VI
The writing of songs during Schubert’s time, and immediately before, was carried on on an amazing scale. It is not unusual to find composers of the time writing thousands of them. These songs have practically vanished from modern song-programs. But many of them were extremely popular at the time, and remain staples in the repertories of singing societies. Not a few of them have become folk-songs second to none in popularity. The simple form of most of these little lyrics almost precludes their having any importance in the history of song development, but it would be a pity if they were lost altogether to the student of singing.
The age in which they were written was, as we have seen, the great age of German national feeling. The intense sincerity and manliness of a Körner or an Arndt filled the whole nation with generous sentiments, contrasting with the delicate refinement of the French culture on the one hand, and the morbid introspection of the German romanticists on the other. Patriotic and military songs abounded. It was also the age of the formation of the male singing-societies which have since become such a typical feature of German life, and composers wrote freely for the four-part male chorus, or for the male solo voice. It was also the age of the awakening interest in folk-literature, and German history or legend furnished many a tale for men to sing around the festive board, or for nurses to sing to the children at night. Finally, it was the age of republican sentiment in Germany, the age when an idealistic and naïve nation was still expecting the reigning house to give constitutional government once the people had freed themselves from French rule. It was a Germany very different from the Germany we have seen since the Franco-Prussian war—a Germany that was less practical, less commercial, less ambitious, but infinitely more simple and lyric. Hence the output of fine songs was enormous. Never was the German genius more spontaneous; never was it more truly German. The songs of the time, which repose by the thousands in old Kommersbücher, and have sifted by scores into modern song collections, are the very breath of fresh air and generous spirits.
At the period of Schubert’s early activity Weber was the great national composer of the Germans. We have seen elsewhere[22] how German national sentiment centred around his music when the German kings turned traitor and sought to force the people back into an age of eighteenth-century reactionism. His opera, Der Freischütz, was a sort of Marseillaise in time of exile for the lovers of German liberty and union. But earlier than this Weber had made himself the chief national musical figure in Germany. His settings of Körner’s fiery Leyer und Schwert songs had raised him from a hardworking kapellmeister into a household name. The newly formed singing societies took up the songs, and at least one, the ‘Sword Song,’ has lived to this day. But in addition to these purely national and military songs, Weber wrote a great number of others, all in simple form and in the direct folk-spirit which he mastered as no other composer mastered it before or since. Many of them are sung still. But the great majority have by this time become quite outdated. We need only refer to one—the charming lullaby Schlaf, Herzenssöhnchen, mein Liebling bist du.
Three composers preëminently continued Weber’s work as composer of German opera—Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849), Albert Lortzing (1801-1851), and Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861). Of these, Kreutzer was peculiarly close to the German popular genius. His settings of Uhland’s Wanderlieder are very fine, In die Ferne being particularly worthy of study. Kreutzer, too, was one of the most successful composers of male choruses; his elaborate chorale, Das ist der Tag des Herrn, will probably be remembered as long as German music exists. Lortzing and Marschner freely introduced simple strophic songs into their operas, and by these are chiefly known. Their style was as simple as Weber’s and the historical development of song at their hands (slight in any case) is in a different direction from that which Schubert took. Their melodies are not inappropriate, but we look in vain in them for any of the close emotional interpretation which we find so abundantly in Schubert.
But the finest songs of this semi-popular style (volkstümliche Lieder) were written by men who have no other claim to greatness. We may mention F. H. Himmel (1765-1814), Methfessel (1785-1869), Nägeli (1773-1836), Lindpainter (1791-1861), and Silcher (1789-1860). These are the true writers of modern German folk-songs. The energy of their music is of an elementary sort which the more highly trained composer rarely equals. They live to-day in every gathering of German students, in every Männerchor, in every nursery. Ten people are familiar with their songs to one who knows who the composers were. But the gifts these composers have left to their people are co-extensive with German culture.
Methfessel is direct and virile, the singer of battles and of the manly virtues of the great ancestors. How compelling is the vigor of ‘Stimmt an, mit hellem Klang’! And what a boiling of the blood is in his fiery setting of Arndt’s ‘The God Who Made the Iron Grow!’ Nägeli is softer and more sentimental. We remember him chiefly by Freut euch des Lebens and the charming ‘Good-Night.’ Lindpainter was less talented, and his songs, which partook of a romantic nature, have almost disappeared. But Himmel is among the greatest. His setting of Körner’s ‘Prayer on the Eve of Battle’ (vastly superior to Schubert’s) is one of the deepest expressions of religious faith in all song literature. His ‘Ballad of the Three Tailors,’ from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, is a delightful example of the typical Studentenlied. And one should not overlook his four songs from Alexis und Ida, in which he shows a delicacy of sentiment approaching that of Schubert though he wrote them some years before the composition of the ‘Erl King.’
Finally, there is Silcher, who is to Germany exactly what Stephen Foster is to America. His songs are innumerable, and the number of great folk-songs among them is astonishing. The very heart of German music pulses in Silcher. The famous ‘Loreley’ melody is his, and also Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz and the wonderful Lebewohl. He is one of the three or four composers in the world who could with any considerable frequency equal the beauty and directness of folk-songs. He is a text for this chapter. Only the student who knows and loves Silcher can truly know and love Schubert.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[21] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[22] Vol. II, p. 230 ff.
CHAPTER IX
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Romantic music and romantic poetry—Schumann as a song-writer—The earlier songs—The ‘Woman’s Life’ cycle; the ‘Poet’s Love’ cycle; the later songs—Schumann’s contemporaries.
Schubert died just before the great artistic outburst which we know as the romantic period. We have seen elsewhere[23] how this force grew and achieved expression in Paris, and thanks partly to political conditions spread to all parts of Europe. Schumann, though not at all interested in politics, felt this force in its artistic aspect, as did all other sensitive men of the time. After Schubert, he was the one man preëminently to express the new feeling in terms of song.
Much had happened between 1828, when Schubert died, and 1840, when Schumann wrote his first songs. To put the case briefly, the romantic movement in music had got under way. People had begun to know Schubert’s songs and the later symphonies of Beethoven. The pianoforte had grown to perfection and had come to have a technique and literature of its own. The technique of harmony and polyphony had undergone (partly at Schumann’s own hands) striking changes in the direction of freedom and expressiveness. The short piece in free form had become a recognized part of musical literature. The national movement in Germany, with its extensive use of the folk-song, had been universally accepted. The travelling virtuoso had become a fixed part of musical life, and the musical centre of gravity had shifted from the nobles to the masses. In short, people had come to look for intimate emotional expression in music, and music had developed the means of supplying the demand.
Since Schubert’s time, the text of a song had become a factor of growing importance. Musicians began to recognize that it should be regarded as equal in value to the music. And along with this recognition arose a remarkable group of poets, as we have seen in the last chapter—a group which have supplied German poetry with one of its most brilliant periods. This group we have described as representing the period of disillusionment following the shattering of the dreams of German unity. For a time the hopes of the people had been directed toward the political and social field; what the best literature had expressed was the feelings and aspirations which were common to men. Now that all the fair dreams had been shattered by the selfishness of the courts and the bickerings of politicians, men asked, ‘What is the use?’ Turning inward to examine their own souls, they produced a delicate lyric poetry which contained just what the art-song of the time needed—the intimate and personal. No grand emotions ring in this period. In the whole list of Schumann’s songs there is hardly one whose words could be put into the mouth of a hero. By far the greater portion are pessimistic. What the poet remembers is a beguiling hour in the shade of a tree. What he looks forward to is a smile from his sweetheart. Every man tries to snatch his own small portion of happiness from this life—and generally makes a poor job of it. Nevertheless, a man usually tells more of the truth about himself when he is discouraged than when he is self-satisfied. And in the lyric poetry of the time we get charming and truthful analyses of human emotions and moods. The literary standard is perhaps higher than at any previous period (excepting, of course, the work of the giants like Goethe and Schiller). Versification is smoother, form is more pleasing, and words are used with more regard for their suggestive connotations. In short, men are looking at details in this romantic poetry, even as in romantic music.
High above all poets of the time stood Heine. No German poet, except possibly Goethe, ever produced such a quantity of short poems which have become the property of every German child. The whole literature of lyric poetry can show only three or four men who can equal him in brief and direct expression. It was Heine who brought German literature down from the mountain tops and made it inhabit the homes of men. His poetry was no ‘mighty line,’ with inverted phrasings and high astounding polysyllables. He never spoke the speech of the gods, as did Schiller. He had no use for the paraphernalia of Greek mythology that had been popular in the Sturm und Drang period. He spoke a German that easily fits into men’s mouths as they converse with their neighbors. Out of this he fashioned poetry. His syntax is as simple as that of the King James Bible (a rare thing in German literature). Each statement is a unit. And so with each of his thoughts and observations. Each comes to us in its simplest terms. Heine’s vocabulary (in his poems) is that of a child. His thoughts are those of any callow love-sick youth. His statement is so literal that it seems always to be on the verge of foolishness. He even seems careless in literary art; his lines are uneven, his rhymes the simplest imaginable, his rhythm disordered. Yet beneath and beyond this simplicity is the art of a careful workman, and the charm of a sensitive observer of men. Heine’s poems have the true lyric quality in that their real charm can never be finally analyzed. We can only say that beneath those childlike statements of the obvious was the genius of a poet.
Heine’s genius, like that of Rückert, Platen, Chamisso, Kerner, Eichendorff, and other contemporaries mentioned in the preceding chapter, always tended a bit toward the morbid. These poets partook of the common malady of over-individualism. ‘It is not good for man to be alone.’ The commonest and truest of truths is that man is a social animal. It is impossible for him to conduct his life except in company with others. The stories of hermits who have gone mad with loneliness have an excellent foundation in fact. And just as man seems meant to act socially, so he seems obliged to feel socially. It is a spiritual necessity to think a good deal of others. ‘Whoso saveth his soul shall lose it.’ The man who seeks to discover all the treasures within him usually ends by finding nothing there. And when it is the literary fashion (as it was in Schumann’s time) to look exclusively within one’s own soul, the age ends in helplessness with a moan of despair. This condition is implicit in the poetry of Heine. It is, as we have said, never the poetry of a hero. It can console us in our leisure; it can never inspire us in our labor. Yet the fault is not so serious as it may sound. Few people have contracted serious spiritual diseases from Heine’s poetry. The very simplicity and brevity of it prevent the reader from taking it too seriously. Read before the fire in the still hours of the evening Heine cannot harm the tenderest soul of a child of twelve. He was too genuine a humanist, as well as too excellent a literary man, to be utterly removed from health. He is a far more harmless amusement than Byron, for instance, just as he was a far greater poet than Byron. He was, of course, taken much more seriously in his day than we can take him in ours. Schumann in particular shows that he regarded his poet as a text for the highest tragedy and passion of which he as musician was capable. Yet even in his own time Heine’s influence must have been essentially healthy. For he had in abundance two qualities that always tend to keep men in the path of health, simplicity and humor. The mind that can think simply is not wholly diseased. And we need never fear the pessimist who can laugh at his own despair.