duration: it evokes an imaginary place where there are enacted feelings of sadness, awe, tenderness, hope and frustration, even while it reminds us of the abnormal nature of what it reports. As science, it confirms and adds to what has been patiently researched, tested and reported by psychoanalysts and behavioural psychologists over many years. And as a synthesis of art and science, it offers a rare instance of a work that positively demands both to be performed and to be treated as a case study. So let us approach this song from our two vantage points though beginning with the second, the psychological. As a topic in psychoanalysis, loss has been made familiar to the reading public by two works: Sigmund Freud s paper on Mourning and Melancholia of 1917, and Melanie Klein s Love, Guilt and Reparation, a group of essays written between 1921 and However, it was in the third part of his monumental and more specialised Attachment and Loss that John Bowlby mapped out the stages which mourning passes through on its way to recovery. The model he devised deals with healthy mourning, as opposed to the pathological mourning, or melancholia, described by Freud; and this health he saw as a challenge to Klein and others, who maintained that in mourning we work through guilt. Bowlby drew on various sources for this model, but especially on the work of Colin Murray Parkes. In 1972, for a period of about a year, Parkes had interviewed twenty-two recently bereaved London widows aged between 26 and 65. His task was to monitor their progress, and although dealing with women, he suggested that his findings applied equally to men (Bowlby 1980, p. 88). The model Parkes and Bowlby devised from this research identifies four stages of mourning (p. 85): 1. Phase of numbing that usually lasts from a few hours to a week and may be interrupted by outbursts of extremely intense distress and/or anger. 2. Phase of yearning and searching for the lost figure lasting some months and sometimes for years. 3. Phase of disorganisation and despair. 4. Phase of greater or lesser degree of reorganisation. For our purposes, we need only concentrate on stages 1 and 2. According to Bowlby, the first, numbed phase, leads to pangs of intense pining and to Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

4 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 13 spasms of distress and tearful sobbing. Yet almost at the same time, there is great restlessness, insomnia, and preoccupation with thoughts of the lost one. The mourner even has vivid dreams that the loved one is still alive and well. These dreams are accompanied by a corresponding sense of desolation on waking. The second phase can lead on quickly from the first. The mourner has the sense of the actual presence of the lost one: there is denial that loss has even occurred. Here it is usual for a bereaved person to alternate between two states of mind. On the one hand is belief that death has occurred with the pain and hopeless yearning that that entails. On the other hand is disbelief that [loss] has occurred, accompanied both by hope that all may yet be well and by an urge to search for and to recover the person. (p. 87) Bowlby remarks that another feature of this phase observed by every behavioural scientist is anger. This may be aroused both by those held responsible for the loss and also by frustrations met with during fruitless search (p. 86). Indeed, anger may be seen as an intelligible constituent of the urgent though fruitless effort a bereaved person makes to restore the bond that has been severed. So long as anger continues, it seems, loss is not being accepted as permanent and hope is still lingering on. Furthermore, loss at this stage may induce an element of self-reproach centred on some minor act of omission or commission associated with the last illness or death. If felt intensely and persistently, this self-reproach can lead to depressive illness. This (presumably) is the (pathological) guilt diagnosed by Klein and her followers. In general, though, the second phase may last for several weeks or months before its force diminishes. So how do these views help us with Heine s poem and Schubert s music? Let us consider text and music in the first verse (the poem is laid out as the quatrain Schubert set, rather than the couplet indicated by Heine s rhymes): Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen und starrt ihr Bildnis an, und das geliebte Antlitz heimlich zu Leben begann. (I stood in sombre reverie / and stared at her portrait, / And the beloved face / mysteriously stirred to life.) Bowlby s science teaches us that the lover has sustained a loss; that the loss is significant (he already has access to a painting of the beloved); and that the intensity of the reaction suggests the bereavement is recent. In art, we understand that there may or may not have been an actual loss, but that the symptoms are nevertheless those of bereavement. When the music begins, its tone is Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

5 14 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE numb : the two, desolate, empty octave Bbs in the piano (bars 1 2) are broken by silences that sit on the threshold of grief-stricken speechlessness. Schubert writes pianissimo; Webern might have written kaum hörbar ( barely audible ). As fascinated and empathetic observers, we strain to hear what follows. Now this sospiration in the piano is quite unlike, say, the peremptory call to attention on a unison Bb (the tonic) that opens Beethoven s Symphony No. 4, or the more tender unison Bbs that open Haydn s Symphony No Indeed, Schubert s two notes have little will or prescience, defining neither key nor chord. Yet in their meagreness, they initiate a process. They establish the framework of a two-bar unit within which the lover will sing; as Augenbild, they represent two eyes; and these eyes open inwardly, searching the dream for the illusion the lover craves. As we shall see, their presence pervades the song in a deep and uncanny way. The voice now enters, and as listeners we note and feel an irony. The diction has all the succinct clarity of a patient recollecting emotion in the tranquillity of a consulting room (bars 3 6), and the phrases in both music and text are restrained and articulate. Yet at the same time this diction evinces an almost childlike wonder: the piano doubles the vocal line with slurs throughout and encourages the singer to an entranced legato. As the lover outlines the situation in the first two phrases, the precarious unisons of the piano opening continue; the line first reiterates the two Bbs and then circles around the pitch as it begins its search the pair of eyes (the two Bbs) are coming to life. The intense pining of the speaker is heard through the appoggiatura An Bb; the uncanny events are adumbrated through the falling tritone; and the pining appoggiatura is lengthened and turned into a (b6 5) figure of distress as the voice encircles Gb for a whole bar before resolving to F. In particular, the rhythmic profile of the first vocal phrase (bars 3 4) is distorted upon repetition in bars 5 6 by a pair of double-dotted figures depicting the physiological effect of staring. These are Bowlby and Parkes s little spasms of distress, and they deepen the mystery when, in bars 7 8, they are repeated below the first harmony in lugubrious octaves low in the piano. This issue of rhythmic profiling is not in fact addressed by Schenker, yet is essential to that aspect of Schubert s Lieder which promotes lyric stasis. As Ex. 1 shows, the twelve phrases of Ihr Bild all derive from the model introduced at the opening and are grouped in pairs. This means that the first phrase is answered by the second in the manner of subject and predicate as described by Koch: the end of the first phrase is open and feminine, whereas that of the second is closed and masculine. In the A/A1 verses, moreover, the alteration of the predicates responds to the keywords starrt and zu leben. In the B verse, the varied model gains in character as there are two dotted figures rather than one, and subject and predicate in each case are similar. The differences in this section are between the two systems: the first celebrates Lächeln (smile), Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

6 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 15 Ex. 1 Rhythmic profile: MODEL [SUBJECT] PREDICATE x A/ A 1 x stand starrt x x zu leben MODEL VARIED PREDICATE B Lächeln [ ] Wehmutstränen the second Wehmutstränen (tears of sorrow). We shall amplify these points as we proceed. Now emerges the vivid dream (bars 9 12). It is the change to the tonic major that releases disbelief that [loss] has occurred, and the vocal line, which previously had risen timidly, now burgeons in the hope that all may yet be well. However, since we know that this alleviation of gloom is illusory, the modal change to major is ironic. Here, choice of key is crucial, for contemporary theorists noticed similar ironies in the handling of Bb by other composers. On the one hand, Bb minor was described as often dressed in the garment of night (C. F. D. Schubart, c. 1784, in Steblin 1996), as imbued with deep feelings of pain, dread and horror (Weikert, 1827, in Steblin 1996), as belonging to a good soul who no longer knows himself and as using ponderous chords, which appear as if brought forth from the deepest depths of gloomy, depressed melancholy (Gustav Schilling, , in Steblin 1996). It found a locus classicus in Mozart s Don Giovanni with the Act II trio of Don Giovanni, Leporello and the Commendatore. On the other hand, Bb major in its simplest manifestations inspired noble womanliness, cheerful love, hope [and] longing for a better world (August Gathy, 1835, in Steblin 1996), the pious belief or confidence which abandons itself calmly to the will of providence (Schilling) and the triumph of faithful friendship (Ferdinand Hand, 1837, in Steblin 1996). But another of Mozart s Act II trios, this time for Elvira, Don Giovanni and Leporello, used the key in a more complex way to appease [Don Giovanni s] inner enemy with ironic insolence (Hand). Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

7 16 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE Ex. 2 1 circulating figures (b.3) r. o. a Coll 8ve 6 5 b Model reaching over i II 7 (V) 6 5 c foreground image of loss dim. intense distress figure of distress * NOT: 1 2 d i V Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

8 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 17 Ex. 2 (cont.) ( 3) N N N 9 10 voice exchange Coll 12 8ve N I V I * icon - forming faux bourdon I V I * Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

9 18 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE We may now see how art enriches psycho-analysis. Whereas in opera, portraits often excite love, hope and longing irrespective of the moral worth of the subject (Pamina, the Dutchman, Lulu), in this song the power of loss combined with the piety and irony of Bb major turns image into icon. The piano texture from bar 9 is hymn-like, the song a chorale; the dark dreamscape through which the lover searches becomes a sanctuary, and the stirring to life of the image seems no less than a miracle. The lover invokes the eternal divine as he seeks his divine, who (it seems) has been absorbed into the eternal. The diction is correspondingly ambiguous. On the one hand, the rhythmic profile of the music to und das geliebte Antlitz restores that of the first line; and although this results in a slightly awkward elongation of the first syllable das, which no apology after the event can mitigate, the crudeness of the accent itself recalls the hand-to-mouth underlay of simple hymns or sacred songs. On the other hand the stress-inversion at the beginning of the fourth line / / / heimlich zu leben begann, rather than / heimlich does not merely celebrate the mystery ( heimlich ) as goal of the ascent, thereby altering the rhythmic model, but emphasises how, throughout this hymn, the yearning sensibility of the mourner is still retained through the succession of appoggiaturas: geliebte Antlitz heimlich zu leben C Bb D C Eb ( ) D Ironically, this yearning is reinforced by a contradiction of conventional performance practice. As the line rises, there is a crescendo. This continues through Antlitz, where conventionally the resolution of the appoggiatura should relax tension, and is even sustained through the rest after Antlitz in the voice (but not in the piano, as is confirmed by the chromatic descent in the tenor part ). The peak Eb on heimlich, supported by an accented rootposition chord releases the iconic vision the dream has worked to produce; the decrescendo accompanies a fall to the close. As the lover draws breath after begann, we realise that through its gentle rise and fall, the whole four bars (9 12) have described the physiological effects of his vision. All this generic interaction may account for a special feature in the harmonic treatment. This is shown in system (b) of Ex. 2. In the first part of this verse, the II 7b harmony is presented as a voice-leading chord inflecting V. The bass Eb, however, is missing. This is partly because the music is only slowly gaining in Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

10 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 19 substance as the narrator moves through his narrative; it is also partly to throw into relief the Gb F (b6 5) figure of distress. As system (c) suggests, the Gb is also part of a diminished structure formed together with the salient notes An and C: the conformation again projects Bowlby s intense distress of the bereaved lover. In the second part of the verse, the asterisk below system (b) shows that the arrival on the raised third degree (Dn), following a divided ascent from Bb, is not accompanied by the tonic in the bass. What might have occurred (but did not) is shown in system (d). Rather, as system (b) shows, this Dn in the upper voice is supported by a 6 4 resolving to 5 3. This treatment, together with the fauxbourdon parallels in the piano part, maintains the insubstantial, not fully supported quality of the diction: this is shown in system (c). At the same time, as comparison of systems (a) and (b) reveals, the use in bars 9 and 10 of 6 3 and 6 4 harmonies overcomes a potential problem of parallel fifths. One effect of this is that the upper voice Dn is again supported by a 6 4, creating the air in the lover s mind of wonder and disbelief (most other features of the graph will be clear to readers of this journal, though the Augenpaar sign () used for the pair of Bbs is an innovation.) As an insight into the continuing alleviation of the lover s distress through illusion, the piano filler of bars adds an afterthought to the first verse. The new succession Gn F in the upper voice repudiates the earlier figure of distress, Gb F, whilst at the same time complementing the three earlier appoggiatura figures. This repudiation is made crystal clear by a fresh hairpin dynamic. The rhythm, too, reinforces the new situation by summarising the progress through the four phrases that make up the first verse: bar 12 restates the opening model (from bars 3 4) whereas bars reiterate the fourth version from bars Most interestingly, though, the bass both distils the previous verse and paves the way for the transformation that will follow. In Ex. 3, the first system shows the two Augenpaar Bbs from the piano introduction. The second demonstrates how these Bbs are expanded in bars The third monitors the way the piano filler from bars compresses this bass and transfigures it into the major. When we glance ahead to the fourth system (4a and 4b), we may see (with Schenker) that the bass descent is again reiterated in a further transfiguration, and that the entire verse represents another unfolding of the pair of Bbs (we shall return to this and the fifth system later). The sixth system repeats the second as part of the recapitulation of the music of the first verse; and the seventh recapitulates the third system in the minor. Thus we can see that within the context of ternary form, the pair of eyes opens and shuts seven times in this song, and that this sevenfold action holds the key to the music s psychological design. With this in mind, let us proceed to the central section. Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

11 20 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE Ex. 3 1 Bars 1 2: Augenpaar () 2 Bars a Bars b Bars Augenpaar (as bars 1 2) 6 7 Bars [as bars 3 12] Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

12 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 21 II The text for the second verse shifts our attention from the lover to the lost one, and takes us to the heart of the dream. We listen with baited breath: Um ihre Lippen zog sich ein Lächeln, wunderbar, und wie von Wehmutstränen erglänzte ihr Augenpaar. (About her lips there played / a wonderful smile, / And as with tears of melancholy / her two eyes glistened.) As clinical observers, we realise that what the lover sees in the picture represents the same blend of hope and pain that he felt in the first verse, but now experienced with even greater intensity. The movement of the portrait is his own; it is he who smiles consolingly (bars 15 18), his the moist, melancholy eyes that greet him (bars 19 22). There is no actual other ; the verse is a monument to the effects of denial in loss. He projects hope that all may yet be well and that he may recover his lost person. And as if to affirm this, the music of this second verse recasts that of the first in a number of ways. At bar 14 in the vocal line, the hushed numbness of the bare Bb unisons returns (pianissimo) and is extended for most of bar 15. Now the singer pours forth his spellbound wonder in two unbroken four-bar phrases; the short two-bar units have yielded to the fuller breath, and the force of Heine s couplets is restored. Because the second phrase (bars 19 22) is a close variation of the first (bars 15 18), and because each vocal phrase begins and ends with Bbs, the pair of eyes seem miraculously expanded in two successive acts of scrutiny. (This is in addition to the single act of scrutiny defined by the bass in systems 4a and 4b of Ex. 3.) The fact that Heine s endrhymes (-bar/paar) are now so audible confirms this fixity of gaze. The diction in this verse is complex, and each of its aspects enhances an earlier feature. First, the line sinks from the unison Bbs to Gb, which then serves as local tonic (in the major). As in Schubert s Nacht und Träume, the sinking through a major third, from tonic to (flat) submediant, itself releases the lover from the harsh reality of everyday life into the transfigured, timeless dreamscape of the inner world. As too at the opening of Schubert s posthumous Bb major sonata D960 (also composed in 1828), the fall from Bb to Gb is matched by the fecundity of a new accompaniment. In itself, Gb major may symbolise triumph over difficulty, the sigh of relief uttered when hurdles are surmounted [, the] echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered (Gathy, 1835), but here its smooth emergence through the fall Bb Ab Gb transfigures the tortuous fall Bb A(n) Gb F of verse one, as we have already noted in Ex. 3. Provisionally, Gb is no longer associated with the figure of distress (b6 5): in calm triumph it appears to establish its own dominion. Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

13 22 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE These unison Bbs of bar 15 significantly grow in stages to four- and five-part writing in bars 16 17: we see the lips break into the fullness of a smile. Once again the fuller texture invokes a sacred image, but as the tender, decorated and accented suspension reveals, it is not one celebrated by a hymn, but more numinously by a swelling polyphony: the wonderful smile is itself divinely sent. It fills the lover with renewed feelings of sublime tenderness, as is shown by the upper of its two voices: this adds a new yearning figure to the earlier appoggiaturas: Bb Cb Bb. In the second of the two four-bar phrases (bars 19 22), the music of bars is repeated, though the smile is now flecked with sadness. The quaver decorations for Wehmuts- use a Bachian weinen, klagen sighing figuration; the extra hairpin towards -tränen throws back into relief the eerie sound of a tritone (F/Cb); the bass sinks with a chromatic motion invoking pathos; the Ebb, alias Dn, taken with the tritone Cb/F, brings back the intense distress created by diminished elements in bars 4 5; and as the quaver figuration is reiterated in bar 21, encircling the pair of Cbs (the Augenpaar again), the line is decorated with, and interrupted by, a tiny, sobbing catch in the voice. This extraordinary fusion of smiling and weeping, of hope and pain, is matched by the word-painting, which relates to both lost one and lover. At bar 15, the diverging upper lines Bb Cb (Db) Bb and Bb Ab Gb F (Ab) Gb may depict the parting of lips, but they are both hers in a smile, and his in wonder. This wonder, akin to the sharpening of attention back in bar 5, is enhanced by the piano fillers in bars 18 and 22. These echo the musical space of the smile (Db falling to Bb) and reintroduce the double-dotted rhythm. This too is associated with the spasms of distress at bar 5. However, the new spasms, though mollified, are still the lover s: as observers, we are not allowed to forget that the origin of what he sees lies in his staring. To reinforce this sense, a staccato is introduced into the texture for the first time: this cuts into our attention, and thus links this verse with the outer, more objective ones. It is also through these spasms that the remarkable return to the material of the first verse is effected in bars At bar 22 the filler echoes the fall at the end of the vocal line, Db Bb. It also presents, as it did within bar 18, two Bbs. It may sound contrived to say that these sum up the boundary pairs of Bbs in bars 15/18 and 19/22, and thus form a diminution of the two Augenpaar Bbs of the piano introduction (bars 1 2). Yet this is demonstrably how Schubert asks us to hear the filler. For in bars 23 and 24 the falling Db Bb of bar 22 is displaced into the lower register and augmented. The Bbs thus sound on the downbeats of two successive bars and reintroduce the pair of Bbs of bars 1 2. They also reintroduce the numbness and silence of the sombre reverie. We hear illusion dissolving. As if to support this, the Gb harmony of bar 22 turns into an augmented ( Italian ) sixth in bar 23, which resolves onto the Bb tonic harmony at bar 24. Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

14 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 23 But this Bb harmony lacks a defining third, and is thus modally indeterminate; the hollow sadness of the opening has been restored. Above all, in bars 23 4 this inspired welding of retransition and recapitulation gives the lie to the Gb tonality of the second verse. For the Gb (in bar 23) resolves to the F (in bar 24) just as did the Gbs at bars 5 and 7, defining once again the figure of distress. We now understand how profoundly and meaningfully the beatific vision of the central section has been underpinned by grief. In the voice-leading diagram for this verse, this underpinning is shown in system (d) of Ex. 4. The remainder of the diagram should be self-explanatory. System (a) shows the abundance of Augenpaar Bbs: system (b) shows the pair that overlaps the end of verse two with the returning music of verse one. System (c) shows four models. The first is reconstructed in the second with a diminished sonority; the third, in leading back from Gb major to Bb minor through a chord of the augmented sixth, resolves to the 6 4 which fails to resolve to a 5 3 (this creates a situation analogous to that found in the retransition to Bb major in the first movement of Beethoven s Fourth Symphony). The fourth model shows how this expectation may lead the listener to interpret the returning music from verse one as a completion of this cadence: the C in bars becomes structural rather than ornamental, its linear 2 resolving the linear 3 (Db) sustained throughout bars III Schubert sets the text for the third verse as a quatrain just as he did with the first verse: Auch meine Tränen flossen mir von den Wangen herab und ach, ich kann es nicht glauben, dass ich dich verloren hab. (My tears too flowed / down my cheeks / And Oh! I cannot believe it, / that I have lost you.) Allowing for small adjustments in the prosody, the third verse is an exact musical repetition of the first up until the coda. Inevitably, this raises the familiar question of the suitability of architectural symmetry (a b a) for a lyric whose three verses are typically progressive (they address the self, the other, and the impact of the other upon the self). From the poem we learn that tears, prompted by the glistening eyes of the lost woman, now flow down the lover s cheek; that with a cry of distress ach he breaks the quietly measured report of the progress of his mourning as recent history; and that he can marvel at his own capacity for denial even as he accedes to it: I cannot believe it, that I have lost you, he laments. As in certain operatic narratives, past tense gives way to Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

15 24 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE Ex. 4 Verse 2: 2 (N) [g : 3 N 3 3 N a i / I [VI: I V I I [VI:.... I b N N c Model (1) (2) ( ) dim intense distress d 6 5 figure of distress Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

16 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 25 Ex. 4 (cont.) 2 (N) Verse 3: 3 ] Coll 8ve etc. etc. 7 [5 6] V I ] V [ no ] 5 3 but but i cf. 36 implied: (3) (4) B mi: VI [G ma: I] V [i] Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

17 26 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE present just at the point when the narrative begins to matter, and dispassion yields to emotion. The patient, previously so steady, floods the consulting room with grief. Ternary the song may be, but Schubert s setting of the last verse still monitors some of the movement in Heine s lyric, even if the matching of prosody is less perfect than before. By returning to the opening music, the recapitulation isolates the central verse: it is as if the Gb major narrative has been examined from either side before and after by the eyes of Bb minor/major. In the first four bars (25 8), the affected, encircling music that previously portrayed the darkening dreamscape now depicts the tears which sympathetically well up in the lonely lover, and the spasms that accompanied his staring at the portrait now grip him as these tears flow down his cheeks. (Even the earlier awkwardness of prosody now recurs through the emphasis that attaches to von.) The return of the Bb major visionary music may signal the lover s refusal to believe that he has sustained loss, as Schenker argued. But, in the voice part of bars 31 4, what of Heine s change of tense, and the cry of ach? Here there is a tension that cannot be resolved. The singer must sing in the past tense, as if still narrating a miraculous event, whilst his words switch to the present. But the rupture eventually does have a musical counterpart in the remarkable change of diction in the piano in the last three bars of the song; the singer must allow the pianist to effect the change, and not try to respond to the words himself. These last bars flatly contradict the tone of the piano filler that ended the first verse (cf. bars 12 14). Gone are the pianissimo slurs and hairpins; gone is the calm triumph of Gn F over the earlier distressed Gb F. Instead, the peremptory unarticulated chords provide the song s first moment of passion: the music, is suddenly forte; a forthright octave doubling of the upper voice is matched in the final chord by the doubling of the bottom Bb; there is no tierce de picardie, but a stark minor triad; and in bar 34, what was once an affective passing note Ab, filling in the space between A and G in Bb major, is now revealed as part of the forcefully teleological harmony in the minor (cf. bars 10 and 12, and contrast bars 4 5 and 15 16). Ex. 5 shows its voice-leading character. In Bowlby s terms, this coda is a response to the frustrations met with during fruitless search. The forte music is a flash of anger indicating that loss has not been accepted as permanent and hope is still lingering on. It shows the lover stuck where he began, in the second phase of mourning. The closing return to Bb minor is therefore symbolic and not just schematically opportune, and the fermata that extends the final chord shows the defiantly enduring nature of this phase of grief. What the ending does not do, however, is to introduce an authorial voice in the piano part, peremptorily sweeping away the phase of mourning the song has defined, and thus opening the path for the lover to progress through the later phases to a full recovery. On the contrary, there is no suggestion that this Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)

18 FRANZ SCHUBERT, IHR BILD (1828): A RESPONSE TO SCHENKER 27 Ex. 5 Close of verse 1 N N 5 piano: 12 v. e Close of verse 3 figure of distress: N 5 piano: Coda: bars 35 6 Coll 8ve v. e patient can respond to treatment. Rather, as lover and artist he is transfixed by the images yielded by his loss, whether actual or supposed. (May one suggest that the picture is a mirror, narcissistically reflecting a split-off part of his own self, a part that he holds sacred but struggles to admit is doomed?) For him, cure might be a deprivation. With his closing cry of anger, he raises a fist against all those psychologists or whoever rash enough to help him overcome his fantasy. Let us now consider the Urlinie. Whereas Exs. 2, 4 and 5 show the detailed voice-leading of the foreground, Ex. 6 shows the background of the song (i), and the first stages of the middleground (ii) and (iii): these all project a Bb minor structure that for the most part is merely sensed behind the Bb major parts of the later stages of the middleground and the foreground (iv). The first middleground stages cast the song into two parts: verse one (A), and then verses two and three (B and A1) together: at this level, there is not a meaningful distinction between these two arches. In the musical representation, the bracketed Dbs already allow for the sense of climbing (anstieg) at the beginning of the A and A1 sections. These Dbs are heard in the music, but are only weakly represented: as the next level shows (iv), when the head-note is actually reached, Db is replaced by Dn through the principle of mixtur. Indeed, insofar as this analysis does not isolate the central verse as do both the poem and the Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

19 28 CHRISTOPHER WINTLE Ex. 6 (i) 3 (ii) (iii) [3] [3] R B R 1 (iv) [3] [3] surface texture of the music to create a three-part form, it may be argued that only the modern Schenkerian perception of a two-part form offers an accurate diagnosis of the lover s unchanging circumstance. REFERENCES Bowlby, John, 1981: Attachment and Loss, Vol. 3: Loss, Sadness and Depression (London: Pelican). Steblin, Rita, 1996: A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, 3rd edn (New York: Rochester University Press). Blackwell Publishers Ltd Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)