F Schubert (1797-1828) Winterreise

1 Gute Nacht (Good Night)
2 Die Wetterfahne (The Weather-vane)
3 Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears)
4 Erstarrung (Numbness)
6 Wasserflut (Torrent)
7 Auf dem Flusse (On the Stream)
8 Rückblick (Backward Glance)
9 Irrlicht (Will o’ the Wisp)
10 Rast (Rest)
11 Frühlingstraum (Dream of Springtime)
12 Einsamkeit (Loneliness)
13 Die Post (The Post)
14 Der greise Kopf (The Grey Head)
15 Die Krähe (The Crow)
16 Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope)
17 Im Dorfe (In the Village)
18 Der stürmische Morgen (The Stormy Morning)
19 Täuschung (Deception)
20 Der Wegweiser (The Signpost)
21 Das Wirtshaus (The Inn)
22 Mut (Courage)
23 Die Nebensonnen (The Phantom Suns)
24 Der Leiermann (The Organ Grinder)

Programme Note

In the last year of his life Wilhelm Müller confided to a friend: “perhaps a kindred spirit may some day be found whose ear will catch the melodies of my words, and who will give me back my own”. His yearnings couldn’t have been more ironic. The year was 1827 and in Vienna one Franz Schubert was composing Winterreise. Nor was it even Schubert’s first brush with the poems of the Ducal Librarian at Dessau; in 1823 he’d already set twenty of the Die Schöne Müllerin poems – ensuring that Muller’s name, if not his reputation, would survive the ravages of literary posterity.

Muller was a popular poet in Schubert’s circle, and his 77 Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling Hornplayer (published in 1821) was widely circulated. Its appeal lay in an irony subsumed beneath a simple folk idiom – though the Viennese may not have fully appreciated the element of parody by which the poet took a pot shot at Biedermeyer cosy certainties. At any rate, Die Schöne Müllerin was a great success, earning its publisher a house out of the profits, and when Stockhausen gave a public performance at the Musikvereinsaal he netted three times as much as Schubert had received for composing the cycle in the first place.

Perhaps in turning to Winterreise Schubert now hoped to repeat the success without this time missing the financial boat (he was certainly short of money). His friend Johann Mayrhofer however, writing after Schubert’s death, hazarded another explanation: “the very choice of Winterreise shows how much more serious the composer became. He had been long and seriously ill, had gone through disheartening experiences, and life had shed its rosy colour; winter had come for him”. Was this just being wise after the event? There’s nothing to insist that a composer’s inner and outer life should necessarily always synchronise. Schubert was certainly ill and in low spirits for much of 1827, yet he also managed to compose the great Eb Piano Trio (whose slow movement echoes the first song of Winterreise), the charming Moments Musicaux and the 4 Impromptus D935. If the poems fulfilled a particular need, ‘winter’ wasn’t the only season on Schubert’s creative agenda. Indeed it’s worth remembering that just two weeks before his death in November 1828, Schubert started a course of counterpoint lessons with the renowned theorist Sechter – hardly the action of a man believing himself to be staring that ultimate ‘good night’ in the face.

In February 1827 he took up lodgings with his friend Schober at a new address near the Graben, bagging two rooms and a ‘music closet’ for himself. Here he completed the first twelve songs of the cycle, finishing the set – bar much revision – in October. The first performance, given privately to an audience of friends, was later remembered by Spaun: “For a time Schubert’s mood became more gloomy, and he seemed upset. When I asked him what was the matter he merely said to me “well you will soon hear it and understand. Come to Schober’s today. I will sing you a cycle of awe-inspiring songs. I am anxious to know what you will say of them. They have affected me more than has been the case with any other songs”. So, in a voice wrought with emotion, he sang the whole of Winterreise through to us. We were quite dumbfounded by the gloomy mood of these songs and Schober said he only liked one song, Der Lindenbaum. To this Schubert only said “I like these songs more than all the others, and you will get to like them too”. He was right, soon we were enthusiastic over the effect of these melancholy songs which Vogl performed in a masterly way”.

Public enthusiasm did not lag behind. After the publication of Part 1, the Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung summed up for everyone: “Schubert has understood his poet with the kind of genius that is his own. His music is as naive as the poet’s expression; the emotions contained in the poems are as deeply reflected in the composer’s own feelings, and these are so brought out in sound that none can sing or hear them without being touched to the heart”.

To careless readers the critic sold Schubert short. The music of Winterreise is far from naive except when intentionally so, and it adds a depth that Muller’s words alone do not engage. The wintry poetic landscape, both physical and emotional, engenders some of Schubert’s most desolate imaginings, yet his means are so breathtakingly simple (witness Einsamkeit or Letzte Hoffnung for example). The journey is an odyssey initiated by rejection and fuelled by despair – from the reluctant plodding of Nacht to the bleak stasis of Der Leierman. This last song, (in what Schubert once called “a cycle of horrid lieder”!), has often been portrayed as the very nadir of desolation. Perhaps so …. and yet! For if we can’t have love, is not companionship – however lowly – something, a start at least. The organ may drone on, its melody repetitious and constricted, but the pedler is human (and also rejected). Even the hoariest winter must eventually give way to spring.

© Paul Riley

Texts & Translations

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