SCHUBERT. Winterreise. Dowd Winther

Transcription

1 SCHUBERT Winterreise Dowd Winther

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3 FRANZ SCHUBERT Winterreise Song Cycle, D911 1 Gute Nacht (Good Night) Die Wetterfahne (The Weather-Vane) Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears) Erstarrung (Frozen Rigidity) Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree) Wasserflut (Flood) Auf dem Flusse (On the River) Rückblick (A Backward Glance) Irrlicht (Will-o -the-wisp) Rast (Rest) 3 03! Frühlingstraum (Dream of Spring) 3 Einsamkeit (Loneliness) 2 41 Die Post (The Post) 2 08 $ Der greise Kopf (The Hoary Head) 3 04 % Die Krähe (The Crow) 2 00 ^ Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope) 2 30 & Im Dorfe (In the Village) 2 51 * Der stürmische Morgen (Stormy Morning) 0 50 ( Täuschung (Delusion) 1 24 ) Der Wegweiser (The Signpost) 4 30 Das Wirtshaus (The Inn) 3 30 Mut (Courage) 1 31 # Die Nebensonnen (The Phantom Suns) 3 00 Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man) 2 48 Total Playing Time Ronald Dowd tenor John Winther piano 3

4 In the bleakness of February 1827, Franz Schubert composed the first part of the song cycle Winterreise. The evidence of the composer s autograph suggests that at this stage, he regarded the song cycle as complete. In the following month Schubert visited the dying Beethoven and, at the end of March, he was one of 36 torch-bearers in Beethoven s funeral procession. The texts of Winterreise were written by the author of Die schöne Müllerin, Wilhelm Müller ( ), over a period of some years. The 12 poems which make up the first part of Schubert s setting were published in the almanac Urania in In the following year, a further ten poems were published, and in 1824 Müller published the whole cycle in a new ordering, together with two new poems. It seems almost certain that Schubert composed the second part of his song cycle before returning from a journey to Graz in September If the memoirs of Josef von Spaun ( ) are to be trusted, Schubert corrected the proofs of the second part of Winterreise on his deathbed. Spaun left us with the following record of the first performance of Winterreise: Schubert has seemed for some time moody and run down. To my questioning he replied, You will soon understand. One day he said, Come to Schober s and I will sing over a bunch of ghastly songs to you. I shall be curious, he went on, to hear what you think of them they have taken more out of me than any other songs I have written. He then sang to us the whole Winterreise through, with much emotion in his voice. The gloom of the songs quite nonplussed us, and Schober said there was one he cared for, Der Lindenbaum. All Schubert answered was, I like them all more than any of the other songs, and the day will come when you will like them too. He was right; we were soon full of admiration for these mournful songs, which Vogl sang like a master. Unlike Die schöne Müllerin, which pursues a narrative, even dramatic plot, Winterreise is introverted and interior. There are no great shifts in either mood, external circumstances or psychological state. Through a series of recurrent images, the poet weaves a complex tapestry of images from his tragic feelings of desperation. Among these images are those of ice, snow, death, tears, anguish and journeying. Much of the organic unity of the cycle is achieved by the poet s employment of these recurrent images. Their cumulation builds a powerful and multi-layered impression of the protagonist s emotional and psychological state. 4

5 Although the cycle tells of the pains of unrequited love, Schubert s protagonist is not the victim of an individual set of circumstances; he is, rather, a romantic hero set against fate itself. In Die Wetterfahne, for instance, the poet focuses upon the weather-vane as an image of the disregard shown by the external forces upon the lover s inner torment: The wind plays with the weather-vane on my fair love s house. In my folly I thought it mocked the wretched fugitive. And again, What do they care about my suffering? It is no exaggeration to say that Gute Nacht, the opening song, is emblematic of the entire cycle. The opening phrase, A stranger I came, a stranger I depart, indeed even the first word Fremd (strange, foreign), set at the apex of the opening motif, prepares us for the extraordinary journey which is to follow. So many of the musical and poetic ideas which unfold throughout the journey are first exposed in this song. Most obvious is the regular walking pace which conveys such a strong sense of forward movement. Schubert also employs a pedal point which both here and in later songs becomes associated with the recurrent idea of snow. The opening four-note motif of the vocal part also appears throughout the cycle in an astonishing variety of guises. In fact as many as 19 of the 24 songs refer to it. As early as the second line of Gute Nacht the motif is inverted to provide the melody for the words Das Mädchen sprach von Liebe (The girl spoke of love). The opening motif is a descending one and, in fact, the majority of the melodies in the entire cycle are descending. The semitone, which is the very first interval of the vocal part, becomes associated later in the cycle with the evocation of death, and the piano echoes the semitone in a dotted rhythm, which is later associated with the heartbeat. Similar rhythmic figures are connected throughout the cycle with grief, fate, pain and the heart. The most obvious example, of course, is Die Post, which employs such a rhythm throughout. Schubert, at the height of his creative powers, brought to the poems the full panoply of compositional artifice. With the utmost finesse and subtlety he transformed Müller s visual images into his own aural images. The erratic movement of the weather-vane, for instance, is evoked through the piano s accompaniment with its octave leaps and trills. In Gefrorne Tränen Schubert forges an accompaniment figure which illustrates, through staccato chords and displaced accents, 5

6 the poem s central image: Frozen teardrops fall from my cheeks. The descending vocal line at the beginning of Wasserflut, together with the dotted rhythms, depicts the falling of tears on the snow. Schubert s mind, perhaps more than that of any composer who had preceded him, was deeply attuned to poetry. Indeed, every style and form, every melodic line, each modulation and accompaniment figure represents the composer s response to the poet s art. At every level, from the most obviously onomatopoeic to the most profoundly perceptive, Schubert forged a new synthesis between the arts of word and tone which finds one of its most enduring monuments in Winterreise. Although many of the great interpreters of this song cycle, from Schubert s friend Vogl on, have been baritones or basses, it is the tenor voice which can most naturally sing these songs in Schubert s original keys. Michael Noone Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd ABC Classics Robert Patterson, Martin Buzacott, Hilary Shrubb, Natalie Shea, Claudia Crosariol 1976 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. 6

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