I
But song proper before Schubert is largely in the hands of men who by no means hold a primary place in musical history. Of course, it can nowhere be said to have a beginning. But we can sense the feeling for romantic song as far back as the Geistliche Lieder of Philipp Emanuel Bach, published in the middle of the eighteenth century. The preface to these songs is a remarkable document. Bach says that he has tried to set fitting melodies to the words; that where the various stanzas of a song were so different in spirit that a single melody could not express both with equal faithfulness he has tried to strike an average between all the stanzas and to compose the tune which will be most appropriate to all; that he considers it unjust to the poem to compose a tune which is suitable only to the first stanza, as is the usual practice; and, finally, that he realizes that Gellert’s poems, being didactic, are not of the sort best suited for musical settings, yet the high earnestness of the poet’s work justifies musical treatment.
These remarks foreshadow the romantic spirit in more than one respect. First, Bach recognizes the importance and integrity of the text: the music exists in order to enhance the poem, not the poem in order to sing the music. Next, Bach feels the power and the obligation to express the spirit of the words in detail. Further, he clearly feels the contradiction inherent in the strophic form—making one tune do service for various dissimilar stanzas. Finally, he feels that song is at its best when it is emotional. In all this he is entirely at one with the romantic song writers, from Schubert on. In his criticism of the strophic form he has put his finger on the central problem of the art-song. It is true, his solution of the difficulty was different from that of the romanticists, as was inevitable with a composer who came half a century before the problem was ripe. But he shows in his preface that he regards his solution as no more than tentative.
The songs themselves are not remarkable. They are much like the Geistliche Lieder of the composer’s great father, except that a subtle and almost indefinable change has come over them in the direction of the ‘intimate.’ They are short melodies, much like a German chorale, except that they have a gentler, smoother movement. The strophes are sometimes in one of the recognized melodic forms and sometimes comparatively free. When closely compared they reveal not a little individuality (which is undoubtedly what the composer was aiming at), but, taken as a whole, they seem too much like short cantata arias to suggest expressive song.
The real spirit of song was preserved in the German singspiele. These were lively dramatic entertainments, interspersed with songs, like the English ballad operas, except that the music was usually composed especially for the piece. The singspiele were not taken seriously by the educated classes, hence the lightest kind of joyousness reigned in them, and the music was that which would appeal most quickly to the hearts of the people. The tunes were, in fact, generally as much like true folk-songs as their composers could make them. Singspiele were written and performed by the hundreds during the eighteenth century. Many of the more popular songs were remembered and sung by the people as half-naturalized folk-songs, and the successful composers were usually fertile producers of songs independent of the singspiele. This was the true song-tradition of Germany before Schubert’s time. It grew out of the art of the people and spoke familiarly to all. It was a dignified and firmly established art institution, though it was given hardly more recognition by the great musicians of the time than the symphony composers of to-day give to operetta. The singspiel folk-song type, moreover, was the type which was called into service for the setting of the works of the standard poets of the time. Zelter’s settings of Goethe’s poems were scarcely to be distinguished, in point of form, from the songs that were sung in the cheap theatres.
Among the best of the singspiel composers was Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804), also distinguished as the first director of the famous Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig and as perhaps the first writer of true durchkomponierte Lieder. His songs kept the popular flavor, but strove for vigorous expression of the text and, in doing this, broke out of the simple strophe or stanza form. The spirited character of Hiller’s singspiele is suggested by the names of some of them—‘The Devil is Loose,’ ‘The Hunt,’ and ‘The Village Barber.’ Johann André (d. 1799), fertile composer of singspiele, has a place alongside of Hiller as a pioneer in that he was probably the first to adapt the durchkomponiert style to the ballad, setting Bürger’s famous ‘Lenore’ soon after it appeared in 1775. The true ballad style, however, was more freely cultivated by Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg (d. 1802), commonly known as the inventor of the ballad form. He composed settings for several poems to which Schubert and Löwe later set their hands, notably Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy,’ Des Pfarrer’s Tochter, and Ritter Toggenburg. Johann Schulz, who was another prolific singspiel writer, is chiefly famous for his beautiful ‘Songs in the Folk-Manner,’ which appeared between 1782 and 1790, when Herder’s pioneer collection of Volkslieder (words only) had just commenced to create an interest in the subject of popular song.
But the most famous singspiel composer of the time, and one of the most interesting personalities among the lesser musicians, was Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814). Unlike most musicians of the age, Reichardt was a man of wide interests and excellent education. At the age of twenty-three he became royal choirmaster under Frederick the Great at Berlin. But he was a radical by temperament and seems to have caused the head that wore the crown to lie uneasy. His visits to Paris gave him such a sympathy with the approaching French revolution that he later lost his position in Berlin on account of his radical politics. For a time he was choirmaster at Cassel to Jerôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, who was anxious to pose as a patron of art. Reichardt caught the ‘folk-manner’ in his singspiele, but he was not a naïve musician in the technical sense of the word. His choruses and concerted pieces sometimes show a grace and artistry which suggests Mozart, and his songs are always organically and artistically conceived. He set in the simple strophe style some sixty of Goethe’s songs and Goethe’s delightful singspiel, Erwin und Elmire (as did also André). We must give Reichardt praise for working in musicianly style, with a fresh vein of melody and a graceful sense in the organizing of it. But we should make a mistake if we gave him a very high place in the history of the development of song, for Schubert’s earliest efforts tower far above his and they surely owe but little to them.
Precursors of Schubert.
Top: Johann Zumsteeg and Johann Adam Hiller
Bottom: Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Carl Friedrich Zelter
Schubert’s admiration for Zumsteeg and for his use of the ballad form (to which we doubtless owe ‘The Erl King’) was extended to another song writer of the time, Karl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832). This composer, who did a notable service as director at the Berlin Singakademie, was a personal friend of Goethe and had an extensive correspondence with him, which has been preserved and published. He set a great number of Goethe’s songs in the simple and unpretentious style of Reichardt. This much pleased the poet, who was professedly not much of a musician. In fact, it seems likely that Zelter frankly directed the great man’s musical tastes. Zelter’s songs, some of which are still sung by German singing societies, are spirited and musicianly. In their manly and straightforward way they compel one’s liking. If they do not figure as an element in musical history it is because their simple form offered little that was of service to the genius of Schubert.