IV
Of Schubert’s six hundred songs, as we have said, many are of little or no musical value. Sometimes the melody seems too facile; it expresses nothing; it is like every other ordinary tune. And sometimes, especially in the longer ballads and scenas, there is a lack of any musical character; commonplace chords and scraps of indifferent melody succeed each other to fatigue. The length is sometimes enormous. ‘The Diver’ occupies nearly forty printed pages, and many others between fifteen and twenty.
It is more regrettable that some of the songs should be sad mixtures of greatness and triviality. ‘Death-Music’ is such a song. The opening bars have a deep solemnity, which is almost equal to the dignity of the theme, but seems just a little too thin or facile. Then on the words Hebe aus dem ird’schen Ringen comes a passage which is one of Schubert’s great moments, and this is repeated in finer development on the words: Alles grosses werd’ ich sehen, until one can almost feel one’s self carried into the mysteries of death. But then follow three pages of melody which are irritating, for they have much beauty and expressiveness, but seem aimless and disorganized. In ‘Viola,’ which is a matter of twenty-one pages, there are one or two of the most gracious melodies Schubert ever wrote, but the song as a whole, what with length and formlessness, is hopeless. Fülle der Liebe, again, is both beautiful and expressive, altogether a distinguished piece of work, except that its movement soon becomes so monotonous that it is unendurable.
So Schubert is often betraying the rapidity with which he worked. But he has left us at least one hundred songs which are immortal. First of all, they are worth knowing for their wonderful stock of melodies, as pure and rich as any composer in the world has ever given us. The enchantment can hardly wear off with such melodies as those of ‘Praise of Tears,’ ‘The Trout,’ Du bist die Ruh, ‘The Linden Tree,’ ‘The Inn,’ ‘To Sylvia,’ ‘Litany,’ and ‘The Serenade.’
It is by no means the melody of the drawing-room. The dainty, snobbish grace of the French bergerette is foreign to Schubert. He seems anxious to sing with everybody. It is recorded that one of his favorite pastimes was walking out with a friend on a Sunday afternoon to one of the villages in the neighborhood of Vienna, and watching the peasants dance and hearing them sing their songs. This popular sense persists in all Schubert’s music, however delicate may be his delineation of mood. He had nothing of the aristocrat in him. The son of a schoolmaster, accustomed to poverty, and accustomed to teach in an almost menial capacity in the house of Count Esterhazy, he acquired none of the tastes of the aristocrat and was content to take his pleasures as other people did. Besides, the whole tradition of German music has been remarkably close to the people. Even Mozart, the most polished of composers, wrote in ‘The Magic Flute’ music that would have delighted any peasant. So we are not surprised to find in Schubert’s lyrics a strain of folk-song, especially in the cadences and progressions which the Germans love so well. Take, for instance, the continually recurring cadence of the song Sei mir gegrüsst, or that of ‘Praise of Tears.’ It sets the spirit for the whole of the song. And it is taken from the very bone and sinew of German music. Or take the short middle section of ‘The Wanderer,’—in which the Wanderer cries out, ‘Where art thou, Where art thou, My beloved land!’—or the first of the Erl King’s songs in the ballad ‘The Erl King’; or the whole strophic tune of ‘The Fisher.’ Hum these over two or three times. Then take at random two or three German folk-songs—Ach du lieber Augustin and Immer langsam voran, or what not, and hum these. And then two or three French bergerettes. The relationship of Schubert will then be quite clear. These matters of musical analogy are subtle and slippery. They cannot be established by analysis. But they can always be proved or disproved by the sympathetic ear.
But Schubert was writing art-songs, not folk-songs. Accordingly he was obliged to give more precise meanings to his melodies than folk-songs choose to give. He must not sing only of love or sorrow, but of a certain mood of love or sorrow. This is what we mean by the refinement of melody. Not that the unrefined melody is less worthy or less beautiful, only that it is less precise. In refining his tunes Schubert’s delicate artistic sense stood him in glorious stead. The Ave Maria is first of all a beautiful German melody. But it is also a delicate, sensitive melody, which might have been sung by the essentially aristocratic Ellen. Or notice the delicacy of mood implied in Heine’s poem Ihr Bild. It is essentially a civilized mood, one which comes over a person inside of a house with the lights turned low, a mood which a folk-song would never be called upon to express. Schubert catches it in a few simple notes. He does not strain his melody in order to make it express an unusual mood. He selects his notes—that is, refines the melody—until its expression has become specific and accurate instead of broad and general.
This matter of melodic refinement (which must be divined by a sort of sixth sense) leads us to one of the essential characteristics of Schubert’s songs (and of art-songs in general)—namely, detailed expression. Here we can be more specific. Compared to later song-writers, Schubert makes very little effort to emphasize details in his texts. He is never willing in his lyrical pieces to distort or disturb the flow of the melody or the design of the whole, in order to illustrate a detail. But a slight study of his songs will show that he is never overlooking these details. And when it seems to him proper to give them precise expression, the device is always at his finger-tips. Take one of the loveliest of all his songs, Das Wirthshaus—‘The Inn’—from the cycle Winterreise. The whole song should be played through first to get the mood of weariness, of spiritual hunger and thirst, that pervades it. Then on the words die müden Wandrer—‘tired wanderers,’ comes this progression:
die müden Wandrer laden ins kühle Wirtshaus ein
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Notice the wonderful D flat of the accompaniment. And notice too with what magic the simple chords of the next measure seem to fit the word kühle Wirtshaus,—the ‘cool tavern.’ A little later, on the words: bin matt zum Niedersinken—‘tired to exhaustion’—is the following passage:
bin matt zum Niedersinken und tötlich schwer verletzt
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Notice the G flat of the accompaniment, how it creeps into the harmonic framework and gives poignancy to the expression. And then four measures further on, on the words: doch weisest du mich ab?—‘and do you turn me away?’—there is this very simple musical passage:
Doch weisest du mich ab
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Only one altered chord, that containing the B natural, but what pathos lies in it!
An even finer instance of musical delineation is the song Der Doppelgänger, the last but one that Schubert ever wrote. Mr. Henderson, in his ‘Songs and Song Writers,’ justly says that this wonderful song anticipates Wagner’s theories and methods. Here we have the continuous melody, the leit-motif (the first four measures of the accompaniment), the declamatory voice part, and the ‘orchestral comment’ which we associate with the Wagnerian music-dramas. We cannot fail to notice in this song the ghostly effect of the thick chords kept in the bass section of the pianoforte’s range, nor the uncanny effect of the short, almost gasping, phrases for the voice, nor the fierce picturing of terror on the words meine eigne Gestalt. What couldn’t Schubert have been in the history of music, asks Mr. Henderson, if he had lived!
Schubert’s command over modulation is facile and abundant. Sometimes there is no rest in the matter of modulation. Yet the changes of key and mode never seem strange. Tonalities melt into one another, and voices lead as naturally as they do in the simple key-schemes of Haydn. The best of examples is the wonderful song, Die Allmacht. Nominally in the key of C major, it remains actually in this key for only about a fifth of its length. The astonishing simplicity and inevitableness of Schubert’s modulations are well exemplified by the change from F major to G flat major on the words Gross ist Jehovah der Herr (at their next to last appearance). Wagner used precisely this modulation about ten years later for the climax to the great prayer in the opera Rienzi. But we find it no uncommon thing to discover that strokes of genius in other composers have been anticipated in Schubert.
But the richness and smoothness of Schubert’s modulations, which are everywhere to be discovered in his songs, are not the most important qualities from the artistic standpoint. The important thing is the marvellous deftness with which the composer uses his modulation for expressive purposes. Let us return to Das Wirtshaus, a thorough knowledge of which is a liberal education in Schubert’s art. Modulation here is like flowing water. But notice especially the last (repeated) line of the poem: Nun weiter denn, nun weiter, mein treuer Wanderstab—‘then on again, my faithful wanderer’s staff.’ The first half of the line is in C minor. Then on the words mein treuer Wanderstab it goes again into its original F major. The effect is past all analysis. We feel the tragic vista of life ahead of the man, the eternal trudging along white dusty roads. The human pathos of the modulation is intense.
It is interesting to notice, in passing, that Schubert gets his most tragic and pathetic effects out of the major mode rather than out of the minor. Besides the example just quoted one recalls the entrance of the major in Ihr Bild,—an effort of most delicate pathos; and the ending of ‘Death and the Maiden,’ in which the coming of the minor brings with it the feeling of deep human tragedy as contrasted with the somewhat spooky tragedy of the preceding minor. Schubert’s effects, though usually very simple, rarely come from a reliance on conventional means.
Another of Schubert’s expressive devices is famous. It is the dissonance of D flat against D against C (or a corresponding combination), recurring in ‘The Erl King’ when the boy shrieks in terror at the sight of the evil ghost. It was strenuously objected to by certain ones who heard it in Schubert’s time, and it is recorded that one of the objectors withdrew his criticism because the compound dissonance resolved so smoothly. The justification, if justification is needed, is something other than this. It is that the device is tremendously expressive.
In ‘The Erl King’ we cannot fail to notice how the triplet motive in the accompaniment binds the song closely together. In nearly every case Schubert finds some means of accomplishing this end, when the free form of the song might threaten to distract one’s attention. In a number of the Müllerlieder, in which the brook figures constantly, the rippling water is suggested (not imitated) in the accompaniment. The devices by which the suggestion is accomplished seem naïve to us to-day, but it is perhaps more artistic than an attempt at imitation would be.
Suggestive devices are innumerable. Note the movement of the breeze in ‘Suleika’s Second Song’; the opening chords, suggestive of deepening night over the sea, in Am Meer; the delicate will-o’-the-wisp figure in Irrlicht; the bass figure that suggests huge weight in Atlas; the leaping triplet figure in ‘The Trout’; the tragic snatches of melody in the bass of Aufenthalt, and so on without limit. It must be remembered that such details as these were much more of a novelty in Schubert’s time than now. A century ago the use of music for detailed expression was comparatively strange.
We should bear in mind, also, how slightly this attention to detail in Schubert affects the external unity of the song. Schubert’s method (except in the long declamatory pieces) was essentially lyrical. He wanted to write a piece of music which, while truly expressive of the words, would be a beautiful piece of music even without them. He kept the organization and proportion of his music, as such, always in view. The whole course of song after him illustrates the conflict (which was the origin of the art-song in the first place) between this formal design and accuracy of expression. A simple strophic song can, as we know, be quite perfect in design. But only rarely can it also be quite accurate in the expression of the words. The musical realist will seek to make the music detailed and expressive at all costs. The many to whom beauty comes first, on the other hand, will admit the realistic detail only when it accords with the beauty of the pattern. It is instructive to note how Schubert solves the problem. While he was never a formalist in the stricter sense of the word, his sense of pattern beauty was such as would be pained at a realistic detail that was detrimental to form. Judged by modern standards he was conservative in his procedure. But considering his conservatism he managed to get a wonderful amount of detailed expression into his songs. No song-writer has ever had a more delicate and accurate feeling for these details of human realism.