Of the Heine songs the best known is Am Meer (‘By the Sea’). The introductory chords scored in the bass express the impenetrable mystery of the sea. The very simple melody is the essence of moody retrospection. Such a work as this is as supreme among songs as the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is in orchestral music. Die Stadt and Der Atlas show the great importance which Schubert accorded to the accompaniment and the freedom with which he had come to handle it. In Ihr Bild (‘Her Picture’) we have another of Schubert’s very simple melodies—and how impressive in its simplicity! Perhaps Heine was never more perfectly set to music than in this instance.
The wonderful Doppelgänger, unique among Schubert’s works, has already been mentioned. Mr. Henderson is right in his judgment of this piece. It is Wagnerism before Wagner’s time. It is the technique of the latter half of the nineteenth century previsaged by the genius of a poor and shy school-teacher living in a cheap Vienna lodging. It is a vision and a prophecy.
Of the ballads we need say little. Strangely enough not one of them is of the finest quality, or truly representative of Schubert, except that one which was the first of his songs to be published, and one of the half dozen to be most widely known—the ‘Erl King.’ It is strange, and disappointing, when we consider the perfection of this early attempt, that Schubert left the ballad, one of the most attractive of song forms, to his contemporary, Löwe, a man who had not a tenth part of his talent. ‘The King of Thule’ is one of the best of the remainder, but it is immensely surpassed by Liszt’s setting. The ‘Fisher Boy’ is charming, but being in the strophic form, is no contribution to the development of the form. ‘The Young Nun,’ fine as it is, is too rhetorical to satisfy a true lover of Schubert. In his more declamatory style Schubert often fails even to be interesting. ‘The Singer,’ to words by Goethe, is workmanly declamation such as any man of talent might have written. The Ossian songs, of which ‘Kolma’s Complaint’ is the best, reflect the somewhat strained verbosity of the words, and fail to convince with their beauty. The same is true of Schubert’s setting to Klopstock’s scena, ‘Hermann and Thusnelda.’ Pomp and circumstance drown out the music. For the true Schubert we must leave the larger forms and return to the shorter lyrics, which reveal the composer’s highest glory—the greatest beauty in the simplest terms.
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.’