Pregardien - Program Notes 92Y

PRÉGARDIEN program notes

Notes on the Program

By Richard Stokes

(for below, can follow style on page 11 of MC-5829)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN “ADELAIDE,“ OP. 46 Completed in 1796; 6 minutes

“WONNE DER WEHMUT,” OP. 83, NO. 1 Composed in 1810; 3 minutes

“NEUE LIEBE, NEUES LEBEN,” OP. 75, NO. 2 Composed in 1809; 3 minutes

AN DIE FERNE GELIEBTE, OP. 98 Composed in 1816; 15 minutes

FRANZ SCHUBERT SCHWANENGESANG, D. 957 Composed in 1828; first set, 28 minutes; second set, 19 minutes

The five concerts of this season’s vocal series all focus on song cycles or collections, and Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte will be performed in each one—a reminder of how this first substantial example of the genre influenced other composers in the years from Schubert to Mahler.

Beethoven, not Schubert, was the first great lieder composer. Most of his hundred or so solo songs were composed before Schubert’s, and in them he used all the main song types— strophic, through-composed and cycle—his successors would employ. Moreover, Beethoven seems to have coined the word ‘Liederkreis’ (song cycle); the published score of An die ferne Geliebte was subtitled “Ein Liederkreis.” On the nine occasions that Beethoven and Schubert set the same text, Beethoven six times composed the more successful version, the opening two songs of this evening’s recital being prime examples.

“Adelaide” dates from 1796, the same period that saw the composition of the early piano trios and sonatas. It was not until 1800, however, that Beethoven dedicated the song to Friedrich von Matthisson, author of the poem, which had enjoyed immediate popularity upon publication. “Wonne der Wehmut” is a model of concision; in a mere 23 bars Beethoven expresses the numbness of unrequited love, depicting the tears in the piano’s right hand. Goethe’s poem expresses the sorrow he felt at separation from Lili Schönemann, to whom he had been engaged, while Beethoven’s song, dedicated to Fanny del Rio, speaks volumes about his own great loneliness and quest for the “immortal beloved.” “Neue Liebe, neues Leben” also reflects Goethe’s love for Schönemann, about whom he later said: “She was indeed the first woman I truly and deeply loved. I can also say that she was the last.” It must have been the closing lines of the second verse that prompted Beethoven to return to the opening strophe, suggesting the circularity of the poet’s thoughts and the permanence of his obsessive love.

Ludwig Rellstab, the poet of the first seven poems of Schwanengesang, had originally offered his poems to Beethoven, who died before he could set them to music, but not before he had studied the poems in detail, as this extract from Rellstab’s memoirs makes clear:

A few had been marked with pencil, in Beethoven’s own hand—those which he liked best and had then passed on to Schubert to set, since he himself felt too ill [ . . .] It was a moving experience to receive back the manuscripts which had travelled a route so strange, yet so fruitful for Art, before they returned to me.

Schubert’s source, then, was almost certainly the annotated manuscript that Beethoven’s secretary, Anton Schindler, had provided to him after Beethoven’s death. It must have been a thrill for Schubert to handle the very pages of Rellstab’s poems that Beethoven had consulted and marked. Each Rellstab poem from Schwanengesang, though there is no detailed narrative, has the distant beloved as its theme; it seems likely that Schubert wished to choose poems that were united by this commonality, thus forming a tribute to the composer of An die ferne Geliebte.

Schwanengesang was the title conceived by Tobias Haslinger when he published 14 of Schubert’s late songs in the spring of 1829: seven settings of Rellstab, six of Heine and one of Seidl. “Liebesbotschaft” begins in G major, and then passes through E minor, C major, A minor, F major and B major, as though Schubert wished to illustrate the distance between the lovers by the multiplicity of keys. “Kriegers Ahnung” begins with nine bars of muffled drums, as we are introduced to a soldier who, billeted on a battlefield, dreams of his beloved with the knowledge that imminent death will prevent them ever reuniting.

“Frühlingssehnsucht” ends with a passionate question and answer: “Who shall finally quell my longing?/Only you can set free the spring in my heart,/Only you!” Though “Nur du!” is repeated four times, there is no final flourish; instead, the broken B-flat major chords limp to a close with a suggestion of E-flat minor, as we realize that the poet is alone. A similar melancholy informs “Ständchen,” and though there is an abrupt change of mood and rhythm at “Laß auch dir die Brust bewegen,” the singer’s macho confidence is a sham: the repeated “Komm, beglücke mich!” loses all conviction in the final repetition and peters away in a heartrending decrescendo, as the singer realizes how unattainable his beloved has become.

“Aufenthalt” is the only song in which there is no mention of love, but the distant beloved seems present in every bar of this anguished outpouring in which the outcast expresses his torment in E Minor, Schubert’s key of sadness and depression. “In der Ferne” presents us with an emotional wreck, and the poet’s distressed mental state is wonderfully conveyed by Schubert at the end of the first verse where the vocal line plunges a fifth on “Wegen nach.”

Though the song ends in a crescendo, the final bars tells us that there can be no solace or cure. “Abschied” is no merry farewell. The last verse is full of foreboding—the stars are commanded to “veil themselves in grey,” and the jilted lover tells us that he has been forced to leave the town. The present has become unbearable.

A month after the composition of An die ferne Geliebte, Beethoven confided to Ferdinand Ries that he had found “only one woman whom I shall doubtless never possess”; Fanny del Rio, whose father owned the boarding school which Beethoven’s nephew attended in 181618, confided to her diary in September 1816 a conversation she had overheard between her father and Beethoven, who confessed how he had become acquainted with a person, “a more intimate union with whom” he would have considered the greatest happiness of his

life. However, it was impossible, a chimera. “I have still not been able to banish it from my mind” were the words that affected Fanny most profoundly.

Whatever the truth of Fanny’s diary, it’s clear that at the time of An die ferne Geliebte Beethoven was obsessed by some powerful, unconsummated relationship. It seems likely, moreover, that the poems of the cycle were written expressly at Beethoven’s request. Alois Jeitteles (or Aloys Jeiteles) was a doctor and, though his poems appeared in several almanacs, they were never published in book form. Beethoven was probably delighted to have found a virtually unknown collaborator who was not only musical and cultured but almost certainly willing to be directed. Each of the poems is dominated by the distant beloved. “Auf dem Hügel sitz ich spähend” tells us of their first meeting and subsequent separation which, we are told, is a torment to both. “Wo die Berge so blau” expresses the poet’s obsessive wish (the “wo” is mentioned four times) to be by her side. His reverie is banished in “Leichte Segler in den Höhen,” in which he begs the scudding clouds, rippling brook and gusting breeze to convey to her his longing. The same idea (and the same key) is continued in “Diese Wolken in den Höhen,“ which contains the only sensuous phrase in the cycle, describing the breeze frolicking about her cheeks and breast, burrowing in her silken locks. All these fond imaginings, however, vanish in “Es kehret der Maien, es blühet die Au,” as the poet comes down to earth with a bump. The joys of nature are contrasted with the barrenness of his own heart, leading him to conclude in “Nimm sie hin denn diese Lieder”— with a mixture of reverence and stoicism—that only through his poetry will he be at one with the object of his desire.

The Heine songs in Schwanengesang are performed this evening in the order in which they appear in Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo. “Das Fischermädchen” is not the blithe barcarolle it is sometimes claimed to be: the abrupt shift from C-flat to B-flat in stanza two and the repetition of the final word of each verse as a slurred seventh convey the irony of Heine’s verse. The serene diatonic opening of “Am Meer” is followed by a tormented, chromatic stanza whose tremolando chords depict the rising tide, the mist and the grief. Heine’s bitter last line is caught to perfection by Schubert’s slow turn on “Tränen.” The bleakness of “Ihr Bild” is achieved in a mere thirty-six bars—a distillation of despair conveyed by bare octaves and a modulation at “ihre Lippen” from B minor to G-flat major that provides an illusory solace; immediately dashed as minor reasserts itself. The short prelude of “Die Stadt” repeats in the bass the bare octaves of “Ihr Bild,” while scurrying diminished sevenths in the right hand convey the gusting wind. A lonely low C on the piano brings the chilling song to a close. “Der Doppelgänger” is an intensely dramatic declamation; the bleakest song in Schubert. The resemblance between the four-note theme of the opening bars to the “Agnus Dei” of Schubert’s E-flat Mass, composed in June of the same year, tells us which way Schubert’s thoughts were turning: prophetically, towards Wagner and Wolf. “Der Atlas” calls for a wide dynamic range to express the suffering of Atlas, who fought for the Titans against Zeus, was defeated, and was condemned to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Richard Stokes © 2019