I
Lyrical song begins with Schubert. Before him there was no standard of that form which he brought almost instantaneously to perfection. It is hard for us to realize how little respect the eighteenth century composer had for the short song. His attitude was not greatly unlike the attitude of modern poets toward the limerick. Gluck set his hand to a few indifferent tunes in the song-form, and Haydn and Mozart tossed off a handful, most of which are mediocre. These men simply did not consider the song worthy of the best efforts of a creative artist.
If we take a somewhat broader definition of the word song we find that it has been a part of music from the beginning. Folk-song, beginning in the prehistoric age of music, has kept pretty much to itself until recent times, and has had a development parallel with art music. From time to time it has served as a reservoir for this art music, opening its treasures richly when the conscious music makers had run dry. Thus it was in the time of the troubadours and trouvères (themselves only go-betweens) who took the songs of the people and gave them currency in fashionable secular and church music. So it was again in the time of Luther, who used the familiar melodies of his time to build up his congregational chorales (a great part of the basis of German music from that day to this). So it was again in the time of Schubert, who enjoyed nothing better than walking to country merry-makings to hear the country people sing their songs of a holiday. And so it has been again in our own day, when national schools—Russian, Spanish, Scandinavian and the rest—are flourishing on the treasures of their folk-songs. And when we say that song began with Schubert we must not forget that long before him, though almost unrecognized, there existed songs among the people as perfect and as expressive as any that composers have ever been able to invent. But these songs are constructed in the traditional verse-form and are, therefore, very different from most of the art songs of the nineteenth century, which are detailed and highly flexible.
Of the songs composed before the time of Schubert, mostly by otherwise undistinguished men, the greater part were in the simple form and style of the folk-song. A second element in pre-Schubertian song was the chorale. The Geistliche Lieder (Spiritual Songs) of J. S. Bach were nothing but chorales for solo voice. And the spirit and harmonic character of the chorale, little cultivated in romantic song, are to be found in a good part of the song literature of the eighteenth century. A third element in eighteenth century song was the da capo aria of the opera or oratorio. Many detached lyrics were written in this form, or even to resemble the more highly developed sonata form—as, for instance, Haydn’s charming ‘My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair,’ which is otherwise as expressive and appropriate a lyric as one could ask for. The effect of such an artificial structure on the most intimate and delicate of art forms was in most cases deadly, and songs of this type were little more than oratorio arias out of place.
It will be seen that each of these sorts of song has some structural form to distinguish it. The folk-song, which must be easy for untechnical persons to memorize, naturally is cast in the ‘strophic’ form—that is, one in which the melody is a group of balanced phrases (generally four, eight, or sixteen), used without change for all the stanzas of the song. The chorale or hymn tune is much the same, being derived from the folk-song and differing chiefly in its more solid harmonic accompaniment. And the da capo aria is distinguished and defined by its formal peculiarity.
Now it is evident that for free and detailed musical expression the melody must be allowed to take its form from the words and that none of these three traditional forms can be allowed to control the musical structure. And the Lied of the nineteenth century is chiefly distinguished, at least as regards externals, by this freedom of form. Such a song, following no traditional structure, but answering to the peculiarities of the text throughout, is the durchkomponiertes Lied, or song that is ‘composed all the way through,’ which Schubert established once and for all as an art-type.
But in its heart of hearts the ‘art’ song at its best remains an own cousin to the folk-song. This art, the mother of art and the fountain of youth to all arts that are senescent, takes what is typical, what is common to all men, casts it into a form which is intelligible to all men, and passes through a thousand pairs of lips and a thousand improvements until it is past the power of men further to perfect it. Its range of subject is as wide as life itself, only it chooses not what is individual and peculiar, but what is universal and typical. It has a matchless power for choosing the expressive detail and the dramatic moment. An emotion which shakes nations it can concentrate into a few burning lines. It is never conscious that it is great art; it takes no thought for the means; it is only interested in expressing its message as powerfully and as simply as possible. In doing this it hits upon the phrases that are at the foundation of our musical system, at the cadences which block in musical architecture upon the structure from which all conscious forms are derived.
This popular art, as we have said, has revivified music again and again. It was the soul of the Lutheran chorale, which, the Papists sneeringly said, was the chief asset of the Reformation, since it furnished the sensuous form under which religion took its place in the hearts of the people. It is the foundation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music from beginning to end. And it is therefore the foundation of the work of Bach’s most famous son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, from whom the ‘art song’ takes its rise. In the fifties he published the several editions of his ‘Melodies’ to the spiritual songs of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert; these may be taken as the beginning of modern song. In his preface Bach shows the keenness of his understanding, stating in theory the problem which Schubert solved in practice. He says that he has endeavored to invent, in each case, the melody which will express the spirit of the whole poem, and not, as had been the custom, merely that which accords with the first stanza. In other words, he recognizes the incongruity of expecting one tune to express the varying moods of several dissimilar stanzas. His solution was to strike a general average among the stanzas and suit his tune to it. Schubert solved the problem by composing his music continuously to suit each stanza, line, and phrase—in other words, by establishing the durchkomponiertes Lied, the modern art song.
Philipp Emanuel Bach thus saw that the Lied should do what the folk-song and the formal aria could not do. It is a nice question, whether the conscious durchkomponiertes Lied is more truly expressive than the strophic folk-song. Mr. Henderson, in his book ‘Songs and Song Writers’[88] illustrates the problem by comparing Silcher’s well-known version of Heine’s Die Lorelei with Liszt’s. Silcher’s eight-line tune has become a true folk-song. It keeps an unvarying form and tune through three double stanzas, using, to express the lively action of the end, the same music that expresses the natural beauty of the beginning. Liszt, on the other hand, with masterful imaginative precision, follows each detail of the picture and action in his music. Mr. Henderson concludes that he would not give Liszt’s setting for a dozen of Silcher’s. Some of us, however, would willingly give the whole body of Liszt’s music for a dozen folk tunes like Silcher’s. It is, of course, a matter of individual preference. But we should give an understanding heart to the method of the folk-song, which offers to the poem a formal frame of great beauty, binding the whole together in one mood, while it allows the subsidiary details to play freely, and perhaps the more effectually, by contrast with the dominant tone. Whatever may be one’s final decision in the matter, a study and comparison of the two settings will make evident the typical qualities of the folk-song and ‘art’ song as nothing else could.
Emanuel Bach also showed his feeling for the lyrical quality of the Lied by apologizing, between the lines, for his poems, saying that, although the didactic is not the sort of poetry best suited to musical treatment, Gellert’s fine verses justified the procedure in his case. There is in the melodies, as we have said, something of the feeling of the folk-song and of the Lutheran chorale. And there is also in them an indefinable quality which in a curious way looks forward to the free melodic expression of Schubert.
Throughout the eighteenth century the chief representative of pure German song was the singspiel, or light and imaginative dramatic entertainment with songs and choruses interspersed with spoken dialogue. The singspiel was not a highly honored form of art; it held a place somewhat analogous to the vaudeville among us—that is, loved by the people, but regarded as below the dignity of a first-class musician (Italian opera being à la mode). Nevertheless, we find some excellent light music among these singspiele. Reichardt’s Erwin und Elmira, to Goethe’s text, contains numbers which in simple charm and finish of workmanship do not fall far below Mozart. These singspiele maintained the German spirit in song in the face of the Italian tradition until Weber came and made the tinder blaze in the face of all Europe. Reichardt felt the spirit of the time. He was one of those valuable men who make things move while they are living and are forgotten after they are dead. As kapellmeister under Frederick the Great he introduced reforms which made him unpopular among the conservative spirits. His open sympathy with the principles of the French revolution led to his dismissal from his official post. From such a man we should expect exactly what we find—an admiration for folk-songs and an insistence that art songs should be founded on them. He was widely popular and had a considerable influence on his time. He was thus a power in keeping German song true to the best German traditions until the time when Schubert raised it to the first rank. Reichardt was also the first to make a specialty of Goethe’s songs, having set some hundred and twenty-five of them.
Zelter,[89] likewise, was best known in his time for his settings of Goethe’s lyrics, and the poet preferred them to those of Schubert. This fact need not excite such indignation as is sometimes raised in reference to it, for Goethe was little of a musician. Zelter kept true to the popular tradition and some of his songs are still sung by the German students. Zumsteeg[90] was another important composer of the time, the first important composer of ballads, and a favorite with Schubert, who based his early style on him.
Historically the songs of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven are of less importance than those of the composers just named. Haydn’s are predominantly instrumental in character. Mozart was much more of a poet for the voice, and has to his credit at least one song, ‘The Violet,’ a true durchkomponiertes Lied, which can take its place beside the best in German song literature. Beethoven’s songs are often no more than musical routine. His early ‘Adelaide,’ a sentimental scena in the Italian style, is his best known, but his setting to Gellert’s ‘The Heavens Declare the Glory of the Eternal’ is by far the finest. Except that it is a little stiff in its grandeur it would be one of the noblest of German songs. Yet Beethoven’s place in the history of song rests chiefly upon the fact that he was one of the first to compose a true song cycle having poetical and musical unity. In some ways he anticipated Schumann’s practises.