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Was Goethe Wrong About the Nineteenth-Century Lied? An Examination Of The Relation Of Poem And Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Jack M. Stein
Jack M. Stein*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Mass.
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Extract

The Encyclopædia Britannica defines “song” as “the joint art of words and music, two arts under emotional pressure coalescing into a third. The relation and balance of the two arts is a problem that has to be resolved anew in every song that is composed.” This critical relationship between poem and musical setting, as observed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German song, is the subject of the following. Goethe, whose interest in the song form was great, and whose life spanned the transformation of eighteenth-century into nineteenth-century song, is used as a convenient focus to center attention on the critical relationships which were introduced into the song form by the course of its development at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The question in the title is thus rhetorical. I do not propose to answer it; indeed, there can be no answer more decisive than a thorough examination of the implications of Goethe's views and the esthetic problems which he saw or sensed in the form.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , June 1962 , pp. 232 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Note 1 in page 232 For accounts of music in Goethe's life, see, among others, Wilhelm Bode, Die Tonkunst in Goethes Leben, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912); Max Friedlaender, “Goethe und die Musik,” Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft, iii (1916), 275–340; Edgar Istel, “Goethe and Music,” Musical Quarterly, xiv (1928), 216–254; Hermann Abert, Goethe und die Musik (Engelhorn, 1922); Samuel Fisch, Goethe und die Musik (Frauenfeld, 1949).

Note 2 in page 232 For accounts of eighteenth-century German song, see Max Friedlaender, Das deutsche Lied im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, 3 parts in 2 vols. (Cotta, 1902); W. K. von Jolizza, Das Lied und seine Geschichte (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910); Hermann Kretzschmar, Geschichte des neuen deutschen Liedes, i, Von Heinrich Albert bis Zelter (Leipzig, 1911), (only vol. published).

Note 3 in page 232 The most convenient source for examples of these songs is Max Friedlaender, Gedichte von Goethe in Kompositionen seiner Zeitgenossen, Vol. xi: Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft (Weimar, 1896). A second vol., Gedichte von Goethe in Kompositionen, Vol. XXXI: Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, not limited to compositions of Goethe's contemporaries, appeared in 1916.

Note 4 in page 232 In this meaning, the word does not imply ironic or satiric intent, but only “creating new texts to older tunes and rhythms.” See Frederick W. Sternfeld, “The Musical Springs of Goethe's Poetry,” Musical Quarterly, xxxv (1949), 511–527.

Note 5 in page 233 See Willi Reich, Goethe und die Musik, Zurich, 1949, a useful anthology of statements on music by Goethe. Also Hans Joachim Moser, “Goethes Anschauungen vom Wesen der Musik,” Neue Jahrbucher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung, viii (1932), 209–218.

Note 6 in page 235 For a try at just this, see Robert Haven Schauffler, Florestan, the Life and Work of Robert Schumann (New York, 1945), 384–388.

Note 7 in page 235 See Edward T. Cone, “Words Into Music: the Composer's Approach To the Text.” Sound and Poetry, English Institute Essays, ed. Northrop Frye (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1956), 3–15.

Note 8 in page 235 In the following discussion of nineteenth-century song, I have limited myself to those songs which are most celebrated, and with which the reader is most likely to be familiar. Examples of the various points discussed are legion when the entire corpus of nineteenth-century song is taken into consideration.

Note 9 in page 235 See S. S. Prawer, Heine: Buch der Lieder, Studies in German

Literature, No. 1 (London: Edward Arnold, 1960), especially ch. vii, “Divided Self.”

Note 10 in page 236 It is perhaps unfair to expect Schumann to have had an insight into the nature of the poems in Heine's Buch der Lieder which is only recently becoming accepted, particularly with the help of excellent analyses by Barker Fairley (Heinrich Heine. An Interpretation, Oxford, 1954), and Prawer (see fn. 9 above). The fact is, however, that these interpretations fit the poems, but the songs limit the implications to those perceived by the composer.

Note 11 in page 236 In this connection, the comment of the celebrated late eighteenth-century song composer, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, as quoted in Samuel Fisch, op. cit., p. 35, is of interest:“ Ich habe bemerkt, daß man, so hübsch man auch meine Lieder sang, doch fast nie den rechten Gang dazu traf, und da ich dem Dinge nachspürte, fand ich, daß alle Die, die den rechten Gang verfehlten, erst die Noten als ein melodisches Stück für sich gespielt und dann erst die Worte dazu genommen hatten. Das ist der Art, wie ich die Lieder komponierte, gerade entgegen! Meine Melodien entstehen jederzeit aus wiederholtem Lesen des Gedichtes von selbst, ohne daß ich danach suche. Und alles, was ich weiter daran tue, ist dieses: daß ich sie so lange mit kleinen Abänderungen wiederhole und sie nicht eher aufschreibe, als bis ich fühle und erkenne, daß der grammatische, logische, pathetische und musikalische Akzent so gut miteinander verbunden sind, daß die Melodie richtig spricht und angenehm singt, und das nicht für eine Strophe, sondern für alle. Soll man das nun aber so gut im Vortrage fühlen und erkennen, so muß der Sänger vorher die Worte ganz lesen und so lange lesen, bis er fühlt, daß er sie mit wahrem Ausdrucke liest und dann erst singen.”

Note 12 in page 237 The only creative artist to devote prolonged attention to this problem, and to have solved it in large measure, was Richard Wagner. See Jack M. Stein, Richard Wagner and the Synthesis of the Arts (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1960).

Note 13 in page 238 See Clemens Heinen, Der sprachliche und musikalische Rhythmus im Kunstlied: Vergleichende Untersuchung einer Auswahl von Mörike-Verlonungen, (diss. Köln, 1958).

Note 14 in page 238 See Hans Joachim Moser, Das deutsche Lied seit Mozart, 2 vols. (Berlin and Zurich, 1937), Einleitung: “Die vertonte deutsche Lyrik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,” I, 49–71.

Note 15 in page 238 See Martin Cooper, “The Songs,” Schumann, A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham (Oxford, London, New York, Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), p. 133.

Note 16 in page 239 For a delightful rococo setting, undeservedly neglected, see the composition by the Dowager Duchess Anna Amalia, first published in Friedlaender, Gedichte von Goethe in Kompositionen seiner Zeitgenossen. The entire Singspiel Erwin und Elmire was composed by Anna Amalia and performed with success in Weimar, although it remained unpublished until 1921 (Erwin und Elmire; Ein Schauspiel mit Gesang von Goethe, komponiert von Anna Amalia, Herzogin zu Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. 1776 nach der in der Weimarer Landesbibliothek befindlichen handschriftlichen Partitur bearbeitet und zum ersten Mal herausgegeben von Max Friedlaender, Leipzig, 1921).

Note 17 in page 239 The omitted stanza: “Hab' ob manchen Zeichen/Mutter schon gefragt,/Hat die gute Mutter/Alles mir gesagt,/Hat mich unterwiesen,/Wie, nach allem Schein/Bald für eine Wiege/Muß gesorget sein.”

Note 18 in page 239 Care must be taken by the reader who compares poem with setting, as Schumann often used earlier editions of the poems, which were altered in subsequent editions by the poets in question. This is particularly true of “Aus alten Märchen” from Dichterliebe. Schumann used the first edition of Heine's Buch der Lieder, where this poem is quite different from the later revised and now standard version of the poem. Schumann made no changes in the text.

Note 19 in page 239 See Max Friedlaender, Textrevision zu Schumanns Liederkompositionen, (Leipzig: Peters, n.d.); also Sämtliche Lieder für eine Singstimme mit Klavierbegleitung von Robert Schumann, revidiert von Max Friedlaender, Vol. i, (Leipzig: Peters, n.d.). An appendix contains a list of variants. See also Max Friedlaender, Brahms' Lieder, an Introduction to the Songs for One and Two Voices, trans. C. L. Leese, (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1928).