The Magic in Schubert’s Songs

New York Review of Books ^ | April 2, 2015 | Ian Bostridge

[mojito]

“Truly,” Beethoven remarked in 1827, “in Schubert there dwells a divine spark.” Franz Schubert himself worshiped the older composer and was a torchbearer at his funeral. In the following year, he asked for one of Beethoven’s string quartets to be played at his own sickbed, days, if not hours, before he died at the age of thirty-one. Many of Schubert’s works contain homages to Beethoven: the Fate theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the animating motif of Schubert’s terrifying song “Der Zwerg” (The Dwarf). His “Auf dem Strom” (On the River, for voice, piano, and horn) takes up the theme of the Eroica’s death march. And the unusual tempo marking of the first song of the Winterreise cycle (Mässig, in gehender Bewegung, moderate, at walking pace), written in the year of Beethoven’s death, might be seen as a valedictory reference to the latter’s piano sonata “Les Adieux” of 1809–1810.

For Schubert’s contemporaries, Beethoven was the colossus, a figure whose titanic energy and sublime originality went on to define the cult of the hero-musician in the nineteenth century. His deafness added a strain of tragedy. And Beethoven could look the part, his image in paint, print, and sculpture portraying the rugged aesthetic adventurer. Schubert, on the other hand, was under five feet tall, bespectacled, and pudgy, “looking not like a god of music but like a harried Viennese clerk with a head-cold....”

[onedoug]

You said it. I have a version with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Beautiful.

[AnAmericanMother]

I see (or hear) what you mean (does that mean that Wagner was crazy? I've often suspected it.)

I'm curious as to where and how the Lied as a form started. In form, and structure, and execution, it is so different from the chanson and madrigal with which I am more familiar (I am firmly backward-looking. Mahler is an anomaly.)

[crusty old prospector]

Schubert is in my Top 5 as I am more of a “K” Man than a “D” Man.

[mojito]

Below is a link to 21 Schubert lieder performed by the author of this piece, Ian Bostridge, and the pianist Julian Drake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaHIZqeiKfo

[Publius]

It started with Mozart. After him, a host of minor composers from northern German lands set poetry to music, but they were second raters. It was Schubert, under the tutelage of Salieri, who added an Italian style to the German lied.

[AnAmericanMother]

Thanks. That makes sense. Mozart has a good deal of Italian in him, too.

[COBOL2Java]

Thank you! That was beautiful.