To name all the Franz songs which are distinguished in musical beauty and workmanship would be to name the best portion of his life work. But we may point out as of especial beauty (in addition to those already named) Auf geheimen Waldespfade, Auf dem Teich, Der Sommer ist schön, Die Welt ist so öd, Im Friedhof, Im Walde, Für Musik, Im Mai, Ich hab’ in deinen Augen, Der junge Tag erwacht, and Er ist gekommen.
IV
We have seen in a previous chapter how Schubert, having created one supremely great ballad, failed ever to write another. So the task of creating the art-ballad fell not upon his shoulders but upon those of another, Johann Carl Gottfried Löwe, who was born in North Germany in 1796, almost at the same time as Schubert, and long outlived the gentle Viennese composer. Löwe wrote a quantity of choral and church music, but he is chiefly known for his numerous ballads, which he made known throughout Europe in his own concert tours and which have pretty well held their own to this day, in spite of serious drawbacks. Löwe’s songs were almost solely in the ballad form. To this he gave his best talents, which were marked though uneven. Undoubtedly he was an artist, working with sincerity and reserve in a form which, more than most forms, would tempt a composer to artistic excess. Add to this the fact that Löwe was not endowed with a rich fund of musical ideas (at least from the standpoint of pure beauty) and we must pay considerable respect to the man who stuck to his guns as he did and produced such a sincere and admirable body of work as he did. Löwe’s ballads are descriptive in the highest degree. Every resource that the composer has at his command he calls upon to make the scene pictorial and vivid. In his search for effects he stumbled upon many musical devices which must have proved valuable to later composers. His harmony, considering the time in which he worked, is free and daring. His modulation goes by direct chromatic progression to the most remote keys. Dissonance he uses freely for poignant effect. But the great fault is that he was not a melodist. Melody is, of course, not needed in the ballad as it is in the lyric, but none the less the composer who cannot call forth a beautiful melody when he needs it must jog along as a second-rate artist. It is the lack of melody which we miss most in Löwe’s ballads. Melody is obviously absent because the composer could not command it, not because he chose not to use it. Time and again he writes what is meant to be, and perhaps was believed to be, a pleasing tune. But too often it is only empty and angular. It was in developing the form and technique of the art-ballad that Löwe performed his chief service to music.
Apart from this failing in point of melody many of Löwe’s ballads are altogether admirable. He caught the spirit of the ballad as few others have, that spirit expressed so well in Goethe’s words: ‘The ballad requires a mystical touch, by which the mind of the reader is brought into that frame of undefined sympathy and awe which men unavoidably feel when face to face with the miraculous or with the mighty forces of nature.’ Löwe’s resource in the invention of picturesque musical formulas is very great. With his fine sense of drama he managed to make his best ballads impressive and moving. In the Erlking or ‘Sir Oluf’ we feel (if they are well sung) that we are living through a great life experience with the characters represented. His Erlking is not comparable with Schubert’s in loveliness. But it emphasizes the dramatic elements of the poems as Schubert did not try to and probably could not have done if he had tried. The galloping of the horse is represented graphically in the accompaniment. The three characters speak in three different kinds of voice—the father’s is quiet and low, the son’s high and excited, the Erlking’s eerie and unsubstantial. The Erlking’s speeches are all in G major and on the notes of the tonic chord. For the effective delivery of the song there are demanded not only dramatic fire and intensity of emotional expression, but the careful differentiation of the three qualities of voice.
One of the finest of the ballads is ‘Sir Oluf,’ in which there are four speaking characters and an abundance of picturesque stage machinery. Sir Oluf, riding through the forest on his way to his wedding, is accosted by the elves and invited to dance, with the fatal consequences usual in ballads. Oluf’s ride is described in a stirring allegro vivace in the introduction, and the dance of the elves is pictured in a charming passage. Another of the great ballads, perhaps the best known of all, is ‘Edward,’ the text being that of the famous Scotch folk-ballad of the same name. (Brahms wrote a piano piece on the subject, and also set the words as a duet.) The dramatic power is gained from the repetition many times over of an incisive emotional phrase. The whole effect is broad and tragic. Among the many others of Löwe’s ballads which are worthy of study and of frequent inclusion in concert programmes we may mention ‘Henry the Fowler,’ ‘The Moorish Prince,’ and ‘Odin’s Ride Over the Sea.’
Few composers have given their best to the ballad form. This is a pity, because no single form of poetry has such a universal and direct appeal as the condensed dramatic story in verse. No type of poetry is more difficult to write with sincerity and human truthfulness. The ballad has remained almost as it was in the beginning, the peculiar property of folk-art. It is, on the other hand, the easiest form for a musician to abuse, the one which tempts most to cheap and clumsy effects. Löwe is one of the few composers who has given his best to the ballad form and, while that best is far inferior to what a first-rate genius would have done, it is too stimulating and suggestive to be absent from any singer’s cultural equipment.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Vol. II, chapter VI.
[27] Chapter VII.