Franz Schubert: Arpeggione Sonata, D.821 & Lieder ohne Worte for Viola and Piano

Description

Franz Schubert’s melodies are capable of concentrating many nuanced and very deep feelings within a single design. The phrasing’s regularity, the tendency to move by tones and semitones, the tune’s bending within a well-defined texture seem to indicate a vocal imprint. This is found also in many themes of Sonatas and Quartets, of Trios and Symphonies. This applies not only to the use of specific references, as in the Forellenquintett D 667, in the Wandererfantasie D 760, in the Variations D 802 on Trockne Blumen or in the Quartet D 810, Der Tod und das Mädchen. Beyond the undebatable centrality of vocal music in Schubert’s oeuvre (more than 600 Lieder written between 1811 and 1828), instrumental music in turn absorbs inspiration from the vocal, establishing an osmosis between these two genres which will be adopted by Mahler. Beyond all precise programmatic intentions, it is possible to find, also in the instrumental works, some figurations which Schubert associates, in his Lieder, to the recurring symbols of his poetic world. These include, for instance, water as life’s generating power, but also as mutability and destruction; spring as a comforting mirage within life’s winter; march, associated to the meaningless itinerary of existence; dance as an image of seduction and ebriety. It is interesting to observe their persistence also in the performances presented here, of twelve songs played as Lieder ohne Worte, with the melodies transferred from the voice to the viola.
Frühlingsglaube (Spring faith), from 1820, is the only piece Schubert wrote on lyrics by Ludwig Uhland. It celebrates the blossoming of spring as the illusory hope in a better life. Lachen und Weinen (Laughter and tears) belongs in a group of five Lieder on lyrics by Friedrich Rückert, written in 1823. A piano ritornello frames and connects its two parts, whereby the outpouring of opposing emotional states is evoked through symmetrical fluctuations in the mode. In Die Forelle (The Trout), on lyrics by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, a carefree tone underlies the bitter metaphor of the traps disseminated throughout life. A trout swims in the stream, unworried by the line thrown by the fisherman, until he makes the water turbid and the cheated fish bites. The regularity of the first stanzas, over the piano’s crystal-clear flow, associated to the trout’s swimming, is troubled in the third stanza by the water’s muddling. The accompaniment is turned into a dark harmonic stirring; the repeated chords underscore the catch of the fish, whilst the concluding partial reprise, associated to the trout’s wriggling, hung on the hook, assumes a tone of mocking cynicism.
Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden), written in February 1817 on lyrics by Matthias Claudius, takes the form of a tragic dialogue between the two characters. It opposes the girl’s desperate terror, in the dramatic central episode, to Death’s ruling composedness. At the beginning, this is evoked by the piano alone on a solemn dactylic rhythm, and later by the voice, in the consoling sweetness of the final lethal embrace. Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel), of 1814, customarily marks the beginning of the German Romantic Lied. The text, in eight stanzas, is excerpted from Goethe’s Faust. It is grouped into three sections, separated by the repetition of the first stanza in the fashion of a refrain. It is almost entirely accompanied by an ostinato, picturing the monotonous rotation of the spinning wheel, but also the obsession of love. The voice part follows the protagonist’s psychological changes in a crescendo of emotions, culminating in the memory of the lover’s kiss, which briefly suspends the motion. The melody then expands again in the exaltation of desire. At the end, it bends itself to a state of prostration, on the murmured repetition of the first lines.
Lob der Tränen (In praise of tears), of 1818, on lyrics by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, constitutes an example of a strophic Lied whereby the attention is entirely concentrated on the grace of the melodic line, sustained by the piano, with a flowing motion of triplets or repeated chords. In such a simplicity, the master’s touch is not missing, as for example in the modal ambivalence of the piano’s introduction. Auf dem Wasser zu singen (To sing on the water), written in 1823 on lyrics by Friedrich Leopold Stolberg is a fairy Wassermusik, combining a salon-like lightness and the scent of death on a constant accompaniment, representing the flowing of water and, at the same time, the inexorable flow of time. The three stanzas, intoned all on the same music, propose a similitude starting by a naturalistic vision. The soul glides like a boat on a river, while, all around, a red sunset dances, and time vanishes in rocking waves. The minor mode prevails, but each stanza closes in the major mode, highlighting the fullness of a fulfillment which, in the first two stanzas, is bound to the flames of sunset, and in the last indicates the landing of death.
Gute Nacht (Good Night) and Die Wetterfahne (The weather vane) are the first two Lieder of the twenty-four contained within the cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey) on lyrics by Wilhelm Müller, which occupied Schubert between February and October of 1827. In his last moments of lucidity, he kept correcting the proofs, without however being able to see the entire collection in print. The reduction of the narrative elements, whereby even the cause of the journey finally becomes devoid of meaning (just as happens to the indistinct features of the faceless wanderer, who has not a defined psychological contour) reveals the Liederkreis’ symbolic nature and influences its structure. The wanderer’s itinerary is defined already at the beginning: Gute Nacht is a painful and ironic good-bye to the unfaithful lover, but also to earth, to life, to reality. Its firs lines (“A foreigner I came, A foreigner I leave again”) act as an epigraph to the entire cycle. They anticipate the anguished meaning of the journey, whereby every landing becomes a new starting point. If the march rhythm of Gute Nacht is the very symbol for a goalless journey, the jagged rhythm of the Wetterfahne represents the senseless turning of the weather vane, associated to the lover’s capricious inconstancy.
Ständchen (Serenade), on lyrics by Ludwig Rellstab, belongs in the group of Schubert’s last fourteen Lieder on lyrics by three different poets, posthumously published by Haslinger in May 1829 under the title of Schwanengesang (Swan’s Song). It is a night song of the desire, where sensuousness and irony get mixed. The accompaniment seems to evoke a mandolin or a guitar; the minor mode imparts an even exceedingly sad tone. The five stanzas are grouped into two parts, the second of which is amplified through a contrasting section laden with pleading emphasis, with final cadences by the piano ending in the major mode, suggesting the persuasion of the reluctant lover. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre provided the lyrics for many works by Schubert. Already in a Lied written in 1815 the character of Mignon appears. She is a young street artist who seems to live outside the rules of society. In particular, among the stupendous and disquieting lines sung by Mignon, Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt (Only he who knows nostalgia) received no less than six versions, the last two of which are included in the Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister of 1826, published as op. 62. In the collection’s first piece the lyrics are set as a duet for soprano and tenor, whilst the fourth is for solo voice. This Lied, framed by a touching cantilena by the piano, constitutes a fascinating portrait of the feminine soul: at first with desolate melancholy, then with sad resignation, and then with anguished tremor, re-establishing, in the end, the initial situation as the unconquerable persistence of grief. Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen (Litany for the feast of All Saints) is a strophic Lied of 1816 on lyrics by Johann Georg Jacobi. It is a prayer for the deceased’s souls, whereby every stanza is closed by the same words (“Let all souls rest in peace!”), whilst the rocking sweetness of the melody and the uniform accompaniment by the piano evoke the serene calm of a berceuse.
The arpeggione is a curious hybrid between a cello and a guitar, invented in 1823 by the Viennese luthier Johann Georg Staufer, and already fallen into disuse a decade later. It took the shape of its body, as well as the style of the six-stringed board, from the guitar. It took from the cello the traits of being held between the knees and played with the bow. It enjoyed some success within a small circle of amateurs, and obtained the support of Vincenz Schuster who, in 1825, had the only known method for this instrument published by Diabelli, and, in November 1824, commissioned to Schubert the famous A-minor Sonata, which would be published only in 1871. This work is now performed normally on the cello or on the viola, even though in the second half of the twentieth century there have been attempts to recover the forgotten original instrument. In spite of its seeming formal simplicity, in this Sonata it is not difficult to notice the distinctive traits of the musician’s mature style. This applies especially to the ambiguity of the harmonic plane, with its pronounced tendency to deviate toward distant keys. This is already evident in the variegation of the lowered second grade, which adorns the melancholic initial theme proposed by the piano and immediately re-presented by the bowed instrument. Another example is the deviation toward the lowered fourth degree, constituting the extreme modulating landing in the central development. The short Adagio in E major, hinging on a luminous hymn-like melody by the arpeggione, has actually the function of an introduction to the final Allegretto in A major. This is structured as a rondo-sonata, rich in harmonic surprises and formal anomalies, starting with the first episode, which is presented in D minor, and comes back in the reprise in A minor, before the triumphal recovery of the main key.
Giuseppe Rossi © 2022
Translation: Chiara Bertoglio