~~Tunes For The Troops~~
Warren Zevon~Werewolves Of London
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Heinrich Heine had only a few of his poems set by Franz Schubert. It was Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf who would mine his poetry for songs. Heine’s Jewishness got him banned during the Hitler years, and there is a sense of knowing decadence in much of his poetry.
Beethoven had died only a year before, and Schubert at 30 had inherited the complete works of Handel from Beethoven’s library thanks to Beethoven’s factotum, Anton Schindler, who recognized that Schubert was going to be the next big thing in Viennese music. Had Schubert lived longer, Schindler would have won his bet. Frannie was too young to have heard Handel in the opera house, so the books were a revelation. Baroque techniques such as canon, fugue and cantus firmus became a staple in Schubert’s final year.
In German folklore, there is a tradition that if you see your double, it’s a sign of your impending death. Schubert takes a passacaglia ground bass progression as an underlay, using the same motif that he used in his last mass for the words, “Grant us peace.”
I won’t analyze this song. Just hide under the covers, close your eyes and roll with it.
The night is still, the streets are at rest;
In this house lived my sweetheart.
She has long since left the town,
But the house still stands on the same spot.
A man stands there too, staring up,
And wringing his hands in anguish;
I shudder when I see his face –
The moon shows me my own form!
You wraith, palid companion,
Why do you page the pain of my love
That tormented me on this very spot,
So many a night, in days long past?
This is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau accompanied by Gerald Moore.
~~Tunes For The Troops~~
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