HEINRICH SCHENKER (translated by Robert Pascall) IHR BILD (AUGUST 1828): SONG BY FRANZ SCHUBERT TO A LYRIC BY HEINRICH HEINE* Traditionally, there are two main ways of celebrating a great thinker: through scholarship and through new thought. Scholarship, as we know, tells us who a thinker is or was, and labours at clarification of his or her work through critical editions, exegesis, archival research, translation, biography, cultural history, and so forth. Its activity is essential: without such a responsibility to the past there can be no responsible present or future. New thought, on the other hand, does not just recycle old ideas, but raises the question: If the thinker had continued into later times, how would his or her thought have evolved? To canonise great work, on the other hand, and to allow it no further evolution or even self-contradiction, is to strike at the heart of thought itself. Where there is no novelty or readiness to adapt, there can be no life of the mind: hence the danger behind the allure of schools of thought. This article and the one that follows it embody this double celebration; taken together, they are intended to throw light on Schenker s hermeneutics. The first, representing scholarship, is by Schenker himself in a translation by Robert Pascall: it is a typically lively and combative introduction to an aspect of his thought which is both under-represented and largely unacknowledged. The second article, representing new thought, is a modern hermeneutic analysis by the present writer which takes Schenker s essay as its starting-point and attempts to change it from the inside. The hope is that something of the spirit and thought of 1921 can be preserved into 2000 and beyond. Christopher Wintle The three-part form of the music (a1 b a2) corresponds to the three strophes of the poem. [The song is reproduced on pp. 8 9.] Two bars serve as introduction: Fig. 1 * From Der Tonwille. Flugblätter zum Zeugnis unwandelbarer Gesetze der Tonkunst einer neuen Jugend dargebracht von Heinrich Schenker, Vol. 1, Vienna, 1921, pp. 46 9. Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) 3 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
4 HEINRICH SCHENKER Since this cannot yet be regarded as a motive, the question arises as to what other sort of purpose these bars have. Is it simply that they introduce the key, or perhaps that they establish the opening note of the voice-part, or both? Be all this as it may, we nevertheless still have to ask why the master sounded the same note twice, when it was clearly just as possible to hold this note through the two bars. The answer to precisely this question in fact solves the riddle: to repeat that note in slow tempo, and furthermore to repeat it thus, after a crotchet rest, means: we stare with the note. And as we do so, we feel ourselves instantly transported, as if by magic, to the side of the unfortunate lover, who stands there in sombre reverie, staring at the portrait of his beloved: we now stare also with him at the portrait. It is a simple artistic act is it not? to replace a note held for two bars with a repetition of itself separated by a rest. Yet one has to be a genius. It is only given to a genius to appreciate the distinction between such possibilities, as also to set himself so directly and decisively into the midst of the life of the soul that he can produce an artistic act of this kind. Thus already with his very first act, Schubert shows himself a true magician one who immediately binds the external circumstance (as here, staring at a portrait), the soul of the unfortunate lover, and us ourselves, with a secret bond, a bond which guarantees we will experience, beyond the working out of the single local effect, an eternal future replete with an ever-renewed present. Schubert keeps the first two lines of the first strophe in unison, while the harmony traverses the scale-steps I II V. At Fig. 2 und starrt ihr Bild - nis an II V the augmented fourth is not simply the bearer of scale-step II, it is also the staring eye itself. In bars 7 8 the accompaniment repeats the last two bars; this separates the first pair of lines from the following pair not only out of purely formal intellectual considerations, but also so as to characterise the staring in a temporal way. Similarly the third and fourth lines of the poem also occupy just four bars, while the harmonic progression achieves a simple and complete perfect cadence, albeit in Bb major rather than in Bb minor. The mixture of these two Bb keys, also a frequently-used artistic device elsewhere (cf. [Der Tonwille,] Vol. 1, p. 106ff.), is to be traced back in this instance, less to a simply external usage than to a really strong inner cause: to the illusion ( and the beloved face mysteriously stirred to life ). Even if it remains correct that it is merely the sustained absorption of the lover with the portrait which has called forth this blissful illusory vision, the very fact that the illusion has occurred nonetheless signifies Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000 Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)
IHR BILD (AUGUST 1828): SONG BY FRANZ SCHUBERT 5 a motion of heightened consciousness in the soul of the lover, and thus it is precisely this motion which properly finds its expression in the transition from minor to major. In bar 8, Schubert writes thus: Fig. 3 und das ge - lieb - te moreover he does so clearly, and fully without affectation. It could well be asked, does he really find it inoffensive to set the definite article on the strong beat in such a way, furthermore to a dotted note? And was it not, even for him too, a duty to avoid such a contradiction between metre and meaning-accentuation, at least for preference? As is well-known, more recent composers like to emphasise meaning-accentuation so especially, that they sacrifice the actual metre in favour of it. Because they do not realise how very much they dissolve actual poetry back into prose, whenever they chase this meaning-accentuation uphill and down-dale in this way, cost what it will because they also do not realise, as they only too clearly reveal thereby, that they no longer have sufficient mastery of musical means to render to the metre what belongs to the metre without endangering the meaning-accentuation at the same time, they manage to flatter themselves that they have achieved God only knows what for the intensification of the musical expression and for truth itself. The old masters followed completely different paths: from their superior compositional instincts, they faithfully followed the prosodic values above all, and yet were able to distil from the type of the versification the very essence of musical invention. One sees it in our example from Schubert: the rising vocal line to Eb Fig. 4 9 10 Ant - litz heim-lich zu le - ben be - gann I II V I furthermore, the crescendo from bar 8 onwards, the hairpin in bar 9 leading right up to this apex-note of the group, and finally the thrust towards the scale-step II (I II V) all these so greatly divert the attention away from that definite article and its positioning, that this article can no longer be found contradictory to the meaning-accentuation. And lastly, if the poet thought it advisable that the meaning-accentuation should bring the definite article into prominence, then Schubert is merely doing exactly the same. In fact both of them are decisively in the right, compared with those uncertain and incapable Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
6 HEINRICH SCHENKER artists who always privilege the meaning-accentuation at the expense of the prosody, basically because they have to hide their own deficiencies in the mastery of musical means. An accompanimental epilogue follows the second pair of lines, which, just as was the case with the first epilogue, is again based on the motive of the last melodic bar. The second strophe is in Gb major. The vision lives a second life before the loving beholder: Around her lips there played a wonderful smile, and her eyes glistened as with tears of melancholy. Every note of the music also draws further life from this new life. When in the accompanimental parts Fig. 5 the unison opens up gently to a third, one sees unmistakably how the lips of the newly-resurrected beloved open in a delicate smile and moreover how the charm of this smile is also reflected in the decorated resolution of the suspended fourth in the accompaniment (bar 17)! But the master does not by any means lose himself in these isolated instances as creator of this artificial life, he stands simultaneously at the beginning and at the end of it; he is also present in its every breath, and his glance comprehends all, before and after. It is indeed something from the past (bars 5 6 and 7 8) which he brings to life again in bars 17 18: Fig. 6 ein Lächeln wun-der - bar The following pair of lines in the second strophe presents the same musical picture, apart from inessential alterations to the step-progressions and melodic formation. The manner of word-setting in bar 20 (compare bar 16): Fig. 7 und wie von Weh - muts Tränen er - glänzte etc. is again of that kind for which more recent musicians have long since lost the courage. It is however clear that the unaccented syllables, even though they have the value of minims, remain unaccented, because they fall on the weak beat. Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000 Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)
IHR BILD (AUGUST 1828): SONG BY FRANZ SCHUBERT 7 Now the soul of the lover returns from the dreamland of the vision, returning to itself there, where it gives itself up to the pain of loss and remains alone with itself. Is there anything left for this soul, other than simply to stare into memory? The master also treads this path of sorrow. In bars 23 4: Fig. 8 a last echo of the vision trembles yet in the shudder of staring, and then Now, when the old melody (a2) sounds forth for the second time, the tonepoet speaks to the lover s soul, lonely once again, a word which is only too true. He remains true to himself also, in that he follows both the last lines, as before in bars 9 14, with a major-key motion. For the unfortunate lover clings onto the last links to the beloved, with a cry of despair. And Oh! I cannot believe it, that I have lost you. As the major key tells us: has he actually lost her, as long as he still feels this way? But it is only the seer in the tone-poet who sees yet further. He withdraws the major-key motion. The epilogue could once have borne it, but can do so no longer and a gloomy minor tonality engulfs the whole realm of the soul Here is the Urlinie: Fig. 9 bar 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ( ( ) ) 3 B m: I II V I II V I G : III I 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 (as bars 3 12) ( ) ( ) ( ) V I I IV V I B m: VI I Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
8 HEINRICH SCHENKER Langsam Ihr Bild text: Heinrich Heine music: Franz Schubert Ich stand in dun keln Träu men und starrt ihr Bild nis 6 an, und das ge lieb te Ant litz 11 heim lich zu le ben be gann. Um 15 ih re Lip pen zog sich ein Lä cheln, wun der bar, und Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000 Music Analysis, 19/i (2000)
IHR BILD (AUGUST 1828): SONG BY FRANZ SCHUBERT 9 19 wie von Weh muts trä nen er glänz te ihr Au gen paar. 24 Auch mei ne Trä nen flos sen mir von den Wan gen her ab 29 und ach, ich kann es nicht glau ben, daß ich 33 dich ver lo ren hab. Music Analysis, 19/i (2000) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000